Zombie Behavior/Herds + Items + Camp Construction

[ruarz 739]

Well first of all I simply love the mod. I've been waiting for a true zombie survival experience and the fact an alpha mod for an essentially half finished game has taken over the internet shows what a great concept this is.

It obviously still has a long way to go yet and I'm exited to see how it turns out. Here are a few suggestions, I hope you read them:

I'm all good for the zombies being fast and deadly, but whats not good is when they become especially deadly due to unrealistic and buggy behavior. The zombie movement is rather erratic and when chasing they appear to jump forwards periodically and rapidly zig zag, making them almost impossible to hit. They can also attack through walls and occasionally even move through them. Additionally, when zombies go prone to crawl under objects they race forwards even though they were walking before, which also looks unrealistic. All in all zombies should behave more naturally and fluidly, although I can appreciate this is far harder to achieve than it sounds.

Again, zombies are especially deadly due their strange spawning patterns. When you're moving stealthily around a zombie infested town and a zombie pops out of nowhere and spawns in front of you, it often becomes aggrod straight away, forcing you to run or fire - either way, making you go loud and screwing up your infiltration. I think there should be a minimum distance zombies should spawn - not only does this break immersion but is enough to give you a heart attack and can spell game over for your character. Additionally I think some areas should have very mild or no zombie infestation while others have heavier levels. At the moment the pattern appears to be where there's buildings there's a proportionate number of zombies, making the challenge of getting loot the same each time. Changing this would make the game far more tactical - making some areas definite loot points while others areas best avoided. While the general pattern could be more zombies = better loot, I think exceptions to the rule would mix up gameplay far more. Furthermore I would love to see some sort of module for each town which allows the zombies to be fully cleared without them instantly respawning. Some towns like Cherno, shouldn't feasibly be able to be cleared though unless all 50 players on a server unite and take it by force.

There should be extremely rare but occasionally good loot in the woodland - you could come across a survivor's camp (they've since bugged out), a crashed plane/helicopter, or an airdrop which may yield decent supplies.

I also think roaming herds of zombies would be especially cool, with the more common herds having 3-10 zombies but several larger herds having 20-50 zombies which roam around loosely together from town to town and around the countryside. Imagine the adrenaline of looting a town and then having to rapidly get out of there or take cover because a zombie herd is passing through. I imagine you've seen the likes of the Walking Dead, which would give you a better picture of what I mean. They could be drawn to spurts of gunfire, fires or flares. They could occasionally pass through woodland, meaning the woods are never entirely safe and you are always on your toes. Currently the player must always come to the zombies - in reality the zombies could come to you.

There should be a greater variety of equipment to prevent looting becoming too monotonous. I believe several weapons are missing, forgive me if they have already been added:

>Something like a Mossberg 500/590 shotgun or a Remington 870 - a staple of zombie films, games and books.

>A greater variety of handguns - USPs, Sig P226s and Glocks are among others I've seen in other Arma 2 Mods. (Rarer) Silenced handguns should also be added. Would love to see the flare gun added.

>Seeing as we're in ex-Soviet Chernarus I think AK variants should be more common, certainly far more common than Armalite variants like the M4. Maybe some RPGs scattered about too, but make the rockets rare.

>I am yet to see a Dragunov

I'd love to see melee added to the mod but I appreciate this is extremely difficult. I'd like to see mountable flashlights on some guns, however.

Other items:

>Different grades of binoculars - civilian grade and military grade

>Wirecutters

Also you could implement a basic crafting system from which scavenged supplies could be turned into something useful e.g.

>Gas canister + Circuitry = IED

>Gas canister + Circuitry + Nails = Shrapnel IED

>Rag + Bottle + Petrol = Molotov

I'd like to see players be able to be ordered into groups with a group leader, encouraging the formation of gaming communities and clans. This would allow you to implement something like a huge humanity hit (although I understand this system is to be put on hold) should you kill a team-mate.

Finally I'd love to see some sort of camp building. One of the absolute central themes of the zombie survival genre is creating a camp. I and many others feel it is a must and should become one of the longer-term goals of the mod's development. It could feed into the group system and a group could share a camp. They should be persistent on one server so a group or clan could build a camp on the server they regularly use. While players in that group are online, so is the camp in the gameworld, and the group has a responsibility to guard it. While they are offline, so is the camp. If rival players wipe the defenders out they can loot it. The herds of zombies would feed into the idea your camp is never entirely safe and you may have to defend it or evacuate. Whether you set up a camp from scratch in the woodland or convert a building into a shelter for your group, it would be essential that zombies don't spawn within the confines of the camp.

Important camp items:

>Tents + Sleeping Bags

>Medical bay

>Workbenches

>Containers - important for storing items

>Wooden watchtowers/sniper towers

>Static fortifications - sandbags, barricades, wire,

>Static weaponry - MGs, possibly even a mortar

>Trip flares/alarm. Will alert you to incoming herds/players.

I think this is an incredibly important feature if not the most important. It would lay the basis for a new playstyle based on cooperation, long-term planning and communal responsibility, rather than nomadic players simply seeking to acquire their personal loot and equipment.

As a quick note I think this mod could take a lot of excellent ideas from A.C.E. if any of you have played it you'll know what I'm on about.

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Some of these weapons are now featured in Day Z :D

[Land Squid 22]

Boobytraps + IED's

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=1729

Campsite Items

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3491

[ruarz 739]

I am aware there are already some similar suggestions out there, but the things above are not all repeated suggestions, and because some of theses ideas feed into each other, for example the idea of zombie herds and camps, I thought I'd create a new thread.

[mooncabbage 2]

i do like the suggestion regarding the guns and binoculars though. Glock17 is already in mind.

[Seaon09 5]

Good post Raur, I agree to everything you said especially the camp system with alarms and such. I would proudly work with the dev team in developing some of these things so the process isnt at tedious in their eyes.

Building camps or reinforcing buildings so that it is zombie and bandit proof while you survive the night holding out in it would be great!

[ruarz 739]

Compiled a list of weapons that were missing a while ago and just found it in a .txt file on my PC so i thought I'd upload it here. Most of these weapons already have models made for them in Arma or on Armaholic, so it would be more a case of asking for usage permission and blending them into DayZ than creating them from scratch. While I'd love to go round killing zombies with F200s they wouldn't exactly fit into the setting so I've tried to put emphasis on weapons which are relatively common, especially lots of Soviet weaponry in Eastern Europe. Would never expect all of these to be added so the ones I feel are most sorely missing from DayZ have been highlighted with a */*****. Obviously content isn't as much of a concern ATM as stability but once a stable platform is rolled out and the team want to work on more content they should consider a few of these. As much as I love the L85A2, I'm perplexed as to how its found its way to Chernarus while a fixed stock AK-47 has not!

SNIPERS/BATTLE RIFLES

*Accuracy International L96 (Great Britain)

*****H&K PSG-1 (+ Silenced Version) (Germany)

Remington Model 700 (USA)

US Navy Mk.14 Mod.0 (USA)

*SV-98 (USSR/Russia)

SVU (USSR/Russia)

*Dragunov SVD (Non Ghillie Version) (USSR/Russia)

*VSS 'Vintorez' Silence Sniper Rifle (USSR/Russia)

KVSK 12.7mm (USSR/Russia)

Simonov SKS (USSR/Russia)

HISTORIC RIFLES/HUNTING RIFLES

M1 Garand (USA)

*Mauser K98k (Germany)

Tokarev SVT-40 (USSR/Russia)

*****Mosin-Nagant (USSR/Russia)

HANDGUNS

*****CZ 75 (Czech Republic)

Browning High Power (Great Britain)

*Glock 18 (Austria)

FN Five-Seven (Belgium)

Magnum Research/IMI Desert Eagle (.357 and .50 versions) (USA/Israel)

*H&K USP (Germany)

Luger 'Parabellum' (Germany)

*Tokarev TT (USSR/Russia)

*****Makarov (SD!) (USSR/Russia)

Sig-Sauer P226 (Switzerland)

S&W Model 29 (USA)

ASSAULT RIFLES

FN Mk.16 and Mk 17. (Belgium)

Steyr Stg.77 AUG (Austria)

*H&K G3 (and some of its millions of different variants :D) (Germany)

*H&K 416 and 417 (Germany)

*****H&K G36/G36C/G36K/G36E (Germany)

H&K M27 IAR (USA/Germany)

*****MORE AK-47s than just the AKM

*Kalashnikov AK-101 (USSR/Russia)

*****Kalashnikov AK-103 (USSR/Russia)

*Kalashnikov AK-102/104/105 (USSR/Russia)

*****Kalashnikov AK-107/108 (USSR/Russia)

Nikonov AN-94 (USSR/Russia)

AEK-971 (USSR/Russia)

Groza OC-14 (USSR/Russia)

*****SA Vz.58 (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic)

*SIG SG-550/551/552/Stgw. 90 (Switzerland)

*****Type 56 (PR China)

Type 81 (PR China)

SHOTGUNS

*Browning Auto-5 (Belgium)

*****Franchi SPAS-12 (Italy)

Saiga-12K (USSR/Russia)

*****Molot "Bekas-Auto" (USSR/Russia)

Molot "Bekas" 12m (USSR/Russia)

TOZ-194 (USSR/Russia)

Ithaca 37 Homeland Security/Ithaca 37 "Stakeout" (USA)

*****Mossberg 500/590 (USA)

USAS-12 (USA/South Korea)

AA-12 (USA)

MACHINE GUNS

+++STATIC MACHINE GUNS (Kord 12.7, DShKM, MG42, Browning .50 CAL)

M60/M60E3/M60E4 (USA)

*****Kalashnikov RPK (USSR/Russia)

*****Kalashnikov RPK-74 (USSR/Russia)

Kalashnikov PK/PKS/PKM/PKMS (USSR/Russia)

*RPD (USSR/Russia)

*PKP Pecheneg (USSR/Russia)

H&K MG4 (Germany)

Why are there currently only U.S. machine guns?

SUBMACHINEGUNS

H&K MP5k (Germany)

*H&K UMP (Germany)

H&K MP7A1 (Germany)

Spectre M4 (Italy)

*PP-2000 (USSR/Russia)

PPsh41 (USSR/Russia)

*****+++82MM MORTAR+++***** TO ENCOURAGE TEAMPLAY. MAKE THE ROUNDS RARE :)

[StealthyBrayden 6]

I love these ideas. All must be implemented! :D

[ruarz 739]

Had some great suggestions regarding fire, made another thread: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=20748

[carlgustav 63]

Liked all of these, especially the herds

[ruarz 739]

Now melee is in the game it would be nice to see hammers, sledgehammers, machetes, the hunting knife, and chainsaws put to use as weapons.

[Reaps 22]

Melee is in the game, but hugely overpowered (if you get a hatchet) There is no fear of the zeds any more. If you know how to use the weapon correctly, there is also no chance of getting hit, in its current form. I'm worried the mod is swinging to a L4D style hack em up game, which this shouldn't be, we have those.

Camps - from day one my friends and I have been wanting to build fully fortified camps. However keeping it within the boundaries of the engine we'd need to tone down the "dream" just a touch. There are plenty of missions/mods out there where base building is available, so camps are within the limits. Just the basics would be nice. Of course, it wouldn't be as simple as just popping open a build menu.

But something like:-

Once you have found and placed (X)tents, (X)sandbags, (X)barbed wires in a certain area when you open the tent menu, you can set your spawn point to the tents.

*Now onto the dream*

From the same tent menu. Create a workbench and a storage building.

However, keeping it in true dayz fashion, where you have to work for everything, you have to have 100 wood to make a storage shack, 40 wood for a work bench. Once you have the shack and the workbench you can store crafting equipment/supplies in the shack, you're own personal supplies in the tents and of course the workbench would play into the basic crafting of the items you said in the OP. As well as base defences, scrap metal + weapon + (X) sandbags gives you a basic MG nest etc. You could make the base as elaborate as you'd like, but you'd have to gather all the resources yourself, and actually make the base.

Only one gripe about your Base camp idea, i feel it should be persistent, if you're offline, your base isn't. People can and should be able to rob you of your hard work. Much like they can your tents right now. This would give the game the extra edge to it, where groups of people would seek out the enemies base, to pillage. Removing those Key buildings should revoke the right to spawn there/use the features until fixed also.

[ruarz 739]

Love the idea of collecting wood for shacks and work benches. Maybe you could create barricades and watchtowers as well :)

[fenririv 4]

Making the game too easy :(

Good suggestions.

[carlgustav 63]

The zombie aggro from gunshots definitely needs to change. The shots should be heard from further away but the zeds shouldn't aggro on the player immediately but rather wander over and investigate the area the sound came from, encouraging players to fire and move etc.

[fundan@gmx.de 82]

<3 this....

[resistence1993 6]

love these ideas

[ruarz 739]

So who else has heard rocket talk about underground bases? I don't think you can rely fully on underground or overground structures - I think a subtle blend of the two would be the best bet :)