More dangerous environment

[ZomboWTF 527]

So, what i experienced in my few weeks of dayZ is that, with good gear, theres not much you can do,

-everything has been explored allready (dayZ db map)

-you can survive way too easy on water source + animals

-zombies aren't hard enough/dont provide any more you'd want

-there is basically no end game except for pvping without reason

what i'd like to have is a new way of danger like aggresive animals like packs of wolfes/bears or other stuff

since it's a zombie apocalypse, the virus could mutate animals in a way too, so maybe mutants would be an option

i collected a few ideas and maybe will make a poll on it with this post

1)radiation:

it would be awesome imo to have some sort of radiation filled zones with warning signs of radiaton around, survival would require a very rare geiger counter to survive, since radiation pockets can wander around and you wouldn't notice being in one until you lie on the floor coughing blood

maybe even getting contamined through it, passing on the radiation to people near you, maybe even getting irradiated when picking up your bodys items

since the radiation zones would kill you and probably your friends without a sign of it before its too late, it would be very dangerous and has no cure

these zones could have stuff like radiation protected bunkers with extreme good loot, providing also a very safe place to camp at

radiation would provide:

-moving pockets of radiation inside a zone -> dayz db map couldn't map them entirely, new exploration elements

-more dangerous environments, place the radiation zones in much travelled areas for example and all around the map borders, maybe even some radiation pockets being completely random

2)aggresive animals

besides having one or two zombies wandering off into the woods sometimes, the real danger in the wild would be something like bears or a pack of wild dogs/wolfes, maybe even mutated animals (i know this sounds like a stalker reference, but the atmosphere of the game was just too damn good)

since animals are way faster than humans, they could even damage you while running, forcing you to stop and shoot them as the only viable tactic

they are also smarter than zombies, maybe they can try to surround you, having movement patterns like the rabbit (damn hard to hit) or destroy some tents

-more random encounters, erasing the feeling of complete safety in the woods

-a new kind of reacting to npcs besides running into a building and using an axe

tl:dr

-more dangerous enviroment to make the game challenging outside of pvp'ing

-more diversity in npc enemies

-denser atmosphere of an apocalypse and survival horror

please post replys, else this will get lost in the suggestion forum

Edited July 24, 2012 by Zombo

[Maximus the Great 34]

Sounds like you want to turn this game into Shadow of Chernobyl.

Edited July 24, 2012 by Maximus the Great

[ZomboWTF 527]

Sounds like you want to turn this game into Shadow of Chernobyl.

no, but i want to turn it into an actual challenge besides having the best gear resulting in instant thoughts like "lets go to XYZ and snipe some people just out of boredom"

Edited July 24, 2012 by Zombo

[Jerichoswa11 2]

I think it would be more realistic, considering the fact that in a situation like a zombie apocalypse, I think governments would nuke infected areas, in turn causing radioactive material to start drifting with the winds, so instead of having random movements of these radioactive pockets, I think you'd even have to go so far as to script the games weather patterns. Then from the weather patterns use them to figure out how the pockets would actually react. Now you could even have a radio as an item, to listen into the weather forecast to figure out if pockets of radiation are moving towards them. I'd even go so far to have a radio station built, so that if a player wanted to they could broadcast, to the server to anyone with a radio, with pre-recorded weather messages being put out every 15 or so minutes. The radio station, could either turn out horrible or awesome, I haven't really thought that out.

[liquidcactus 719]

defentley need nasty animals........and a whole new hunting system

[UmBe 125]

roaming wolfpacks <3

A nuklear powerplant or some stranded/disposed of Submarines laying around so there is a reason for the radiation to be there.

regarding the Subs .. I was thinking something along the lines of the Kola Peninsula

Findable loot:

-high end technical equipment in the powerplant

-technical equipment and some weapons in the Sub

Edited February 10, 2013 by UmBe

[p4nnus 42]

the underground bunkers arent happening in the mod, atleast not in that scale. Im against all of those ideas, except for animals roaming authentically. (and bunkers, if they just could be done in a way that honors the game)

edit: I also think that youre trying to change Chernarus to the Zone. If you come up with a realistic story, milieu and setting for the radiation activity(/possible nuclear plant).. maybe then it would work. (still doubt it) I can assure you, Im a fan of Stalker too, but this mod is about autheticity to a much further point than Stalker, so the ideas dont really fit in DayZ as they are.

Edited February 10, 2013 by p4nnus

[janus0104 212]

I love how the voting majory on all of those can be equated to "no, easy street, please". If there had been a choice for "bunkers with tons of loot and no zombies", I bet that one would have won....

Point in case? Polls rarely work in your favor.

[captainwaffles 41]

I could put a long speech about this but im tired right now so

In short I want to play dayz not stalker

Edited February 10, 2013 by captainwaffles

[enforcer1975 1111]

I'd like more leg breaking doors, gates and stairs so we don't need a non working zed AI. And it will all be random of course. And then we can call it DayB(reak)

[Udak 104]

Disregarding the 8 month necro, that is by far the most complex poll I've seen on this site, ever. OP (that I even doubt is still on this site), have my beans.

/edit Forgot my On Topic Addition! I want those underground bunkers to be FULL of zombies. Literally, no walking space, they're shoulder to shoulder for the entire thing. In a room thats 20ftx20ft, I want 400 zombies, is what I'm saying. I want an excuse to use 40mm grenades and like four or more people using every round of every gun they have and STILL LOSING.

Edited February 10, 2013 by Udak

[decoman 45]

I would stress the importance of any game element to be fundamentally based on it being a fantasy experience.

Anything that offers the player choices is good imo, having the player consciously choosing to react against his/her environment, voluntarily or not.

Anything conceived as being a timesink in this respect is probably bad, having more to do with pacing than fantasy.

Any flashy effect is also bad, having more to do with presentation than making good sense.

So.. I would say that an idea about adding the element of radiation hazard for the sake of it simply 'being harmful' would be a bad idea, particulary any idea for 'random' events being shallow and utterly meaningless in the larger scope of things.

Suggestion:

If radiation hazard were to be added as a more simple feature to DayZ, I think I would insist on such an idea to have: a) base "such an idea" on a the player's need for a thrilling experience, b ) have the game mechanics help the player identify with this particular type of hazard, so that 'risk' is involved more than "it" being forms of traps to pring simply shaving off a blood count.

How to make 'risks' a fun and interesting concept? Maybe there could be a pressing need to survive for some reason, like in the movies, having to become a hero for some reason, becoming a part of "something larger"? Maybe there could be some kind of catastrophic or cascading failure, which would otherwise be an interesting addition to the gameplay without ending up as being an exploit in itself to be wielded against others?

More concrete ideas:

• Perhaps radiation could be used as a means to control an area, like controlling the access to an area? Irradiating certain corridors while leaving others free of contamination? (Or maybe this idea would suck in a certain context.)

• Maybe carelessness in a combat areas would simply come to infer a more dangerous enviroment towards the players (and equipment) in the form of radiation hazard? (Would probably be exploited, or abused unless controlled somehow.)

• Maybe a major point of gameplay would be to simply avoid the effects of deadly radiation? Like avoiding radioactive dust clouds (lethal to inhale), avoiding areas littered with contaminated material (lethal to touch, lethal to ingest)

Edited February 10, 2013 by Treehugger

[shadowjack 254]

What's with the infatuation with radiation? (not just here but may other suggestions) Where did the radiation come from? In all the infected/zombie lore that i have read i don't recall any of them being radioactive. Was the area nuked to destroy the infected? If so where is the devastation? Even a small tactical nuke can have a several km blast radius depending on the altitude of detonation.

For me the whole radiation thing does not fit. Same with mutants. Give me lions and tigers and bears o my :)

[victusmortuus 1074]

Why always with the mutants?

[catweazle (DayZ) 28]

In case of a Zombie or Mutant Apocalypse they would rather use Napalm than anything radioactive...You don't have to destroy vehicles/weapons because zombies don't drive tanks...

The infection thing coming up will be threatening enough I think...when you're infected you can run, but you can't hide :D

[ZomboWTF 527]

Why always with the mutants?

technically zombies are just that, just that they dont have mutations you can see

show me a human that can still walk around without breathing eating sleeping or a functioning blood cycle

or if you stick to the infection rage thingy, how can a human have a disease that agressive and damaging and walk around for more than one or two hours?

zombies are mutants, if eating infectious flesh doesnt affect animals at all, that wouldnt make that lots of sense either now would it?

edit: why did people start to post here again? it's been some days since i posted this, and i think the thoughts about the standalone have pretty much all been accounted for

also to the people thinking mutants and bunkers would be a bad idea: i bet there are a ton of people thinking the map namalsk is great, and fits into dayz quite nicely

mixing stalker and dayz seems to be not that bad after all, and all those changes can be made map-side without changing the entire game as it is

Edited February 11, 2013 by Zombo