The general philosophy here is that we might be able to bring some diversity and variation into the human encounters in the game. Right now we have "best friends" or "just shoot them" and not much of interest going on in between. It's very black and white which means it will inevitably be two things: predictable and boring. If we can enhance player identification and squad mechanics, the social dynamic of the game can be elevated to include more than two sides and get a little more complex than "friend or foe." You could establish peaceful alliances with other clans - no friendship, but a negotiated cease fire. You could target particular clans who have wronged you in the past for a long-term military campaign spanning multiple servers. You could take note of any survivors you helped out when they were young and be surprised when you find them again alive a month later and think about the role you played in their survival, etc. Yes, plenty of people will ignore this feature altogether and just shoot the living shit out of everyone they see like they always have been, but the presence of a system like this would allow those who are interested to explore a bit more depth in the human interactions in the game. And remember, I'm not necessarily interested in how this idea would work in DayZ at it exists today, but how it might incorporate into the larger list of changes that are coming up (in the stand-alone game especially) and how some of these features might work in the bigger picture. Just slapping this on top of the Alpha as it exists now would probably not work quite as well, especially given the transient nature of servers and their player bases/player lists.

The removal of the Respawn option in 1.7.2.4 is a step in the right direction both for those who have been unfortunate enough to click it accidentally, and as a deterrent for those who have been circumventing the spawn system for so long by spam re-spawning to get nearer to their desired locations. The problem is, 1.7.2.4 will just begin the era of "extended suicides." People will kill themselves by zombie or ladder at the first opportunity in order to try for a more desirable spawn point. Unfortunately this will have the side effect of skewing the death statistics since some of these lives will exceed the threshhold of being ignored by the algorithm, but will end shortly thereafter to some purposeful mishap. A simple proposal: You are bound to a single spawn point until you reach 60 minutes of continuous survival. Any death including zombies, PvP and suicide within 60 minutes will simply spawn you at your most recent spawn point. Only after passing the 60 minute mark will your spawn point be "cleared" and chosen anew randomly upon your death. A seemingly simple change that would end forever the practice of "choosing" spawn locations by suicide.

Yes, I absolutely can. DayZ was not designed to give you things "fast and easy." You're supposed to have to work for them. The time you take to meet up with friends is meant to be part of what you lose when you die. It's part of the punishment for death. How is death ever going to be scary, disappointing or feel in any way like a loss if you can just click "Buddy Spawn" and be sitting in your best friends lap again in 5 minutes while he fans you and feeds you grapes? Get up off your ass and jog for a few minutes. And if you find yourself doing this more than once or twice per month then maybe you need to practice not getting your lazy face shot off quite so often, eh?

I have absolutely no idea what the entire content of that post had to do with the final sentence. Basically, I can summarize your post like so: "Morality is subjective and varied, except when I arbitrarily determine that it should be absolute." Why is team killing the only kind of morality that should be forbidden? It's everywhere in reality - in all the places you listed. The mafia, the police, political parties, armies, tribal communities, coworkers, friends, etc. Anywhere human relationships exist, people throughout history have turned and betrayed those relationships. So why should the game prevent this? Your post and your conclusion are in absolute contradiction, in other words. Your suggestion is both senseless and baseless.

Find a good hiding place. Preferably between some trees/bushes and away from populated areas or highly-trafficked corridors. You can place it near obstacles if you're patient: stand where you want to place it, open your gear menu, and try to 'Pitch Tent.' If you get the flat ground error message, without closing your gear menu, nudge your player ever so slightly in a direction and try to pitch again. Repeat until it works. Make sure to 'Save old camping tent' any time you add gear/items. Best to also note your map coordinates for ease of finding it in the future. Yes, it will stay on a single server. Inventory is not unlimited, ~10 guns, ~5 backpacks and 50 miscellaneous items/ammunition. Cross your fingers and hope it doesn't get found 2 hours after you put it down.

Yes. In other exciting news: ground to become less wet after rain stops; toilet less full after flushing.

Not with a bunch of random lackwits I bumped into and have never met before, sorry. That kind of "team" is a death sentence. Not enough people know how to play this game properly to make that a sustainable model for building cooperative team play. There are far too many considerations, especially once vehicles and tents become involved, to just team up with every random Joe Blow I run into in the game. Half of them just end up getting me killed by alerting zombies or nearby players. I cooperate with people I know and trust. Everyone else gets the business end of an M249. Make friends and then play the game with them, not vice versa. If you don't like or want to do that, then you will be at a disadvantage against those who do. And you will be victimized more often.

Yeah, well. Not farting should be a rule on airplanes, but it's not. So sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.

The only thing hacking has made unusable is the forums because they're choked with repeat threads from an army of foaming-at-the-mouth lackwits who think the world owes them something.

I've added a section addressing the encumbrance, size and maintenance issues which have been raised in the thread. Thanks for a decent discussion thus far.

The beauty of this, and not to imply that BattleEye hasn't always been dedicated to doing a good job, but honestly it seems like such a symbiotic thing. DayZ explodes which causes hacking to explode which focuses attention on BE and their ability to deal with the situation. They ratchet up their game and notch or two and start a PR campaign in the process. So BE is now a better company because DayZ got popular. Which is pretty cool.

I think that's an argument for adding a more realistic inventory and encumbrance system, not for removing the equipment from the game.

I couldn't have covered the "Quadg thinks they're boring" argument in the OP since I didn't know that until just now. Though, I'm not sure how your personal subjective opinion on their being boring informs just cause to remove them from the game? Just... don't use them? Doesn't that solve the problem? You will forgive me if I don't include this rebuttal in the OP as I think it's rather silly and particularly specific to you.

Is this your theme today, man? Server admins pay money and invest time so the rules shouldn't apply to them? Come on. I get that you're a little miffed; I assume someone called you out recently, or an admin you know? Take a breather. The rules are there for a reason. If following them is such an upsetting and stressful situation, then just stop hosting. As you say, it's hard work and often thankless and nobody is forcing you to do it. And yes, honestly, I do believe abusive admins are as bad as hackers. Hackers are just bored assholes who don't really have respect for the game. People expect them to be jerks so it comes as no surprise when they are. But admins are in a position of authority. They're supposed to represent and support the community. While not operating as "official" officers of Bohemia, their actions reflect upon the product and company in a way that hackers do not. In short, they have a responsibility and the ones who ignore the rules and abuse players do that responsibility a grave disservice and harm the integrity of the game and community in a way that normal hackers do not.

Love that AS50 video in that it contradicts pretty much every detractor in these threads. Light, easy to use and assemble, one-shot-one-kill, used to engage personnel, etc. Though it might be cool if it had to be disassembled and reassembled for transport. I could get on board with that. Need a toolbox to use one maybe? Anyway, thanks. No, no! Didn't you know? You have to hit their medulla oblongata! It's the size of a thumb. :rolleyes:

So basically he works hard and pays money, so he should get to ignore the rules? Yeah, sorry. No. Can't get on board with that line of reasoning. Being a good admin is about more than maintaining a stable server and paying the bills; it's about not using your position to gain an advantage over or abuse people.

These can't be true. The internets told me BattleEye is useless and does nothing!

We have freedom of speech here too. Like when someone is being a total douchenozzle we are free to say, "Hey, quit being such a douchenozzle over there!"

I've made no secret of my intent to argue for their inclusion in the game. So, yes, my aim is to rebut arguments for their removal to the best of my ability. I feel I've been above board about that. If I encounter an argument I cannot effectively rebut, I'll be more than happy to concede. Or at the very least say "Good one." Incidentally please do not let this thread devolve into another PvP debate thread. There are enough of those on the forums. If you're feeling the itch to debate that topic, there are other homes for you very nearby.

The patch thread was updated literally yesterday with information and an estimated date on the upcoming patch, including the fact that it fixes these glitches. If you're so interested in news and information, pay attention.

Poor OP's handwriting almost gave out when he wrote of this. Of the six men who never reached the ship, he thinks two perished of pure fright in that accursed instant. The Thing cannot be described - there is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! What wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant? The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight. Three men were swept up by the flabby claws before anybody turned. God rest them, if there be any rest in the universe. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were plunging frenziedly over endless vistas of green-crusted rock to the boat, and Johansen swears he was swallowed up by an angle of masonry which shouldn't have been there; an angle which was acute, but behaved as if it were obtuse. So only Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert as the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and hesitated, floundering at the edge of the water. Steam had not been suffered to go down entirely, despite the departure of all hands for the shore; and it was the work of only a few moments of feverish rushing up and down between wheel and engines to get the Alert under way. Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, she began to churn the lethal waters; whilst on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not of earth the titan Thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus. Then, bolder than the storied Cyclops, great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue with vast wave-raising strokes of cosmic potency. Briden looked back and went mad, laughing shrilly as he kept on laughing at intervals till death found him one night in the cabin whilst Johansen was wandering deliriously. But Johansen had not given out yet. Knowing that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert until steam was fully up, he resolved on a desperate chance; and, setting the engine for full speed, ran lightning-like on deck and reversed the wheel. There was a mighty eddying and foaming in the noisome brine, and as the steam mounted higher and higher the brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where - God in heaven! - the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form, whilst its distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam. That was all. After that Johansen only brooded over the idol in the cabin and attended to a few matters of food for himself and the laughing maniac by his side. He did not try to navigate after the first bold flight, for the reaction had taken something out of his soul. Then came the storm of April 2nd, and a gathering of the clouds about his consciousness. There is a sense of spectral whirling through liquid gulfs of infinity, of dizzying rides through reeling universes on a comets tail, and of hysterical plunges from the pit to the moon and from the moon back again to the pit, all livened by a cachinnating chorus of the distorted, hilarious elder gods and the green, bat-winged mocking imps of Tartarus. Out of that dream came rescue-the Vigilant, the vice-admiralty court, the streets of Dunedin, and the long voyage back home to the old house by the Egeberg. He could not tell - they would think him mad. He would write of what he knew before death came, but his wife must not guess. Death would be a boon if only it could blot out the memories. That was the YouTube Video I saw, and now I have placed it in the tin box beside the bas-relief and the papers of Professor Angell. With it shall go this record of mine - this test of my own sanity, wherein is pieced together that which I hope may never be pieced together again. I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me. But I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives. Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which has shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more, for the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. He must have been trapped by the sinking whilst within his black abyss, or else the world would by now be screaming with fright and frenzy. Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come - but I must not and cannot think! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors may put caution before audacity and see that it meets no other eye.

Sorry, I've had a couple beers. But you're straight up retarded.

You do not need 5+ people, nor need you equip everyone with these weapons. In fact you would be severely limiting the versatility and effectiveness of your squad by equipping them all with the same loadout. It only requires a single L85 for spotting and a single rifle if you care to engage the targets. Both of these can be on the same player if you are squeezed for man power but a two-man sniper team is ideal for simultaneous spotting and firing. If you're not interested in engaging the targets, spotting them is usually enough to avoid their sight line and vacate the area safely as per my tips in the OP. You don't actually need to kill a sniper to survive an encounter with one. Overstate it all you want, it is ridiculous. A .50 caliber round in your sternum, heart, spine, anywhere above the shoulders, or in your stomach would result in immediate and irreparable trauma. You would not be able to "get help" nor would you be in a condition to "turn around" let alone "put a bullet" in anything. We can spare the thread links to images of the effect of .50 caliber rounds on human bodies, but I can't entertain with any degree of serious discussion the notion that a "hit to the medula oblangata" is the only surefire kill. If you want to pick nits between an "instant kill" and bleeding to death in ~8 seconds from a catastrophic wound, fine. I will concede that it would be more realistic if a .50 caliber round in the chest knocked you down and gave you about the time it takes you to realize what happened before you actually die, but what difference does that make in game play terms? If you really think a human is going to absorb a .50 caliber round center mass and come away in anything but a body bag, let alone turning around guns blazing, we're probably not going to have a very productive discussion moving forward about "realism" or anything else.