The Biggest Problems

[naizarak 41]

I've been playing this game since the start and these major problems have yet to be addressed, here's my take on it:

1) PVP - There's nothing wrong with killing others but, in its current state, PVP is too easy. There's really no strategy or tactics involved in finding an overpowered sniper rifle, camping a hilltop with dozens of rounds of ammo, and taking potshots at passing players. This is exactly what this game DOESN'T need - senseless killing.

Solution - cut down on military weapons, remove military-grade sniper rifles altogether. Main arsenal should consist of handguns, civilian shotguns and rifles, and alternative weapons like tranquilizer guns.

Excellent thread on alternative weapons

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=8756

Make bandits work for their kills. Give players equal-footing weapons wise and base the outcome of a firefight on skill, tactics, awareness, etc. Not whoever has the more OP gun(mk48! .50 cal! silenced m4!).

Military weapons, like AK's - m16's - mp5's, would stay in the game, but become extremely rare, with extremely rare ammo. People using these guns would come to value every bullet and seriously consider the necessity of every potential engagement. If you're going to use these rare guns, you better have a good reason to because odds are you won't find ammo for a long time afterwards.

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2) Disconnecting - self-explanatory. Server hopping is a big problem and needs to be fixed ASAP.

Solution - a sleep system. Before disconnecting, players need to fall asleep. As soon as the player character enters sleep, players are free to disconnect. However, the player body will actually remain in-play for a set amount of time - like 5 mins. This way DC-ing to avoid combat would be impossible as your sleeping body could still be looted and potentially killed. Upon reconnection, players would have to wait 30 secs. or so before regaining control of their character and waking up.

Disconnecting before your player enters sleep(task manager, alt+f4) doesn't save your game. You lose all progress and items since your last successful "sleep".

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3) Vehicles - clans stash vehicles off-map limiting their use by everyone else.

Solution - tents and vehicles don't "save" off-map. Players can still go up and explore these areas but will not be able to stash equipment/vehicles up there. Normal players would now be able to search for and find vehicles within proper map-boundaries. Would pose a real challenge in maintaining and protecting valuable equipment and vehicles to clans.

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These following changes are more controversial but I felt like listing them anyways:

1) All servers should be veteran. Players shouldn't see themselves on maps and there should be no name-tags. If possible, the range on name tags should be reduced to 10-15 meters. Groups of players would still be able to identify each other without abusing name-tag scanning.

2) Game should be 1st-person only. Arma has a 3rd person feature because it's primarily a single-player/COOP experience. All PVP gametypes and servers usually disable 3rd person because it's way too easy to abuse.

3)NVG and GPS should be removed completely.

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Of course dayz is only in alpha and has a long way to go, but I think these pressing issues are capable of being, and should be, fixed as soon as possible.

I'd like to know what everyone else has to think, but constructive criticism only. Any insulting/flaming posts will be reported.

[m2n2l2 0]

Nah. Let the devs fap over how great they are and stfu.

That's the impression I got from the posts that have been REMOVED.

[naizarak 41]

hmm...thanks for the feedback?

[freak367 24]

Hmmm,

1) Snipers may be the weapon of the preying bandit, but they are also used for scouting, covering others from a distance, and just clearing an area of zombies without getting aggro. If anything, I think more weapons of every type should be introduced.

On bandits in general though that just shoot on sight, I think they need to be easily recognizable again, the bandit skin was great, it was a punishment for killing other players, something that makes other survivors shoot on sight and never trust you, you sacrificed the entire idea of meeting friendly survivors, because they know just by appearance, that you kill other players.

People actively hunted bandits down as a sport, which was fantastic.

Now though, with just the glitchy heartbeat thing, it's hard to know who you can trust and who you can't, especially at distance, which is making everyone just shoot on sight and abandon the idea of making friends and grouping with strangers, it's too dangerous.

PvP can still be a part of DayZ, but personally, I think "bandits" need to be recognizable by appearance. So people might think twice about turning into a bandit since you would become fair game.

2) That system you described isn't good... 5 minutes is a long time, you'd never know if the next time you booted the game up you'd be a new character or not.

To avoid disconnecting in combat, a simple 10 second counter would be enough, to quit, you'd need to stand still for 10 seconds, which will be interrupted by any movement or being shot/hit. So you always need to find somewhere safe to disconnect.

And if someone forced a quit, their character would stay behind, standing still where it was for 10 - 15 seconds. So it wouldn't be an option to disconnect in the heat of battle.

Server hopping is a harder issue to solve, but anything as harsh as a 5 minute timer would also punish people just finding a better server, or disconnecting because of a glitch or because the server happens to be night time (which many don't like), it would be rageworthy needing to wait 5 minutes between joining servers. Especially if your character was out of your hands and vulnerable for all of that time.

3) Stashing vehicles is a problem I agree, but I think the solution lies more with respawn rates than anything. Having proper map boundries would be good.

But additionally I think the spawn rates for vehicles should be much shorter... If someone takes a vehicle, I'd want a new one spawned there within 2 hours, even with the other vehicle still on the map. Which gives the potential for servers to have many vehicles operating at the same time, they are a too rare at the moment in my opinion, I can't see any harm in having more vehicles on the map, so they become a less rare sight. I have played for hours every day for the past 5 days on full servers and I have seen no vehicles of any kind, anywhere.

I also think Bicycles should become a lot less rare than vehicles, even if they were slightly broken and needed just a Toolbox to fix, every town should have a bicycle, realistically the majority of homes would own atleast one bicycle, so I don't think they should be that rare.

4) A single difficulty is fine with me.

Also, how can name tags be abused?, is it just like looking around the landscape until a green name pops up, so it lets you spot people?, lowering it to 50m would be fine, so you could identify people who are around you.

How can 3rd person be abused? o_O, I enjoy using it, I like seeing myself, anything one player can do with 3rd person, any other player can do, so it's a level playing field.

I agree with the NVG being removed, unless there was more ways to see in the night, like floodlights, power etc...so they become less essential in the dark.

I have never used GPS so I don't know what it offers, but if it's just a GPS like in real life, which lets you see yourself, and only yourself on the map moving around, then that isn't a problem.

[Emrico1__1 0]

Agree with most of what you are saying, especially the vehicle off map problem.

The sleep one is a good idea but how frustrating would be a internet drop out or PC crash?

[WhiteTigerShiro 25]

Disconnecting before your player enters sleep(task manager, alt+f4) doesn't save your game. You lose all progress and items since your last successful "sleep".

So you're saying that if I have a run of bad luck and lose all my ammo, food and medical supplies, all I have to do is Alt-F4 and get it all back? What a great system. Oh, and Bandits wouldn't exploit this AT ALL to get their full stash of ammo back after a day of PKing. The save system is fine as-is. Not against your idea of the player needing to "go to sleep" or some other system like in MMOs where logging out is on a timer unless you're in a town (and simply hitting Alt-F4 causes your character to just stand there like you got d/c for a while before actually vanishing); but don't tamper with how the game saves.

Edit: On the note of people who quick-log to avoid death: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=8029

Quoth the Rocket:

It will be patched out, very easily, in a future update

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Now though, with just the glitchy heartbeat thing, it's hard to know who you can trust and who you can't, especially at distance, which is making everyone just shoot on sight and abandon the idea of making friends and grouping with strangers, it's too dangerous.

Gee, you mean that the current system makes the game more like how things would actually be if something like this happened? Golly...

[freak367 24]

Now though' date=' with just the glitchy heartbeat thing, it's hard to know who you can trust and who you can't, especially at distance, which is making everyone just shoot on sight and abandon the idea of making friends and grouping with strangers, it's too dangerous. [/quote']Gee, you mean that the current system makes the game more like how things would actually be if something like this happened? Golly...

Yes, except this is a game, in real life there would be a HELL of a lot more humanity, I doubt even 10% of the people who go around in DayZ, gun people down and shoot unarmed people would ever do that in a real life situation.

A game cannot replicate real life, because the person behind the character is never in danger, so humanity is thrown out of the window and the result is what we have now. A Survival game with the unique ability to band other survivors together against a zombie apocalypse, where 90% of people are killing every other survivor they see on sight, including people actively hunting down other survivors, or camping somewhere and gunning down anyone they see just for sport.

In my opinion, The Walking Dead more or less got human nature spot on in the tv series. Even when coming up against other armed people, communication was made, they tried to reason and fighting was a last resort. Of course there's guys like Shane... but right now we have a game full of Shanes.