BC_Hawke

Strange, I don't remember typing out "every 2 minutes" anywhere. In the mod we'll travel around and run into someone every 20 minutes or so depending on where we go. Back when we played SA we'd roam the map for 2+ hours without seeing a damn person other than right at the coast.

But this isn't how it actually works out now, is it? I would spend hours and hours in SA going from town to town to town without seeing anyone on 40/40 servers. It was so rare to see anyone away from the coast that the game got completely boring to me. Now, like I've said, there's a good middle ground in there somewhere, where the small houses out in the middle of nowhere are enterable and have loot, but there aren't 1,000 enterable copy/paste apartments in Cherno and other big cities they've added. To be clear, I'm not saying that nothing should have been added, I'm saying they took it too far and added too many buildings.

I actually would go so far as to say CQC in DayZ is horrid due to the massive amount of desync, lag, and low FPS. Whether or not the game will ever be optimized enough to make CQC good is to be seen. As for interactions, your point may be true in cities on the coast or right next to spawn points, but one of the main reasons I quit playing SA is because I'd spend hours roaming the map going to high value loot spots like NWAF and not see anybody. Seems everyone is just too damned busy checking every single apartment in Cherno. Yes, the mod version of the map certainly restricts how many places you can explore, and I'm not arguing that additions shouldn't have been made, but the massive amount of apartments/houses/buildings just (virtually) spreads people out too much. IMO there's a much better middle ground where there's a good amount of places to explore but you find yourself needing to move on to the next town. If some real incentive to venture inland on the map would be added to this, you'd have an increase in player interactions in areas other than just the coast. Well, here's the interesting part. The map in the mod had acres and acres of woods and even tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere in which you can play as a hermit. I MUCH prefer the feel of the mod map where you can isolate yourself if you want, or venture to places like Stary, NWAF, NEAF, and Orlovettes factory to meet people and get into some good action. I quit playing SA after the 10th or so time that I went from the coast to NWAF and hung out for over an hour on a 40/40 server and didn't see a damn person either at the airfield or any of the interesting towns on the way.

First off, your question should read "How, exactly, have an insane amount enterable buildings negatively impacted the dynamics of the game?" Like I stated in my comment above, the addition of an unbelievably large amount of enterable buildings has virtually increased the size of the map by 10 fold. What I mean by that is that looting a city can now take you three or four hours if you actually check all the rooms. Searching for loot is very tedious, especially in cities like Cherno. It adds a significant amount of time that it takes for players to move from one area to another, and adds what seems to be an infinite number of of nooks and crannies that players can be tucked away. What this means is that it really reduces the amount of contact that you have with other players. The map is significantly larger than the mod due to all the enterable buildings, yet as of now the max player count is 40. Even then, most servers only have 20 or less players. When you add this to the lack of incentive to venture to places like NWAF, you can literally play for hours on a max population server without seeing a single person (unless you want to deathmatch at spawn areas). SA is incredibly boring. I can't tell you how many times my buddies and I ran all the way to NWAF, looted it 2 or 3 times, then ran all the way back to the coast and didn't see a damn person even though it was a 40/40 server. Another factor is the hit on performance that the servers and clients see. 100's of apartments means 1,000's of objects and textures. Given the horribly optimized state of BI engines, this KILLS server and client FPS. Honestly so many of the apartments, buildings, and houses are just cookie cutter copypasta that's just unnecessary and uses up resources. You see, there's a good middle ground. OF COURSE the original A2 Chernarus map had a severe lack of enterable buildings. Adding more was the natural thing to do, but they took it way too far. DayZero is much closer to that middle ground with the added interiors to houses, police stations, and hospitals.

I look back on 1.7.7 with great fondness. People were constantly low on ammo because everyone was actually shooting zombies for fear of getting infected. THIS IS HOW A ZOMBIE GAME SHOULD BE! My squad got in a big fight over a Huey at Skalisty, and in the end, after several people had died, it came down to one guy on the other team with an enfield and myself with a Makarov. I was able to take him out because he was too busy shooting aggroing zombies. It was one of the most intense fights I ever experienced in DayZ. On top of that, people were banding together like crazy just to stay alive. It was great!

The thing is, it's not about the lack of being completed. It's the fundamental and complete change in direction of the game. It's a totally different experience in almost every way, and not for the better. The interactions are different, the look and feel of the game have changed entirely, the addiction to adding insane amounts of enterable buildings has changed so many dynamics of how people use (or don't use) the map...it's just far to different from the vanilla mod. Even when it reaches 1.0 release it still won't offer anything close to what vanilla mod does.

I completely agree. I was getting sick of the lack of vanilla mod servers by mid 2013 and hacking made it too difficult to play on the public hive. I was really down about it because vanilla DayZ mod is such an amazing game and the interactions and intense fights were incredible. The popularity of all the carebear mods and private hives depressed me, but I was so stoked because SA was on the horizon. Ironically, SA ended up being the stake through the heart of vanilla DayZ. Anyone that still played on vanilla servers or the public hive went to play SA, but sadly Dean Hall and BI completely lost focus and SA retained virtually nothing that made the vanilla mod such a great game. SA has gone so far in a different direction that I doubt it will ever offer the same experience as the vanilla mod. It's a different game entirely which is really sad because the mod had such a great thing going. Thankfully, there's a small community that still likes playing the vanilla mod. Servers like US434 have kept that alive. I've been so glad for all the fun I've had playing on US434 in 2014 and 2015. Unfortunately that won't last forever. It seems like the end of an era. I don't see anything on the horizon that can replace vanilla DayZ mod. EDIT: your comment about enterable buildings is spot on too. Even though Chernarus is still the same sq km in area, they've virtually increased the size of the map by 10 fold while only being able to have 40 players on at a time. Even if this number increases to 100 or more, I think the idea of adding thousands upon thousands of identical looking rooms to have to scavenge for loot is a terrible idea. They should have taken a much more conservative approach to adding enterable buildings to the map. Go crazy with visual enhancements, but adding endless apartments and big cities was the wrong move in my opinion.

Wow I'm surprised nobody here has been able to answer this. Okay, first off, the reason your inventory looks the way it does is because you're playing the official DayZ mod. Most videos you see of "DayZ mod" these days are of derivative mods (ie mods of the mod) like Epoch, Overwatch, Overpoch, Origins, etc. When the official mod went from the 1.7 patch to 1.8, there were significant changes to the game, including the HUD and inventory. At that point, all the derivative mods branched off and are still based on pre 1.7.7 code. 1.8+ has brought great changes to the mod, allowing you to carry a melee weapon and rifle/shotgun at the same time, improved hunger/thirst mechanics, improved medical mechanics, improved infection mechanic, crafting, base building, and improved zombies. Honestly, most of the mod derivatives have devolved DayZ into an absurd mash up of gameplay that resembles GTA, CoD, and BF much more than DayZ. 99% of those mods are just insta-gear up PvP games with severely nerfed or even completely removed zombies. Second, the controls are not nearly as hard as you're making them out to be. They're just a bit more involved than most games. Spending 10 minutes in the options>controls page will allow you to familiarize yourself with the controls. The one major downside is that when you're not holding a weapon in your hand you can accidentally toggle certain settings that force you to walk instead of run without realizing it because your character won't do the animation without a weapon in his hand. You may accidentally double tap one of your lean keys (Q and E by default I think) which will slow your character to a walk, but you won't see him leaning without a gun. You may also toggle "aim down sights" which is your right mouse button. This will force your character to walk as well. Also if you double tap "walk" (left shift), your character will be toggled into walk mode. The order of trouble shooting if you're stuck walking without a gun in your hands is tap Q, then tap E, if that doesn't work, try RMB, if that dosn't work click RMB again, then try double tapping left shift. That should fix things. Soon you'll find that Arma 2/DayZ actually has an amazing set of controls, allowing you to lean, go prone, play in 1pp or 3pp, and be able to free look around you by swiveling your head. I find it mind numbing going back to traditional primitive 1pp or 3pp games that don't give you this much freedom of movement. Third, you cannot punch nor raise your fists in DayZ mod (save a few mod derivatives that added a script allowing you to do a slow punch animation). It's the standalone game that allows you to punch people. Fourth, your screen shots look terrible. Be sure your interface resolution is set to your monitor's native resolution, and your 3D resolution is the same (100%). Then try these settings if you want decent FPS but still want the game to look good: Texture detail: very high Video memory: default Antisotropic filtering: very high Antialiasing: disabled (you can enable this if you have a really good GPU) ATOC: disabled Terrain detail: very high Object detail: very low Shadow detail: high HDR quality: normal PPAA: FXAA sharp high Post Processing: off (or low if you like the bloom effect) Fifth, understand the difference between vanilla DayZ mod servers, modified private hives, and mod derivatives like Epoch/Overwatch. Vanilla DayZ servers run the original mod with no changes. Unfortunately, 99% of DayZ mod private hives are heavily modified with 100's of vehicles and choppers, added buildings, starting loadouts, and other things that cheapen the experience. I HIGHLY recommend starting off in vanilla servers to get a real feel of DayZ and how it was intended to be played. Here's some info on getting into vanilla servers. Beyond that, there's plenty of other mods of the mod that in my opinion ruin the entire point of DayZ by making it super easy and strictly PvP, but for some reason a lot of people enjoy them. Hit google, there's plenty of info out there on how to install them and find servers. Just remember, DayZ and Arma 2 aren't Call of Duty. You're not going to boot it up and be in a 360 noscope FFA sniper deathmatch after 5 minutes of playing. Vanilla DayZ mod takes patience and time to learn and gear up. If you want a good idea of how the game functions and what to expect, watch Frankie's DayZ mod series (though his videos are pre-1.8 DayZ so inventory/hud will look different and hunger/thirst/medical/infection will be different).

Razor, I know you've heard me suggest this a few times but I wanted to see if you had given it any thought or whether or not it's even possible. Is there a way to have a 3rd type of zombie that is less difficult than regular zeds or viral zeds and have them spawn at the coastal cities? You've mentioned risk vs reward a number of times lately and I know it's an insanely difficult thing to balance considering the amount of people that complain that zombies are too hard or too easy after a new patch releases. With different tiers of zombies you could really make the game more challenging up North and at military sites like NWAF and heli crash sites, but keep things easier near the coast so that new players don't quit playing the mod after 5 minutes because they can't hack it. I'd really like the idea of zombies further inland behaving like the 1.8.1 zeds that could really do a number on you even when sprinting away from them. I love that DayZ mod is a sandbox game (honestly despite all the bugs and the endless complaints people post here I feel it's the most entertaining video game I've ever played), but I don't think it would compromise the sandbox feel too much to give it a bit of a linear progression in terms of difficulty as far as zombies are concerned.

FYI the changes that you claim are copying the SA were made before SA even released. Those changes just weren't implemented because BI held up any mod updates for over 6 months around the time SA released. As far as difficulty with zombies, it's a GREAT thing that they present a challenge (hell, I'm bummed out the devs nerfed them from 1.8.1 when they could actually catch up to you and hit you while you were running). 1.7.7 and 1.8.1 are the only two DayZ mod patches since I started playing 2 years ago in which the zombies were actually a *real* challenge. Currently all you have to do to get away from them is run in a straight line. And BTW like Razor said they cannot take 3000 blood in one hit. =P Where did you get that number? You should be HAPPY for all the changes since 1.8.1! The game is truly a zombie survival game now and not just a "run to NWAF for gear and PvP" zombie game. If you want small numbers of pathetic wimpy zombies then go play SA.

Heheh, I fully believe they should revert back to the 1.8.1 zombies as they had a longer reach and since there was no unlimited sprint they could catch up to you, hit you, and sometimes knock you down. 1.8.2 didn't have unlimited sprint but the zombie hit distance was reduced and they could no longer hit you when you were running. There was no simply running away from zombies in 1.8.1. You had to stealth, evade, lose aggro, or fight them. It was great!

This is a temporary unintended consequence due to them removing the duty system as a temp fix for all the exhaustion/gun sway issues in 1.8.2. I believe it is all worked out in 1.8.4 and you should be back to the way it used to be where sprinting quickly exhausts you and you get gun sway for 15 seconds or so after running or sprinting.

I like it. It's a great deterrent to letting your humanity get too low.

Have you played the mod (on vanilla servers) anytime in the past year or so? The interactions are SO much better than SA. 90% of the people I run into in SA are either KoS junkies or 12 year olds derping around wiggling and screaming "TAKE YOUR PANTS OFF!!" The interactions in vanilla mod are so much more interesting.

LOL brag much? How can I ever expect to be on your level? Listen, my comments were describing the rarity of weapon spawns in DayZ mod, not about my skill level in obtaining them or how "easy" it is for me. If you want to take it there...yeah, of course I can fairly easily obtain high level military weapons, but that's simply because I know where to look, I'm willing to take the risks of going there, I know the map well enough to get to top tier loot locations without the aid of a map or GPS, I'm often mobile by means of a car, plane, or chopper, I'm usually traveling with companions, and I have a good amount of stashes in which I can store gear. Is it "easy" for people like you and I to find and use military weapons? Sure. We've played the game a lot. We know the ropes. However, for the newer player (especially the lonewolf), they will spend a fair amount of their time with a russian or stanag assault rifle and a small backpack, and be stoked when they come across an LMG or mil sniper rifle. If you make it too hard to obtain these weapons it really screws the little guy because he'll spend almost all of his time with short to mid range assault rifles while being targeted by squads who have the means to find and store ultra-rare LMGs and mil sniper rifles. Back to the real issue at hand, which is the rarity of these guns and not a comparison of our skills at playing the game, I'm still doubting that you're playing on an actual vanilla server if your statements are accurate. My squad is often very mobile and we make a lot of hits on NWAF and the mini airfield next to it and more often than not we find M1014s, AK variants, and STANAG guns. It usually takes us 2 or 3 airfield visits to find an LMG, SVD, M40A3, or DMR and often 8 or 9 visits just to find a Czech or Coyote pack. For a lone player that's not a veteran to the game, 2 or 3 visits to an airfield is a big deal, and finding a big backpack is a really difficult task unless luck is in their favor. Heli crash sites tend to spawn G36 variants and AKs more often than LMGs or mil snipers. Either way there's typically only between 3-5 of them on the entire map by the end of a server cycle, so it takes a lot of effort and risk for the average Joe lonewolf that's traveling on foot to reap the rewards of these spawns. On the other hand, if you're simply being hyperbolic and are actually in vanilla servers and don't like it, then it sounds like you'd be better off playing another mod like DayZero or 2017. Maybe the standalone would better suit what you're looking for. Honestly, I'd be okay if they nerfed the high tier loot a bit in the official mod, but I really don't think it's as out of hand as you're describing.

Okay. Thanks for answering. Currently in the vanilla servers I've been playing on vehicles always spawn with 80% damaged engine, 80% damaged fuel parts, and no tires, and I don't recall having to find jerry cans to get anything up and running other than a helicopter.

I have a question about the parts necessary to rebuild vehicles. I may be remembering wrong, but I thought that a couple years back when I first started playing on the public hive servers that vehicles spawned with no fuel and 0% health on all items which required you to find an engine, fuel parts, a jerry can, and 4 tires to get it running. Repairing the glass and hull were optional but useful to survive being shot at. Currently, on US434 and other vanilla servers I have played on, vehicles spawn with some fuel in the tank and a working engine and fuel parts (both 80% damaged), requiring only 4 wheels to get the vehicle on the road. Similarly, airplanes spawn with 1/2 or 3/4 full fuel tank, requiring absolutely no work to get in the air. Am I remembering the public hive mechanics wrong, or did things change when all the former public hive servers loaded the private hive defaults. Or is it a step further than that and server admins have tweaked what vehicles spawn with to make it easier?

I know it's really late to reply to this but I just came across this post. While I agree that rare top tier gear is a good thing I have to question whether or not you're actually playing on vanilla servers when you make statements like "you are very likely to find M14 aims, m249's, m24 in every airfield visit.", "90% of the people I see above spawn cities has either a DMR or an LMG (or both)", "it seems AK and AKM is rarer than a dmr weapon", "every player has DMR's and LMG's", "Almost everyone is carrying [czech packs], and you can almost expect finding one when you run up north to loot military". These statements simply aren't true. We get pretty bummed out when we lose a DMR or a Czech pack because they're actually pretty difficult to find and you may go a few days, a week, or more without one. We make many airfield visits in which we only find AK variants, Stanag guns, and ammo. We see PLENTY of people inland as far as Stary and NWAF that have non-DMR/LMG weapons on a regular basis. I actually feel the spawn rates for DMRs and czech/coyote packs is really good right now. We'll go days without seeing any of those and are more likely to come across one by killing a bandit that has one of those items on them. It sounds to me like you're playing on servers that have altered the loot tables to make top tier weapons and equipment easier to find if your claims are accurate. As for squads that regularly have high end gear, they have WORKED for that gear. My squad (knights) regularly goes through all the trouble to gather the parts necessary to get a helicopter running so that we can make trips to industrial spots for more parts, military spots for more weapons/backpacks, and heli crash sites to find the top tier stuff. It takes HOURS of gameplay to find and store up a decent amount of high end stuff in stashes and tents. And to be perfectly honest, even with hours of gameplay on a weekly basis, I currently only have ONE spare DMR in a stash and TWO spare M14s. And I pretty much never pass up a DMR/M14 when I come across them. Our squad has been spending a good amount of time running with British assault packs and even the small assault packs as of late as survival ACUs, Czech packs, and coyote packs are hard to come by in 1.8.3. Now, could the game benefit from making some of these items a bit more rare? Maybe. But remember, that will most likely have a much harder hit to the little guy lonewolf than squad players. Squads will still be able to collect top tier gear through manpower, use of vehicles/aircraft, and the ability to win gunfights while the lonewolf survivor will hit the airfield time after time without ever getting a chance to get their hands on that precious DMR. Lastly, I think it's a fallacy that the DMR is the god tier weapon in DayZ mod. The variable scope, detachable magazine, compatibility with NVGs, and semi-auto are great, but it has no zeroing so you have to rely on your ability to memorize mildots to range it, and it becomes really difficult to make a shot past 700m because you have to zoom out to level one to keep using the mildots. The M24 and M40A3, however, can be zeroed. You can get a perfect headshot at 800+ meters with these guns by ranging it and dialing it in. The DMR is a really tempting gun but the bolt action rifles with zeroing are much more effective at making long range kills.

I was under the impression that wild spawning zeds is currently an available server option now. Is it not?

Absolutely NONE of this is vanilla (except self blood bagginng since 1.8.1). You should really take vanilla out of the subject line. It's deceptive and it confuses newcomers to the game. In DayZ mod "vanilla" refers to the server settings, it's not a designation of what mod the server is running. The proper term would be 1.8.3 official mod.

Since the BE update yesterday it seems you cannot run DXTORY or any software that has an OSD overlay. I remember this happened a long time ago (over a year?) and somebody came up with a workaround, but I cannot remember what it was. Anyone remember a solution?

Okay I was running an outdated version of DXTORY (from the last update). I updated and still had the problem. Another DayZ player and youtube channel owner named iConnorN gave me a tip to solve it. He said to uninstall DXTORY, delete any folders/files associated with it, and delete the DXTORY folder in user/apdata, then do a fresh install of the latest version. Worked like a charm!

Untrue? Why would I lie? =P I'm at work so I can't see if I have the latest version of DXTORY, but I'm not the only one having the problem: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?187328-New-battleye-update-blocking-dxtory-%28recording-software%29 DXTORY was working fine for me right up until the most recent BE update, and it still works on non-BE games so it seems the BE update is conflicting with DXTORY. I'll check to see if updating DXTORY fixes it and post here. On a side note I found a forum thread and a fix on the last time this was an issue: http://forum.exkode.com/index.php?topic=19.15 Direct link to the fix (not sure if it will work for this issue, but it did work for me the last time this happened):

Just some feedback, the server has been performing really well the last few days. Not sure if it has anything to do with removing JSRS support, but I have had virtually no issues with inventory lag, player desync, delayed switching from weapon to melee, etc. FPS still hurts a bit when the server is full, but overall the server's been MUCH more smooth at peak times when pop i high.

I think the current hydration mechanics are great (in 1.8.3. I'm assuming they're the same in 1.8.4). A 12oz can of sugary/caffeinated soda or lemonade shouldn't help much. Taking a couple drinks of fresh water from a well or boiled water from one water bottle almost completely refills your drink meter. It's a good thing that people have to plan their routes and look for fresh water sources. Honestly, as long as you drink a soda here and eat a tin can of food there you're pretty well off. You only really HAVE to have cooked meat and water if you travel really far from food/drink sources or if you're lazy and sprint past towns to make it to NWAF. I know you've heard my opinion on this a few times but I think the 1.8.1 zombies were fantastic. They hit hard, you had a fairly decent chance of getting infected by viral zeds, and they had just enough speed and melee range to catch up and hit you and occasionally knock you over while you're sprinting. I think the solution to people complaining about the difficulty is to limit types of zombies to certain areas (which I believe has already been done to some extent). Spawn military and viral zeds inland and further North. Spawn only regular zombies in residential areas near the coast. Sometimes the global changes to zed damage and melee range becomes a pendulum that swings back and forth between extremes. Would it be better to create another, more easy tier of zeds that spawn at coastal towns? (is that possible?) Also, I think I mentioned this before, but in playing 1.8.3 I've really missed the low blood effects from before. I LOVE the changes to being in pain (the drunk cam), and I like that getting hit by zeds or gunshots really shocks you now, but I really miss the shakiness, desaturation, and panicky sounds that you used to make when close to death. Currently you could be at 300 blood and hardly know it save for the fact that you're passing out frequently and the color/saturation goes all funky (sometimes you make the panic sounds when zombies are nearby but sometimes you don't). It just doesn't feel threatening when you're low on blood. Curious, what do you mean by change was unknown? I thought changing the loot spawn timer was intentional. In 1.8.2 it was extremely easy to loot farm. You could bounce from barracks to medical and back to barracks at the new POI airfield and cycle the loot like crazy and be fully geared in 20 minutes. The longer timeout is much better at creating the apocalyptic scavenging feel. We roll up to a factory to look for engine parts...none there...okay, let's move on! We then proceed to travel to other towns, running into all sorts of action and folly on the way. With the 5 minute timer we just hang out running circles around the factory until an engine pops up. They loot farming process is too tempting to pass up but inevitably leads to a more boring experience of hanging out in a single area rather than searching the map for the one part you need to fix the helicopter/car/etc. Would 10 minutes be a better compromise?