A Few Ideas

[pilot 13]

I am a huge apocalypse-anything fan, and have watched many movies (Book of Eli, Mad Max, and to a lesser extent The Matrix) and read many books (I am Legend, which is very different from the movie, World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide) and played many games (Fallout, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC and CoP, DayZ) about the various human reactions to such an event. And I think that a few concepts from these various mediums could be applied to DayZ very well. I understand others may disagree and that is fine, but let's get to it.

A concept I first saw in Book of Eli (I am aware that it is a real occurrence as well):

Cannibalism: Give us the option to gut recently killed players and collect "Sweet Steaks" from the corpse, and anytime we eat too much of these Sweet Steaks we get the shakes that stay for an extended period of time (As well as a huge hit to your humanity). It gives desperate players an option of becoming truly monstrous, and having this option would have saved my life once when I got truly desperate.

Now a classic concept that sadly has not been touched on in most games.

Reanimation: When a player dies from a zombie attack his corpse gets back up, creating an interesting dilemma for loot hunters. Do I shoot it and collect the former player's gear and possibly risk attracting a horde or bandits, or do I let it pass?

Now a concept I have seen a few veteran members make fun of, so I will do my best to defend it.

Inclement Weather: STALKER Call of Pripyat did this very well, and is a perfect proof of concept that waiting out a storm can be exciting in its own sense (

) Inclement Weather would force players to bump elbows looking for shelter, and make my "Mountain Man" playstyle extremely difficult to maintain. It comes down to much more than just sitting around waiting for a storm to pass.

A concept that I know will be an unpopular suggestion, but this would not be what you will think at first.

Player maintained settlements: NOW BEFORE YOU SAY ANYTHING ABOUT PVP, its not what you think, this is not a change to the existing PVP mechanics, but rather a zombie spawn reaction to a high number of players in a zone (Like 20 players in the same 100 square meter area.) Instead of having zombies spawn normally if this group was in a spawn zone like a city, the zombies would no longer spawn in the city after the players had cleared it, they would spawn just outside of the city and in higher numbers. This would allow a player maintained "safe zone" that was only safe if everyone co-operated to ensure it stayed safe. For instance, if someone gets into a disagreement with another player in the "SZ" and some idiot fires a weapon, all the zombies that were shambling around just outside of the city flood back in. Everyone would have to work together to clear it again. This is no "Weapons locked hand holding party" this is just what World War Z would call a "Blue Zone" where survivors banded together and reclaimed some real estate. With these zones set up things like markets would naturally appear again, and we would see the advent of a player created currency system. And the most important part? All it would take is one dumbass to screw it up.

Thank you for reading, and I really look forward to any input on these ideas.

[peliluola@gmail.com 28]

I gotta watch Book of Eli again, that was a great movie. I like the cannibalism idea too :)

[DeathHaze420 0]

There's a sub forum for suggestions. An idea may be putting it there so it doesn't get buried here.

[pilot 13]

There's a sub forum for suggestions. An idea may be putting it there so it doesn't get buried here.

Posted it there as well, thank you for bringing that up, mods are welcome to close this if they feel it is unnecessary, although I am curious what others have to say and feel it won't be discussed as much by people in the suggestions subforum.

[Uuni 74]

Cannibalism is something that isn't getting discussed enough. Seriously guys, if there were a zombie apocalypse I would surely make the best of all the nourishment I can get. Also - let us drink blood from fresh animal kills for a minor help for thirst

[peliluola@gmail.com 28]

Yup, I actually think human flesh would taste good if cooked. Wouldn't drink blood from fresh animal kills though :) You could make blood pancakes or whatever they are called though.

[Uuni 74]

Yup' date=' I actually think human flesh would taste good if cooked. Wouldn't drink blood from fresh animal kills though :) You could make blood pancakes or whatever they are called though.

[/quote']

People at their most desperate moments have drank animal blood as their last resort. We already have animals that we can shoot so why not add the option to do that? It should risk an infection though to make it hazardous enough

[pilot 13]

Survivors of horrid accidents who ended up having to eat human flesh describe it as the sweetest meat they have ever tasted.

Which made me worried when McD's was adding sugar to their patties. I thought they might be selling human flesh.

[Uuni 74]

Survivors of horrid accidents who ended up having to eat human flesh describe it as the sweetest meat they have ever tasted.

Which made me worried when McD's was adding sugar to their patties. I thought they might be selling human flesh.

There there, no need to worry about that. Mass produced slaughterhouse waste is way cheaper than human meat will ever be, they are most likely serving us the cheapest grade D meat they can find

[Ravenspear 22]

In list form, my thoughts.

1. Cannibalism. The issue I see with this is that it is a very touchy subject in a lot of areas around the world. Many people would be so repulsed/sickened by the idea that I fear it would eventually be a massive drain on the number of players. Don't get me wrong, I know that a lot of the design decisions so far have been anything but accepted by a large number of community members, but Cannibalism is a little extreme. Even for DayZ.

2. Reanimation. This subject has been touched upon many times on these forums. It's an interesting idea, yes, and could possibly be implemented within the game. Zombies are already attracted to dead player bodies, but there is still an issue inherent within the game's mythos. DayZ markets it's 'zombies' as more 'infected' than 'reanimated dead bodies'. Along this line of thought, the survivors we play as are only likely to become infected if they are attacked by a zombie, and not another survivor. Unless we had 'infected bullets' or some rot like that.

3. Inclement weather. To a small extent, this has been added already, with the implementation of the temperature system, where your temperature will drop at night or in the rain. It is not perfect yet, and Rocket has stated that he still has some changes to make to it, so we still have to bide our time. I agree with the fact that the weather was a major part of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. gameplay, and could, in fact, be a very interesting factor in DayZ as well, but we'll have to see Rocket's ideas, first.

4. Player maintained settlements. With the current spawn system of zombies/items, this doesn't seem like a possibility. At some later point in development, this might be possible, but right now, zombies will spawn around certain buildings in certain numbers, regardless of how many players are nearby. This would take some sort of new mechanic by the server itself that would have to recognize the fact that a large number of survivors are in an area, as well as to realize that zombies should therefore spawn elsewhere. Even with a different spawn implementation, this could lead to some serious lag/desync issues within individual servers.

[pilot 13]

@Ravenspear

Cannibalism has been done in games such as Fallout 3 with out any repercussions. Its a CHOICE, no one is forced to do it.

I specifically stated that they would only be re-animated if they were killed by zombies.

Otherwise, you have some fair points