Weapon and Ammunition Rarity (Discussion)

[gesundheitk 420]

Onto the topic of weapons/their proceeding ammunition, and how rare it should be. This has been a pretty heated topic ever since DayZ loot has existed, and it's good that we feel very passionate about this, but making a nice, mature, discussion topic is something nice to have.

 

 

In my opinion, I am all for a push on making weapons rare, and their counterpart ammunition even rarer. I am sure the argument can be used that the people in the Czech Republic are prominent owners of firearms, however, how well do you believe this would affect gameplay? I mean, I like to think about this like vehicles. No, vehicles are not that rare in real life as they are in the mod, but in all honesty, you cherish it. It is your baby. You treat it with the utmost respect and would lay your virtual life down on the line to protect it.

 

(Slightly irrelevent, but I thought I would post this along with the topic)

I think also a push in weapon maintenance (I am surprised this hasn't been talked about as much, as I think this will be mandatory) would be another deciding factor. There is great potential for guns to be treated like gold in this game, and I believe that should be the case. Take the time to contemplate it; you have been rummaging through the streets for a long time, but you come upon this house. Inside this closet, you find an M1911, but it is in pretty poor condition with terrible prior maintenance, abused grip, and a needed magazine. So what do you do? You go out and find a weapon cleaning kit for it, some new fancy grip, and a magazine! Once this is fixed, you treat it good and it treats you good, saving your life many times.

 

 

I am interested to hear the arguments from the other side on the matter and truly hear the voice of the community. I will be adding a poll along with the topic.

[austen.fart@gmail.com 54]

Yea Iv'e mention the gun cleaning kit before too.  :thumbsup:

 

But you have my beans good sir  :beans:  :beans:  :beans:

[Odysseus (DayZ) 43]

I wouldn't want this stuff to be any more rare than it already is... a more even dispersal would be nice, thought, so that "good guys" didn't have to run the gauntlet at the army bases, which are constantly being camped.

[twingunz 308]

I think the whole to much guns (M4) thing atm isn't really a worry as when more guns and ammo types are implemented this will correct itself so i don't think guns and ammo should really be altered as you can only take 1 main on back and 1 in hand at most and even that i see as risky.

As for the cleaning kits and weapon maintenance i'm sure that will be in there eventually seeing base weapons don't even have a quality makes me think it's something they're already working on.

Edit: that sounded more skeptical than i intended i actually like your idea haha!

Edited December 24, 2013 by twingunz

[Celt (DayZ) 30]

I was really excited when I first started playing the standalone, because I could hardly scrape together any gear, and I was constantly searching for food and never quite comfortably stocked with anything.

 

I soon realized that this was because I was playing on a 40 player server which hadn't been restarted in ages, so all the good loot was gone.

 

I'd like to see a more even dispersal of loot over time, rather than a huge influx at certain times. If you know when and where to look, you can easily get all you'll ever need in the standalone right now, and I hope to retain that sort of desperate scavenging and survival in the future by making ammo, weapons, pretty much everything scarcer (but more evenly over time).

Does that make any sense? I'm pretty tired right now

[__redruM 7]

So without ammo, It become a melee combat game, great idea...

 

I could stand to see more pistol clips and ammo.   I've found 5 pistols, haven't found a clip for any of them.

Edited December 24, 2013 by __redruM

[Chaingunfighter 917]

Yeah considering there are only four guns (one of which has a bugged spawn, the .357 magnum) it is hard to make it balanced. The only reason they have what they have is to test the features;

 

- M4A1, for the universal customization it allows and their showcasing of this feature

 

- Mosin-Nagant, for bolt-action and long rifle animations, as well as a weapon that would be common in somewhere like Chernarus (At least in farms/cities)

 

- FNX-45, to test sidearms and holsters. Also is a pretty damn cool pistol

 

- .357 Magnum (aka Colt Python), to test revolver animations, as well as actually having a revolver. Again, pretty cool.

 

They also have shown us a Ruger 10-22, Blaser B97, Remington 870, AK-74, CZ-75D, IZH-43 Shotgun, Crossbow and have confirmed the SKS (not that we didn't expect it anyway). There will undoubtedly be more weapons as time goes on.

 

Though there is questionable realism of the FNX series (which has only been produced for a few years and not had a lot of exports) and the Colt Python (which is rare even on the American market and runs a high price where you can get one). Same with the Blaser B97, which costs around $7000. Hopefully they tune them to become more rare as suitable and more common firearms come into play, because there would likely only be two or three of each of those in some country other than the US.

 

Then again, I'd rather have their hard work pay off and be shown rather than be scrapped or limited to only two or three players at all.

[nighhawk 41]

So without ammo, It become a melee combat game, great idea...

 

I could stand to see more pistol clips and ammo.   I've found 5 pistols, haven't found a clip for any of them.

Thats probably because people like me who already have a pistol go around collecting all the ammo :)

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

One thing that bugs me currently, is the tendency to find about 30,000 pistols and maybe 1 pistol magazine. Pistols should spawn with a magazine in them.

 

But, rare, make it all as rare as possible.

[beardedcap 22]

There's really no point in complaining about the abundance of M4s in the game right now.  There are only 3 lootable weapons in the game at this point so of course the availability of m4s are going to be high.  Once there are more civilian weapons I bet you will be satisfied.  As to the question, I'd like to see civilian bolt action rifles and shotguns be pretty available to most players, but have m4s and whatnot in military areas which will be a higher risk to get to when the player count goes up.

[DefoneESP 17]

I am on the fence..

 

as it is right now, i cherish my weapon (and it's ammo), only using it as a last resort.. ammo is fairly abundant (if you know where to look), but it's alpha and i know they want to test out features

 

on the other hand, in later developments of this game, where hunting will become more viable I think it will play another role in your survival.

 

I would like to see less military weapons for sure. I would like to see civilian weapons such as Rem 700, Mossberg 500, maybe even some smaller .22 cal like 10/22 or something of that nature

 

i think civilian weapons would play a role more for personal protection/hunting than noob spawn or NWAF camping

[[vw] khaos 2]

Yeah, having ammo more rare would definitely increase the survival part of what the game is meant to be. I would also prefer civilian weaponry to be a LOT more common.

[Mopp_94 29]

I voted other, the reason why is that it depends how rare you mean. I do think it should be quite rare, but not to the point where I can check an entire AF and not find a single gun or ammo. Its a risk going there to begin, It'd be incredibly frustrating for newer players if they spent 6 hours looking for a gun only to die because they couldn't.

[kamil575 0]

Will there be like military snipers in SA like, MSR,M110,DMR,SR-25?

[ImageCtrl 719]

Other (please specify)

 

Think about balancing.
Freshspawn must defend them self.
A freshspawn need something like a Lee Enfield in maximal half a hour. (a freshspawn knowing the map)
Low weapon rate is OK. But it is no fun having for hours no ranged weapon.
I have no problem using the enfield a few weeks, but I need a ranged weapon fast.

 

Ammunition... can be rare.

It´s ok for me that I kill Zombies in the first time with meele combat and save the few bullets for possible PVP defending.

Edited December 24, 2013 by NoCheats

[kimdrummel 0]

I think this should be determined by what difficulty the server has. That way people can choose how easy it should be to find weapons and such. And when we get the respawn loot feature, this should really get noticeable depending on if you're playing on a Recruit server or a Veteran Server. The harder the difficulty, the less amount of heavy weapons and ammo for them will be spawned. But once they are found, they will respawn eventually somewhere on the map. I would suggest not in the same place as before, but let's not make them disappear completely.

[Gdaddy22 299]

Lol at all people who want ammo to spawn eveywhere in shitload amounts. Please get out 

Edited December 24, 2013 by Gdaddy22

[lucasmarteney@gmail.com 0]

So i will get right into it.. If all weapons are rare i will NOT play. There needs to be balance however, see i feel that high grade military weapons MUST be harder to find but when u find them u find them in bulk Example, a Armory or a Abandoned military base. I would make it so yes you could find maybe an M4 or Military AK-47 laying on the ground by a Jeep or on a soldiers corpse But in my world most of the weaponry for anyone New, Fresh spawned, or just general gear for looting would be Cheap AK-47s with normal wood stocks, Hunting Rifles, and Pistols, but say your with a group and you want to do something important, Protect base, setup camp or raid a camp well bust out the military rifles.

 

As for ammunition Yes it absolutely should be more difficult to come across, this promotes good Role Play in game as opposed to this terrible Shoot on site mentality.

 

This is my View as someone who likes Guns.

Edited December 24, 2013 by CheefReef

[Xandariel 14]

Weapons have to be more rare. Its not good for gameplay if you find a gun in literally every second house. Make it super rare to find a pristine m4 or ak and make them, like OP said, hard to maintain in a good state. Make it hard to repair them once they break(they shouldnt just vanish but just stop working until you fix them). Pistols can be more common. Not as common as an axe but common enough to find one within your first 2-3 hours of playing. The ammo however, has to be even rarer than weapons. I dont want every higher grade weapon to be as rare as the former as50 and its anti material nato rounds, dont get me wrong. But having an m4 with the rarity it had in the mod, I fear, will kill alot of the tension in staying alive, especially if they manage to pull off the 10000 moving entities theyre aiming at. Make ammo really scarce so your choice to shoot that player matters. You wanna shoot him point blank without wasting tons of mags or you want to get him with good aim. What you dont wanna do is shooting every single zombie in a town, then running into a firefight with 5 others you attracted by shooting and simply going to get more ammo 5min after you got out of that fight. That will just ruin immersion, the survival aspect and will lead to more kos.

[rangerbarlow@gmail.com 22]

Dirty gun = Malfunctions

[aarondm4 1]

i was lauging with my friends on TS how rocket has said he doesnt want this to be about guns and a murder sim but then he triples(at the very least) the number of military spawns.

 

keep the spawn rate as it is now but implement gun damge just like items maybe have the rof and accurecy go down with each teir.

 

jamming sounds cool but from games that have implemented it it's just a huge pain in the ass i dont need the game trying to fuck me over anymore than it already is, dsync is already wonky enough not to have to worry about your gun not working when that guy might not even be where you saw him run anymore.

[gesundheitk 420]

I wish had more beans to give to people. I am really loving all the feedback on this topic.

 

 

 

Viewing it from the other perspective, I can see how it is very hard to judge at the moment how rare a weapon should be since there is really only three currently in-game. However, the aim (haha, get it?) I was hoping to see was a feeling such as vehicles have in the vanilla dayz mod. It's something you truly can cherish and makes you value your life more than normal.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

I think at this stage, particularly until the new hive-wide loot system is implemented, it's very difficult to know exactly which way things are going to go. Having X number of a specific weapon in the entire game will have a drastic effect on the way people perceive that weapon and the way they use it.

 

Personally, I absolutely believe that the amount of ammo and weaponry in the game is excessive at the moment (and was in the mod as well) - if I find a gun, I want that to make my day. I don't want to look at it and go 'meh, might as well take it, I don't have anything better', I want to be delighted that I was even lucky enough to find one. I then want to spend the next day or two hunting for ammo to use in that gun.

 

In my eyes, it will almost single-handedly fix the excessive kill-on-sight issue, because the majority of players aren't going to have the patience to spend days scouring every last nook and cranny of a server for any kind of firearm, and they're certainly going to be a little more careful with what they do with the ammo. Yes, there'll be a few dedicated KoS players who'll stick at it and go about their business as usual, and I actually welcome that - I've said many times before, I do feel that KoS has a place in DayZ - maybe just not as prominent a place as it has right now.

Part of the thrill of DayZ is finding an item that you didn't have before that dramatically increases your chances of survival - we all know that little hit of excitement we get when we find a bigger backpack - that's what finding a gun -any gun- should be, only multiplied by ten. Right now, it barely registers any more significant than finding a water bottle or something similar.

[Kipale 78]

I don't really see point of military bases if there is not gun loot, i mean in military base guns are pretty common lol. It's also imposibble make any balance with gun spawns when there only 3 guns avaible atm.

[baggeh 1]

I would love for ammo and well maintained weapons to be exceedingly rare. I think most of the weapons you find should be in a pretty grim state, with diminished accuracy and being prone to jamming. A weapon cleaning kit should be as much a god-send as a saline bag is now and weapons should require regular maintenance.

I would like for an m4 with 1 half full 60 round magazine and a scratched to shit acog to be considered end-game. I'm not sure if this would truly change player behaviour, but it would make for a more immersive experience.

I 100% believe the weapon/ammo distribution we currently see is purely because we are in alpha. I hope in a couple of months all the "so I found my 5th m4 and I have 500 bullets, what do I do now?" complaints will change to "Why are m4's so rare? This is unfair, it was better in alpha." whines.

 

Ofc making ammo/weapons rare as shit wont matter much when a player can hit 10 servers and 10 different barracks in 5 minutes.