JoeM (DayZ)

Well I believe they are making infections more controllable and potentially less deadly. This will make zombies easier, to counteract this I would suggest that zombies do maybe 50% more, maybe even double damage compared to what they are doing now. I want zombies to be a real threat./

You get infected when zombies hit you right???? So why do you keep letting zombies hit you? Sneak around, only loot buildings on the outskirts of villages unless you have a good route in. When a zombie does aggro on you, you get plenty of warning. SHOOT IT before it hits you, don't worry too much about headshots just shoot till it drops. You cannot afford to be hit due to infection. I have played for hours and hours now and have yet to become infected. I now have near full gear myself (with a little luck). 1.7.7 is awesome because zombies are now a challenge. You have to calculate risk and reward just from zombies alone. You can no longer stampede through areas looting only to then lose zombies in a bush. You need to crouch, and prone around zombies and villages. This is how difficult I want zombies to be, maybe in another way like doing more damage and reduced infection. But it is definitely headed in the right direction. This is a game with zombies now, not just bandits.

My advice? Download 1.7.7, find a Vanilla server with nothing else added. Just normal DayZ with not added loot or more added vehicles. Also make sure there are at least 20 other players on. And learn the hard way. If you learn this way be prepared to die a lot, become very frustrated and annoyed but you will quickly learn. And you will very quickly become a good player who knows how to deal with the difficulty. Stay away from servers with starting gear and loads of vehicles though. Those are just easy mode servers where everything is handed on a plate for you. If you learn on 1.7.7 you will be able to tackle anything in future.

The only thing, IMO that needs to be changed is where antibiotics are found. Like you say there should be a chance of it spawning in supermarkets and maybe even a low chance in residential buildings?

I don't see why everyone is complaining about the infection rate. Yes it is high, there is a high chance of being infected when zombies hit you now. So ask yourself this..... Why do you let zombies keep hitting you? Been playing for two days now, not been infected once. Just use a more stealthy approach and if you get zombies on you shoot them until they are dead, don't let them hit you AT ALL!!! Awesome patch, people need to adapt. EDIT: This feels like a proper zombie survival game now, I love it.

I found one. There were 4 tents and a blue barrel thing. LOADS of Viral zombies spawned and I couldn't even loot the tent and there was no other loot around...

I really want to know, someone please help me. Me and my friends sat down today to find a good 1.7.7 veteran server but there is apparently no such thing. All the servers we find are listed as [600+ vehicles/25+ Choppers/Starting Gear/Custom Spawns/Recruit] etc etc etc.... I want to play DayZ, the zombie apocalypse mod not some kind of CoD/BF3 remake where you are spoon fed weapons on spawn and go around death-matching people. I don't disagree with PvP in DayZ but PvP in DayZ should be exhilarating and actually quite stressful. I tried a server with 800+(eight hundred+)(Yes EIGHT HUNDRED+) vehicles and starting gear. I spawned in Elektro with an MP5 with 3 mags and all I heard was shooting and just saw a kill feed of death after death by MP5 from distances of maybe 50 metres at most. I ran around a bit, got to the firestation and was shot at. I returned fire and killed him. There were at least 5 others around. I turned a bandit and finally got killed. And guess what! I didn't give two hoots about it, why? Because of course I would just respawn with near full gear again! I spawned in Kamenka, made my way to Zelenogorsk and found myself an ATV. It was fully repaired, just like all the newly spawned vehicles in this specific server. I drove it further north and saw a Bus, Ural, Jeep, Off road and another ATV that's when I knew it was getting a little ridiculous. After I got past Vybor I couldn't go 20 metres without seeing another 4 vehicles. Then I drove straight through the NWAF only to find that it was impossible to drive straight through it. Not because of the bandits around, but because it was filled with more vehicles! Hundreds of them! I then found an M24/NVGs/Coyote Backpack, all the toolbelt items and some other stuff. I then died. But I couldn't care less, I know that if I wanted to find that gear again it would take at most one hour. This is not what DayZ should be... We actually managed to find a good vanilla server yesterday, it had 35/35 people - a good amount. It took time and was very very very difficult, but at the same time it was awesome. There were 3 of us, we found zombies a threat for once thanks to 1.7.7, we found bandits and got into some exciting gun fights where our hearts were beating hard. We were screaming down TS 'Player! Player!' After multiple deaths (mainly from my not so skilled teammates) I managed to kill a bandit who had full gear! He said his character was some hundreds of days old. I had a DMR/NVGs/Rangefinder/Ghillie/Basically, the whole thing. After that point I played so carefully, everything was a risk if I had died I would have been mad. This server was so much fun, there was no loot in most buildings, bloodbags didn't work thanks to the server host and zombies were extremely difficult. It felt like a real zombie apocalypse and it was a real struggle to survive. There was swearing, blood, sweat and tears. BUT IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!! However there was a problem. The server is now empty, it has been all day. I think people found it too hard, people were raging down side channel and there were constant calls for help. I can find no servers that have a constant good population of players that are actually fun to play. Either vanilla or near vanilla. This makes me very sad. I'm worried for Standalone because it will be hard, I am concerned that people will give up on it because it's a challenge so there will be a small player base. So I just want to ask the question, what the duck happened to DayZ?????????????????????? Is it now just an FPS? Also if anyone could show me a near vanilla server with at least more than 20 players at all times that would be fantastic!!!

I mean 'proper DayZ' in the terms of how DayZ was meant to be. I am not saying they are doing it wrong, they can play how they want it doesn't bother me. And I do wonder why they play it, if I wanted to run around like in an FPS I would go and play BF3. I don't want to come across saying they are doing it wrong. But I just want to know why nobody really seems to play vanilla. And it does concern me for when SA comes out because people may still have this attitude that they should get everything on spawn. I noticed someone complaining that it was too hard to find a vehicle (with 800+ vehicles on map) and that made my heart sink a little.

Well I never insulted CoD/BF, I just stated that's what it feels like. Which it does. You get weapons on spawn and you run around shooting. There is nothing wrong with that, I never said there was. I just want to know why people bother playing this if that is all they want to do? Why does nobody seem to enjoy proper DayZ?

But on these servers it really doesn't feel like the world is coming to an end! You can just ignore the zombies and then nothing feels different to CoD/BF. It feels like the world is coming to an end when you have to upturn a whole village just to get a can of beans. Not when you stampede through Cherno like a bull killing everything on sight with a nice new MP5 you just spawned with.

Well I searched 'vanilla'. Have just done it now to double check. And the busiest server has 8 people on it. IMO it is not much fun when you never bump into anyone, I like it being busy. This is also what I am concerned about, why does most of the playerbase enjoy playing with hundreds of vehicles and no incentive to loot? Are they going to find SA boring frustrating?

Patch is AWESOME!!!! But I think some things should be tweaked. It should be: When a Zombie hits you and you start bleeding you should have to apply an antiseptic of some sort and then apply the bandage. If you do not do this, then you get infected. You should not get infected from random hits from zombies it seems a little odd if they do not pierce the skin. And you are not exposed to them long enough to get it from the breathing over you... The infection system should be reworked. At the moment you can get infected and then die within an hour, that seems ridiculous. Antibiotics should be rarer than they are currently but infection should take maybe 8 hours of game time to kill you from full blood to no blood. Then there should be other effects from infection, maybe shivering, double vision at times, hallucination (seeing people that aren't there would be totally amazing and scary). But antibiotics should be quite a bit more rare. Every item should be a little rarer, just a little. It is hard as it is but I feel that some things are still too common such as food and drinks. Maybe increase trash loot like empty tins etc. What I'm saying is, make the game even harder! But in a slightly different way I guess, a more controllable way - less randomness.

Awesome server, great admins that work hard on the server and are dedicated. Definitely worth trying this server.

I'm left handed but seeing as most FPS games have a right handed only option I have just become used to shooting right handed in FPS games. It feels very strange to shoot left handed in games for me (playing as Sheva on Resident Evil 5), even though I would shoot left handed in real life. I think most other left handed people will probably think the same thing.

This mod used to be as it should...... quite some months back. However now it has just turned into a KOS deathmatch between everyone. This is because there is very little incentive to team up with randomers and the zombies are easy enough to deal with on your own. Play with a few friends you trust and there is no reason to team up with randomers. Wait till standalone then hopefully there will be something added so there is less incentive to KOS and more incentive to team up for short times.

Yea I agree that they are amazingly common, but then again everything is too common.

I think it would be a good idea, would be much easier to identify people you are teamed with instead of shouting down TS/Skype 'is that you?!?!, is that you?!?!?'

I think this is a great idea, to add to it you should be able to find a new type of clothing 'Winter Clothing' that consists of the standard Russian outfit with the thick fur coat and the big hat (I don't know its name). I think it should be the same rarity as a backpack such as an ALICE pack. Not too common, but not too rare. I also think to shelter from the blizzards you should be able to enter houses and use a fireplace in the house to light a fire (from wood you gathered yourself of course). The downside to this of course would be that smoke will come out of the chimney so it will be fairly visible to passing players.