TOP 5 Things that should be Tweaked.

[sephirotic (DayZ) 1]

This is not just another topic about a casual idiot who doesn´t like the game and goes "OW FIX THAT WY DONT U MAKE THIS MORE EASIER? THIS GAME TO HARD AND BUGGED HERP DERP DONT NOW WAT A ALPHA IS HURR", but more like a compilation of the main bugs/problems of the obviously alpha nature of the game, not just another pointless criticism.

The suggestion topic has too much garbage, and delusional suggestions impossible to be implemented and obviously too much individualistic to a specific person's taste and preferences, few sugestions are actually directed to the masses and the hardcore community.

I've been discussing these main points of the game with a large group of friends and random players, some of wich are very fond of hardcore games and arma players, like myself, who isn´t looking for ways to make the game easier or gratuitous harding (and unbalancig) the game for the sake of expelling the whinning kids. Let´s keep one thing in mind: REALISM WHILE MAKING IT FEASIBLE TO THE ROCKET TO CODE! PROGRAMMING ISN´T FUCKING EASY GUYS! (i studied basic programming just too know i wouldn´t going to this carrer) So, i would like to extend this discussion with this views even further to you guys of the forum of DayZ.

I understand is a presumptuous topic, and too much extensive, but if you guys have patience to read (most of) it, and forgive my non-native flawed englishwe could have a productive topic. What you guys think?

The idea is that, as we advance in debate, I edit and change the topic and suggestions orders of these topics.

Also a realistic view of programming difficulties should be considered, if you don´t have any idea how programming workds, keep your suggestions short and open then.

1) Zombies

2) Server hoping

3) Zombies Spawns

4) Inventory and storing itens

5) Bandit System.

lets go into details:

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1 Zombies are obviously the main thing that should be improved in the game, after all, it IS an zoombie apocalypse.

There are several aspects of the zoombies that need to be tweeked in our humble opinion

1.1: Speed, The most debated aspect about zoombies is how they move. Most people playing for more than a week have already noticed that zoombies far away will run in a turbo mode till catchs you and then lag behind and the same speed as you. They don´t actually slow donw, thy just try to hit the air and miss, lagging behind for a couple of seconds. This means that if a zoombie ever notice you, you won´t be able to "lose" then no matter what. You'll have 2 options: Try to shoot then down in that ridiculous zig-zag speed, run away and exploit the ladders/mountais glitches to gain distance and try to shoot then down again, or the old exploit trick: Logout.

Suggestions how to improve the zoombies are countless, but is common sense that zoombies should run as fast as the player, or less. The increased difficult to counter that should be obviously: Disable the Disconnect Exploit, Increased Zoombie numbers, and maybe something more that you guys may come with.

1.1.1 I have personally one sugestion: Humans have a base 100 speed + initial short sprint of 120 (this is already in the Arma code) , zoombies have base speed of 87 (due to their putrid nature), and an initial sprint of 110. But a counterbalance system to that, should be added: Every filled slot on your bag will add weight to your char, so you lose 1.5 units of speed per slot, eventually a full Coyote bag will loose you 24x1.5=36 of speed, making you at speed 64, after an initial sprint, if you gain a good 100 meters of distance from the running ord, you'll have only 15~20 seconds before the zoombie catch you. Sounds to hard? Then i suggest adding the feature of dropping your bag while running to increase your speed. Sounds too easy? People will start losing their equipment very fast depending of the landascape and the amount of zoombies they had to get rid off, you'll start finding lost bags everywhere in the map! Also, lost bags mean, lost basic equipment, the game to a full equiped player will start to feel hard again.

Not only the equipment should slow the player down, decreased blood, infection and pain also should, how they would affect? That would need to be tested for balance and would also depends on how hard it is to implement to our dear Rocket. Sprinting speed and duration should also be tweekd.

1.2 Running and Shooting. There is also an obvious problem when running away from zoombies: YOU CANT SHOOT BACKWARDS, or while running. While i do think, allow shooting while running is unrealistic and is an inherited feature of arma II, the only option of stoping, turning around and aiming down the sights, isn´t acceptable since this would always make you be hit by two or 3 zoombies and this means you could die by a single zoombie if you have less than 8k of blood (i know, happened to me once) the time it takes for you to stop, turn 180 degrees and aim down the sight to shoot super-marathon-speed-like zoombies in your direction is, UNREALISTIC. Some ways of shooting, completely poor in acurrancy, but backwards, without the need of stoping completely, should be added. Maybe just allowing to shoot down the hip with no accurancy while jogging backwards could be an option, no one run away backwards anyway because is just too slow.

1.3 Zoombies Perception

Zoombies are very dumb to detect a single human crawling 2 meters in front of then, but in a larger ord in the dark of the night with lots of screams they can still don´t loose sight of you while in chase like it was bright day light. The nature of obstacles in arma also makes you sometimes, standing without reason and attracting zoombies as far as 15 meters away. Sometimes zoombies also shows a high level of perception, even sobrehuman, if you shoot a rifle in the middle of a forest, relocate and stand crouched still, they can still find you no matter how and they know the exactly location where the shot came from. In the matter of sight, some zoombies can, somehowm, distinguish you walking slowly as fas as 50 meters. After all can zoombies really distinguish humans from thenselves that easily? We can notice that zoombies has two states: LURKING/BERSERK. In berserk mode they become super-humans, and can virtually track you anywhere, catch you anywhere, and keep up with you running in any circustance. Again i would like to nerf then down and add difficult compensating by some other approachs, again an increased number of zoombies could be a better aproach. Also, adding random zoombies inland and in woods, that would be spawned as you approach the peripherical zones of the map could be an option. With the previous sprint/speed tweak i mentioned, this would mean that you would be already tired jogging at 100 speed, when you face a new zoobie rested just 50 meters aways in the woods who can sprint up to 110 speed, and would catch you even if you are running.

1.3.1 About the zoombies states: LURK/BERSERK, i would suggest nerfing the berserk AWARENESS, but adding some sorth or intermediante state before going berserk, if you make some step noises, they would move their random lurk towards the noise, and maybe even start to walk a little faster, so you would need to lay down so those zoombies don´t notice you by sight and get the hell out of the spot where you made the noise. By this logic, increasing a little the zoombies hearing capacity without making their go berserk by any sound, could be a good balance of nerfing a little their sight ability. AFter all, if you are a dumbass zombie, and see a silhoute of a man 10 meters away walking slowly and crouched, coudl very well be other zoombie, no?

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2. Disconnecting and Relogging has extensively been debated latter, so not much point in going into details. one of the best suggestion IMHO, is using the already exysting system of tent.

If you don´t logout in a tent, your body persist in the server as longs as 30~60 seconds and you won´t respawn in your exactly logout spot, but in the last place you put a tent.

Some changes to the tent system would be:

2.1 Increase the tent loot spawn.

2.2 They can only be planted away from the cities in a considered safe zone area. Could be a hassle walk 1km away from a city to put a tent, but make sense, since you cant keep connected while not playing so the tent could be easily looted and attacked, so, make you walk to counter that.

2.3 The tent also hold itens, you can choose to never dismantle then so you can have a place to store itens, but since they can only be deployed in plane zones they would be easily spotteable by burglars. If not a big server load, tentes should stay as good as 2~3 hours inplace even after the player disconnects, if the player logs in a different server, then the tent dissapears and go to the other server with the itens.

2.4 After you logout, the tent should stay for about 30 minutes to even more, 1 hour, inplace as long as you don´t enter other servers, so other players can loot then. By disarming the tent you have to take all the itens away from it and carry it somehow with you. Those tents should be persistent if you leave then as longs as you are in the server.

2.5 Currently collecting parts and fixing a car is a very hard thing that is not rewarding enough, if the server crash, you loose all your effort, cars could be also saved if parked close to a tent (or maybe work as tent and saving point thenselves? Problem is, if some player steal the car, how would the "saving spot" be transfered? Needs some work.)

2.6 A player can´t put more than one tent (to avoid server load). If you try to punt a new tent, either you'll lose the old one (with all their items) or simply won´t be able to place the new tent (i prefer the first option)

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3 Spawn of zoombies and loots are very predictable. If a player enters a zone of zoombie spawming, like a small city, you will at first sight, with an binocular look at the city completely empty and would think "hey nice! a safe city, maybe there are people in there?" and then just as you are walking crouched behind a house, sundelly 3 zeds pop out just at your front and side, and instantaneous attack you. Well, that DID happened to me and some friends of mine on the first Dayz. We now know, that as we approach the city, we get close enough, and then wait for zoombies to spawn to finnaly infiltrate the city. This is also a exploiting war of reloggers, to know if there are somewehere already camping in an hot area like the NWAF. If you spawn in the middle of the airfield and there is no zoombies, you know there is no one there.

This issue also make killing zoombies something pointless, because, if there is another zoombie spawn close to ours, shooting would attract those zoombies, empty that spawn and in a couple of minutes MORE zoombies would spawn as if there where noone in that neighboard sector. Killing and cleaning cities become also a pointless activity only to waste ammo, holding a city is impossible unless it is full of players constanting occupying the spawn zones, if one player leave, then zoombies will spawn instantly.

My suggestion and that of some friends is:

3.1 Increase the amount of actual zoombies a city can hold and disable the re-spawn of that city for as good as couple of hours it stays completely empty of players. This means a city that once was hold safe can only be occupied again by zeds if it is abandoned for good. Also, if a player trigger zoombies spawning in a city, kill a couple of then and go away, does not clean up the zoobies that was spawned there for as good as 2 hours, of course, don´t calculate their behavior with no player around, but just freeze their last location and numbers in the script till they are retriggered (dunno how much load this would add to the server)

For large cities that are also constantly present of players like Cherno or Elektro, an alternate to make zoombies always a problem is making zoombies spawning in the close peripherical forests and woods and make then walk in direction of the city, like they were attracted by the noises, flashes and smells of the city. This could give us a nice feature of a unsaid "A ZOOMBIE ORD IS COMING". so even if we secure Elktro, there would be always some new zoobies coming from the woods and, ammunition, to keep then away, would be a problem. Wire-fencing to prevent them entering cities from the sides would make even more sense now, not only to block a camping spot of a bandit.

3.2 Zoobies spawning inland and at forest. At a reduced number, but make they still there.

3.3 Optimizing zoombie spawns. I may have studied programming in my university, but i understand all those ideas can be as good as uselles because of difficult in programing, specially if they aren´t sponsored by a full staff of a software enterprise. So, in practice, simple increasing the Zoobies isn´t a easy task because would give lots of loads to server both in Processor power and bandwidt to process the extra amount of zoombies. thus clever optimizing should be implemented! One idea is peripherical spawning, not in-locus spawning. This way if you are 1km away from a city you can already see with binocular if there are zoombies in there, but further away the map with no players is idle in activity to the server. Dunno if that 1km radius is too much straint already, but some optimal way to improve the spawns is something essential to make the game better. I could only come with this humble suggestion of making peripherical zones spawn zoombies, and not the zone you actually enter like described previously but only Rocket himself can program to his liking and methods and come with an effective way of optimizing any of these suggestions if he finds usefull. This could also work well with putting the tent suggestion of putting relogging tents as far as 1km away from zoombie spawning points (cities).

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4 Inventories Part of this is already explored in the Tent system on item 2, but there is not much to be said in this metter. Inventories are broken real bad, itens keep disappearing, but the bag system is a clever and realistic system, just need a more pratical and faster way to be manageable, if the code permits, and a way to safely store a larger amount of itens from server to server apart of our bags would be a good addition, specially cars, this is already debated on the item 2, tough.

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5 Bandits is a hottopic, but not particularly that important. We have an impasse that is: Skins are an alternative to make people value more thenselves and don´t go on a killing spreed by being completely annonymous, but different from real life where you can judge the carachter or even reputation by a person by its looks, the alternative of regular generic skins is also imperfect.

We don´t have a pratical solution, so is a good thing to be debated in this topic so i can edit and add here.

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Extra itens to be debated and that could take place of some of the top 5.

- Loot redistributated and (little) increased (More reason for you to go inland, add more hotspots in chernarus while decreasing the chance of being ambushed in obviously hotspot of bandits like the airport, etc...)

- Stamina/tiredness system (slow you down to a point you can run faster than zoombies, get you sicken easier and more severe), could make you pass out, decrease your aimed accurancy and in the end oblige you to make a shelter/tent and lay down for the night)

-Meele system. (just a crude one since i believe could be hard to implement since is completely absence from the game, maybe just a slow strike that can slow down a single zoombie by hit could be already an option. Adding axes and baseball bats, could be cool, in a realistic and not OP manned, for a desperate resort agains just a couple of zeds, but we understand that implementing that could be too hard).

TL;DR

read the main 5 suggestions and look for Bold text of your interest and discuss, whatever i could use of it i'll edit and change here.

Thanks for your patience.

-EDIT 1 : Fixed some massive grammar errors and shortened some descriptions to a less massive text.

[warioman91 0]

My issue is with server hopping(and I made a suggestion on it not too long ago), but if you respawn at your tent....well what's to keep you from using it as an insta-teleporter.

(Run half way across the map, find some loot, logout, teleport back to your tent)

What I had suggested was that if you logged onto a new server, the game would not put you in your last location, but in one of those random starter spots to prevent people from hot-looting things like the airfield, barracks etc.

[sephirotic (DayZ) 1]

My issue is with server hopping(and I made a suggestion on it not too long ago)' date=' but if you respawn at your tent....well what's to keep you from using it as an insta-teleporter.

(Run half way across the map, find some loot, logout, teleport back to your tent)

What I had suggested was that if you logged onto a new server, the game would not put you in your last location, but in one of those random starter spots to prevent people from hot-looting things like the airfield, barracks etc.

[/quote']

Hmmm, yes, that is, indeed a form of exploit. However, all the counter-solutions of it also have some disavandtages so concessions have to be made.

In your example, this will make the game extremely focused on the south coast of the maps and northen territories will be kept empty.

We should scattered players more, so one way to counter that, is to add random spawn ZONES across all extremes of the maps and make a spawn zone selectable, because, otherwise, teamplay will be jeopardized by random spawns extreme away from each other.

Other possible solution is to make respawning at tent increase your hunger and thirsty if you logout too far away from the tent.

What worries me more however, is exploting the tents to store itens and decrease the player's character importance. If i die i have all my itens in the tent anyway so i just walk through it. Making the tent go away as you die won´t help, because we'll see a large number os persons buying a sencond KEY for OA to have a second safe guarding character for the tents, while exploring with their main characters.

For balance that, some sort of improvement as you play with your character more and more, with will value the caracters should be added. Something simple as "endurance"; The more exercice (running around) you make, the more endurance (stamina, blood, and decreased chance of getting ill) you get.

Also, BUMP.

damn, so many topics in the suggestion forum, this is a mess, moderators should start pinning the most debated questions about the game, like the 5 topics we have been discussing around.

[sephirotic (DayZ) 1]

Shameless bump.

[bobda 11]

Your idea with the zombies speed vs your speed wouldn't work in my opinion. The problem with the zoombies (lol) is not their speed. They suffer the same problem you pointed out with the "running and shooting" idea. They sprint right up to you, then come to a complete stop, then attack. If your running away you easily get out of their range during their stop to attack routine.

I think having a system to run and shoot would make the players, and zombies, more dangerous. Of course a CoD like system (running and shooting with the accuracy of a proned sniper) wouldn't fit into this game at all. Your gun would be shot "from the hip" taking away any accuracy, as your not aiming down the barrel. It would be realistic however to be able to shoot something that is 2 feet in front of you while running. Maybe not 100% every time, but a pretty good chance of landing the shot.

But this should be represented on both ends. The zombies should be swinging wildly while running, not hitting you every time, and even have the chance of hitting other zombies that have joined the chase.

[vladiman 25]

On the part about players logging out and logging back in later, I agree that their character should remain in game for a while, I think a few minutes would be good and force people to find a safe place to log off, but I disagree with spawning back at your tent. I think people should just spawn at the edge of the town they were in when they login again, or exactly where they were if they were out in the wilderness. This would also prevent people from spawning inside buildings and surprising people who are camping or just looting.