Adding to the pile; A few of my suggestions

[AwesomeBillfromDawsonville 3]

Greetings, I'm going to list a few of my ideas and briefly explain a bit about them. A few of these have been covered before in other threads but i feel my take on these can only add to the great wealth of ideas that Rocket can pull inspiration from.

Gestures: Along with more animations such as the salute I suggest something similar to the free look controls for a way to gesture with your off hand. You hold a button and with the mouse you can control the arm moving it in what ever direction. The hand is normally in a normal position but holding left click points and holding right click closes the hand into a fist for those navy seal moments hunting bandits. You could also wave at people and probably do a gimpy high five or hand shake.

Fire: Can you imagine accidentally knocking over an oil lamp in a house forcing you to exit leaving supplies behind while the rising smoke and fire attracts zombies and bandits? Or maybe you set a campfire too close to some dry grass or haye. You should be able to burn the bodies of zombies and players to prevent the spread of sickness or for badass viking funerals. Zombies could be set on fire and be a flaming threat setting other things on fire as they shamble around. Crafting a torch to wield as an ineffective weapon but decent light source would be neat. Houses couldn't really burn down though but you could have a charred cindery texture on the effected areas for a while.

Night of the Living Dead is a great source in general for inspiration. Boarding windows and doors have alwasy been a staple of the genre since the beginning. There was a scene in Walking Dead where there was a fence they thought was secure but a herd of zombies stacked up against it over time until it gave way, If there were a system at play for the pressure exerted by zombies piling on a door, wall or fence that would be cool.

Spray paint, sticky notes, billboards or some sort of sign: It could be a way to denote turf, a safe haven, set up a Wile E Coyote style trap or other wise indirectly communicate with other players. To prevent them from spamming the servers with millions of memes they could be easy to destroy and take up alot of room in the inventory, just not be very common to find or use materials that are much better used for something else. Leaving a sharpie message on a church leaving directions for a bro to find would be a neat thing to do and even cooler is if a bandit were to find this and track them both down.

Players should have unique "phone numbers" on radios so that if everybody in a party dies, as long as they can find a radio they can call eachother in their new life.

More indoor areas like large hospitals or police stations ala Resident Evil 1 2 and 3. They could be like the dungeons of the game. Any large place would do, like a hotel or some sort of bunker like in some of the addon maps.

Fist fighting. It only knocks down zombies at the most but could incapacitate players. A critical hit would knock an armed player's weapon out of his hand and away a few feet. Improvised weapons like bricks and sticks would be nice too.

More civilian everything: Planes, guns, cars and clothes. Finding apache helicopters is nice and all but realistically single engine aircraft would be the most common thing to find and survive with. The idea of getting stuck wearing a woman's fur coat because it was warm sounds funny to me. We need all sorts of variants of civilian hunting rifles and shotguns. mundane changes are fine just as long as there is distincition from my rifle and my buddy's. Little things make an item seem a little more significant.

Personalizing items such as carving your name into your gun or spray painting scary teeth on your bus.

As for player bases the simpler the better. Put it into the player's hands and a place will naturally grow and fall. Look how Wurm online handles it's cities. Basically a couple dudes or a party will decide a place looks okay to start building and they'll build their infrastructure. The more progress they make the more people discover the village and it all snowballs from there. Getting resources for the village and the construction of the village becomes the primarmy mission. Add in defense of the town and supplies plus a mandatory need for regular upkeep of the fences and barriers the prospect of running a city would be so daunting that a newby player would see this as an end game type thing as getting a running helicopter is now. Players can destroy other player structures with certain tools or with fire and Zombies can damage constructed walls over time or carry fire through camps. Disease is another thing to be careful of in a settlement.

These are my ideas, I hope i'm coherent. I'm sure all of thise has been covered before but I hope my spin on things will help out the creative process just a bit more.

[Falabox 76]

The spray paint seems like a awesome idea,(sorry for metioning this) WarZ have a system like this where you can leave notes and they are permanent.

The village things looks exactly like wasteland and it is pretty neat!

You won my beans sir.

[ajaywork@hotmail.co.uk 1]

Flaming zombies + fist fights + women's clothing. I can already imagine the hilarity :P Individually items like the ones mentioned would not detract from the overall sense of realism /immersion but combined they could break the mundane jogging sim I have grown used to !

[hurricane14 1]

Hand Gestures where put into the ACE mod for arma 2. For many of you who bought Arma 2 for just dayz, ace is a realism enhancement which added hundreds of new features to the game. I haven't tried it in a while but i think you held the start button and you where presented with a circle across the screen and you selected one with your mouse, but if you used one single hand gestures more often it could also be bind to a key. The hole system worked perfectly. This could be a great feature for the stand alone. I think the devs should look at the lesser-known mods over shadowed by dayz's success for ideas for the future.

Edited January 6, 2013 by hurricane14

[foke 0]

I think that items such fencing, barbed wire, metal panes, poles, ladders, locking systems, batteries/electrical generators, lights, gates/doors, and electrical wiring would be useful for making bases.

The fencing would be rolled up and can be arranged between poles. Barbed wire can be used as a barricade or to prevent people from using a ladder to leap over the fencing. Metal panes can be made from salvaging scap metal and can be used as a barricade or to make walls. Ladders could be used to go over obstacles (maybe be used to get on top of small buildings) or can be used to access down or up vertical obstacles(underground or elevated bases?). Locking systems can be found or crafted from metal and wiring. They could vary from mechanical ones or electronic ones. The mechanical version would be built from scrap metal and could be picklocked using a kit. The elctrical one would be made by electrical wiring and scrap metal where the combination could be a word/number. The locks would be used to lock gates and doors. Batteries and generators could be used to power lights or charge whatever electronic item. The generator would consume fuel and the batteries would be scavenged. Lights would be a loot item and can be placed on poles or walls. They would be powered by generators/betteries/solar panels. They can be used for lighting indoors or placed on top of poles. Gates/Doors would be used as a mean of access into bases and could be locked. Electrical wiring could be uused to connect batteries/genrators to elctrical items.

We should be given the possibilty to build above ground, on the ground or below ground. We could use trenches and digging tools to fortify and create our bases

[psstloaf 17]

hand gestures are great idea to stay silent

Fire- maybe like far cry 3 best to date in my opinion

yes.. how far can we go to create real life!