Spear-WTF

[Whyherro123 2283]

So, there is a spear now implemented in the game, crafted from a "long wooden stick" and some bones.  (http://dayz.gamepedia.com/Spear) While I am undoubtedly happy that the devs implemented a weapon that has such a history with humans, I must say that there are some ..... aspects that don't make any sense.

 

1) Making the head from bone.

 

Yeah, sure, you can use bone for projectile heads. Yeah, it will "work". But...... there are literally infinitely other materials that would be 1) easier to work with and 2) equally as effective, if not more so, than carving down a piece of bone. Say, for instance, a knife-blade? In Day Z, I have stumbled across about 5 kitchen knives and 2 hunting knives. Why can I not crack the handles off and lash the tang to the shaft? Boom- spearhead that is sharper, stronger, and more resistant to breaking than a bone one, with -MUCH- less work.

 

In real life, I made a knife-spear from an old kitchen knife and a broom handle in 5 minutes. 3 minutes of that was cracking off the wooden handles.

 

As a tie-on to the first point:

 

2) Forcing the head to be made of bone essentially makes the spear useless

 

The "whole point" (heh) of a spear is it "being easy to make" with little to no materials. You can make a serviceable spear by carving down a stick with a knife. Lacking a knife, rub it on a rock. Then, you take the spear and kill something with it, to make better tools. The Day Z wiki actually had an "improvised spear" listed, which was little more than a sharpened stick. The spear linked to above was initially labelled "advanced spear", before the .59 experimental update.

 

If you need to kill something in order to make the spear, why the hell are you going to make the spear to begin with? This is like, back several patches ago, you could either make a bow using rope or intestines. You needed a weapon to get intestines. If you get intestines, you already have a weapon. Likewise, if you have bones, you already have a weapon.

 

At least by letting you make the spear out of a stick and a knife, you could feasibly make the thing after looting a single house. A much more "realistic" crafting-path.

 

2) Spear use

 

That is .... not how you use a spear, especially one where the head is hafted (http://anthropology.umn.edu/assets/img/hafted.jpg) on, not socketed (http://www.antiques.com/vendor_item_images/ori_436-34301-728208-Large-Eastern-Zhou-Bronze-Socketed-Spear-picture5.jpg). If you try to use a hafted spear as a slashing weapon, you are probably going to snap the shaft at the haft-point.

 

And, besides that, the "whole point" (I LOVE that pun) of a spear is REACH. With my broomstick + knife spear, I can easily reach 10 feet away from me with a two-handed grip. Holding on to the end of the shaft with one hand, I can get 12+ feet. Using slashes, you get 5, maybe 7 feet. 

 

Oh, and slashes with a spear are going to do little more than irritate an enemy, especially with a hafted spear that you can't put force behind. (YES, there were spears that could be used as slashing weapons in real life, but they 1) had socketed heads 2) had long metal heads, and 3) were essentially designed for that use, look up Chinese qiang, and had leaf-shaped heads to facilitate this.

 

No, with a "regular" spear, you STAB the target, in order to cause massive internal bleeding. Take the point and drive it into the torso of the enemy. Not faff them about the head. 

 

I understand that the animation is the same as the "bayonet; buttstroke + stab" thing that has been around for quite some time, but ....... come on. Give us a proper "weapon thrust" animation, guys.

Edited November 4, 2015 by Whyherro123

[Avant-Garde 229]

This is a great post tbh, my personal grip is with the animation as well. We need a animation that favors the use of the reach, pitchfork has the same problem, as the animation don't thrust properly. Especially if you are pressing W+A and attack, the animation goes all over the place and its impossible to hit something in front of you, as the animation goes almost 90° to the left. Its broken, really, needs fixing at some point. I mean, we need a GOOD thrusting animation, in this video here, notice the Spear animations of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, there is a underhand thrust and a overhead one as well. The underhand one goes REALLY far, the overhead one is faster but shorter.

 

In my opinion, DayZ should use the underhand one, as this attack is the one that makes the spear different from everything else.

 

Melee, even if they don't plan to add more mechanics to it, needs a shitload of refinement. All the animations feel really fast/uncontrollable to use, if the animations on two handed weapons were just a bit slower, it would do wonders to melee already. We could use a sensitivity cap when the attack animation is playing as well, so people don't just helicopter weapons that use a horizontal slash animation, and makes more confortable to aim as well.

[Herkyl Puuro 52]

Well, of course it would be cool if you could first trip the other guy by slashing his feet or head, and then thrust while he's momentarily immobilized. But currently melee is people running around 20 miles per hour and taking 90 or 180 degree turns in full speed, which in reality should make them fall by themselves, but it never happens as in Dayz people have full control of all physics like they were some kind of ninja-jedis. So if slashing gives you larger hit chance it probably works better than thrusting, which is more time taking movement.

 

I'd like to see the devs to work with melee before they go beta, as compared to ranged combat with all kind of shooting angles and bullet penetration capabilities being already considered, melee stays pretty comical. Idk if many here remember Benny Hill Show, but often I can hear it's theme tune in my mind when people are chasing each other in "close combat". And if you raise your fists and walk you enter in this really funny tiptoe dancing mode. My friend cited Muhammed Ali when we we're fist fighting, he said "Dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee!", I started to laugh uncontrollably and he could defeat me so easily. :D

 

What you say about bone tipped spear, that's spot on. Why you should have to kill first to make a very simple and primitive weapon? And adding sharpened piece of bone isn't much of an upgrade to a sharpened stick. Btw I hope we could make a spear from bayonets too when they bring them back, because in real life that would probably be the easiest way to make a good spear.

[Whyherro123 2283]

So, making a spear out of a kitchen knife makes for a brutally effective weapon.

 

I just stacked up three full sandbags, each about 3-4 inches thick, and set a full gallon jug of water on the other side. With a solid thrust, the 12 inch-long knife blade punched through all three sandbags and into the gallon jug, with basically no effort on my part. Remember, when actually using the spear as a weapon, you only need, at most, about 2 inches of penetration into the chest cavity before very important things start to get cut up. If anything, any penetration further than 1 inch (aka deeper than the ribs) would be lethal. The kitchen-knife blade is thin, meaning it punches through things easily, and could slip between ribs with little-to-no issue.

 

Second test: I took another full gallon jug, and did several "slash" tests on it. A wide "wu-shu" style swing, where I hacked at the jug, and a more controlled draw-cut. Both slashes absolutely devastated the jug, and if I did it on a limb, I am pretty sure I would've cut down to the bone with ease. Of course, the hafting on my knife-spear is really tight and in-depth, so I can do slashes like that without worrying about the bindings. 

 

I basically just made a poor-mans naginata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naginata).  Best part is, both the shaft and the blade are made from common, easy-to-find materials (a kitchen knife and a broom-handle, basically), so if either breaks, I can easily make a new weapon in a few minutes.

 

Annnddd of course I didn't take a video  :(

Edited November 4, 2015 by Whyherro123

[sneakydudes 278]

Getting one in the game is a start.

 

Improving on this? correct i would add in different aspects of this as we go.

The same applied to the cloth shirt. Uses would be wide open. It has already a few functions.

 

So your ideas are not far from that.

[jayfkay (DayZ) 185]

So, there is a spear now implemented in the game

 

I get your gripe with the melee weapons.

Some weapons just have animations that make no sense and do a riddiculously small amount of damage that makes no sense. I expect a lot of rebalancing for both animations and damage tho as the gam,e progresses.

[Zurvivalist 300]

Devs have already addressed this in other posts. They are simply place holders. 
What they are working on now is just adding the items in , putting the system in place. 

Later they will add more , smooth them out and so on . 
They added a crafted spear. great. At worst case , later the modders will change them into better versions. 
But I do agree.. a stone knife + sharpen stick would have been a smarter choice for the spear than a bone one .... 

It seems they added this just for the bushcrafting aspect of it . 

 

FYI you can get the needed bone likely from trapping or fishing first , THEN use the bow or spear to hunt larger animals . 

[DemonGroover 8836]

I am still waiting for battery + paperclip = thermonuclear device.

[ZomboWTF 527]

would love a thrusting animation for long weapons, spear, pitchfork, crotch and Santier's Spear etc.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Zombo

[Jex 1104]

Why not the stone knife for the spear - I would have thought that would have been the obvious choice?

[SMoss 2101]

would love a thrusting animation for long weapons, spear, pitchfork, crotch and Santier's Spear etc.

Let's see what will actually be there once the new character controller and such allows for the new character animations to come into play.

[Whyherro123 2283]

Why not the stone knife for the spear - I would have thought that would have been the obvious choice?

You've still got to actually make the stone knife. Besides, the stone knife doesn't actually have a sharp point on it.

 

I still maintain that lashing a knife-blade to a shaft would be the easiest way to make a spear.

[pillock 850]

I basically just made a poor-mans naginata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naginata).  Best part is, both the shaft and the blade are made from common, easy-to-find materials (a kitchen knife and a broom-handle, basically), so if either breaks, I can easily make a new weapon in a few minutes.

 

Annnddd of course I didn't take a video  :(

 

Don't worry. I'm sure your neighbours will have made a video, so that they can pass it on to the relevant authorities.

[Whyherro123 2283]

Don't worry. I'm sure your neighbours will have made a video, so that they can pass it on to the relevant authorities.

 

 Considering how I spend a decent amount of time in my backyard practicing at archery, if they were going to call the police, they would have already  :D

[pillock 850]

 Considering how I spend a decent amount of time in my backyard practicing at archery, if they were going to call the police, they would have already  :D

 

Still, they might have a video you could copy, if you ask nicely and don't bring the Naginata with you when you knock on their door.

 

Or the police might have one already.

[yazar8 584]

just make the spear upgradable with a bone

 

ez life

Edited November 5, 2015 by Yazar8

[Jex 1104]

You've still got to actually make the stone knife. Besides, the stone knife doesn't actually have a sharp point on it.

 

I still maintain that lashing a knife-blade to a shaft would be the easiest way to make a spear.

 

Yes a real blade made from steel would be better but I like the idea of using the stone knife you make on the beach rather than having to find bone?

[Deathlove 2286]

Well hopefully the idea of spear crafting in general gets expanded upon. Theres allot of different ways to make one and improvise on things to craft one in general.

 

So basically to start out you could just make a crappy wooden spear tip on a stick to start out than when you find things like glass and even the rocks used to make knifes you could upgrade and craft the spear further from there till your able to make a spear out of bone. Making a spear out of bone would require tones of work in just hunting down the damned animals in general just to get the material to make it.

[Avant-Garde 229]

Or we could find in castles a rare medieval spear as "end game spear", one of those huge ones with metal tip and all, maybe you would need to carry it in your hands all the time, because how the fuck do you put something that big on your back. But it could have huge reach and damage output.

Edited November 6, 2015 by Avant-Garde

[Bororm 1156]

What's the damage like?  Some one test it and see if its useless like all the other melee weapons besides the axe.

[MrAerospace 87]

It's roughly five hits per zombie - really not worth the effort during serious game-play. Of course it's useless though, it's just a melee weapon, not some holy lance that magically re-coded the entire melee system to something beyond it's current functionality. What did you expect?

[q.S Sachiel 470]

quartz spearhead is all you really need in life.  Those things get as sharp if not sharper than a knife and will blunten far less than average steel.  They're easy to make and silicates are the most abundant minerals you'll find at the surface so it's not for want or scarcity.

[Bororm 1156]

It's roughly five hits per zombie - really not worth the effort during serious game-play. Of course it's useless though, it's just a melee weapon, not some holy lance that magically re-coded the entire melee system to something beyond it's current functionality. What did you expect?

 

Was hoping they actually made another melee weapon that was viable.  It doesn't need re-coding, it's a matter of just putting the damage stat at something that isn't total shit.

[IgnobleBasterd 161]

So, making a spear out of a kitchen knife makes for a brutally effective weapon.

 

I just stacked up three full sandbags, each about 3-4 inches thick, and set a full gallon jug of water on the other side. With a solid thrust, the 12 inch-long knife blade punched through all three sandbags and into the gallon jug, with basically no effort on my part. Remember, when actually using the spear as a weapon, you only need, at most, about 2 inches of penetration into the chest cavity before very important things start to get cut up. If anything, any penetration further than 1 inch (aka deeper than the ribs) would be lethal. The kitchen-knife blade is thin, meaning it punches through things easily, and could slip between ribs with little-to-no issue.

 

Second test: I took another full gallon jug, and did several "slash" tests on it. A wide "wu-shu" style swing, where I hacked at the jug, and a more controlled draw-cut. Both slashes absolutely devastated the jug, and if I did it on a limb, I am pretty sure I would've cut down to the bone with ease. Of course, the hafting on my knife-spear is really tight and in-depth, so I can do slashes like that without worrying about the bindings. 

 

I basically just made a poor-mans naginata (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naginata).  Best part is, both the shaft and the blade are made from common, easy-to-find materials (a kitchen knife and a broom-handle, basically), so if either breaks, I can easily make a new weapon in a few minutes.

 

Annnddd of course I didn't take a video  :(

Actually, a kitchen knife isn't the most effective thorax weapon, since it is to broad to go in between your costae if not tilted enough. In real life violence you see more lethal damage done from for example screwdrivers than large scary kitchen knives.

Edited November 8, 2015 by IgnobleBasterd

[MrAerospace 87]

Was hoping they actually made another melee weapon that was viable.  It doesn't need re-coding, it's a matter of just putting the damage stat at something that isn't total shit.

Then pick up a bloody fire extinguisher, and quit complaining about something so trivial as a new weapon being implemented into an old system. It seems to me that you don't care how broken CQC is, so long as there is a new weapon that's more overpowered than the last.