Excellent write up; I support the first ammendment you propose (seperate hip fire and ADS accuracies), but I would ask you to reconsider your stance on the second ammendment you proposed (actions influence accuracy) only because these actions themselves need reworked anyway.

Part of me doesn't hate these things though, now I'm reflecting. After learning the game, and understanding how it works I have an appreciation for the arcadey aspects of it; but I also would like to see it become more gritty. I think the main project should continue to become more gritty and realistic (while remaining a fun game), but they shouldn't go out of their way to make it impossible for modders to restore the arcadey aspects of the game.

How players use the current gunplay is not intended. Which is why the crosshair given by the game gives you a general area of where your bullets will land.

Players disable it and add a perfectly centered one. That is not intended.

The accuracy and ease of use is far above that of ADS. ADS should be for precision. And it is for sniping but for nothing else.

I'd prefer they rebalance hipfire to compliment ADS more appropriately, and then give the community a config with the options to change it back if they want.

Officially, the game shouldn't be "arcadey". It's a hardcore survival game, following the lore of the Arma series.

Not to say gunplay, movement etc should be the same. Just that point fire should not be preferred over ADS for precision.

This question of whether or not the game should be "arcadey" I feel like it killed the game in some ways; what it was in the arma 2 mod dayz.
This restriction I feel is the sole reason the game lacks so much content; while I also am of the opinion the official game shouldn't necessarily be "arcadey", the state of the game is sub-optimal. Most of the game still feels like a mod; and it may be caused by this adherence to a product that is "polished" and "realistic". Take for example the crafting animations that require you to hold mouse click down for N seconds. Those to me are very annoying; but it's an attempt to make the game "gritty" above anything else right? This is a large reason why we need a forum for DayZ again, so the creative leads can share their long term design goals for the game, and explain current features in a way that defines the direction of future elements of the game.

Offically, some elements of the game should be "arcadey" I've chopped a tree down in real life; even with a chainsaw you're going to be out there for a while and it's draining. You don't want the game to be 1:1 with real life, and I don't want to feel like DayZ is becoming more and more of a job.

Making a cooler in-game mechanic for crosshairs and maybe even dissallowing players to disable it might stop them from using 3rd-party tools. I have some ideas how you could implement this, but currently my development environment is not supported by the DayZ modding tools suite. If you're interested in some proposals that might address a fragment of your disposition, you should show your support and open a ticket asking the devs to distribute the DayZ modding suite as a standalone binary on their website; or merge the DayZ modding tools and the base game install on Steam.

I agree with your last statement; clearing buildings in a cool quick fashion and winning close range fights is cool, but it would be even better if it took a little more skill, (maybe you spin too fast and fall over? so you have to learn the limits through playing and get good at it? etc.)
Here's one that might address part of your pain: Aiming is head, followed by shoulders, so imagine you have 2 crosshairs. One follows where you're looking, the other is your shoulders turning, this means you could look to the left of your scope, like holding alt, but your shoulders won't turn until the threshhold is reached. That would make ADS and hip-fire more mini-gamed, and I think that would be really cool.

I think a possible change could be that when you raise your weapon for hipfire, it's slightly not pointing directly at the middle of the screen, and can be pointed in any possible direction, then as you have it raised your character is adjusting it into a more accurate location? Or it could just be random every time, and then maybe if you hold it up for long enough, or you shoulder it, then the firearm will be more accurate. If you go back to hip fire it will stay there until your stamina starts to drain from holding it up, and it will slowly drift from the accurate spot.

You could further enhance this mechanic by making it so that aiming often will increase the visibility of the crosshair, like you're training it. It starts invisible but over time becomes dim and eventually bold. Giving you a better idea of where your bullet will land, appearing only when you raise your weapon then fading after it lowers. That would be cool. This does raise the question of character progression which DayZ could use, but it needs to be done right, or else it's going to make the game not good anymore. I also think the crosshair is a missed opportunity for some creativity, it shouldn't be a white dot; but a vague shakey dynamic outline. These two ideas could play off of eachother of course.

You say the current crosshair in game is less accurate and more general; I don't use it, but if I did I would hit many shots that would likely raise your eyebrow. I don't have a problem with this, I've just accepted that's what it means to be good in this game. I would be interested to see more in depth mechanics; I believe gunplay in general needs a rework as you also believe. Have you seen the mod: sGunplay? It's an interesting mod that changes the way scopes work so that they don't zoom peripherals, so weapons feel more real, (think tarkov). I've tested it a while back, and it runs smooth. The mod owner has added a bunch of mechanics for accuracy penalties and stuff too, maybe he found a way to implement your desired features? Worth checking out at least.

nice seeing these core gameplay elements being questioned! People have been taking advantage of crosshairs for too long as they are much too precice!

Many changes should be made, just look at what the "meta" player is doing and you will find many broken interactions, My suggestion is disabling Nvidia filters as well! then we can balance night time for everyone one the same level rather than having to know that half players will just make it look like daytime.

I'm fairly certain post-processing filters have been banned (or at least there was major talk about it on the other feedback portal; not sure what happened if they weren't banned...)

Reshade was banned but they already have a workaround for that.

That's how it works; cheating is a billion dollar business. Anti-cheat is a lazy solution, trying to stop players from doing things, that is, in general. Instead you should hire a psychologist to identify what it is the cheaters like to do in the game, and make the game something they won't want to play, instant no cheater problem.