A couple "Long Term" Suggestions for DayZ

[nahholmes 0]

Loving the game, just wanted to get a couple ideas out there. Obviously most of these ideas would take a lot of work to implement but I thought it would be interesting to put them out there and see what other people had to say.

#1 On the topic of Zed AI.

Seems like they are putting a lot of work into implementing better zed AI which is great. The better the zed AI the more interesting the game will end up.

IMO ideally there would be 4 "modes" of zed AI

1: Normal "roaming"- already implemented the zed roam around zones and moving around them is risky.

2: Aggro - also already implemented, the zed know where you are and are actively pursuing you.

3: Investigate - if the zed notices something somewhat unusual they move at their "roaming" speed towards it to investigate. So for example if a zed hears you moving on the other side of a wall or in a building they will move towards where you are making noise to see what the noise was. Zeds wouldn't go aggro ever on you just from hearing a noise. Cans, flares, and other distractions should be a little more effective. The devs seem to be in the process of implementing this kind of activity.

4: Aggressive investigation - If a zed hears a highly unusual noise such as a gunshot or an explosion they go into "aggressive investigate mode" and move at their "aggro" speed towards where the noise came from. Zeds never go aggro on you just from gunshots if they can't see you but if they are running full speed to where you just fired a shot they are usually going to find you quickly unless you make a hasty exit. They would also use the mode to follow you around corners or if you exit LOS.

#2 Stamina

The main problem with implementing stamina currently is that it would make moving long distances around the map tedious. IMO the best way to fix this issue is changing the way panic works. If you aggro a zed you instantly panic and when you lose a zed you stay in panic mode for a short amount of time.

If you are not panicked running does not waste stamina. If you are panicking running or crouch running uses stamina. Once the stamina meter runs out you can no longer run. The stamina meter recovers if you are not running but while panicked the stamina meter recovers more slowly (so if you aggro a bunch of zombies and make it on the other side of a barrier or stop running to deal with some of them you might have some time to regain stamina to allow you to escape). Stamina does not recover at all if you are bleeding.

With stamina you should run slightly faster than the zed so that if you aggro them you have enough stamina to get a head start and put a little distance between you and the runners, allowing you to slip into hiding or into a building to deal with them. Once you run out of stamina though they would quickly be all over you. Running long distances until you find a barn with 20 zed behind you or running up and down hills becomes a thing of the past. Running through towns and around corners to lose zed becomes risky because you risk aggroing more and you know you can't run forever.

In combination with the changes to zed AI I listed it would make zed encounters more interesting. You have a zed chasing you into a town and see an open door. Do you risk running around the corner and trying to lose him in the town and maybe run into more zed? Do you run into the house and shoot him? If you shoot him do you try to run out of the house and quickly hide before the rest of the zed can find you with low stamina or do you waste precious ammo killing them all?

It would probably requiring a lot of tweaking to balance the amount of stamina, regen rates, zed speeds vs. your speeds and all the elements needed to make this work admittedly.

#3 Soda-

Have soda refill less thirst (maybe 1/2 of max) and have it regen a small amount of blood (50-100). They do give you a soda after you give blood for a reason and no one ever comes out of the desert saying "I'm dying, give me a Pepsi."

#4 Broken bones-

Make a new item "makeshift splint" that takes care of broken bone status. Make morphine cure the "pain shakes". Get rid of painkillers. Make 1x splint a starting item if you are going to make broken bones more common (you can make a splint out of practically anything in real life anyways). If you still feel the need to be evil take away the new morphine (read painkillers) from starting supplies when you give splint. It's still possible to play the game with pain for a little while until you can hunt down meds, but a broken leg with no cure means a reset 99% of the time for me. It's way to tedious to crawl around such a large map, not that it's too hard just that it's wayyyy too boring. On a related note...

#5 Pain

Maybe make pain only shake the screen in aiming mode with gun up if possible (Amra 2 and all). I'm getting seasick. Pain should make it much harder to aim a gun which is realistic and understandable, I've never seen someone in so much pain they were violently shaking their head but still able to move (for the sake of the game this much pain should = passing out). On a related note disable digital crosshairs across all servers.

#6 Flags

There should be a new item "flag." It is put down similar to a tent or fireplace and once put down only the owner can pick it up but any player can remove it. If a player would login on a server within a certain distance of a placed flag they instead are logged in at a point outside of that area. This allows clans and groups of players to set up small controlled areas like temporary forts, trading posts, or safe zones to regroup without worrying about players ghosting servers into a hiding spot then logging in and PKing to grief them or other stupid issues that ONLY exist due to exploits. It might be a pain to recalculate spawn points for players who are relocated due to flags and I understand this, but no harm in making a suggestion. Flags should be limited to one per player per server and flags should delete once the owner is logged out for > 5-10 mins to prevent idiots dropping flags all over the place and creating messes (if you place a new flag with one already down in server it deletes old flag).

I am currently in school for software design and hope to get into the industry one day. Barring that at very least I will continue programming games as a side project in the future (I've done some demos and proof of concept stuff just for fun outside of school), so I'd be interested to hear people's opinions on my suggestions even if nothing else ever comes of them...

[nahholmes 0]

Also

#7 - Server farming.

Keep a short list of the last 8 or so places a player generated loot spawns. When a player generates loot the server first checks the list and if the loot spot already appears on the list 2 or more times the server generates crappy loot instead (tin cans, flares, bottles...). Save and load this list from main server with character data. The slightly increased load on the server is more than offset by not having hundreds of people log in/out 10 times an hour farming barracks.

#8 - Maps

Most people use online maps anyways which are superior to in game maps and have a 100% spawn rate. Increase the spawn rate of in game maps and let us all play more legit. In real life a map would be a really common find anyways compared to most loot.

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#8 Agree with this, irl maps would be ten a penny, I know we can't loot from cars but we could reflect the abundance somewhere else I'm sure. I actually ordered one of the paper maps, I think it's going to really add to the DayZ experience, not going to open or mark it up unless I have one in my inventory though.

[nahholmes 0]

Maybe it is all part of Rocket's master plan to sell more paper maps.

He should make an item that is a scrap of paper and when you read it it gives you the website link to buy a paper map. (I keed)