"Sorry you may have been a friend, you just weren't worth the risk"

[Muffinsforever 4]

More zombies, not harder zombies. I don't know about you hard core types, but I carry around a lot of ammo for the day when it's not just 3 zombies, more like 15, that are coming at me. But there will always be that day...

When your gun runs dry and you pulled out your grendaes and pistol and they are still coming, you'll be thinking "Man, someone else would've been really nice to have right now." and then you hear gunfire across the town, and you can just make out someone else in a similar situation, the irony sets in when it's that person you shot at like 15 minutes ago.

XxxChanci was killed

Gunguy was killed

Another idea is to add, sadly, super-infected, but not like the ones we know, something that is a little more friendly to the ARMA engine.

[Siberian (DayZ) 527]

ummm i can tell you right now that as a noob the Zombie threat is brutal hard already..

make Zeds harder and sure enuf ALOt of new players will "uninstall"..

maybe the hardcore players find Zombies easy to deal with but for solo/new players its a serious challenge already.. ramp it up even more and well i think that difficult wall becomes a unclimbable challenge

i think this game needs a shift into zones of difficulty.. perhaps the noob areas have easier zombs or less.. then make the raise the difficulty factor go up from there as you go inland.

[Derpy_Hooves (DayZ) 4521]

Best way to survive is as a group, but again you try being disciplined in a computer game... it just doesn't happen. I try to take as much military i know and incorperate it into squads im in for maximum effectivness. but again unless everyone is trained the same way you are it just doesn't work... But changing the Zeds won't do nothing, human nature is to kill one another, been proven for thousands of years.. it's what we do best!

i've only ever shot 1 friend... and it was a lesson for him, he just bought DayZ and grouped with us, ended up with an AK-74u and coyote pack, generally not bad stuff, but then complained about how easy it was... of course the game is easier to survive with 6 guys on your side always looking out, i find bandits back off from large groups, yes more loot but at the same time how many Bandits are truley Chuck Norris??

So as i was saying i took my friend to the NW airfield and provided overwatch with my AS50, needless to say no one turned up... and he went on a rant on how easy this was.. so i shot him in the head... before he could utter anything on Skype i just said "never trust anyone, rule number 1... now i will gaurd your body... make it back here for your stuff on your own"

i sat watching over his body for a good 2 hours till he hailed that he was there... Safe to say since he hasn't uttered how easy the game is, though it put the fear of death into him by showing him the risks of playing alone.

I think rewarding team players would be a good idea, but i don't know how these "rewards" would be given? higher chance of rare loot near your location?? or maybe a ranking setting... all ideas that generally i would find to be pretty annoying to add to the game.. in the end find some buddies or a clan, or continue being bandit bait! :)

[tufting 21]

Hey, if 2 people enter a certain area, is there twice as much loot around?

If there isn't, it would make sense really so people have a better chance finding what they want.

As long as it's not like markets being packed every inch of stuff... I'm talking 2 or 3 more loot spots.

[Swineflew 480]

The zombie threat is brutal because you're new. If you're being chased run full speed and zigzag near trees or through buildings and you'll lose them without ever being hit.

The only time they're a pain for me is when I want to shoot someone.

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Ah well, some ideas are good, some are poor - the general negative reception tells me this one is in the latter camp.

[Askar 177]

RayPugh made that interesting quote in reply to a different thread.

He got me thinking.

Is the lack of co-op/willingness to wait and see if someone can help you out or you help them out because the zombies are not enough of a threat?

If the zombies were considerably tougher, in a variety of ways, that it became suicide to even attempt to go to a supermarket, hospital or military encampment without colleagues, would that encourage team play? Would that be the catalyst for people grouping up and stop shooting each other so often?

Or would that flood the forums with "teh zombie iz too hard waaaaaa?"

Over to you fine people.

It's not really an issue of difficulty, but rather an issue of trust. There is very little trust still in game, and that causes people to kill each other. Once people have lost trust in the other survivors as a whole, they shoot on sight. It is very hard, if not impossible, for the playerbase to regain the trust of that individual. If everyone suddenly trusted the playerbase as a whole, we'd see a lot more friendlies. There will always be bandits and murderers, but that does not mean that there can be no friendlies too.

Most of the true friendlies are people who haven't been sniped/betrayed/robbed enough yet that they stop trusting the playerbase. There's nothing anyone can really do about the situation unless everyone decides to make a tremendous effort to only play friendly, which probably won't happen. You can, however, trust medics! :)

[Bacon Surfboard 61]

Tool box that takes up 8 slots that you can use to repair weapons/scopes.

Something similar with health mechanics.

Just an idea.

[Askar 177]

Tool box that takes up 8 slots that you can use to repair weapons/scopes.

Something similar with health mechanics.

Just an idea.

That would encourage clan-based play, I don't think it would help the average survivor though. Player A needs player B to use his toolbox to fix his gun. Player B does so but player A cannot trust player B, so as soon as player B finished player A kills him. Or, player B simply kills player A for the weapon, before or after he fixes it.

Things like that only work when people can trust one another to some degree. Clans would do fine with this system, because someone actually can be a mechanic without having to worry about being betrayed. Survivors, on the other hand, are just too jumpy and paranoid due to the lack of trust. The only way I can see this toolbox idea working for the average survivor is if a system similar to the medical one were established, and that just seems like a silly way of going about it.

Nice ideas in theory, but I dont think they'd have any true impact on the playerbase.

[gizm0 96]

That would encourage clan-based play, I don't think it would help the average survivor though. Player A needs player B to use his toolbox to fix his gun. Player B does so but player A cannot trust player B, so as soon as player B finished player A kills him. Or, player B simply kills player A for the weapon, before or after he fixes it.

Things like that only work when people can trust one another to some degree. Clans would do fine with this system, because someone actually can be a mechanic without having to worry about being betrayed. Survivors, on the other hand, are just too jumpy and paranoid due to the lack of trust. The only way I can see this toolbox idea working for the average survivor is if a system similar to the medical one were established, and that just seems like a silly way of going about it.

Nice ideas in theory, but I dont think they'd have any true impact on the playerbase.

basically we need ways to build trust

[Sinoby 39]

Making zeds harder will not solve so-called bandit problem. Bandits will group up and hunt players together (we already do it).

Making loot more valuable will result in morePK for loot, right now if I see a guy with basic gear, 'all leave him alone, but if all loot will be scarce I'll most definitely shoot him for chance of getting some loot.

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

Making zeds harder will not solve so-called bandit problem. Bandits will group up and hunt players together (we already do it).

Making loot more valuable will result in morePK for loot, right now if I see a guy with basic gear, 'all leave him alone, but if all loot will be scarce I'll most definitely shoot him for chance of getting some loot.

It's already been poo pood.

[testsubject81 6]

Get rid of debug monitor or atleast the murder and bandit killed stats.... Show those stats only when you DIE?? or even not at all.

[Ankhenaten 111]

Best way to survive is as a group

But if everyone is in a group, it either doesn't matter or becomes a number game. Or everone is pals with everyone. Desirable in real life, maybe, but not in a apocalyptic mod. If I want to play boring shite, i can do the FB farmyard bloerb.

Groups are an advantage if most play lone wolf style.

Edited July 30, 2012 by Ankhenaten

[CLewis 31]

Ah well, some ideas are good, some are poor - the general negative reception tells me this one is in the latter camp.

The general idea of promoting/rewarding teamwork is fine, and I'm sure that the devs are working/thinking along those lines. I think the hard part of making this work, will be to get strangers in-game to work together. If all teams are created in the forums and between friends, then nothing really changes. KoS would still be as it is now.

[Rauvir 5]

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 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. The downside is that more zombies puts more strain on the server and rocket has been making tweaks to allow for more players and more zombies but until its stable to have 50-100 zombies roaming towns at once for one or two players what I've described won't work.

tl:dr zombies shouldn't be harder but instead be more likely to punish player mistakes through numbers, and it should be rewarding to clear towns with a group for brief safety.

Edited July 30, 2012 by Rauvir

[Butcher71793 12]

I think it would be great if they had an option to "make friendly" then if both parties agree, you wont be able to shoot them, or if you shot at them then it wouldnt hurt them (on Novice, Regular would do 25%, Vet would do 50% damage, and expert wouldnt have this enabled)

haha shot my friend in the head because there was a zombie coming at us and he lagged when i said stop (his player kept moving) and let a round off into his dome instead of the Z

Edited July 30, 2012 by Butcher71793

[a_casual_banana 38]

I've killed people for the reason that they are too dangerous, they have too much. One time, there was a guy with an M24 and a PDW in Balota, and said he was friendly. My 4 friends and I gunned him down, only because it wasn't worth the risk to let him walk.

[Virfortis 111]

Basically, no. This is an FPS and you have a gun, shooting other people is all anyone is conditioned to do. It would take an almost Star Trek style mentality to fix that.

Hey, Picard believed in being friendly, I'm sure he's a carebear, right?

[Ankhenaten 111]

Please play FB farmthingy ... It's safe and nice and you just get fleeced for dosh ..

[septuscap 42]

If the zombies were considerably tougher, in a variety of ways, that it became suicide to even attempt to go to a supermarket, hospital or military encampment without colleagues, would that encourage team play? Would that be the catalyst for people grouping up and stop shooting each other so often?

People are ALREADY grouping. The addition of one more person to your group is NOT worth the risk of backstabbing from a stranger. That's literally what it comes down to.

I might TRADE with a stranger with a buddy on overwatch, staying behind cover, etc, but I simply could not trust the guy to stay with our group and not betray us.

[Acix 132]

Isn't working together a reward? You can get to the spawn points alive instead of dead?

true but eventually people will start shooting their comrads over gear they find, it'll end in tears and I will feast on them

[martin.pleister@gmail.com 10]

What SeptusCap said: I won't trust strangers in my group, in case they might betray the whole group.

Some people in my group have actually done just that with another group: found a clan on a server, one dude joined the clan, gained their trust and then, after some days, passed the locations to the original group, making sure he was in the back of the line and fired away when he reached the point where the ambush was set up. Won us a loaded truck, and more stuff.

When you watch videos from back when DayZ started, you'd see groups of complete strangers going about and raiding towns to kill zombies, because it was all new and people didn't know their ways around yet. But people found out that it's not needed, people won't group up with strangers; why would you put your life in the hands of a complete stranger, if said stranger could put a bullet in your head without even blinking?

The only groups I trust, are people I can talk to over TeamSpeak and preferably already know for some time, or are associated with some good friends of mine.

Mankind exists of egoistic beings: everyone's doing what's best for them, even in a group of friends. It's a part of modern day society and it's reflected in how the DayZ community currently behaves.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Fengshen

[CLewis 31]

What SeptusCap said: I won't trust strangers in my group, in case they might betray the whole group.

Some people in my group have actually done just that with another group: found a clan on a server, one dude joined the clan, gained their trust and then, after 3 or 4 days, passed the locations to the original group, making sure he was in the back of the line and fired away when he reached the point where the ambush was set up. Won us a loaded truck, L85, SVD and more stuff.

When you watch videos from back when DayZ started, you'd see groups of complete strangers going about and raiding towns to kill zombies, because it was all new and people didn't know their ways around yet. But people found out that it's not needed, people won't group up with strangers; why would you put your life in the hands of a complete stranger, if said stranger could put a bullet in your head without even blinking?

The only groups I trust, are people I can talk to over TeamSpeak and preferably already know for some time, or are associated with some good friends of mine.

Mankind exists of egoistic beings: everyone's doing what's best for them, even in a group of friends. It's a part of modern day society and it's reflected in how the DayZ community currently behaves.

That's an extremely negative view on mankind, and I strongly disagree. Some people are dicks in real life, but far from everyone. Most are dicks in DayZ, but it's a game with little to no consequences for being a dick.

[Hawk24 94]

that it became suicide to even attempt to go to a supermarket, hospital or military encampment without colleagues, would that encourage team play?

No

It would only lead to solo players leaving the game and organized groups continuing like they did before

You can't force teamwork, either people co-operate or they don't, game mechanics won't change that