LDSkinny

I just don't understand the cheater mentality. I remember being 16 and cheating the shit out of Phantasy Star Online. Amazing how we went from a couple good items to having copies of every item in the game in a matter of days. It was also amazing that we had no desire to play the game anymore because we had everything. In a similar sense, cheating in more competitive games like this leaves you with a pretty hollow victory. Maybe the kids that cheat are just different than most people? I just don't see how it could be satisfying. Either way, I'm glad to see them getting banned.

Oh good to know, I made an assumption there. I didn't realize that the disciplinary action was on the host's end.

I advise you read the thread. You agree to a contract stating that you will not ban players from your server if you wish for it to be connected to the hive. Banning a player for KoS is a form of admin abuse and it is cheating. Doing so will have your server branded as a cheating server and will make it no longer able to access the hive (This effectively kills the server) Admin abuse was a huge problem in the mod and I do not want to see it coming to the standalone.

You already have that without KoS, though. The main reason we can't have this discussion is because the KoS supporters assume that anything other than instant engagement of hostilities with any spotted player is being a "carebear." KoS as a philosophy is irrational. It puts you at massive risk for marginal gains. Avoidance is the least risk for no gains. If you are playing with the mindset to survive, the logical course of action is to avoid player interaction at all. This is boring to most, I would guess. KoS players are effectively putting themselves at massive risk not because it is rational, but because they are bored. This suggests that the problem is resolved in other ways, such as adding more content and things to do besides deathmatch. Additionally, the penalty for death is basically nonexistent, so once you gain enough experience to know how to gear up quickly, death is just a minor inconvenience. I get that KoS is a thing, and by no means do I wish for the devs to condone PvE servers, as ridiculous as that is. I just wish players would stop using the justification that KoS is rational. It is not rational. It is at the other end of the extreme from players who wish to chat peacefully with everyone they meet.

That's the funny thing that I see. KoS tend to use that logic to justify killing everyone they see, the idea that it is logical to ensure their survival. Honestly though, if you prioritize your survival you will typically not engage another player at all unless it is absolutely essential. If you are concealed, firing your weapon alerts everyone in the area that there is a hostile presence nearby and puts them on high alert looking for you. God help you if they saw your muzzle flash, because now a target you did not know existed knows your precise location. KoS is incredibly irrational. Taking out specific targets for specific reasons is. I shot a guy on sight because he walked into the house I was in and I was cornered. He had an axe and I had an M4 and I've been charged by them in that exact situation before. I took the shot. I see an unarmed guy fresh off the beach? Why would I shoot him. That just alerts every bandit in the area that I'm here and willing to shoot everyone. The best way to survive is to not be seen at all. That means having the restraint to say "I'm not going to shoot that guy because it is too risky." I was in Zelenegorsk the other day and saw a player running through the town. I took up a defensive position and kept an eye on him from a window. I hear a gunshot and see the player dead in the street, so I scan around and see this player in a window. At this point it is logical to assume if he sees me that he will snipe me, so I shot him through the window and fled from the town. I didn't know if he had friends, so I left. If he hadn't shot that guy, I would been unlikely to know he was there and possibly would have walked into an ambush. Shooting puts you at risk. That is why I don't KoS. I kill when they are an active threat.

Assumptions? I never said anything about you playing on a No KoS server. I addressed your statement, which I will quote again since you seem to have forgotten you said it. You are implying that not being allowed to ban someone for breaking the rules that the server admin has set is "utterly retarded." Banning someone from your server for anything other than hacking is cheating. This is not up for debate, this is what you agree to when you purchase a server. What your statement above is saying is actually saying "Not allowing server owners to have a massive advantage over everyone else is utterly retarded." You might not realize that is what you said, but it is. Kicking and banning players for not adhering to your rules is cheating, this is a fact. I don't condone cheaters and neither should you.

It's not "your" server in the sense of a typical game. You're effectively paying money to have a server that you know won't go down suddenly. This was a lot more relevant back in the mod, since if you built a base and stored vehicles, those were local to the server. I know I had some heartbreak when a server went down permanently where we had worked hard to establish a base filled with loot and three vehicles. That's what made us buy our own server (until hackers ruined everything and led to us quitting the mod. They would come on daily and teleport every vehicle to NWAF, including the boats). Basically, what you're forgetting is that you still own your server. It's yours, but in order for it to be allowed to connect to the hive, you have to abide by certain rules that are designed to keep the game fair. This is because you get people who would lock their server, farm up all the best loot in the game with no risk, then take all of that loot onto another server they didn't own just to kill everyone with their superior gear. By all means you are free to kick and ban whoever you want from your server, but because you are effectively cheating at that point by banning players who are playing the game in a way that it was intended to be played, you server is no longer a legitimate server. That's what you fail to understand. Kicking a player for not following your arbitrary rules is cheating. You're no better than the hackers at that point, and it is perfectly reasonable for a server run by a cheater to have his server banned from the hive, just like you would expect any other cheater to be banned.

So, you insult me? I've never touched the FOV because it's known to screw up aiming. Perhaps you're the one lacking intelligence when you make assumptions and then throw out insults based on those faulty assumptions.

Ok...? I'm not sure how this addresses my issue. I guess I'll have to find a compass in-game and take a screenshot since people aren't understanding my problem. Obviously. When I'm in first person with the compass in my hand and raised by hitting spacebar, I cannot see the compass without holding alt and looking down.

The funny thing to me is that people keep saying that you can put it in your hands and hit space to see it. That has never worked for me. I can put it in my hands, and obviously I won't be able to see it. I hit space and now I can barely see the edge of the compass, but none of the working parts of it. In order to actually see the direction I have to hit space and alt look down at it. That's what annoys me the most. I don't know if I'm just doing something wrong there, though.

"Friendly" means "You caught me in a disadvantageous position and I don't want you to kill me, so please give me time to pull out my weapon and shoot you in the back." The second sentence is a mouthful, so they came up with "Friendly" as a way to express that quickly and efficiently.

If you could take parts off them, you should be able to pick it up, no? Were you trying to drag it to your backpack? As far as I know, there aren't any backpacks big enough to hold an M4, so you have to drag it up to the top area where weapons go.

Most of the time it's just lag. I know what you mean though, I have lost things permanently this way, but I've noticed that most of the time I can recover the items again. Basically, when they disappear, sometimes they'll show up after a bit. I had a medkit vanish and show up on the floor where I originally dropped it over a full minute later. Also, sometimes if you're on the second floor of a building, it will appear on the first floor (happens a lot in the two story military buildings I find)

I find it funny that people think that the server providers won't shut down their server. The server you pay for has to connect to the hive in order for it to be playable. The service hosting your server has to maintain good standing with the community in order to ensure quick whitelisting of new servers. It is actually not worth the paltry fee you are providing the server host for them to risk losing their position. And even if they do? If you server is consistently found to be abusing the system, your server will lose its whitelist status. Your server host doesn't have any control over that at all. DayZ has to allow your server provider to allow you to purchase a server. If DayZ revokes that privilege, your server is effectively dead.

After reading the title I thought for sure this was going to a be a thread saying how the devs are horrible people for taking a Christmas vacation.

Indeed, I have vaulted out of windows of houses before. One time from the second story of a building, which I thought would be ok. I died instantly.

I think the idea of capturing a town is a neat idea, but I'm not sure how it could be implemented with the hive system. You would have people logging into your town, so you'd basically have bandits appearing inside the perimeter. I can't imagine any fortified town lasting long, as the deathmatch players would log into the middle of it and shoot everyone they could until they died. Not to mention it would be exploitable because you could "fortify" a military base and then have a safe place to farm military loot once loot respawning is working. The alternative would be to have loot not respawn at all in a fortified location, but that's exploitable too, since if a sufficient amount of towns got fortified on one server, there wouldn't be anywhere left to get food. I think it's a great idea, don't get me wrong, I just think the hive system adds a number of challenges to implementation that would be difficult to overcome. At best we could have temporary fortifications or bases being built from scratch outside of the established towns. I think those are already in the plan if I'm not mistaken, though. I've been pretty critical of the hive system for a long time now, because the system itself is so exploitable for so many purposes that it is the source of the vast majority of complaints players have. (Server hopping for gear, characters getting wiped due to hive sync issues, ghosting, etc).

I've killed three players so far. One was self defense. A player kept following me while saying friendly (I've been keeping count since I started on SA, 4 out of the 5 players who have said "friendly" have attempted to kill me unprovoked within a minute of encountering them). I told him to go away or I would shoot him. He said "That's not cool I just want to team up" pulled out his axe and started charging at me swinging, so I shot him. One was in Balota Airfield. I had a fresh spawn after an unfortunate death to another player, and noticed I was at Balota so I decided I had nothing to lose and checked it. I picked up an M4 and ammo, and while I was in the room a guy logged in next to me decked out in gear. He turned and faced me and I shot him reflexively, since he had an M4 too. The last one I felt really bad about. I had an extremely good set of gear to start a run inland with (35 slot backpack, tons of food, FOUR canteens, a coveted can opener and a Mosin Nagant with ammo to spare). There was just one problem. A zombie snuck up on me while I was filling my canteens and hit me leaving me bleeding. I had no bandages, so out of desperation I took off my shirt to tear it into rags. Problem was, the game decided to just make the shirt disappear instead of tear into rags properly. I searched house to house as fast as possible hoping to find something desperately when I saw a player running from three zombies. I walked around the corner to see him trying to fight them all off with a baseball bat, and I gunned him and the zombies down. I ripped his shirt off and tore it into rags only to pass out unconscious right as I went to use the rag. I'm generally not a KoS guy, as I usually avoid players if possible, and when I encounter unarmed players I always leave them be unless they follow me and ignore my statements to leave. So that was a situation where I was desperate and killed a guy in vain, just to literally take the shirt off his back to save my own ass, and it didn't even work.

What exactly does item degradation even do? Ruined consumables like food, bandages, canteens, water bottles, compasses, etc all seem to operate just fine. I've heard ruined guns are less accurate and ruined clothing provides less protection, but other than that it doesn't seem to me like something being ruined really even matters.

I'm honestly beginning to think maybe my character is bugged. I've even tried on a fresh spawn who never got hit by a zombie nor ate any rotten food. No matter what quantity of water I drink and food I eat, healthy never comes up for me. Coincidentally, the "my stomach is stuffed" messages don't come up for me anymore either. I can eat a full box of cereal and several cans of food in their entirety in one sitting and never throw up or get any indication that I'm full. The same thing happens with water. My character is a bottomless pit for food and drink.

I ate a full can of beans, a full can of sardines, a full can of tuna, an entire bag of rice, and a box of cereal. I never got a message saying I was full. Then I drank three full bottles of water, four sodas, and emptied out my canteen, still got no message saying I was full. When I was doing this, I did not have either hungry or thirsty as an indicator, so I was already in good shape. After all that drinking and eating, I afk'ed in the woods for about 45 minutes while waiting for my friends to make their way to me. No change in my blood level. No messages, nothing. I heard about a "healthy" indicator being added in this patch, but no amount of eating and drinking seems to trigger it for me. The best I can do is make myself so full of food and drink that I won't have to eat again for hours. I feel like there's some other hidden requirement to healthy status that is not indicated anywhere and thus some players meet the requirement and others don't. Either that or there's a bug that is causing some players to not be able to ever become healthy. As it stands, I still think it's just better to kill yourself if you take too much damage.

Not all. They can all go semi/full or semi/burst or semi/burst/full. The M14A2 I used in basic only had semi/burst, for example.

I wouldn't mind it if getting healed was a reasonable proposition or if there was an actual reason to stay alive. As it stands now, in the time it will take to get a friend to log on and travel to me, assuming we have a blood bag and access to the proper blood type, I could have killed myself in a relatively secure location and returned to my body with a fresh uninjured spawn, so if I take more than a couple hits from a zombie or end up in one of those situations where trying to bandage myself ends up making the bandages disappear until they magically reappear 10 minutes later after I've all but bled out, I just act as though my character died and lure a nice zombie friend to finish myself off and respawn. The biggest reason this is the most viable solution is that I can drink 20 canteens worth of water and eat a full box of cereal and a pack of rice (why on earth did they disable the message saying when you're full now, I never know when to stop eating which is ridiculous. I'm hoping that's a bug.) so I know that I'm stocked on water and food. Yet, even a half hour later I'm still having vision issues indicating I'm hurt. I know when I'm severely hurt but there's nothing indicating the difference between "ok but not healing" and "ok and healing." Our bodies give us a number of cues to indicate something is wrong with us, the problem is that we aren't experiencing it first hand so we have to attempt to interpret a greyscale effect on the screen and make a guess at how wounded our guy is. In real life there would be a number of symptoms that would tell us the difference between "I feel light headed from blood loss" and "I'm about to black out." This game just gives us a single indicator that in practice just tells us we might as well kill ourselves because this character is screwed. Ultimately a serious wound in this game is no different than death unless you have an extra life in the form of saline or a blood bag compatible with your type, since suicide will get you back on your feet far more effectively than actually treating the wound.

Hitting "T" doesn't have any confirmation when you hit it, so I'm wondering if it actually works, but I haven't had something worth shooting at to warrant testing this. Maybe I'll go out into the woods and shoot some rounds into a tree. I'm just nervous about using it in town frivolously. Honestly if someone is flaming you for a lack of trigger control they're an idiot. Single shot is for killing, full auto is for suppression fire. You're not going to accomplish much of the latter with a 30 round magazine unless you're in a squad and even then staggered three round bursts are more effective anyway. Since 99% of players are going to be running solo and using their ammo to attack other solo players, full auto is not going to be an appropriate setting to have your weapon on.

I agree that the biggest way to stop KoS is to increase the zombie count. If firing a gun in the middle of Electro brings down 40 zombies on you, most people would perhaps hesitate to fire. That said, the zombies aren't much of a threat considering they are pretty much incapable of hitting a moving target right now. Even if 40 were chasing me, they'd never hit me as long as I kept moving, and it's easy enough to break line of site on trees repeatedly until they give up on the chase.