Zombie abductions for science + emergency food drops

[Felixthefriendlycat 92]

Idea 1

What if the story of DayZ was set in a part of the world that was almost completely wiped out by the virus. But there would still be countries that survived the plague and are trying to come up with a cure. They would need zombies to do experiments on to test whether the cure works. For this they hire special forces teams that would go into Chernarus at night by helicopter or airplane and capture zombies that suit their requirements. Now imagine yourself walking through the woods at night when you suddenly hear the loud roar of a helicopter flying over you along with a bright search light. You would have to stay hidden because the special forces are instructed to kill any possible form of resistance. This would create a more tense atmosphere at night but also an opportunity for the player. If you plan things out well you could overwhelm the special forces when they land and take their equipment. The special forces would be NPC's (which I know not many people like) but they would only have a very limited time on the ground so you wouldn't get very frustrated by stupid AI.

Idea 2

Another idea I was thinking about would be emergency food and medicine drops by airplane. If the story was like I described above then the governments of the surviving countries wouldn't have the capacity to evacuate everybody from the region but they would have the possibility to help out the good willing. The idea would be that you could find a book or piece of paper that contains secret codes that you could broadcast with your radio. You would then get messages back from the surviving countries by radio which you would have to decipher with the codes on the paper. And then you could radio the coordinates to the surviving countries where they would have to drop the emergency food and medicine packs. I think this could add alot the atmosphere and story but also would make the world a bit more alive and random. For instance what if somebody radios the wrong coordinates and you get somebody else's food dropped near you. That would make for a nice surprise. Also if somebody makes a distress call on the radio you could help him out by radioing his coordinates for the airdrop as a random act of kindness :). And ofcourse these things would need to be anomalies, they would have to be very rare.

Let me know what you think, also specify idea 1 or idea 2

Edited May 19, 2013 by Fellazio

[wisper 61]

Sometime ago I sugested that the map limits be "cordoned off" by ground and naval international forces that quarantined the infected area. Thus, as survivors, not only would we need to face the z risk, but eventually formulate a plan to either break out of the zone, or choose to act as the international forces' freelance agents from within. It was not well received by the community, mainly because it would then limit the expansion scope, I believe. As an alternate, we could have different national uninfected havens, heavily fortified to the general hostile environment. Then the world would be the sandbox and those secluded areas provide extra points of interest/tech/supplies. U see, I still hope that, as the sa will develop, different locations will become available (high hopes for Asia, America and Africa).

Emergency food drops could only be explained with the existance of organized society, so it remains to be seen if we will get any.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

I don't think a forced story is the best IMO. Of course there could be a backstory as to how the infection began, but it should be mostly unanimous and left to the player to decide on what they think created it. In a 'sandbox' survival horror the whole idea is that the players create the story, even the background pretense for the most part. The only information that must be placed is that there is a zombie apocalypse, it takes place in said location and you as well as anyone else playing are the survivors. Now onto specific parts of your post;

But there would still be countries that survived the plague and are trying to come up with a cure

It's an interesting proposal, wondering whether someone else out there is still operating on full-government scale to try and halt this plague. The problem is that, the open-bordered Chernarus clearly is not the only place that would be infected, and it's most likely that any other surviving countries would be more intent on doing it close to home.

Now imagine yourself walking through the woods at night when you suddenly hear the loud roar of a helicopter flying over you along with a bright search light. You would have to stay hidden because the special forces are instructed to kill any possible form of resistance. This would create a more tense atmosphere at night but also an opportunity for the player. If you plan things out well you could overwhelm the special forces when they land and take their equipment.

It's already like this. I'd be much more afraid of players flying around in a chopper with the search light on, they have more choices at the current situation as well as the fact that players in general are more desirable for a realistic scenario than AI (For obvious reasons.). I think the 'tense atmosphere' aspect gets a little overused during many suggestions, because creating fear in someone isn't necessarily making the game better. It's quite apparent that there will NOT be AI (It's been refuted plenty of times by the devs and a large group of players who do not want AI, including myself.), so suggesting that AI even be included is out of the question. The second problem with this is that, even if they are made to super-accurate skills to realistic standards, the force will probably have many 'end-game' weapons and equipment. Coupled with the fact that the AI are either too easy to kill just on coding restrictions, or way too difficult because of unrealistic added measures, it wouldn't even work and you'd have a lot more players who are simply out of range of the spec-ops with their new CZ-550 sniping them and getting hold of advanced weaponry. 'Limiting time on the ground' wouldn't really make a difference to the player base. It's not that the AI become annoying (Well, they do, but that's not the main idea.) The main idea is that AI remove the sense of abandonment and desperation, as well as create distance between players that ruins the whole reasoning behind adding them.

Another idea I was thinking about would be emergency food and medicine drops by airplane. If the story was like I described above then the governments of the surviving countries wouldn't have the capacity to evacuate everybody from the region but they would have the possibility to help out the good willing. The idea would be that you could find a book or piece of paper that contains secret codes that you could broadcast with your radio. You would then get messages back from the surviving countries by radio which you would have to decipher with the codes on the paper. And then you could radio the coordinates to the surviving countries where they would have to drop the emergency food and medicine packs. I think this could add alot the atmosphere and story but also would make the world a bit more alive and random. For instance what if somebody radios the wrong coordinates and you get somebody else's food dropped near you. That would make for a nice surprise. Also if somebody makes a distress call on the radio you could help him out by radioing his coordinates for the airdrop as a random act of kindness :). And ofcourse these things would need to be anomalies, they would have to be very rare.

The idea of 'secret codes' to broadcast out seems too gimicky, and adding 'deciphering' doesn't make it better. It would be a very tedious task to 'decipher' and besides that, it's not very realistic that the government would just hide 'codes' for a supply drop around. They would plan out certain supply drops and do them on their own decisions, leaving the supplies for people to find. That, or they would leave it up to military officials at bases to call in supplies as needed, but it's obvious that the Chernarus bases are overrun and the governments aren't sending planes out for dead people.

Already dropped supplies or crashed supply planes could be cool, or maybe operational planes that could be used by PLAYERS to airdrop things would be interesting, but nothing like this.

[Oh-Em-Gee 3]

Good ideas but they don't suit DayZ in my opinion.