Some feedback and ideas. A giant wall of text.

[SillySil 295]

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

Zeds

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.

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.

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.

Disconnecting

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.

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 frigging dialog box.

Server hopping gotta be reduced. 1 minute wait before logging back in. Alert players with "someone is close" if someone logs in close to them, rage 300 meters? That would force players to log out outside populated areas.

And finally I'd love to have a secondary character. I usually play with a friend but when he's not online I'd want to play with another character. Possible exploiting and using the other char as safehouse, might break the balance. Would need something to prevent that.

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.

[Optimist (DayZ) 6]

I'm sure you're going to get this a lot. TL;DR

Seriously, condense the information into two short sentences per para. Space them too.

[SillySil 295]

I'm sure you're going to get this a lot. TL;DR

Seriously' date=' condense the information into two short sentences per para. Space them too.

[/quote']

I've talked about like 20 things. It's not about 1 topic.

[Max Planck 7174]

I'm sure you're going to get this a lot. TL;DR

Seriously' date=' condense the information into two short sentences per para. Space them too.

[/quote']

I've talked about like 20 things. It's not about 1 topic.

If you edited out all the insults at people who disagree with you and kept it on topic, it would take up less space. Also, read the stickied posts please.

On topic:

Honestly tried to read the whole thing, but the lack of formatting... My eyes, my beautiful eyes!

[Zeromentor 169]

Okay okay okay.

4 sentences per paragraph. Space them evenly. Topic header and maybe bold the idea.

Example:

I like Pie

Pie is a great dish, and I love talking about it. I once heard the cake is a lie. It haunts me in my dreams, speaking to me, telling me to do aweful things. Now I sit outside of my neighbor's house, watching them through the windows... Naked.

About like that. Being that this is a forum, and many people (like myself) ignore huge walls of text, add a TL;DR version at the bottom. Or maybe a few of them, for each item on your list.

[SillySil 295]

I have formated the whole thing a bit.

If you edited out all the insults at people who disagree with you and kept it on topic' date=' it would take up less space. Also, read the stickied posts please.

On topic:

Honestly tried to read the whole thing, but the lack of formatting... My eyes, my beautiful eyes!

[/quote']

What insults? You didn't even read it. There is like few sentences at the very end about being constructive. If that's an insult to you then what are you doing here?

[Max Planck 7174]

I have formated the whole thing a bit.

If you edited out all the insults at people who disagree with you and kept it on topic' date=' it would take up less space. Also, read the stickied posts please.

On topic:

Honestly tried to read the whole thing, but the lack of formatting... My eyes, my beautiful eyes!

[/quote']

What insults? You didn't even read it. There is like few sentences at the very end about being constructive. If that's an insult to you then what are you doing here?

You attribute stupid ideas to people who disagree with you. You start with the whole 'cod fan boy' thing. You write 334 words, in an already longwinded and cluttered post, just to tell those who might disagree with you to stop flaming.

Why am I here? To ask you, ever so kindly, to read the stickies so those of us who use the suggestion forum as intended don't have to skip through a million posts like this one.

On topic:

The zombie-hearing-through-walls thing is being tweaked in the upcoming patch.

Broken legs are being fixed too. Do you ever read patch notes before complaining?

[SillySil 295]

You attribute stupid ideas to people who disagree with you. You start with the whole 'cod fan boy' thing. You write 334 words' date=' in an already longwinded and cluttered post, just to tell those who might disagree with you to stop flaming.

Why am I here? To ask you, ever so kindly, to read the stickies so those of us who use the suggestion forum as intended don't have to skip through a million posts like this one.

On topic:

The zombie-hearing-through-walls thing is being tweaked in the upcoming patch.

Broken legs are being fixed too. Do you ever read patch notes before complaining?

[/quote']

See that's the attitude I was talking about. When someone points out that something is wrong you think he's complaining. When someone tells you not to be so negative you think he's flaming you.

And I wasn't talking about disagreeing with me but about flaming every guy on this forum who points out that something is broken.

And since I'm talking about many things I've decided to make 1 topic instead of 20.

[Dreamseller 0]

It's Alpha. What do you expect? Of course it's bug ridden. That's why we are testing it, so they can be fixed.

Too many people expect this to be some polished AAA title, which it isn't. Stop complaining and start reporting the bugs instead.

[Zeromentor 169]

It's Alpha. What do you expect? Of course it's bug ridden. That's why we are testing it' date=' so they can be fixed.

Too many people expect this to be some polished AAA title, which it isn't. Stop complaining and start reporting the bugs instead.

[/quote']

LOL

This mod has less bugs than many EA or Capcom games!

[SillySil 295]

It's Alpha. What do you expect? Of course it's bug ridden. That's why we are testing it' date=' so they can be fixed.[/quote']

That's why I made this topic?

Too many people expect this to be some polished AAA title' date=' which it isn't. [/quote']

I'm not? I even said that the alpha is for development?

Stop complaining and start reporting the bugs instead.

Where did I complain? What is wrong with you people seriously? I'm enjoying the game and I forgive it for all it's flaws since it's the alpha and it is going to be full of bugs. But at the same time I can speak about them and talk about features that are simply wrong without complaining. I don't mind those things at the moment. But I mentioned them because they should be fixed in future.

[Max Planck 7174]

But I mentioned them because they should be fixed in future.

Read patch notes, things you 'report' are already getting fixed.

[SillySil 295]

But I mentioned them because they should be fixed in future.

Read patch notes' date=' things you 'report' are already getting fixed.

[/quote']

Some of them yeah. And I think it's awesome.

I'm actually going to cut a part of op and make another thread.