So...who exactly is this game supposed to be hard for?

[P5ykoOHD 63]

I read it all, was a very good read. Props to you sir, have some beans.

Now about the difficulty level, I think it would help if zombies had different difficulty levels depending on where you are on the map.

Veteran players, bandits and survivors, tend to stay up north, unless thay are scumbag bandits who enjoy killing fresh spawns for the sake of killing easy targets (you know, the kind of noob who Alt F4's the moment you shoot back cause thay did not expect to fall against someone who can actually fight back).

Atm I am counter sniping, it's alot of fun.

Anyway, the idea would be to have zombies that hit much harder, have a much larger detection range and more health (forcing you to pop a headshot ... hell, why not even make them invincible until you make a headshot) up in the north ... making it so that players can play in different difficulty zones and get rewarded for that.

Military spawns down south should only spawn AKM max ... (better military grade weapons found only up north).

And make it so that when fully equiped players go south, thay carry their difficulty level with them and with a penality multiplier that will "punish them" for abusing lower level players.

Make the difficulty representative to the gear you carry ...

Carry an As50 with Ghillie ?

Get 1 hit killed by zombies and have a much higher detection radius.

Like that, low level players can have their "easy" start, and high level players can have their "extra challenge".

I personally don't see why a couple hits from zombies should not kill you ... it's a zombie apocalypse after all. Irl you would not get scratched, bit and be all "Meh, I'll just apply a bandage and will be ok" ... it's an infection.

You should get sick fast.

Making the zombies a real threat, and not just a poor piece of the sceenery.

But that's just me ^^

EDIT:

OR

Have a difficulty selction in the options menu ... you select how hard you wish to get hit by zombies (expert being 1/2 hits and you join their ranks) ... like that, every player can chose how hard he wants the game to be and that will only affect him, not punishing the others.

Newbies can select Recruit ...

Only thing would be player killing.

Recruit difficulty should allow people to have armor, but on the other hand, it should also requir MANY more bullets to kill other players ... like that people will not abuse by getting top grade gear then set themselves to recruit to kill newbies ...

Edited August 16, 2012 by P5ykoOHD

[gambles 234]

Completely agree on this. Coming into this game as someone who just happen to have arma 2 and decided to try it out after hearing about it. The learning curve was ridiculous...even when I knew the basic controls from arma!

What you said stands, the learning curve is ridiculously stupid off the coast. But as you get experienced, even just a month or so in as I am. You begin to see that curve take a nose dive, you can avoid it by limiting how many tents you use, not hoarding vehicles, and avoiding duping like the plague... But purposely gimping yourself against duping bandits, asshat hackers, and Shoot on Sight clans/groups/survivors/friends leads to you saying "Why the hell am I still playing fair when no one else is?".

It's really sad that the community hoards 10+ vehicles to all corners of the map and uses them as inventories just to have them. And dupes because they can.

The only way to beat em is join em...and you may ruin the game for yourself by doing it, such a crappy situation.

[chris p. bacon 182]

You go on a lot about new players getting killed moments after they spawn by other players. I have never had this experience. If you're that desperate for a bandage or a painkiller, chances are, you don't have a gun to kill a newly spawned. I agree on your other points. As Prez said, they ARE veterans, and they ARE going to be better than the average newcomer, even if that better-enabler came from an outside resource. I'd like to say that most DayZ players use outside resources such as dayzmap.info or the dayzwiki. Its part of the game.

Edited August 16, 2012 by tocsik

[Blindingsun 233]

the game shouldn't be balanced. people with high end weapons SHOULD have an advantage. same as someone in the real world with a pistol going against a soldier with a mp5... screw balance. seriously. just make the game have a purpose

[Blindingsun 233]

Carry an As50 with Ghillie ?

Get 1 hit killed by zombies and have a much higher detection radius.

that is the most illogical idea I've ever heard....

[P5ykoOHD 63]

that is the most illogical idea I've ever heard....

You yourself say "screw balance" ... and talk about real life zombie stuff.

In a real zapocalype you would only need to get bitten once to get infected.

But read the "EDIT" I put in at the end.

would be better.

Edit:

And hell, you are shooting a 50.cal ... zombies should detect you from miles & miles away.

Edited August 16, 2012 by P5ykoOHD

[gambles 234]

the game shouldn't be balanced. people with high end weapons SHOULD have an advantage. same as someone in the real world with a pistol going against a soldier with a mp5... screw balance. seriously. just make the game have a purpose

I don't think he was saying make the game easier for new players, just somehow make it more difficult for high end players. Some how preventing hording and doing away with duping would be a start. The game is much funner when you don't do that stuff, but also much more fustrating as you know that everyone else does. Then they go snipe cherno.

[Blindingsun 233]

You yourself say "screw balance" ... and talk about real life zombie stuff.

In a real zapocalype you would only need to get bitten once to get infected.

But read the "EDIT" I put in at the end.

would be better.

personally the server difficulty should dictate things like how many shots kill you. I play on veteran for example. so It would only be logical that 1 shot kills are fine there..

but recruit servers should take more for example

[Blindingsun 233]

I don't think he was saying make the game easier for new players, just somehow make it more difficult for high end players. Some how preventing hording and doing away with duping would be a start. The game is much funner when you don't do that stuff, but also much more fustrating as you know that everyone else does. Then they go snipe cherno.

well from what I've seen, Rocket said Duping is impossible to stop at the moment because it's a flaw with the Arma2 engine,. no doubt it won't be a problem in the standalone so therefore it's a bit of a moot point..

[Shaimou 49]

The game itself is really easy at the moment. No problems finding a gun unarmed, finding food&water, shooting zombies and surviving from other players. The only ones the game is too hard for are the humane players. Those who dont want to kill on sight and want to help others will die the most.

[libertine 351]

Seems like your shooting yourself in the foot by using tents, like hackers do when they make themselves invisible, etc. Your taking the challenge away from yourself and reducing the number of goals you can achieve. When you spawn, your supposed to by NEW to the land (well, thats my assumption). Should you really have a camp? I'll never do that. I consider myself new to the situation, with the exception of knowing about bandits. Like maybe my family was killed by bandits... I agree that it is too easy and once you've got your favorite weapons and your in the wilderness, its like "what now?" I think that for the long haul, DayZ will need to make harder difficultly levels and continue adding in interesting things, like zombie behavior, maps, gameplay tweaks/additions, changes, and hopefully little bits of spice, like ominous sounds in the distance or weird things seen in the distance, notes left behind, etc to keep the mystery alive, and appropriate and hopefully objectives or other interesting things to do.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Thane

[Jex =TE= (DayZ) 218]

If anybody actually read the post, they'd see he actually has a point and isn't simply complaining. It was a very well thought out post, bravo OP.

I thought so too and too the idiots who can't read, or did read it and can only post some asinine comment, why the fuck did you even bother to sign up on the forums? here....

forum

  Example Sentences Origin

fo·rum

   [fawr-uhm, fohr-uhm] Show IPA

noun, plural fo·rums, fo·ra  [fawr-uh, fohr-uh] Show IPA.

1.

the marketplace or public square of an ancient Roman city, the center of judicial and business affairs and a place of assembly for the people.

2.

a court or tribunal: the forum of public opinion.

3.

an assembly, meeting place, television program, etc., for the discussion of questions of public interest.

4.

the Forum, the forum in the ancient city of Rome.

As for the post, much of the points made were spot on. After another death sometime ago I decided to test out the zeds and just aggro as many as I could and found that I could run circles around them. So now other than their annoying "spot you whilst crawling from 200 meters" BS, they are nothing more than a pest.

Going to disagree on your metagaming analogy a little. Since there is zero human interaction in the game, the forums is a place where that goes on. So think of it as a bar in the middle of the desert that survivors congregate too to talk about the infected.

[P5ykoOHD 63]

personally the server difficulty should dictate things like how many shots kill you. I play on veteran for example. so It would only be logical that 1 shot kills are fine there..

but recruit servers should take more for example

That, as it seems useless atm since the difficulty is set in the server cfg not by the difficulty shown.

Or

Add the thing I talked about in my edit: the personal diffucilty selection. (it already exists, just need to make it apply)

[derrida (DayZ) 18]

the OP had some interesting ideas but kind of rambles on for a while.

two things to keep in mind:

1. the game DOES NOT have to be friendly to new players and follow the "standard" difficulty curve that most games use.

2. most of the "difficulty" now is due to ARMA 2 engine zombie pathing. when standalone comes it should solve most of the quirks about aggro that you learn over time.

also you mention spawn camping a lot, but it doesn't really happen too much unless you run directly into large cities. 95% of the time if you just run north, you'll be fine. And even those times when you do die, who cares? You're a new spawn, you don't have any good gear yet, just start over and try again.

[Talon2000uk 30]

I've always though that the level of zombie threat should increase the further North you go. That way as you go up there the challenge would increase along with your gear. You could have it so that there are more zombies. they are harder to kill and they start spawning in the woods not just in the towns. This would mean that down south the noobs would be safer but up north thing would be more challenging and fun for those end game players like me.

[sostronk 334]

the game shouldn't be balanced. people with high end weapons SHOULD have an advantage. same as someone in the real world with a pistol going against a soldier with a mp5... screw balance. seriously. just make the game have a purpose

Having high end weapons which are more powerful doesn't mean the game can't be balanced.

[Jex =TE= (DayZ) 218]

Having high end weapons which are more powerful doesn't mean the game can't be balanced.

it's the players that are unbalanced, not the game. When u have a bunch of selfish psychopaths running round shooting everything on site because they shit their little pants when they see another player then how is the game ever going to work? "Oh but it's survival..it's you or me" - bullshit.

Are people really that deficient in brain power that they equate survival to having 4 extra slots in their back pack, or a slightly better gun, or a car? When food and water are plentiful and everywhere "survival" doesn't come into it AT ALL.

Take away the players and give the player a hunting knife, hatchet, a water bottle and a box of matches and if you can't "survive" with just those then you're a fucking moron. Survival my ass.

People who use the "survival" excuse are basically saying, "I can't be arsed to walk over the map looking for gear so I'm going to take urs and then shit myself when any other player shows up"

The game is to survive, nobody in RL is going to murder someone because they have a slightly nicer backpack than they do and the people that do - they're just lazy pricks who don't want to play the game for themselves, they want other people to play it for them so they can just sit on a hill trying to shoot at people whilst they stuff their fat faces with twinkies - go out and have a run u fat fucks!

[NightRipper 284]

[McLovinCR 29]

This guy is killing me xD

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

it's the players that are unbalanced, not the game.

Too true.

Some people man the fuck up and deal with the selfish psychopaths in the game by avoiding or killing them.

Others whine on the forums and claim the game "doesn't work."

That's the imbalance.