Couple of stances/animations

[cirkular 178]

This is an older post I found stored in my editor but can't find if I actually posted. I probably gave up on it because the game is soon to be released :) I just wanted to get some of these couple of things out there. It's probably nothing new for you, but I hope people can get through it and maybe comment :) It's about animations/stances mostly.

1. Sneak - slower quieter movement

When standing up:

• pressing forward the character would jog
• SHIFT would make it sprint
• pressing CTRL key (default), the character would just walk.

When crouched:

• what would regularly be jogging is kind of a crouched walk
• pressing SHIFT your character would kind of run crouched
• Since we might have a third option here, when pressing SHIFT key when crouched, can we have a really quiet sneak movement? The idea of course is to be able to move around, yet keeping the noise to the minimum and/or really a much smaller radius of sound getting through. Mainly to sneak around other players. For example if you spot them first from inside a house, you would be able to move to another corner or another room and ambush them more easily without them detecting you from the outside.  Or just sneak out and away. The floor stepping noise is really loud. Actually, for me that was the only other sure way of detecting other players, except visual of course. And aggroed infected. And firefights :D Maybe if that sneak could also affect detection by the infected, even better.

2. Weapons at hip stance and looting stance

• I think for the immersion sake, the other player characters are missing a hip-firing stance shown, and there should be some more distinction between that and when you see a player aiming down sights. Currently, from first person perspective it's ok. But when you look at another player or at your character in 3rd person with a raised weapon or when aiming down sights, it's the same stance. Although they are quite a different thing. My idea with this is that when you press a key for raising a weapon, basically you would just point the rifle or a pistol forward holding it kind of hip-side. I think that looks natural. Also, you should be able to just spray bullets when firing weapon hip-side while moving easily and quickly. For example when suddenly shit goes down with other people and you've got to move out quickly but also want to keep them busy avoiding your bullets. And with pistols it would be sort of a gunslinger style :) You would be able to make a quick surprise attack. In return, as I said you would be able to move more freely and quickly with weapon drawn, but weapon position should be hip-side. Of course, that should mean less precision and someone really skilled or lucky would be able to actually shoot people like this.
• The other one is when standing or crouched and looting a body. When someone loots a body, they are gonna be prone most likely. When standing and looting it looks kind of stupid. You don't really know if they are just looking around still or looting the body really. So I suggest you have to get crouched or prone to show the vicinity loot from the body. When you press TAB, from the perspective of other player you would then be in a somewhat modified crouched stance with your hand going through the backpack.

3. When aiming down sights through windows for example, sometimes you just can't avoid that window glass frame. Especially now with the weapon collision. It could be just that the height of the obstacle is such that it is always lined up with your gun barrel and you can't really shoot. Or you do but you hit it :)

I was wondering if we could have a key (Z now available) which when we press, we can lock our character in position and move the mouse around to aim more freely just for the sake of getting that clear shot? Up and down to raise your aim a bit and left and right would work like Q and E does. Or be able to set your rifle like a machine gun on the edge of the window and move it around. Similarly like the prone and roll aiming works now. Does that make sense?

4. Hand to hand and melee

If this is a kind of a post-apocalyptic environment, I'd say sometimes and in some areas there should be scarce ammo and weapons, so having more advanced melee combat ability should be some kind of a goal for Dayz characters. Now I don't know if melee weapons have any categories in the game, like bashing, slashing-cutting, thrusting... except one-handed and two handed maybe? I guess not. Anyway, what we have is pretty basic now. Click once - right punch/bash once. Click a couple of times for a combo-like move with right then left punch. Sprint and attack for a power hit. Also, what I find troublesome right now, when moving left, right or back and pressing attack, the character always makes a forward step and hit animation. I guess that one could be just a placeholder until new ones are done?

We should be able to make a choice with direction: attacking while stepping left, a swipe from right to left. And vice versa. Attacking while stepping forward - a thrusting or hit-on-the-head attack depending on the weapon used - like a weapon category, if it's a blunt or thrust like weapon.

Also, the kicks are missing though highly usable if you want to keep some distance from the opponent.

The same goes for buttstock hits and bayonet thrusts. 

I'm sure there's plenty of people with all kinds of suggestions. I hope I was at least close to realistic in this "wish-list" :) Also, from what I have seen so far that the developers are more into freedom of movement with this new player controller, as much as possible currently to make Dayz stand out somewhat from other games. I am also aware that if the devs don't, probably some modder will look into some of this too. It's just that I'm afraid too much modding could bring a lot of different versions or variants. Of course that means variety and everything for everyone, however I'm also afraid that the whole community could be too much scattered and could even feel both overwhelming and frustrating for some in the end to have everything needed just to play on some server where your buddies are (me first lol). So it's sort of like, more in the game - less to 'fix' with modding :D

[0.64 Freerider 261]

Thank you very much for this fantastic list of, as I see them, very much vital improvements to DayZ's core mechanics. I hope the devs will be looking into these within 2019.

[0.64 Freerider 261]

I also want to suggest you bring this up in the upcoming 2nd feedback round, as two of the four topics will be "Gun Mechanics" and "Melee Combat".

[cirkular 178]

Thanks man :) I will. Also if anyone has a thought and wants to comment too on these couple of points, add them here.

[0.64 Freerider 261]

Just in case you didn't know, you can add a poll to the suggestion so people can vote on whatever questions you want to provide there.

[cirkular 178]

*bump