Couple of suggestions to make it less of a deathamtch

[maracusarillius_irl 2]

These things might have been suggested before but this is just some ideas I've had after playing for a while.

At present the zombies are more of an annoyance rather than an actual major threat if you play your cards right.

It would be better imo if the zombies were as much of a threat as players.

As it stands people are quite happy to be way too trigger happy and shoot someone else just for fun, even if the other guy has no weapon and poses no threat.

If the zombie aggro radius was tweaked just right(maybe half way between 1.7.1.5 and the current build) and the number of zombies were increased 5x or even 10x(if it didn't completely degrade performance), then I think people would be a lot less likely just to go around shooting their guns off without any real fear of bringing a serious hoard down on themselves.

Also random zombie spawns in the woods would tame down camping snipers.

If this was a real life situation I think people would pick their fights a lot more than they are doing here.

If the other person is not an immediate threat then pass on by.

You should only shoot your gun as a last resort in a life/death situation, or else you will end up causing as much trouble for yourself as for them.

If you saw someone walking down the street in one of the cities randomly shooting at anyting or anyone that moved, he would be quickly overrun by 100+ zombies. This would soon quieten the trigger happy death matchers and would make the game a lot more stealthy imo.

The ability for zombies to run in building wll also help here.

If you were actually afraid to aggro a zombie due to bringing down a swarm of them on your position, I think people would pick their battles a little more wisely.

Just my impressions anyway :)

Loving the game btw!!

Edited July 15, 2012 by MarcuS_IRL

[andy_uk15@hotmail.com 70]

I agree with this...

The environment must get a lot tougher in order to encourage a shift in a players priority.

Even things like making ZEDS ridiculously hard to kill without a head shot could shake things up this way. Players will tend to be more frugal with their ammunition. Bandits are always likely to kill for loot, but it may stop the shoot--recently-spawned-unarmed-player ethic we got going right now.

Edited July 15, 2012 by ScramUK

[Neek (DayZ) 53]

Good in theory i guess. Kinda scary to imagine it going to those levels. From my experience the only way to get better at shooting a gun... Is to fire it... Alot.

I kinda like firing my gun in dayz. Your proposal would mean alot less of that.

I've decided i don't like it now :P

[andy_uk15@hotmail.com 70]

I don't think it will mean players are shooting less...

They are just emptying their clips at different targets.

Zeds are already attracted to sounds - I think the behaviour just needs tweaked a little

Edited July 15, 2012 by ScramUK

[Tox2401 1]

I don't agree with part zombies running inside buildings...

Also adding more zombies won't change anything, because there's a lot of people that will reconnect just to lose zombies if they aggroed to much of them...

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

If your fed up with the death match thing then just avoid Cherno and Electro. Head north, it's much more fun up there.

[ActionManZlt 160]

Only issue is, most of the times I've been murdered, it's been by some camping sniper on a hill 300m away from town. Even if they upped the aggro radius on snipers to 200m, they still wouldn't pull any aggro when sniping me.

[edit]Sorry - I missed this bit: "Also random zombie spawns in the woods would tame down camping snipers."[/edit]

IMO, snipers besides the CZ need to go... or maybe they'll be OK once all the duplication bugs and loot-farming exploits are fixed, so that they're actually as rare as they're intended to be...

Furthermore, I've been sniped several times where my surviving friends have seen zombies aggro and run up the hill, but the sniper just DC'ed to avoid the zombies anyway... I don't mind too much when passive/friendly players use disconnecting to avoid death... but when a PvP player does it, that's just weak.

If your fed up with the death match thing then just avoid Cherno and Electro. Head north, it's much more fun up there.

Stary, Novy, Berez, NWAF and NEAF are just as bad as Cherno/Electro for camping snipers. Edited July 15, 2012 by ActionMan

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Only issue is, most of the times I've been murdered, it's been by some camping sniper on a hill 300m away from town. Even if they upped the aggro radius on snipers to 200m, they still wouldn't pull any aggro when sniping me.

[edit]Sorry - I missed this bit: "Also random zombie spawns in the woods would tame down camping snipers."[/edit]

Furthermore, I've been sniped several times where my surviving friends have seen zombies aggro and run up the hill, but the sniper just DC'ed to avoid the zombies anyway... I don't mind too much when passive/friendly players use disconnecting to avoid death... but when a PvP player does it, that's just weak.

Stary, Novy, Berez, NWAF and NEAF are just as bad as Cherno/Electro for camping snipers.

I don't mind snipers it's part of the game and there's ways of dealing with them. I was referring to people running around the city COD stylee. Up north people have more to lose and tend to be more skillfull.

[maracusarillius_irl 2]

IMO, snipers besides the CZ need to go... or maybe they'll be OK once all the duplication bugs and loot-farming exploits are fixed, so that they're actually as rare as they're intended to be...

Yea I think that a lot of the high end military gear should go. Would be more realistic and challenging if only weapons were pistols, shotguns and hunting rifles :)

Also depending in where the zombie apocalypse took place, these are probably the only weapons you would find, except at a crash site which should be as rare as hens teeth :)

If it happened in Ireland for instance all you might find weapons wise are a few shotguns and maybe a hunting rifle, and you'd be lucky to find them. Maybe at the odd farm or something. Weapons in general should be a lot more rare imo.

I don't think military grade snipre rifles and nvg's really fit with the ethos of the game to be honest.

Edited July 16, 2012 by MarcuS_IRL

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

I definatley think military grade stuff should be MUCH rarer. The problem with this is that server admins would then abuse there positions even more than they do at the moment. They would hoard the good stuff and be able to run around the map like little Hitlers killing anyone who dares confront them.

[lightnings0ul 19]

I think that walkers should be tougher to handle, too. They just take one shot to their body with most of the good weapons, in all of the zombie movies I know you'd need at least 4 or 5 shots to the body or one well placed shot to the head.

And the disconnecting part should be fixed. Maybe let the characters stay for another 5 seconds after disconnect and give em 5 times the damage in that time period or sth. ^^

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

I think that walkers should be tougher to handle, too. They just take one shot to their body with most of the good weapons, in all of the zombie movies I know you'd need at least 4 or 5 shots to the body or one well placed shot to the head.

And the disconnecting part should be fixed. Maybe let the characters stay for another 5 seconds after disconnect and give em 5 times the damage in that time period or sth. ^^

I'm undecided about making Zeds harder to kill. Until you get fairly good at the game the Zeds are a bloody nightmare in my opinion. Of course once you've figured it all out they become much less of an issue. The only problem I can see with making Zeds harder to kill is the danger of turning the game into a complete crawlathon. I wouldn't want to waste my rare ammo gunning down Zeds so I'd end up crawling everywhere more so than I do at the moment. I'd like to see a bit more random spawning from Zed's, maybe in the woods to give snipers something else to worry about.

[wolfstriked 143]

It gets to the point where zeds are just an annoyance as OP pointed out but I feel that the tweaks they made in last patch are excellent in their aggro ability.So what could be done next is the question.IMO a better thing to try would be to up there damage a great deal.Right now you aggro and then run around smiling and laughing because if they do get a hit on you its just a small amount of damage and maybe bleeding.The broken legs we had before were making people petrified of being near zombies but the end result was too harsh and so it was fixed.If instead each hit and bite caused 1000 damage then you would feel every hit.Maybe they could try this and see what happens??

Edited July 16, 2012 by wolfstriked

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

I want Zombies that only die if you shoot them in the head! But until they fixed the zigzagging issue that'd be too hard, because right now trying to hit them in the head when they're running at you is near impossible.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

I want Zombies that only die if you shoot them in the head! But until they fixed the zigzagging issue that'd be too hard, because right now trying to hit them in the head when they're running at you is near impossible.

No!!!!!! They're supposed to be infected people, not super-human!

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

No!!!!!! They're supposed to be infected people, not super-human!

They're supposed to be... Zombies?

Also, not sure wether the Arma2 engine allows that but if you shoot their arms and legs that should cripple them. So when you shoot them in the arms they can't use 'em anymore and when you shoot them in the legs they start crawling. Not sure wether they already do the latter.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

They're supposed to be... Zombies?

Also, not sure wether the Arma2 engine allows that but if you shoot their arms and legs that should cripple them. So when you shoot them in the arms they can't use 'em anymore and when you shoot them in the legs they start crawling. Not sure wether they already do the latter.

Go and read Rockets thoughts on the matter. He prefers to call them infected because of all of the suggetions he was getting to make it more of a Zombie game. He wants it to primarily be a survival game with the Infected as a backdrop to that narrative.

I'm not sure about the arms and legs thing BTW.

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

Go and read Rockets thoughts on the matter. He prefers to call them infected because of all of the suggetions he was getting to make it more of a Zombie game. He wants it to primarily be a survival game with the Infected as a backdrop to that narrative.

I'm not sure about the arms and legs thing BTW.

Guess he picked the wrong name then. Thanks for the info though. ;)

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Guess he picked the wrong name then. Thanks for the info though. ;)

Yup, I don't think he was expecting it to become anything more than a Mod with one server and a few people kicking around in it.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Just a general note: as a veteran player, the harder the game becomes the less willing I am going to be to group up with random people in the game.

I already have difficulty enjoying the company of random people because:

• They will not stay close, resulting in confusion and often friendly fire.
  
• They refuse to take direction in combat, again creating dangerous cross-fire scenarios.
  
• They run. Everywhere. Wasting my medical supplies and drawing undue attention.
  
• They shoot. Constantly. Again, drawing undue attention.
  
• They mooch off of me because I had the wherewithal to farm up basic supplies while they ran around in circles yelling "Friendly!"
  
• They get lost because they either don't have a map or can't read it.
  

The harder the game becomes, the less I will want these kinds of people around. They are already a liability to my survival. Making the game harder will make them LESS desirable as companions, not more. I will play with my friends whom I trust to play quietly, remain unseen, fire only when necessary and stay in formation so nobody gets shot in the back of the head by mistake.

I really think this notion that making the game more difficult will suddenly have everyone playing grab-ass and kissy-face is a pipe dream.

No matter how many cooperative elements get added and no matter how difficult the game becomes, it will always be better to group with people you know and trust. Why? Because you know them and trust them. Those words mean things. You can't "game design" trust. It has to be built through demonstrated behaviors and unfortunately not everyone is capable of demonstrating trustworthy behaviors.

Edited July 16, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[jaynich 12]

1 word, performance.

More zombies means more for your PC to render

[wolfstriked 143]

I think the end to this banditry problem is to just add in teams.We all want deathmatch and that is not going away any time soon as the game relies on PVP fear factor.So why not add in some type of factions to the game.Give people what they want...to kill other players but with a story to play off of.

So you wanna hunt and kill then hunt the enemy while surviving the apocalypse.Now think of a good story to immerse the players into this world where a zombie apocalypse is happening at same time as a war between survivors is happening.

[ATeamM 2]

Making Zombies more difficult in the form of taking more shots to kill them I can kind of see. Making Zombies more difficult in the form of they see you easier I don't like, because when people feel that they are going to get seen no matter what then why even try to stealth and it will turn into the standard run and gun zombie gome. I think I like the Idea of making ammo more rare so you think about shooting alittle more.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Agreed. Trying to bend the game towards one kind of playstyle or another really doesn't sit well with me.

[duddbudda 33]

but it's not a deathmatch