Alpha, spinning your wheels in the same ditch for months...

[semipr0 402]

I know that sounds like an arbitrary statement but when you really think about it, the alpha is stalled and doing nothing.

Right on the website it pretty much tells you what the point of DayZ is, in three pretty easy steps.

Problem is, the "Survive" portion of that simple step process has no real purpose whatsoever. And until the game does, all we're doing is spinning our wheels generating largely the same metrics over and over from version to version.

I mean you can spend the next six months tweaking Zeds as far as I'm concerned, but until the "Survival" portion of DayZ actually sees some level of exponential development, DayZ isn't going anywhere.

My suggestion, of course, revolves around using the tools available within Arma 2 itself, to make survival and the will to survive more engaging and fun than simply going down to Cherno to PK til you die so you can go back to PKing til you die in Cherno....cause thats really sorta where the fun is right now. You can have all the greatest stuff you can find in DayZ but USING it....is pointless, costly, and you're just going to lose it anyways.

Why should I spend an evening putting a downed chopper back together just to have it shot out of the sky by an AS50 or god forbid lose our whole team when the server desyncs and our pilot ends up upside down in a tree?

Why should I scavenge all this great gear, over and over...simply to sit around with it and "survive"? Its far more fun to pick up a 1866 and just kill as many people as you can til you die, than it is to actually try to survive.

So, with that in mind, DayZ needs to port in the Arma 2 base construction system, perhaps using a slightly more interesting method of generating/scavenging resources to afford said emplacements, and use it as a way to give survival some kind of continued appeal. Cause building something in a sandbox is really what sandboxes are all about....building your own reasons and entertainment.

Right now, without any movement towards increasing the "Survival" aspect of DayZ, the actual purpose of the game is largely stalled on step 3, and most people prefer to stick with step 1 and 2, as they're currently far more entertaining.

This isn't to say that there aren't hundreds of people Bear Gryll's'ing it up out there in the northern forests, but sitting around, staring at trees and hunting animals for food tends to loose its shine and excitement after a day or two for most normal people. Especially since the game isn't all that hard to hunt down, and consuming steaks and canteens of water while avoiding all contact with anyone entirely can't be all that interesting as a game mechanic.

So my suggestion here is that you need to stop worrying about the challenge level Zed's present, and spend more time developing additional system features which support the intended point of the game itself.

Step 3 is where the game loses itself entirely, because Step 3 hasn't been given any level of development as of yet. Surviving is easy, its also boring, and there is no feeling of accomplishment from having "survived" at all. If your character is a month and a half old, good for you, just means you picked your fights smartly (or picked your way around them), and spent most of your time hiding outside the map borders behind a hill where no one could see you. Congratulations...you have won DayZ.

[david.mcentee@live.co.uk 46]

verry well described and You used your

Point

Evidence

Explan

well but son this game is going to take time to develope into a.. well a game. they cannot just drop everything and just do as one person asks it takes time and effort to build a game.

I totally disagree with you i think they cçshould carry on with zombies becouse well thats the change between arma 2 and dayz.

Theres zombies...?

[fundan@gmx.de 82]

I feel the same way....

Gearing up is giving you sth. to do. But if you have done it so often there is no challenge in it anymore. Once geared up there is little excitment left.

Edited July 29, 2012 by bonsai

[WhiteTigerShiro 25]

Because heaven forbid that a game which is developed on a person's free time and doesn't earn a paycheck isn't moving forward with the speed and force of a bullet train.

[Skint (DayZ) 138]

Yes, DayZ seems to be on a treadmill at the moment, but what you don't see is the stuff that is going on "under the hood". There are many aspects of the survival game already in the code but not yet activated: story, objectives, missions, etc. I guess these will come in when it goes Beta. Until then we have to make our own entertainment with what we have. At the moment "being entertained" is not the primary objective, but adding functions, ideas and testing is.

[semipr0 402]

Because heaven forbid that a game which is developed on a person's free time and doesn't earn a paycheck isn't moving forward with the speed and force of a bullet train.

I get the intent of your statement but, I suggest you think about what you're saying.

Its well documented that DayZ increased Arma 2 sales by upwards of 500% of post shelf life resales with the emergence of DayZ.

Rocket does work for Bohemia Interactive as of this time.

Rocket gets no paycheck? I somehow find this lacking in logical explanation.

Edited July 29, 2012 by semipr0

[tiptoptopper@gmail.com 244]

I bought ArmA 2 to play DayZ, but after about 2 weeks I've become a bit bored of it. I started to play ArmA 2 online a couple of days ago and it's much more fun.

[*Regulator* Oldtribe 68]

The trick is to start roleplaying and giving yourself some goals: become a bandit chief, start a free hospital or run a church service if that tickles your fancy :D

Try helping out some new players instead of shooting them - you will find that much more challenging and rewarding, I promise you.

-O

[semipr0 402]

The trick is to start roleplaying and giving yourself some goals: become a bandit chief, start a free hospital or run a church service if that tickles your fancy :D

Try helping out some new players instead of shooting them - you will find that much more challenging and rewarding, I promise you.

-O

I'm all for this. But, its hard to role play as a bandit chief without a village to be chief of. A nearly indefensible pile of sandbags and some rather dated tents does not constitute a village.

And I'm sort of all out of charity at this point, I was actually cleaning up all the cat wire and crap in Cherno so new players could actually get into buildings the other day and caught and axe to the back of my head for my trouble. Not everyone is a psychopath, I get that, but, being a psychopath seems to be a lot more fun in DayZ than being anything else....thus the dilemma I present as the posts main argument.

Why should someone appreciate my maintenance efforts so they can have more fun...when they could just as easily axe me in the head a few times and take all my stuff and not need to get into the buildings I'm trying to make sure they can get into? Simple facts are...they don't, by and large. Cause step 1 and 2 are far more fun than step 3.

[Element47 2481]

the medic thread is pretty much proof that gearing up isnt the only goal, and alot of people enjoy the game by not being a backstabbing bastard.. i, for myself, use low tech gear on purpose, and love it this way. i rather have a hatchet and matches than nvg and a sniper rifle which forces me to hunt military installations for ammo.

i dont want to tell you how to play the game - but i beg to differ, as there are more ways to enjoy the game than those you stated.

[snake_eyesF 2]

It's an alpha, it's still in testing. We are the testers so we should be giving the feedback (which is what you've done and good feedback at that)

I don't think it's stalled, they are constantly re working and tweaking things, and yes eventually they will develop a more gripping stage 3.

Personally I like the progress that rocket and his team have done.

And it is afteralll it is a sandbox game and a social experiment; for now it's make your own fun

[Robolord 11]

Whoaa! Its almost...like...its a...ALPHA

Goddamnit for real people, do you think a game is developed within a year or something? What we are playing now is not even 50% of what the real game is gonna be like! But it takes time!

Better spend your time finding out bugs and making constructive posts about something the developers DIDN'T know yet. Do you think they dont know what they're doing? Do you think they dont know that there is no real end goal now after getting all the good stuff. Ofcourse they do! They have their own agenda, and i'm pretty sure player made structures etc are on that. Maybe have some damned patience.

People need to learn what a alpha game is, this game is nothing more but a rough layout with maybe only 20% of the content.

[semipr0 402]

People need to learn what a alpha game is, this game is nothing more but a rough layout with maybe only 20% of the content.

As an independent developer I do find it sometimes hard to tell the difference between ALPHA and RC. I surely do.

Seriously, I acknowledge that its alpha. There is no part of this suggestion feedback that somehow is blind to the fact that its alpha.

The survival portion of DayZ is not something that we should ignore simply because its "alpha", in fact you sort of want to get your balance and content feature system for that in place, in alpha, so you know what works and what doesn't work, come beta.

Spending six months tweaking zed agro and player load outs and being flooded with bug reports about shit that is inherently a problem of the Arma 2 engine, not the DayZ game itself, doesn't do much for making any progress whatsoever.

I'm well aware its alpha, what I'm saying is we need to be moving into further feature development simply so we can test that, rather than consistently, in version after version, seeing just how close we can get to zeds before they see us and how much challenge the PVE content provides in a sandbox environment.

To be frank who cares how challenging the Zeds are? They're not the point. The players are the point, the sandbox is the point. And right now the most entertaining part of the sandbox is the lather/rinse/repeat portion of Scavenge/Slay, Survive is absolutely undeveloped and thats what I'm pointing out, Survive needs more feature content, to make Survive a key element in the game structure.

And yeah, even that, in alpha, is going to be buggy, unbalanced and completely screwed up half the time, but long as we're providing metrics and feedback on it, by beta, it'll be a strong feature of the game.

Nothing more, nothing less.

[WhiteTigerShiro 25]

I get the intent of your statement but, I suggest you think about what you're saying.

Its well documented that DayZ increased Arma 2 sales by upwards of 500% of post shelf life resales with the emergence of DayZ.

Rocket does work for Bohemia Interactive as of this time.

Rocket gets no paycheck? I somehow find this lacking in logical explanation.

Yes, but how much of that boost in sales did Rocket actually get? Rocket's paycheck is for his work on Arma 3 (and/or any other games BIS assigns him to work on). Day Z is not a BIS game, it's something Rocket does with his free time. Thus, it doesn't earn him a paycheck.

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

Yes, but how much of that boost in sales did Rocket actually get? Rocket's paycheck is for his work on Arma 3 (and/or any other games BIS assigns him to work on). Day Z is not a BIS game, it's something Rocket does with his free time. Thus, it doesn't earn him a paycheck.

YET ! ... as you seemed to forget about that...

I entirely agree with the OP as far as gamedevelopment goes, though i do realize that the last 2/3 weeks have been largely about hackers, server hoppers, and respawn abusers ... while i personally couldn't care less about all these problems in an alpha stage, it was clear that everybody that doesn't view this mod as an alpha thought these were the most important problems. But basically, besides the respawn abusers that were messing up life-expectancy and other data, there was/is no real problem as far as alpha testing/development goes with these other two things. Are the things that needed fixing, sure! but in a Alpha screw around phaze they are not, it's the entitled whiney consumer that wan't it's cake before it's baked that caused a shift in focus for the dev team. It's realy a shame in regards to the speed the mod could have moved forward, but with 800.000+ players that all sort of payed for DayZ by buying Arma2, well i can somewhat see how the Dev.team had not choice but to deal with these 'perceived problems' first.

Now where i do agree with the OP is that the survival needs to be worked on, but i do not agree this has to be the 'thriving part', because as the OP clearly analyzed, the survival part is currently easy and somewhat lacking. And there are easy ways to continue the 'experiment', that is by taking the next step in the cycle. Aka, the first thing that was likely created in this mod are the Zed's and their behavior, the next was likely the spawns and some items, after which the User interface followed quickly. When this was done the body functions likely followed, which in turn brought Rocket back to the Zeds and items, to deal with the introduced inconveniences...

And i agree that the zeds can be tweaked till 'the zombie apocalypse' comes, so don't keep doing that, nobody notices any real progress with it and they are not going anywhere soon! They need work but for the alpha they shown their value to the game! So now the next step needs to be made and that's the Items and spawns (re-evaluate your weapons, remove some/add some others), also run through the assets and figure out whether there are more that would be suited as spawns (YES!! Containers, Piles of Rubble, Boats, dead bodies), i would also advocate making more items, even if they are completely bogus now. And find out that these will put more presure on the loot tables, actually making other items spawn less (that is what some people wan't and what could make innitial/medium survival harder), i would also test spawning us with just a bandage, putting backpacks & flashlights more prominently on the loot tables. While the beartrap worked as a proof of concept, 'we' all know the looting can be improved a lot, people are asking for lower chances, but as chances always have a 100% reducing one means increasing another. UNLESS you add more options to drop !! And we all know there need to be more items to drop, so why not just add a ton of stuff that may not entirely have a function yet... atleast the dev team can find out how far they can drive the loottables and object classes, fairly important info i would think. And also effecting the game as already explained ... and just to show that these times dont have to be high tech:

- rags, partial (torn) maps, notes (greets from the dev team), post card, needle&tread, batteries, carbattery, fishing line, rocks, magots, wurms, cookies, candybars, bullits, empty mags, cooling packs, breakable walls, storrage crates, etc ...

And all these items could essentially be used in all sorts of features lateron, but atleast it will mess up the loot tables, and the models and textures are neither

hard nor demanding (easy shapes, and simple textures).

Questions to be asked: So more items means less directly usefull spawns, how did that pan out? did it effect average living time, did it f/e increase server hopping? have 'you' found a better sollution for it in the meantime, what does data say? ... how are the forum reactions, are people still gearing up in 20min, can they find what they absolutely need in a fairly decent time, how about what they want? ... how is the engine holding up, can these items be made 'active' in some use, how easy is it to implement?

Easy step2: Reduce the inventory space, and the toolbelt space, it's not realy important yet what the interface will look like, but just remove some slots. And with it I would suggest adding in 'broken' backpacks of all the types with less slots, and perhaps adding the water canteen to the toolbelt (if possible). Not only do the extra bagpacks put more items on the loottables, further reducing spawns of all items, it will also experiment a bit with specialization and teamwork. If you can't carry all the tools. In step one people already spawn without a backpack, and with broken backpacks added, chances on very big packs will reduce. So i would suggest, to cut the toolbelt in half first, and then at each consecutive patch remove a slot. In regards to the inventory, perhaps remove a slot every patch.

Somewhere people have got to 'break' in their choices, WHAT DO THEY DO!? ... do they whine here on the forum (obviously) but what do the fanboys say, do they agree or see the value in teamwork? do they shoot eachother less now that less space means you may well want a teammate, or do they just stack tools in their backpacks? How far can Rocket reduce our slots till the forum explodes !! ... (my guess is around 4 toolbelt slots and 6 main inventory spaces, with 4 secundary inventory spaces) ... so now what? Do you give people even less space when they start out, how do you give them more space as they progress? Can you do this, by either introducing toolbelt-bags, being a bit more lenient on backpack spawns, can you integrate space in clothing perhaps? CAN you do clothing, and link it to space? What clothing do people start out with, how does that relate to the minimum space that has 'just' been determained... How is the engine holding up with all these different items? and the larger loot tables?

After these fairly easy steps, it's clear that the body functions need a serious update, we need to die of hyperthermia and hypothermia, well just check the 'Full medical'-compilation thread in my signature-link, there is a TON of stuff that can be improved or added, some may also need new items (like splints). But likely the most important, add WEIGHT! or do something about us being able to sprint for miles! We do need a travel mode, that is beyond doubt, but sprinting from zombies should only be possible for a short while, especially if you are packed! ... then again, if you just start you may want some extra speed UNTILL you get packed, and WEIGHT is the perfect speed balancer. And once you add weight, ohw hey, this may well effect the zed's again (it may not), because if we can't run endlessly to shake them off, they instantly become a bigger thread, and especially where you want them to be a bigger thread, that is after you are packed! because if they are a bigger thread you are hurt more, you use more ammo, you need more medical supplies, etc. AND you accomplish this WITHOUT messing with the zeds! The dev's might actually have to tone them down a bit, depending on how harsh they make weight influence speed. This will make them somewhat slower, which will likely make them glitch less because the animation is innitially made for a slower pace. It also means you won't have to make new animations YET, because making those now for faster zeds, that may be 'to fast' if you slow the players down, a waste of time... So we are now back at where we are now, evaluate the zeds, based upon speed ...

Questions to be asked: how did this pan out? did it effect average lifespan, are people complaining enough about it being hard and unfair? how do i need to tweak the zeds to deal with the running, or should i tweak the weight penalty? Do i need to tweak the medical conditions, or are people asking/suggesting more ways to deal with them? How is the engine holding up with all these added scripts? what can i use for the standalone?

In between all this i think clothing should have a good look, it could be a way to integrate some sort of cash-shop, where different designs are sold which have fairly basic equivilents in the game. Never sell the best ingame stuff in the shop, you will ruin the game, but with weight added having 'medium' space available for some cash only means you get into hoarding troubles sooner. And players don't have to buy these clothing items because they can find them in the game as well, If you set up your clothing system well and think of benefits and drawbacks well, it may mean a FTP game with loads of options for fans to contribute to the game financially while not giving them any significant advantage. Heck perhaps you still need to find the equivilent clothing item in the game before you can wear your 'bought' alternative, wouldn't that be fair !

And 2 of these should not even take to long, if the dev team pulls together and helps eachother out! ... I am also still a fairly convinced that letting the community contribute assets to the game in some sort of forum competition could speed up fase1 to lightning speed! ... And while all this is NOT the kind of improvement of survival that the OP meant, as he seems to hint clearly at 'when are we getting our base building!' all of these things are to me atleast, clearly the aimed at start and mid-game experience, aka stretching the survival part into mid-game, stretching out 'gearing up' over time, and step 1 & 2 could likely be in patch 1.7.3.0 (2-3 weeks) ...

After all of this, as i noted, we are back at the zeds, so again the cycle starts, items&spawns (more items available? how about effectuating them), new inventory to include clothing? All these items need to spawn, how does it effect spawnrates... etc and so on, well i guess we can see the cycle going now and we get ever closer to endgame while all the base 'features' get ever more expanded putting more strain on loottables, by now we likely also have more assets used as spawns, just to accomodate all that stuff spawning, how is the game holding up? and how is the community doing?

[paradox. 12]

I know that sounds like an arbitrary statement but when you really think about it, the alpha is stalled and doing nothing.

Right on the website it pretty much tells you what the point of DayZ is, in three pretty easy steps.

Problem is, the "Survive" portion of that simple step process has no real purpose whatsoever. And until the game does, all we're doing is spinning our wheels generating largely the same metrics over and over from version to version.

I mean you can spend the next six months tweaking Zeds as far as I'm concerned, but until the "Survival" portion of DayZ actually sees some level of exponential development, DayZ isn't going anywhere.

My suggestion, of course, revolves around using the tools available within Arma 2 itself, to make survival and the will to survive more engaging and fun than simply going down to Cherno to PK til you die so you can go back to PKing til you die in Cherno....cause thats really sorta where the fun is right now. You can have all the greatest stuff you can find in DayZ but USING it....is pointless, costly, and you're just going to lose it anyways.

Why should I spend an evening putting a downed chopper back together just to have it shot out of the sky by an AS50 or god forbid lose our whole team when the server desyncs and our pilot ends up upside down in a tree?

Why should I scavenge all this great gear, over and over...simply to sit around with it and "survive"? Its far more fun to pick up a 1866 and just kill as many people as you can til you die, than it is to actually try to survive.

So, with that in mind, DayZ needs to port in the Arma 2 base construction system, perhaps using a slightly more interesting method of generating/scavenging resources to afford said emplacements, and use it as a way to give survival some kind of continued appeal. Cause building something in a sandbox is really what sandboxes are all about....building your own reasons and entertainment.

Right now, without any movement towards increasing the "Survival" aspect of DayZ, the actual purpose of the game is largely stalled on step 3, and most people prefer to stick with step 1 and 2, as they're currently far more entertaining.

This isn't to say that there aren't hundreds of people Bear Gryll's'ing it up out there in the northern forests, but sitting around, staring at trees and hunting animals for food tends to loose its shine and excitement after a day or two for most normal people. Especially since the game isn't all that hard to hunt down, and consuming steaks and canteens of water while avoiding all contact with anyone entirely can't be all that interesting as a game mechanic.

So my suggestion here is that you need to stop worrying about the challenge level Zed's present, and spend more time developing additional system features which support the intended point of the game itself.

Step 3 is where the game loses itself entirely, because Step 3 hasn't been given any level of development as of yet. Surviving is easy, its also boring, and there is no feeling of accomplishment from having "survived" at all. If your character is a month and a half old, good for you, just means you picked your fights smartly (or picked your way around them), and spent most of your time hiding outside the map borders behind a hill where no one could see you. Congratulations...you have won DayZ.

I know that sounds like an arbitrary statement but when you really think about it, the alpha is stalled and doing nothing.

Right on the website it pretty much tells you what the point of DayZ is, in three pretty easy steps.

Problem is, the "Survive" portion of that simple step process has no real purpose whatsoever. And until the game does, all we're doing is spinning our wheels generating largely the same metrics over and over from version to version.

I mean you can spend the next six months tweaking Zeds as far as I'm concerned, but until the "Survival" portion of DayZ actually sees some level of exponential development, DayZ isn't going anywhere.

My suggestion, of course, revolves around using the tools available within Arma 2 itself, to make survival and the will to survive more engaging and fun than simply going down to Cherno to PK til you die so you can go back to PKing til you die in Cherno....cause thats really sorta where the fun is right now. You can have all the greatest stuff you can find in DayZ but USING it....is pointless, costly, and you're just going to lose it anyways.

Why should I spend an evening putting a downed chopper back together just to have it shot out of the sky by an AS50 or god forbid lose our whole team when the server desyncs and our pilot ends up upside down in a tree?

Why should I scavenge all this great gear, over and over...simply to sit around with it and "survive"? Its far more fun to pick up a 1866 and just kill as many people as you can til you die, than it is to actually try to survive.

So, with that in mind, DayZ needs to port in the Arma 2 base construction system, perhaps using a slightly more interesting method of generating/scavenging resources to afford said emplacements, and use it as a way to give survival some kind of continued appeal. Cause building something in a sandbox is really what sandboxes are all about....building your own reasons and entertainment.

Right now, without any movement towards increasing the "Survival" aspect of DayZ, the actual purpose of the game is largely stalled on step 3, and most people prefer to stick with step 1 and 2, as they're currently far more entertaining.

This isn't to say that there aren't hundreds of people Bear Gryll's'ing it up out there in the northern forests, but sitting around, staring at trees and hunting animals for food tends to loose its shine and excitement after a day or two for most normal people. Especially since the game isn't all that hard to hunt down, and consuming steaks and canteens of water while avoiding all contact with anyone entirely can't be all that interesting as a game mechanic.

So my suggestion here is that you need to stop worrying about the challenge level Zed's present, and spend more time developing additional system features which support the intended point of the game itself.

Step 3 is where the game loses itself entirely, because Step 3 hasn't been given any level of development as of yet. Surviving is easy, its also boring, and there is no feeling of accomplishment from having "survived" at all. If your character is a month and a half old, good for you, just means you picked your fights smartly (or picked your way around them), and spent most of your time hiding outside the map borders behind a hill where no one could see you. Congratulations...you have won DayZ.

Agree totally.

[Haplo (DayZ) 44]

I saw an intervew in wich Rocket states he wants to implement base building and many other endgame mechanics.

I made a suggestion of my own which details how building a base could be made desirable. You can find it here if you're interested: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/38928-community-minigames/

Edited July 30, 2012 by Haplo

[Wulframm 0]

the game does need a little something. i like the idea of sandboxing. you could cut trees down and build your own bas or house with logs. put some creativity in. if set up correctly this could even be a reason to work together instead of killing on sight. also we could set up groups (i think thats coming anyway though) and have wars of somekind. get some kind of notion of join a group because it's easier.

edit: wow... just read the last reply. whayever i'll leave it here anyway.

Edited December 30, 2012 by Wulframm

[GeneticFreak 23]

Which is why I tried to suggest non-beneficial "levels" which are artificial "proof" of how "good" you played the game.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/112929-a-non-op-pseudo-level-system-not-what-you-think-it-is/#entry1066610

Of course that suggestion got shot down by some people who dislike "fame" and would rather hide in the bushes forever (true survivors?)

You might not realize but, a lot of people do like virtual achievements...

[radrussian1 (DayZ) 23]

The trick is to start roleplaying and giving yourself some goals: become a bandit chief, start a free hospital or run a church service if that tickles your fancy :D

Try helping out some new players instead of shooting them - you will find that much more challenging and rewarding, I promise you.

-O

well said. thats the whole point of the game. if you cant fathom past player killing then there is really no hope for you here. the only difrence between arma 2 multyplayer and dayz (other than the zombies) is that in arma you are locked down by certain objectives. in dayz you create your own.

Edited December 30, 2012 by radrussian1

[colekern 1364]

The mod is pretty much dead for Rocket. He's turned this over to the community now.

Rocket's full attention is on standalone.

[plrsniper 87]

OP insinuates everybody enjoys the same thing in DayZ. While i can agree that the survival aspect of DayZ is broken at the current time (Food and drink is everywhere if you know where to look, hunting is just a bonus) i don't agree with "the only fun is to pick up an 1866 and PK in cherno til you die..." because my fun lies in finding good gear and NOT dying with it while fighting other players with good gear knowing very well that it's you or them once in battle and it takes quite some time to regain all that was lost. (Not talking AK's here...)

Then there's the whole sandbox element of DayZ, you make it into what you want it to be. If you want to pass through all of cherno without being spotted by neither player nor zed then that becomes an awesome minigame in itself. If you play at night and sneak up on other players until you are 1 meter behind them and yell BOO! in direct chat you might find enjoyment in seeing them shit their pants before you break their bones with an axe and run off as he tries to hit you with his lee enfield only to get roflstomped by a thousand zombies.

Or you can kidnap players for sport, enter them into bambi deathmatches as seen on video site XYZ.

Or you can help others enjoy the game, take risks and experiment with other players trustworthyness etc.

Or you can try and collect all the different vehicles in the game in your super secret base...

Or you can force players out of their newfound gear without killing them, piracy can be fun too!

You can drop bambis off at the far edges of the world where they have no idea how to get back to civilization...

There are endless possibilities really!

But aside from all the possibilities you never mentioned (and that players do all the time) i agree with your basic idea, adding more game mechanics to the game. Rebuilding infrastructure, creating items out of raw resources, maintaining your equipment, actually having to survive by finding shelter. Not just when you are logged on but throughout.

Adding features that allow more RP elements to be performed without using bruteforce methods to compensate for the lack of options in the PvP department and so on.

EDIT:

Forgot to mention another thing you can do in DayZ... Form a team of players so you can have gang wars and claim whole cities for your gang/peers/survivors/whatever.

Many servers set up two or more teams on private hives that are meant to battle eachother for dominance of the map or a region of it. Base vs Base warfare etc.

Edited December 30, 2012 by X0TCadde

[GeneticFreak 23]

Currently dayz lacks the choice of what to do with other players other than killing them. Maybe disarm them, or tie them to a tree, or kidnap them, or actually robbing them without killing (having them drop their items). Most of the times this cannot be done cause they will try to shoot at you instead, since you have no means of "non lethal takedown".

So if you meet other unknown player its either awkward moment of shoutings or direct pvp. No "drama" which I think "drama" is crucial in a "social experiment game"

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

The OP posted this in JULY. Locked.