Day Night and an Ecosystem.

[Taiphoz 95]

I think we should explore a faster day an night cycle, we all enjoy the real time setting but for a lot of people it means missing out on any day/night play, possibly due to long work hours or school.

 

I think we should work from a rotation that's 1 hour long, for day and 30 minutes long for night, with dawn and dusk taking up 30 minutes , giving us over 30 minute dawn, 1 hour day, 30 minute dusk and 30 minutes pitch black night.

 

During the dark, and yes because of 7 days to die, I think the zombies should be affected by the light, at night make them a serious threat, super fast, very alert, and strong, while during the day they would be as they are now.

 

This would give people an objective beyond killing on sight, they would need to collect ammo, guns and stuff to keep them alive during the night..

 

Scenario : Your scavenging through cherno, killing a few players, having some fun, it starts to get dark, which is an instantaneous red flag that you need to gather food, water, and supplies and then find some where to hide, at which point your less blood thirsty and more friendly to helping or forming a small temporary group.

 

You start gathering things to survive with, wood for a fire , the light of which might act the same way sunlight does and slows and weakens any zombies that come near, but at the same time attracts them.

 

During the night zombies senses should also be heightened, being able to smell players from hundreds of meters away , so you hide in a house, second floor, zombies are flooding into the the building seeking the smell, eventually there are so many of them it triggers a horde attitude and ai switch and they then all spread out searching every room, as soon as the player is forced to fire every zomebie within earshot heads directly for them.

 

Nights like this would be EPIC!. players would be battling until the sun comes up, or seeking that perfect hiding spot, or forming groups to slaw the zeds as they come, you might for a group setup 6 or 7 fires in a ring around your camp, zombies will flood in but slow down once they hit the light of the fires, as long as you have enough ammo you and your group could simply head shot them as they arrive, while some one in the group makes sure the fires dont go out.

Imagine that fire situation when your alone, and your fires start to go out, you cant chop fast enough to keep them all lit so you start only topping up some of them reducing your protection, all the while your running out of ammo, running out of supplies.

 

OFF the zombie front, I think we should hear owls, at night in the woods, we should see other animals as well, things that only come out at night, possibly hunting fox's or bears at night for their pelts which could be crafted into jackets, or a type of ghillie bear suit thing that masks your scent from the zombies, possibly the zeds done like bears or don't see them as pray / food.

 

wolves should come out at night and hunt anything that moves, they should howl within 500 meters, that would be the red flag for the player, if they get close enough they would charge and attack from the shadows.

 

this is how I would like the game to be, something that players can play for PVP while at the same time still fear and have to hide from the zombies.

 

I also think that there should be boss type zombies, that drop something important, something all players will want to have, but something that a single or very small group will not be able to obtain, a boss zombie that could possibly have abilities, what if its huge and fat and slow, it can see and hear for miles, and it passes that information to its minions, it can summon zombies and then send them at a target, possibly it can belch gass like a green smoke but that poisons players who get to close, it should be hard to kill, requiring a group or 4 or 5 at least with sustained fire to bring it down.

 

So possibly it regains health really fast, 3 people shooting full auto with ak's all hitting wont kill it, but if the combined damage for a fourth players ak fire is brung to bare on it then it will go down.

 

give people a reason to be nice to each other, a reason to help each other, give clans a reason to clan up other than just rampant pvp.

 

1 person at night = Hide, up a roof, wait till dawn.

2 people at night = make a camp, set a fire, and wait for dawn

3 people at night = make a camp bigger, set more fires, wait for dawn.

4 people at night = look for things only available at night, covering each other as they move.

5 people at night = seek boss mobs and the epic cool loot they guard, or drop, or have on them.

 

Possible epic loots could be unique items, body armour that's been mutated by the infection making it stronger than normal body armour, guns that cant be found anywhere else, ammo for these special guns possibly laced with poison , shooting a player will infect them if the bullet does not kill them. possibly these fat boss zombies are like magpies they like shiny things so they collect all these rare and unique items.

 

I would say small boss per city or town, and possibly 1 or 2 world boss's that are random and walk the world.

 

 

With stuff like this, night time would be epic, clans would form to take down these bosses, bandits would find places to hide near a boss, which would come with a massive risk as the boss could see them and send in zombies, but if the banidts good he could let a clan take the boss down and then ambush the clan taking the loot for himself.

 

fun for everyone.

[h3l1x 327]

No. You can't combine l4d run and spray playstyle with arma. Fighting zeds all night long? With so scarce ammo? You'll end up tossing empty whiskey bottles and tin cans in a couple of minutes. Not to mention the server load of these hundreds of zeds you're talking about. Instacrash for server/client. Also werewolf/vampire zeds getting buffed during night? Again no, not to mention they're supposed to be infected human beings, not evil spawns of hell. Bosses? For the love of god no, it's not a mmorpg, it's a survival simulator.

 

As for wild animals possing a threat to the player, wolves, vultures, bears, wild boars, deers, etc have been suggested already plenty of times.

[TheLastEmp 295]

I actually agree with a lot of the OP's suggestions.  Not that they should all be implemented, but simply the concept of making zeds a little bit more wary and giving them better awareness at night, or adding in 1 or 2 heavily mutated zeds across the server that players can try to hunt down, would add more of a threat from zeds and it absolutely would give people more of a reason to play cooperatively.  

 

I can't even tell you how many times I've been playing Origins and had players broadcasting the location of the Dr.Ivan zed, trying to get people to help take him out.  People naturally want to team up to work toward a common end, but there isn't much of a mechanism in the game to promote that.

 

I think the Day/Night cycles proposed by OP are way too short, and honestly, I like having them be on a 24hr. cycle.  I do believe night time needs to be more difficult though.

[Bludy 324]

i like it the way it is..there are already servers with a different daytime if you want to play night in the morning..and bosses and stuff are not for this mod i think..the viral zombies have already 12k blood and are enough i think

[enforcer1975 1111]

There shouldn't be a reason to play certain daytimes or certain servers or areas, imo more zombies should show up during the cooler times between dusk and dawn but not in too many numbers. No extra loot to make people play what they don't want to. But i would like it if they forced a whole day cycle so no server admin can alter the settings and have daytime servers only because it's just wrong. A lot of zombie games gain a lot of atmosphere from the dark because it's creepy, hopefully they don't spam NVGs in the SA soe the night stays frightening.

[mzltv 2281]

I can't remember the last time I fought a boss-anything in real life.

[okami (DayZ) 129]

I can't remember the last time I fought a boss-anything in real life.

 

Most of us do this everyday. Its called "job".

Edited August 30, 2013 by okami

[TheLastEmp 295]

 

...Love it...

Edited August 30, 2013 by TheLastEmp

[Korsbaek 1778]

If the zeds become stronger after darkness people won't play when it's dark.

[TheLastEmp 295]

If the zeds become stronger after darkness people won't play when it's dark.

It depends on how much stronger... right now night-time is an absolute cake-walk... It's far too easy to avoid zombies... I would absolutely still play at night so long as the zombies couldn't smell me from 100m away or whatever OP suggested.  I just think there should be more of them and/or they should wander around a bit more and/or they should do more damage and/or be tougher to kill...

 

Right now I tend to only play at night as I feel that it is insanely easy... To me, that's a problem...

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

I agree that we need a condensed day/night cycle. 1 hour of daylight? That is just not enough. I think servers should be able to choose from a template of different day/night cycles, but all servers should be forced to have nighttime at some point. 

 

And no, zombies shouldn't "gain power" from the dark. They aren't magical. They are infected human beings who have similar limitations to non-infected human beings. If anything, it should be easier to sneak around them at night, just as it is in the mod right now. That's one of the very few incentives to operate at night time. The cover of darkness and the fact that the server population might be low, (a.k.a people are sleeping, which would be the case in a real life scenario) means that you can scavenge with relative safety at night. But of course the darkness can make navigation harder, and of course encountering another player in the dark can be an especially stressful event. So it has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Edited August 30, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Rocket did discuss on the forums (a long time ago) about condensing the day/night cycle to something like 8 hrs day/8hrs night.  I love the idea but not sure what his recent thoughts on the matter are.

[enforcer1975 1111]

Rocket did discuss on the forums (a long time ago) about condensing the day/night cycle to something like 8 hrs day/8hrs night.  I love the idea but not sure what his recent thoughts on the matter are.

 

 

It's ok but most forget about the skies if you have timelapse...it looks awkward. A clan buddy solved it like this: Every time he fast forwarded the time he removed the clouds ( = clear weather ), with just the sun, moon and starts moving faster it's not as awkward looking as it might sound. If i remember right it was a 4-6 hour day cycle and it was pretty balanced, it took us a day or two to perfect it and we didn't want to watch anything else but the sunset.  :D

Edited August 30, 2013 by Enforcer

[AP_Norris 1018]

30 mins is too short, 8 hrs might still be too long.

I'm thinking maybe 6 changing with seasons.