Meaningful Customization: Complete Edition

[Evil Minion 943]

I like the aspects of survival and charcter customization and in my opinion it would be great if those could be combined to allow for more choices. Some might be "just for show" while others might have some special use or general utility. Instead of only having "joke", "low tier" and "high tier" items there should be a variety of options that can prove useful under certain circumstances while also having some drawbacks attached to them. On the other side there should also be room for purely cosmetic aspects.

I decided to combine all four topics into one (this one) so the others are redundant. Long post ahead - used spoilers for a better overview.
 
1 MECHANICS:

 

1.1 Weight System:

Right now it seems your choice of equipment is prettly linear: You got camouflage, protection and storage capacity and military gear usually offers most of this without much downsides. Having on lot of stuff should also come with some downsides hence the weight sytem. The basic idea is simple: Every single item in your inventory has a weight attached to it. More weight means you suffer from several disadvantages: You accelerate (and maybe also move) slower and your turn rate is reduced when moving fast. Your stamina (see below) and energy consumption will be higher. Swimming will be affected to a far greater degree: High weight means you need quite some stamina to stay at the surface and even more to swim a certain distance. Weight might also influence the height you can fall without breaking your legs.

This way there might be some reason to pick up less and lighter gear to stay more mobile at the cost of having fewer or weaker (high caliber rifles and ammo should have more weight than low caliber ones) item choices.

1.2 Stamina:

Instead of being able to run infinitely you should have stamina to pay for this. In general the faster you move the faster you lose stamina but moving crouched and prone cost more stamina than moving upright. When not moving you will regenerate stamina. Swimming also takes stamina and at a much higher rate than walking or running. Stamina consumption is also increased in proportion of your overall weight. Moving uphill will increase stamina consumption (but you will be forced to a slower way of moving much less frequently - it should be perfectly possible to run up most hills but it would cost a lot of stamina to do so). Now stamina is not a mana bar. There should be a huge amount of stamina available so you can run for quite some time (depending on your fitness and inventory) before suffering consequences. Then it might be a smart idea to rest before moving on as being exhausted might hurt both your sneakiness and combat abilities.

High Stamina (Fit):
- no negative effects
- full regeneration

Medium Stamina (Tiring):
- louder breathing
- reduced accuracy for ranged attacks
- reduced regeneration

Low Stamina (Exhausted):
- heavy breathing
- strongly reduced accuracy for all attacks
- blurry vision
- slow regeneration

Extremely Low Stamina (Collapsing):
- very heavy breathing and gasping
- heavily reduced accuracy for all attacks
- blurry vision that starts to blacken
- very slow regeneration

No Stamina (Unconscious):
- you will pass out
- you awake when you reach the a certain amount of stamina again (e.g. the "Exhausted" state)

Adrenaline:
Under some circumstances (getting shot etc.) you will gain a big chunk of additional stamina to perform better than you would otherwise. This bonus stamina might even increase the maximum stamina available but the main use is to push you out of suboptimal stamina stages in time of need. But be careful: After a certain time the effect will end and all the granted bonus stamina will be taken from you. In the worst case you will pass out because this causes you to drop at zero stamina.
This effect does not stack and can only happen again once the old one wears off. But it might save you if you are ambushed by someone while tiring or even exhausted.

Regeneration:
As written above regeneration gets slower if your stamina drops. If you are fit you will regenerate stamina even if moving around (W) but drain stamina when moving prone or running (W+W) while moving crouched will only prevent regeneration (regeneration-drain = 0). If you are tiring simply moving around will slowly drain your stamina but going (Shift+W) still grant some minor regeneration. Exhausted players need to rest - no matter how you move you will lose stamina so better take a break. Finally for collapsing players even standing is hard - you need to sit or lie down to regain your stamina.

1.3 Temperature:

Instead of just freezing when getting too cold high temperature should also have some negative effects on the character (I would probably not get as far as including sunstroke). If you get hot you will consume water much faster and at maximum temperature you will have to drink a lot of water to keep going. You will also start to sweat which might help with getting cooler but also makes you wet (and thus more vulnerable to sickness and sudden weather change). Temperature is gained from heat sources like: yourself (especially when moving), other players (and maybe companion animals if implemented), fire, cooking devices, interiors during the day and maybe even hot midday sun. Temperature is lost when wet, outdoors during a night, bad weather, lying on bare ground and so on. You clothings protection both lowers temperature loss and increases temperature gain - as long as its dry enough.

With the right clothes you should be able to stay in the cold for quite some time before suffering negative effects but the same clothes might turn out too warm under different circumstances. Stuffing your jacket in your backpack might be the right thing to do if walking around in the open during a sunny day or sitting right next to a big fire for an extended period of time.

Very High (Sweating):
- strongly increased dehydration
- slowly getting wet from sweat

High (Hot):
- increased dehydration

Optimal (Warm):
- no ill effects

Low (Cold):
- higher chance of getting sick

Very Low (Freezing):
- high chance of getting sick
- loss of health and stamina

1.4 Wetness:

This is related to temperature. In particular getting wet will greatly reduce your resistance against temperature loss and getting dry usually requires you to increase your temperature (though you should become dry on your own but only very slowly). Staying wet for a longer period of time should also increase the risk of getting sick or might worsen an already aquired sickness. Of course the wetter you are the longer you need to become dry.

Some clothes might protect you from getting wet. However, they won't prevent you from getting wet via sweating. Other will soak up water and make it more difficult to dry up. In order to get dry you need to be next to a heat source. Clothes get dry faster if not worn (lying on the ground next to a heat source) and shorter clothes get dry much faster than longer clothes (in most cases becoming dry and exposure protection should be inverse). Also wet clothes are usually heavier than dry clothes and the water might also hurt their condition or the condition of items stored within. Use water-proof bags/containers to protect things from getting wet. Especially if you want to go for a swim - in which case you might consider taking off your down jacket.

Dry:
- no ill effects

Damp:
- slightly increased infection risk*
- slightly faster temperature loss

Wet:
- increased infection risk*
- faster temperature loss
- slight weight increase**

Soaked:
- increased infection risk*
- fast temperature loss
- weight increase**

*only if also cold or wet for a longer period of time
**depending on the clothes you are wearing

 
2 CHARACTER:
 
2.1 Ethnicity

I am not entirely sure if different ethnicities are needed. On the positive side it might provide more realistic characters because it allows to couple multiple traits making them look more like people you would meet in real life (avoiding single eyelid black skinned characters with blonde hair). On the other side it might be too restrictive and make it impossible to create mixed ethnicity charcters as you are limited to "typical" characters.

I think it might be a good idea to go the middle way: provide some rough templates but plenty of options (like a skin color slider) to make the character unique while still retaining some of the typical traits of their (wider) ethnicity. So basically provide three base types:

African (allows for the darkest skin tones and coiled hair)
Asian (allows for single eyelids)
Caucasian (allows for the brightest hair colors)

Those, while providing some typical looks, should be highly modifiable. In fact it should be possible to bring two charcaters who are based on different types very close to appearance or modify your character in a way that he/she looks very different from the typical base types.

2.2 Face

Faces should work similar to the way faces work in real life: to recognise people. To make this possible the overall variety of faces should be very high - which means significantly higher than the maximum number of players on a server (right now any group of 9 or more people has at least one pair of "twins"). The best way to achieve this is to provide some kind of character generator to combine single features - this way variety comes from different combinations rather than needing a huge amount of predefined faces. A character generator would also make it possible to "recycle" features and is much easier to access (though it is possible to arrange predefined faces in a similar way).

Lets look at an example to understand the possible combinations. You got six features: head (upper face, ears etc.), jaw, nose, mouth, brow and cheeks with 5 options each. This already makes for over 15000 possible combinations. Add sliders for their positioning (e.g. for the mouth) and skin tones as well as some additional options (like the already mentioned single eyelids, more mouths, eyes etc.) and nobody has to find a clone of him/herself ever again.

But there should be more than that. I highly doubt that all survivors of a zombie apocalypse would be young or middle-aged adults. There should be a much greater range of possible ages starting from characters in their late teens and up to people in their sixties (lets play as badass grandpa/grandma!). Also appearance: some people look plain, some look cute, some look scary, some are pretty, some are ugly - and so should the survivors (potentially - if everyone decides to play an ugly and slightly scary badass grandpa so be it). Each of those effects should be achievable in multiple ways (if there is only one "scary option" per feature chances are that all players who like to be scary will look alike).

Faces should come without accessories or makeup so every freshly spawned player would look comparatively plain. However there could be some items for painting your face in various ways - as well as an option to wash it all away - and maybe even piercings and scars. There should be some freedom how to use the items in question (e.g. painting your whole face in red using a whole lipstick). Also using dirt to "paint" your body might be interesting.

2.3 Hair, Eyes and Body cosmetics

Some additional customization options that affect your appearance. You choose them when creating your suvivor and they cannot be changed mid-game - similar to your face - but - also similar to your face - could be altered ingame if you got the right items or playstyle. Hair will grow over time (and if you are a male your beard will also grow) but can be cut, shaved and even styled (with the right tools). You may dye your hair but finding colored (and usuable) contacts in a postapocalyptical world doesn't seem very realistic to me. Similar for your hairtype: getting curls or straightening your hair would require tools and effort you usually would not have. So your eye color will stay the same and your hair type will dictate which kind of hairstyles you can use.

Hair Colors:
- black
- dark brown
- auburn
- chestnut
- ash
- red (only caucasian)
- golden (only caucasion)
- blonde (only caucasian)
- grey (only older survivors)
- white (only older survivors)

Hair Types:
- straight
- wavy
- curly
- coiled (only african)

Eye Colors:
- light blue
- dark blue
- grey
- green
- hazel
- amber
- brown
- dark brown

Finally we got body types - because not all survivors of one sex are built in exactly the same way. This gives an option to tell apart people at medium range and adds some optical variation. Body types are meant as purely cosmetic but you might have the opportunity to gain or lose weight or even train to build up muscles (next topic will cover this). Your body type is more of a basic setup that outlines your basic appearance and where you gain or lose fat in general.

Male:
- Athletic (lean with long legs and somewhat defined shoulders)
- Muscular (broad shoulders with shorter legs and very narrow hips - "top-heavy V-shape")
- Rectanglular (less defined shoulders with medium legs, weight is distributed equally)

Female:
- Hourglass (balanced weight distribution, defined waist and slender legs)
- Pear (wider hips and legs with a longer waistline and narrow shoulders)
- Androgynous (narrow hips and less defined waist with broad shoulders)

Different body shapes (the ones that do change gameplay) will come from ingame weight loss or gain. For example a "bulky bear" will be a muscular man that got some weight (rectangular would not gain broad shoulders while athletic would only get a beer belly) and a supermodel body would be a skinny hourglass figure (pear would retain the wide hips while androgynous would tend towards a boyish look instead). Still the body type is only meant to affect appearance ("bulky bear" would still play just like "beer belly guy" if they got the same weight).

2.4 Starting Character

You should be able to choose most of the above for your starting character as well as your first basic set of clothes. But similar to this you should not get all options right from the beginning. I already mentioned that body paint (of any type) and possibly accessoires should not be present at the beginning. Similar for hairstyles. Both sexes should start out with a rather short cut (compare george form above) and men with a stubble (if you want cleanly shaven go find a razor!). Body type should be as selected with medium weight (neither skinny nor fat) and not particularily trained.

2.5 Weight and Training

Instead of keeping the same shape all the time you should be able to change your body ingame for the better or the worse. You progress towards "Fat" when you consume food that would put you above your maximum energy capacity and you progress towards "Thin" when you are hungry. Progressing towards "Trained" is much harder: You need to consume stamina while being healthy and either tiring or exhausted due to physical activity (you need to run for quite a while before progressing even starts). For the sake of simplicity I suggest a semi-onedimensional approach: You can only ever be "Fat", "Thin" or "Trained" and transition is only possible via "Normal" state. So you can either progress further towards your current state or the normal one (if you do something that would make you progress towards a different one). So a thin person that starts to train will first gain weight until he/she reaches the normal state and then start to build up those muscles. Besides affecting your characters appearance and weight (and thus stamina costs - a trained survivor would have about the same weight as a normal survivor) there could be some other effects:

Normal:
- no positive or negative effects

Thin:
- faster temperature loss
- lower maximum energy
- lower stomach capacity

Fat:
- faster temperature gain
- lower movement speed
- higher maximum energy
- higher stomach capacity

Trained:
- higher stamina
- higher moevement speed

The more you progress towards a certain state the bigger the effect and the more your survivor will look like it. The exact appearance should depend on your body type:

Athletic males would look especially skinny when "Thin" but when "Fat" most of the weight concentrates on the belly while arms and legs stay thinner. A trained one would - as the name suggests - look similar to a professional athlete.
Muscular males would keep their broad shoulders even when very thin. Weight gain is more significant on the torso and arms so "Fat" one tend to look bulky while "Trained" ones would look more like bodybuilders.
Rectangular males would still be relatively stocky when thin, gain weight all over the body when progressing towards "Fat" and a "Trained" one would be well muscled without looking like he was on steroids.

Hourglass females would have the typical supermodel figure when "Thin", keep a defined waist even when "Fat" while gaining weight elsewhere and hardbodies when very "Trained".
Pear femnales would keep wide hips even when "Thin", a relatively slim upper body when "Fat" and a very feminine shape even when "Trained" but with well defined muscles.
Androgynous females would be boyish when "Thin", quite bulky when "Fat" and pretty masculine (in body shape) when "Trained" (comparable to the athletic and rectangular males).

2.6 Hair and Beards

also here

You hair and beard (if male) start out relatvely short (for both genders) and grow slowly over time. This means that growing long hair would take multiple ingame days and Rapunzel hair would be a strong indicator for a character that survived a long time. Still growth should be faster than it would be in real life just to make it possible to grow long hair. Hair (but no beards) could also have an effect on body temperature with long hair offering better protection against cold but also taking longer to become dry if it got wet. Hair can be cut and altered with different tools, where the specific options depend on the tool itself (you can't get a very orderly hairstyle when all you got is a Machete) the length of your hair, our hairtype (curly hair will always be curly) and the cut (if you use scissors it will look very different than if you use a sickle).

Cutting tools:
- Razor (best for shaving, relatively clean cutting)
- Scissors (best for cutting, clean cut)
- Knifes (okay for both cutting and shaving but might not cause the best results)
- Machete/Sickle etc. (only for very crude cutting)

The basic length and cut might be altered using other tools. A comb or hairbrush might result in much less savange looking hair. Use a band to create a ponytail and hairspray to make it stand (headwear will probably ruin this). Dreadlocks and braids should be possible as well. I am not quite sure if loose and long hair should have some drawbacks like impairing your vision (smaller FoV or blocked vision during rapid movement) - it pretty much depends on how much it forces players to tend their hair (which should not be one of the more frequent or important things to do in my opinion) and the technical possibilities of course.

Finally you should be able to do these things (and maybe even more) to other people (buddies, strangers and prisoners). Maybe even cut off someones long hair as some kind of trophy.

2.7 Body paint & Piercings

Pretty simple: paint your skin with different colors and shapes which of cuase requires you to find suitable equipment (like those colors) before. This includes makeup, bright colors and also camouflage and mud. The equipment should be able to be used more liberally - for example lipstick might be used to give you red lips but also to paint your face with red stripes or even color your whole face in red (which might require multiple lipsticks to be used). You should be able to color most body parts (everywhere) with a wider array of possible patterns or symbols although more elaborate paints might require another survivor to apply them to your skin.

Getting rid of the paint should depend on the equipment in question. Simple colors and mud might only need you to jump into a body of water to wash them off you while others might require the use of alcohol. However, no bodypaint should be permanent and the colors might fade or blur over time (maybe faster on wet survivors and slower on dry ones).

Piercings could work similar to clothes but applying them would be more elaborate (finding suitable equipment, desinfecting the equipment and choosing the place on you body) and might require another survivor to do the job. With the right equipment you should be able to take them off pretty easily and maybe even reapply them.

2.7 Tattoos & Scars

Lets talk about permanent marks. Tattoos are basically the big brother of body paint and should always require another survivor to apply them. Just like in real life they could work as identification marks especially because once you commited to them you won't we able to change them (until your survivor dies). In general almost everything possible with body paint should also be possible with tattoos and the bigger the tatoo the longer it takes until its finished. Tattooing by itself should require special equipment and take quite some time (and maybe even carry some risk of infection if not using sterile/high quality equipment) so not every survivor is able to affort it.

Scars should come in two flavors: combat scars and decoration scars. As the name suggests the first kind is aquired by being wounded in combat while the second kind works similar to tattoos but with some differences: decoration scars don't come in different colors (unless combined with tatoos if possible) and can't be as detailed. On the other side you don't need that much dedicated equipment. Still it should take quite some time and the process might be painful and cost some health as well as risking infection as well.

Combat scars are aquired by getting wounded. Bleeding wounds (or worse) would have some probability of leaving a scar. This probability should depend on the quality of the medical equiment used for treatment and further reduced by letting another survivor treat your wounds. Depending on those factors you will keep a big scar (pretty ugly but might look badass), a small scar (visible but not disfiguring) or no scar at all if you are lucky. So treating your wounds yourself with bad equipment has a high chance of causing a big scar, a smaller chance of causing a small scar and a very small chance of causing no scar while getting treated by another survivor using good equipment might have a good chance of causing no scar at all and a small chance of causing a small scar.

There might be even more specialized items that reduce the probability of leaving a scar even further at some cost (more inventory space needed, heavier, much rarer). This way scars could also help to give away people who like to fight often and mainly carry equipmemnt that helps with fighting as the tend to have more and bigger scars than pacifist medics. And battle hardened loners would also look like battle hardened loners with quite some scars all over their body.

2.8 Skills

also here

Now DayZ is obviously no role playing game where you collect experience points, level up and buy shiny new abilities with your skillpoints. But on the other side its not very realistic for a random survivor to have the skills of paramedics, soldiers, hunters, tailors etc. combined. Now I believe knowledge should stay on the players side - you should not be required to read a book ingame to perform specific actions. But training and experience should play a role: A freshly spawned survivor might know how to do something but lacks the experience to do it perfectly.

So similar to shaping your body you might be able to passively shape your skills by just doing things. If you perform one action over and over again you will become faster or the effect might be increased. Maybe some actions (like clothes modification or crafting more complex items) might even require a particular skill to be advanced enough before you can do so. Still most actions should be available to everyone although in a less effective shape (an untrained medic might take much longer to treat woulds than a more experienced one making the patient lose more blood in the process).

Skills would affect multiple actions (e.g. a medicine skill would affect treating woulds, giving and taking blood etc.) and should slowly degrade when not used for a longer period of time - faster you skill level is higher as it takes a lot of work to maintain extraordinary skills. So your actual skillset would depend solely on your playstyle instead of some starting preset or skillpoint distribution. If you concentrate on a few of your abilities you will end up as a specialist while doing everything on your own would make you into a generalist.
 
Possible Skills:
- Medicine (bandaging, taking or giving blood)
- Firearms (reloading, cleaning, switching stances, drawing guns)
- Brawling (drawing melee weapons, damaging melee weapons, melee attack speed)
- Crafting (tool usage, repairing or creating equipment)
- Mechanics (with vehicles/machines implemented)
- Survival (skinning animals, cooking, making fire, gathering wood)
... (further suggestions are welcome)

Edited June 16, 2014 by Evil Minion

[enforcer1975 1111]

All things that are on pretty much on the wishlist of everyone who wants to have a survival game isntead of another TDM, DM. Good thoughts nonetheless.

[Otis.Driftwood 204]

I think that they will add most of that but when they add wehicles

[peter5on 1]

Yeah we need stamina system like in Arma 3 (more u carry, faster u get tired) But that could be done when they add at least bicycles, and tents.

[Otis.Driftwood 204]

They have infinite run because there is no other transportation, once they add that they will add stamina system

[alu 3]

heavy breathing is in also when you run alot you have shaky arms and cant hit with accuracy

[gibonez 3633]

Daam shameful that mods like epoch have far better stamina, weight and inventory systems than stand alone.

[Axel335 2]

When/if this is implemented the game will be ten times better

[Evil Minion 943]

Allright - combined all 4 big scary post into one big scary post. The other three should not be needed anymore.

[Evil Minion 943]

Bump for visibility.

[slippery gypsy 107]

hi quality gear for tattooing ..  :huh:

[alsmir 255]

I agree with most of the suggestions with the exception of skills and training. Don't want to see any grinding in DayZ.

Training? I have very little time to play since I'm spending quite some time running/cycling/training in the gym irl so you're suggesting that after I get to play some DayZ I should do some weight training in game or be in a disadvantage? Sounds fun... not. 

[Evil Minion 943]

The training is thought less as grinding and more as an indicator of your general playstyle that also helps differentiating survivors. As a start option everyone would pick skinny (if no bonus was attached) or trained (if a bonus was attached) while in game development would create a wider array of body shapes.

 

For the skills you are probably right (the idea was to have something its worth surviving for even if you lose all of your gear and - depending on implementation - your hair). To avoid grinding you could keep the overall power level the same: Whenever you increase your skills in one area you will lose skills in the least used area. So you will start as generalist and depending on your playstyle you might slowly change to specialist (which is of course more interesting for groups, lone wolves would probably not specialize as much). Of course increasing skills should require a specialized playstyle - you should not lose all you skills in crafting because of a prolonged gunfight.

[Guest]

I would love to have an character with an clipped monarch-like moustache, wearing an gasmask and beeing an skilled medic. Have my beanz!

[killerpixel 49]

Daam shameful that mods like epoch have far better stamina, weight and inventory systems than stand alone.

 

Yeah...in basic function, maybe. Problem is, they make it all in scripts, so it runs like ass and is not reliable. The DayZ Devs are making it all from scratch, in engine. Once it's done (and yes, it does take a while to completely tear up and rewrite/modify an engine, espcially one that is as purpose-built as the Real Virtuality is) it's not only gonna have expended functionality, but also run smoother.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Pixel1191

[Evil Minion 943]

Things are progressing. When I started this topic there was no temperature system and wetness did not really do anything but spam you with messages. Stamina is in the works and I really hope character customization will also be added at some point (using the procedural color change system that is in devolpment for guns on player models might allow for quite some variety already).

 

An interesting effect with some body features (like long hair) and clothes (like the ghillie suit) might be a slow down or stagger effect if running close to bushes etc. For hair this might be mitigated by cutting or making a braid and in case of clothes it might add another dimension for balance and authenticity.

[pale1776 375]

Eh, I think tattoos should be something you add in the creation menu. I mean SOME of us have tattoos, they wouldn't disappear if there was a zombie apocalypse would they?

[OnionOfShame 138]

Eh, I think tattoos should be something you add in the creation menu. I mean SOME of us have tattoos, they wouldn't disappear if there was a zombie apocalypse would they?

I agree with this. I also think that hair style, facial hair, and piercings should be options in the creation menu. If a long beard can only be achieved by living long, facial hair will become another one of those things where there is one objective "best"/endgame option rather than it being up to personal choice, which in my opinion should not be part of DayZ. I'd rather have a survivor's appearance reflect their personal style rather than just being a sort of medal for surviving so long. Of course the growth and maintenance of hair over time could still be in, I just think that we should be able to spawn with our hair how we like.

[Evil Minion 943]

The advantage of aquired traits over starting traits is that they require some investment. You do not get them "for free" and you can lose them (and loss is a central aspect of DayZ in my opinion). Because of this aquired traits reflect a players playstyle much more and can have a much bigger range of actual ingame effects.

 

The advantage of starting traits over aquired traits is that you set them at the beginning and if you cannot change them ingame they can serve as identification method. In both cases they increase the overall diversity of survivors in general. However, as players have complete control over them at the start they need to be somewhat balanced which limits possible ingame effects. They also don't reflect playstyles nearly as much.