Late night thoughts - Suggestions for the game.

[Jaux 12]

I'm not going to use this thread to report bugs and issues, that's what the feedback section is for. Instead I want to share my own and other peoples opinions and thoughts about seemingly finalized features within the game that I don't fully agree with or that I believe is in need of a rework. Hopefully somebody important will read this thread and consider some of the points. Anyway, I'll try to make this TLDR as formal as possible not to cause unnecessary eye cancer, brain aneurysms and other unpleasant sensations.

 

-Balota Military Facility-

 

The essence of this game is self punishment - The struggle to survive and taking risks to find essentials such as weapons, ammunition, food items and tools. -, that is the goal of the game. Having powerful weapons, camouflaged clothing and being independent of "the road" for food and water is something most of us consider endgame, with that said. The Balota military facility adds a non-risk endgame element within 5 minutes of spawning at the shore. There are no stake going there as a newly spawned player as you have nothing valuable you risk losing and you haven't invested any time to travel there. It's a very unsatisfying location and gives an unfair RNG advantage early on in the game.

 

-Solution-

Add more and stronger Zed's inside the base and decrease the loot value to industrial, e.g Car wheels, Helicopter rotors, engines, repair kits etc. This would entice more achieved players to travel south for vehicle repairs and discourage newly spawns from entering the area as they have no need for such items that early on.

 

 

-Zombies & Hordes-

something I always wanted to see is hoarding behavior in zombies, especially or perhaps even exclusively in big cities. I want them to patrol the streets of Cherno and Electro in big groups of 10-20 Zeds. It should be very dangerous and scary to enter a big city and not a choice you do lightheartedly.

 

I also want zombies inside SOME(Not all)closed houses. Opening a closed door is not something you should do on a whim. Opening a closed door to a house should have an inherent risk of letting something out, you should fear it and investigate properly before entering. This would add more depth to the looting aspect of the game and even for endgame when houses may serve as cover from an ongoing battle. *Do I really need to go in there? Is it worth the risk?*, that's fun!

 

Another thing that comes to mind is the distribution of Zeds. Realistically speaking there should be more zombies down south as that area had a higher population and density. Bigger cities like Cherno and Electro should almost be completely overrun with zombies, again, you don't want to go there unless you really want or have to. But on the flip side, Zeds in the biggest cities should be slower and less dangerous on an individual level and the threat would come from quantity rather than quality of the zombie. My suggestion is to only spawn Crawler and Hopper type zombies inside the city, perhaps make a new zombie type that is a mix between Viral and Crawler/Hopper - Upright stance but just as slow.

 

I've also seen a lot of people talk about that it's not scary to fight zombies. They're absolutely right, it's not scary at all. The anticipation of the fight is what strikes fear into the heart of players, not the fight itself. Put more emphasis on the anticipation rather than the fight itself. Make it risky and dangerous. How do you do that? Remove the different damaging levels of zombies. Instead add probability stats to the different types of zombies. The threat from a zombie should revolve around getting infected, not bleeding to death. Examples below;

 

Attack speed: Some zombie types will strike faster than others.

Chance to hit: Different types of zombies has a different chance to land a successfully strike.

Chance of shedding blood: Some zombies hit harder than others, thus, have a higher chance to tear skin and shed blood.

Chance of infection: Some zombies have a higher chance than others to infect the player when shedding blood or tearing skin.

Infection: 80% mortality rate without treatment. 60% mortality rate with treatment. Virus has a 1 hour life cycle.

 

The different zombie types could look something like this:

 

Walker: 15% attack speed. 30% chance to hit. 50% chance to tear skin on successful hit. 50% chance to infect the player on successful hit.

Hopper: Normal attack speed. 50% chance to hit. 20% chance to tear skin on successful hit. 70% chance to infect player on successful hit.

Viral Zed: 10% attack speed. 40% chance to hit. 40% chance to tear skin on successful hit. 90% chance to infect player on successful hit.

 

So when you do encounter zombies you can take calculated risks. I could engage this walker as it has a low chance of infecting me and I can off it pretty quickly so it wont get that many strikes off, if any at all. But I'm probably going to avoid that horde of walkers as the probability of them hitting and infecting me increases dramatically when there are two or more walkers in play. I can also take the risk of engaging this horde, lets do that. Oh shit, I got infected. Now, do I potentially waste 1 hour for the slim chance of surviving or do I just off myself to not waste time and effort?

 

-Ammunition & Guns-

Some people may disagree with me here but in my opinion ammunition to gun ratio is way too high. Ammo is a consumable, guns are not. Why do we find more ammo than guns then? There should be way more guns than ammunition to shoot with. Getting a firearm should be fairly easy, the least of your problems. Ammo however that is a rare treat and every single bullet should mean as much to you as a bottle of water or can of tuna does. You don't waste water or food unnecessarily and neither should you with ammo.

 

The reason I want it this way is because it adds more depth to player-player interactions, combat and reduces the KOS playing style dramatically. Kill on sight would be a thing of the past, robbery would be the new thing in town. People with ammo would be conservative and cautions not to get robbed. People with guns might be bluffing with their unloaded weapons. There is a CHANCE that encounters between armed players doesn't result in the loss of life. Again, it's the anticipation of events that hasn't yet occurred that is frightening and exciting.

 

Weapons with unlimited ammunition would be the new scary thing. Imagine an interaction between two player, one with an axe, the other with a gun. Both of them might carry lethal weapons, but only one weapon is guaranteed to be dangerous at the point of interaction. So many possibilities for that interaction. Perhaps they kill each other, perhaps one get robbed, perhaps they even become friends. Who knows? 

 

 

-Overall/TLDR-

 

Add more uncertainty and risk to the game. The current system barely have uncertainty at all. You know you'll get shot by an armed player. You know you start bleeding when engaging zombies. There is too much certainty and once you're fully geared and have 5000 mags of ammo there's really nothing left to do than KOS until bored or dead. The survival and conservative aspects should ALWAYS be the main focus for all players no matter how much gear they have, that is the essence of the game. No one plays DayZ because it offers such a good and well polished shooter in the FPS genre because DayZ doesn't offer that at all. KOS play has simply become endgame because there's nothing else to do when fully geared. You won the game, that's it, now go shoot people in the face for no reason. Need less of that and more tactics. Well, those are my two cents at least, thanks for reading. :)

 

[varick 3]

Your ideas are more thought out than mine on the thread I started but I like how you're thinking.

 

Would be interesting to see trading become more common.

 

I'll come back with a more indepth response once I digest your ideas.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Varick

[Jaux 12]

I agree. Trading should be more common. Unfortunately, at the moment there isn't even a remote chance of trading as KOS is the go-to-solution for everything.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Jaux

[steezeortiz 69]

I agree. Trading should be more common. Unfortunately, at the moment there isn't even a remote chance of trading as KOS is the go-to-solution for everything.

 

I've learned that the only way someone will trade with you is if you have a weapon and they don't. It's pretty sad.

[Jaux 12]

I've learned that the only way someone will trade with you is if you have a weapon and they don't. It's pretty sad.

I like the concept of stealing though. It could be fun if ammo was so rare that you're pretty sure the guy with the gun doesn't have any but you can never be 100% sure, he might have a bullet to shoot you with. It's fun mindgames like that which makes this game so great. :)