Stamina as well as Blood for Life

[nashable 45]

Been Playing DayZ for a couple of weeks and enjoying the alpha immensely. I've played Arma2/OA for over a 1000+ hours over the past couple of years and wanted to make a suggestion on how 'health' could be slightly modified to make it easier for players starting out but still keep the danger of combat (with humans or zombies) intact.

Okay so what if we had a secondary resource to accompany blood to manage players health?

The Issue

Due to the very few ways you can regain blood, the high DPS of Zombies and technical issues of the Arma engine it can feel very punitive every time you get into a small 1v1 battle with a Zombie. You are generally always going to lose some amount of blood when fighting.

The Idea

I propose Adding an extra fast regenerating resource of 'Stamina' that would be drained by certain activities, Running, Getting Hit by a Zombie etc. would allow for short bursts of combat/fleeing without the feeling of attrition that comes with losing blood.

How would it work?

Stamina would drain as the player was punched by a Zombie or Sprints, it would only regen when standing still/walking and not in the panic mode when near an active zombie (I.e. no longer being chased)

If Stamina is drained and the player is not in panic mode they have to stop a few seconds to get their breath back and can resume sprinting. Stamina drains slowly while sprinting so players can still cover larger spaces further north without feeling hamstrung.

For balance reasons if they are still in Panic mode due to being chased by a Zombie (or shot at?) then they can continue to Sprint and their Stamina would stay at the lowest possible number (1?)

If a player is hit by a Zombie, they drain Stamina massively, maybe only 2-4 hits and if a Player's stamina is depleted in this way they fall unconscious.

Once a player is unconscious the zombies start to eat the player. This drains blood immediately, has a chance to break bones, causes bleeding etc.

The max value of Stamina could also be affected by the levels of blood, hunger, thirst, infection etc.

For PvP the model remains unchanged, you get shot, you bleed as you do now.

How is this better than what we have now?

In my opinion (and its just an opinion), this does nerf solo Zombies in the early game and actually makes packs of zombies (4+) tougher. With the performance changes in 1.7.2 it could mean more Zombies in the future and this change could balance that out.

From a Player's perspective it makes the early game without a weapon more forgiving, you can still take 1-2 shots from a zombie without permanent damage to your character. The later PvP game remains unchanged and is still deadly.

It also makes it more worthwhile taking out a single or pair of zombies with melee weapons as the awkward hit detection would be mitigated by the Stamina buffer, making melee more valuable as a option in the later game and allowing for more stealth play.

Finally if it was possible to have the Hatchet/Crowbar be in either the Rifle OR the Pistol slot that would increase the value of melee/stealth in the later game also.

[nashable 45]

One other thought I had as well. This would incentivise travelling in groups when taking on packs of zombies and add an element of risk for all the lone wolves that are tooled up in the later game.