Feedback on status of infectious diseases in DayZ

[wolfstriked 143]

Easy cure for lazy suiciders who can't bother to play the game the way it was meant to be played.....spawn them with the diseases they decided to leave with. >:(

What gets me though is no talk of survival in the food and drink part of the game.I want an apocalypse where cans of food and drink spawn at rate of matches and you must hunt to survive with contaminated wells and lakes to contend with and the animals that drink from these water sources....ahhh everything will be diseased!! Also,I wanna stop running past every town I encounter as my destination is super markets and military drops only.I want to see towns in distance and feel hope that maybe just maybe an item I desperately need can be found there.Make the blood loss from hunger happen very slowly and add in blood gain(1.5 times the speed of blood loss) only when the hunger icon is not blinking.To make this more effective also slowdown the blood loss from dehydration and add in slow blood loss from freezing.

[vacalouca 86]

Medicinal herbs could implement in the game? Find, cook and combine to make alternative medicine.

[psylnz 34]

I think this goes a bit too far.

This is only going to frustrate people - it's one thing to get killed by your own carelessness around zeds and players, but to die because you looted something that you can't even detect as being dangerous? Then have to search the whole map for medicine to cure to a disease you can't even diagnose. If the only means of prevention is to head to the woods and have 0 interaction with anything but a stray goat, I'm out.

This won't drive people to group - if anything this will make them KOS even more. To get people to cooperate we need in game tools to recognize and identify people. Like a team/squad chat or something. Sure that's unrealistic, but so is loot dropping every so often all over the place - if the looting system were realistic, loot would only spawn once when the server was initially rented, and we'd eventually all end up bludgeoning each other with axes for the last can of beans to see who can win the title of avoiding starvation the longest. With all the characters looking alike, I never know weather the guy I see creeping up the street is the guy the night before who gave me a blood transfusion, or the guy who gave me the bullet wound. That's the biggest problem with the deathmatching in this game - every player always remains an unidentifiable stranger, unless you use other software like teamspeak to communicate with friends. Even then we all pretty much look alike.

I think this will end up being like broken bones - most people won't spend hours crawling to a city to find morphine, they'll just suicide and start over.

Another thing - who needs to hack and nuke players when you can shit in a pond, drink the water and then run around spreading disease? I'm not sure how the dev's will manage infectious diseases, but I fear this will make DayZ either slightly annoying or near unplayable.

Edited November 22, 2012 by Psylnz

[Nort 26]

Sounds awesome, with many types of infections, players need different types of antibiotics, love it.

Has anyone thought of adding a backpack dedicated to those wishing to play the medic yet? bright white with a red cross on it, is 30 item slots and unable to fit anything but medical supplies?

Edited November 22, 2012 by Nort

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

I like where this is going.

I can already imagine how uncomfortable a ride in a chopper will be when someone coughs for the first time. Friends turning on friends. Attacks on water supplies. Vanishing wildlife. Stores and wells becoming hotter pvp spots than the airstrips. This is going to be interesting.

[ratface2000@gmail.com 44]

Is there any chance new spawned players could be given a random blood group which they have to stick to

for the duration of that character,and you had to find blood bags of your blood group in order to have a transfusion.

it would make it more belivable i think.

[Michaelvoodoo25 3120]

I hope the anti hacker element is water tight, just 1 is all it takes for whole servers to contract a disease. Remember when they had the flu epidemic? Players moved servers and passed it on quickly! Walking anywhere near the body piles will mean instant contraction of something. I find this addition is going to cause grief for a simple thing like looting a body, that's just not good, even chopper crash sites will be death carriers. This all depends on how realistic you want it!

The more I read this thread the more I realise this game is moving in a whole new direction. One I'm beginning to not like, there has to be balance. availability of cures unlike the rare as fuck anti-biotics we have now

I hope there is more to the SA than dogs and disease!

[RiggsUK 69]

I may have had some words of cynicism earlier, but i'm totally for this. It's new ground (to my knowledge) and after hearing your gear and body will remain infected, I'd say most late game characters would have some medicines already stocked up, and go looking for other meds if they needed them. especially if the char has nvg or a mk48. I'll be honest and say yeah ive jumped off the bridge at kamenka a few times to respawn, but if i had a m14 aim even a m4a3, i wouldn't stop till i found a cure or died trying. I just envisioned myself interrogating my squad after hearing a cough amongst them. "Who's ill? TELL ME NOW!" (multiple coughs) "oh shiiii". Bring the fear, i love it.

[Marvel.Jane 113]

I think the best thing about implementing these changes or improvements is that it should breed a more serious and mature style of player. Thus slowly eliminating the COD Kiddies and Hackers out of our servers and back to HALO.

[rocket 16567]

Gameplay-wise, I agree with this. But I have to call you out on this because I know you know the facts better! Diseases do not survive within a corpse for very long, the article you linked to on Redit quoted I believe it was the UN as calling it a "negligible" factor.

Remember, those articles are written from the perspective of epidemiologists dealing with populations not with individuals. Dead bodies have a negligible long term impact on the spreading of epidemics. I.e. your dead body sitting around is not going to cause the population much trouble (unless, of course, you have cholera, and when you shit your pants as you die, it falls into a pond... and then the water source becomes infected for those not adequately boiling their water).

But, that dead body will present a very real problem to anyone immediately looting it. Even your own fingernails continuing growing for some time after you die, certainly the diseases talked about here are nearly all spread either by faeces, urine, or blood. Hep has been shown to stay around for an extremely long time. Your faeces don't immediately change much upon death, as your bowels are regulated by natural bacteria anyway and it takes a few days before they start losing their battle or taking over entirely. So at least for a few days, your body presents a very real individual problem to anyone coming across it. But it presents no great danger to the population, unless you shit in peoples water or mouths as you die.

[Marvel.Jane 113]

Will there be any visual way of telling if a corpse is infected? I think that it would be great if the corspe would decompose, the longer it has been sitting there. If there was a way for the bodies to rot over time, letting other survivors know how long it has been there for, they would be abe to judge the risk it posed when looting it. It would also be great to remove the 'hide body' feature so that you have to avoid the corpses when possible. (Sorry if these ideas have been covered, try to keep informed, but so much information) :)

Edited November 22, 2012 by Marvel Girl

[dallas 5195]

@Rocket. Thanks for that last sentence, the mental imagery.

[edited] for context.

Edited November 22, 2012 by Dallas

[Marvel.Jane 113]

damn context, my apologies :)

Edited November 24, 2012 by Marvel Girl

[aVIOLATED+_-monkey 43]

Thanks for that last sentence.

Wow highly constructive Uber-troll

[Feral (DayZ) 622]

will there be other less obvious ways to protect yourself from infection, face masks, latex gloves or even ABC suits for example?

edit - How about disenfectant to clean infected items?

I could see players specializing in salvaging and making safe infected items, it would be risky and would need to be done right, we could have a whole new class of player lol

Edited November 22, 2012 by wabbit

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

Amputation.

You can survive some of those diseases but lose limbs in the process. Will this be a factor?

-Wheel chairs, crutches.

-Restricted to one hand(sidearms only) if you lose a hand/arm.

-Can't use backpack if you lose a leg.

it's in walking dead...

[Brubble74 5]

I can appreciate the pandemic route. I feel it would add a really cool and unique dynamic; but how could one become "rich" if one was to find a cache with a vaccine? I could definitely see some serious trading of quality gear happening, but even then, what would stop someone who is less scrupulous from blowing your brains out, keeping their trade item and simply taking the vaccine and all of your other gear to boot?

Edited November 22, 2012 by Brubble74

[Feral (DayZ) 622]

I can appreciate the pandemic route; but how could one become "rich" if one was to find a cache with a vaccine? I could definitely see some serious trading of quality gear happening, but even then, what would stop someone who is less scrupulous from blowing your brains out, keeping their trade item and simply taking the vaccine and all of your other gear?

absolutely nothing, that's dayz =)

[Creep- 569]

I still think sick people will store their valued gear somewhere and kill themselves.. Perhaps a penalty for suicide/death from anything other than player or zombie kills?

[Heiduk 265]

I can appreciate the pandemic route. I feel it would add a really cool and unique dynamic; but how could one become "rich" if one was to find a cache with a vaccine? I could definitely see some serious trading of quality gear happening, but even then, what would stop someone who is less scrupulous from blowing your brains out, keeping their trade item and simply taking the vaccine and all of your other gear to boot?

Your friends?

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

unless you shit in peoples water or mouths as you die.

1. Shoot bandit in leg.

2. Teabag bandit.

3. ???

4. Cholera

[tommes 331]

Can you find Gordon Freeman's Hazard Suit? Sounds like you need one to survive. I'm also wondering if fighting infections will be any more fun than in the real world. Can't wait for the next flu to prepare for SA!

Can you use gasoline or other flammables to get rid of corpses? Maybe KOS and burning mofo's rotten corpses without touching their loot will be considered a hero-like playstyle.

[Feral (DayZ) 622]

squads of heroes all suited up clearing out the cities, burning piles of bodies. Bandits honouring the ceasefire and sniping zeds because they need to gear up too once the place is cleared, this could be epic

Edited November 22, 2012 by wabbit

[Mr Nasty 1023]

Remember, those articles are written from the perspective of epidemiologists dealing with populations not with individuals. Dead bodies have a negligible long term impact on the spreading of epidemics. I.e. your dead body sitting around is not going to cause the population much trouble (unless, of course, you have cholera, and when you shit your pants as you die, it falls into a pond... and then the water source becomes infected for those not adequately boiling their water).

But, that dead body will present a very real problem to anyone immediately looting it. Even your own fingernails continuing growing for some time after you die, certainly the diseases talked about here are nearly all spread either by faeces, urine, or blood. Hep has been shown to stay around for an extremely long time. Your faeces don't immediately change much upon death, as your bowels are regulated by natural bacteria anyway and it takes a few days before they start losing their battle or taking over entirely. So at least for a few days, your body presents a very real individual problem to anyone coming across it. But it presents no great danger to the population, unless you shit in peoples water or mouths as you die.

did you just confirm that we can in fact shit in someones mouth? im buying 2 copies of this game now. a well placed turd could potentially kill hundreds of players spanning many servers.

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

I remember when I put on my cousins underpants and caught herpes