ZedsDeadBaby

Rare? Yes. "Extremely" rare? I'll pass on that. I'm really not interested in playing a game in which the primary combat mechanic is beating each other over the head with shovels and axes. Because, rest assured, if people don't have ammo they're not suddenly going to stop killing each other. For evidence of this you need only visit the beach at the moment and see how many people try to beat you to death with their bare hands. Lacking ammo doesn't make people friendly. Further, the notion that rare ammo will make people "think before shooting" is misguided in my opinion. If ammo becomes extremely rare, I'm personally going to want to kill you more on the off chance you have a few rounds on you. If I spend 1-2 bullets to murder you and you have more than 2 on you, then I've made an ammo profit on the deal.

Can't imagine a single decent reason why we wouldn't want ghillie suits. Personally I can't wait for them. Downbeans.

Rejoice! rocket says: "We already have streams. We want to do skyrim style rivers, and they are relatively straightforward for us to do. We'll just need time."

You will be happy to know that bows is the feature that has Dean "most excited." So expect them within a few short weeks.

Nope. Just whatever, I guess? All I have is a backpack, an M4 and an ax but every time I walk my screen is occluded by these massive black polygons. Parts of my player model clipping into the camera's view port. It's downright unplayable.

Vehicles are an absolutely integral part of the game. Yes, they make it easier. That's the point. This makes them an incredibly valuable asset, and something not only to be sought after but to be fought over, which enhances the drama of player interaction. The first time you heard your engine start up had to be one of the single most exciting and gratifying moments the mod had to offer, and I personally cannot wait for that moment in the Standalone.

Yes, it very specifically does say that in the server hosting rules. Like when I pay for a cab and then it's okay for me to assault the cab driver and steal his wallet because "Hey, I paid for it." Money doesn't make the rules go away.

No, not really. Fixing the issues with the current engine will take months. Creating a new one from scratch would have taken years.

If they had started "fresh" Alpha would have been 2015 at the earliest. Beta maybe 2017. Using the ARMA engine saved them at least 2-3 years of development time.

Well, yes and no. I'm certainly not ignorant as to why you might suggest such a thing, insofar as you might think James Byrd or those like him have been the only people to be dragged by vehicles until death. I must confess to some degree of ignorance about how you decided that those are the only people who have ever been killed in this manner, or that "dragging to death by vehicle" is somehow a tactic used only in the commission of hate crimes when, in fact, lots of people have died this way. I mean, MLK was shot by a gun. Does that mean everyone in the game who uses guns to kill people is a racist? In summary: I genuinely don't appreciate being called a racist. I've been trying to stay civil as often as possible on these forums, but under the circumstances I think it's perfectly reasonable for me to tell you to go fuck yourself, douchebag.

No, it's not. Did you read my post at all? Players should play the game however they want to. That's what makes Dayz great. Everyone gets to do what they want. Everyone. These servers have nothing to do with any one individual player playing the game the way they want. They are about server administrators attempting to force everyone to play the same way. If you want to be friendly, there's nothing stopping you from doing it on any server. Your rights to do so are perfectly secure and protected. What you don't have the right to do is say that everyone else has to also play that way. That's not about your personal preference, it's about denying other people their own. No, the other objection I have is that they are serving up something called "DayZ" which doesn't actually resemble the game Dean made in any way, shape or form. It corrupts the brand, dilutes the product and ultimately harms the community. DayZ succeeded because it's not Call of Duty and it's not Second Life. It's something somewhere in between where people can get together and be pals, but always under the constant threat of a bullet to the head. "PvE" servers are an abomination unto Dean in my opinion. They take his vision and carve it up for just the bits they like as would some petty car thief at a chop shop. Okay? He knew he was making Standalone since August 2012. Why would he dump weeks of work into fixing this issue in the mod when he knew SA was coming? that would have been a huge waste of time and resources. The mod was a proof of concept - that's it. The work that went into it was mined for data and ideas, but large scale systemic changes were out of the question. Let's just go ahead and wait and see if that's the case shall we? So just to summarize your stance: everyone should be allowed to play how they want, but if I play how I want I'm in "Arsehat." Is that about right?

Proper banditry is the kind from which you are able to walk away alive. This whole "real bandits" circljerk is old. If I wanted to run around handcuffing men in the middle of the street and forcing them to take their pants off, I would move back to San Francisco.

You obviously don't, though. The things you are complaining about are an integral part of the game's core principals. If you really liked DayZ, this thread wouldn't exist. What you like is some fanciful preconception of what you want DayZ to be.

On that topic, I sure do hope we can eventually use rope to tie people to the trailer hitch on the backs of our trucks and drag them down the highway like tin cans after a wedding.

Fixing loot farming is the current top priority according to Dean. So "foreseeable future" is just until the next patch or so. He doesn't have to move away from the public hive, he's just going to make it a giant pain in the ass to swap servers to farm loot. You're right; there are no right or wrong ways to play. Which is precisely why nobody should be permitted to run "PvE" servers. There's nothing stopping you from playing friendly on any normal public server. When you try to create an entire server where everyone has to follow your rules then you're no longer talking about how you play. You're trying to determine how everyone around you plays. And that is wrong. That's not an individual play style anymore, it's a worldwide rule that changes the game for everyone on the server, and it is explicitly against the server hosting rules for precisely that reason. Do you perhaps see the irony in this statement? A PvE server exists precisely because the administrator is "concerned with the way other people want to play" and is trying to stop them from doing what they want. You need to understand the difference between personal play style and server-wide rules. The way you choose to play the game is absolutely your choice. Implementing server rules to try and make everyone play in the same way has nothing at all to do with your personal play style. It's trying to push your play style out to everyone on the server. It has nothing to do with satisfying anyone's "whims," mate. It's Dean's vision for the game. It always has been. He isn't trying to make anyone happy, he's just trying to make the game he wanted to make and have the people who play it experience it in the way he designed. The game is meant to be harsh, unforgiving and bloody. It's supposed to instill you with fear, uncertainty, loneliness, frustration and sometimes suffering. These things all go away when you play on a la-la land, everyone holds hands and plays zombie shooting gallery while rubbing ointment into each other's balls and telling ghost stories over cans of beans. If you don't like the game he designed, then the answer is to go find another game, not to implement a bunch of server administration tools to let every random pickledick with mom and dad's credit card make fundamental changes to the game's core mechanics and design. The Hive is fine.

What is that even supposed to mean?

Google "one punch knockout" and find out for yourself after like 5 hours of viewing clips of people doing exactly that. I realize decades of playing video games where you have "HP" makes us want to believe humans are more durable and resilient than they are, but we're actually just big fleshy bags of water. And our brains absolutely *hate* being bopped around inside our skulls.

Is that supposed to be better? Now you're not just spoiling the effort of discovery for yourself, but you're doing it for a large part of the community. I'll try to be more clear. Knowledge is an asset in the game, just like beans and ammunition. Gaining knowledge is something you should have to do as a regular part of playing the game. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever why you should be afforded a special protective bubble of PvP immunity in order to go gather a bunch of data on how weapons operate or what items do what. That's something you should have to figure out for yourself as a regular part of playing the game. If someone hears you testing your Mosin accuracy range and comes and plugs you in our cerebellum, well that's the way this cruel world works.

Yes; that was the same during the mod days and it never happened. People constantly reported these servers that were locked or kicking everyone or whatever else and nothing ever happened because server hosting companies don't want to lose money. They're not going to act unless they absolutely have to. Unless Dean and/or Bohemia get a lot more serious about forcing server hosting companies to enforce DayZ hosting rules, then I don't see it being any different for the Standalone. That's fine, but what evidence do we have that it's being handled any differently than it was during the mod? The mod had hosting rules too. At least, for the first 6 months or so before they completely gave up enforcing them and basically said "do whatever you want." In the early days most of the same rules were in place. No kicking/banning without just cause (hate speech, cheating), no password-locking. Heck, in the early days of the mod you weren't even supposed to alter the time of day. But, admins just said "fuck you" and did it anyway and nothing was ever done about it. Until I see some evidence that they're actually going to put effort into enforcing these rules this time around, I don't think admins should have any more privileges than they do now.

That's no longer "testing" in the sense of looking for bugs and issues. That's testing for your own benefit to gather information about how things work. That's not the sort of thing you should be "protected" in order to do nor is it what "Alpha is about." You're gaining knowledge about the inner workings of the game and mechanics. That's something you should have to do while playing the game and under threat of conflict. Information shouldn't be free. Discovery is part of the game. And in either case, my point stands. Just join a normal server and head up north of Gvodzno or so. You will never see another soul.

And what about all the ones that do not? What do you propose we do about them? The "effect on the community" in the mod was dozens and dozens of rogue admins running "join and get kicked" servers, passwording their servers for their clan and friends, randomly restarting the server when firefights didn't go their way or in order to "roll back" vehicle positions if one of their vehicles got stolen, etc. It was a mess and I hope the developers can find a way to avoid it for the SA. Opening up a bunch of tools right now would be a mistake imo.

There is absolutely nothing preventing you from doing this on regular public servers. Get a clan or informal Steam group together, join a server and go meet up somewhere less populated. There are 250km2+ to work with, and 30-40 people on the server. You have more than enough room in which to test whatever you want without asking the developers to intervene by giving you a protective bubble of immunity against PvP. If you have really been wanting to do this for "some time" and have thus far failed, it can only be by lack of trying.

Not me. If DayZ is "about" anything, it's staying alive. Death is losing the game. It should be as punishing as possible without preventing continued play. That's okay. This isn't a real apocalypse. It's a game. Nobody on the team has ever said they're trying to make an "apocalypse simulator." Hopefully as far from the status quo as possible. Dying should feel like the end of your life, not just "run a little bit" and "oh that was annoying but back to it!" That's how death feels in WoW and it's entirely artificial.

No, but I can control me, and I have a gun. No. Killing people who think they are "safe" is not only fun, it is in the spirit of DayZ. You should never be safe in Chernarus. When I see "friendly" in server names or MOTD's, I read it as "easy targets." Difficult to dignify this with a response.

I'm about 99% sure that's not true.