my brainstorms/suggestions

[sockpuppet 1]

for a LONG time (about 10 years or so), i had always had a dream of the perfect zombie game. i even came up with a concept and thought up game mechanics and everything for it, obviously i never made it because i know nothing about modding or how to develop a game. then dayz came out and it is almost exactly what i had in mind as the perfect zombie game. needless to say, i'm very happy that a game like this has finally been made and that i'm here playing it. thanks rocket!

ANYWAYS! here are some concepts, mechanics and improvements that i thought of; both while i was daydreaming about this game and that i thought of while playing this game. sorry if any have already been mentioned in other posts, but i don't exactly have the time to read through all of them to check. enjoy!

zombies

*in my opinion and the opinion of anyone i've played with, the movements of the zombies are too jerky. it seems at times like they teleport, making it impossible to effectively fight them unless you are inside a building, where they can only walk for some reason.

*i had two ideas to remedy this... one for slow zombies and one for fast zombies.

slow - if you made a higher zombie population it would be more realistic, and if survivors aren't careful, could find themselves having to deal with a bigger horde than they can handle since ammo is not readily available. in addition to this, if the zombies are aggro'd they should continue chasing the person as long as he is in line of sight, but if he escapes and gets decent distance, those zombies should continue following the path they were chasing the player in for a while, and then maybe losing interest and stopping after a while. this would create flocks of zombies where there is no zombie population normally, creating an environment where you could potentially run into danger at any time; including in the woods, where there currently is generally no danger other than bandits. the zombies should also migrate toward sounds, like they currently do. this way, someone could be surprised if they were careless and fired too many shots without leaving the area soon enough after doing so with a horde of zombies that heard his gunfire. these mechanics, i feel, would balance the lethality of the slower zombies with that of the faster zombies and would add more realism to the game as far as population of the infected while also being a remedy for the jerky almost teleporting movements of the current fast zombies.

fast - the main issue with the current zombies is the jerky/laggy movement and the fact that it is almost impossible to effectively fight them outside of buildings because of this. it also looks very strange when something in the game is much faster than you while chasing you, so it catches up to you and is randomly stopping beside you due to this. on the level of realism in the game, why would a zombie be able to be so fast outside of buildings, but instantly forget how to run upon entering a building? i understand that is obviously for balancing issues, but it stands out in such a realism-based game as very strange and unrealistic. my suggestion for this, is to make the zombies as fast as a player who is running, not sprinting. maybe even make the zombie slightly slower than that, because if you think about it, you can't effectively outrun this speed while shooting, you can only slowly back up and fire or stop all together so you can fire accurately. doing this would make players who are working as a team utilize firing and moving tactics and would keep a stress on the players who are being persued by these zombies.

*some other ideas/mechanics i came up with pertaining to zombies that i feel would add more of an intense environment and add more danger from the infected vs mainly bandits. some i feel would be good to add for defenses against zombies, and maybe even creating a safehouse for yourself and your friends.

patrolling/roaming groups of zombies - currently, the safest way to get around is the woods. this is also dangerous because bandits have free reign on anyone in the woods without having to worry much about aggroing zombies when they shoot other players. this could be remedied by having groups of zombies migrating throughout the map, this would also add to the realism of the game as obviously zombies aren't just going to hang out around empty buildings realistically, especially if they had been chasing a person who escaped, which brings me back to a mechanic i mentioned on the slow zombie description.

aggroed zombies keeping the path they were chasing a survivor in, and continuing on that direction after they lose the survivor - this i feel would work best with the slow zombies, because it would be easier to have the slow zombies keep their speed in those directions than to determine when it would be best for the fast zombies to stop running after their target and return to their passive roaming state. this mechanic would make travelling less predictable and would add more danger to being a bandit as you don't know when a group of zombies will hear you firing on survivors in the woods nearby.

barricading doors - there are some barricading aspects implemented already, but what i mean by this is picking up some wooden boards and nailing a door shut. this would enable survivors to create a safehouse for themselves and their team. letting another survivor enter could be as simple as just removing the boards to open the door, or maybe add an item such as an emergency rope ladder they can drop down from the roof to let a friendly in. these doors and the boards holding them would need to be given a threshhold or some form of health bar so the survivors have a danger of bandits breaching and attacking them or zombies overrunning the safehouse. an additional mechanic to consider for this idea is to have certain buildings that have a way to store weaponry or food (besides just tossing them on the floor).

guns and ammunition

ammunition - the most common problem i both notice and hear people bring up as far as weapons and ammo, is that ammo is not as cross compatible between firearms that use the same caliber. i know that for some guns, you can convert the ammo from say .45 acp to m1911 ammo, but i have a better and simpler solution to this than that. i feel it would be much more realistic and convenient if players were to find the rounds themselves instead of magazines. say someone were to find a box of 9mm ammunition, they would be able to use that ammunition with an m9, silenced m9, or a glock 17. 12 guage would obviously be for double barrel shotgun, the winchester, the 870 and so on. this would also get rid of the problem of having 2 shotgun shells for dbl barrel take up as much space as 15 of the same gauge shells for the winchester. another option this could open up is that you could also take into account the fact that you won't always find full boxes or magazines of ammunition wherever you find them, especially in a zombie situation where the person will have likely fired a few shots before being killed or zombified. all you would have to do to simulate this is kind of randomize how many rounds spawn in at any given pile.

guns - the only real problem i have with guns (aside from the ammunition problem) is that the crossbow shoots a lot higher than it should. the bolts should also not take up one slot per bolt, this is also partly what turns players off from using this weapon. on top of the aiming being off a bit and single bolts taking a slot, the ability to retrieve your bolt doesn't seem to work very often. i don't remember a time where i was able to retrieve a bolt from a zombie i had killed. i was, however, able to do so when i shot the bolt into a wall once before.

tools/weapons

*a major problem with weapons that are also tools, is that they are an annoyance to use currently due to the fact that to equip one you have to open your inventory, right click, remove from tool belt, which will then probably tell you that you don't have enough space to do so because you have a main weapon equipped, in which case you need to throw your weapon on the floor and hope you can pick it back up, then equip the tool as a weapon, reload the melee weapon and then you can attack. a simple remedy for this would be to have it permanently on your tool belt and the way you use it as a weapon, is to equip it much like you equip flares or grenades. that way in a pinch, you can use a melee weapon to take out a zombie so you don't have to go through hell just to equip it. if you had a hatchet in real life, would you have it on your hip so you can quickly access it in a pinch? or would you drop your weapon and all your ammunition for that weapon or put your weapon away in your backpack before using it?

crowbar - my problem with this, is that in a real life situation this is a great tool to have. currently in the game it has no use, but with one of my mechanics it could have a use; to remove barricades or to breach barricaded doors. this weapon should be able to go on your toolbelt (could be shown strapped to backpack on the opposite side of your primary firearm if you want to be more realistic) and be used for that and as a weapon as i described above.

flashlight - currently the flashlight makes you an easy target and it disarms you while you use it. the only ways i can see this becoming usable is if you can use it alongside a gun, only make the follow up shots less accurate due to one handed shooting having less recoil control or to enable the players to quickly transition between the flashlight and the gun. even with these mechanics added, it will still be fairly hard to justify using the flashlight due to the gamma/brightness exploit.

radio - since the "side chat" or global chat in the game has been disabled, the bandit situation has become MUCH worse. there is no way for non bandits to communicate to other non bandits in the server to warn them of bandits or their whereabouts, or to find other friendly players to group up with. i understand this was removed due to realism issues, but the solution is fairly simple. if you put a 2 way radio in as a tool that when players discover it, they can communicate to other players by enabling the side-chat (and giving players the option of turning off the radio if they don't want to hear/see side chat) it would add more realism and make teamwork more possible, while giving bandits a reason to not be bandits. as it is, you will almost definitely not survive if you don't shoot everyone on site, because even the friendly players are too paranoid to try to team up with a player they encounter in the game, and rightfully so. not that this will completely remedy the all-too-frequent bandits, but it will help toward that goal and promote teamwork between strangers instead of that being almost completely exclusive to people you know personally.

[sockpuppet 1]

all these ideas and no feedback? is my post bugged or anything?

[THEDirtySanchez 0]

Well, I like them.

[sockpuppet 1]

thanks!