After playing the game I have a few suggestions.

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

Hi all and Rocket.

I've done a lot of work on game design and flow in the past, and I really appreciate what you've done here. I've been playing the game in a number of different roles and really trying to get my head around the end game as well as the beginning.

The answers to these problems are all ones that tweak or add features, but don't interfere with player choices (the biggest problem with the bandit skin).

1. Give greater risk/reward on NATO weapon spawns.

The current problem in the search for weaponry is that the size of the guns in the back pack, plus the ammunition sizes and scarcity means that receiving a weapon that will be good for more than thirty minutes is incredibly low. I'm not suggesting a drastic increase in spawn rates etc, but I am suggesting that you remove rubbish and underpowered spawns from spawn chances in militarised zones. Similarly, add a single military spawn, with military zombies, to some of the humvee wrecks and other military apparatus that can be found around the map. Give the higher end weaponry a chance to land into the hands of random players, while assuring that those who treck to the airfield will be able to find something worth their time (and usually life). Perhaps two mags per gun spawn would be generous enough. Simply, the amount of times I've sat at NE airfield for two hours waiting around while empty G17's and single mag AKM's spawn amongst a great deal of rubbish and whiskey bottles has lead me to question the viability of end game. Reasonably, there is no reason I should ever, at present, forgo my Winchester or my CZ for any NATO or automatic weapon. The stopping power is often not as good, the ammo count ridiculous in scarcity and I have a high likely hood of dying when trying to obtain it.

2. Diversify endgame content with survival tool spawns.

At the moment, you're really trapped to catering for a few basic player wants in terms of rewards. In order to increase map travel it would be wise to have certain items spawn only in some parts of the map. For instance, the only camping shops in Chernarus might be located in Dubrovka and Petrovka. Within them would be three generic supply spawns and two focused spawns that yield the respective drop chances: tent 20%/GPS 30%/map 5%/compass 5%/binoculars 5%/NVG 15%/cross bow 20%. Simply adding those two new shops would diversify player travel across the map to a large degree, giving them a sense of direction, but also of danger. It would also increase party tensions, as a rare NVG spawn might force betrayals in the group. I must also add that the respawns should occur only every thirty minutes or so in order to add tension to the enterprise, and ensure they're not easily obtainable.

3. Reward exploration, intuition and memory in placing several reliable garages around the map.

On the above note, I think it's prudent to suggest the increase in spawns for vehicle related components in the rare gas stations around the map. The south is well suited, but the north has few vehicle depots. It would be wise to limit the better vehicle spawns the further north you go in order to balance the map out and take PvPers away from the coast. Placing bike/car/bus spawns at a few choice garages (while keeping the random ones we have at the moment), you're rewarding player memory and intuition and encouraging a great deal of travel. If you would like me to assess each town individually as to what and where vehicle componentry/type of vehicles should spawn, I'd be very happy to go through it. In any case, by doing this you'll be lengthening the flow of play through the entire map. New players will want to try to survive the cities to get a few quick supplies, while Bandits and experienced players will want to head north to secure different vehicles and survival equipment. Again, it's another way of allowing different interested parties to control resources. It's essentially a high risk puzzle that is completed quicker with friends.

4. Greater reliance on water.

Greatly lower the amount of soft drinks available in the wild. Force the player to find their own water. It's an elegant system with the bottles, but it's also under used due to the high availability of soda.

5. Resource denial.

To this degree, allow players with a raw meat in their pack to have the choice to poison a water source (effective for five game hours). It adds a huge new dimension to survival, and player morality choices. It also presents the interesting tactical use of water as a method to cripple your enemies and to discourage people from following you. Poison effects should be curable by painkillers (and perhaps morphine if you've been poisoned for a while). It should be a threat. Would also give extra dimension of functionality to raw meat.

6. Extend value of water and potential gadgetry.

Allow players to boil water over a fire in order to purify it. Would give extra functionality to matches.

7. Increase the reward for random exploration of the middle towns and settlements.

Create instances of single or double NATO spawns near humvees or military wrecks near towns or on the roads. I'd be happy to draw up a detailed spawn flow of Chernarus that will balance the map (in terms of not having some places be completely redundant).

8. Give the ability to identify as friendly, to signal, or to mislead.

Adding a military whistle item pickup would be really useful for a player to directionally signal over a large area (perhaps 2-300 meters and fading to silent at 500) in a certain sequence or to attract zombies.

9. Lower the risks in anti-bandit teamwork via short wave radio.

Add CB radios as an item, allowing you to communicate directionally over 1 km or so. It would allow for random players to more effectively coordinate a bandit hunt without having to implicitly trust each other, as well as allow for some great roleplaying or entrapment. Attempting to locate the origin of a broadcast could be very tense and satisfying. I would have the strength of signal die out at 1km-1250 being silent.

10. Allow for more universal signalling.

Being able to fire flares into the sky would be a great addition in allowing you to see the landscape around you, as well as signal your position to friends (and of course enemies).

11. Differentiate damage taken.

Please add some dramatic bloody claw or fracture marks on the screen to denote zombie swipes. At the moment, it is hard to know exactly what is damaging you, especially due to the weird hit radii of the zombies. The white flash is also a bit insipid for a zombie attack.

12. Increase sound ambience and tactics when approaching a town.

Add noise makers to different areas in the town. It could be quite cool to turn a factory loudspeaker on to an old Soviet song in order to draw the zombies out of the town (without using ammunition). It would also be very creepy to be in a town by yourself and suddenly hear the old working song come on in the factory on the hill. (The power source for the factory or whatever would be justified as an old generator.) You could have an individual song for different locations on the map as an easter egg for the player to find. I'm sure you can see the millions of ways a player might use this to his advantage, or have it used against him to his disadvantage. It would also add ambience to the general soundscape of the game.

13. Allow players to revive recently fatally wounded players.

Taking a leaf out of Project Reality's book, it might be nice to have a give up or hold out option for dead players. A solo player might just respawn, while a player in a group might be revived, given a transfusion, morphine, pain killers and a bandage in order to bring them back to full health. Basically, having major medical surgery in the field with the right supplies. I'm sure you can imagine the interesting scenarios and sacrifices/decisions a group of players might have to make in order to preserve their team. While it would be preferable that the player's stats remain on revival, the death would still need to count as a stat start-over, and as a murder or bandit kill on the gunman's debug monitor.

14. Allow intuitive and natural bandit tracking through victim's corpses.

On inspecting corpses of players, it would be good to have a feedback such as "Still warm." "Blood is still running from the wound." "Cold." "Rigor Mortis." Still warm would mean the player has been dead for ten to fifteen minutes, still bleeding would mean they are revivable with defibrillators (sustaining) or an epipen (one time use) and have been dead for anywhere up to five minutes, and so on. It would also be apt to have the cause of death in the readout as well. "Eaten" or "Murdered" would be equally apt. I'm sure you can imagine the story that will tell itself should a player stumble across a player's corpse that bears the wounds of murder, and is also relatively fresh. It will certainly influence their decisions in how they treat anyone they immediately encounter.

Essentially, my fixes aren't about inhibiting the player, but diversifying player attention away from only acquiring weapons. I think these fixes shouldn't be too difficult to implement (most requiring fiddling the numbers and spawn locations), and I also hope that they go some way to mitigating the banditry on the south coast and giving people effective ways to deal with bandits. I also believe that it will greatly increase the depth and richness of the player story and experience, and the use of team work.

[Diamondback 19]

Big + on the spread of spawn areas and the reduction of soda cans. Not so sure about poisoning water supplies. On one hand, if the feature is in, there WILL be groups of assholes driving from water to water hole poisoning them and killing handfuls of players with their throttling of the water supply. On the other hand, having matches and the ability to purify water would remove all point of poisoning in the first place.

Love the flares, radio, corpse details and such... really they would only serve to give us, as players, much more interactivity within the mod and allow our imaginations greater freedom. A mean a flare gun would be so freakin' cool.

I really think there should be less tinned food and soda spawned in general. You can hit one or two buildings in a small village and end up with enough food and drink to survive for hours. Soda and tinned goods should be a rare convenience, not the norm. We should be forced to more or less hunt for our food and trek for our water.

I'd be really interested to see the importance of water sources go up. You'd have a shift from clashing over cities to clashing over sources of water. Perhaps, given the implementation of a dynamic weather system, we could set up improvised devises to catch and then boil rain water for storage later.

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

Thanks for the considered reply!

In terms of water supplies, I think very few people would have the inclination or time to shoot and continually poison heaps of supplies to a super detrimental effect. It would more be a way of area denial, mainly used as a reactionary thing, or a specific tactic to force people into a certain area. It would also encourage wider map exploration, and players making certain ponds and hidden fountains their "favourite", most secret place to fill up.

As such, I included the boiling water in there because matches are not often easy to find. It would be great to see older players warning newer players of potentially poisonous water, or otherwise helping them clear zombies away from a fountain to get at clean water.

I suppose it's just another way to encourage team work/immersion and a great depth of play. I also saw it in Walking Dead haha.

[=MeRk= Morbo513 1]

I've got to say I really like most of these ideas. I'd guessed that revival was out of the window with the dev team, so I suggested a re-work of the PvP damage system, but your idea works equally as well, and has the same effect in mind.

ACRE is supposedly a planned implementation

Diamondback, I really like your idea about dynamic weather and setting up improvised rain-catchment systems - Empty whiskey bottle/tin can/waterbottle, cling film and an entrenching tool could create the catchment system (This type has a name but I can't remember it), then a campfire and an empty tin can can be used to purify it (Rainwater could have a [very] low chance of being "poisonous" - Infected with the virus or some shit)

[MechaGodzilla 5]

These are all solid ideas and I'm having a hard time finding something I disagree with. Originally I was against any kind of revival mechanism but after reading this I think I could live with that. I love the poison water and purification idea. Deaths due to poison I'm debating on whether that should count towards your murder score. One the one hand somebody did kill somebody, but it's more like a trap rather than a trigger.

[Nedak 10]

I like these ideas a lot. They are not punitive and are in support for exploration and game diversity.

Now to see if Rocket sees any of these things doable.

[relentless@clear.net.nz 12]

I thought they already discussed removing the ability to fill water in the ocean at a later point, would that change your view on the abundance of soda?

[Diamondback 19]

I don't speak for the guy but it wouldn't change it for me and I don't think I'm wrong in saying for a lot of others too.

As it is I think you should be able to gather water from the ocean. It should only be potable, however, after some form of purification. Really soda cans could be done away with almost entirely. Having enough food and water should be far more of a priority than it currently is. Players should be carrying a couple of canteens of water at any given time both to stay hydrated and to take advantage of water supplies when found.

You could play aroud with the thirst system aswell. Maybe have it so you need to drink more often, but then offset it appropriately by having a canteen only lose a quarter of its contents per drink... or something.

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

I think for the sake of simplicity, the easiest thing to do would be to make coke and pepsi much more infrequent (nearly every house I go in has some), and simply have boiling water act as something that makes water safe, and has no effect if the water is already "safe". To specify, poisoned water wouldn't instantly kill, it would begin a very slow increase in pain (that at first can be addressed with painkillers, and if develops, must be addressed with morphine - or whatever). Drinking sea water could have the same effect for the time being, as I can understand how busy Rocket is. The basics remain though - boil your water to stay safe and take a risk if you don't want to. I'd also note that while you may have drunk an unsafe water and become poisoned, it should quench your water need regardless - therefore fixing one problem and creating another.

[=MeRk= Morbo513 1]

Rather than reducing the commonality of soda, make it have a diuretic effect. The more you drink, the faster you become thirsty. So a player COULD survive off soda but he'd have to be finding it constantly, or they could rely on water which has few sources.

The odd single-use commercial water bottle might be nice.

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

That sounds like a good idea Morbo. I think for the sake of Rocket's work load, it would be good to recreate the diuretic effect by making sodas replenish you 25% as opposed to waters full 100%. I'm not sure how the game handles the value, but this would quickly let a player know that they really need to fill water up when they see it if they're to survive. Similarly, for the time being I would give sea water the same properties as soda's (so you need to have it often if you're to survive). Then in the future, it would be good to have a stacking effect of increasing thirst. I don't know though, a stacking "dehydration rate" might be just as doable as the first solution. Of course, the stack cycle would by made null and void as soon as a player drank a good bottle of clean water.

Also, I think a bottle of one time use branded water is a great idea.

As such, I would perhaps make it that soda spawns one third less than the amount it does now - so that they're in game and present, but also not the best thing available.

[B4N3 0]

Hi all and Rocket.

I've done a lot of work on game design and flow in the past' date=' and I really appreciate what you've done here. I've been playing the game in a number of different roles and really trying to get my head around the end game as well as the beginning.

The answers to these problems are all ones that tweak or add features, but don't interfere with player choices (the biggest problem with the bandit skin).

1. [i']Give greater risk/reward on NATO weapon spawns.

The current problem in the search for weaponry is that the size of the guns in the back pack, plus the ammunition sizes and scarcity means that receiving a weapon that will be good for more than thirty minutes is incredibly low. I'm not suggesting a drastic increase in spawn rates etc, but I am suggesting that you remove rubbish and underpowered spawns from spawn chances in militarised zones. Similarly, add a single military spawn, with military zombies, to some of the humvee wrecks and other military apparatus that can be found around the map. Give the higher end weaponry a chance to land into the hands of random players, while assuring that those who treck to the airfield will be able to find something worth their time (and usually life). Perhaps two mags per gun spawn would be generous enough. Simply, the amount of times I've sat at NE airfield for two hours waiting around while empty G17's and single mag AKM's spawn amongst a great deal of rubbish and whiskey bottles has lead me to question the viability of end game. Reasonably, there is no reason I should ever, at present, forgo my Winchester or my CZ for any NATO or automatic weapon. The stopping power is often not as good, the ammo count ridiculous in scarcity and I have a high likely hood of dying when trying to obtain it.

2. Diversify endgame content with survival tool spawns.

At the moment, you're really trapped to catering for a few basic player wants in terms of rewards. In order to increase map travel it would be wise to have certain items spawn only in some parts of the map. For instance, the only camping shops in Chernarus might be located in Dubrovka and Petrovka. Within them would be three generic supply spawns and two focused spawns that yield the respective drop chances: tent 20%/GPS 30%/map 5%/compass 5%/binoculars 5%/NVG 15%/cross bow 20%. Simply adding those two new shops would diversify player travel across the map to a large degree, giving them a sense of direction, but also of danger. It would also increase party tensions, as a rare NVG spawn might force betrayals in the group. I must also add that the respawns should occur only every thirty minutes or so in order to add tension to the enterprise, and ensure they're not easily obtainable.

3. Reward exploration, intuition and memory in placing several reliable garages around the map.

On the above note, I think it's prudent to suggest the increase in spawns for vehicle related components in the rare gas stations around the map. The south is well suited, but the north has few vehicle depots. It would be wise to limit the better vehicle spawns the further north you go in order to balance the map out and take PvPers away from the coast. Placing bike/car/bus spawns at a few choice garages (while keeping the random ones we have at the moment), you're rewarding player memory and intuition and encouraging a great deal of travel. If you would like me to assess each town individually as to what and where vehicle componentry/type of vehicles should spawn, I'd be very happy to go through it. In any case, by doing this you'll be lengthening the flow of play through the entire map. New players will want to try to survive the cities to get a few quick supplies, while Bandits and experienced players will want to head north to secure different vehicles and survival equipment. Again, it's another way of allowing different interested parties to control resources. It's essentially a high risk puzzle that is completed quicker with friends.

4. Greater reliance on water.

Greatly lower the amount of soft drinks available in the wild. Force the player to find their own water. It's an elegant system with the bottles, but it's also under used due to the high availability of soda.

5. Resource denial.

To this degree, allow players with a raw meat in their pack to have the choice to poison a water source (effective for five game hours). It adds a huge new dimension to survival, and player morality choices. It also presents the interesting tactical use of water as a method to cripple your enemies and to discourage people from following you. Poison effects should be curable by painkillers (and perhaps morphine if you've been poisoned for a while). It should be a threat. Would also give extra dimension of functionality to raw meat.

6. Extend value of water and potential gadgetry.

Allow players to boil water over a fire in order to purify it. Would give extra functionality to matches.

7. Increase the reward for random exploration of the middle towns and settlements.

Create instances of single or double NATO spawns near humvees or military wrecks near towns or on the roads. I'd be happy to draw up a detailed spawn flow of Chernarus that will balance the map (in terms of not having some places be completely redundant).

8. Give the ability to identify as friendly, to signal, or to mislead.

Adding a military whistle item pickup would be really useful for a player to directionally signal over a large area (perhaps 2-300 meters and fading to silent at 500) in a certain sequence or to attract zombies.

9. Lower the risks in anti-bandit teamwork via short wave radio.

Add CB radios as an item, allowing you to communicate directionally over 1 km or so. It would allow for random players to more effectively coordinate a bandit hunt without having to implicitly trust each other, as well as allow for some great roleplaying or entrapment. Attempting to locate the origin of a broadcast could be very tense and satisfying. I would have the strength of signal die out at 1km-1250 being silent.

10. Allow for more universal signalling.

Being able to fire flares into the sky would be a great addition in allowing you to see the landscape around you, as well as signal your position to friends (and of course enemies).

11. Differentiate damage taken.

Please add some dramatic bloody claw or fracture marks on the screen to denote zombie swipes. At the moment, it is hard to know exactly what is damaging you, especially due to the weird hit radii of the zombies. The white flash is also a bit insipid for a zombie attack.

12. Increase sound ambience and tactics when approaching a town.

Add noise makers to different areas in the town. It could be quite cool to turn a factory loudspeaker on to an old Soviet song in order to draw the zombies out of the town (without using ammunition). It would also be very creepy to be in a town by yourself and suddenly hear the old working song come on in the factory on the hill. (The power source for the factory or whatever would be justified as an old generator.) You could have an individual song for different locations on the map as an easter egg for the player to find. I'm sure you can see the millions of ways a player might use this to his advantage, or have it used against him to his disadvantage. It would also add ambience to the general soundscape of the game.

13. Allow players to revive recently fatally wounded players.

Taking a leaf out of Project Reality's book, it might be nice to have a give up or hold out option for dead players. A solo player might just respawn, while a player in a group might be revived, given a transfusion, morphine, pain killers and a bandage in order to bring them back to full health. Basically, having major medical surgery in the field with the right supplies. I'm sure you can imagine the interesting scenarios and sacrifices/decisions a group of players might have to make in order to preserve their team. While it would be preferable that the player's stats remain on revival, the death would still need to count as a stat start-over, and as a murder or bandit kill on the gunman's debug monitor.

14. Allow intuitive and natural bandit tracking through victim's corpses.

On inspecting corpses of players, it would be good to have a feedback such as "Still warm." "Blood is still running from the wound." "Cold." "Rigor Mortis." Still warm would mean the player has been dead for ten to fifteen minutes, still bleeding would mean they are revivable with defibrillators (sustaining) or an epipen (one time use) and have been dead for anywhere up to five minutes, and so on. It would also be apt to have the cause of death in the readout as well. "Eaten" or "Murdered" would be equally apt. I'm sure you can imagine the story that will tell itself should a player stumble across a player's corpse that bears the wounds of murder, and is also relatively fresh. It will certainly influence their decisions in how they treat anyone they immediately encounter.

Essentially, my fixes aren't about inhibiting the player, but diversifying player attention away from only acquiring weapons. I think these fixes shouldn't be too difficult to implement (most requiring fiddling the numbers and spawn locations), and I also hope that they go some way to mitigating the banditry on the south coast and giving people effective ways to deal with bandits. I also believe that it will greatly increase the depth and richness of the player story and experience, and the use of team work.

The only thing I don't like is reviving from death, maybe a low percentage cpr chance, or an EXTREMELY supply extensive surgery like you talked about. It would have to be a 15-20 second process at least too if not longer so in combat players can't just pop their team mates up from death.

Other than that you have a pretty decent list of suggestions, I really like the lack of whine in your post too. (srs)

[sgtsnug 26]

1. I wholeheartedly agree, and I've stated many times the weapons should be geared towards those that share ammo clips instead of specialise per weapon, cause god forbid if you find an AK or a NATO weapon your chances of finding ammo to go with it are slim and even then you spend more ammo getting to it then you get out of it usually.

Having weapons/ammo drop near destroyed military vehicles is something I've constantly thought about, I mean in an apocalypse one of the places you'd look for items is in cars since they'd be stocked up by fleeing civilians or military in first place.

2. Again I agree, right now the only main place to find tents is in the main cities 3 story buildings and that's a massive gamble and huge walk from those of us set-up in the north, having stores around the map even just a few with tent spawn chances would defiantly improve things for us.

3. A good idea, we need more reason to take veterans away from the newbie spawns and two main cities.

4. I often find myself overstocked on food and drink in my skirmishes into towns and on every other zombie, me and my group have often gone on water bottle runs to fill up at a well and return to camp with it, needing to do that is fun and gives us stuff to do.

5&6. I don't really like this idea myself, in respect to players poisoning water, but in regards to sea water, and maybe still water which is dangerous to drink in real life yes, these water sources could follow your idea and need purifying by fire. This would make players actively seek out wells instead of the ocean.

7. as stated above, yes to finding ammo n guns near broken military vehicles.

8. The whistle...ehh I wouldn't use it myself if you could just use a radio or blink a flash-light instead.

9. yes radios would be useful and fun especially if you got them working like in ACRE.

10. technically you can, with a m203 flare, thou it's too rare so yea a flare gun for side-arm just like a torch but for flares.

11. kinda cosmetic really, if your being shot you'll hear the gun, but i suppose being able to tell difference visually would be beneficial.

12. This falls into one of my threads about villages should have generators in them that can be fuelled up and power the area for a few hours if you turn it on, making the street lights turn on and like you've suggested maybe speaker systems and the like. Perhaps players could make noise devices from scavenging a car horn and a battery, theres lots of various ideas about noisy things you could make.

13. I've also made a thread about this one too, I figured you'd need some defibs which would be as common as binocs roughly and for 5 minutes after death you can revive the player at the expenditure of a blood bag.

14. I've supported this suggestion on another thread, not just for tracking bandits but knowing if it's safe or not by seeing the corpses status is very useful, cause if they are warm and murdered you know to get into cover and hide.

[TheOnlylars 0]

Love it all

[boxman80 964]

Fantastic suggestions!

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

Yeah I believe that the "revive" function should require nearly duplicates of every medicine available in the game, making any revival incredibly precarious both supplies and time wise. It would put stress on a group to coordinate a revival if they decide to undertake one.

[lt gunner 4]

I love the revive option. This alone could stop the "at all costs" griefers, that ambush groups to get a kill or two, knowing they will die anyway. It will place more importance on having medics in the group, and keeping medical gear handy. I think that it should be intensive on blood bags, and bandages. One or two doses of morphine, and one or two epi, depending on how long the guy has been down.

This alone could change the PvP just enough to help create more groups of players and less lone wolves that are just out for murders to ruin people's fun. Being able to revive your friend that was taken out by some randomness would make the game much more enjoyable by a huge measure. Of all the suggestions, which are all good, I like this one the most.

Some of the suggestions seem too script intensive, and a lot of development work, and theres too little benefit to work ratio.

Otherwise I really like 2,3,7 and 9. If ACRE were implemented, or at least made optional on some servers, 9 would be a really good addition to the mod.

To add onto 2,3 and 7, I feel more important buildings should be placed up north. Possible "shanty towns" built out in the open fields, that could contain more useful spawn points, or simply adding a new building or two to certain towns, with medical or military spawn points in them would help balance the map out a little more.

[anothermartz 0]

Adding to the reviving as I was just about to make a defibrillator suggestion thread myself:

Players should only able to be revived if they are still in the "YOU ARE DEAD!" screen meaning that they can give up on their in game life and rejoin to start fresh so it's up to the other group members who aim to bring them back to keep telling them to "hang in there!" as they drag them to safety or protect them while someone gets the materials. Of course the dead shouldn't be able to talk back to them and their pulse can be checked to tell the medics if they're still waiting to be revived or have given up.

I don't think there should be a time limit for how long they can wait because their will of resisting to just respawn is what keeps their body warm. It's not like someone could get killed on their own then go offline until their friends are on to revive them; they'd have to wait in game the entire time while their corpse can be looted making reviving them pointless.

I really don't see any drawback on this system for bandits and it can eliminate the hassle of having your character instantly reset because a PKer happens to kill you with their first shot before being taken out by the rest of your group.

As for water poisoning, there are antibiotics in the game that currently do nothing so those could be used instead of the suggested morpheme if you can't take painkillers early enough after being poisoned.

[lt gunner 4]

Max 5 minutes for revive, after that your guaranteed brain dead even if your body is still somehow functioning.

[grandpa_smuckers 1]

14. Allow intuitive and natural bandit tracking through victim's corpses.

On inspecting corpses of players' date=' it would be good to have a feedback such as "Still warm." "Blood is still running from the wound." "Cold." "Rigor Mortis." Still warm would mean the player has been dead for ten to fifteen minutes, still bleeding would mean they are revivable with defibrillators (sustaining) or an epipen (one time use) and have been dead for anywhere up to five minutes, and so on. It would also be apt to have the cause of death in the readout as well. "Eaten" or "Murdered" would be equally apt. I'm sure you can imagine the story that will tell itself should a player stumble across a player's corpse that bears the wounds of murder, and is also relatively fresh. It will certainly influence their decisions in how they treat anyone they immediately encounter.

[/quote']

Absolutely brilliant.

It would seem a system such as this would require very little work. The effect it would have on immersion would be immeasurable. If I were to see anything on your list become a reality I seriously hope that it is this.

[Bernardusaurus 2]

1. While I agree with some, like the random players getting high tier weapons, part of a risk/reward is that there may not be anything worthwhile there. It seems unfair that a simple trip to an airfield would always land you something great.

2. I don't believe there is an 'endgame'. The goal is everlasting. You have to just stay alive. True, the ammo for NATO weapons is rare. In a realistic setting such as this one, there wouldn't be military grade weapons and ammo laying around in an isolated barn. I do, however agree with your idea about the camping supply shops. It would be great if you could know where to find them at all times, but like #1, it just doesn't fit with this mod. The idea is for most things to be random. Once within 2 minutes of spawning I found a tent. I hadn't found one before and I've never found one since. If there was somewhere that you could always find one eventually, everyone would have one.

3. Same as above. If there was a place where something would spawn for sure, the element of exploration is cut drastically.

4. I agree 100% I accidentally dropped my water bottle early on in this life, and I quickly saw no reason to find another one. Although, tonight after the 1.5.4 update, I passed out from thirst because I couldn't find a single drink in 3 different towns. Also, if you couldn't get water from the ocean/sea, but IRL, you'd be very sick.

5. I honestly just don't see the point.

6. A good idea if something were implemented that made sodas recover ~25% health, and unpurified water ~50%, and purified water ~75%, or something similar. Otherwise, no reason to actually purify it.

7. I agree if it were around 1/20 humvees or something. Would help with the lack of NATO magazines issue.

8. Also, morse code would be cool.

9. I agree. Currently, when I play with my friend, I use Skype, and I feel like I'm cheating a bit, because I can coordinate a flank without the target ever being aware. Maybe some kind of text chat that would span the entire map akin to whispers in MMOs? Otherwise, we'd have to communicate outside the game to ever find eachother anyways.

10. Yes, flare guns are a yes in my book. But they'd take up your secondary slot.

11. I personally hate in a game where hits are portrayed via blood on the screen, etc. Some kind of red pulse or something from the direction of the attack would be good though. If it were subtle.

12. This is a very, very cool idea. I can't imagine how scared I'd be if around 3am, a Soviet song started to blare and all I knew was that someone was there.

13. I agree unless the gunshot wound would kill upon impact, like a headshot or a shot to the heart. You wouldn't be able to just get up. If the character was hit in the stomach, and his comrades had sutures and bandages and disinfectant, they could ATTEMPT to resuscitate him.

14. I like the idea of revival under the conditions I stated in #13, but when I die, I'm not going to wait for 15 minutes to see if someone stumbles upon my body to revive me.

If you can't tell, I want this mod to remain gritty and realistic and unforgiving. This is the first game I've played in a LONG time that has given me this feeling of immersion. If it becomes too easy/casualized, a great thing will have been lost.

Also, I'm not a game programmer, nor have I any experience with the concept, so I don't know what is possible and what isn't, but let's remember that it's still early alpha. And from what I've seen, Rocket seems to listen to the members of this community, and I feel that he's trying to keep the mod the way I and many others, feel like it should be.

[litoralis.nMd 1]

All and all a very nice list of suggestions.

I will just add this, it is the first four chapters of an American "survivalist" fantasy book that will be published soon.

http://jamesmdakin.blogspot.com/2012/04/preview-of-upcoming-post-apoc-novel.html

Here are the first four chapters of Buck. You may post them on your website as you see fit. Again, it's the sequel to Shut Down and takes place two years after the economic collapse.

W. R. Flynn

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

I'd also be down for cannibalism as it extends role playing and can just use the "hide body" function while restoring your hunger, however, every time you do it, it lowers your humanity by the same as a kill.

This is good for the bandits who want to stay bandits (at the moment many bandits are killing survivors simply because they dont want the transition bug) and it's also a good moral decision for the survivors as to whether or not they want to descend.

Also, the antibiotics that are currently useless in game could very well be good for curing water poisoning. It makes much more sense than morphine.

[MR DELICIOUS 297]

Edited main post.

[Legend (DayZ) 0]

1. While I agree with some' date=' like the random players getting high tier weapons, part of a risk/reward is that there may not be anything worthwhile there. It seems unfair that a simple trip to an airfield would always land you something great.

2. I don't believe there is an 'endgame'. The goal is everlasting. You have to just stay alive. True, the ammo for NATO weapons is rare. In a realistic setting such as this one, there wouldn't be military grade weapons and ammo laying around in an isolated barn. I do, however agree with your idea about the camping supply shops. It would be great if you could know where to find them at all times, but like #1, it just doesn't fit with this mod. The idea is for most things to be random. Once within 2 minutes of spawning I found a tent. I hadn't found one before and I've never found one since. If there was somewhere that you could always find one eventually, everyone would have one.

3. Same as above. If there was a place where something would spawn for sure, the element of exploration is cut drastically.

4. I agree 100% I accidentally dropped my water bottle early on in this life, and I quickly saw no reason to find another one. Although, tonight after the 1.5.4 update, I passed out from thirst because I couldn't find a single drink in 3 different towns. Also, if you couldn't get water from the ocean/sea, but IRL, you'd be very sick.

5. I honestly just don't see the point.

6. A good idea if something were implemented that made sodas recover ~25% health, and unpurified water ~50%, and purified water ~75%, or something similar. Otherwise, no reason to actually purify it.

7. I agree if it were around 1/20 humvees or something. Would help with the lack of NATO magazines issue.

8. Also, morse code would be cool.

9. I agree. Currently, when I play with my friend, I use Skype, and I feel like I'm cheating a bit, because I can coordinate a flank without the target ever being aware. Maybe some kind of text chat that would span the entire map akin to whispers in MMOs? Otherwise, we'd have to communicate outside the game to ever find eachother anyways.

10. Yes, flare guns are a yes in my book. But they'd take up your secondary slot.

11. I personally hate in a game where hits are portrayed via blood on the screen, etc. Some kind of red pulse or something from the direction of the attack would be good though. If it were subtle.

12. This is a very, very cool idea. I can't imagine how scared I'd be if around 3am, a Soviet song started to blare and all I knew was that someone was there.

13. I agree unless the gunshot wound would kill upon impact, like a headshot or a shot to the heart. You wouldn't be able to just get up. If the character was hit in the stomach, and his comrades had sutures and bandages and disinfectant, they could ATTEMPT to resuscitate him.

14. I like the idea of revival under the conditions I stated in #13, but when I die, I'm not going to wait for 15 minutes to see if someone stumbles upon my body to revive me.

If you can't tell, I want this mod to remain gritty and realistic and unforgiving. This is the first game I've played in a LONG time that has given me this feeling of immersion. If it becomes too easy/casualized, a great thing will have been lost.

Also, I'm not a game programmer, nor have I any experience with the concept, so I don't know what is possible and what isn't, but let's remember that it's still early alpha. And from what I've seen, Rocket seems to listen to the members of this community, and I feel that he's trying to keep the mod the way I and many others, feel like it should be.

[/quote']

Bern basically said everything I wanted to say.