Speculation on the upcoming ''survival focused'' patch.

[repzaj1234 126]

I've taken a hiatus from DayZ because of the lack of survival elements currently in the game. In the current build all the necessities are easy to come by, people can fend for themselves easily and don't need to rely on anybody for anything be it for food, water, medicine, companionship. There should be a reason to help people and a reason for people to need help. This upcoming survival focused patch got my hopes up.... but what can we realistically expect from it? Here is what I think can be worked on from easiest to ''wishlist''

Tweaks to existing features:

- Balancing of food stats, specifically nerfing their thirst satiation values. Certain food (powdered milk, cereal) should not quench thirst or even provide a penalty to thirst.

- Food/drink needs to be more scarce in the loot economy. There is currently an abundance of food in the loot economy as well as how much infected drop. There are 5 main ways of finding food. Loot spawns, hunting animals, farming infected, growing your own food and scavenging for fruits/mushrooms. Right now, you can live just by looting and farming infected. People rarely have to hunt for their food.

- On the topic of hunting, animal detection needs to be increased. Right now you can run up to chickens, sheep, goats and punch em to death and be good on food for a long time (especially because you can eat raw meat without major consequences). Animals should be wary and keeping their distance way before you can sprint right up to them.

- Further tweaking of health/blood regeneration. It seriously needs more than a third reduction. There's no need to think and make decisions beforehand about what you are going to do or if you could you even survive the situation you are getting yourself into if you get badly wounded.

- Zombie spawns could use a re-work/diversification. Particularly, in high traffic areas like military areas (NWAF, Stary, Tisy, Zeleno) or the major cities (Cherno, Elektro, Berezino). I would not mind only seeing 1 or 2 zombies in a remote village at all, why not relocate some of those spawns to these high traffic areas if server performance can't handle additional spawns? Military areas are endgame areas and they should feel like it. They should require some sort of preparation before going in. The only threat right now are other players, military areas should still present some sort of threat even if there's no other player there. It'd bring a new dynamic to PvP encounters there too. Imagine wounding a player and letting zombies finish the job or completely getting overrun while in a firefight with other players. Or as a fresh spawn on a coastal city, carelessly firing a gun and not knowing there's a shit load of infected nearby. I think it could enhance the starting and endgame experience. I've looked into the .xml file that contains all the infected spawns, it looks like they just copied and pasted minimum = 7, maximum = 13 infected spawns for almost every spawn point. Mix it up a little bit, add higher variance to some spawn points (like minimum=1, maximum=18) it would make the game less predictable and routine for long time players.

 

Post .63 features that require re-integration to the new engine: (Honestly, if just one of these get re-integrated I'd be a happy camper)

- Fractures, broken bones and a medical system that actually gives use to blood bags/saline bags. Since 1.0 I've never had to give/receive a blood transfusion at all.

- Complex, deadly diseases and specific medication for them.

- Dynamic weather and a temperature system linked to weather that actually influences gameplay. I'd love to have heavy rain + thunderstorms back.

 

Wishlist:

- Infected being able to ram closed doors (with a reasonable delay). It's very easy to shake off zombies with buildings right now. Especially with the newly introduced "zombie dispersion" when they lose sight of you. Get chased by multiple zombies, go into a building, close the door and wait for them to disperse or find another door in the back. Imagine blindly going into a building with only one way out with a ton of zombies chasing after you that can ram through doors. Do you unload your precious ammo? Do you risk pushing them back with your gun and making a break for it? Do you risk the jump from the 2nd story? Do you radio for help? Do you just slash your throat?

- Throwing (I'd like to throw an empty can to distract nearby infected)

- Notes. I need my immursion.

- Fishing

- Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

 

Anyways, I'm cautiously optimistic about this upcoming patch and a huge chunk of the community is as well. We've been clamoring about it for a while now.

EDIT: Just thought of new things and what others have chimed in with:

Immersion/Quality of Life improvements:

- A better introduction to a new game/new life. Black screen, the sound of the ocean. A visual effect on regaining consciousness plays. You spawn in flat on your face, washed up on the beach. Your clothes are all damaged. That's how you start off a survival game.

- Increase the amount of hits it takes from infected for clothing/gear to get damaged. I'd say 90% of all my infected kills are from melee, this is where realism doesn't really translate into challenging gameplay. It's just a pain in the ass constantly keeping your whole outfit repaired. And if equipment takes time to get ruined you can now add an actual penalty for wearing ruined clothes. A chance for a random item within the ruined clothing to drop every X amount of minutes? For ruined armor, strip away their protection stats?

- Lower the footstep and door opening sound effects. Immersion killer when you loudly close a door with infected right next to it and it doesn't react. (Best case scenario: have sliders for the different sounds)

- Hunger rate. Honestly, the time it takes to die of hunger can be long. It feels much more natural to slowly die from hunger over the course of a few hours of gameplay than having to constantly stuff your face every 20-30 minutes because your hunger bar tells you to. The amount of food just needs to have a drastic decrease. Canned goods need to be a rare again, they need to be taken out of the zombie drops loot table. Fruit and mushroom spawns could be rarer.

Zombies:

- Zombie spawns around heli crash sites. Enough to be a challenge (8-12?)

Edited May 20, 2019 by repzaj1234

[kopo79 426]

boiling water,coffee,candles,meatsoup,fishsoup,sleeping mechanic with sleeping bags to restore and gain extra stamina..
 

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

1. Extensive crafting, with particular attention to cooking – this is really at the heart of survivalist “lifestyle”. When you picture a survivalist, what he does is usually about finding and processing edible food, preparing cooked water with little to no tools, or crafting a lean-to. The basics are really about water, food and shelter. This is why I was very upset to read on this forum that “we never promised advanced cooking so if you expect that, that’s on you”. Even games like Bethesda’s Fallouts understand that people are surprisingly eager to tinker with a variety of ‘cooking’ choices – steaks, soups, drugs, poisons, medicine.

 

Many regulars here have always called for the option to make tea, coffee or finally cook that goddam rice. And is it really that hard? It definitely seems less than adding a new clothing, of which we had more than enough in 2016 already.

 

2. Animal behaviour, hunting – I tried to follow various herds to watch their behavioural patterns, I really did. But the truth is, they are little more than placeholders or the animals you see in Minecraft. I repeat this statement every couple of months: I vividly remember when in 2015 we were promised a separate team just to emulate authentic hunting – complex herd behaviour, following tracks, blood stains etc. Nobody even addresses that anymore. It’s great to see a variety of animals (re)introduced – pigs, sheep and goats. But they only differ in textures, sounds, detection ranges and runaway distances. If you watch closely an attacking pack of wolves (just aggro them and run away to Debug Plains, they can’t leave the map so you can take a longer look at them in peace), you will notice how half-assed and papier-mache they really are.

 

And I don’t agree that domestic animals should run away from humans – why should they be afraid? But if you kill one of them, they should really make a run. Currently, cows run away for like 100 metres and go back, while the goats scatter for only 10-20 metres! Few vertebrates are that stupid.

 

3. Medical system – currently, if you need anything more than 6 rags, that means you’ve made a mistake. If an experienced player needs charcoal, most probably he made a misclick due to clunky interface (I still drink gasoline every now and then). Morphine/splint was useful mainly for PvP. We need a variety of conditions which can be prevented and treated in various ways – washing hands, boiling water, chewing herbs, you name it. Some kind of zed infection could also be nice. I haven’t thought it over that much so I can’t offer any detailed examples, but I’m sure that the devs could come up with something interesting if there was a will to do that. Maybe we can brainstorm new ideas in this thread?

 

4. Persistent notes – this may not sound that obvious, but would actually be crucial to my PVE lone-wolf gameplay. I roam a lot and I’ve found dozens of bases, all over the map but especially along the Western and Northern bands. I rarely take anything as I rarely need anything, but sometimes I leave a steak or some other “gift”. It would be so interesting to leave a note and offer some kind of trade, like an abundant supply of food for some rare scope, something along these lines. Arrange a meeting at their place and come with full hands. Or leave a map with directions to the pub at 020 078 and meet them there. It would bring a lot of colour to the somewhat dull, “I explored all the new content and quickly got bored again” DayZ solo PvE experience.

 

5. Massive tweaks to CLE – do I need to say more? As long as ammo and canned food is abundant, survival-focused gameplay is only for dumb players like me who fail to see how fascinating pew-pew is.

 

Should I even mention the bow? No, I shouldn’t.

 

What do you think, guys?

[FunkInYourTrunk 354]

fishing and craftable bows.  I'd trade all the guns for fishing and bows.  I miss the days of setting up a tent and barrel beside a lake, getting crops and a fire going, making leather clothes and fishing for hours on end.  loved the whole never enter a city style gameplay (cept to get the tent of corse)

[amadieus 316]

If they add fishing, more complex diseases and bone fracture, then I will be satisfied for a while. Needs to come with some CLE tweaking, too much ammo and food to be found right now. 

[repzaj1234 126]

1 hour ago, FunkInYourTrunk said:

fishing and craftable bows.  I'd trade all the guns for fishing and bows.  I miss the days of setting up a tent and barrel beside a lake, getting crops and a fire going, making leather clothes and fishing for hours on end.  loved the whole never enter a city style gameplay (cept to get the tent of corse)

Not if you can craft an improvised tent from pelts 😉

 

4 hours ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

2. Animal behaviour, hunting – I tried to follow various herds to watch their behavioural patterns, I really did. But the truth is, they are little more than placeholders or the animals you see in Minecraft. I repeat this statement every couple of months: I vividly remember when in 2015 we were promised a separate team just to emulate authentic hunting – complex herd behaviour, following tracks, blood stains etc. Nobody even addresses that anymore. It’s great to see a variety of animals (re)introduced – pigs, sheep and goats. But they only differ in textures, sounds, detection ranges and runaway distances. If you watch closely an attacking pack of wolves (just aggro them and run away to Debug Plains, they can’t leave the map so you can take a longer look at them in peace), you will notice how half-assed and papier-mache they really are. 

 

And I don’t agree that domestic animals should run away from humans – why should they be afraid? But if you kill one of them, they should really make a run. Currently, cows run away for like 100 metres and go back, while the goats scatter for only 10-20 metres! Few vertebrates are that stupid.

8

Eeek, I haven't observed animal AI as extensively as you but damn do they need more polishing. I just don't like that you can run up to a goat, sheep, pig, cow or whatever and melee it to death and have enough meat to run to the end of the map and back. They can at least make them a bit wary where they don't completely run away but try to keep their distance from you and if you sprint up to them they get spooked and actually run away. I can see how much scripting has to be made for that.

 

Quote

Persistent notes – this may not sound that obvious, but would actually be crucial to my PVE lone-wolf gameplay. I roam a lot and I’ve found dozens of bases, all over the map but especially along the Western and Northern bands. I rarely take anything as I rarely need anything, but sometimes I leave a steak or some other “gift”. It would be so interesting to leave a note and offer some kind of trade, like an abundant supply of food for some rare scope, something along these lines. Arrange a meeting at their place and come with full hands. Or leave a map with directions to the pub at 020 078 and meet them there. It would bring a lot of colour to the somewhat dull, “I explored all the new content and quickly got bored again” DayZ solo PvE experience.

2

I'm the same as you man. I feel like there isn't enough things that remind you other players are there. You rarely see a player corpse on the ground because they despawn too quick. You rarely see zombies dead on the ground to give away that another player is nearby because they despawn within 5 minutes. Notes definitely bring more life into the seemingly empty game. I've heard on Reddit that they took them out because of all the trolling/toxic shit players would write in them. That's a weak excuse imo, toxic people will still find ways of being toxic, they'll just do it over VOIP.

Quote

5. Massive tweaks to CLE – do I need to say more? As long as ammo and canned food is abundant, survival-focused gameplay is only for dumb players like me who fail to see how fascinating pew-pew is.

I've always envisioned DayZ with dangerous and numerous infected + common civilian guns/ammo + rare military grade weapons + scarce necessities. Trying to fend off numerous infected with a single shot bolt action hunting rifle, or a pump shotty, or a 7 round pistol would be challenging and doable. The PVP skirmishes that would happen between players wielding only civilian weapons would be more drawn out as well because of the quality of their weapons.
 

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

5 hours ago, FunkInYourTrunk said:

fishing and craftable bows.  I'd trade all the guns for fishing and bows.  I miss the days of setting up a tent and barrel beside a lake, getting crops and a fire going, making leather clothes and fishing for hours on end.  loved the whole never enter a city style gameplay (cept to get the tent of corse)

Amen. I think I fished and bathed in all the lakes in Chernarus.

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

3 hours ago, repzaj1234 said:

 Notes definitely bring more life into the seemingly empty game. I've heard on Reddit that they took them out because of all the trolling/toxic shit players would write in them. That's a weak excuse imo, toxic people will still find ways of being toxic, they'll just do it over VOIP.

So it wasn't the usual 'we're working on the new engine' story? One of my beloved features was deleted because DayZ players are a bunch of immature shitheads? FFS, people. Sometimes it strikes me how little I share with 'the average DayZ player'. But then again, maybe that's what makes Chernarus a good story.

Anyway, cutting the notes is like banning cars to curb drunk driving. If DayZ was at any moment close to what it says on the box (I mean the 'gritty survival' part), the problem would have never been there in the first place. I bet diamonds against nuts that stupid notes just won't happen on survival-heavy servers.

[liquidcactus 719]

 What about infections ? Do they even work yet ? I tried to wash my hands on a hardcore server but it didnt work ? There was no text option ? Then i drank from a pump with bloody hands now i seem to have a disease. Does it even matter ?

[repzaj1234 126]

8 hours ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

So it wasn't the usual 'we're working on the new engine' story? One of my beloved features was deleted because DayZ players are a bunch of immature shitheads? FFS, people. Sometimes it strikes me how little I share with 'the average DayZ player'. But then again, maybe that's what makes Chernarus a good story.

Anyway, cutting the notes is like banning cars to curb drunk driving. If DayZ was at any moment close to what it says on the box (I mean the 'gritty survival' part), the problem would have never been there in the first place. I bet diamonds against nuts that stupid notes just won't happen on survival-heavy servers.

Not entirely sure man, just stuff I read from Reddit. Take it with a grain of salt.

I read something that the notes were bleeding into other servers and having all sorts of bugs when they were taken away from the game.

[repzaj1234 126]

2 hours ago, liquidcactus said:

 What about infections ? Do they even work yet ? I tried to wash my hands on a hardcore server but it didnt work ? There was no text option ? Then i drank from a pump with bloody hands now i seem to have a disease. Does it even matter ?

Infections are in the game but they lack depth and progression. They also lack harshness. It's okay for players to die in a survival game, the next life the player will be more wary of what he drinks and learns from it. I would take that over this current hand-holding feel that the game has.

Infections should get nastier as time goes by. Fever sets in as the infection gets worse. You get hungry and thirsty faster as your temperature rises. Accompanied with a slow health drain. This will actually influence the player's decisions. Instead of making the trip further in-land, he has to stick to the coast to find medicine.

Edited May 20, 2019 by repzaj1234

[Uncle Zed 272]

Do you have a link to information about this supposed "upcoming survival focused patch"? I haven't heard of that.

[Max Planck 7174]

1 hour ago, BetterDeadThanZed said:

Do you have a link to information about this supposed "upcoming survival focused patch"? I haven't heard of that.

It's sort of implied in here: https://forums.dayz.com/topic/244356-news-regarding-the-2019-roadmap/

The survival mechanics were supposed to have been expanded upon in 1.02, but didn't make it in. Thus, we should see them changed in a later patch.

[aux7 234]

12 hours ago, repzaj1234 said:

Infections are in the game but they lack depth and progression. They also lack harshness. It's okay for players to die in a survival game, the next life the player will be more wary of what he drinks and learns from it. I would take that over this current hand-holding feel that the game has.

Infections should get nastier as time goes by. Fever sets in as the infection gets worse. You get hungry and thirsty faster as your temperature rises. Accompanied with a slow health drain. This will actually influence the player's decisions. Instead of making the trip further in-land, he has to stick to the coast to find medicine.

for sure it means that the player needs to take care of what he eats and drinks, but if he does catch something, then he needs a fix. So then you have to find a med centre somewhere to get the fix or he has to be carrying it on him.

If the first, if he tries to go to a med centre on the coast, the player is more likely to die from player interaction rather than the illness. The inland ones make better sense, but player interaction still has high percentage rates of death than the illness. With the relative infrequency of med centres, if it gets deleterious to a players health in the same way/rate that the weapon, clothing and tool deterioration occurs (currently unrealistic) the player is likely to die before he gets to a med centre, if another player doesnt get them on route (also assuming the med centre hasnt already been looted by another player).

if the second, players will start having serious inventory problems by having (or trying) to cover every eventuality in their backpack. Its bad enough now with weapons, ammunition, tools and cleaning/repair kits. (ignoring carrying food and water and the steadily increasing range of ammunition, also ignoring finding some of this stuff). With such a load in your backpack, you have no chance of running, so you have to fight.  In my opinion bases would need (come to the fore) to be used to store such emergency stuff, and currently you cannot secure bases or tents.

Really, if we want this type of immersion (sure) then we need to be able to craft/set up secure bases . . . from raw materials. And an axe or knife that doesnt get ruined so fast. Be able to build a small shelter from the trees surrounding with an axe or knife. dig some storage in the ground. Camouflage both with fast growing bushes that you can plant around it, and secure  .. . somehow. none of this looking for nails and plank spawn points, miles from wherever you might want to set up. Some of us run alone  . . . . . .  (ok, mostly)

Edited May 20, 2019 by aux7

[repzaj1234 126]

Quote

Really, if we want this type of immersion (sure) then we need to be able to craft/set up secure bases . . . from raw materials. And an axe or knife that doesnt get ruined so fast. Be able to build a small shelter from the trees surrounding with an axe or knife. dig some storage in the ground. Camouflage both with fast growing bushes that you can plant around it, and secure  .. . somehow. none of this looking for nails and plank spawn points, miles from wherever you might want to set up. Some of us run alone  . . . . . .  (ok, mostly)

Agree with this. I can't understand why they would implement a bury-able wooden box that can fit endgame weapons over an above ground makeshift tent. 2 months from now there will be a LOT more people saying where are the M4s? AKs? They're all gonna be buried in one of these wooden containers while the global limit for the weapon is reached. Above ground storage has a more natural "cleaning" process with player raids. A well placed underground stash will most likely never be found. I can see makeshift tents adding stress to server performance though, they will add up easy and more persistent items on a server always equals to worse performance but it's the same thing with these wooden crates.

Also I feel like item degradation is way too fast across the board. Silencers get ruined way too quickly. Clothes get ruined way too quickly. Bags get ruined way too quickly. You gotta understand that melee combat is the main way of eliminating infected. It is a chore to constantly use sewing kits, duct tape, leather sewing kits etc. It's not fun and neither is it challenging.

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

3 hours ago, repzaj1234 said:

Also I feel like item degradation is way too fast across the board. Silencers get ruined way too quickly. Clothes get ruined way too quickly. Bags get ruined way too quickly. You gotta understand that melee combat is the main way of eliminating infected. It is a chore to constantly use sewing kits, duct tape, leather sewing kits etc. It's not fun and neither is it challenging.

I agree, although I'm in two minds about this high enthropy of Chernarus. On the one hand, a considerable portion of my precious precious time is checking and repairing my clothes after each PvZ, and I agree that this is a chore rather than a challenge. On the other - I've noticed a long time ago that people only complain about disadvantages of the overall time acceleration (like how fast you eat through axes, can openers and silencers) and never about the goodies (like fast healing, farming or running). I guess I would support slower item degradation but only if the devs removed morphine and splint, to which I've always referred to as Potions of Limb Restoration, because they are exactly that - magic items.

Edited May 20, 2019 by Kirov (DayZ)

[dirrly 70]

14 hours ago, repzaj1234 said:

Clothes get ruined way too quickly. Bags get ruined way too quickly. You gotta understand that melee combat is the main way of eliminating infected.

I don't agree. It's easy to manage not get hit by the zombies most of the time. And if they hit you, they ruin your clothing and bags. And that's ok in my mind. Fighting a zombie should be a threat to your items and to your health. Don't get hit or avoid combat against zombies and you are fine. 

In my mind (sorry) this sounds more like "I found that badass [insert item] and I don't want to lose it again." But care for your items and search for items is the core of this game. For me it's fine. Something is ruined, well i have to search for another. :-)

 

[dirrly 70]

I hope for the future that survival (infections, weather...) becomes a more important part of the game.

For examle:

Infections. Should be a threat for life. Don't have to kill fast. Maybe start with reducing the amount of stamina for running, maybe increase sway at aiming and so on... untill it gets really bad and kills. So you don't have to interact real fast and go straight for the next medical center, but have to interact after a while. 

[Bob.E.Dazzler 13]

I'd like the game to have more choices required for carrying weapons, currently with so many guns that will fit in most of the bags you can carry all the assault rifles and snipers you want. Would like to see it back to only small smgs and pistols in bags so you had to decide on what 'long' gun to main.

[repzaj1234 126]

10 hours ago, dirrly said:

I don't agree. It's easy to manage not get hit by the zombies most of the time. And if they hit you, they ruin your clothing and bags. And that's ok in my mind. Fighting a zombie should be a threat to your items and to your health. Don't get hit or avoid combat against zombies and you are fine. 

In my mind (sorry) this sounds more like "I found that badass [insert item] and I don't want to lose it again." But care for your items and search for items is the core of this game. For me it's fine. Something is ruined, well i have to search for another. :-)

 

I would agree with this if the melee system and zombie behaviour isn't so janky. Zombies run past you while a light attack makes you move forward. Often times you find zombies behind you wacking away. I hope the melee system we have now is a placeholder cause it's just awful.

The easy way is to just block their initial attack and spam left click on their head with a knife. They go down before they can even attack you, but doing this same thing hundreds of times without getting a scratch on me just feels like an exploit and is a boring left click spam fest.

[dukstuf 24]

I've played DayZ since the very beginning- back when it represented a novel and fiery cult hit. I don't post often, but I still play, and it's still one of my favorite mp games- ever, really. 

It's bizarre how much the game is pretty much the same as it always was, after all the years of work on it. It is somewhat less wanky than the old days- more reliable, I would say. 

I love the whole "getting away from it all" style of play- living in the forest in as secret and isolated place as I can find. Traveling to a city becomes a dangerous chancey thing to do, generally based on some extreme need. 

Here are the things I see the game needing the most. 

1. Actual occasional zombie hordes which are rare, but dangerous if you aren't watching for them. They would need to have a half dozen to ten or so  members that simply wandered together in some random direction. If you were quiet and in cover, they would pass you by. Having zeds only in predictable locations is the thing that most makes them mostly harmless. It wouldn't need to happen often, in order to make the world more dangerous and unrpredictible. Maybe make the chance for a horde coming your way larger if there is a gun battle involving more than one weapon to attract them. Or, a likelier chance if there is  wildlife present.  7 Days to Die, an interesting game in itself, uses hordes to good effect. 

2.  The return of broken limbs, disease, and especially weather that matters. This really does force a player who works to survive longer term to think and plan ahead. 

3. Somewhat better zombie battle behavior. This was super ultra awful in early days in the original game, and it's better today- but it needs to be better still. It might be the one thing that most holds the game back from a finished state.

4. Crafting foods, more expendable items like clothes, maybe some ability to craft tent-camo placeable bushes....that would be very cool. 

5. Fishing. Of course!

6. Basic security for bases. At the moment, there is in reality zero hope of keeping anyone out of your base, which of course, makes them pointless, except for base building practice. Shouldn't it take something of a percentage amount of time to bust into a person's base as it does to build it in the first place? It only takes the time to log out of the server and log in and out again to undue all that work of traveling to cities for lumber, tools, finding nails and all that. Walls need to be much stronger, gates need to actually work, hacksaw blades either break or be uber-rare, and so on. One way to stop the cheating would be a simple teleport of 100 meters radius in a chance direction when you switch servers with a character. The base building feature is a nice start- it is possible to build a great base- even a single person doing it works fine, but, security for this feature needs attending to, and soon. 

I love DayZ. It is neither dead nor crippled. It's a game that will continue to have players for years. It hosts two styles of play, in my opinion. Those seeking fast paced combat with realistic weapons who enjoy gaining the best equipment and lording over others as the top tiger, and those who prefer a more camping, longer term survival experience basically keeping unseen. The world is big enough for both to be happy. It's a classic game, destined to be remembered, and there is really still nothing quite like it. 

My thoughts.