Guns, seriously.

[Gavalin 90]

Ok to think about it on a serious note, the amount of guns found in a setting such as this should be -high- what shouldn't be easily found is the ammo.

If it was to happen and the military mobilized there would be piles of military standard issue stuff laying around. What wouldn't be is ammo for it. Either having ran out or already picked through.

I tried looking for a post like this prior to comment on it, I didn't see one.

But yea. I would make ammo more plentiful at crashes. (Like the ammo boxes at heli's that have 10 of all the rifle mags in them) Decrease the chance of ammo spawn all over for all guns. If you seen an increase in gun spawn decrease in ammo spawn. People would have to scrounge for guns and ammo more often.

As of now even clans with choppers and such, they go around collecting ammo and leaving the guns at heli's. I don't care if there is a full server of AS 50 kiddies as long as they only have 10 shots each.

People would start thinking about using the Makarov more just because even if you halved its ammo spawn a player can keep a Makarov relatively full on ammo.

A quick swap (Or at least a swap that doesn't make me lose my gun) to the hatchet would be nice.

Range of zombies, harder to kill. Fast slow, they shouldn't aggro unless they have visual, I think guns should make them curious from much farther out. Start shambling over toward the shots until they can see the target.

Main topic was about guns, added a few extra meh.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Gavalin

[turkeybacon 26]

Your idea is bad and you should feel bad.

[Tristram 23]

His idea is good, and you're an irritating waste of oxygen.

Get over yourself.

[HellSnake 26]

I actually like the idea, but wait for the standalone. In the mod, duping and scripting would make this idea affect only legit players.

[hatfieldcw 184]

Ammo scarcity is a tough thing to manage. I was on a private hive a while back with some hardware issues that prevented normal stuff from spawning, so you'd get one loot spawn at each node, and after that it would only be non-pile loot, so there were plenty of hatchets, crowbars, backpack sand wood piles around, but no cans, no food, no ammo, no guns, no tools, except for what you could find that first time around. So people were running around with hatchets, and the couple lucky guys who had guns had one or two magazines for them, and wound up not using them. We'd range all over, trying to find barns or tiny villages that hadn't been hit yet, and I got lucky and found a hunting knife, a canteen and a CZ 550 with ten shots for it. First thing I did was find a guy with a 1911 and shoot him with my rifle, then score his pistol and head into the woods to live forever. I died shortly thereafter. Hit by a Ural. Apparently car parts still spawned and everyone had a ton of them in their ALICE packs, so it turned into a freaking demolition derby. Fun server.

Anecdotes aside, restricting ammo is a neat idea, but I don't think it'll work without a lot of testing and balancing. Since it's possible to go a long time without firing your gun, even very rare ammo can be amassed. I have 5 M9 SD mags right now, because I'm so stingy with the thing. Back when I had a PDW, same story. One magazine would last me days. On the other hand, if you make it so you only find one magazine every few days, you'll be totally screwed in a big fight, and a lot of the thrilling fights would be rendered impossible by lack of ammo.

Plus, ammo isn't modeled very well. If it was rare enough that we had to pay a lot of attention to it, I'd want a much better management system. I want to be able to strip cartridges from a G17 magazine to reload my MP5 mags, or dismantle an M240 belt to recharge all the empty DMR magazines I've been carrying around. One shot left in a PDW magazine? Drop it right into my M9's chamber and hope I don't miss when it's important.

[Gavalin 90]

Your idea is bad and you should feel bad.

You really should get to know a military friend or two. Trust me guns would be flipping every where. Damn near two per soldier, plus speciality guns. The ammo should be the really hard part to find. Slow some of the zombies down and make head shots count, half the ammo people could find. I personally think it would do amazing things for the game. I don't want different types of monsters but old decomposed zombies that shuffle, etc etc, ones that don't move at all, dead bodies that surprise you when you get with in grabbing range of them.

[Never 237]

The military grade stuff does need some kind of handicap or something.

Personally though, the Heli crashes need to be binned. Way to common, don't really make sense and because of that seem very arcade-like and clumsy.

Let players find and restore an 'ammo press' instead? Adds a goal and a very valuable target for a group to control. Just spread the materials needed al over the rest of the map so its not OP. A resourceful clan could even start a pressing service with a 5% bullet tax.

[bazbake 456]

If we're getting rid of helicopter crashes, we might as well get rid of military loot at army bases, too. The idea that no one is flying helicopters supervising Chernarus but military bases are still full of machine guns and anti-material rifles is...amusing.

[hatfieldcw 184]

The problem with helo crashes and military loot spawns is that the world is small, despite being massive. In a 24-hour period, the entire island is covered by many people, and unless you're intentionally hiding things in out-of-the-way places, carefully positioned to be hard to spot, it's going to get discovered in short order. Heck, even well-hidden caches are discovered often. Dropping a helicopter wreck in with understood heuristics guarantees that it'll be found and looted within an hour or two of server restart. I know that when I have a bike and see that, "Server restart in five minutes" message pop up, I plan on being on the server in seven minutes, pedaling like a madman through the fields, stopping at key high spots to glass the horizon for wisps of smoke or the hulks of British choppers. Teams that have a working UH-1 beat me to them as often as not, blazing across the sky and depositing paratroopers with M9SDs and empty Coyote packs at each wreck in turn and harvesting the rare and precious loot that appears there.

With barracks, it's even more absurd. If you log into a nighttime server and see four people online, you can bet your butt they're planted at NWAF with a mountain of cans on one hand and a Ural on the other, scooping up Rangefinders and GPS's and M24s as fast as the loot can repopulate. Sometimes I'll find tents filled with discarded M4s and AKMs that didn't make the cut.

The disparity between the survivor scrounging village to village and the elite task force casting aside carbines because they have the wrong kind of sight on them is a big one, and problematic. But really, I don't see much of a problem with military-grade gear in DayZ, with two exceptions:

First, the anti-materiel rifles are too much. Guaranteed one-shot kills with incredible precision and high-quality optics makes for a balance-shattering advantage. They kill players, they kill cars, they kill helicopters. We don't need them, and they're too powerful to contribute to the game.

Second, the ability to carry two primary weapons. I like the M24 and the DMR and the CZ 550, and I love the SVD. They're great guns, they do their job and they add depth to the game by allowing players to effectively fill the overwatch role. But they come with a cost in the loss of CQC effectiveness. Inside of 200m, an assault rifle is almost always a better choice. But people routinely have both, thanks to a big pack that can inexplicably stow a primary firearm and hot-swap in a matter of seconds. I can switch from one primary weapon to another via the gear interface more quickly than I can switch to my sidearm or even reload a rifle. Letting a single player be both a sniper and a CQC specialist gives too much power to the well-geared individual in PvP and PvZ alike.

I'm all for rewarding cooperative play. It's my preferred play style, and I'd never suggest removing it from DayZ, but allowing a successful team to not only run away with the farming of predictable loot, but to monopolize the rare spawns from helicopter crashes makes the game hostile to less organized players. Military weapons aren't going anywhere, but I'd like to see something that fixes the "best fit" syndrome we currently suffer from. Anyone who takes PvP seriously has an AS50, an M4 CCO SD, an M9SD or PDW, and a ghillie suit. That's the correct setup, and for all my love for the M14 and G17 and Camo clothing, I'd always trade up for some or all of the "win fit".

I won't bore you with my suggestion for the standalone, but the problem that Gavalin describes is real, and the solution is tough to find.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

The whole spawn system is being overhauled for the standalone.

[Michaelvoodoo25 3120]

Good to hear, I recall Rocket mention an emphasis on ammo. and the managemment thereof.

[Gavalin 90]

Beez is right too. I can not wait to see the balancing act of this game. Its so close and hurts so much to watch it faulter to one side or the other.

Props for even trying to do this. I will play most like because i log 100+ hours into any zombie game. Just my thing. I love PvP, I love the idea of helping. (Though wish people were not such traitors most of the time.)

Just the whole game keeps me warm and fuzzy inside. I'd be sold completely if we got good special effects, brain and gore splatter on the walls and shit when you got a head shot. (I mentioned some where I keep a tally of movies that have my favorite head shots in them)

I'd deal with all the bandits if I could see them slump against the tree I shot them against, leaving a blood trail from the full 30 round mag in their torso. 30 HP rounds would remove a torso. Head popping would be awesome from the high calibers.

Something I enjoy but it comes to us from Lag is the whole dying and running into a crumpled ball after you realize you're dead. Meh here I go just babbling away meh.

[ZomboWTF 527]

there's a way to refill ammo in the current version just like in the old days, but generally it's a great idea

no organisation or general people i know of put the ammo where the guns are, ammo should be rare, the better the ammo, the rarer

actually just make rifles spawn without ammo completely, having ammo taking up a spawn just like a gun, .50 only spawning at heli crashes and stuff like 7.62 more often since it's russia...