Joshnpk

To be perfectly fair, in Ecky's earlier videos he had done a great deal of effort to move a huge number of zombies away from his base by firing a shotgun repeatedly and moving away to the south-east towards the middle of the city, hence why there's a huge gap between the nearly empty surrounding area of the base, and actual city (where he lured all the zombies away into)..
 
I see your point though - I would really love an expanded, dynamic system that would turn zombie distribution into uniform after a few months into apocalypse and "create" random groups of 100+ zombies that actively roam around the area non-stop. 

How about adding extension cords that you could run from a generator to lights, fridges, radios, etc? Maybe power tools if they are added someday.
Feel free to correct me, I don't often use generators in game, but generators need to be placed adjacent to a pre-existing building to work the electrical demands of that building. What if you built your own safe house and want to power a fridge that you dragged over with the upcoming furniture moving update? What if I want to power the lights that I put up on my catwalk? What about that radio that I grabbed?
Currently, it's unrealistic how placing a generator next to a building powers that building anyways. This may be a gameplay design simplicity sort of thing, but it doesn't reflect reality. In the real world you would need to connect your devices to it, at the least have an electrical panel that you connect the generator to.
This would require the player to do more looting, thus making the game more difficult and risky. It would also make it more realistic. Double win IMO.

Probably better to have the appropriate moodles show up, rather than one specific to carbon monoxcide/dioxcide poisoning:
headache nausea (feeling sick) and vomiting diziness tiredness and confusion stomach pain shortness of breath and difficulty breathing Always prefer mystery over "hey, you're suffocating!"

Was just thinking that it would be nice for a class, perhaps carpenter or engineer, to be able to remove an entire window pane leaving an empty hole in the wall where the window was.
 
I think this would be nice instead of having to break the window, remove the glass pieces, and then look at the horrible jagged frame pieces for the rest of it's existence.
 
Also this would tie into restoring windows if/when it is implemented. You could gather windows from other buildings to restore broken ones.

I think it could be cool to have Power sub-stations/Water distribution stations or water plants/power plants in the game area and when the power/water gets turned off you could try and turn it back on?
 
Maybe have the national guard/army/SEAL team 6/whatever protecting the stations? Or whenever you turn it on there's a chance the government will come back to switch them off/sabotage the buildings?

The professions could be worked into it too, so like, an electrician could try and turn the power back on, but wouldn't be able to work the water system, etc.

I think he means more like a randomized "limit" of maximum Zombies for a "group". For example, right now it has a fixed limit (that you can change in sandbox), because of this the hordes will never form in groups higher than that limit number, meaning if there's 40 zombies in the area and the limit is 20, then we'd see two zombie clumps with even amount of zombies in each.
 
What he proposes is to see random amount of groups with random amount of zombies clumped into it. For the same example, with 40 zombies we'd instead see 1 group with 10 zombies, 1 group with 14 and 1 group with 16, without having all of them reform into two groups with 20.

To make it so not every horde you encounter after a few in-game days looks just about identical in number and distribution, maybe add three fields that govern rally group size and a percentage modifier that governs the likelyhood of that number being selected.
 
Right now it's set at 20. Instead, for example you could have something like 4-8, 12-18, and 20-28 with 40%, 30%, 30% utilization respectively. Perhaps even spice it up even more by weighting the percentage rolls based on what size the "neighboring" hordes have selected to reduce the chance of one area getting too high a population.
 
 
It would probably be beneficial to make a random-ish appearing adjustment for how the groups distribute themselves on the map as well, so you don't encounter those areas with neatly spaced zombie hordes dotting the landscape.

From a technical stand point I can't see it being too hard to implement. If a certain amount of zombies are on the border of a chain-link fence, lower HP of fence. Of course, it should have quite a lot of HP since they aren't easy to just tear out of the ground. Keep in mind I'm not programmer.
 
It'd also be really cool to see the fence become gradually less stable, perhaps even having it physically shake back and forth. Could be done pretty easily in 3D without the use of too many polygons, provided it fits in with the other fences that aren't 3D graphically. Here's a quick mock-up because I have Maya open for some reason.
 

 
It's only 150 triangles for a single fence, which is low considering the current shotgun model in-game is around 500~. It could be made much lower poly as well without much of a visual difference.
 
(+1, sorry   )

I don't agree with this idea, it removes the whole "profesions and recipes" part of the game since you can be a jack of all trades with a 25% of failing.
 
I dont know how to express it, but it kinda removes the whole meaning of specialization of a character plus the need to look for recipes books.

_ _  _ Traces_ ____ ___ __  _    _    
Players, NPCs (...and animals...) leave tracks when walking/running on snow, dirt, sand or flour/powder poured on the ground
 
every player can see running tracks  
characters with hunting/foraging level 5 are able to see walking tracks  
characters with hunting/foraging level 9 can see sneaking tracks  
direction of footprints is visible  
traces fade out progressively (similar to blood) until they disappear after a time calculated by the weight, sneaking skill (and type of shoes) of the character (edit)  
during rain-/snowfall traces fade much faster  
foraging/hunting skill (alternatively a new trait like "tracking") enables players to gather information about tracks by right-clicking on them, for example:  
level 1-2: weight (...kind of shoes [ link to shoes-suggestion by heporlathic -> http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/16623-shoes-blisters-and-prison-weapons-bonus/ ] )
level 3-4: kind of animal (kind of vehicle)
level 5-6: travelling speed, male/female
level 7-8: leg injuries, fitness/strength level
level 9-10: character name if you have seen him before
 
(edit)
 
a high sneaking skill (alternatively a new trait like "traceless") enables players to move around almost tracelessly while sneaking  
the heavier a character is (including inventory) and the faster he moves the longer his tracks are visible  
walking barefoot or wearing low profile shoes lets tracks disappear faster  
covering a track is possible by rightclicking -> "remove track", the tile will be "fresh" again then  
zombies don't leave tracks since it would cost too much server storage capacity/ processing power i guess? If it was possible it'd be awesome though...
 
 
 
 
Some gameplay possibilities traces would provide:
      
 
reconstructing individual player routes and actions would be possible (tracking down players, investigating "crimes", evaluating player behaviour etc.)
 
a foundation for an immersive hunting/trapping system (I'm coming up with an idea for an animal-, hunting- and trapping system based on tracks)
 
winter would become a season attractive for hunters and trappers (whereas farmers have their high-time in summer/autumn)
 
you could tell how frequented a certain area is by examining the amount of tracks there and consider that when choosing your base location
 
finding poorly hidden lootspots/ bases would be easier
 
pouring flour/sand/dirt on the ground could leave a tile that conserves traces (so you could f.e. tell if somebody has entered your base when you return home from your stroll or you could gather information about the attendance of areas/buildings of interest)
 
 
Some information on the pure technical feasibility of this topic by a developer would be nice, just to know if it makes sense to pursue this idea. Love the game so far!
 
What do you think of this concept?

I've been playing a character out in the middle of nowhere and living off the land and it has hit the winter so there are no berries or mushrooms to eat so I was thinking...
 
What if you could fatten up your character before winter hits so they have more calories to burn when food becomes hard to find? I know it's kind of hard to simulate considering you can die from starvation in under a week on this game and it takes way longer in real life but I still think it's something to consider. Plus you could be a slow running fatass and have huge overweight zombies.
 
edit: I don't think it's too complicated really.
 
Eating when full = fat
fat = longer period between very hungry and starving or just a slower depletion of health when starving.

And now introducing a new way for a player to die: Falling down the stairs!

More specifically, pushing zombies down staircases because it's pretty hard to keep your balance falling backwards down a staircase. They'd flop down the stairs potentially knocking down other zombies.  I'd personally like to go zombowling

I propose a change to how the cooking systems works, it goes as follows. If you are a character who starts with a high cooking skill nothing really changes for you, its business as usual, if you have no/low cooking skill then things change. if you start with 0 points in cooking you don't know many if any of the recipes that you do now, for instance you'll know how to make a sandwich/salad (because who doesn't) but you won't know how to make a stir fry lets say. If after making lots of salads/sandwiches you've gained a few points in cooking, instead of just magically knowing new recipes what if you had to learn/find new recipes?
 
You could find a recipe for a steak pie in a kitchen draw, if you had lets say 4 points in cooking you could learn it and make your self a lovely steak pie (mmmmmmmmmmmmm). But if you had 0 points in cooking your character wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of it and would have to hold on to it till he/she had a higher cooking skill.
 
You could also expand this by making different traits, for instance a trait you could pick is amateur baker which would give you 2 points in cooking and some cake/sweet based recipes. Another one could be BBQ Dad which would give you various meat based recipes, and the job chief could give you a broad mix of recipes.

Another change I propose is the ability to edit titles of topics you've created.

I propose a change to how the cooking systems works, it goes as follows. If you are a character who starts with a high cooking skill nothing really changes for you, its business as usual, if you have no/low cooking skill then things change. if you start with 0 points in cooking you don't know many if any of the recipes that you do now, for instance you'll know how to make a sandwich/salad (because who doesn't) but you won't know how to make a stir fry lets say. If after making lots of salads/sandwiches you've gained a few points in cooking, instead of just magically knowing new recipes what if you had to learn/find new recipes?
 
You could find a recipe for a steak pie in a kitchen draw, if you had lets say 4 points in cooking you could learn it and make your self a lovely steak pie (mmmmmmmmmmmmm). But if you had 0 points in cooking your character wouldn't be able to make head nor tail of it and would have to hold on to it till he/she had a higher cooking skill.
 
You could also expand this by making different traits, for instance a trait you could pick is amateur baker which would give you 2 points in cooking and some cake/sweet based recipes. Another one could be BBQ Dad which would give you various meat based recipes, and the job chief could give you a broad mix of recipes.

Another change I propose is the ability to edit titles of topics you've created.

Another change I propose is the ability to edit titles of topics you've created.

A small suggestion, Wouldn't it be nice to have more options for character customization such as body type, more faces, beards, hair, ect.? With all of the new animations and models that will be coming our way in the soon-ish future it would be cool if they could add some of these.

I like this idea, I also wish your hair and facial hair could grow (very slowly). I know the devs said no hygiene but shaving your face or cutting your hair doesn't seem like a problem. Most players die in the first month so they most likely wont even know the feature exists, and any player who lives any longer would shave or cut there hair once if that in there entire play through. So it doesn't seem like it would involve any micro managing. Would be a cool way to increase immersion.

I like this idea, I also wish your hair and facial hair could grow (very slowly). I know the devs said no hygiene but shaving your face or cutting your hair doesn't seem like a problem. Most players die in the first month so they most likely wont even know the feature exists, and any player who lives any longer would shave or cut there hair once if that in there entire play through. So it doesn't seem like it would involve any micro managing. Would be a cool way to increase immersion.

Basically it'd be nice to seeall hairstyles avalible on all people.
I'm a guy with long hair. I'd like my character to also have that.
That is all.
Also perhaps make it so long hair makes it easier for zombies to grab you maybe.

This might be a stupid idea, but why not give a heads up to the players the first weeks?
 
Example, you enter a building with zombies inside a room, not specific which one, but a moodle could appear telling you that something smells really bad, that should give you a heads up of either a corpse or a zombie that might lurk around there.
 
This could prove useful when they add diseases to having corpses around inside a house, giving a heads up of something begin rotten and probably dangerous to your health.
 
Maybe is too hard to code, maybe is too stupid, but it sure as hell can save you from that one zombie inside the bathroom when all the lights are out and is night time, you know the one.

Alot of food can be dryed for presevertion.
I would like to see dryrrack and shelves for drying various kind of foods.
There are many different kind of dry racks and most are very easy to make yourself, you could even use a dry rack for cloths with a little creativity. 

TheKimster

If is a dead NPC that you cared about, yeah i think that will happen.
 
But random zombies that are familiars from the get go? i doubt it.