Some feedback and ideas.

[SillySil 295]

So I've been playing this for about a week and I've noticed few things and have some ideas.

First thing I wanna talk about is zeds and how they act.

The aggro is really weird at times. Sometimes you can crouch and move slowly next to a pack of zeds and sometimes you will aggro the entire village while proning. Lets first talk about their sight then hearing. I think visibility through windows should be lowered. I mean, you just can't see someone who's inside a house as well as when he'd be outside yet zeds do, most of the time. There is also this thing about crossing roads. It seems to me like your visibility while crossing the road is multiplied by 15. Now I have no problem with being really visible while crossing a road since there is no cover, but this is insane. You can aggro zeds that are like 100 meters away from you if you run, that's kinda too far. Then there is situation when you are crawling through the street. Your visibility indicator shows 0 or 1 yet you will get spotted from 10 meters at least. Like I said I don't have problem with being spotted while on the road but the indicator is confusing in this situation, it should show 4 bars or something like that. Apart from that I didn't notice too much issues with their sight. Sometimes they can see you through buildings, but it's obviously a bug that's being worked on.

Now the hearing. When you are inside a house, there is no reason why zeds should hear your footsteps (while not running ofc) from outside that good. The walls should dampen the sound heavily. The ability to hear things through walls of zeds reaches superhero level. It's way over the top. I can understand hearing some movement, if someone is running. But if someone is walking/crouching and moving around on the first floor there is no reason why someone who's outside at ground level should hear you.

And this brings another topic. Aggro on sound. When a zed hears a footstep it will launch itself and run full speed to the place when he heard it. How does he know? Are there no other sounds? Do other zeds have different footsteps? Again I can understand if someone is running full speed. That's loud and easy to differentiate but crouch walking or running... you can't be that sure, depending on the distance ofc. I think in this case there should be 2 ranges of hearing. The bigger one, where they walk to check out the sound, kinda what they do when you throw a whiskey bottle (curious that they rush fullspeed at a footstep but casually walk to a broken glass sound) and smaller range when there is no mistake of what's making the sound and they just run to the sound. Now those ranges would obviously have to be tested and balanced. But that's what alpha is for.

Second thing about hearing and aggro. Zeds should never "lock on" just by sound. Too many times a zed heard me, so I started moving slower and hid behind a corner just to be kicked in the face because the zed knows where I went. But I think it's a bug or something. I've had maybe 2 instances when a zed only went for a sound and didn't follow me. So I'm guessing it's not working as intended atm.

And now suggestions about aggro and zeds. Maybe add a sense of smell? Maybe only to those zeds that walk/run crouched? Maybe you'd only leave scent while crawling? That would force you to sometimes stand up in a town. Could be interesting.

Now few things about combat.

At the moment there aren't many options when it comes to fighting zeds.

Once aggroed you can

1. Fight with a hatchet, but get damaged at almost every encounter and sooner or later bleed out or break legs. Not a very good choice.

2. Shoot and aggro everything within a mile. Prolly gonna die.

3. Leg it far away from the town and then shoot. Bothersome and redundant.

4. Disconnect/alt+f4. Which is by far the best option. Few seconds of loading for making the threat disappear. There is just no comparison. Unacceptable mechanic, I'll get back on that.

Right now, apart from the crossbow that's... not really worth it. There is no way of silently taking out zeds without taking damage (at least without some end game gear that I didn't manage to get yet due to pesky snipers up north :) ). This would add to the gameplay, but would have to be limited (hard to find, use) because it would be just too good if you could use it all the time without downsides. What could it be now? Well the crossbow could use a buff. Belts should come in stacks or combine automatically (could be hard to implement, maybe some day). But really. There is no way 8 bolts are going to take up the entire bag. If you have room for 1 bolt you should have room for at least 5. Maybe the crossbow could be secondary weapon? And retrieving bolts man. There is no reason I can't take a bolt out of something because it's under the body. Unless the bolt breaks I should always be able to retrieve it. One way of doing it would be putting a bolt into inventory of the thing that was killed by said bolt. Or giving bolts a bigger dialogbox but that could make it too easy when looking for bolts that missed the target. Maybe there is a way to give it a bigger dialogbox when it hits a player/zed? Another useful thing could be throwing knives. Would have to be hard to use and find. Same deal with retrieving. It would be cool if you could sneak up on a zed and hit it in the head with an axe. Right now they run away and back just before you can reach them.

At the moment zeds are faster than the player by what? Half? There is no reason for that. 100% player speed should be absolute maximum.

I'd also love to have ability to swing fists. I mean the zeds have no weapons but they are somehow able to damage you. Why can't the player swing his hands or legs? Even if that would make little to no damage, there is no reason why a grown up guy should be defenseless like a baby without a weapon. (inb4 you wouldn't fight against a zombie. If I had a choice? No I wouldn't. But you don't always have a choice between fight or flight. Sometimes you can't run and you have to fight. If that happens I'd rather have a possibility to defend myself, even if it would suck).

And how about pushing away/kicking. Long recharge and makes you unable to move for the length of animation but would stop a zed for few seconds. I think that would only add to the gameplay.

And now lets talk about the disconnect BS. A popular topic. And for me the timer is the best option. The problem is. People will still alt+f4. The only way to counter it, would be that the character would stay on the server for those 10 seconds. But now you have a problem of storing the data. It would either have to be done by a master server which would store all the characters and their gear and would receive that info from the server, not from the player. But that goes way beyond the boundaries of simple mod. The other way would be storing the data by the server and sending it to the player when he connects next time. Problems would arise if the server would be offline when the player connects next time. Well, lets just say that the really lucky ones would get away with it. It's not that they can choose when the server they played will be offline. But in this case the server on which the player died after alt+f4 would have to check if the player logged on when the server was offline and played some more. We don't want a situation when a player alt+f4s or crashes. Logs in the next day, but the server where he died is offline. The guy plays for a week and then the server where he died comes back again and sends info that the player should die. Again this goes beyond simple mod. But I think this would be easier than master server although not as reliable.

Right now I really don't like the wound system. Especially the broken leg mechanic that's somewhat random. It wouldn't be as bad if zeds would be more manageable and less random. (running and aggroing through walls, running in circles, running inside the player, but the worse of all is making damage at the start of the animation [it should deal damage somewhere in the middle of it] not even having the attack animation [happens a lot with crawling zeds]) But I thought up a system of wounds that I always wanted to see in a survival game. It would have 4 types of wounds. When you get damage you can have a combination of these.

1. A bruise. Wouldn't show an icon or anything. You simply lost some of the health and you're not bleeding. Already in the game. Minor chance for pain.

2. A cut. Slowly loosing blood, needs bandage. Already in the game. But the bleeding would be slower and would stop after a 1000 or 2000. Moderate chance for pain. (however I'd change the indicator of it. kind what broken bone has, just different icon)

3. A gash. Heavy bleeding wound. After applying the regular bandage you are still bleeding but slower. Need a pressure bandage to stop it completely. New item. Needs painkillers. (Would require new 2 indicators. One for the gash and one for partially dressed)

4. A deep wound. Heavy bleeding but can be stopped with regular bandage. Needs morphine or you will keep passing out at random times. Needs painkillers to stand up. (again new indicator)

As you see that would replace crawling with random passing out which I think is a better mechanic because crawling for miles is not much fun (I know someone is going to disagree, but seriously, not many people have fun crawling for 2 hours). And it would still make the morphine a necessity.

And there are some bugs or things that just have to go. When I'm trying to put a gun in my backpack, it shouldn't move the ammo for it with it. (I shouldn't even mention that it eats up guns or ammo when you don't have enough room for both ammo and gun). Same for picking up weapons with ammo. If I'll want to pick up all the mags I'll do it myself. I don't want to first pick up the gun with ammo, throw some important things on the ground automatically, throw away unimportant things manually and pick up the important things again. Don't do things for me game. I can manage.

Zombies walking through walls and doors has to go too. I know it's in the game not in the mod but yeah.

Dropping things in tight spaces makes those things disappear sometimes.

Sometimes you can't check your bag without crouching.

Sometimes you stand up after drinking (usually in 3rd person).

Sometimes you stand up when crawling onto something or trying to crawl into a building.

The frigging barbed wire needs a bigger dialog box.

Server hopping gotta be reduced. 30 seconds or more wait before logging back in.

Now before I get flamed for wanting this to be an easy game, although I doubt those "quality posters" are still reading this. No. I enjoy the difficulty. But it has to come from challenge. Not from inconvenience. You could make a button for inhaling air and one of exhaling air and if you forget to breathe you pass out and break your leg if you were running. That would make the game much harder but it would also make it less fun. Not all difficulty is fun. It's best to have many options and loose because you've chosen poorly and not because you have to compensate for bad mechanic design and lack of choice. Every time you die it should be because you messed up. Not because you had no other choice but even that wasn't good enough. That's why loosing was fun in Dwarf Fortress. Because if you lost it meant that you messed up. There was always a way of going through something.

Now I don't know how all those changes would affect the gameplay and difficulty. These are ideas for a game that's in an alpha stage. Those would have to be tested, tweaked and balanced. If they would make the game too easy they would have to changed or even scrapped. But that's exactly what the alpha is for. The game is not in a perfect state at the moment. There is no point white knighting for it. You are not helping the development if you keep insisting that there is nothing wrong and tell everyone who has a suggestion or doesn't like anything to go back to call of duty. The irony is: all those who call other people cod fanboys act exactly like cod fanboys, telling people to ignore bugs and bad features and get better or leave. Don't be like that. Discuss the bugs and undeveloped features, suggest new things. Help the game develop. You are holding it back if you flame everyone who wants changes.

[SillySil 295]

Come on I've put some effort into this thread. At least one person could say what he thinks about my ideas.

[DeathHaze420 0]

Gonna be honest man. Walls of text are intimidating lmao. Also, you posted this in the wrong section. http://dayzmod.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=7

Try posting it here. The ppl that go there are willing to read and discuss this, general seems to be more of a boxing ring of QQ'ers and fanboy defenders hahahahaha

Also, look over the patch notes for 1.7.2 update. Some of the things you are talking about are already being fixed. And always remember that this is alpha. It may take weeks or months to see the things you want to see make it into the game / get taken out of / get tweaked.