Suggestions for the DayZ standalone - thinking outside of the limitations of an Arma 2 mod.

[Kornwallis 9]

The suggestions in OP's post are awesome! I've got a bit of a wishlist myself for zombies, even if some of them have already been posted.

-More diversity in zombie populations. Some areas almost inaccessible and other virtually zombie-free. This might stop all the new players from going straight into Cherno/Elektro (or future cities on future maps) right away and getting their ass handed to them.

-Roaming zombie hordes of variable sizes. Ranging from small to OH GOD RUN, these packs would roam through city and countryside alike. They could change direction to go investigate a far off explosion or a helicopter flying overhead. Think The Walking Dead.

-Zombies attracted to the smell of meat kinda like a bear. You can use cooked meat to distract groups of zombies like smoke grenades without making it extremely visible. See zombie hordes above. That's right, you thought you were safe eating your steak out in the wilderness...

-Female zombies!

-Shots to vital organs more effective. Shots elsewhere, not so much. These suggestions for headshots only make no sense. The zombies in DayZ are infected humans, and so they need blood pumping through their veins and the ability to breath air to survive. Obviously, headhots should be one-shot kills. Shots to arms/legs/lower abdomen should be almost totally ineffective. However, a well-placed shot to the heart or lungs shot either kill or incapacitate a zombie like it would any other animal.

-They should be easy to kill at a distance because they don't chickenrun at you, but dangerous up close. It should be easy to get swarmed if you're not careful.

[anabolamyggan 2]

I would like houses to be locked down with nails and boards making a use for the crowbar, you'd have to break in to the buildings with higher tier loot, and make it noisy so both people and zombies are attracted to it!

[OuterHaven89 1]

Actually, to build on that i was pondering the idea of a skill system. Naturally the more you do something, the better you *should* become at it. If you spend a lot of time repairing vehicles, your skill would improve, and you would need less materials to repair a vehicle. Same applies with field medic, rifleman etc. A percentage of skill points could be lost on player death, for added bumfuckery.

I was thinking of the exact same thing. Another addition to this would be fitness...as in when you do a lot of running or anything that requires physical strength it would increase your fitness skills overtime which would make you be able to run longer(bigger stamina),faster (maybe) and decreases chances of illness though the fitness skill could also depend on what food you eat if you keep on eating bad food it could decrease the skill and also fitness skill could make less of a hassle on what you have for inventory..as in you would run less slower if you have good fitness but also have heavy stuff in your inventory.

[Deathcall 101]

Mkay... more brainstorming...

Zombies grab people! Of course, how come nobody suggested this? Zombies don't just stay in place and claw at you! They want to eat you! So they grab on to you. Right now you only get thrown down if you are low on health, which is not only a bit unrealistic but also... TOO EASY! If zombies were able to grab onto people, and if we implement some sort of QTEs to get away or some other mechanic, that'd mean that one single zombie could be your downfall! Also, it would foment group play, both for survivors and bandits.

Oh! Also make some zombies spawn with protective gear! Policemen zombies could have body armor or protective head gear! Headshots don't work anymore? Go for the legs!

Will be back later with another idea I'm currently elaborating...

[Kay3o 0]

I haven't seen this been suggested yet, but..

HUGE shopping malls.

But kinda like Dawn Of The Dead and Dead Rising. Just a competely fully fleshed out shopping mall with absolutely everything. Shops, supermarkets, stock rooms, basements, car parks, food courts, toilets, janitors closest, a control room..? Basically everything.

You'd stumble upon the shopping mall in a fairly big city, i imagine it would get fairly popular, but without a doubt, worth the reward and risk, but that's also fun right? Helipad on the roof with several other ways to get inside the shopping mall. I imagine the whole shopping mall would be a deep and very fleshed out place to possibly set up camp, and if enough players, even control the place. It could spring scenarios where you have small groups of players fighting over the mall, but also surviving there. Vents, broken elevators and junk could be used to make this happen.

I just for one think Day Z would benefit with added, a 'classic zombie shopping mall in, just as a possibility.

[Max Planck 7174]

No one stickied this?

I'll sticky this.

[zenvolta 12]

What Id like to see is better ways to play as a group. LIke you could add people to your squad and you could see there name plates to keep track of whos who. Maybe even a green triangle above their heads(sounds dumb but anything is better than nothing). Right now the faces dont help to tell each other apart since you were a hat most of the time and clothes can be different from client to client. I heard rocket was tossing around the idea of Arm bands. That would be nice. Arma has the squad URL thing thats built into the game maybe it could encompass the arm bands or name tag system(so people couldnt easily sneak into your group).

[Ped 80]

I would like the option to use various maps.

Rocket once stated it would take only a mere 10 minutes to convert the DayZ mod to work on any of the Arma maps.

So, let's do that. Let Admins pick whichever map they'd like to host.

[bigtoolz@hotmail.com 4]

I like the idea of "events". Maybe at Green Mountain or Black Mountain. Maybe have them triggered by having certain items (eg. Mountain Dew in Green Mountain)

The pen and paper idea is brilliant. Would love to raid a tent and leave a note saying thanks.

Better reasons to not kill on sight.

I know some people don't like a skill tree. But maybe something that levels up fitness or how long it takes before you need to eat. (eg. When you first start you get hungry/thirsty quickly, can't sprint for long periods, nerves/shakes, ect. But as you keep playing and leveling your trees it increases and doesn't start again if you die)

[Toybox 36]

Would be a cool idea to be able to find mods for weapons. Things like scopes, barrel/ suppresor kits and fully automatic kits. So you could kit out your G17 into a suppresed, holo, fully automatic zombie killing machine or stick a ridiculous scope onto that revolver.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

Plausible shotgun idea: Ability to empty both chambers of double barrel shotgun at the same time.

Not so plausible shotgun idea: Ability to make or find sawed-off double barrel shotgun that can be holstered as sidearm.

Sawed-off shotgun would have massive pellets spread with medium damage at close range for one man zombie crowd control, with damage decreased greatly at long range.

[Magikalkraker 0]

Howdy. I'm so into this I made this account just to suggest stuff XD. I played the STALKER series hugely and to see that it shares themes with DayZ is awesome, but if you wanted to accept ideas from the outside I figured I'd give my two cents:

More zombie variance, maybe even more enemy variance. Where are all the killer dogs?

A reworked AI (DayZ zombies run around ALOT, lag between kill and death)

A damage system, maybe like Fallout, where limbs and body parts can be crippled or damaged, to varying consequences

Modular Weapons (Underbarrel grenade launchers, scopes, sights, flashlights, lasers, clips, stocks, grips, bayonets, bipods, camouflage). Even an upgrade system to swap out internals, receivers, barrels, etc.

A dedicated melee button

Huge arsenal of weapons and equipment

A system to construct (realistic) bases

Rework the inventory system to perhaps partition between different types of items for better organization

Rework looting or item spawning to display item information while looting/before looting

There is no shortage of realism, but the degree it could go could be amazing. Inventory size, gear, and certain weapons could affect movement and ability to go undetected, for example.

Besides that, the mod really seems to capture what I like so much in other series, a great atmosphere, a huge focus on surival, scavenging and exploration, and CO-OP! I'd stress the genius of an outfitting system like STALKER Call of Pripyat where weapon equipping is free form. Provided you can get the gun into a fixed-size inventory slot, it's yours to use with bound key support for access (i.e. "1" key for inventory slot one, "2" for slot two, etc.) with slots for different weapons, equipment, armor, clips for guns, knives, maps, etc.

[Lag (DayZ) 17]

seasons that change over time as the year goes by and clothing that provides different levels of warmth. temperature should also change the further north one goes. possibility to overheat if you wear clothing that's too warm. possibility to freeze to death if you venture too far north without appropriate clothing.

allow people to craft home made alcohol to be filled in empty whiskey bottles or cans. it could make you temporarily more warm at the cost of giving you a slight chance to trip and fall and go into prone. if you drink too much, you get a fuzzy shader effect like when you're low on blood with a possibility of throwing up and depleting a large portion of your food meter. :]

Edited August 24, 2012 by Lag

[LeYuno (DayZ) 51]

I'm surprised that I didn't see this proposed yet. But what about an explosive device you can manufacture and carry in your gear to hurt someone that shoots you and tries to loot your body.

[Bat (DayZ) 230]

Just 2 things I thought about :

- Zeds able to enter houses by climbing through windows.

- Players able to jump through windows.

[Meppo 16]

just one thing comes to mind i still haven't seen anyone post,

Dirt tracks and dirt roads should be formed moore or less permanently if players take the same route many times.

-----> Players with big camps cannot keep them well hidden as tracks would start to form in the direction of their tents.

[soullessnut 4]

I know body armor has already been suggested probably a million times, but i don't think anyone has touched on the topic of different protection levels. For example in real life there are two types of body armor, soft armor and hard armor. Soft armor is only rated for protecting the wearer from pistol caliber rounds and shrapnel from explosives, where as hard armor is rated for high powered rifle rounds. There are also different levels of both types such as (in order of protection) level 1, 2A, 2, and 3A for soft armor, as well as threat level 3 and 4 for hard armor. All the ballistic protection that each level provides is available online. But what i'm getting at is that having the different protection levels would in my opinion make bullet proof vests more balanced, and also add even more realism to the game.

[Porkroll 7]

What about every now and then a triggered helicopter crash animation appears in the sky and crashes somewhere?

e.g You're running across an open field and all of a sudden you see a burning helicopter flying down atleast 2km's east of you. The helicopter will act as a normal chopper crash like in dayz but it just has a fancy entrance!

This could be a good way to to promote some competition as whoever saw/heard the helicopter would be making their way there asap, most probably encountering a group of survivors doing the same thing

[deadlykenny 37]

How about a map editor? where you can change terrain and add buildings etc. I know some people hate Halo but in halo's forge option if you make a map it doesn't have to be downloaded by every player that wants to play it so perhaps make something that would do that :P

[JJ Bigs 0]

Right off the bat:

1. Random gear spawning.

2. Some way to discourage PvP killing sprees, at least without a reason.

3. No cheating/avoiding the day and night circle by switching servers.

4. Randomize Chernarus every time you die. (No looking at a map beside the in-game one)

[NightFire661 13]

Stronger Zombies? Seems like the only real terror in this game are hackers and other players camping the spawn. Zombies are just there..

Oh and Rocket admit that they are Zombies. That'll probably be the best update the game could have.

[frantix (DayZ) 14]

Simple but good: Run faster, sprint longer without backpack.

Reason: Use it as a tactical advantage in firefight. Hide your backpack and get it back later. After dying, get rid of your starting backpack to get to your teammates faster.

Edited August 24, 2012 by frantix

[joona.kujanen@suomi24.fi 62]

Really nice collection of ideas, awarded that with beans.

Personally I would like to see a bit S.T.A.L.K.E.R and Fallout-styled gaming: some special locations that requires much more preparations than your ordinary trip to airfield. For example, military bunker with biohazard-status (vaccine/antidote development bases) with special loot. Say, one should gather gas masks and protective suits (http://th00.devianta...ura-d422ovh.jpg) in order to explore them, and keeping suit and gear intact (filters to mask) in order to avoid problems like infections... A "end-game" content like this would totally blow my mind.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Kuikka

[The2ndLink 156]

-Roaming zombie hordes of variable sizes. Ranging from small to OH GOD RUN, these packs would roam through city and countryside alike. They could change direction to go investigate a far off explosion or a helicopter flying overhead. Think The Walking Dead.

^This!

Zombies independent from building spawns. Walking the land.

Combined with the idea that:

If a player gets infected there is a chance he turns into a Zombie. That zombie would have as much health as a survivor, carry the items of the player and be able to walk the map freely.´Maybe even be a spawn point for regular Zombies.

[bobbybka 3]

All of your ideas are perfect I hope the stand alone dayz game is just like this