Does DayZ need aeiral transport?

[therandomredstone 431]

DayZ Standalone is an apocalyptic simulator. You get to play in a zombie apocalypse like you were actually there.

  

 Getting your hands on a running chopper IRL in an apocaplyse would be hard. damn.. REALLY HARD. But atleast its still a possibility.

 

If someone really wants to get a chopper, or something of the sort up and running, then I see no need to keep them from doing so.

 

 

 

Besides it's already planned.

 

 

;)

[97ADU Doug 103]

Good points from both sides. Personaly I think adding transport aerial vehicles will only add more challange and content to the game.

 

However whats wrong with a simple by plane like the AN-2? It needs a runway to take off and land, or a long strip of grass/land, which means not just anyone can switch on auto hover and land. No weapons? All in all its a very limited vehicle, and yet it would be great fun to have one in the game would it not?

Edited April 12, 2015 by 97ADU Doug

[pilgrim* 3513]

I'm happy to see that the large majority of players do not want armed aircraft in the game.

 

BUT Probably most players do not realize the real problem of aircraft:

Because of the game textures, as soon as you are at altitude the trees turn into naked sticks, the grass flattens to smooth green, you can see tents players and vehicles easily from a distance.

There is no visual cover from the air, it is a graphical weakness of dayz

 

This means anyone in an aircraft has a power exactly like wallhack. Tents and equipment can NOT be hidden.

 

Everyone who played the mod knows this

[Grimey Rick 3417]

I played thousands of hours on the mod, and I must say that aircraft were the farthest thing from stupid.

Black hawks were annoying from time to time, but unarmed aircraft were never 'stupid'. What do you mean by stupid?

Why couldn't aircraft be acceptable if there were no military variations?

Why not have gritty aircraft to go with gritty survival rather than military aircraft to go with military gear like the mod had?

Having aircraft be so extremely rare or hard to get that merely seeing one induces a state of awe is too rare to be a relevant game-play mechanic.

Perhaps if aircraft were modular and upgradable, then the top possible tier makeshift aircraft should be something awe inspiring. The point of having aircraft at all would be so that players get to use them. I just want to know why you would consider the concept of ultralights and autogyros to be stupid, and why everyone being decked out in military gear would make light aircraft 'more acceptable'.

I want DayZ to be difficult, but I don't want the end game to consist of 'day to day survival' and roaming around engaging in banditry and the like. I want to be able to do fun things once I master the game and have invested so much time into it. Otherwise why play the game at all? Mods became so popular because they added features and functions and vehicles. The more content a mod had the more popular it became. Given this trend vanilla DayZ should strive for as much content as possible, and aircraft are too enjoyable and dynamic to leave out.

EDIT: typing on phone, so many typos. too lazy to fix

It was easier to swallow/more acceptable in the Mod because the Mod never felt authentic. DayZ Standalone, even with infected/zombies, feels authentic. The Mod was always much more heavily based on PvP in its vanilla form; of course, with the inception of private servers, PvE servers began to crop up here and there, but most servers weren't about surviving the harshness of the environment, they were about building bases and getting into PvP.

I live in an area where the are several airports in my vicinity. Mostly for private aircraft. If an apocalyptic situation were to take place, these planes would probably be gone or destroyed within days of the event. Of the aircraft that actually made it into the air, I'd imagine not even a quarter of them would be still functional after a week. Of course this is all speculation, but it's hard/expensive enough to keep aircraft working properly in day-to-day life, apocalypse aside.

A helicopter in a Zombie Apocalypse would be pretty stupid. Think about it: it's going to attract every zed for miles. Granted, it's mobile and could probably land on many buildings, but the trade-off of alerting every zed and hostile person within a five mile radius would more than offset any advantage it may offer. Stealth would definitely be the name of the game.

Now, of course people are going to argue until they're blue in the face that aerial transportation is a must-have because they were present in the Mod and purple have gotten used to them and expect to see them in the Standalone. And now with H1Z1 implementing them in the future, DayZ will basically be forced to do so as well. And that's fine. But to argue in favor of aerial transport simply based on realism is silly. They'd be far too difficult to maintain, maybe 1% (a guess, of course) of the population could even pilot them, and the sheer disadvantage they present in a world where making too much noise gets you killed are all valid points that no one has yet to address.

The only aerial transportation you'd see would be piloted by any remaining military forces. Joe Blow survivor isn't going to magically read the operator's manual for a Saab 340-B and magically understand how to maintain and pilot it.

It just isn't going to happen.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Grimey Rick

[Chaingunfighter 917]

It just isn't going to happen.

In real life it won't - it is going to happen in DayZ (as of right now) whether or not the forum's voting consensus is decisively against it (and it isn't - there's a clear divide.)

[IgnobleBasterd 161]

Can't wait to get a plane up in the air and then kamikaze right down into someone's base, or a big group!

[xalienax 621]

Yeah, I somewhat addressed that in my post. An apocalypse would be a seriously imbalanced situation; even more so than day-to-day life. But issues of imbalance don't mesh very well in a video game. DayZ is, unfortunately, still classed as such, so any imbalanced features implemented would only serve to damage the game, not help it.

IMHO it does help. It creates a dynamic- those who work together (regardless of rather their nice or asshats) have a huge advantage as they would IRL. so you either;

 

A. Choose to be part of a group for an advantage

B. Choose to NOT be in a group and be at a DISADVANTAGE in direct action.

 

simples.

 

also as for it being bad game design? extremely asymmetrical game modes have always been my favorite. I Used to be in a Milsim clan that ran Arma 2 with ACE MOD and i Always took OPFOR/Insurgent roles against US Army/UN forces that had artillery and CAS while we had a few technicals, rifleman and the ability to be flexible. Its not that different in dayZ. Vehicles are big, loud, Logistically intensive resources. the lone wolf/small group can easily hear them coming and dip into a building and hide from them, probably determine where they are coming from/going to and in time track down the 'clan base' and steal said assets if they are patient and smart about it.

 

Small groups and lone wolves should NOT be directly confronting clans/large groups/milita/what ever you want to call it. you play smarter and use the ability to work quickly without carting a circus around with you.

[Katana67 2907]

Yeah, again, there seems to be only two lines of argument here against having things like helicopters in-game. Neither of which are particularly logical.

 

The first, just views the mere act of being able to fly from A to B at an undetermined speed, as an imbalance. Not sure why, but okay. Can't really help you there, if you think "going places rapidly" qualifies as irreconcilable with DayZ.

 

The second, goes a step further with the "imbalance" argument and then some kind of "realistic" requirement is superimposed on helicopters (i.e. regular folk can't fly helicopters without a certain level of knowledge). Often times, this line of argument references the helicopters in the mod as irrevocably problematic/overpowered.

 

Said it before, many others have, but I'll say it again...

 

If a helicopter has to be appropriately maintained, has rare enough repair parts, doesn't come with weapons as standard, does not come with auto-regenerating ammunition as standard, can be brought down from the ground, would require folks to land to refuel, would be at the whim of a limited/dynamic fuel supply, can only be fully effective with all of the above plus several players, and we have suitable camouflage options on the ground, doesn't give the passengers infinite/innate parachutes, etc.

 

If that's all the case, then you, not just me, you, should have zero issue with helicopters. DayZ isn't a game predicated on balance. Even so, these things can be balanced if need be. So if you feel they're imbalanced, they can be made balanced. They're not innately contrary to DayZ.

 

As for the "realistic" argument of our "characters" not being able to know how to fly a helicopter. I mean really? I'm tempted to go for the "it's a game" argument, but I'll develop something a little more coherent.

 

Our "characters" are not characters, they're avatars. Paper dolls. Marionettes. Puppets. They have no lack of knowledge, they have no possession of knowledge. The only knowledge/skill/ability that is expressed in our avatars comes from the player. You control an avatar that is your stand-in in Chernarus. We are not inhabiting Commander Shepherd, SFOD-D Death Dealer #2, or Joe McSnore. You play as either nobody, or yourself. If you have not learned how to fly a helicopter in DayZ, then you will not be flying a helicopter in DayZ (without crashing anyway).

 

If you want flying a helicopter to be difficult, you're in luck, we're dealing with the same company that made TOH. If you'd still never be satisfied with that, see the above "paper doll" argument.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Katana67

[raynor009 204]

I want planes. Civilian planes, like the one green cargo plane from the mod.

Helicopters there should both civilian and armed ones. Now when I say armed I don't mean rockets and bombs, some door machine guns or something(PKP or something beltfed).

Edited April 12, 2015 by raynor009

[xalienax 621]

Our "characters" are not characters, they're avatars. Paper dolls. Marionettes. Puppets. They have no lack of knowledge, they have no possession of knowledge. The only knowledge/skill/ability that is expressed in our avatars comes from the player. You control an avatar that is your stand-in in Chernarus. We are not inhabiting Commander Shepherd, SFOD-D Death Dealer #2, or Joe McSnore. You play as either nobody, or yourself. If you have not learned how to fly a helicopter in DayZ, then you will not be flying a helicopter in DayZ (without crashing anyway).

 

If you want flying a helicopter to be difficult, you're in luck, we're dealing with the same company that made TOH. If you'd still never be satisfied with that, see the above "paper doll" argument.

THIS. A MILLION TIMES THIS.

 

this is also why i want dispersion cones altered by optic and ergonomic attachments permanently removed, and replaced with proper ballistic simulation of each physical bullet effected by gravity, wind, etc. and it's initial trajectory calculated based on the physical orientation of the weapons barrel at the moment of firing (and these ergo attachments could perhaps reduce sway in some cases). Player skill and ONLY PLAYER SKILL should be the sole factor. characters shouldl be blank slates and representations of the PLAYER. nothing more or less. the same applies to vehicles.

[FlimFlamm 509]

EDIT: typing on phone, so many typos. too lazy to fix

It was easier to swallow/more acceptable in the Mod because the Mod never felt authentic. DayZ Standalone, even with infected/zombies, feels authentic. The Mod was always much more heavily based on PvP in its vanilla form; of course, with the inception of private servers, PvE servers began to crop up here and there, but most servers weren't about surviving the harshness of the environment, they were about building bases and getting into PvP.

I live in an area where the are several airports in my vicinity. Mostly for private aircraft. If an apocalyptic situation were to take place, these planes would probably be gone or destroyed within days of the event. Of the aircraft that actually made it into the air, I'd imagine not even a quarter of them would be still functional after a week. Of course this is all speculation, but it's hard/expensive enough to keep aircraft working properly in day-to-day life, apocalypse aside.

A helicopter in a Zombie Apocalypse would be pretty stupid. Think about it: it's going to attract every zed for miles. Granted, it's mobile and could probably land on many buildings, but the trade-off of alerting every zed and hostile person within a five mile radius would more than offset any advantage it may offer. Stealth would definitely be the name of the game.

Now, of course people are going to argue until they're blue in the face that aerial transportation is a must-have because they were present in the Mod and purple have gotten used to them and expect to see them in the Standalone. And now with H1Z1 implementing them in the future, DayZ will basically be forced to do so as well. And that's fine. But to argue in favor of aerial transport simply based on realism is silly. They'd be far too difficult to maintain, maybe 1% (a guess, of course) of the population could even pilot them, and the sheer disadvantage they present in a world where making too much noise gets you killed are all valid points that no one has yet to address.

The only aerial transportation you'd see would be piloted by any remaining military forces. Joe Blow survivor isn't going to magically read the operator's manual for a Saab 340-B and magically understand how to maintain and pilot it.

It just isn't going to happen.

 

So, I think we're starting to close the gap between our perspectives here and this is good news! Here are my rebuttals :) !

 

On 'authenticity': The mod only felt authentic when you were new to DayZ. Walking around in unfamiliar territory with scary zombies everywhere, not having barely any gear and not knowing what to do next; that is the authentic zombie survival feeling. But once players mastered the environment, the game evolved. The vanilla DayZ mod was about slowly acquiring better and better gear until eventually you have 'full military gear'. You would also hide a tent in as remote a location as possible, and you would seek out and stash vehicles to make it so that traveling places was not a nightmare. This was the vanilla endgame. It turned out in the end that surviving zombies while competing against other players and trying to maintain some semblance of secure survival (how many days could you go before dying?) wound up being more fun than an eternal struggle for survival against zombies with no place to call home and no ability to improve your situation. Tents were liabilities, vehicles were rare, nothing was safe. The mods that came out and dominated the game addressed and enhanced these aspects of the game. Instead of tents mods let you build semi-secure locked bases. Instead of relying on luck to get a vehicle, they allowed you to construct them with materials and labor or purchase them from traders with in game currencies. The ability to build a secure base and reliable access to vehicles became the main selling point of the mods. It was this model that inspired spinoff games, including H1Z1.

 

The standalone by default is going to feel much more authentic than the mod ever did, due to the in-depth nature of the survival mechanics, and also because of the (as some people put it) gritty design of the things that players have access to. Where aircraft fit into the standalone in terms of 'authenticity' is a difficult question. Rarity/cost, quality/type, look, and performance of aircraft can all be tailored and moderated to fit in with the rest of the environment and so aircraft have no inherent authenticity problems.

 

The issue is rooted I think in the availability and the strength of aircraft versus a vision of 'a difficult survival game'. While some players are looking forward to a very in-depth and challenging survival simulator, they see the flying of aircraft as a direct affront to their immersion and feel that if people are rich enough to fly aircraft, then they have completely transcended survival. (Is this a fair approximation?)

 

As a rebuke to this argument, let's go for a ride with the ghost of DayZ future and do a thought experiment where we put ourselves in the shoes of that survivor you see up in the sky, the one who has transcended survival and laughs in the face of realism...

 

"His name is BillyJoe (That's my in game name! What a coincidence!). He is in the cockpit of some sort of one seater wooden bi plane. His plane is painted sky blue and is contrasting against the clouds. It is traveling relatively low compared to modern aircraft, and is going quite slow, maybe 500 meters up at a speed of 180 km/ph. As we get closer to him we can see that there is actually a small gun mounted to the nose of his plane. It looks like some sort of modified AK mounted to some sort of firing mechanism, but we can see there is no available ammunition. BillyJoe himself is wearing a warm looking pilots cap and a bomber jacket. The cockpit is open and it looks quite cold; Billyjoe doesn't look very comfortable. We follow him until he lands on a hill near a fortified castle, which looks quite spectacular. He runs inside as fast as his tired legs can carry him, in through the broken front door, up through the battlements and finally arrives in a room where three sickly looking players, his friends, lay dead. They had recently been raided, and while they managed to hold out in this one area, they had taken damage and their wounds festered. They no longer had adequate medical supplies to treat one another owing to the raiders absconding with nearly everything, including food, which they were desperately short on, and they slowly died waiting for the return of BillyJoe. The raiders had taken everything from them, and BillyJoe swore to the sadistic zombie gods that he would have his revenge. In the same instant that he finished uttering his oath, he heard the familiar sound of an engine cresting the hill, and then suddenly the terrifying pop of the same machine gun that had destroyed their front door. The raiders were back. Mixed with the engine roar and the firing of the guns, he heard a sound that he recognized to be bullets striking wood, a kind of splintering explosive sound. He knew his aircraft was disabled or destroyed. Before he could think he heard footsteps from below, winding the narrow stairs. He had no ammunition, it had all been spent. As he pulled out his flare-gun, which was something he always carried with him when piloting aircraft, he could hear them hammering and sawing something below. He knew that there was no way out. There was too many of them, he had nothing to fight them with; he and his friends had overreached. Weeks worth of work and planning had come to an ignoble end. He fell to his knees and pointed the flare gun at his own head, and then somberly pulled the trigger..."

 

There is no such thing as transcending survival in DayZ. At some point eventually your character will die, so long as you play long enough. Groups who raise bases and build aircraft attract enemies, and no matter how well established or how powerful they are, they will eventually fall into decline and into ruin. The bigger a base is, the cooler toys they have, the more at risk they are of being raided and potentially having their base, and everything else they have worked for be taken from them outright. The game can be interesting/fun and dynamic on a day to day survival level (the need for food, medicine, ammunition and other resources) while also catering to the actual end game or long game aspects of things. Operating a base and owning aircraft need not fly in the face of difficult survival whatsoever, given the logistics and effort it will require to get there and stay there, combined with the ever growing threat of raids that comes with affluence. I know a lot of people are interested in more PvE elements, but we should never forget why the DayZ mod earned the nickname "human nature simulator"... Banditry is an unavoidable element of DayZ, but in my mind this only enhances the experience. Having aircraft and raidable bases gives bandits something that is very fun and high-stakes. DayZ consists in my experience of roughly 30% bandits who would want aircraft just so they can steal them from hardworking groups.

 

On aircraft in a zombie apocalypse:

 

Private aircraft like cessnas and even lighter private aircraft which spend long periods of time sitting under tarps or in hangars do not require constant reassurance or will fall apart. Maintenance on them is not the same as maintenance on a jet. They can be very robust. If you're not willing to accept that there would be at least some viable small aircraft leftover at an airport, then would it be acceptable for someone to build their own DIY ultralight or wooden bi plane? There should be all kinds of engines leftover, all kinds of materials and such, and does it really matter that most people don't know how to build or fly planes? Can we not presume that if people are motivated enough and the data exists in libraries and such that they could figure it out?

 

Yes aircraft if flying low would trigger zombies, and this would be one of the draw backs of landing a helicopter on a roof somewhere populated. Not only do zombies see you, but players also see you. They see what direction you are heading and if they are covetous enough they will head in that direction too. Aircraft can be as much of a liability as they are an asset.

 

Many people indeed are going to feel that because planes and helicopters existed in the mod that they should exist in standalone too, but just because they might be pampered with convenience and therefore biased doesn't mean that they are wrong. In DayZ you starve to death in 3 hours or so without eating. Being forced to drive everywhere in real time on the ground means you need to spend an inordinate amount of time stopping and eating. The speed of point to point travel that aircraft grant means that the amount of time you spend eating in game is more realistically proportional to the amount of time you spend traveling. It's not just the reward of fast travel that makes sense for DayZ, it's also the joy and dynamic of actually flying things. I personally feel that DayZ would be less of a game without aircraft whatsoever. The skies would be wasted and while playing DayZ if I looked up, I just couldn't bear it.

Edited April 12, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[Grimey Rick 3417]

All of your reasons for wanting aerial transportation in DayZ are fine and I'm willing to cave because I liked being able to fly around in the Mod. As you can all well imagine, I was a massive troll. Like I've already said, I've accepted the fact that they'll be present in the finished game, I just think it's funny that in one thread people can argue for realism in any particular thread pertaining to the medical system, running speed and stamina, stealth systems, etc., then weigh in on a thread about aerial transportation being a possibility in an apocalyptic situation where you should consider yourself lucky to find a half-eaten can of beans. It's just not plausible.

[gibonez 3633]

As for the "realistic" argument of our "characters" not being able to know how to fly a helicopter. I mean really? I'm tempted to go for the "it's a game" argument, but I'll develop something a little more coherent.

 

Our "characters" are not characters, they're avatars. Paper dolls. Marionettes. Puppets. They have no lack of knowledge, they have no possession of knowledge. The only knowledge/skill/ability that is expressed in our avatars comes from the player. You control an avatar that is your stand-in in Chernarus. We are not inhabiting Commander Shepherd, SFOD-D Death Dealer #2, or Joe McSnore. You play as either nobody, or yourself. If you have not learned how to fly a helicopter in DayZ, then you will not be flying a helicopter in DayZ (without crashing anyway).

 

If you want flying a helicopter to be difficult, you're in luck, we're dealing with the same company that made TOH. If you'd still never be satisfied with that, see the above "paper doll" argument.

 

 

THIS. A MILLION TIMES THIS.

 

this is also why i want dispersion cones altered by optic and ergonomic attachments permanently removed, and replaced with proper ballistic simulation of each physical bullet effected by gravity, wind, etc. and it's initial trajectory calculated based on the physical orientation of the weapons barrel at the moment of firing (and these ergo attachments could perhaps reduce sway in some cases). Player skill and ONLY PLAYER SKILL should be the sole factor. characters shouldl be blank slates and representations of the PLAYER. nothing more or less. the same applies to vehicles.

 

 

Devs already said they are ordinary people ordinary survivors with no military training, they are not avatars or whatever you want to make them.

 

Just regular dudes with no mil training trying to survive.

 

Edited April 13, 2015 by gibonez

[Chaingunfighter 917]

 then weigh in on a thread about aerial transportation being a possibility in an apocalyptic situation where you should consider yourself lucky to find a half-eaten can of beans. It's just not plausible.

It's certainly not realistic that your average joe could fix up and use aircraft after a disaster, but that's no different than a lot of things our characters can, but "shouldn't know how to" do;

• Perform tactical reloads, and in many cases reload complex weapons at all.
• Exhibit professional recoil and firing control (most of those who pick up an AR for the first time have a hard time controlling the recoil if they have no experience, even if they're strong)
• Deploy land mines & bear traps.
• Properly zero iron sights, scopes, and optics for long ranged combat.
• Swap several of the attachments on the weapons we have, especially at the rate they do
• Properly hunt, skin, and gut animals of all kinds.
• Properly cook food of all kinds.
• Tan leather
• Craft bows, fishing rods, and other tools/weapons out of extremely simple materials
• Craft extremely useful ghillie suits out of, again, extremely simple materials
• Craft clothes and backpacks from animal skins
• Properly cultivate a wide variety of native and non-native plant species
• Use fish traps and rabbit snares
• Give blood tests
• Give blood transfusions
• Give injections, morphine, and epi-pens
• Administer proper dosage of medicines (I'm aware you can force someone to take more, but on average the player always consumes enough on the first consumption)
• Use a defibrillator
• Use a splint

and many, many other things that your average person couldn't do. Sure, some of these things are more unbelievable than others and most people could probably do one or two of these things, but the point is that the player characters aren't hindered by what an average joe can do, they're hindered by the real player's knowledge. If helicopters are supposed to be difficult to fly then give them realistic mechanics and force people to learn how to fly; don't just not put them in the game because most people don't have that knowledge.

 

 

 

Devs already said they are ordinary people ordinary survivors with no military training, they are not avatars or whatever you want to make them.

 

Just regular dudes with no mil training trying to survive.

 

 

All that says is that they're survivors, that doesn't in anyway suggest their profession except that they weren't all spec-ops.

 

And regardless, aviation is not military exclusive by any means, so that post means absolutely nothing here.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Chaingunfighter

[gibonez 3633]

It's certainly not realistic that your average joe could fix up and use aircraft after a disaster, but that's no different than a lot of things our characters can, but "shouldn't know how to" do;

• Perform tactical reloads, and in many cases reload complex weapons at all.
• Exhibit professional recoil and firing control (most of those who pick up an AR for the first time have a hard time controlling the recoil if they have no experience, even if they're strong)
• Deploy land mines & bear traps.
• Properly zero iron sights, scopes, and optics for long ranged combat.
• Swap several of the attachments on the weapons we have, especially at the rate they do
• Properly hunt, skin, and gut animals of all kinds.
• Properly cook food of all kinds.
• Tan leather
• Craft bows, fishing rods, and other tools/weapons out of extremely simple materials
• Craft extremely useful ghillie suits out of, again, extremely simple materials
• Craft clothes and backpacks from animal skins
• Properly cultivate a wide variety of native and non-native plant species
• Use fish traps and rabbit snares
• Give blood tests
• Give blood transfusions
• Give injections, morphine, and epi-pens
• Administer proper dosage of medicines (I'm aware you can force someone to take more, but on average the player always consumes enough on the first consumption)
• Use a defibrillator
• Use a splint

and many, many other things that your average person couldn't do. Sure, some of these things are more unbelievable than others and most people could probably do one or two of these things, but the point is that the player characters aren't hindered by what an average joe can do, they're hindered by the real player's knowledge. If helicopters are supposed to be difficult to fly then give them realistic mechanics and force people to learn how to fly; don't just not put them in the game because most people don't have that knowledge.

 

Yet none of those even remotely approach the amount of skill and practice that is associated with Helicopter flight and maintenance.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

Yet none of those even remotely approach the amount of skill and practice that is associated with Helicopter flight and maintenance.

Maybe so, but the point is that our survivors have no background whatsoever - they're just avatars of us, and "it's not something a survivor could do" is a rather poor argument against it. If you want to argue gameplay or balance that's fine, but those aren't the same arguments.

[gibonez 3633]

Maybe so, but the point is that our survivors have no background whatsoever - they're just avatars of us, and "it's not something a survivor could do" is a rather poor argument against it. If you want to argue gameplay or balance that's fine, but those aren't the same arguments.

 

Yet they do.

 

They have one very clear background and that is not military trained that alone would drop the possibility of being able to fly to near zero.

The devs have mentioned many times before that these are just regular survivors not soldiers or pilots or special forces.

[Grimey Rick 3417]

Maybe so, but the point is that our survivors have no background whatsoever - they're just avatars of us, and "it's not something a survivor could do" is a rather poor argument against it. If you want to argue gameplay or balance that's fine, but those aren't the same arguments.

Indeed, however, most of that list with the exception of the medical procedures could be learned from a book and a little hands-on experience. I still don't even really like the idea of a lot of the medical procedures being in the game, to be honest. With the exception of basic first-aid, sticking someone with an epinephrine/morphine injector, and perhaps using a defibrillator (which takes about five minutes to figure out, let's be honest), I've always felt things like blood transfusions are a tad beyond what an average person could figure out how to properly perform.

And let's make no mistake, this is a video game. It's not real. It'd just be nice to play a game that tried harder to focus on what an actual apocalypse might be like. The Standalone was supposed to be more of an authentic experience than the Mod was. As it's currently developing, it's just more polished, yet essentially the exact same game.

The whole avatar angle doesn't really hold weight either, as I'm pretty sure I don't know how to expertly control a chopper in real life, yet in Arma and Battlefield I'm a bloody reaper. I still think DayZ could benefit from passive skills that allow your character to perform certain tasks better than others. Even an option to choose a character's background upon creation would help. And who knows, it might even help with the rampant murdering DayZ suffers from as groups would need to recruit people with different skill sets, while at the same time justifying why this guy knows how to pilot a chopper and that one knows how to perform advanced medical procedures.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

Yet they do.

 

They have one very clear background and that is not military trained that alone would drop the possibility of being able to fly to near zero.

The devs have mentioned many times before that these are just regular survivors not soldiers or pilots or special forces.

Soldier =/= Pilot

 

'Survivor' is a general term that just describes someone who continues to live after a major disaster, it implies nothing about their background. In this instance they justified changing a jogging run with aim into a walking run with aim, because for one they only had a single option for that animation (since they use the same keypress) and they decided that it would be more practical and something you're more likely to do over actually running and firing.

 

 

If you can show me exactly where they've said that these 'regular survivors' will not be able to use aircraft and that they're just kidding about aircraft being a future feature then I'd love to see it, because clearly the developers aren't consistently basing their ideas on "what your average person could do" if they aren't planning on getting rid of half of the actions already in and/or confirmed

[gibonez 3633]

Soldier =/= Pilot

 

'Survivor' is a general term that just describes someone who continues to live after a major disaster, it implies nothing about their background. In this instance they justified changing a jogging run with aim into a walking run with aim, because for one they only had a single option for that animation (since they use the same keypress) and they decided that it would be more practical and something you're more likely to do over actually running and firing.

 

 

I suppose that is correct what I am saying is since your player is clearly not a soldier that already makes it highly unlikely that he would posses pilot skills thus making it really unrealistic to have every survivor be able to fly in game.

 

It is simply not realistic and bad for gameplay to have air vehicles. It does not fit within the mold of what Dayz survival aspects are thus far. The devs are carefully creating an intense survival game at the moment and having air vehicles would be such a drastic change from the rest of the game.

[J4G 92]

if there is three airfields in 200 square kilometers, i think there is few pilots in that area too.

[gibonez 3633]

if there is three airfields in 200 square kilometers, i think there is few pilots in that area too.

 

Ok fine then.

 

Let's duplicate that via randomized spawning in game. When you spawn you have a .05 percent chance of having a character that can pilot a helo. That percentage is also probably really really generous.

[Whyherro123 2283]

if there is three airfields in 200 square kilometers, i think there is few pilots in that area too.

 

So, let us do some quick math to determine the statistical likelihood of this

 

The devs have stated in past posts that the disease had a 98% infection rate, that is, 98 out of 100 people would come down with the disease. Of those 98 people, 60% would die, and 40% would become the "zombies" we all know and love due to symptoms like brain damage, etc. 

 

However, based upon the in-game information, this doesn't mean that the "healthy" human population is very high.

 

Yes, 2% of the original Chernarussian population (and by proxy, the world, assuming this is a world-wide event, which I personally believe to not be the case), was "immune" to the disease, meaning they never got it in the first place. However, based upon even the highest of server populations, there cannot be all that many people left.

 

Let us say that Chernarus originally had a population of 100,000 people, which may be relatively accurate due to the small size of the cities and the low population density of South Zagoria. This means that of those 100,000 people, 98,000 had the possibility to develop "the disease". Note that this doesn't mean that every single person capable of getting sick did so, it just means that they had the possibility to develop the illness. In all likelihood, probably far fewer people actually got sick, and the more rural population remained uninfected and died from other causes (more on this later).

 

Of these 98,000 people hypothetically infected, 58,800 would die as a result of the infection. 39,200 would degenerate into "the infected" we see in-game. This means that there would only be about 2,000 "immune" people in Chernarus, which canonically all of us players are.

 

NOW, HOWEVER: what does all of this mean?

 

We know next to nothing about the "zombie disease". However, if we compare it to the overwhelming majority of real-world diseases, "catching it" doesn't mean you will die right away, even if the disease has a 100% fatality rate. These "infected" individuals, both those fated to die and those who degenerate into "zombies", would be alive for at least a few weeks, eating food, burning fuels, and doing anything they could to survive. Same thing with the "immune" population. They all have to eat, stay warm, and stay safe as well.

 

So, let us compare the above figures with the current server population sizes. What is the max population? 50? 

 

Think about this, and you will realize just how lucky we are to even find any "loot" whatsoever. The "infected" people ate food before they died, burned gasoline in generators (there is only 1 power plant in South Zagoria, and I am certain the workers would much rather go home to their families than shovel coal), and used up medications (probably at a high rate). Same thing with the "immune" population. The canned food we find in houses, medications, boxes of ammunition, all of that is likely the stuff in the back of cabinets, underneath floorboards, stashes that is only out in the open due to graphical limitations.

 

All the rest of the "stuff"? Gone, used up in the weeks/months since society collapsed. The people, both "infected but alive for now", "infected and degenerated", and "immune"? All dead, probably from starvation, disease (if society broke down, there would almost certainly be outbreaks of other, non-zombie-related diseases, especially with dead bodies and the lack of a sewer system), or just plain old bullets. 

 

50 people left, out of a possibly-100,000+-population, and all we do is kill each other. Sickening. The likelihood of a pilot still alive amongst the current playerbase in Chernarus is rather low, considering how most sane people with such skills would get out of Dodge while the borders were still open. Same thing with working ground vehicles and boats, really.

 

TL;DR. The likelihood of there being a pilot amongst the current playerbase of Chernarus is really, REALLY REALLY low.

[FlimFlamm 509]

Why on earth is it so disconcerting to have people piloting aircraft when statistically they should not have the knowledge?

 

It's not a relevant 'realism' flaw. Nobody should care about the plausibility of piloting skills. It's not rocket science so what is the big deal?

 

If you take that logic and apply it to other aspects of DayZ it is easy to see how ridiculous of an argument it is. Players are granted all kinds of knowledge of survival skills (not really, they have to learn them in game) and medical skills and military skills, and without these the game is literally pointless. Run around with axes and can openers and looking for beans.

 

You can do all kinds of posturing based on lore but that is a double edged sword. Perhaps pilots had a higher chance of survival (the immune ones) because they had the ability to escape the zombie hoards. This would increase the pilot population, and depending on the length of time that has passed since the outbreak, give piloting knowledge a chance to be passed on to the general masses.

 

You will get much further with the 'not enough resources' argument where at least we can find some compromise and middle ground (rarity, quality, performance).

Edited April 13, 2015 by FlimFlamm

[gibonez 3633]

Why on earth is it so disconcerting to have people piloting aircraft when statistically they should not have the knowledge?

 

It's not a relevant 'realism' flaw. Nobody should care about the plausibility of piloting skills. It's not rocket science so what is the big deal?

 

Are you trying to imply that it is easy to pilot a helicopter or even that a regular person would even know how to take off in one ?

 

Piloting a helicopter is not something you pass on via word of mouth, it requires thousands of hours of flight time with an instructor to even begin to feel competent , then that is met with tons and tons of hours in a simulator.

 

Helicopter and airplane training is so expensive and insane that the Government was forced to change how the gi bill gives money to Veterans when it comes to schooling due to veterans taking helicopter classes were hemorrhaging money.