40 Suggestions to Improve Realism and Immersion

[slonlo 43]

I think some aspects of the ACE mod are not quite intuitive, and it's full feature set requires lots of new controls for the player to remember. I'm not against including most of ACE, but I would probably want to figure out how to make the interface more intuitive, without breaking immersion.

I agree... basically you have all the Arma controls, then CTRL + all the keys, for ACE. Not intuitive at all. But some of the environmentals could be implemented without intrusion. Then rely heavily on the scroll wheel and intuitive on screen "devices". For example when you pull out your scoped rifle, the turrets are on screen for you to click to adjust your elevation and windage. I like the idea of needing batteries for your electronic equipment too, which IIRC Rocket supports. Honestly though, I'd be perfectly happy with everything we have now, just fixed haha.

[00dlez 22]

I think some aspects of the ACE mod are not quite intuitive, and it's full feature set requires lots of new controls for the player to remember. I'm not against including most of ACE, but I would probably want to figure out how to make the interface more intuitive, without breaking immersion.

Due to the limitations of what a computer game is, there are only two things that a player can rely on for clues: Sight and Sounds.

Due to the limitations of current (mainstream, anyway) technology, very specific details about the environment cannot be well reflected in current graphics or sound coding. A sound that can be heard out to 15m cannot be heard out to 16m. The graphical difference between a flag waving in 8mph winds versus 11 mph winds isn't going to be well represented.

The subtleties that you keep referencing for long range shots might be more realistic and immersive, but they can't be effectively translated into the game medium.Trying to force them in doesn't seem any better to me than leaving them out entirely.

[Digby 24]

The one thing you don't want in this game is for the character to start getting scared, or start seeing things. Rocket (and many others) want the player himself/herself to be the one that is getting scared and seeing things. When a person is scared and paranoid the human mind starts picking things up on a much higher scale than it usually does. So when your in the middle of Elektro, Rocket wants YOU the player to be the one getting scared and paranoid, not the character. He wants YOU to start freaking out or staying calm when you get in a firefight. If you make the character the one having the effects, it ruins the immersion.

Why does your character start hyperventilating and crying with fear when he's injured and zeds are close by or beating on him then?

Almost all the suggestions of the OP have boiled down to discussions about long range shooting and the technicalities of making it harder to do it at longer ranges. Why not include, as someone a couple of pages back suggested, a compeletly random drift/inaccuracy element. A cone of fire that gets bigger the farther away the target is? Seems extremely simple to me and answers just about every question and situation everyone has brought up.

As others have said, remember our survivors are ordinary people, many of whom probably never handled a gun before or only handled a simple one such as a farmer with a shotgun (this is a rural area in Russia, not the USA). You average person does not know much about sniping and what affects a bullet over long distances, and even if he did, he would be technically untrained and unable to effectively correct for the problem.

Ammunition should be extremely rare, and would be much rarer in the game if people didn't dupe the damn stuff. How many anti-materiel rifles are lying around the average small barracks in a rural military airfield? How many military helicopters really would crash in a given 225sqkm area in a given day and not mangle their human and equipment cargo into twisted rubbish? The commonality of hi-end military kit in the game is way too high and its way too easy to use.

The issue of drawing survivor graphics at long ranges when really a prone stationary figure would be invisible is easily addressed by making the figure slightly ghostly/fainter as the range increases or offsetting its location slightly from where it actually is.

In some ways while its great that ArmAII provided the base game for Dayz its also a great pity because far too many hi-end military grade weapons got included. I realise Rocket was working mostly alone and so porting over existing mechanics and items was a quick way to get the mod finished but a lot of logical links were broken such as batteries for GPSs, NVGs and rangefinders and the sheer difficulty of maintanence for many of these guns.

For more immersion I would prefer to see a hand-to-hand combat system created (it doesn't have to include a whole slew of wuxia moves) and a whole string of melee weapons in the stand-alone. To make melee weapons worthwhile would mean making guns rare, or at least the ammo for them. Most guns should be civilian weapons and they should be quite rare, with ammo only spawning with guns.

[Average Pegasus 646]

28. Allow players to build spike pits and other rudimentary traps.

Other trap ideas (many stolen from the forums):

• Tripwire hooked to a gun to shoot anyone coming thru a door. Claymore mines. Landmines. Caltrops to slow people down or puncture tires. Oil slicks to make people slip and fall or make cars lose control... grenades/flares/chemlights rigged to tripwires. – JamesR
  
• Booby trapped vehicles that explode when started / moved.
  
• Remove slide pins/hammer pins, and plug barrels from weapons and leave them places so if sumone shot them they would explode/malfunction in their hands. – Mr Two
  
• Poisoned food.
  

- trap are good idea but they should not be able to kill people, since alot of people would abuse with trap and set mine/weapon everywhere in the world. Just going to cherno and you might fall on a minefield in the supermarket, I would not play a game went you have 80% chance of getting kill by a forgetten trap...

Trap should only be use for detection, like Tin can on a rope OR if you really want traps you should be able to see the trap and remove it. Be able to see that the weapon have missing part and etc...

(sorry for my bad english, im french)

[Skat3rat 1633]

Why does your character start hyperventilating and crying with fear when he's injured and zeds are close by or beating on him then?

Almost all the suggestions of the OP have boiled down to discussions about long range shooting and the technicalities of making it harder to do it at longer ranges. Why not include, as someone a couple of pages back suggested, a compeletly random drift/inaccuracy element. A cone of fire that gets bigger the farther away the target is? Seems extremely simple to me and answers just about every question and situation everyone has brought up.

As others have said, remember our survivors are ordinary people, many of whom probably never handled a gun before or only handled a simple one such as a farmer with a shotgun (this is a rural area in Russia, not the USA). You average person does not know much about sniping and what affects a bullet over long distances, and even if he did, he would be technically untrained and unable to effectively correct for the problem.

Ammunition should be extremely rare, and would be much rarer in the game if people didn't dupe the damn stuff. How many anti-materiel rifles are lying around the average small barracks in a rural military airfield? How many military helicopters really would crash in a given 225sqkm area in a given day and not mangle their human and equipment cargo into twisted rubbish? The commonality of hi-end military kit in the game is way too high and its way too easy to use.

The issue of drawing survivor graphics at long ranges when really a prone stationary figure would be invisible is easily addressed by making the figure slightly ghostly/fainter as the range increases or offsetting its location slightly from where it actually is.

In some ways while its great that ArmAII provided the base game for Dayz its also a great pity because far too many hi-end military grade weapons got included. I realise Rocket was working mostly alone and so porting over existing mechanics and items was a quick way to get the mod finished but a lot of logical links were broken such as batteries for GPSs, NVGs and rangefinders and the sheer difficulty of maintanence for many of these guns.

For more immersion I would prefer to see a hand-to-hand combat system created (it doesn't have to include a whole slew of wuxia moves) and a whole string of melee weapons in the stand-alone. To make melee weapons worthwhile would mean making guns rare, or at least the ammo for them. Most guns should be civilian weapons and they should be quite rare, with ammo only spawning with guns.

Here's my opinion. If you make the guns hyper realistic (which will probably be hard to do) then the player will be the one learning how to use the weapon and adjust it. I've shot real guns before and can easily nail a headshot on a man sized target from 200 meters away. While my Uncle and Dad (Both were in the military) can nail a headshot double the distance. If you make the guns realistic enough, then the player is the one who does/doesn't know how to use the gun. So if two people found a M4, one knows how to use the gun IRL and the other doesn't, the one who knows how to use it IRL will be more effective with it.

I don't know if it's actually possible to make guns work like that in a game. But if they could it would be amazing. It would bring even more immersion to the game.

[jaws4096 77]

Has anyone heard anything solid on ammunition management and reload modeling? See video from my suggestion list. Hope it makes it in!

[4dyce 1]

DayZ is not a Life Simulator! More Realism = Shit Game! (With the exception of a few new ideas)

[radivmoe 47]

I like it. Things to be added under medical:

ABILITY TO OVERHEAT:

• Not drinking enough water/long periods of running would cause this
  
• Can be countered by staying in the shade and indoors
  
• Player passes out if overheated, can be revived with the aforementioned Defibrillator, but only if player has heart attack, rather than just passing out
  
• Revival from overheating takes a while to cool down, as well as a few bottles of water/cans of soda
  
• Easy to implement, just make the thermometer icon go red, and when flashing red, player passes out
  
• As soon as thermometer starts to flash, player passes out. Would encourage players to drink water to prevent that. Because let's be honest, if you're having a heatstroke, you don't go "Oh no, I'm blinking. Better drink some water so I don't pass out!" No, you would just pass out
  
• Dehydration + Overheating would lead to blood loss, eventually leading to death
  
• When thermometer meter starts to get redder, player running speed decreases exponentially, as well as panting, which would lead to wheezing, which can be heard by players and zombies
  
• Once meter is returned to the green zone, player is returned to normal
  

I'm surprised that this isn't already in the game, because it's already possible to get cold. Why can't I get hot when it's daytime and I'm running endlessly and not drinking water unless I'm dying of dehydration?

thank you for keeping me from making my own topic about this :P

[Udak 104]

Hate the necro, love the topic.

[jaws4096 77]

Been awhile since I checked this threat. Nice suggestions, Radivmo!

[Avtomat (DayZ) 0]

Just my thoughts on "acceptable degrees of realism", and what should be possible without major scripting issues.

 

1  Yes

2  Yes

3  Yes

4  No

5  Yes

6  Nyeh, most adjustable sights are pretty solid, or have a locking feature

7  Yes!

8  Yes!

9  Maybe, have "particle ground"- dirt & grassy areas, and "non particle ground"

10 Yes

11 Yes

12 Yes

13 good idea, but for practicality, pass

14 No

15 No

16 Yes

17 YES. SEE COMMMENT 1 BELOW. 

18 Yes

19 Clip? Shame upon your house, but agree w/ ammo - magazine management

20 Yes

21 Yes

22 Confirmed for Standalone

23 Yes

24 Yes

25 Yes

26 No

27 No, but if ground debris makes noise when moved... this might have potential

28 No

29 Scratched

30 No

31 Yes

32 Yes

33 Yes

34 Willing to try

35 Yes

36 Yes

37 Yes

38 You'd be suprised

39 Doubt people would live long enough

40 Scratched

 

COMMENT 1: Yes, and this could be accounted for quite easily. various ammo types have various penetration/ damage  values, Each gun has a "grid" - for a hunting rifle, it might have been zeroed by its previous owner for hollow points, so they follow the sights, but say, (N)grn FMJ shoots high, AP shoots low-left, Match shoots high left. A military sniper might shoot center with match, etc.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Avtomat

[enforcer1975 1111]

I think i missed the first person and no crosshairs part for added realism...

Edited July 19, 2013 by Enforcer