liquidsnake

This is basically my dream update, I love it!

The idea of haunting goes too far for me, but mental issues as a consequence of killing on sight is an interesting idea. I see two problems with the idea as you presented it here; it seems to punish lone wolf gameplay even more than the disadvantage of being alone in itself already does and especially the haunting aspects are going quite far into the realm of fantasy. Too far for it to fit a game like DayZ. What I would probably be in favour of is if after a few kills there is a chance for the player to start hearing things that aren't there, as a consequence of being troubled by the murders and/or experiencing paranoia/PTSD due to experiencing combat. What these effects ought to be and how far they should go is an interesting discussion. Hearing footsteps that aren't there is fairly hefty in my opinion, as that is the main method of finding out whether another player is close in f.e. buildings. That'd be a big disadvantage, unless it happens fairly rarely (as in, rare enough for the player to not start thinking "it's just paranoia anyway" ever time they hear footsteps). I would probably be a fan of hearing distant screams (not too loud) and other subtle, uneasy sounds that make the gameplay atmosphere more creepy and might induce paranoia. But for me, I think the best approach is to make it subtle. It should probably cause players to lower their guard a bit to environmental sounds that indicate the presence of a player, but the sounds still ought to be distinctive enough for an attentive player to know what is real and what isn't. Not being alert, a player would risk not hearing the sounds properly and in hindsight wondering whether there is a player or not. I think that would be a great addition. It should probably apply to both singular and group players, even if realistically lone wolves would be more vulnerable to this.

That is definitely the main risk of having your food state impact mobility much sooner. Players might get frustrated. One of my fresh spawn lives in which I got very unlucky with food/tools, I got stuck on yellow health in a town and I knew I couldn't travel to the next one without starving. So basically that town was my last chance at survival. I spent an entire day there just trying to survive and eventually with my health at red and food/hydrated stat full, I just went into a house, lay down on a bed (it had just become pitch dark) and "slept" there all night to let my health recover to the point where I could travel normally again. I actually found this a really interesting experience myself and I enjoyed the feeling of really being stuck until I was at full health again. I love moments like that. But for others I understand that there is a serious risk they won't enjoy being locked in a town by mobility issues and forced to survive there. Especially the part of actually having to rest in a house for considerable amount of time. I certainly think you have a point there. Players tend to call this game a walking simulator as is. The sprinting restriction is probably something that could easily be implemented though. Yes, I understand that, but there are choices that can be made within the context of gameplay balance. DayZ can choose to simulate starvation by having the process be extremely quick, but it can also simulate this by having food be much rarer than it is now and making agriculture take longer, coupled with slower starvation, or by having your food stat impact mobility sooner to make searching for food more troublesome unless you plan ahead. These are all different options to simulate starvation and we can have a discussion about which would work best in terms of both gameplay balance and immersion/realism. There is no one 'correct' choice here and it's also not a matter of extreme realism versus gameplay. There is a middle ground to be found there. Even the present system tries to find such a middle ground between realism and gameplay. Question is, what is the sweet spot that allows for both gameplay balance and high immersion? Opinions will differ on that.

Mate, this discussion is about food. You're rambling all over the place about basic survival stuff to someone who you can see has joined this forum in 2012... That and I have repeatedly stated that survival even in this patch is not a problem for me, but that I think the current food dynamic has realism issues that are troublesome IMMERSION-wise. And back to food specifically... starvation is an extremely slow moving process where you gradually go from fed to near-death, limping and running on reserves being quite literally just skin and bones. The notion that our characters in DayZ are already starving to the point of being an hour from death at spawn is ridiculous. Just something you're telling yourself to rationalise the insane rate at which starvation happens, but ultimately it is completely disconnected from realism and that remains my point. Reality is that humans that start out decently fed can survive up to a literal month without food. Reality is that when even remotely close to death by starvation, a human will already be limping and looking seriously malfed. And none of that is the case in DayZ. It being a game requires the process of starvation to be hastened, naturally, but the current dynamic just goes too far for it to remain believable. As I've said before, to better simulate starvation I recommend our energised state to impact our mobility much sooner. No or severely diminished sprinting unless food is white, limping at red food, even slower limping at flashing empty food. Meanwhile health diminishes relatively slowly, but fast enough to be a serious threat in combination with slower movement. This much more realistically simulates the impact of starvation on a human IRL. And most importantly, it remains a challenge, especially when you consider mobility is important to properly deal with PvP and certain PvE factors.

Already said I washed my hands directly after hunting. Maybe you should stop assuming things.

I love the loot economy too. Especially the longer persistence is great as you can actually see the remnants of a battle now (more often anyway). The challenge to find something is great, but the insane rate at which we starve is not. I think it would be a lot more realistic and no less challenging if starvation (as in death) happens a lot slower, but there are other limitations tied to your energised and hydration stats. For instance, make it impossible to sprint or heavily impair sprinting when at yellow energised stat, because you lack the energy to do it. Make the character start limping at red energised state (even if health is full), to show how the character is completely bereft of energy and at this point is just burning their muscle/fat for reserve energy. This makes a low energy stat a challenge not by having you die comically fast, but by seriously impairing your ability to travel while at the same time slowly picking away at your health to simulate a more realistic path to starvation that is no less challenging. This also requires planning, because if the red food state sneaks up on you, you're going to have a lot of trouble finding food while your health slowly diminishes and in the long term slows your movement even further.

I have been playing all those patches and I only noticed the extreme food situation this patch, so I don't know what you're talking about there. I never had this issue before. I suppose it is technically possible that it has always been like this and it's just the loot changes that bring attention to how fast starvation happens, but I doubt that. We've had other patches in which finding food was hard and I didn't notice this issue back then.

I play official, hardcore. Anyway, yes, the game must balance out real life survival in a way that might not always be realistic. I know this. And the devs can do this in a good or bad way. Whether we think the food choices are good or bad is a matter of opinion that we discuss here on the forums. Telling someone to stop playing the game is not really a constructive way to engage in that discussion. This is not a matter of "this is a game, so any choices you think are bad are just to be accepted and go play something else if you don't agree". It's wildly unrealistic, it's unnecessary from a gameplay perspective (as I said, there are many other ways to better simulate hunger) and I generally simply think it's a bad choice for the game. You're acting as if any choice the devs make is infallible and I can only either accept it or stop playing. This again is not a criticism towards the difficulty of survival, it's criticism towards how insanely far this is from realism while DayZ does profile itself as at least a semi-realistic suvival game. To me, this is unrealistic to such a degree that it starts being damaging to the experience. I call upon the devs to find more intuitive ways to simulate survival elements in the game, rather than just making everything from items wearing out to hunger go much quicker. It's a lazy way of implementing such things and if overdone it can seriously mess with our sense of realism. The boots and knives wearing out quick is an example of something that is unrealistic and perhaps an annoyance, yet understandable. The food system right now way oversteps it, imo. It seems like another one of those changes that is designed to keep players busy in the late game rather than actually making the late game more interesting (f.e. with helicopters or other things as high profile end game goals).

I already told you, the challenge is not a problem for me. I'm giving anecdotes of a few fresh spawns that didn't end well. Regarding sickness, I did nothing out of the ordinary. That particular fresh spawn I was cold at the start (played at night), but for the rest nothing special. Washed my hands, only drank from wells. Only ate directly from cans, prepared meat or drank water from wells either directly or poured into a bottle. The extreme rate at which hydration went down definitely seemed to be of cholera or something in that order, but the only place I could have contacted that would be a well as that is the only source I drank from (and if I did have cholera, IRL that is simply treated with sugar water to stay hydrated and energised. That I did insofar my stomach allowed for it). However I was coughing and sneezing so it was a cold, which also checked out with how I started out in the cold state as a freshie. I'm also fairly sure I got sick before I even found the water bottle. It was the first time I was sick in a very long while so I don't have a habit of becoming sick either and I'm no expert at diagnosing exactly what I had. Might have been both a cold and cholera. No rain, no sprinting. Again, my complaint is not the difficulty and I can survive just fine. But the complete lack of realism in the hunger stat atm is just no fun to me. Every time I see my food stat go to yellow and despite being absolutely loaded with meat and at full health I know if I don't build a campfire right now I'll literally starve to death, my immersion is ruined. Every time I see my food stat go to yellow maybe half an hour after eating something and I know I'm going to die in 20 or so minutes if i don't eat something, my mind goes "this bullshit again". Same if my boots are damaged after an hour long hike and I know I'll literally bleed to death if I don't go searching for new ones (lol) "this bullshit again" or my knife is damaged after the fifth time I use it "this bullshit again". But since those were just small elements of the game I never really cared too much. But this one just goes too far. Just the idea of starving to death in the space of half an hour is such complete and utter nonsense that the survival element of this game (which is the main reason I play it) loses all sense of realism and with that all value. But the loot system changes are pretty good though. Only having one shot in my double barrel for self-defence while looting NWAF was fun. It's a shame the game took this course, because there are many ways to have survival be challenging in a more realistic way. The loot changes seem an interesting step in the right direction, but the food system is broken. Not in an "I can't play" kind of way, but in a "what is this bullshit" kind of way.

I got sick either by drinking from a pump well or because I was cold as a fresh spawn. Either way not much I could have done. And managing hunger/thirst, while certainly possible (which is not what I'm complaining about), is absolutely not reasonable because starvation happens about 720 times faster than it does in real life. I get that the game needs to be a challenge to have it be fun, but the correct way to get that done is to stay within certain bounds of realism. Because making things challenging for the sake of having a challenge even though it makes zero sense is not fun. Instead of making starvation comically fast, food could be more rare or a limp could set in that lasts a lot longer and hampers looting/PvP. And most importantly, healing is also way too fast. Right now the game is no fun to me. Not because managing food is difficult; I know how to source food, but simply because the way starvation is currently implemented as something you have to constantly manage and plan for even on short treks breaks immersion in a really bad way. I like challenges, but I don't like exaggerated and unrealistic tasks that make the survival experience feel fake. It breaks immersion in a way that makes me want to stop playing. I've been playing DayZ since the mod and I can actually say that I've never had this little fun playing the game.

I think having players limp early but for a much longer time is a good idea. It could simulate how after a few days of not eating we can still move on just fine, yet don't have the energy to go around running for food. The limping itself could prove a challenge, which I'm up for.

No, I ate the plum, chicken and pumpkin spread out over the course of about 30-40 minutes surviving. I ate the plum as soon as my food sat went yellow, I ate the pumpkin as soon as it went yellow again and then searched for food, which I finally found in the form of a chicken when my food was red. The rest of the story I told already. Finding the food is not even the problem, I just now died again of dehydration 10 minutes after drinking an entire bottle of water and eating two cans of tuna, a can of sardines, a beef steak and 2 chicken breasts. I was sick, so there's that, but what happened this time is my stomach got full after trying to keep my food/water in white a few hours ago. And this led to a rather comical situation, because while my stomach was full my food and water went down so fast that before I could eat more I already was starving again. So over the course of several hours I spent managing my food by eating or drinking a little bit (just what I could without vomiting) whenever a few minutes had passed. This caused m food stat to permanently go from yellow to red to yellow and back again. I had on me 2 chicken breasts, a steak, and found 4 cans of tuna, 1 can of sardines, a can of peaches and a water bottle that I refilled. Within the space of about 2 hours I ate all of this and drank in total 3 refilled bottles of water, everytime only ingesting what I could without vomiting, but I constantly kept my food/water at yellow. Eventually I had just finished my third bottle of water and after being yellow for 1 minute my water stat went red again. So at this point I start eating the food I have left because at this time I had no water pump near me. That was at that point the aforementioned 2 chicken breasts, a steak, 2 cans of tuna and a can of sardines (meaning in the previous hour or so I ate a can of peaches, 2 cans of tuna and drank 3 water bottles). By this point my stomach was no longer stuffed, so I ate the cans I had left and noticed after each can my water stat only went to yellow and then almost immediately back to red, so I proceeded to build a campfire immediately after. My health was full at that point, but by the time I could start roasting the meat I was already at yellow health. I had just entered red health (still red hydration, not empty because I kept it filled with cans) when my steak was ready. Ate the steak, hydration never even left red this time. Cooked the chicken, health still red when done, ate it and again hydration didn't even leave red. Health went flashing just as I started cooking the last chicken and I was dead just as I could eat it. But it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. But hey, after spending the last hour eating 4 cans of tuna, 1 can of sardines, 2 chicken breasts, a can of peaches and a steak, my food stat was finally full (yes, up until I ate the steak my food stat was never full and even alternated between yellow white and sometimes red)! In real life, humans can survive up to a literal month without food before dying of starvation and 3 days without water. If said human is actively searching for food and burning calories, that number might go down to 2 weeks or MAYBE 1 week if exceptionally active. In this game starvation happens in the space of 30 minutes or so. It is absolutely ridiculous. I like the new loot system wherein it's difficult to find weapons and other loot, but the food system is utterly broken and I don't see how anyone can even defend this meme. The human body doesn't die of starvation until it has used up all its reserves, which means that before the body has used up all fat and muscles and a human is literally reduced to skin and bones (I guess we've all seen pictures of starving humans at some point, for example holocaust pictures) we actually don't die but instead progressively weaken until there is nothing left to burn. Now think of how long it takes to go from a healthy human to that and that is how long it takes to starve to death. The fact that people like Gandhi could voluntarily fast 21 days out of protest multiple times in their lives, yet in game I die because while stocked with meat I took 5 mins too long building a campfire is ridiculous and indefensible. Make food extremely hard to find if you insist on making it a challenge, but don't do this.

I'd disagree. My last character got lucky and found a pumpkin another player had left behind, killed another recently spawned player for their plum (yes, that's how bad it is) and hunted and cooked a chicken. I died of starvation 5 minutes after eating the chicken, which only got me to yellow food and went down to red literally one minute later. Barely lasted an hour in total. Even getting lucky is not enough to survive at the moment. I wouldn't at all call that realistic, which is what this game strives to be. Food scarcity is great, but what you find/grow/cook ought to keep you fed for longer (depending on what it is). Nowadays this game is already plagued by mostly artificial things to manage (like shoes getting ruined and causing you to bleed to death, so you have to keep moving to find new pairs or repair kits, knives and other tools getting ruined unrealistically fast and more), food is not something we need to add to that list. Keeping food realistic can already be a nice challenge, if done right.

Health regens too fast, broken bones and other more complex conditions would add to the medical/survival elements of the game, reintroduce leather clothing (you can as of now already make tanned leather), reintroduce fishing, (cross)bows would be great, item colouring needs to return at least for the now not so useful ghillies. The survival elements of the game are lacking right now, it's all about combat.

This is not supposed to happen, no. But I have heard stories of simply switching servers (without hopping) being enough for a spawn near the coast. This is not intended as far as I'm aware, but it can happen. So I'd advise staying on a single server.