Animals - A discussion / I'm excited for this..

[pillock 850]

I think tame dogs and horses are a bit far-fetched, personally.

 

To me, it seems more likely that there'd be packs of feral dogs that attack you - a bit like wolves, but in more urban areas - rather than strays that you can buddy up with.

 

And horses... they'd be extremely difficult to catch, for a start. And then you'd have to break it in and teach it carry things, to tolerate a rider, to respond to your commands. And you'd have to learn how to ride, yourself - it's not some innate human behavioural trait. I just don't think it's believable in DayZ's setting.

 

Maybe if you spent a long, long time working on it - weeks or months - but there's no way you should just be able to run up to a horse that's standing about, and just jump on and ride away.

Edited February 21, 2014 by Pillock

[pacific_coast 632]

I love reading your posts you have such a hate for the game its almost funny.. Hey i like zombies to but strangely i realize when rocket first started making the mod it actually had nothing to do with zombies it was purely intended as a survival game based on his experiences in the army...

 

Will they work on zeds sure will they get them decent maybe but in the end they will most likely end up a back drop to the setting... Even if you listen to Rocket get excited talking about the game its the survival elements of the game he is passionate about he wants to make zeds better but doesnt get excited about it ... The rv engine may not be able to produce zeds you will trully be happy with...

 

Zeds were added for the cool factor and as explanation for the survival scenario, dayz was born .. Players were always to be the star of the show so to speak...

 

Now as for animals he did say 3 levels of animal food companion and predator so for me it would be deer dogs/horses maybe, wolves anything on top of that will be a bonus

 

There is wants and there is realistic belief

lol soul fire i love dayz!

i have hate for how the community supports EVERY HAIRBRAINED SPITBALLED IDEA from the devs as if it's the word of god

some of their "upcoming features" are stupid and unnecesary.

[pacific_coast 632]

I think tame dogs and horses are a bit far-fetched, personally.

 

To me, it seems more likely that there'd be packs of feral dogs that attack you - a bit like wolves, but in more urban areas - rather than strays that you can buddy up with. And horses... they'd be extremely difficult to catch, for a start. And then you'd have to break it in and teach it carry things, to tolerate a rider, to respond to your commands. And you'd have to learn how to ride, yourself - it's not some innate human behavioural trait. I just don't think it's believable.

this is as far as it goes regarding animals that arent specifically in game to be hunted for food.

seriously.

getting mauled by a bear in the woods sounds COOL

getting ambushed by a pack of wolves sounds COOL

but has no place in a zombie survival game

 

breaking in horses, building a barn, crafting a saddle, crafing shoes, looking after the feeding and health of the horse...

so you can ride it, be immediately spotted and shot.

or are there going to be giant walled horse ranches run by breeder clans?

 

wtf is this game turning into?

Edited February 21, 2014 by pacific_coast

[soulfirez 901]

lol soul fire i love dayz!

i have hate for how the community supports EVERY HAIRBRAINED SPITBALLED IDEA from the devs as if it's the word of god

some of their "upcoming features" are stupid and unnecesary.

Ok speaking calm i can see that.. Would i have taken the game down the path the devs are hmm maybe not i do like me some zombies ( the licensce plate of my car actually says Z0MB1E lol) do i think he can pull of an effective companion animal sounds pretty damn hard to me if they cant get the Ai on zeds right but hey if they can then imagine what they could do with zeds..

 

I think at the least hunting fits the dayz idea and having a predator animal fits the survival idea but hey i am really not sure on companion animals but ill wait to see what they do it may suck they may scrap it.

 

But have you tried going on reddit and seeing if they will listen there?? as these forums are well not overly used by the devs..

[pacific_coast 632]

Ok speaking calm i can see that.. Would i have taken the game down the path the devs are hmm maybe not i do like me some zombies ( the licensce plate of my car actually says Z0MB1E lol) do i think he can pull of an effective companion animal sounds pretty damn hard to me if they cant get the Ai on zeds right but hey if they can then imagine what they could do with zeds..

 

I think at the least hunting fits the dayz idea and having a predator animal fits the survival idea but hey i am really not sure on companion animals but ill wait to see what they do it may suck they may scrap it.

 

But have you tried going on reddit and seeing if they will listen there?? as these forums are well not overly used by the devs..

the devs want upcoming features and ideas to get and keep people supporting the alpha

it is kinda unrealistic

the engine and the server and the client are going to support the AI, communication and pathing of:

10000 zombies

100 players

a dog for each player with it's own ai and pathing

a horse for each player with it's own ai and pathing

packs of wolves (number unknown)

bears

 

im hunting a deer with my dog on horseback when 500 zombies ambush me and wolves leap out of the forest and start fighting a bear

 

REALLY?

that's gonna be in this game?

why?

Edited February 21, 2014 by pacific_coast

[GrappleX 354]

 Nothing, just wasting a bullet or two to keep yourself safe, no bear meat, no bear claws nor fur, just a dead animal in the way to make other player know someone has been there

 

But...you can skin and eat bears....

[Mr Jizz 313]

this is as far as it goes regarding animals that arent specifically in game to be hunted for food.

seriously.

getting mauled by a bear in the woods sounds COOL

getting ambushed by a pack of wolves sounds COOL

but has no place in a zombie survival game

 

breaking in horses, building a barn, crafting a saddle, crafing shoes, looking after the feeding and health of the horse...

so you can ride it, be immediately spotted and shot.

or are there going to be giant walled horse ranches run by breeder clans?

 

wtf is this game turning into?

 

 

Haven't you said enough? You don't think the Moderator's post was directed specifically at you? This thread and OP was not about whether or not you want to see Animals, it was about the possibilities therein, because, as the moderator suggested, they're likely coming, and your 'flame-posts' will have no bearing on the direction of the developers.

 

[coltonlong 211]

my argument is better than yours!!!! CAAAAAAAPPPSSSS LOOOOCK!!!!!

[djporternz 644]

So, your sitting out in a remote tree line in the middle of Chernarus, plenty of food and water, and with enough ammo to feel relatively secure you can manage to account for any and all threats. Look around you. What do you see? The ever present wind running through the trees and the grass. You hear sounds of the non-existent animals that have no in-game presence. You may if you sit there long enough (and I mean multiple hours) see a solitary player run by in the distance or if you are extremely un/lucky a group of three or more. That's it! Nothing else is ever going to happen with the game in its present state.

 

IMHO if you think this state of affairs is acceptable, then you're playing the wrong game!

 

In this state Chernarus is a dead country (pun intended).

 

Adding animals of the types described here would alleviate this 'deadness' of the in-game world somewhat in several ways. In no particular order:

 

Dogs: Now, I'm not a dog person in RL, but the idea of a companion animal is appealing, and cats just don't fit right in the post apocolyptic, Zombie infested world. Dogs do.

• Uninfected: Could be a great mechanism for warning a player of Zs and players in the area. This would work for the dogs master and would also add an extra challenge to other players as well. And challenge is good, right. The 'hard' kills are the ones you remember most fondly!
• Infected: This will give those PvE types the 'fast' zombie they seem to need without having to bifurcate the existing Zs into multiple catagories. In PvP they would again add challenge in that situational awareness is even more neccessary as things can change in seconds if you forget even the smallest things. And challenge is good!

Domesticated Animals: Cows, Sheep, pigs and Chickens, etc. If we are going to have crafting, you'd need some sort of material input into the system. I'd not like to see a fully fledged farming simulator built in, but having stray animals roaming the countryside with respawn seems to be a good compromise. This way you'd have a renewable supply with the rate of the various imputs being able to be managed so as to make it hard to jump straight to the 'best of class' items without some work.
 I added in chickens because 'Crossbows and Bows'. If we get to craft Bolts and Arrows feathers should be necessary. And eggs, of course, for food.

 

Wild Animals: Hunting for food. Dear, Rabbit, Bears, Boars, etc. Do I have to explain this? No, didn't think so! And if they include Bears and Boars and other more aggressive game, then all the better. Who wouldn't want their next meal to be able to fight back?

 

@pacific_coast & others...

This IS the Zombie Apocolypse as warned about by the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm. There are no container ships coming into Elektro or Cherno on a weekly basis to replenish supplies. There are no military resupply missions being flown into NE/NWAF bringing c-130s full of new guns/ammo and new mil uniforms. As far as I've seen there are no working factories that can accept new orders for Backpacks and/or clothing. We're pretty much screwed at this point.

 

If you want a new Bandolier, then you're going to have to go out and grab a cow and work out how to get from that big fat grass-eating, methane & milk producing apparatus into an exquitelty hand-crafted leather work of art. Of course, most of us are only going to be able to turn that cow into a half-decent Sunday roast, a dogs breakfast and something resembling a vague outline of a tool belt, but it will be ours!

 

If you want to play the 'Realism' or even the 'Authentic' card, then having new pristine items appear in places that have already been picked over by everyone and his dog would seem to be completely farcicle. But this is a game, and it is played by more than one 'gear-whore' like me, so I'll make some small concessions to that for the sake of being able to tool up.

 

TBH, without the crafting aspects of the game, then there is no SURVIVAL in DayZ. We might as well accept now that it is going to be given nothing more than a bad knockoff of a FPS that could be done better in another engine. It probably already exists as there are more Z based games floating around ATM than I care to count.

 

Animals are coming! Crafting is already in to a certain extent, and hopefully will be further expanded as planned. If you are just in this for the PvP I fail to see how any of this detracts from the 'Path of the Warrior' that you seem to want. Adding extra content DOES NOT detract from the Devs responsible for bug fixing as has been explained multiple times. Different people have different jobs within the Dev team. Multiple things are happening all the time.

 

The fact that your pet bug hasn't been fixed yet is probably an indication that either the problem is seen as a lower priority due to a much more catastrophic problem elsewhere in the code, or that the fix is not as trivial as you would think. We are a long way from release, and while the game is frustrating at times it is the game we have and it is still immensly more fun to be in-game than to be simply reading about it in the media and not being able to get into it as we are.

 

NOTE: That CDC link was an ACTUAL thing. Great campaign that used the metaphor of a Zombie Apocolypse as a means to help people prepare for any sort of un/natural disaster. As PR go, this was shear genius! If you haven't seen it before you should go check it out!

[pacific_coast 632]

this isn't real, or realistic

this is a fake eastern european counrty full of zombies

the point of this game (was) to keep your player alive and have fun.

 

animals are great. as background sprites, to be hunted for food, ect.

 

but when the point of this game becomes crafting, horseback riding, walking your dog and NOT about surviving in a zombie apocolypse

it's not better, its accomodating to what players want

and players want flying god mode unicorns and dynamic wolves hunting you down and crafting bear skin living room sets

the line must be drawn here!

[Mr Jizz 313]

So, your sitting out in a remote tree line in the middle of Chernarus, plenty of food and water, and with enough ammo to feel relatively secure you can manage to account for any and all threats. Look around you. What do you see? The ever present wind running through the trees and the grass. You hear sounds of the non-existent animals that have no in-game presence. You may if you sit there long enough (and I mean multiple hours) see a solitary player run by in the distance or if you are extremely un/lucky a group of three or more. That's it! Nothing else is ever going to happen with the game in its present state.

 

IMHO if you think this state of affairs is acceptable, then you're playing the wrong game!

 

In this state Chernarus is a dead country (pun intended).

 

Adding animals of the types described here would alleviate this 'deadness' of the in-game world somewhat in several ways. In no particular order:

 

Dogs: Now, I'm not a dog person in RL, but the idea of a companion animal is appealing, and cats just don't fit right in the post apocolyptic, Zombie infested world. Dogs do.

• Uninfected: Could be a great mechanism for warning a player of Zs and players in the area. This would work for the dogs master and would also add an extra challenge to other players as well. And challenge is good, right. The 'hard' kills are the ones you remember most fondly!
• Infected: This will give those PvE types the 'fast' zombie they seem to need without having to bifurcate the existing Zs into multiple catagories. In PvP they would again add challenge in that situational awareness is even more neccessary as things can change in seconds if you forget even the smallest things. And challenge is good!

Domesticated Animals: Cows, Sheep, pigs and Chickens, etc. If we are going to have crafting, you'd need some sort of material input into the system. I'd not like to see a fully fledged farming simulator built in, but having stray animals roaming the countryside with respawn seems to be a good compromise. This way you'd have a renewable supply with the rate of the various imputs being able to be managed so as to make it hard to jump straight to the 'best of class' items without some work.

 I added in chickens because 'Crossbows and Bows'. If we get to craft Bolts and Arrows feathers should be necessary. And eggs, of course, for food.

 

Wild Animals: Hunting for food. Dear, Rabbit, Bears, Boars, etc. Do I have to explain this? No, didn't think so! And if they include Bears and Boars and other more aggressive game, then all the better. Who wouldn't want their next meal to be able to fight back?

 

@pacific_coast & others...

This IS the Zombie Apocolypse as warned about by the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm. There are no container ships coming into Elektro or Cherno on a weekly basis to replenish supplies. There are no military resupply missions being flown into NE/NWAF bringing c-130s full of new guns/ammo and new mil uniforms. As far as I've seen there are no working factories that can accept new orders for Backpacks and/or clothing. We're pretty much screwed at this point.

 

If you want a new Bandolier, then you're going to have to go out and grab a cow and work out how to get from that big fat grass-eating, methane & milk producing apparatus into an exquitelty hand-crafted leather work of art. Of course, most of us are only going to be able to turn that cow into a half-decent Sunday roast, a dogs breakfast and something resembling a vague outline of a tool belt, but it will be ours!

 

If you want to play the 'Realism' or even the 'Authentic' card, then having new pristine items appear in places that have already been picked over by everyone and his dog would seem to be completely farcicle. But this is a game, and it is played by more than one 'gear-whore' like me, so I'll make some small concessions to that for the sake of being able to tool up.

 

TBH, without the crafting aspects of the game, then there is no SURVIVAL in DayZ. We might as well accept now that it is going to be given nothing more than a bad knockoff of a FPS that could be done better in another engine. It probably already exists as there are more Z based games floating around ATM than I care to count.

 

Animals are coming! Crafting is already in to a certain extent, and hopefully will be further expanded as planned. If you are just in this for the PvP I fail to see how any of this detracts from the 'Path of the Warrior' that you seem to want. Adding extra content DOES NOT detract from the Devs responsible for bug fixing as has been explained multiple times. Different people have different jobs within the Dev team. Multiple things are happening all the time.

 

The fact that your pet bug hasn't been fixed yet is probably an indication that either the problem is seen as a lower priority due to a much more catastrophic problem elsewhere in the code, or that the fix is not as trivial as you would think. We are a long way from release, and while the game is frustrating at times it is the game we have and it is still immensly more fun to be in-game than to be simply reading about it in the media and not being able to get into it as we are.

 

NOTE: That CDC link was an ACTUAL thing. Great campaign that used the metaphor of a Zombie Apocolypse as a means to help people prepare for any sort of un/natural disaster. As PR go, this was shear genius! If you haven't seen it before you should go check it out!

 

Amen!

 

The CDC page is hilarious, had no idea..

 

I never considered Boars, but that's a great two-way animal.  It would make a fantastic meal AND seeing how dangerous they are, if it gores you with its tusks its CERTAIN to cause infection! 

[djporternz 644]

this isn't real, or realistic

this is a fake eastern european counrty full of zombies

the point of this game (was) to keep your player alive and have fun.

 

animals are great. as background sprites, to be hunted for food, ect.

 

but when the point of this game becomes crafting, horseback riding, walking your dog and NOT about surviving in a zombie apocolypse

it's not better, its accomodating to what players want

and players want flying god mode unicorns and dynamic wolves hunting you down and crafting bear skin living room sets

the line must be drawn here!

Okay, I was hoping you'd calm down and enter into the discussion, but it appears that you are unwilling to do so.

 

We all understand that DayZ is a fiction. But there is no reason that it can't be an 'authentic' fiction. No one is asking for 'flying god mode unicorns' that I can tell. What we are asking for is a world more akin to the one we live in. If it is possible for a sub-set of humanity to survive, then it could/would follow that a sub-set of fauna would also survive. All we are asking for, and the Devs seem to be in agreement, is a few of each type to populate the empty places, to give us something to do/avoid while we are surviving.

 

No one has likewise stated anything about 'crafting bear skin living room sets'. Simple facts for you: There is rain in-game now and it gets you wet and cold. This will be linked into the illnesses already contained in the game's configs; Cold, Flu, Head Flu, etc. These will make you ill and you could die from untreated symptoms. Bear skin would allow you to craft a warm, dry coat that would prevent this. Or you could customise your tent to be made out of bear skins. Yes this is 'merely' cosmetic, but otherwise you'd end up with a very bland enviroment to play in.

 

I don't see how any of the suggestions make it any less unlikey that you'd be able 'keep your player alive and have fun'. If you don't like the crafting, just don't do it. Other games like 'Skyrim' are completely playable without crafting a single item. But if you do choose to do so, the possibilities within the game world increase for the player (at the expense of time and sanity!).

 

I can only conclude that you idea of survival is completely alien to me. If you could at least define what you mean by 'Survival' then at least we'd know where you're coming from. As it is, your idea of survival seems to be implied as simply avoiding the next bullet, which hardly needs the simulation features that are present in the RV engine.

Edited February 21, 2014 by DJPorterNZ

[Mr Jizz 313]

 

Edited February 21, 2014 by Mr Jizz

[Mr Jizz 313]

 

^this guy probably doesn't understand the purpose of KoS, unless you tried stealing his jerky

 

 

OMG

 

JERKY...

 

When animals go live in game, jerky will be BOMB survival food

[ponymony 9]

I'd love to see mountain lions added to the predator list.

[irishroy 1347]

As i have already said:

But i really have to say, that Wolves are, often not a too serious danger to humans. They become serious however, when there's not enough food, winter, or their "area" becomes too little. but actually, none of these things is in DayZ. there will be bears, deer and rabbits, so there's food. The map is pretty big, so they don't have to fear a small area. and there's no winter, too...

So i don't understand, how they should be a real dangerous threat ;)

 

but yes.

 

fur is cool to wear

[pillock 850]

There are birds in the game already. I'm assuming they're cosmetic in DayZ, but is it not possible to shoot birds in the ArmA games?

 

That'd make a lot of sense within the hunting mechanics - and you could use the feathers for making arrows (or tickling people with).

[ValHallas 2]

Dogs would be cool. Have to figure out the loyalty dynamic. Maybe dog would gravitate towards humans but would start obeying it's master after feeding it for "x" amount of time and maybe having a scratch behind ears key gesture ha ha. I'm not too familiar with commanding Ai in Arma but perhaps some sort of rudimentary commands for dogs such as hunting companions.

I think rideable horses would be the bees knees. Folks bring up the time to tame them but I imagine they were already domesticated before the apocalypse and broke their pens and roamed the countryside. Of course horses need high quality feed which is a lot of work.

[Really Old Man 53]

I'll be so happy when I can find a dog, raise it, watch it die, enter into a depressive state, come out of the depressive state, swear revenge, find the man who murdered my dog, and then proceed to murder him :D

[gatorontheloose 29]

I always thought the eating and carving meat from wild animals made the mod a "survival" game.  

 

The animals being predator/prey will push it further away from Arma and from every other FPS ever released, especially if animals and Zs can engage each other.  

 

 

The "infected" narrative works a bit better when the Z can also survive on water and meat, further infecting the food and water supplies each time they interact with them. 

[ScaryHarry 0]

I like the idea of having animals in the game, but I also agree, that it is a zombie game, not a hunting sim or something else. That's why I prefer to have Zombie animals like Dogs and Ravens. If an infection turned all those people into zombies, why it shouldn't do the same with animals. To me zombie animals would just add new behaviour to zombies, without losing the focus of the game.

 

Dogs are faster than humans, so you cannot just run away from them.

Ravens are really hard to hit, when they're flying around your head.

 

Currently zombies are the most boring part of this game, so everything that makes them more scary and harder to kill is welcome.

[res 373]

I would love to have animals like dogs.

 

I'd handcuff the owner, and make him watch as I beat his doggie to death, then force feed the meet to him.

 

CAN'T WAIT.

[doctorbadsign 645]

I can't wait for the day when I can set up camp in the middle of nowhere and stay out of everyone's way hunting animals until I need to go into a town to do a supply run...

 

That's the DayZ I want.

[twizzm 34]

I'm hoping for raccoons for a coonskin cap and crafting a rabbit foot keychain for my handcuff keys

[Mr Jizz 313]

I would love to have animals like dogs.

 

I'd handcuff the owner, and make him watch as I beat his doggie to death, then force feed the meet to him.

 

CAN'T WAIT.

This is fucked up, but hilarious. Reminds me of when Cartman fed a bully his own parents, ground up in chili.