Does the community want DayZ to become harder?

[Rinner23 5]

A Swarm of Zombies cresting the hills overlooking Cherno.. and a lone spawn camper, squealing with delight like a 7 year old girl on every noob spawn kill.. does not notice them until the last second.. and then it is far too late...

The squeals turn into screams..

[Dokrane 42]

Priority would be for Rocket to keep doing what he's doing and roll out the game officially, then difficulty setting can become a factor.

[Talon2000uk 30]

I think the further north you go the more zombies their should be. and Half way up the map they should start randomly spawning in fields and woods. Things down south are hard enough for new players but by the time you start heading up north you should expect real resistance from the Zs. They should be as much of a threat to the Vet players up North as they are to the Noobs in the south. If not more.

In the north of the map you should never feel safe.

Also remove the deer stands from down south so if you want good guns you have to go north.

Edited July 19, 2012 by Talon2000uk

[AngryRetard 4]

-Zombies should be a little slower but much more numerous (think hordes).

-Head shots and explosives are the only way to kill them and sometimes zombies will get back up if you don't double tap them when they are down.

-Make food and water spawns rarer but put more food and water on the zombies.

-Add mutated zombies that are larger, faster, stronger. Like the thugs from dead island. You can go toe to toe with them solo, but it's easier in a group.

-The military and police zombies should spawn with weapons but randomly fire as you approach or agro them. Players and other zombies will be lured to the gunshots.

-Adding a party function would be good too. A way for players working together to quickly identify each other but no one else on the map or in menus can see what players are working with who.

-Zombie sentries. Certain rare zombies in an area that will scream or alert other zombies when they spot you. Avoid sentries at all costs. When the sentry screams it spawns hordes that are relentless. Sort of like that other co op zombie game... left 4 dead?

-Infection. Zombie bites or slashes you, you have a chance to get infected. Now you can slow the infection with epi pens and antibiotics but you will need a full blood transfusion and time to rest by a fire to break the fever to recover. Not doing these things will have you turn to a zombie (at which point you could add a "zombie side" mini game or just have the player die and get to watch his or her reanimated corpse rise). Adding background chatter, strange sounds of your organs shutting down and vivid hallucinations which increase as the infection spreads could be cool.

-running forever is dumb, so is stamina bars. Having brief periods where you have to walk or suffer from heat or sun stroke would be an added touch (it was addressed in another thread, sounds like a good idea)

-Players need to stop killing other wise peaceful players. I understand people get burned a couple times and then no one is safe. But something needs to be done to distinguish survivors vs bandits/looters, but in a real world setting. Since we can't recognize faces or body shapes. Maybe add a reward system for helping players, or not killing players. Maybe squad bonuses? If you work together in a group you have more eyes watching, zombie agro distance drops, maybe you can see through the fog a little better, at night it isn't quite so dark anymore. If you are in a group and you killed someone, the entire group as well as individual members lose these bonuses until each member has respawned. Your buddy killed someone, you lose the bonus, he dies and runs back, you still don't get the group bonus back until you've all been tagged as dead.

-A moral bar. Starts at 50% when you spawn, which is neutral. There is no disadvantage to having no morals (maybe zombiefication when you die?) But the advantages for moral kick in when you get it to say 75% or some other predetermined number. Helped a player get back on his feet with morphine? It goes up a little. See someone in a field being chased by zombies? Kill the zombies and it goes up. Kill a player that isn't tagged "immoral"? Your total maximum moral is reduced by 10% per kill and will stay at these reduced levels until you respawn. So if you kill a player, the max moral you can have is 90% meaning top end bonuses elude you. Kill more players and miss out on tiers of survival and feel good bonuses. Sharper eyes, better hearing, Maybe instead of one can of food, you find enough for your party now instead. Have all "good" and all "evil" actions tied to moral and have that tied to stuff that makes being a bandit worng, but does not remove anything bandits have now, but rewards friendly players with sunshine and lollipops (there might not actually be lollipops)

[Electrolyte 4]

Loaded poll. Why do the infected have to become harder AND loot spawns reduced? I vote for a new poll.

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

@Electrolyte, because i dwell in the suggestion forum a lot and 95% of suggestions that come with 'make this game harder' suggest harder Zed's and Less loot to be spawned. All other options that make the game harder in other areas (read my list of suggestions in my signature) get a cold or 'meh' response, making me doubt people actually want a harder game, aka. they want to be able to carry the equivilent of a convenient store with them, and be able to carry a whole workshop. They don't want to spawn with nothing, nor do they seem to want a more elaborate loot spawning system, or weight added to items which effects your movement speed, etc ...

So this poll isn't loaded at all, it gives various options to adhere to the various opinions that may be around, it's upto me (and anyone else) to read the poll correctly!

I did notice i FORGOT, Loot to be added to option 2, changed now, if people want to change their vote please do so!

Edited July 19, 2012 by L0GIN

[morten.t.beck@gmail.com 1]

Good points all, but if you're avoiding everything, you're just making it easy for yourself.

Some people run to the North, load up on guns and ammo, then come back to Cherno to shoot survivors, bandits and zombies. They usually don't live very long.

Some people scavenge supplies in small villages. They have a Winchester, and that's all they'll ever need, because they avoid high-traffic areas, and avoid zombies all together. These guys usually live for a long time.

Then you have people who spend their time reparing cars, by either themselves or with friends. Drive this car through the night, park it next to a deserted gas station to refuel, get shot in the head. Good times.

This game is all about choices. If it's too easy, make it harder on yourself. Take a chance, it's really that simple. Most people don't go through life like a breeze, but seek to challenge themselves and their abilities. Everytime I think I am a DayZ pro, something happens that shows me otherwise.

Also, I didn't vote, the poll options are predisposed towards increasing the difficulty, or having an opinion of easy vs hard. How about just letting it run it's course. It's alpha, things will change. I don't know for sure, but i suspect that Rocket doesn't care whether or not if people want it to be harder or easier. The most important thing is that is smooth, and that we, the players, get to choose how we play our own stories out.

Edited July 19, 2012 by HikerRemastered

[Electrolyte 4]

So this poll isn't loaded at all, it gives various options to adhere to the various opinions that may be around, it's upto me (and anyone else) to read the poll correctly!

But the loot doesn't need to be changed for the infected to be harder. The poll only gives me the option to vote for them together. That's what I read when I read it. What are you reading?

Edited July 19, 2012 by Electrolyte

[Dvyjns 1]

I'd like to see wild animals (predators) in the forests and feral dogs in the cities. The forests are much to boring right now and not dangerous at all.

[harvey44 5]

Almost a 100votes, while hardly representative of the whole community, there is atleast some conclusion to be drawn from this, but i do hope more people would vote ... anyways:

25% doesn't want anything to change, in relation to how it is now.

25% just wants harder zeds and more server hopping due to lower spawn chances

50% (Somewhat) agrees with me that there are all sorts of other ways to make this game harder, and that it should...

(75% wants a harder game)

Again, 100votes is hardly representative (though perhaps some statistician (if that is a word) can calculate how representative this actually is) it still shows that 3 in 4 would like this game to be harder. Which makes it very unlikely that the request for harder features are merely made by trolls. The 50% that want this game to be harder in other/every area of the game, is enough for me to feel content with the direction of my suggestions. The only thing that worries me a bit is the 15% that doesn't want any experimentation done in this alpha and trusts entirely on the standalone, an Alpha sets the basic features of the game, and while it is possible the standalone will also start with an alpha, experimenting then just postpones the opportunity to try out other/new things untill some later date in developement, with absolutely no certainty that features will work ...

Hope to see more people voting, to get a more accurate result !

I can see why you might not be getting those votes, I feel the options provided are 'loaded' and if I vote I'm serving your own opinion.

If only 100 people have voted I can only assume other readers felt he same way as me.

[Kopiovastaava (DayZ) 4]

Personally I think that the zombies are fine, but weapons should be more rare. And Supermarkets should have more consumables and less weapons, ammo and tents.

[D4saken1 80]

I like your very bias'd poll options. Cheerio.

[fundan@gmx.de 82]

Survial harder - less loot - ammunition rarer - military loot extremly rare.

[GunzBlazin 4]

harder the better

flush out the lightweights

Edited July 19, 2012 by GunzBlazin

[Kopiovastaava (DayZ) 4]

I'd like to see wild animals (predators) in the forests and feral dogs in the cities. The forests are much to boring right now and not dangerous at all.

Forests are more dangerous than you think....

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

But the loot doesn't need to be changed for the infected to be harder. The poll only gives me the option to vote for them together. That's what I read when I read it. What are you reading?

I can see why you might not be getting those votes, I feel the options provided are 'loaded' and if I vote I'm serving your own opinion.

If only 100 people have voted I can only assume other readers felt he same way as me.

Ok i'll try to explain again, the first two options are there because those are the most commen suggestions, i put them in ONE option because they are usually proposed together. And if i split them up i get people saying that they want both, or i need this super long poll splitting up all possible ways to make this game harder, another option would be to give people more options to vote, but that would just lead to people voting for all option totally screwing up results. So if there is something you want to add to your vote, there is this whole thread here... say: I voted X but i think Y should be taken into account or something like that ...

What i mainly want to know is if the community wants 'just' the most commen suggested things or other areas or everything to be harder, or not, and sofar this poll is giving me excellent results. Mainly that 50% of all voters want DayZ to be harder overall, so not just infected and loot, and that the Dev's thus should get cracking on Weight, stamina, working on inventory, adding more items to pressure loot, and w/e ways more can be conceived to make this game harder, as 70% currently wants the game to be harder... And while 20% of those just want infected/loot to be harder, there are various ways to accomplish this, f/e if weight influences your movement speed, then the Infected become harder IF you are loaded with stuff, which increases difficulty for fast hoarders without making the game harder for starters... just that one thing could please 70% of 'the community' in making this game harder ...

Still though, if you don't like the poll, then don't vote, as said the results work fine for me, and you have the option to entirely specify what you mean with your vote ...

[wolfstriked 143]

You guys that are afraid of the more rare food item spawns are right....that would suck bigtime.This can be cured by making starving and dehydration more realistic though.By making it so that blood ticks away at a very slow rate you can balance(dare I say it)this with the very rare food/drink drops.Now you will not camp around and think of ways to grief and murder but be constantly scavenging.And of course you have hunting and lakes to supply you with still in game.

I would also change the way you can reheal so fast in game.Gorge on a few steaks and voila you are instantly at full health.Make even steaks take a long time and you will be struggling to survive.And that is where the magic of this game is....or doesn't Rocket remember this??

But alas these suggestions fall on deaf ears.

[Powell (DayZ) 734]

Check out the thread in my signature

Yes, we need a much harder game

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

@Powell, that thread is great, and it does have a lot of nice ideas besides also mentioning the Zed's and Droprates, but it doesn't cover all places this game could be harder though... i think adding my suggestions to those would get this game a good decent step in the right direction though :)

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

Cool, wtg, almost doubled the amount of votes, and while % are switching a bit, there is still a 70% wanting this game to be harder :) ... and a 50% that wants it to be harder in area's besides (but not excluding) the Infected and Loot Spawns ... keep voting please :)

[LumberBack 43]

yup loot needs to be halved... and not respawn as fast as it does...

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

Giving this a last reactivation, almost 200votes so .5% per vote which isn't to bad :)

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

Cool 200 votes exactly, Tnx all that voted :) , if you want you may vote but i think the outcome has been fairly consistant through-out the voting process:

70% want this game to be harder, 50% also in places OTHER than just the infected and lootspawn%

30% wants doesn't want it to become harder (or atleast not while it's a mod)

Guess that makes it fairly clear where this game should go in relation to difficulty, now all that's left is to hope that the Dev's have been following this thread ;)

tnx again all!

Edited July 21, 2012 by L0GIN