40 Suggestions to Improve Realism and Immersion

[Gordon Axeman 191]

I get combining lots of partial magazines into one full magazine, but finding individual bullets seems silly to me... Why not just find a full mag and either drop the old one to replace it or hang on to the full and the partial.

No, you haven't gotten the idea. Have you ever found ammo boxes at heli crashes? I did. The point is that there are mags inside, and I suppose to find such boxes full of rounds, for example 5.56 ammo box - 400 rnd. Stanag (single bullets), 200 rnd. stanag sd. You can take the whole box that will take two slots in the inventory. You put some empty/partially empty stanag mags into your inventory, then click on the box and choose "Refill magazines". All the mags in the inventory are full, and the box now has a-b ammo (Default ammo - ammo put into the magazines from it.).

You have a good suggestion too, finding partially empty mags and combibing them is a very good idea.

[nyk_nunya 40]

I think people should keep in mind, with these suggestions, they'd likely (and be better) implemented in the standalone, with the mod being largely unaffected by the changes. Those who don't want to see any of them, can stick with the mod.

[00dlez 22]

Though a new system is better implemented in standalone, and item that's an anemometer.

Don't those only track wind speed/direction at the location they are and not 1 kilometer away, where wind speed and direction can be quite different?

[00dlez 22]

No, you haven't gotten the idea. Have you ever found ammo boxes at heli crashes? I did. The point is that there are mags inside, and I suppose to find such boxes full of rounds, for example 5.56 ammo box - 400 rnd. Stanag (single bullets), 200 rnd. stanag sd. You can take the whole box that will take two slots in the inventory. You put some empty/partially empty stanag mags into your inventory, then click on the box and choose "Refill magazines". All the mags in the inventory are full, and the box now has a-b ammo (Default ammo - ammo put into the magazines from it.).

You have a good suggestion too, finding partially empty mags and combibing them is a very good idea.

I understand your point, and in a game like Metro 2033 where each bullet is tracked carefully your idea would have a lot more merit. But say you have 5 partial mags and want to fill them from the box of ammo... why not just find 5 fresh mags?

Unless your intent is to have finding hundreds of rounds at a time easier (barracks/heli sites), in which case I certainly say no. Military grade weapons and ammo should be rare and stay rare.

[00dlez 22]

Can anyone else comment on the mechanic for not rendering players who are prone in grass or other cover? My experience has been that players render at all distances, regardless of stance or surrounding terrain.

I'm not much of a buff on redering posibilities and such... my only thought would be to have only things in a player's LOS render, and make the tall grass more of a solid, opaque object that would better block or obscure a player.

I imagine the problem would be the lag, when 50 players are running around fields all over the map and have grass rendering within a 1000 meters of them regardless if another player is hiding or not.

What I wouldn't want is what World of Tanks has, where different tanks spot other tanks at varying distances. A large tank can move across an open field and be completly invisible to other tanks watching that field, or a tank hiding in a tree line is totally invisible until a tank is just tens of meters away.

Translated to Day Z - I don't want someone to be invisible (not rendered) just because they are crouch running across a field 501 meters away, but if they were 499 meters away, I would see them. can prone across an open field to a chopper crash and an overwatch sniper cannot see them.

... OR! a friendly sniper is covering you from a hill while you raid a hanger... but they lose sight of both you and an enemy moving up to your position because they are crouching and firing.

Edited September 13, 2012 by 00dlez

[deadlykenny 37]

The funny thing is, about a week before this post was made i was working on a massive post about realism XD, and im still working on it, its more of a collection of loads of realism ideas and some of my own, so i might post it still im not letting a few weeks worth of work go to waste :P

[Gordon Axeman 191]

I understand your point, and in a game like Metro 2033 where each bullet is tracked carefully your idea would have a lot more merit. But say you have 5 partial mags and want to fill them from the box of ammo... why not just find 5 fresh mags?

Unless your intent is to have finding hundreds of rounds at a time easier (barracks/heli sites), in which case I certainly say no. Military grade weapons and ammo should be rare and stay rare.

This is just a variant. IMO, it's more convenient to find an ammo box and replenish mags any time you want, than to look for full mags. If you keep saying no, just let the ammo boxes spawn more often, be pickable, but there will be less mags there.

[PygmyJess 91]

Nice list - I strongly agree about clothing types and weapon maintenance. Some of the lads think players shouldn't be automatically able to repair every vehicle. Character classes perhaps? Backstories? No one wants 'levelling up' brought into DayZ, mind.

One feature I'd like to see - kidnapping. This idea is so badass it glows red. How cool would it be to bag someone, tie them up and take them hostage? It would bring in an alternative to death or wounding, and with the introduction of handcuffs and an interactable radiator we could do the full 'Terry Waite'. You could even chain someone to the fence outside the fire station and fire off one single dinner bell round.

Naturally it allows for heroic saviours, siege situations, blackmail and all sorts of shenanigans. Bandit prison anyone?

I like this idea as well. Hell, it's already possible in the game. You could simply shoot someone in the leg to incapacitate them, drag them close to a car and force them into it by gun point. The only thing missing is not being able to physically drag someone into a truck and drive off.

That and being able to bound and gag the guy.

I told you D2! Haha how awesome would it be? If it was an actual part of the game it would make it so much more interesting. Especially because people already try to do this. If mechanics were added to make it a "real" part of the game I feel as though it would add a lot to how players interact. Maybe take away from the amount of KoS.

I've been trying to plan a kidnapping on our private server.

Edited September 13, 2012 by PygmyJess

[slonlo 43]

Hitting targets at 300m is not difficult, actually. I guarantee I can have anyone putting lead on a man sized steel target at 500m inside of an hour. I was hitting 880yard 20x40" targets on my first day shooting prone with basically an off-the-shelf rifle with a cheap ($600) scope. Put someone behind a 1/2MOA rifle, with some good glass and they'll be banging man sized steel at 900m within a weekend with some decent coaching.

But I like the other features. Just go down the list of ACE 2's features, and put them all in my "need to be in DayZ" column.

[jaws4096 77]

Hitting targets at 300m is not difficult, actually. I guarantee I can have anyone putting lead on a man sized steel target at 500m inside of an hour. I was hitting 880yard 20x40" targets on my first day shooting prone with basically an off-the-shelf rifle with a cheap ($600) scope. Put someone behind a 1/2MOA rifle, with some good glass and they'll be banging man sized steel at 900m within a weekend with some decent coaching.

But I like the other features. Just go down the list of ACE 2's features, and put them all in my "need to be in DayZ" column.

Great post, slonlo. I think you're right - with good equipment, plenty of practice shots, and some competent training, fairly novice shooters can hit range targets well past 500 meters. Based on my own shooting experience, so long as you have some basic breathing and trigger control techniques down, you can just fire a group, observe where your shots land, and adjust the sights... repeating this cycle until you're consistently hitting the target. The next time you come to the range, when conditions are different, you'll have to go through the same process, though it will hopefully go faster.

My question is, could the same novices that learn to hit long-range targets using the process above, also take a deer in the field past 500 meters? With a single shot (i.d. not "walking the fire" into the target)? With a rifle they'd never fired? With scavenged ammunition? On a windy day? Using an improvised rest? While starving / cold / wounded / terrified?

[nyk_nunya 40]

Great post, slonlo. I think you're right - with good equipment, plenty of practice shots, and some competent training, fairly novice shooters can hit range targets well past 500 meters. Based on my own shooting experience, so long as you have some basic breathing and trigger control techniques down, you can just fire a group, observe where your shots land, and adjust the sights... repeating this cycle until you're consistently hitting the target. The next time you come to the range, when conditions are different, you'll have to go through the same process, though it will hopefully go faster.

My question is, could the same novices that learn to hit long-range targets using the process above, also take a deer in the field past 500 meters? With a single shot (i.d. not "walking the fire" into the target)? With a rifle they'd never fired? With scavenged ammunition? On a windy day? Using an improvised rest? While starving / cold / wounded / terrified?

This is why a friend of mine and I were discussing some sort of, fear or conditioning system. Something that has negative effects on you that decrease the longer you're alive, to make it actually mean something to stay alive longer.

[silkyskills 59]

bring in the option to spray tag like on CS

[jaws4096 77]

I like the concept of fear or conditioning, but it may be frustrating to some people to have physical player conditions that are totally beyond their control.

[slonlo 43]

Great post, slonlo. I think you're right - with good equipment, plenty of practice shots, and some competent training, fairly novice shooters can hit range targets well past 500 meters. Based on my own shooting experience, so long as you have some basic breathing and trigger control techniques down, you can just fire a group, observe where your shots land, and adjust the sights... repeating this cycle until you're consistently hitting the target. The next time you come to the range, when conditions are different, you'll have to go through the same process, though it will hopefully go faster.

My question is, could the same novices that learn to hit long-range targets using the process above, also take a deer in the field past 500 meters? With a single shot (i.d. not "walking the fire" into the target)? With a rifle they'd never fired? With scavenged ammunition? On a windy day? Using an improvised rest? While starving / cold / wounded / terrified?

Good points. To that extent the optics should be off too. They'll need to be zeroed. (I'm not even being sarcastic, I'd love that...others not so much though.) As far as the scavenged ammo goes, if you find an M24, or M21 (DMR) laying in military barracks, the ammo with it will likely be M118LR anyway, so you can assume the ballistics with enough accuracy to hit a man sized target at 500. But I agree with you, I'd love to see these rifles jam, have the sights off, hell I'd even like to see the bolt action guns slam fire on closing the bolt (very rarely). I mean they've been sitting out in the woods for who knows how long, the trigger could easily be messed up. I like when guns jam on ACE, it's so damn frustrating, but I love it. Some won't like all that, but I say if you're going for realism, go all the way. You are 100% correct, you aren't gonna be making first round hits with a rifle you find in the woods. But then again most people need follow up shots in Day Z anyway. It would cut down on the kiddy snipers though. If you had to worry about the sights being no where close, so you have to waste your extremely rare ammo too sight the rifle in. And even then, you have environmentals to deal with. I'd eat that Shit up!!

Edited September 14, 2012 by slonlo

[slonlo 43]

Though a new system is better implemented in standalone, and item that's an anemometer.

ACE handles that fairly well also. You can have a Kestrel, and you need batteries for it (just like you need batteries for the rangefinder and have to press a button to turn the thing on even!). But if you don't have a kestrel you can "lick your finger and hold it up" (I forget the command) and it gives you a wind direction arrow in the top left and the brightness of the arrow approximates wind speed. Very clever I think. Now to be able to gauge it from the movement of trees and smoke would be best. I imagine it wouldn't be hard (in a new engine) to implement a mechanic like this:

- 0-3 mph: Wind hardly felt, but smoke drifts

- 3-5 mph: Wind felt lightly on the face (a little tough for that one)

- 5-8 mph: Leaves are kept in constant movement

- 8-12 mph: Raises dust and loose paper

- 12-15 mph: Causes small trees to sway

Now give me some mirage to read and I'd be in hog heaven!!

Edited September 14, 2012 by slonlo

[Skat3rat 1633]

Honestly I love every idea you mentioned and would love to see it in the game.

[jaws4096 77]

Something worth pointing out is that for the great majority of my suggestions, you'd want the systems to be unintrustive. I don't advocate adding a bunch more controls for players to remember, for example. The goal would be for everything to be intuitive, so that players don't have to think, "What was the button to do X again?" - they just look at the world around them and do what makes sense. If they happen to know a lot about the physics of shooting, long range shots will make sense, too... but novices can still live in this big, complex world and view it through simple eyes, just like in real life.

[Skat3rat 1633]

This is why a friend of mine and I were discussing some sort of, fear or conditioning system. Something that has negative effects on you that decrease the longer you're alive, to make it actually mean something to stay alive longer.

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.

[jaws4096 77]

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.

Great point. I agree that modeling character emotion is a bad deal - make the real-life player FEEL those emotions, and you accomplish the same thing, much more effectively.

[jaws4096 77]

ACE handles that fairly well also. You can have a Kestrel, and you need batteries for it (just like you need batteries for the rangefinder and have to press a button to turn the thing on even!). But if you don't have a kestrel you can "lick your finger and hold it up" (I forget the command) and it gives you a wind direction arrow in the top left and the brightness of the arrow approximates wind speed. Very clever I think. Now to be able to gauge it from the movement of trees and smoke would be best. I imagine it wouldn't be hard (in a new engine) to implement a mechanic like this:

- 0-3 mph: Wind hardly felt, but smoke drifts

- 3-5 mph: Wind felt lightly on the face (a little tough for that one)

- 5-8 mph: Leaves are kept in constant movement

- 8-12 mph: Raises dust and loose paper

- 12-15 mph: Causes small trees to sway

Now give me some mirage to read and I'd be in hog heaven!!

Been messing around with ACE. It's pretty damned good. Maybe a bit too involved for the player, but still really cool.

[jabberwock (DayZ) 24]

Less scoped weapons, remove thermal, remove right click zoom, degraded damage at range, way more sway when aiming, fix distance rendering as it's way too easy to see movement far away.

It's getting kind of old how I can be minding my own business hunting in the far north or building a fire to cook meat when I get sniped from a mountain miles away.

[00dlez 22]

Been messing around with ACE. It's pretty damned good. Maybe a bit too involved for the player, but still really cool.

Explain what you mean by a "bit too involved", so much of your conversation regarding long range shooting has been about increasing the player involvement - just looking for clarification.

[jaws4096 77]

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.

[birdman 108]

Neat, maybe, but no different than now, folks would just avoid the winter servers to play on summer servers or what have you. If it was some how forced (all servers have the same seasonal effect, enforced via "seasonal patches") then maybe, but I don't think it's worth the hassle.

All servers have dates as well as time. Just program in four markers for the four seasons; 3/20, 6/20, 9/20 and 12/20. Have the game have unique weather patterns for each season via the marker. Most servers will sync with time.nist.gov so you can count on continuity throughout the hive as you move around(or make it a hive function!). That way if you want a permanent winter server the host can simply:

1. Disable weather.

2. Lock the date.

3. Change the date every time you reset the server.

[jaws4096 77]

All servers have dates as well as time. Just program in four markers for the four seasons; 3/20, 6/20, 9/20 and 12/20. Have the game have unique weather patterns for each season via the marker. Most servers will sync with time.nist.gov so you can count on continuity throughout the hive as you move around(or make it a hive function!). That way if you want a permanent winter server the host can simply:

1. Disable weather.

2. Lock the date.

3. Change the date every time you reset the server.

My vote would be to keep the season choice a local server thing. I don't have any problem with players hopping between seasons on the main hive.