BC_Hawke

It's a very prevalent problem right now. One of my friends was a 4k+ humanity hero and died, then spawned in as a 2500 point survivor. He kept trying to get humanity back up but was reset to 2500 every time he died. Also, we've been in fights where someone kills one of our teammates and becomes a bandit, then we kill him...at which point he spawns in the same city and rushes back to his body...as a survivor. We'll kill him again (verifying it's the same person by seeing the death message and checking the body) and we'll lose 2500 humanity points for killing him even though he had turned to a bandit skin just 10 minutes earlier. This is happening to a lot of people, not just an isolated incident. For the people it's happening to it's very repeatable.

I keep forgetting to mention this, but one critique on the new POIs introduced in 1.8.1 is that all the trees in those areas are copy/pasted with the exact same orientation. When you approach those areas, you see a bunch of trees in neat rows with the exact same shape facing the exact same direction. It's actually really distracting once someone points it out (heh, sorry everyone reading this). The best example is the POI South of Skalka with the burning buildings and medical tents (which actually happens to be my favorite new POI...love the atmosphere in this one!). I'd think that this could be fixed with a fairly simple alteration to randomize the shape/size/orientation of the trees in those areas. Also, we've noticed that a number of trees in the new POI areas aren't tagged as being "in a forest" so you cannot use the hatchet to gather wood from them. Thanks! Can't wait for 1.8.3!

*BUMP* I'm still hoping a new public hive is a possibility. How can we help make this happen?

I absolutely could not have worded any of that better myself. Phil has some great insights here. The only thing that I would add (which probably doesn't need mentioning considering how level headed the mod devs' approach to things have been) is that there shouldn't be any impenetrable safes/shacks/houses in the game. One of the most important aspects of DayZ is that nothing you find or build is completely safe or permanent. If you can stash 50 DMRs/ghillie suits/NVGs in an impenetrable safe the core idea of the game has been lost. Also, to add to Phil's comments on backpacks, the storage necessary for giving blood transfusions has increased dramatically because not only do you need transfusion kits but you have to have a variety of blood types with you if you hope to help other players out. Not complaining about the new medical system mechanics one bit, but it does take up a lot more room in the inventory along with extra tools and crafting items.

You always have the choice to not take them out. Get more creative. You can often get out of a situation without killing them (we do it all the time). Back on the public hive we used to knock people out with an M14/DMR shot and bandage them while they're passed out. Or you can break their leg and make a run for it. If you have a friend he can spray the guy with cover fire while you make an exit. As far as dying and losing your gear, you can always find another backpack and DMR, but humanity is permanent. Look at it this way, if you're both 2500 point survivors and you die, he's that much closer to being a bandit and now you can find him and kill him without taking a hit to humanity. This discussion is moot anyways as the devs have stated several times that they're planning on revamping humanity entirely.

Wow, shit's going nuclear over in DayZ PC General Discussion. This guy's PISSED OFF!

Breath, man...BREATHE! And you said my comments were hyperbolic! Listen, you're either blowing my comments out of proportion or grouping me together with other people that have said some horrible things. I'm not slandering Dean Hall or making personal attacks. I'm only asking for two (fairly simple) things: A formal statement about whether or not there will be any effort to recover the mod's public hive (even if the answer's no...just an acknowledgment that it's down and cannot be recovered) The ability for mod devs to get approval for new patches in a decent time frame so that they can continue to develop the mod As of May it looks like #2 is happening now which is fantastic. Not sure why you use rhetoric such as "All this toxic bullshit of "he promised us" is just fucking insane. Grow up, no one OWES you anything...". It's perfectly reasonable for someone to be upset about a game developer going back on something they said in an official announcement. Even if the reasons for why things are the way they are might be fuzzy, I'm not sure why you're calling my reaction "fucking insane". You're being more insulting than the people you're calling out.

It's hard to pinpoint any one particular moment to link you to, but here's a link to a post that R4Z0R49 made at the beginning of may regarding finally opening the lines of communication with Hicks at BI to get 1.8.1 approved which had been ready to go since (I forget the exact date) but somewhere around Nov/Dec of 2013. Regarding the public hive database, after it went down I posed a question as to who controlled the database or had access to it and this was R4Z0R49's response. Just to be clear, there are certainly ways in which BI has been helping keep the mod going since R4Z0R49 was able to get things moving through Hicks, but I am still upset about the ways in which they dropped the ball (ie waiting 6 months to approve 1.8.1 and letting the public hive die).

+1, we had some great times there Jimmy! Your hard work was appreciated!

About a month (or two?) ago I posted a comment on Reddit in one of Rocket's posts about gutting the engine asking if there would be a revised roadmap. He replied that they are still going by the one announced a Rezzed. I honestly can't remember what thread this was in so I don't even know how to search for it to reference it.

Unless you're calling the mod devs out as liars, they stated that they made several attempts to contact Dean and other people at BI regarding approval of the 1.8.1 update. According to what I've gathered from this forum my comments are neither hyperbolic nor inaccurate. Yes, this is true. I can appreciate the intricacies involved with this, but again, it goes back to the fact that Dean Hall stated that mod development would continue in parallel. I'm sure he knew the implications of that and should keep his word. Again, they were aware of the implications when announcing that the mod would continue to be developed in parallel. I appreciate what they have done to live up to that, but am frustrated at the areas in which they've dropped the ball. I also think that they should focus on SA, but at the same time give the mod devs the tools and the ability to continue development without major setbacks like a 6 month delay in patch approval our the permanent loss of the public hive.

The things I've run into have been stated already I think. I got kicked once while blood-bagging, but have bb'd several times since without getting kicked. "Drink" option always present, can't pick up 5L fuel cans. I've noticed what I assume to be a bug which is sometimes when you try to enter your inventory while in the middle of an animation (going from standing to prone is the most easy to reproduce), your character bobs up and down and the inventory screen does not appear. Loving the new build system, makes placing stashes so much better. One thing I did notice, however, is that the build cam key command can conflict with users' keyboard bindings. I use space bar for "use selected item". I was totally confused for a few minutes the first time I tried to place a stash as every time I hit space bar to "complete build", it kept putting me into the build cam. After a couple tries I realized what was going on and saw the custom key binding in the control menu. Perhaps you can add a note in the change log mentioning which custom action key binding is used for build cam and how to change it if needed (sorry if that's already been notated somewhere and I missed it). As for zeds, you saw my video showing how they can't catch up to you and hit you at all now. Also it seems like you can take a lot of hits now without much danger of getting really hurt. (hear me out on this next part please!) =) Personally, while I don't like the idea of nerfing the zeds too much, I LOVE the idea that you implemented of adjusting the viral zed spawns so that there's none of them in residential areas. This opens up the door for a progression in difficulty as you leave the coast. In my opinion, you should revert the viral zeds to 1.8.1's damage and hit range, and leave the non-viral zeds at the current 1.8.2 settings. This would create a steep progression of difficulty as you move North. That way fresh spawns and new players are able to survive at the coast, but as you move North and start looting Airfields and heli crashes, the difficulty increases dramatically. This could be a game changer, adding to the feeling that the further North you go the harder it gets. That way the people that love a challenge are happy and the people that don't want OP zombies are happy. Win/win! Overall we (my friends and I) have been really enjoying the 1.8.2 patch! Good job dev team! Now that it's available via DZC population is back up and we're really enjoying the mod again.

The community is developing the mod, but they still have to get approval from BI to push updates on the official DayZ mod (meaning the regular mod, not the spinioffs like Epoch etc.). The problem is, the mod devs got shut out by Dean Hall and BI and couldn't update the mod for over 6 months. The 1.8.1 patch (arguably the best update to the mod since it's inception because of the vast PvE improvements) was ready to be released sometime around November or December 2013. They submitted it to Dean/BI for approval, and got no response for several months despite many attempts at communicating with them. Sometime in April they finally opened a line of communication with Hicks and got the ball rolling again. 1.8.1 was approved and released in either late May or early June (I forget). The pace has picked up since then, which is good, but like m0tzilla said BI dropped the ball on moving the mod public hive database to a new host when HFB shut down. The loss of the public hive was a devastating blow to fans of the mod, as most of the players that preferred the true vanilla version of the game played on the public hive. Dean Hall abandoned the mod the moment SA released by ignoring the requests for approval on updates, thus going back on his promise that "Development and updates of the mod will continue in parallel with the development of the game, so anyone who is playing the mod now will be able to continue to do so". I, like m0tzilla, have lost faith in SA not simply because of the pace of development, but more so because Dean/BI went back on their promise of letting the mod continue to be developed/maintained. It's hard to remain optimistic about the future of the game when they keep missing projected goals and going back on what they've said in devblogs. I have a very hard time believing the game will be feature complete in the next 3 months, but I sincerely hope I'm proven wrong.

Stupid question for the devs: would it not be possible to add another tier of zombie spawns on top of local and nearby that would spawn a limited number of zombies from a much farther distance like 1km instead of the typical 200m spawns and tie that tier to just a select few buildings in an area? This could eliminate the "zombie player radar" that has always been a part of DayZ mod by making zombies present at any location before you are really close enough to inspect it through a scope or binoculars. I'm assuming this would be too much of a burden on the server or something like it would have already been implemented? Just curious. BTW, in an unrelated note, who else is stoked about the 1.8.3 changelog!? Lots of changes that (if I read them correctly) will make for some great server side optimization in the game!

I couldn't agree with you more, and I certainly hope a new renascence happens with DayZ mod. =) Thanks! I actually got a PM from dotjosh this morning:

Well I'll be damned. Looks like dotjosh updated DZC today. Hope it actually works and people figure things out and get back into the game. The post on reddit got pretty good response. Hopefully that will bring some people back to the vanilla mod.

Many of you are aware of the mess that DayZ Commander's lack of updates (and a huge amount of the player base's inability to use Steam to install DayZ mod) is causing. A lot of people out there are not aware. I've made an attempt to get the word out on Reddit. If you have an account do me a favor and give this an upvote for visibility. If you feel I worded it wrongly or have additional input go ahead and say so in the comments. I really hope that the official DayZ mod doesn't die her and now because of this mess. http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2fhxvu/dayz_commander_is_killing_the_mod_to_play_182_use/

I love this idea. I think adding one more "super bandit" skin would do it. Becoming a hero is tough, so it doesn't seem like there's a need for another tier there. On the bandit side, though, I'd love to see a psychotic killer skin that reflects how many people they've slaughtered. I'm all for gaining humanity from killing bandits but it has to be a relatively small gain compared to how much you lose for killing survivors, otherwise there's no value to either side and it just becomes Red vs Blue. Au contraire! In our experiences bandits almost always act in a way that is in alignment with their skin. We used to be friendly to both survivors and bandits (flank them, call out friendly from behind...kinda like a hold up but without holding them up), but we found it almost a guarantee that the bandits would be "friendly" until the first moment they got to pull a fast one on us. Despite many people's complaints about heroes I only ran into one hero on the public hive who would regularly shoot sruvivors and he openly admitted to us that an admin that was running a sketchy server on the public hive used some sort of exploit to give him 50,000k humanity. We've certainly come across some people in bandit skins that either changed their ways or sometimes like to play friendly, but invariably they give in to the bloodlust of PvP and just go deeper into negative humanity, all while saying they "mostly kill in self defense". Survivors are the wildcard, and that's what makes meeting them so much fun! Are they survivor skins because they're friendly, or are they just new to the game or new to this private hive? Even if they're friendly, will they panic when they see us and start shooting? What do I do if they start shooting? I don't want to die, but I don't want to lose my humanity!!! This is so much more exciting to me than "player spotted...firing...got him" over-and-over-and-over-and-over like other games. As for your last point, go play Standalone for a couple weeks. It takes sandbox to the extreme and without any rules at all you just end up with a bunch of derpy people goofing off and/or killing anything that moves. There are people that play as "heroes" but anytime they see another group of well armed people they label them bandits and start shooting. It's honestly really drab. Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of a sandbox game, but I think it's even better when there's some consequence to the choices you make. It gives people a motivation to play a certain way without flat out dictating it. It's still sandbox, but outlines some possible paths.

I think the whole "customize your character" aspect of video games is incredibly overrated. It is just an element that appeals to people's narcissism and the need to stand out or be different. That being said, it would be cool to be able to change various aspects of your character while still being bound by the rules of humanity in the game. I do like how you can temporarily hide your identity in DayZ mod with camo/ghillie/soldier clothing but lose that concealment upon death. I think the humanity system, while flawed, is a KEY element to DayZ mod and something that sets it apart from all the GTA type games where you bling out your character with stupid items...for what? (It's also something that SA completely lacks which I feel adds to the boredom and blandness of the alpha). The humanity system in the mod, while harshly criticized, is solid and unforgiving. It's extremely difficult to avoid a bandit skin in a very PvP centric game. What I love about it is that it teaches you that shooting back isn't always the answer. My squad has been in many engagements where we are being fired upon by survivors who see us as a threat and we get a hell of a lot of excitement out of trying to either defuse the situation or escape with minimal humanity loss. Sometimes this means providing cover fire for the teammate being shot at so he can escape (haha we've been called "shit shots" so many times over side chat...if only they knew). Sometimes it means flanking and holding them up. Then there's always risking a non-fatal shot, breaking their legs to give your teammates time to get out of harms way (with the risk being that they may already have low blood and you might end up with a murder on your hands). Then, there's always the scenario where one of our squadmates ends up getting killed in the shootout. Well, knowing that we all typically have decently high humanity (many of us were heroes or close to it on the public hive), the aggressor, having a survivor skin, is sure to be at bandit level or near it, so we can then take him out to avenge our fallen without taking a hit to humanity. In my opinion the old "I had to shoot back to defend myself and now I'm a bandit" is a lame excuse that shows a lack of creativity in the approach to playing the game. People are short sighted and value the Lee Enfield they got (and can get again in 10 minutes after respawning) more than the permanent humanity loss that they take from shooting back. All of this makes for a much more interesting and intense PvP experience for the people I play with. We made it a point to try and have tactical advantage over survivors at all times so that we weren't faced with having to shoot back in self defense if at all possible. Didn't always work, but it did most of the time. Lasting consequences for your actions is something that set DayZ mod apart from all the other FPS, open world sandbox, and survival games. I'm sad that SA hasn't implemented it and it would be a shame if DayZ mod eliminated it.

^^ This. I have no idea why people cannot part with DZC. It's outdated and broken and killing off the mod faster than anything else out there, yet people STILL recommend it all the time as the go-to for installing and browsing, and admins are too afraid to update to the latest version of DayZ mod for fear of losing their players that use DZC. It's sad. I wish dotjosh would just let it go and take it down. I understand that real life gets in the way and it can be difficult to find time to keep things up to date, but it's really doing more damage than good now.

The SA is missing these things: High saturation of zombies at every location you visit (one of the KEY things that makes the mod tense): I don't know if they'll ever be able to reproduce this with server spawned zombies. They'll never be able to optimize the game enough to spawn the amount of zombies server wide that would replicate the saturation of client spawned zombies you had to deal with in the modPlayer movement across the map: NWAF is barren, we would spend HOURS moving around NWAF, Vybor, Veresnik, Stary, Zelenegorsk, Cherno, and Elektro and not see anybody. It seems the biggest factor contributing to this is a lack of loot spawn balancing and lack of really high end military loot like GPS, rangefinders, NVGs, Sniper rifles, LMGs, etc that would spawn at military bases.Exciting heli crash sites: not only do they look terrible, but the loot isn't that great, and there are no zombies to serve as a threat when looting them. I know SA is all about already populating the world with server controlled zombies and not having them spawn via client proximity, but crash sites are boring to loot without dealing with military zombies in addition to the risk of getting snipedVehicles: one great source of tension is trying to gather the parts to repair a vehicle or chopper before someone else gets their grubby hands on it. Race against the clock, then you run the risk of getting sniped while repairing it. Also, you don't have that adrenaline rush that you have in the mod when you hear a vehicle or chopper approaching.Performance: all the desync and random glitch sounds just takes away from the experience IMOA good player base: for some reason SA has attracted a community of people that are just derpy in general. Seems 90% of interactions in-game are people dancing, wiggling, playing music over direct, talking like Morgan Freeman and Hank Hill, and just being idiots. Players in the mod take it a bit more seriously. Not to the point of it being an RP game, but just to where you can interact with people and chat, help each other out, share info on other players/squads in the area, or betray and kill each other. I love so much of the interaction in the mod. When I meet people in SA I feel like I stumbled into a middle school party. Of course, there's the obligatory DayZ Reddit response "IT'S AN ALPHA!!!! IT'S AN ALPHA!!! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND GAME DEVELOPMENT!!!". Yes, some of the things I listed will eventually change as they complete the game, but I honestly don't see them being able to fix all of those issues based on their current approach to the game and the speed of development.

Nope, this has always been a common misconception. I never noticed any humanity gain for killing bandits. The DayZ mod wiki states that there is a gain for killing bandits but I've never seen it. I know that other sub-mods have added humanity gain for killing bandits.

I personally like how hard the zombies were in 1.8.1. They've significantly nerfed them in 1.8.2 which you might like. Not sure what you're saying about removing guns from barracks...I found several guns in the barracks while 1.8.1 was up. They have adjusted the spawn lock times for buildings so you should notice more loot everywhere in 1.8.2. Are you aware that cooked foot regenerates blood? 1 rabbit steak regenerates something like 1,000 blood. Plus, when you're well fed bood is constantly regenerating. It's far from impossible to get blood to full. The only reason it was so hard to become a hero in 1.8.2 is because humanity gain for transfusions was glitched, only giving you 25 points instead of 250. That's been fixed in 1.8.2. As for blood types and kits, what's keeping you from finding a Czech pack and hitting hospitals to store up on blood bags, transfusion kits, and blood test kits? O- is a universal donor, so save up as many of those as you can and you'll be well on your way to becoming a hero. IMO this system is so much better. It makes it harder for squads to constantly blood bag each other just to boost humanity. Not sure why you think it's anything like 2017. I find food and drinks all over the place. As far as sniper rifles I've looted DMRs, M40A3s, and SVDs both in the barracks and at heli crash sites. Not really. Mods like Epoch shouldn't have the name DayZ attached to it. They are fundamentally different. It's the same as if you made a mod of Forza that replaced all the cars with tricycles and still called it Forza. When you mod a game so far that it's a different game it should have an entirely different name. Look at mods like Counter-Strike and Team Fortress Classic...nobody says "I'm playing Half-Life" when they're playing CS.

I thought it was automatic. I was diving into a tool shed as a zombie was chasing me...I turned around to hatchet him but he got a swing in first, however, my screen didn't flicker, there was no hit sound, and no blood loss. I thought he missed me at first, then I noticed a little message in the lower left of the screen: "That was close!" I suppose I could have inadvertently pressed a button that is set up for block/dodge, but it seemed like an automatic dice roll scenario to me.

I'm all for a new "public" hive as well. Not sure I have much to offer but the idea sounds great and it may renew interest in playing the vanilla mod.