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

[tagzard 0]

Please, please have cross gameplay, so those who have dayzmod can play with people who have dayzgame.

[poisonman 28]

Please, please have cross gameplay, so those who have dayzmod can play with people who have dayzgame.

Yea that will never happen......

[Longs 42]

I would love to see less über military weapons and more "civillian home defence" weapons. So more hand guns, shotguns, hunting style bolt action rifles etc less AKs, bigger rifles, machine guns etc.

I would also like zombies to be able to catch you once your player begins to tire. At the moment you can run forever and never get caught. I think running need to be a short term solution when trying to escape zombies.

Some sort of way for a zombie to grab you when they do catch you, make them truly lethal in a pack like if two or more get a hold of you you're screwed. They stop you moving and have to be shot or physically hit or you'll end up getting pulled to the floor.

l think players with lots of gear and weapons should tire much faster to the point they can only walk unless they start dropping equipment. That episode on the Walking Dead where Shane and Otis are trying to escape the Zombies but they're carrying so much stuff they can't out run them.

[darquan 9]

I created a topic for enhancing the melee system:

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/91420-advanced-melee-system-for-standalone/

Really, there are too many firefights and too few good old baseball-bat-fights.

[lozz08 0]

I suggest that it should be made more difficult to shoot in general, by decreasing the steadiness of the hands of the characters.

[Arctic33 12]

My wishlist, and some hopes.....

I hope...

- they don't make it "too real". The mod feels good, you die fast and getting the drop on people is important enough so you feel a need to be careful and not blunder around. However, things can be too realistic, and you transition from a fun and challenging game into a simulator only the most hardcore want to play, and they're generally assholes to play with anyway.

- along the "too realistic" lines, they don't make running a long distance a chore, and the food/water system doesn't get out of control. I like having to eat and drink, and have died from lack of planning a few times. I simply don't want to spend half a play session searching for food because I need it every 4 minutes.

- the game stops breaking legs for stupid reasons. If rubble and such is included, make it work or take it out. BF3 is a huge game in a well known franchise name, and one of the number one complaints about it is the rubble and terrain don't work properly. If they don't kill you, it takes twenty tries to vault it. Either make it work or leave it out.

Wishlist:

- Good weapon balance. Yes, military grade hardware should work better than the Enfield (even though it's military grade itself....). However, there shouldn't be a God-Gun. Travel back... waaaay back, to Call of Duty. No, not that sissy Modern Warfare crap, the REAL Call of Duty. Single shot rifles with open sights in that game were devestating if the player behind it was actually good (Kar98 anyone?). Sure, a machine gun was generally better, but a skilled player could do work with a bolt action rifle. If the standalone would reward skill over "my guns better so I win:", it would rock. A survivor shouldn't be a victim just because he has "old-school" gear. A good fighting chance should be there, not "Oh Lord, I only have an enfield, I'm a dead man"

- Better weapon design, more realistic fire rates. A skilled marksman can fire a bolt action rifle pretty quickly. An IPSC shooter can blaze with a revolver. The follow-up shot times on some weapons seem to be designed after studying a Special Olympic marksman team. As far as design (or damage, to narrow it down) it would be nice to see the sidearms have their own feel. A .357 revolver packs a wallop, with a slow reload rate and moderate recoil, while the M9 doesn't do as much damage, but has a 15 round magazine to make up for it, and a faster reload. Aside from giving the sidearms their own feel, it would also reward the better marksmen in the game with higher damage potential. Again, back to the "skill over gear" ideal.

- Inventory to remain as it is, with a slot system. A weight system just gets too cumbersome (not a pun) to work with. There is such a thing as getting too realistic and ruining the fun of something. How much does a rotor assembly really weigh? Who cares, it takes X amount of slots. Of course, the inventory system as it stands is a raging piece of crap, but I like the slot system over, say, Skyrim's weight system. You can simply carry too much crap in Skyrim, and in a survival game it only adds to the urgency and decision making when you only have so many slots to load up.

- Bases tough to build. Nothing is more annoying than a game where every lone player has real estate. Important things should take teamwork, such as creating a base for your squad, and the higher teir vehicles (choppers and military trucks). Sure, reward the little guy, but the big stuff should take large amounts of effort by a group.

- Don't add too much crap. More junk means more to balance, and really adds nothing to the game. Take, for example, Fallout 3 (or New Vegas). For a game that large, with such a large landscape and so much to see and do, there are really only a few weapons. I hardly noticed it, I doubt many people did. Why? Because sometimes less is more.

- And if you really want to make my nipples hard, make weapons and attachments different, and add a slot next to the weapon for attachments. Say most M4's you find are bare-bones. However, you can find an eotech or a suppressor (or a home-made job with an oil filter, but that's getting into fallout territory) and attach it. It removes the "My end-game gun is the M4 SD" and adds a "Man, I found my M4 finally, wish I would run across a suppressor for it...." or "All I have is a crappy Enfield, but if I find a scope for it, it won't be so bad"

[JJTopper 2]

If zombies are more difficult to deal with in the stand-alone product, how about giving survivors the ability to harvest zombie rot/juices to rub on yourself? It could reduce zombie threat slightly for a limited time. So if you know you're headed into a zombie-heavy area, you might want to kill a wandering zombie outside the town for a bit of an edge.

Edit: I know Rocket mentioned wanting to get rid of the UI in the stand-alone, so this effect could be applied to the survivor skin visually. Like a grunge/guts smeared all over your character and when it runs out, you look clean again.

Edited September 16, 2012 by JJTopper

[Traveler (DayZ) 27]

People are pretty worried about mostly technical issues. I would add the following, which I just put in another thread when it occured to me that this needs to be put into this thread for the standalone....this is to address the KoS issue which has effectively killed most of the gameplay lately (only fun is fighting squad vs. squad then...and we could do that in Arma, but the challenge of gearing yourself and the consequences of death would be missing)...

"DayZ is a mod for Arma II, a military game for which it was really logical to have your character carry a gun at all times, because hell it is war out there. So this carried on to DayZ. This is the ONE SINGLE MOST COMMON REASON for all the paranoia going on. Why would I be running across a field out there with my rifle even drawn? These things are really heavy, so carrying it on your shoulder makes more sense. You can get your sidearms out if you want to anytime, relatively quick. BUT NOW you cannot ever put both your firearms away completely. Whenever you are discussing something, it is done over the barrel of a gun.

THERE SHOULD BE a way to PUT YOUR GUN AWAY (so you have to draw it again). To not make this an effective problem in Zed-infested areas, drawing your handgun should be possible while running (NOT getting out your rifle, though! That could even take more time...)

So yeah, basically it boils down to: Give people the possibility to express their peaceful nature."

[hoik 415]

You can lower your primary weapon by double tapping "ctrl" (though not your side-arm :() , that way you can talk to someone without looking down the sights of your gun...

Just incase you didn't know :) .

Edited September 16, 2012 by Hoik

[Glex (DayZ) 0]

Em português:

- Um itém muito bom e útil seria o Paraquédas, quando você está com o helicóptero caindo, você aperta Eject e solta o paraquédas.

- Mais tipos de Soda e Comida.

- Mais casas que dê para entrar.

- Mais difícil encontrar carros consertáveis.

- Mais dificuldade em achar armas.

- Um novo tipo de prédio, o Asílo, em um asilo ficam muitas pessoas velhas, e essas pessoas velhas sempre carregam antibióticos e remédios... Poderiam colocar loots com remédios nos Asilos.

# Eu sou brasileiro, não falo muito bem Inglês, qualquer erro, mandem MP.

In English:

- A very good and useful item would be the parachute when you're down with the helicopter, you press Eject and releases the parachute.

- More types of soda and food.

- More houses to give to get.

- More difficult to find serviceable cars.

- More difficulty in finding weapons.

- A new type of building, the asylum in an asylum are many old people, old people and those always carry antibiotics and medicines ... Could put loots with remedies in Nursing Homes.

# I'm Brazilian, I do not speak English very well, any error, send MP.

[OmegaWeapon 3]

What if you could find attatchments for weapons lying around on the floor at the airfield or something. That way if we found like a acog scope we could atatch and remove it from the weapon and place something else onto it.

Another idea i just thought about after seeing a post on this thread by StaggerLee where he said " A skilled marksman can fire a bolt action rifle can fire pretty quickly" this gave me the idea of introducing something like xp for your gun skill so when you first pick up a lee enfield you fire quite slowly and sometimes jam your gun but as your xp builds you get much better with the gun so you reload faster, reduced sway when ads stuff like that. But when you die your xp gets reset.

Edited September 16, 2012 by OmegaWeapon

[birdman 108]

VAC or Punkbuster support (any anti-cheating software).

[iashford 73]

I el

You can lower your primary weapon by double tapping "ctrl" (though not your side-arm :() , that way you can talk to someone without looking down the sights of your gun...

Just incase you didn't know :) .

I would like lowering my weapon to apply to both primary guns and pistols. I hate the pistol aiming animation by itself, so I'd rather have it in relaxed mode when I'm by myself

[CombatWombat (DayZ) 63]

Crafting would be awesome, and I think some items should only be obtained through crafting. For example, does anyone actually have a ghillie suit in their closet? I would think not, but they are somewhat easy to make with the right materials. Of course some materials would be harder to find than others but it would make the game more realistic and give another aspect to it.

[Powell (DayZ) 734]

The following is all I want: 1. Zombies do 1500-2000 damage per hit, instead of the ~400 now. Bleeding is a lot less common. 2. Zombies react to gunshots from further away. A loud gun should attract zombies from across Cherno. 3. Cars a lot more common, gasoline more rare. 4. Ammunition such as 30rnd Stanage and DMR a lot more rare. 5. Found ammunition not always full (ie 17 rounds in a stanage found)

[the horror 262]

Don't know if it's been suggested before, but I have a weapon crafting suggestion.

An Explosive Crossbow bolt!

Could be achieved by combining a M203 grenade + steel bolt + gaffa tape?

Again, apologies if this has been suggested before.

[Ipurgepeople 106]

I'm going to say this now, i'm not going to read through 25 pages of posts to see if this has been mentioned, and besides that, I severely doubt it has been based on the responses I got in another thread in which I mentioned this.

The icons for blood, food, thirst, temp, etc. need to have some other visual indicator aside from subtle color changes. The reason behind this is simply that colorblindness is a rather common ailment. I actually play with two people who are colorblind, and in the new update they've quit because switching to the debug mode to be able to see what their health is at is extremely inconvenient for them.

Therefore, I propose that in addition to chancing color from green to red (Which I might add, are extremely common colors that people are unable to see) that the icons fill and empty based on your levels of health, hunger, thirst, etc.

This allows people that are colorblind to have a way to figure out where they stand before they start passing out randomly, or start sneezing.

[yarex 11]

2. Zombies react to gunshots from further away. A loud gun should attract zombies from across Cherno.

Agreed except that it should attract zombies to place where the shot came from, but not to you (unless they can hear/see/smell you).

[pvtjace 37]

Needs to be a mass more of zombies in the major cities. This will stop people camping them and make it feel alot more dangerous with the zombies in the cities rather then the PVP action

[catface.jpg 75]

http://dayzmod.com/f...-an-arma-2-mod/

-A REVISED HEALTH, STATUS & WOUNDING SYSTEM-

Every single one of these items is incredible. Want. Want them all.

[IncognitoNico 71]

suggestion: maybe if you find a hoe or something you could fuel a car without having to run back and forth filling up jerrycans to fuel it up, with the hoe you would be able to connect it to the tank and to the car and fuel it up

suggestion: having much more items so everything is more rare, that way you would praise a can of beans a bit more, cause if you have a spawn rate based of percentage, you can have 4 item with 25% of possibility to spawn or 100 items with 1% (ofc, some things will have a higher percentage, like the junk or empty cans that will be found everywhere, and some thing will spawn on certain buildings)

[indominator 95]

the devs keeping in mind this is no military simulator, so the fun factor, even from nice achievements like building a nice hideout or fixing a car( just like now), is some that must be always put in their minds. Because simulators are to train people, we dont want trainmente, we want entertainment

also, handmade fire arms, just like metro 2033

Edited September 17, 2012 by indominator

[birdman 108]

Spawn Suggestion: Map Orientated Spawns

Always spawning on the coast brings the trolls. A suggestion to keep the bandit hoards and survivors happy; map orientated spawns.

You don't have a map when you start and you have to work to get one. Until that time you continue to spawn on the coast and fight your way back to your previous locations. Bandits will target you still and it takes a lot of practice to get away clean, but the bandits will have their prey, until. . . Once a map is found you would then be able to choose your next (only) spawn location. However I am not simply talking about just picking a random location right in the middle of the military barracks. Only be able to choose:

1.A location you have visited

2.Your current location.

If you are able to pick any place you have visited in the current life you are rewarded for your survivability. If you have to choose your current location you are forced to use better map reading skills. Simply scroll the mouse wheel and click current location on the map to make the programing easier.

Note:

-You can only do this once per life and can (cannot?) change it until you die.

-It would only work with your map, if you give a map away you lose your spawn point. If they give it back they lose their spawn point and you have to visit that location again (no dupes).

-For fairness the map would have to be lost if you die so that you cant set your spawn for a building, camp a building, loot your body if you die and rinse/repeat. Unless you stored an extra you would have to find another. So if someone were to go to the trouble of finding a plethora of maps they could troll that many times then go back to shore.

Pros:

-Bandits still have n00bs to troll until they can find a map and choose a location.

-Survivors/explorers get rewarded with a solitary location to spawn and start again. Keep in mind they have to find a map again to reset the spawn.

-Encourages having a team with a buddy that will hold a reserve map for you.

-Great risk/reward system.

-Not hard to program if you simply mark current location, harder if the server keeps track of where you have been.

Cons:

-Bandits will always set spawns next to high value military targets (but can only do it once =] ).

-If looting Cherno you would have to remeber to reset spawn or risk teleporting to other side of map and losing your loot to your murderer.

-Bandit teams will stockpile.

[birdman 108]

Less military grade weapons and gadgetry, more civilian arms.

Handguns are available everywhere. Civilian rifles: 30-30, 30-06, 7Mag, AR-15/16, Civilian Market AK. All of these use non Nato standard rounds but are the same rifles used by the military. If the game remains set in a foreign country than use more local rifles: Mauser, Mosin-Nagant, any number of bull-pup european rifles.

And you can still throw in an ultra rare automatic weapon. I don't see a lot of military items being around if I was a survivor of z-day.

[cevune 2]

People are pretty worried about mostly technical issues. I would add the following, which I just put in another thread when it occured to me that this needs to be put into this thread for the standalone....this is to address the KoS issue which has effectively killed most of the gameplay lately (only fun is fighting squad vs. squad then...and we could do that in Arma, but the challenge of gearing yourself and the consequences of death would be missing)...

"DayZ is a mod for Arma II, a military game for which it was really logical to have your character carry a gun at all times, because hell it is war out there. So this carried on to DayZ. This is the ONE SINGLE MOST COMMON REASON for all the paranoia going on. Why would I be running across a field out there with my rifle even drawn? These things are really heavy, so carrying it on your shoulder makes more sense. You can get your sidearms out if you want to anytime, relatively quick. BUT NOW you cannot ever put both your firearms away completely. Whenever you are discussing something, it is done over the barrel of a gun.

THERE SHOULD BE a way to PUT YOUR GUN AWAY (so you have to draw it again). To not make this an effective problem in Zed-infested areas, drawing your handgun should be possible while running (NOT getting out your rifle, though! That could even take more time...)

So yeah, basically it boils down to: Give people the possibility to express their peaceful nature."

Does day Z mod not carry over ArmA2's built in weapon down control? I haven't had a chance to give it a try yet, but using rifles, i have 2x ctrl set to lower weapon. Having someone walk up to you slowly, rifle lax in your arms, muzzle to the ground does a pretty good job of showing peaceful intention, though it could be better, I suppose.

OP: I didn't go skimming through 25 pages of suggestions, and hopefully the main post is constantly updated to sum up this whole thread, so I won't be saying anything that's already made its course...but.... the biggest improvement I think they should make is the body's environmental hit detection. What I mean is that crawling up stairs while prone is a total chore. not even to the degree of "such an activity is generally hard, physical strain for realism", I mean in most cases it just can't be done because you static clip the first step. The same thing happens while going through some doors while prone or crouched. Not only that but some doorways will force you to stand up. The entire point here is this forces you to stand and sometimes accidentally run, which greatly increases your audiovisual signature, and as a result, aggros zombies that you were intentionally prone/crouched to avoid. I've seen arma 3 mentioned several times in your OP, so I'll be going off the assumption DayZ standalone will be made in arma3's engine, and i trust A3's core engine is already tuned up in this aspect. But never having used it personally, I'm still covering bases and pointing out that if this hasn't already been treated, it may need to be.

EDIT: I forgot to mention how frustrating it is that you can't defend yourself AT ALL before scrounging some gear. I mean even a super weak punch / kick system would remedy this problem. To that end, why not allow the flashlight to bludgeon an enemy or something, since the LMB doesn't have a function (or if a punching system is added, perhaps LMB could be a momentary switch to use morse code for long distance communication... idk just tossing out ideas now....)

Edited September 17, 2012 by cevune