BC_Hawke

More info on disappearing matches: We've figured out what's going on (Props to m0tzilla who pointed it out to me). You cannot have two of the exact same tools on your tool belt (ex: 2 matchboxes with exactly 3 matches each, to brand new knives, etc). But, say you put a matchbox with 3 matches and a matchbox with 4 matches on your toolbelt. Then, you go to start a fire and right click on the box with 4 matches. You build the fire, then BAM your turn it into a matchbox with 3 matches. Since you can't have two of the same one disappears. As a client, the way to avoid this is to always be sure you use the matchbox that has the least amount of matches in it. Also, just caught up on the last couple of weeks worth of posts here. I'm excited about the changes and can't wait for 1.8.4! Props to all the devs and admins for all the hard work!!!

Then why don't you start a discussion rather than getting fed up about reading about people being...fed up? That would be much more constructive than pointing out the fact that you don't like reading about humanity, right? Sounds to me like you just wanted to complain. Humanity is a hot button topic so it is often talked about. Most of the bugs have been discussed already and people are enjoying/exploring other features in-game. Besides being a hot button topic, the blood bagging bug has made humanity probably the biggest issue in 1.8.3, so it's no wonder that it's being discussed a lot in this thread. Your own personal end-game may be survival, but MANY players use and rely upon the humanity system in the way that they play. It only makes sense for it to be heavily discussed if it has been brought to a grinding halt due to the fact that you can't give blood transfusions currently.

1.8.1 increased the challenge of the game in many ways, and it's one of those areas you just have to adapt. We've adapted by making more use out of stashes for both medical gear and food/water so that we don't have to be carrying all of it at once. As far as blood types, you're usually pretty well off if you can carry an O+, A-, and B- with you. Those blood bags are fairly common and you'll only get hosed if you run into a guy with O-. By the way, I'm not sure why you sai medical items are much less common...I find med boxes at hospitals, med tents, and heli crash sites all the time. As far as bugged blood transfusions, that has absolutely nothing to do with how the humanity system is set up. Yes, it sucks big time (I accidentally killed a survivor in soldier clothing 3 weeks ago and it took me over 2 weeks of playing to get back to survivor status through regen and giving people painkillers and morphine), but it's just something we'll have to wait to be fixed and again has nothing to do with the humanity system. That's just how the game goes. Of course it's easier with a group. Almost everything in DayZ is easier with a group. That's part of how the game functions. It's beneficial to team up. You'll have more firepower, more inventory slots to carry gear, extra sets of eyes, the ability to multitask, people to sit in the gunner seat of choppers, the list goes on. Playing lone wolf is your choice. It has benefits and it has downsides. You can't blame the humanity system for your gameplay choices. Granted, having one hero patching up bandit teammates is a really cheap way to play, but you'll run into those types of exploits with pretty much any karma system unless you remove the ability to gain humanity from administering medical help to bandits. Becoming a hero as a lone wolf just takes more patience and skill. Yeah, it really sucks that the public hive is gone, but the answer to this is to find a server or two that you like and play on them exclusively. Honestly there's so few (populated) vanilla servers out there that the public hive would almost be pointless. It would be the equivalent to 4-5 vanilla servers hived together like what BMRF used to do. Trust me, I really, REALLY wish the public hive was still around, but there's so few server choices it doesn't have as much impact as it used to. As you stated above, blood bagging is bugged right now. Of course it's reeking havoc with the balance of heroes to bandits. I've been completely avoiding shooting survivors at ALL since 1.8.3 came out and I'm right at 0 humanity because of one accidental murder. Honestly, most of the changes that people "would like to see" in the humanity system would end up devaluing the survivor and hero skins. Yes, tweaks could definitely help, and maybe a whole new system will be better, but I STILL like the fact that this game has severe long term consequences for your in-game actions. I have yet to experience that in any other game to this degree.

I really disliked this feature when we used to play on 3480. All it really did was incite teenage drama QQ bullshit. We got so sick of people calling us out on side chat, whining, accusing us of hacking, bitching, moaning, shit talking, etc. My favorite was when you'd snipe a guy at 400 meters that's at a full sprint, but take a few shots to get him (hey, moving/zig-zagging targets are tough), and they'd call your name out yelling "SHIT SHOT! YOU'RE PATHETIC!"...not even able to realize that they're admitting to the entire server that they were killed by a "shit shot". The only thing we found it useful for was being able to report hackers to admins, but the negatives far outweighed the positive. US434 recently removed death messages entirely and it's been fantastic. Fights are so much more tense now, and when you hear gunshots in the distance it's hard to discern whether it's PvP or someone shooting zombies.

m0tzilla makes some great points. The question becomes how to get the game to know the difference between self defense kills and cold blooded murders. Is it even possible? People have suggested things like being able to kill someone that has shot you without losing humanity, but what if I'm a bandit and I come up on a survivor, shoot and completely miss him, then he shoots back at me and wounds me, so on the next shot I kill him, then the game considers my kill a self defense kill. I just slaughtered an innocent survivor but I don't lose any humanity. Unfortunately I have ZERO coding or modding experience so I can't even begin to make suggestions on how to make this happen. I will agree, however, that there should always be some humanity loss for killing survivors, even if in self defense for the reasons I mentioned earlier about questioning your humanity after killing someone even in self defense. As for humanity gain over time, I don't see hiding in a tree and letting it go up an issue as the gain is incredibly slow at this point, and hunger and thirst would force you to go hunting and visit towns or bodies of water which basically mimics the way some people play anyways (you know, the DayZ hermits that like to stay on the outer edges in the woods hunting, camping, and surviving). The only way I'd be on board with adding humanity gain for killing zombies would be if zombies were a serious threat again. Just as m0tzilla said bringing back the 1.8.1 zombies would be fantastic for this. One thing I feel that I have to actually call out though is how so many people call DayZ mod's humanity system "completely broken". I beg to differ. Sure, it has exploits (like ANY other mechanic in ANY game) such as blood bag farming and transfusing friends over and over (though blood types has made that much more difficult), but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that people that call it "broken" actually just don't like the system or can't deal with it. I think it's a fantastic system, especially the persistent nature of it (particularly back in the public hive days). This is the FIRST multiplayer sandbox game that I've ever played where my actions truly have consequences that cannot just be reset easily. A lot of people get upset about losing humanity to self defense kills and claim that it's broken or impossible, but my friends and I have been able to adapt to the system and play in a way that we (for the most part) have survivor/hero skins but regularly get into fights with bandits and are able to finish off hostile survivors that become bandits after shooting our higher humanity teammates. It's a bummer to lose your gear to a survivor that you don't want to shoot, but I find it odd that players get so attached to gear that can obtained again in just a few hours of gameplay while recouping 2500 or more humanity points can take days or weeks. If/when they implement some system for discerning murders from self defense people will just find exploits to that system and us it to their advantage. Personally I LOVE the tension in trying to talk or negotiate with other players with the consequences of humanity loss hanging over my head. It's led to some crazy situations of talking people down during a Mexican standoff and/or wounding survivors to get them down then forcing them to drop their weapon by threat of killing them...then bandaging them and letting them go on their way. These experiences trump deathmatch shoot outs by FAR in my opinion and they are one of the main reasons I play DayZ mod over any number of other FPS games where all there is to do is kill people.

For me just the enjoyment of battle and plundering the gear of the fallen is enough incentive for me to kill bandits! =)

That's actually how humanity loss works now. I don't know the exact math of it, but you will lose 2500 humanity for killing a fresh spawn, but much more humanity if you kill a hero. If they were to add humanity gains for killing bandits, it would have to be a fraction of what you lose for killing survivors (for example you gain 25 points for killing a -2500 bandit). If it were equivalent to humanity losses for killing survivors/heroes, there would be no incentive to play as a hero and it would simply become red vs blue. Additionally it would be way too easy for people to just go on a shooting spree on survivors then go bandit hunting to get back up to survivor status quickly. Either way, it's kind of moot because the devs have stated they want to revamp humanity entirely, so I believe that they're not looking at making any changes to the current system. In my opinion, however they change it, it should still be a challenge to maintain survivor status and be really difficult to get a hero skin. Too many people feel they shouldn't lose humanity at all for shooting in self defense, but if you think about it, killing someone, even in self defense, has an effect on the psyche. If you were killing people on a regular basis that were attacking you first, you'd start to question your humanity and whether what you're doing to protect your own is right or wrong. For a really good look into this read the book or watch the movie The Road.

At this point the question becomes whether you value the game mechanic or realism more. Sure, it's absurd to still be hungry after eating a few steaks (I've never had to eat a whole cow before...I think 4 is the max I've needed to get in the safe zone), but if you double it to make it more realistic, it goes back to being fairly simple to traverse the entire map with just a few pieces of meat again. I LOVE the fact that I really have to be intentional about hunting now. Honestly, I only ever carry maybe 4 pieces of either goat/sheep/cow meat with me (or two pieces of rabbit meat), and just make sure to eat any cans of food I find while moving across the map.

Not been dealt with? It's because of phrasing like this that kichilron reacted the way he did. You came across as an overly demanding diva. FWIW, a lot of us enjoy the food/drink system. You cannot create a completely "realistic" system for this, as players would only have to drink once every few days and eat once every few weeks (in GAME time) to stay alive. Statistically, based on average life span of most players in DayZ mod, the mechanic would be completely moot as most people would never need to eat or drink. The idea behind the current system is to put more emphasis on survival, and it has worked out brilliantly. You now have to prep and plan for a trip across Chernarus. You have to stop in towns here and there to find wells and canned food. Hunting and fishing are now a primary element of the game and not just an afterthought. You have to think before pulling the trigger and potentially getting yourself into a 30 minuite+ gunfight with a squad if you're already low on food or water. With the previous system, all you needed was a can of beans and a coke to literally RUN several kilometers from the coast to NWAF and beyond. That was far more unrealistic than the current system. The current system does not detract from the game, it adds to it. IMO it was very well thought out for long term surviving players as now we have more objectives to staying alive. I love going far North into the woods to hunt rabbits, cook the meat, and store it in stashes for future use. I love the added intensity of risking going out in an open field in broad daylight to kill and gut a cow when there could be a sniper watching from a nearby treeline...something that's risky but I do it anyway because now I NEED to to stay alive. 1.8.1 added so much to the game. It's so much more complete now, and it makes USE of several aspects of the game that were added very early on but weren't necessary to survive like hunting and cooking.

;) No worries. Looks like things will be back to the way they used to be when 1.8.4 comes out. For now I'm just enjoying the fact that it doesn't look like I'm having an epileptic seizure through my sniper scope after taking 3 steps. =D

Really Borges? Really? Even after I explained it to you in the simplest of terms and you thanked me for correcting you? In case you missed it: Y U post this when you already know why it is the way it is?

Um, no it's not. For about a year and a half, DayZ had a normal amount of exhaustion/gun sway. If you ran/sprinted or rolled on the ground your character would start to breathe heavy and if you aimed or scoped in on something your gun would sway a bit and take 10 seconds or so to settle down. 1.8.1 introduced the bug that caused an exaggerated state of exhaustion and weapon sway. Two to three steps of running/sprinting or getting up from prone resulted in heavy breathing and massive weapon sway that wouldn't subside for about 45 seconds. Currently in 1.8.3, there's NO exhaustion or gun sway. Your character does not breathe heavy after running/sprinting/rolling, and the crosshairs stay dead center in any state without any sway (save the tiniest bit of movement when scoped in with a sniper rifle while standing up...holding your breath steadies this out). The proper solution (which the devs have stated they are working on) is to get it back to it's original state. If you're going to bitch about something so much, get your facts straight! ;-)

There are a few vanilla servers left running. The most populated US one is US434: https://www.gametracker.com/server_info/198.27.83.122:2342/

I'm sure that's the case for a lot of them, but I've seen plenty of videos where people fight, drive around, fly, kill players, kill zombies, interact with loot, and use items in their inventory while without major desync/lag problems. I'm not a fan of Epoch and I'm not trying to say it's better, I'm just mind-blown that people can play on those servers when they have literally THOUSANDS more objects present and additional AI, scripts, features, etc. I don't understand how it's possible given how poorly the vanilla mod runs when 50 player servers get maxed out. Fewer zombies, maybe? I rarely see zombies at all when I watch Epoch videos.

I'm curious, with how much trouble that regular DayZ mod servers have maintaining performance with a full 50 slot server, how on earth do all those Epoch/Overwatch/etc servers with 1,000+ vehicles, 100+ choppers, AI missions, player built bases, and 75 players even run at all? Or how about the regular DayZ mod private hives that have radically changed the server by adding 1,000's of vehicles, choppers, buildings, etc?

I played on the 1.8.3 test server last night (loving some of the changes!), but I wanted to make a suggestion on the blood type indicator in the HUD. I *like* the fact that once you do a blood test you have an indicator so that you can remember it rather than have to write it down, but I *don't like* the fact that implementing this completely removes the necessity to actually read the chart and decipher the test results to figure out your blood type. That was a fun little mini-game! I suggest that after doing the blood test and you bring the chart up, that you have to click on the blood type that matches your test results. That blood type will then appear on your blood icon in the HUD. It should allow clicking on the wrong option so that if you mis-read the test the wrong blood type is displayed. If you feel you picked the wrong one after a bad transfusion (sometimes the test results are a bit hard to read) you can retake the test with another kit to reset the blood type indicator. This way you still have to read the blood test and have the permanent reminder there on your icon. Something similar could be done for filling empty blood bags. Have a menu pop up so you check a box for which blood type the bag is. If you don't know your blood type you leave it blank.

My mistake I misread R4Z0R's post. Will 1.8.3 will be available on DZC as soon as it pushes to Steam as an official release?

DotJosh sent me a message a while back stating that he fixed a feature in DZC that should now allow you guys to push the update to DZC immediately. Can we assume that 1.8.3 will be available on DZC as soon as it pushes to Steam? Both of the moves from 1.8.0-1.8.1 and 1.8.1-1.8.2 absolutely KILLED player population for several weeks and in the end killed a couple of really good servers. The move from GameSpy to Steam only made these transitions worse. The release of 1.8.2 made it absolutely clear that a large amount of the DayZ mod community still relies on DZC to update DayZ mod. Player population is low enough these days that it would be crippling if the community gets fractured again due to DZC not having the latest patch available.

As a player observing population on various servers, I've noticed one of THE most important things with server restarts on a vanilla server is to space them as far as possible on either side of sunset. Often times servers have a restart right as the sun goes down. The population will TANK at this point because people are often looking for any excuse to hop off because it's getting dark, and a reset provides them just that.

Not sure. What we do know is that it's definitely happening to a lot of people on the server whether they realize it or not. The server is almost completely void of bandits or heroes. Everyone we meet is a survivor, even after they kill high humanity survivors (we bumped into a survivor that had killed 2 guys the day before that had 3k+ humanity...he had only been playing on the server for a couple days, so he absolutely should have been a bandit but we lost hmanity when we killed him).

Here's the feedback from a couple of the Knights guys: Smurf: Medic:

Cool, thanks. Whatever it settles on I hope zombies can get hits on you while your player is running. As much as I absolutely love this mod (more than any video game I've played), the zombies are a non-factor when you can avoid them by simply running in a straight line. Nobody ever gets worried or freaked out about zombies when you can outrun them. I much prefer having to dupe them by losing LoS and being stealthy. 1.8.1 added a lot of intensity to the game.

I died a few times last Saturday and my humanity stayed intact. I haven't died since then. I'm conferring with my friends that it has been happening to to get more details. Yes, I've experienced inaccuracies in humanity in DayZ mod as long back as I can remember, but this is a separate issue. Humanity is being completely reset to the default 2500 survivor humanity that you get when you first start playing on that server.

Quick question about zombies in 1.8.3: is their hit range going to be increased? R0Z4R mentioned a while back that it needs further tweaking after I posted a video of being able to easily jog away from zombies without ever taking a hit, but I don't see anything about it in the change log. Thanks!