less ammo.. more zombies

[robinhood (DayZ) 16]

just my thoughts on how day z can evolve into something with more direction.

I dont have a problem with bandits i just think at the moment its too easy to be one and theres really no other viable options, if you're a bandit you can have it all, gear kills etc (which is nice i'll admit). but it makes for an uninteresting game to have pretty much one scenario, player sees player, player shoots player, player loots player, moves on to find others.

People seem to be complaining that theres a lack of empathy and co-operativeness and are asking for the developers to basically force it on the player base using pvp restricitons, Which to me is unrealistic and against rockets vision of the game.

There are two ways in which, i believe, the game can retain its tense bandit wild west style, whilst fostering a co-operative survival aspect and here they are.

1. Increase the number of zombies and introduce zombie hordes - i think this would be a step in the right direction, introducting hordes of relentless zombies which are next to impossbile to escape without help or a vehicle. imagine walking through cherno and seeing a player run around the corner with 50+ zombies on his/her tail. What choice do you have, kill him and pull his 50+ zombie horde persuers (and inevitably die yourself) or take the chance, team up and spend the next hour fighting for your life with a complete stranger. Then if it makes you feel better after the hard work you can always shoot him the back afterwards. but it makes for a somewaht fun scenario where the dominant theme is survival in a sense that you atleast have to analyse the situation rather than shoot on sight and waste possible assistance and precious ammo. which leads me to my second point.

2. Decreased Ammunition - This is one thing i feel strongly about and could tip the balance of bandits against would be saviors. The amount of amunition available could be dramatically reduced to the point where you see a player and say to yourself "right, is it worth killing him and wasting one of my 12 shots on the chance he might have ammunition for my particular weapon?" not to mention the fact you might attract a difficault zombie horde and have to waste every shot you have on a bad decision. Maybe if the only ammunition available was within an area of zombie horde madness you might consider teaming up, tipping the odds in your favour and increasing your sucess rate in getting not only ammunition but food supplies and added security through a concertaed team effort (which pretty much represents the only way to take on a zombie horde - help!)

i guess what it comes down to really is that i think the game should be even harder, in every sense. More zombies! less firepower! Being a bandit should be risky busness but with extreme high rewards it should be a gamble every time, being a helper should be something which happens almost as a split second decision when you and another are placed in a situation where without co-operation you're both certain to die, but, when done correctly the rewards are just as high. I think we'll see way more interesting situations arise from this. Car chases, horde zombie ploughing madness.

Make the game less forgiving and eventually strangers will start to pull together.

These are just suggestions btw, feel free to hate and flame.

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Or you could just go and play Resident Evil/Left4dead...

[mythTECH (DayZ) 80]

Or you could just go and play Resident Evil/Left4dead...

No.

I agree to this, ammo is waaaaaaay to common, and zombies are waaaaaaay to rare. Have my beans sir.

[Bacon Surfboard 61]

I bandit all day long and support less ammunition.

I think all sniper rifles (all of them) should be spawn reduced by 75% and all ammunition dropped by 50%.

In 20 minutes I'll nearly always have a Lee Enfield with between 40-70 rounds (if not an AKM or something) and an m1911 with 28 rounds or more. I think this takes away from the game as a whole.

INB4 moaning, I am a Bandit, I love the bandit life - it just doesn't MEAN anything to be a bandit at the moment.

[jubeidok 495]

just my thoughts on how day z can evolve into something with more direction.

I dont have a problem with bandits i just think at the moment its too easy to be one and theres really no other viable options, if you're a bandit you can have it all, gear kills etc (which is nice i'll admit). but it makes for an uninteresting game to have pretty much one scenario, player sees player, player shoots player, player loots player, moves on to find others.

People seem to be complaining that theres a lack of empathy and co-operativeness and are asking for the developers to basically force it on the player base using pvp restricitons, Which to me is unrealistic and against rockets vision of the game.

There are two ways in which, i believe, the game can retain its tense bandit wild west style, whilst fostering a co-operative survival aspect and here they are.

1. Increase the number of zombies and introduce zombie hordes - i think this would be a step in the right direction, introducting hordes of relentless zombies which are next to impossbile to escape without help or a vehicle. imagine walking through cherno and seeing a player run around the corner with 50+ zombies on his/her tail. What choice do you have, kill him and pull his 50+ zombie horde persuers (and inevitably die yourself) or take the chance, team up and spend the next hour fighting for your life with a complete stranger. Then if it makes you feel better after the hard work you can always shoot him the back afterwards. but it makes for a somewaht fun scenario where the dominant theme is survival in a sense that you atleast have to analyse the situation rather than shoot on sight and waste possible assistance and precious ammo. which leads me to my second point.

2. Decreased Ammunition - This is one thing i feel strongly about and could tip the balance of bandits against would be saviors. The amount of amunition available could be dramatically reduced to the point where you see a player and say to yourself "right, is it worth killing him and wasting one of my 12 shots on the chance he might have ammunition for my particular weapon?" not to mention the fact you might attract a difficault zombie horde and have to waste every shot you have on a bad decision. Maybe if the only ammunition available was within an area of zombie horde madness you might consider teaming up, tipping the odds in your favour and increasing your sucess rate in getting not only ammunition but food supplies and added security through a concertaed team effort (which pretty much represents the only way to take on a zombie horde - help!)

i guess what it comes down to really is that i think the game should be even harder, in every sense. More zombies! less firepower! Being a bandit should be risky busness but with extreme high rewards it should be a gamble every time, being a helper should be something which happens almost as a split second decision when you and another are placed in a situation where without co-operation you're both certain to die, but, when done correctly the rewards are just as high. I think we'll see way more interesting situations arise from this. Car chases, horde zombie ploughing madness.

Make the game less forgiving and eventually strangers will start to pull together.

These are just suggestions btw, feel free to hate and flame.

I do like what you're saying, but I don't think you can have both. If you go with an inescapable hoard then you kind of need to provide the the tools to battle with 'em. No matter what people want to call it, it is a game, a way of entertaining ourselves. I like the idea of a higher concentration of zeds, but maybe there are technical limitations there. Ideally I would want to see large hoards congregated outside hot spots. Do you try and shoot your way in or sneak in? Are there any diversionary tactics you can utilize? Another thing that would be nice concerning the zeds, is an earlier spawn trigger. I think if the town is visible, the zeds should be visible. It's just kind of lame that I can scout a town from a distance and if I don't see any zeds I know there is no human threat. Again, prob a technical limitation and a different discussion all together.

Now, the ammo thing, I am with you 100%. Been saying this since day 1. And I'm sure the intention is there, but nothing can be done until they can fix the issue with mags refilling with each new log/skin. You can see the steps leading towards this in the patch change lists, so I'm sure it's going to get there eventually. Once they do get there, I think something that would be needed would be the ability to refill mags with rounds from other mags. One scenario would be taking a 3 round Mak mag and combining it with a 4 round Mak mag to make a 7 round mag. Another could be taking the rounds out of your Mak mags to refill a Bizon mag(I believe they use the same ammo, no?).

Edited July 30, 2012 by JubeiDOK

[misho_p@hotmail.com 31]

I agree on the ammo part, it is far to easy to get alot of ammo and with the unortunate duping going on it's like you have an infinite stash in your tent. I remember my first night playing on an expert server, there was barely any weapons or ammo anywhere and I teamed up with a group of 4 and we were all searching for ammo for the ONE! gun we had in the group. One of the best nights in DayZ.

[Boonies 6]

Funny you should say that Gogs, just dusted off L4D2 last night - loved em both btw - but it felt somewhat counter to the gist of the OP as you're suggesting - I know the buzzword "horde" brings L4D2 to mind, but I personally lean more towards the guts of what I THINK he's getting at - bump up the severity of the PvE threat to a pretty serious level by both increasing the zombie threat and reducing availability of uber weapons & ammo, and mere survival becomes WAY more relevant. The knock on effect of which MIGHT be to make CoD style farm-hides-for-a-bit, grab-snipes, get-your-long-range-gank-on tougher to achieve given the lack of weaponry and the increased time needed to devote to just getting munchies & bevvies enabling you to surivie long enough to get your bandit knick-knacks.

I'm a pve-er meself but given Rocket's stated intent of sandbox, banditry clearly has a place in the game. I'd just like to see the banditry to be a bit more "relevant" - that is to say for eg, given the lack of uber weapons & ammo and the far far harder time of surviving solo against uber zeds/, banditry becomes more of a "ill team up as long as it takes to get the goodies - then as we're evaccing ill hatchet your legs, grab your pack and do one over the fields as I hear you getting nommed in the background by zeds with a big ass grin on my face", The run-around-for-a-bit, ooh, dmr - bandit bandit bandit doh, anti-bandit, respawn, run-around-for-a-bit, ooh CZ... cycle would kinda break that immersion for me were I playing as a bandit meself, but its horses for courses I guess :D

BTW I wouldnt expect any of this to be implemented - as Ive said in a post elsewhere, no game can be all things to all people, and a full-on hardcore survival z-mmo that is massively punitive would be about as popular as the clap to the majority of the casual gamer player base, as much as I personally would love it! (the game, not the clap - I think). So I think they've done a reasonable job of making this appeal to as wide a spectrum of chaps and chappesses as possible, and as the Rocket says, at least theyre collating a lot of feedback by the torrents of rage - sorry, constructive feedback threads on the forums (:D) in order to fine-tune that balance :D

[jmido8 62]

Agreed. Game needs like 3-4x the number of zombies it has now. If i'm just running full blast through town, l want a 30 zombie hoard chasing after me. Zombies also need to be more dangerous in general. I shouldn't be able to run from zombies forever, I should have to think fast; either find cover quick or make a stand and shoot them down. Game also needs 50-75% less ammo for most guns. Even military guns like the m16 and akm are really easy to get with like 8 mags within an hour.

Finding ammo should be exciting and choosing how you use it should need more consideration. Would you really waste your bulltes shooting an unarmed player if ammo's really hard to find and aggro'ing a mass of zombies was deathly dangerous?

Edited July 30, 2012 by jmido8

[envy9o9 3]

If there are increased zombies the urban situation is going to be ridiculous, the zombies already have ridiculous LoS, to have even more will make it worse. It doesn't matter how common ammo is, it matters how rare the weapon is. The fact that it's nearly impossible to stealth in urban areas any more mixed with additional zombies and less ammo would be catastrophic.

Edited July 30, 2012 by Envy

[Boonies 6]

I suppose its all relative to what you want - its funny, at the moment I have no problems at all sneaking around without peeing off zeds in heavily built-up areas, so I guess its a matter of level of expectation; if you're looking for a game where its really tough on the pve front, you wont mind spending best part of half an hour infiltrating a small hamlet or something. If (more realistically) however you want a game where you can hop on, nip around town relatively fast in a crouch without aggroing stuff so long as youre relatively cautious, then the game as it stands I think is about right.

So I dont know if its fair to say "ridiculous" - its all a question of what you personally want :D I think there's probably a camp at one end of the spectrum that wants it painfully tough - where every time you see a zed you're thinking "oh shit" and the VERY last thing on your mind is active engagement - at the other end of the spectrum are folks who want it very easy, very accessible and very forgiving - and then the majority of the gamers falling somewhere in between. We're all obviously sitting at different places on that line, the dev team obviously just listens to the general groundswell of opinion and tries to figure out where the top of the bell curve fits on the line and how to tweak the values to achieve that level of difficulty. Which judging by the various threads they seem to be doing pretty well, as there are two very vocal and fairly balanced camps at each end of the argument although they do seem to be leaning in the direction of the "increase pve difficulty" a bit imo :D

[jmido8 62]

If there are increased zombies the urban situation is going to be ridiculous, the zombies already have ridiculous LoS, to have even more will make it worse. It doesn't matter how common ammo is, it matters how rare the weapon is. The fact that it's nearly impossible to stealth in urban areas any more mixed with additional zombies and less ammo would be catastrophic.

Change zombie aggro, add in shitload more zombies. Problem fixed.

[Bacon Surfboard 61]

Change zombie aggro, add in shitload more zombies. Problem fixed.

Cue a billion QQ in the forums and server crashes - I very much doubt they can just "Add more Zombies". The server side install is weak as is at the moment.

[Dalfin 10]

I have noticed that zombies spawn MORE now than they used to, and im loving it. I was at a stable just south of Vybor last night riding a bicycle. After about a minute i had 20+ zombies on me. They have changed they zombies entirely IMO. Now they aggro from insane distances, and spawn twice as many as they used to. I used to see 3 group spawn at most houses and deer stands, but now i witness two spawns with 2 or 3 zombies. So, i think they have changed zombies. I know i can't be the only one who has noticed this!

[Siberian (DayZ) 527]

disagree on less ammo = less bandits..

i think less ammo means more likely to bandit kill.

[ajrunke03@gmail.com 30]

As it is now, I don't shhot infected anymore. One Enfield shot and infected will keep pouring at you. I shot an infected from an apartment and the infected kept on coming, no end in sight. I shot and shot and shot...it seemed like they kept respawning or something so I just disconnected. After that incident and a couple other ones, I don't even bother to shoot infected anymore, I just run and run.

[KarinjaNinja 80]

You will be getting your wish with "less ammo" in the upcoming patch. They are fixing the glitch when you sign out/sign in your ammo gets refilled. This will put a harder difficulty into the game which i like.

[Aeoneth 163]

disagree on less ammo = less bandits..

i think less ammo means more likely to bandit kill.

Only until people learn that NOONE has any ammo. Bandits can kill everyone for their gun and oooh whoopie they just wasted ammo because the guy they just killed has none / a weapon with less ammo than theirs.

In any event this is an alpha for a reason. It is my personal belief that Rocket should enact changes such as these along with a master server reset so that everyone can see what its like to be desperate and destute. (would also help with the mass stores of ammo from the rampant duping, at least for a while)

Also removing the auto refill glitch (contrary to what everyone believes) will not fix the massive amount of ammo. It's so common that you can easily find more ammo lying around than you will get for abusing the glitch.

Zombies are not hard enough either. However right now its a very binary state. Either they are on your ass hoofing it at top speed or they are standing around with their fists up their noses. I think rocket needs to add a middle state where they shamble towards you and when your at the edge of their view it triggers this state. Then once you get closer to them it trigger the ASDF RUNN FOREST RUNNN state.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

* [FIXED] Ammunition amounts not loaded in properly (Now records used ammunition correctly)

[ripbabyg@hotmail.co.uk 125]

Less Penis more pussy.

[Dregdor 11]

but... that means that i cant just shoot about 80 rounds of my MK48 at random people and giggle as they freek and run...

[Rauvir 5]

I just posted this on a different thread but I think its relevant to the discussion here:

"Most of you guys are right with regards to zombies, the problem is that as a fresh spawn you have nothing to lose so you can just rush around towns for gear without a care in the world. Dying wont cost you anything at that point and thus you don't care.

Once you have a gun and some beans/drink maybe a morphine stick its all too easy to book it north. But that's it that's the end of the line in many ways. The only things you can do from there are get more beans, get a slightly better gun occasionally or turn to banditry. Otherwise all you'll really worry about is the spazz zombie and bandits.

These problems largely originate from the fact that once you obtain a pistol and enough ammo zombies are manageable and even if you screw up and aggro 15 into the super market, with careful aim, you can manage them easily with headshots.

While individually the zombies are actually a threat provided they can hit you a few times, most players don't allow that to happen. Once in town shooting off a few rounds may attract zombies but as long as you are shooting well or zig zag through obstacles you can probably lose them all.

So while zombies are individually 'balanced' and I use that term loosely, there isn't much punishment for the player making mistakes. And by mistakes I mean things like attracting attention, running, shooting loud guns.

Because of the relative safety(read 'little to no consequence) of solo play especially early in your spawn, there isn't that incentive to group up with another player to attempt several strategies such as one person distracting zombies while one loots, or the simple I'll watch your back, or sneak in together, etc, etc.

The other factors contributing to the lack of coop really stem from how zombies work and engine limitations according to what I see rocket posting. Namely, zombies tend to spawn very close to you and in a limited number ranging from 5 to 10 in a small area, occasionally you get 10-25 when you are overlapping several areas at once. When these zombies are killed they also tend to respawn in one or two locations fairly quickly depending on the server, and these zombies are all scripted to walk towards your movement path from the get go.

This means that intelligently planning an entrance to town is useless as zombies can spawn anywhere and beeline for you, also clearing an area of zombies slowly and carefully doesn't reward you with temporary safety(more in depth in a minute), and making mistakes when aggroing zombies generally don't lead to immediate death(death for me usually comes from zombies going through walls, or instant bone breaks from random geometry, or glitchy ladders)

Some solutions to fix that would be to spawn a LOT of zombies in town no matter where you enter from and have them have a 2 or 5 minute respawn timer or so, meaning that you will likely try sneak through town, shooting guns will likely pull 20+ zombies to you which is VERY hard to deal with even with a ton of ammunition (here better guns also means better survival, providing SOME incentive to get better guns instead of snipers)

or having a group of 3-10 with lots of guns will reward you with a safe to loot town for the next 2-5 minutes or so. So players will have to make a choice between blowing ammunition, sneaking, teaming up and since ammo is somewhat limited for the most part and sneaking is time consuming and still dangerous with more zombies patrolling, teaming up is a far more lucrative and enticing option.

Granted this makes spawn even HARDER now, but that could be potentially remedied with a makarov and 2 clips again."

[Ironside (DayZ) 4]

It already takes way too much ammo to kill zombies unless 1) You kill them while undetected, 2) there's a building to run into to force them to walk. It seems that recently zeds have been seeing me from farther distances even while crouch walking and then they haul ass like a track star on meth while zig-zagging to dodge your fire. If I had less ammo I would be forced to just stay in the woods and hung goats.

[Hinaru 96]

I think it's ok how it is right now.

I don't have that much ammo for my L85A2 AWS and my M4A3 CCO.

Currently ammo shouldn't be a problem, if you log out and relog, the whole magazine is back. So you just have to logout before the half magazine is empty and u'll get a full one again. It's not like I'm doing this, but it would be easy to never run out of ammo in that way.

Hihi (:

[deathwizard77@gmail.com 28]

I certainly agree with the Ammo being really reduced. Although as already stated first need to wait for the auto-refill of mags to be fixed. I am all for making zombies more of a threat but fact is most of the servers can not handle more zombies. Going through elektro with double the zombies would be near impossible just to find space to crawl between. I would rather see zombies be more dangerous, maybe do more dmg, or something. I am all for possibly upping the concentration of zombies around military spots only. Make it so sneaking into stary/NW/NE/Ballota is not possible you have to shoot your way in (although you would have to stop the instant re-spawning that sometimes happens now. Overall all for making PvE more dangerous and do like the theory that if you make PvE dangerous that PvP will be more of a risk for the bandit.

[Rauvir 5]

I certainly agree with the Ammo being really reduced. Although as already stated first need to wait for the auto-refill of mags to be fixed. I am all for making zombies more of a threat but fact is most of the servers can not handle more zombies. Going through elektro with double the zombies would be near impossible just to find space to crawl between. I would rather see zombies be more dangerous, maybe do more dmg, or something. I am all for possibly upping the concentration of zombies around military spots only. Make it so sneaking into stary/NW/NE/Ballota is not possible you have to shoot your way in (although you would have to stop the instant re-spawning that sometimes happens now. Overall all for making PvE more dangerous and do like the theory that if you make PvE dangerous that PvP will be more of a risk for the bandit.

making the current zombies hit harder will not make it more difficult, rather more frustrating, they already ignore walls, teleport at will, break bones, slim chance to insta ko from 12k life, give you infections, run at 31kph(tested with car and running zombie). And you want to make them hit even harder when they do. And even then it is extremely simple after a few days of playing arma to headshot zombies and ammo is not THAT plentiful for guns other than the lee/akm/ak74 and m1911/revolver.

Also as I said zombies currently beeline to your movement paths which makes you think it'd be hard to get around, if they roamed properly and if you're in any way actually practicing your sneaking you should be able to get in no problem, it'll just take time and planning. As I said, with the current beeline to player area script you can't plan and it makes it feel like there's a few zombies in town when its really just the ones you can see and maybe one or two others.

So increasing the damage on them wont do much other than frustrate new players and occasionally annoy the experienced ones, and this brings nothing new to gameplay.

of note: found some european servers that have been messing with zombie spawns to make more spawn per player 30 to 1 ratio it looks like and respawn time was about 10 seconds, town was a whole new ball game for me and my 2 buddies. We had to grab our Mk 48 from the car and use it for once.

Edited July 30, 2012 by Rauvir