No starter weapon removes survival instinct, and respect for zeds

[Macenzie 79]

Are people STILL crying about this change?

Really?

Get the fuck over it and find a barn or play something else.

[Blindingsun 233]

I don't think having a starter weapon is needed.

but.

I think a starter hatchet/knife/matches and a waterbottle would be awesome

[xxDJBxx 0]

I don't think having a starter weapon is needed.

but.

I think a starter hatchet/knife/matches and a waterbottle would be awesome

I KNEW I was missing something, the Waterbottle!! A scout never leaves without his Waterbottle, lol.

[Blindingsun 233]

http://www.thebushcraftstore.co.uk/58-pattern-osprey-water-bottle--mug---british-issue-no-fakes-119-p.asp

Get one and survive!

[Knautscher 4]

This probably has been suggested before:

You could get your starting gear at random: some get a crowbar, some a makarov with one clip and some get nothing (maybe even more variety). People, of course, would immediately start exploiting this (killing themselves till they got the makarov), so the better items should have a smaller chance of being in your starting gear and every death should add a penalty on your respawn counter. This is done in Project Reality for example: if you fuck up and act against your team's effort (includes dying, suicide, breaking vehicles etc. as they all = ticket loss) you get 15 or 30 or 45 or sth seconds stacked up on your respawn counter (depending on your actions) up to a maximum of 2 full minutes.

Since they can already track what life counts as a "life" for the counter on the homepage (2 mins or more), they could also track how long someone has lived before they kill themselves. If they suicide and respawn in the first 30 Minutes of a life (or more or less, just an example) they get 2 minutes respawn time. Because this would be tracked via the Hive and player acc and not via the server they play on, server hopping would not help to prevent this and thus:

You'd have to make the best out of what you got this time. Got a Makarov? Holy shit protect that motherfucker! Got nothing? Deal with it.

But wait, wait, wait: That's some "gamey" penalty system you're trying to introduce here, Knautscher, wtf?

Well, schizophrenic me, in this case it affects nothing ingame, it just keeps people from exploiting and it does so with no bonus or harm done to others. Everyone has the same chance to get okay starting gear and if you get worse gear, yeah the game's gonna be a little harder, but if you don't want a challenge why play DayZ at all? So, since this only affects the player outside of the game (respawn time) I think a penalty for exploit suicide is okay. Don't be a quitter just cos you didn't get the biggest slice.

What do you think?

[Rogan (DayZ) 24]

I've been playing for over a month and a half,...

As a disclaimer, I do not find survival difficult. I finally died after two weeks yesterday simply because I spawned right behind a guy in a random house

Unlucky, on the bright side you now get to play the game, instead of lurking about drinking from puddles. This game is all about the multiplayer interactions, which are a lot more difficult when every encounter is kill on sight.

No starter weapon means there is no reason, other than amusement, to kill new spawns.

In the current game it's important to become combat effective as soon as possible. You should be able to get a hatchet within 5 mins... unless you get really unlucky.

[lev 39]

This has nothing to do with the starter kit, rather the fact that you can lose zombies more easily than before. In earlier versions of the game, if you caught zombie aggro you won't lose it until you kill them or die. The game was already easy enough when zombie aggro was impossible to lose making player hunting more interesting, but now it has taken a turn for the worse and made zombies into jokes that you can totally ignore because its not worth expending the ammunition on them.

Also just because your personal feelings on having a weaponless starter kit makes you feel like the need for survival is gone does not make it true for everyone else. Back when everyone spawned with makarovs, all you'd see were pistol shootouts on the beach because players could start killing each other as soon as they spawned. At least now you see people running together or following each other even if it is only because they can't kill each other yet.

Personally, I like the no weapon starter kit because there is a percentage of the player population that I don't feel a need to kill on sight and might even give them medical aid if they needed it because I can be assured they can't kill me.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Lev