1000+ words about DayZ.

[CaptainSi 0]

After clocking my 107th hour into DayZ today, I feel like I’ve gained a fairly good grasp of the game, and I have experienced the intense high and bitter bitter, bitter low moments of the game (still haven’t found a helicopter though). I will split this into 3 sections regarding gameplay aspects that I feel are missing from DayZ; aspects that could greatly enhance a players experience in DayZ. If I was a dev, this is where I’d be heading with the game.

COOPERATIVE GAMEPLAY & BASEBUILDING

Cooperative gameplay, I feel, enhances DayZ massively. While the sense of abandonment running across a dead, still, open field is an awesome and previously before unfelt emotion in gaming, DayZ simply is more fun when you’re playing with people. Try it if you don’t believe me.

Basebuilding is already being attempted in the game, as groups of players seal off buildings in towns/ airfield with barbed wires, place tents in military bases, etc. Basebuilding is an essential component of cooperative gameplay as it provides a common objective, provides a physical location that is “home” in the DayZ wilderness and is a way of boasting a player group’s success at the game.

1. Respawning at tents. No, I don’t think this is overpowered at all, given the rarity of tents as loot anyway. The function of this would merely remove the tedious run from the coast after dying to retrieve equipment. A way to stop this becoming overpowered would be making tents have two modes – storage or spawning.

-Storage, keeping the tent functioning as it does now (1.7.1.5).

-Spawning, in which the tent cannot be moved after being placed once, and cannot be used for storage. Also, the spawn point is across servers.

2. Base building through fortifications such as sandbags, barrels and tents. Currently the only use of existing fortifications is to fill buildings doors to stop players entering the damn building to get the morphine that they need for their shattered legs (yes, this happened to me). It’s douchery at its finest, and by introducing a purpose for these fortifications in base building, perhaps I’ll finally be able to enter the tower at NW airfield. This will also develop upon the clan multiplayer gameplay that makes DayZ so thrilling through building a home base. This coupled with tents as respawn locations could make for great dynamic, player generated sources of loot, and zones of extreme danger.

3. Introduce shovels which can be used to build dirt mounds / create trenches. This will also be useful for the base building mentioned before.

4. More cross compatibility for weapon amunitions, such as all 9mm pistols (silenced or not) accepting a single lootable 9mm magazine, rather than separate magazines for pistols. I do not consider finding ammunition a challenge of the game, as there is always plenty for common weapons, and pooling loot will enhance cooperative gameplay. Mass stores of ammunition in above discussed player encampments will lead to enhanced scavenger gameplay. Obviously keep specialised ammunition for specialised weapons, such as the Bizon SD.

GENERAL USER EXPERIENCE

1. Servers that are configured at timezones must be labelled in their name, and be able to be filtered by this timezone. For example, there are about 30 Atlanta servers online at the moment – does this number of servers need to be available at Atlanta timezones? Spread the servers across timezones equally, so there are always enough servers to support the large numbers of players.

2. Attachments for weapons as lootable items, such as silences, scopes and sights, barrel modifications such as flash or noise suppressors and silencers.

3. Zombies or infected in the game I feel should be dumb, lumbering hunks of meat until they become ravaged. I like the aggressive nature of the zombies when alerted, they are dynamic, voliatile and most importantly, deadly. Make zombies take 2 or 3 more bullets to kill from weapons (hence enhancing the threat they can provide), though dumb them to the sound of bullets. At the moment a gun in a town is almost always a death sentence, rather than an object of defence as I feel it should be.

4. Lootable wire cutters to destroy barbed wire fortifications set up by douchebag players to block of building entrances and/or to break through chicken wire fences in the game.

5. Craftable splint for broken bones, such as two bandages and a crossbow bolt, or wood. When applied the splint will allow players to stand up and walk with broken bones, however not run (morphine will still have a usage and be a necessity).

6. Spawn with the hunting knife, which can be used to gather wood kindling for usage in a splint with bandages, or part of a melee system for defence.

7. Ability to run with a torch while still illuminating the ground in front of the player.

GAMEPLAY

1. Introduce a fully-fledged melee system, or reintroduce a starting pistol with only one mag until it can be done so. Reintroducing the starting pistol until a more complete melee system can be implemented won’t make the game easier, nor will it make it more accessible to inappropriate shoot-em-up audiences as a starting player will have to more strongly consider the sound of the pistol, and experience the drawbacks of the pistol – i.e. it cannot be used as a sniper rifle or a shotgun. It also will not detract from the heart crushing agony that death in the game provides, however it will remove the thereafter kick in the balls that no starting pistol currently gives players.

2. Everyone has been trying to think of a method to stop players disconnecting, however I don’t think this is the problem – I think the problem is players shooting at others meaninglessly. Punish players who shoot and hit or kill others players by preventing them from logging out for 5 minutes after the incident. Also, for players that are genuinely pathetic and do disconnect to escape death, after opening the pause menu, the player must wait 5 seconds before being able to click the disconnect button. This will prevent players disconnecting to escape zombies chasing them, and means players aren’t ever crippled by being unable to control their character from a simple delayed disconnect timeout.

3. Many more vehicles in the game (such as throughout towns and along roads) however make the vehicles highly damaged, often needing a complete repair. This will not make the game vehicular havoc like in Battlefield 3 due to the rarity and weight of vehicle assets, however the gameplay opportunities offered by vehicles is often not explored, given the sparseness of vehicles currently. Having vehicles available also enhances cooperative gameplay (common objective).

4. Night time, keep it dark as it currently is, however make lights have a more potent effect on their surroundings so the game is actually playable at night with a torch. Possibly introduce streetlights in towns.

____________________________________________________________

Obviously this is just my suggestions and opinions; you don’t have to agree blah blah blah internettiquette. Also, I’m not a programmer or game developer by any stretch of the imagination, so I have no knowledge as to whether the ideas presented above are possible in the ARMA 2/ DayZ engine. These are simply ideas presented at the face value that an idea should be.

Written at 12am, give me a break my Führer.

Tldr: Melee system, base building, weapon attachments, stop disconnect abuse and vehicles.

Also, tell me your opinions on this shit, yo.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/vsf81/gets_sniped_at_goes_around_steals_a_gun_from/

[zenshou 12]

I DO NOT agree with 'respawn' at tents suggestion. Firstly, tents are not rare enough for such a game breaker. The long journey home is one of the main reasons I don't want to die. If I respawned back at my camp, I would lose all fear of death, even prefer death to other options like crawling from zelen to cherno for morphine >.< and the like because all I'd need to do would be hit respawn and re-gear at base and be on my merry way.

In fact, I'd say you want the game to be far too easy.

[CaptainSi 0]

I DO NOT agree with 'respawn' at tents suggestion. Firstly' date=' tents are not rare enough for such a game breaker. The long journey home is one of the main reasons I don't want to die. If I respawned back at my camp, I would lose all fear of death, even prefer death to other options like crawling from zelen to cherno for morphine >.< and the like because all I'd need to do would be hit respawn and re-gear at base and be on my merry way.

In fact, I'd say you want the game to be far too easy.

[/quote']

Thanks for replying!

I think it's interesting that you find the run back to your gear a main reason you don't want to die. I suppose this just shows how different each player perceives the game.

Also to clarify, I don't want the game made any easier, just want to remove the annoyances that the game currently has. It's in alpha, and I'd love to see some of my ideas tested, even if they don't work. Nevertheless, it's great to hear your opinion. Thanks again for getting back to me!