House Door Locks and Keys

[mogstat@gmail.com 10]

If an infection really happened in real life and I was a survivor then I would not immediately turn into Ray Mears get a hunting knife, start butchering the farmers herd and living in a tent. In a world full of flesh eating zombies I would want more than a piece of canvas between me and the zombies.

I'd keep my house door locked and venture out scavenging. Survival would be about defending my house against zombies, making it zombie proof and remembering to lock the door. In fact I would probably try to find a bigger better house and go live there.

Implementing a door and key system should be relatively easy, keys would be lootable and identify as something like "52 Berizinio Avenue Chernorski" or "Willow farm Bor" etc. The house would work like a tent holding x number of items.

This would radically change the way we play DayZ and make it better in my opinion,

When approaching buildings players would have to be carful in case there are players living in it.

Killing a player and looting the key to his house sets the scene for some interesting gameplay: Do you move in? Do you go there and see what loot he has? Because when he re-spawns he knows exactly where the house is and where you are likely to go!

Habitable houses would become hotspots for confrontation.

What do you think?

[SentientRobot 16]

That's.... A really great idea. You have my beans!

[GOD™ 2795]

I APPROVE :thumbsup:

But i'm gonna keep my beans

Edited December 6, 2012 by GOD™

[DemonGroover 8836]

I like this idea.

At the moment i claim an apartment block in Cherno and defend it when necessary. I scavenge around town but always come back to my "home", often with an intruder inside.

It would be nice to lock it up and/or set booby traps all over the place.

[Very Ape 748]

It would be nice to be able to break a lock, or the door, with a crowbar, at the risk of attracting zombies.

Of course, this is in a world where zombies are terrifying harbingers of doom.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Very Ape

[BigEdMan 11]

Incredibly awesome idea in theory.

But to facilitate the number of players on any given server you would need massive apartment buildings.

These areas would become killing zones being farmed by bandits.

Even the do-gooders being attracted to fight the bandits would cause enough of a problem for me to move.

What about finding rare lockable footlockers.

You could not use the footlocker until it's deployed and it can only be deployed once.

(would use 4 inventory spaces prior to deployment)

The lockable footlocker could be broken into with enough shots fired at it.

But it would still be relatively easy to hide when compared to a tent.

But remember the more crap you add the world the slower you make the database keeping track of it all. I could be wrong but I would assume the world would load faster without all the barbed wire, tents, parked vehicles and other player modified objects the database is keeping track of.

[Faggala 29]

YUSSSS +1

[seddrik 44]

Maybe... have keys to "lock boxes" in certain static locations (houses, apartments,, barns, behind a picture, in a corner, under a trap door, etc) - ONLY openable by key... The key would act like a vehicle or tent, in that it spawns in certain locations, lasts 7 days with no activity then cycles back into spawning, but if used it remains in that player's posession & the box contents also remain safe. So its a REAL valuable items... Something people will really be looking for.

Perhaps make the keys server specific (like when a tent is placed it only appears on that server?) as well as location specific. That would increase availability of boxes & keys. The key might go in a special inventory slot (key chain)? It would have to have a "tag" with info on its box location just to keep it somewhat playable. At the least a rougyh map or basic description of where (city name and building?). So whoever found it or took it off another guy would have an idea of where to go to get into it.

Interesting idea.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Seddrik

[rpatto92@hotmail.com 26]

Nice idea but can't help but see a massive holes in it; what happens when you change server? Am I to just find a house key then go around server hopping raiding people's secure or so they'd believe houses? The only solution I can see is you'd have to make house keys unique to each server.

Also one other thing I can do in real life that would completely up set this game feature is; being able to break in? Now perhaps you'd need to have some sort of breach mechanic but it would kinda undo the useful part of having a locked door; so maybe there'd need to be some sort of risk element that'd making breaking in a really threat to the looter. I'm thinking some sort of HomeAlone type trap system; were unsuspecting burglars would find themselves pined to a wall by a few dozen nails or knocked or unconscious after touching an hard wired door knob. (Essentially an above ground building mechanic but designed specifically; which will only work with certain type of builds)

Another bone of contention is; once people learn where the strong hold houses are located, they'll no longer be worth having. Solution each strong hold house needs to be randomly assigned at the start of a new game for each server for existing structures and on top of which having strong holds be randomly generated in the wilderness, away from villages or along side disused roads would make them more useful and harder to find.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Rpatto92