ZedsDeadBaby

Simple solution for it go post in my thread!

I agree with this. It's obviously an incredible level of realism because it makes you feel actual discomfort, but it's too much. I don't get seasick, per se, but I start to get a headache behind my eyes very quickly because they constantly lose and regain focus on the screen. I will generally log out until a friend can offer painkillers.

Patience is part of skill. Just as a skilled F1 driver exercises patience in waiting for an opportunity to pass' date=' or a skilled soccer player exercises patience looking for an opening in the goal. Other measures of skill are tactics, communication, an understanding of your weapon, good aim, knowledge of the terrain and an intuitive understanding of human behavior to predict your opponent's actions before they occur. That's true. It's not what I do, but it's true. But that's not how I've survived for 18 days and 50+ hours in game. I own ~11 vehicles on two different servers, a network of fully-stocked tents (legitimately found) scattered across the map and well hidden. This takes skill as well - using the terrain and a knowledge of travel behaviors to choose tent locations that are not discovered. I have in my possession one of every gun in the game at his point except for the Camo SVD. I take chances in the game. lots of them. I survive because I play more skillfully than other people. To deny that this game requires skill is just folly. Whatever your goal, you have to be alive to accomplish it. Surviving is the universal goal. If you choose to do that in a boring way, that's okay. It requires less skill than surviving while doing exciting things, but that's your call. Just because people can choose NOT to use their skills doesn't mean the game has no measure of skill.

"I was in one of the single most dangerous areas of the game looting one of the highest-value loot targets in the game. A total stranger whose intentions I was not privy to approached. I did not confirm his intentions nor did I take sufficient cover. It went poorly." Next up tell us about the time you shaved your balls with a cheese grater and dipped them in a bowl of lemon juice. Then we can all act surprised and shocked when you tells us it hurt a little bit.

Open gear menu. Attempt to place. Move a nudge without closing gear menu. Attempt to place. Repeat until it goes down. You can put them almost anywhere. Just be careful it IS possible to put them out of reach.

Haha, WCG. Yes, DayZ hasn't succeeded until it joins the prestigious likes of Asphalt 6. Oh, don't forget the sports games and the pure death match games. I guess deathmatching is okay as long as WCG says so? You're cute. *pats head gently*

Yeah, it's so confusing. I also often wonder why Jack Kerouac didn't invite classrooms full of 3rd graders to come look over his shoulder and critique his manuscripts as he wrote. They could have totally voted and stuff, and then his novels would be less boring and have like ponies and unicorns and space aliens.

The option exists already. If you want PvP, play DayZ. If you don't, don't play DayZ. Voila! Options. And nobody even had to do any extra work. DayZ without PvP makes as much sense as DayZ without zombies. Just stop. Please?

[Citation Needed]

It's obvious you've put a lot of thought into your post and you presented your opinion in a reasonable way; you even did us the courtesy of using punctuation and paragraphs which can be a rare treat in these forums. For your kindness, and as a fellow game designer, I want to take my time to calmly explain why your analysis is woefully misguided in almost every way. At times I will re-arrange your words to group related thoughts so I can respond to your ideas in a slightly more organized way. Please don't take this as a misreading or twisting of your words, I'm just trying to keep my own thoughts organized. It may feel like that when you are empty-handed at the start' date=' but no. This is not true. Diablo and WoW are loot-driven. This game is player-driven. It is an interactive drama. The loot simply provides a compelling plot device. There is no single item in the game with the possible exception of NVGs that grants one player any particularly game-changing powers over other players. You don't gain access to new areas of the game or new abilities by gathering loot and there is no single item in the game that is as valuable as [i']human companionship. I would take one partner over a thousand silenced assault rifles any day. Not only because a team of two is exponentially more effective than a 'team' of one, but because the game is simply more fun when you can share your story and experiences with someone else. I started this game alone; before it got very popular none of my friends were really picking up on my hints and I ran lone-wolf style. I had a few survivals that lasted 1-2 days here and there, and got up to 40 zombie kills and would feel pretty good. Then, slowly, my friends started to take interest. I began to run with a partner, then a small team, and now we have 5-6 regularly online at any time interested in cooperating on goals and missions. With that team, playing just as often and doing more dangerous things, I have lived for 15 and 18 days respectively on my last two survivors (18 day guy is still going strong). In the process I have reuinted with old friends and made two completely new ones. Flesh-and-blood humans in real life I have met and befriended solely because DayZ brought us together and forced us, through the intensity of the constant threat of death and loss, to bond and build trust in each other. Not just "game trust" but real trust. When I'm in the passenger seat of a truck with my 18-day Survivor, you bet your ass I want the driver to be someone whom I trust - not just the kind of trust you find in Halo or Left 4 Dead like "I trust this guy to make a shot" or "I trust this guy knows the map" but real trust - I trust this guy with something that's important to me. That trust reaches beyond the game, and so do the human relationships I've built. This is a common misconception and entirely false. The best source of loot in the game are crashed helicopters and they are very rarely "camped." You can travel across the northern reaches of the map and find 5-6 in a single night, pulling a variety of high-powered rifles, rare ammunition, NVGs and military equipment. This weekend my team traveled the northern reaches of the map in a vehicle together - scanning the horizon for helos. We found ~8 total in the last two nights, and pulled in sum an M249, M107, AS50 Anti Material, Bizon SD, M14, M4A3 CCO, one pair NVGs and a variety of ammunition. And the worst injury we sustained was a friendly fire incident that was bandaged up quickly. Using players as a source of loot is a foolish deathwish. Any player whose loot is worth having is going to be far more dangerous than 1000 zombies. As rocket wisely noted, scripted AI is dumb and predictable. It's a boring enemy that any decent player can learn to fool in a variety of ways. But players, even the bad ones, are a dangerous foe - unpredictable, dynamic and potentially armed to the teeth. Your odds of dying are orders of magnitude higher facing off against players with worthwhile loot than it is playing quietly, tactically, and looting barracks and helicopter crashes. You understand this is completely subjective, right? You have only put 10 hours into the game so new stuff seems exciting and novel to you - but it wears off and you soon realize the fun IS in creating a story for your character and seeing how long you can make that story last. No, there is no fun to be had in "pure survival" which probably looks something like going prone in the forest and only emerging to hunt cows and get water from a nearby lake, but trying desperately to survive while simultaneously finding ways to challenge yourself with new and interesting tasks, missions and goals is the lifeblood of the game beyond those initial days when just finding a new gun seems like Christmas in July. If I die now, the loss I feel will not be for my neat-o sniper rifle or my cool camo pants. It will be for the life and accumulated history of my survivor. All that he has done, all he has seen and everything he has accomplished. My ties with that narrative will be severed for me mentally. I'm no longer him. I'm someone else. And I will miss him more dearly than any trinket or bauble I found lying on the ground in my adventures. What about my 45-hour-old character? Or my partner's Day 39 ~70+ hour character? Of course the sense of loss I feel will not compare to truly losing a loved one in real life, but is that a fair comparison? Lets compare instead to the feeling of losing a life in any other video game in history. Because, for me - and I have been gaming since the days of Commodore 64 - a death in DayZ feels more like a defeat than any character death I have ever virtually experienced. Three decades of deaths from Radar Rat Race to Metroid to Star Fox to Ultima Online, EverQuest, WoW, etc. nothing compares. EVE comes close, but still falls short of the intense desire I feel in DayZ to survive and the crushing, twisting feeling in my stomach when I fail to do so. Here's where it gets a little harder for me to stay calm. You can claim that the design is not to your personal liking, but if you're going to start throwing around the word "flaw" and attaching qualifiers like a double "MAJOR" and a "HORRIFIC" you better damn well come with some ammunition. As a professional I would think you would understand this. You say you are a Dwarf Fortress player. Dungeons of Dredmor, Ancient Domains of Mystery, Rogue, Nethack? In which of these games can you succeed by simply "wandering in a random direction?" There is a long and amazing history of games that are specifically designed to be front-heavy with difficulty. You are supposed to die over and over and over again. You are supposed to learn by trial and error. What's that? Drank from the wrong fountain? Okay, well try again and don't drink from that fountain next time. These games never held your hand. There was no manual and most existed long before there were active online communities spilling each and every detail of the game so that you could simply Google the problem you were having and solve it in a moment. Yes, the mainstream status quo is "easy at the beginning, then moderately hard in the middle, now really hard at the end" but to call a break from that model a "flaw" does a disservice to all the games that break this model for very good reason and to great success. The initial punishing difficulty in DayZ is perfect because when you finally penetrate it, you will feel you have accomplished something great and you will have an attachment to that character that helps drive those things above we talked about. The desire to survive. To live as long as possible. To not betray all the work and learning you put into to getting to this point in the game. In short, because it's hard at the beginning, your survivor will be more important to you later. Not only because you do not want to go through that initial punishment again, but because your triumph over it is attached to the life of your current survivor. On Day 18 I still remember the first Winchester I picked up. I remember every time I nearly died in my journey to get where I am. They're all vivid and amazing memories precisely because I faced the punishing difficulty at the beginning of the game and triumphed over it successfully. It's also completely inaccurate, simply put. You can reach a farm building easily and safely from every single spawn point in the game, and those are the safest sources of early weapons - hatchets and Winchesters. Deer stands are generally safe as well, almost never camped by players and usually only guarded by 5 zombies whom you can wait out and approach in safety. If you are continually respawning to get close to whatever it is you believe these mythical sources of weapons are, you are doing yourself a disservice. Learn to cope with your starting conditions wheverever they are, and you will be better prepared to face all the challenge Chernarus offers. Always take care not to use the word "impossible" when you mean "more challenging than I personally find desirable." Okay, you test my patience a bit. The incentivization of team play is a such an amazing emergent property of DayZ it makes my blood boil that a supposed designer could pen a treatise on why it's a bad thing. The only mechanic in DayZ that "artificially" incentivizes team play are blood bags unless you want to argue that you should be able to administer your own epi-pen while unconscious. The engine simply lays the ground work for an amazing tactical simulator, and the superiority of team play grows organically. Not because the game enforces it, but because it is simply a fact of reality. 3 heads are better than 1, 6 eyes better than 2, 6 arms better than 2, 3 guns better than 1, etc., There is a reason the Navy Seals do not travel solo or in groups of 50. Small, intelligent tactical teams are incredibly effective in reality and as ARMA simulates reality they are incredibly effective here as well. You would literally have to purposefully design this out in order to downplay team play. You would have to find some way to "punish" team play or artificially reward being alone and frankly that would violate everything that makes DayZ the game that it is. I really hope you can understand this (as a designer). If you do not have friends who are playing the game - either encourage some to play, or make new friends. If using your human brain and human communication faculties to reach out to your fellow humans and make contact is beyond your capacity or more than you are willing to do simply to enjoy DayZ then you cannot possibly complain that you are at an "unfair" disadvantage in the game. You cannot ask the designer to make you as powerful as two or three people simply because you lack the desire or ability to find another human soul who wants to share a few hours in the game with you. No. You do it. YOU go and punish them for it. If someone is relying heavily on murder for personal rewards, pick up a gun and put a stop to it. No, no, and no. No, no and no. It really wasn't. When we all spawned with Makarvos the coast was a din of flies and dead bodies. Survivors shooting other survivors in the back for the can of beans they started with and their ammunition. Now? It's generally quiet. A few scared, frightened survivors darting in and out of buildings praying for their first weapon. A bandit or two sniping unsuspecting survivors foolish enough to stand still in the open. An intensity of desire can almost be felt watching them hunt for that first weapon... And the feeling of accomplishment when you grab your first hatchet or Winchester? Now that you don't start with a gun this sense of accomplishment is palpable relief. When you step in that door and see that beautiful gun lying there on the ground waiting for you it's such an amazing feeling... compared to before when it was just like "Oh, neat. A gun." now it has become "Holy living shit thank you so much! Yes! Yes! Yes! I am a God!" Please don't ask them to design that away simply because you are frustrated at your first 5-10 minutes in the game. Again, farm buildings and deer stands are your friends. It's really not hard and if you did all the research you claimed to have done ahead of time you would know this - get off the coast, find a barn, find a weapon. Blood bags. That's it. Hardly "absurd." What's absurd is expecting the designer to wave a wand and make 1 player somehow as effective as a team. That's okay. I think if the apocalypse came, "gang mentality" would be quite common. How can you make this claim? You have no stats to say how many people are playing solo vs. in small teams. By watching DayZ videos online it certainly seems like the majority of players play with at least one friend. Please do because you don't get it yet and I hope that you do, for your own sake and because it seems like if you can break through this barrier you seem to have hit you might actually contribute some worthwhile thoughts and suggestions to the game - unlike what you have done in this thread which is to rail against all that makes DayZ great and string a bunch of suggestions together that would drag it down closer to the watered-down mainstream crud we have been served in the online gaming arena for the last 15 years.

It's not perfect but it's absolutely the best one I can imagine for this game.

If you're having trouble getting started, be the groundhog. I know you're not used to playing a game where simply moving can be dangerous. You're playing one now. Relax, calm down, take it slow and you will succeed. Start in barns and deer stands, then consider a brief stop over at a hospital before moving on to grocery stores, military camps, crashed helicopter sites and barracks. You can do all of this without ever going within 1500m of Chernogorsk or Elektrozovadsk. Find at least one friend to play with you. If you don't have a friend who plays, try and make one. A partnership is greater than the sum of its parts. Adding friends to your play style will increase your survival rates by orders of magnitude. +1 player is worth 10x survival rate increase, and +2 is 100x, etc. Move with a group of ~5 competent, trusted companions. Plan your play times so you synchronize as often as possible. I refuse to play alone now because I have experienced the effectiveness of tactical team play. You're not going to get it on your first or second try. Or you're 30th. But you will get there if you're patient and learn from your mistakes. I promise. I know someone who plays every day, hours a day, constantly challenging himself on high-value loot targets and vehicle hunting. He's on Day 39.

Everyone just ignore him and maybe he will go away. He's obviously not actually reading the posts he's responding to, so it's pointless engaging him in the discussion.

It warms my hear to see someone think they're getting a really good jab in only to realize it's because they completely misread a sentence and they're about to make a giant ass of themselves. Read the sentences again' date=' bud. Slowly this time. With purpose. I said it's [b']not about ensuring access to loot and it's not about "not being able to get things." The especially hilarious part about this little gaffe is that the forum provides for you a method to directly quote the text of my post. It's right fucking there for you, and instead you try and quote me by hand, leaving out the most important word in the sentence, and then coming in guns blazing like you're going to make a really awesome point. Well, sorry. I live in a bizzaro world where we carefully read and consider the thoughts of other people before responding like a loud-mouthed, petulant little fuck-rag. Another claim I never made. Can you please, please, please try and respond to the actual content of the actual discussion we're having? If you're going to populate my suggestion thread with walls of text then participate in the fucking thread. I'm trying to maintain a civil discussion about a problem that clearly people seem to think is important. If you have a dissenting opinion then provide it, don't just make a bunch of ridiculous shit up that nobody ever said and pretend you're Joe awesome for tearing down a bunch of arguments that nobody has ever made. Right, and then people jam on the enter key as fast as possible to get in, get loot, and get out again. A problem that has had such an impact on the database that rocket himself has made a post imploring that people stop doing it... and low-and-behold my solution would vastly reduce hits to the database and clear up part of that problem as well (we would still have people attempting to spamjoin full servers of course, but far fewer and less often). Okay. What does this have to do with new players? That entire paragraph was a complete non-sequitor and unrelated to the topic of discussion. Once again an entire post in which you have failed to address the key points I made, or respond in any way to anything I've actually said. Once again, to clarify for you - this is not about a lack of loot. This is not about being able to find items. This is not about my being upset at finding areas looted out. I've already listed what it IS about but I can summarize again: tactical game play is severely hindered in a world where people are constantly disappearing and reappearing randomly. Playing tactically is part of what makes DayZ great, so the presence of server hopping which exponentially increases the rates of people disappearing and reappearing has a major detrimental impact on tactical team play. No matter how tactical you are, "warping" players have a major impact on game play and not in a good way. So implementing my solution would: Improve tactical team play by ensuring that server populations remain more persistent and fewer people appear randomly around you as you play. Reduce load on the database significantly by reducing the number of connection requests per minute. Ensure a flow of items that's based on legitimate game play and travel times, giving rocket more accurate information about the effect that his spawn rates are having on the presence of items within the game world. And the only legitimate downside to it is that maybe you have to run a few meters after you login. Oh, WOE IS YOU my friend. You will have to run for 5 minutes before you can loot. I love how this is an absolutely unacceptable solution to you because I guess your feet hurt or you have shin splints or something... yet I'm the one being accused of complaining? Can you attempt to explain why it is imperative to your play that you be able to loot quickly immediately after logging in? Such a major detriment that you are here in this thread arguing with such a passion (and being a giant asshole in the process) against it? How is it that running for 5 minutes is an unacceptable, game-breaking issue for you while having people constantly appearing from other dimensions is "just part of the game?" Also, can I ask that you respond like a human fucking being so we can get back to a reasonable tone of discussion and not continue being assholes to each other? If you want to go full asshole I can do that. I'm really good at it and it's fun for me but I would really rather this thread remain somewhat reasonable. Okay? Please? My solution addresses that directly and elegantly. God, you never even read the original post in its entirety, did you? You're a mess, dude. Clean yourself up.

Well, surely if you don't understand something you should try your best to get rid of it in any way possible. Like a true Texas Republican.

It's always so telling when someone just says your argument is invalid without actually making an attempt to substantively identify the ways in which it is so. Counter my argument, make one of your own with supporting detail, or get stuffed.

Okay' date=' so what? As long as everyone has access, what difference does it make? The challenge isn't supposed to lie in "getting stuff" it comes from using it effectively. Yes, so laughable. Lets ignore the mental repercussions of going through a zombie apocalypse and seeing everyone and everything you've ever known and loved torn asunder into bloody little shreds and focus instead on the specific repercussions that just happen to force people to play the game the way you want them to. Convenient, that. How we're all supposed to "just know" how people would behave in this situation, and that just happens to coincidentally match up with exactly how you want people to play the game so you don't get shot at as often and you can have a relaxing day collecting beans and giving your buddies sloppy hand-jobs around the campfire. Yeah. Except, you know, it doesn't do that. In other words "stop disagreeing with me about things and make the game work the way I want."

You're dead wrong. PvP isn't just about the shooting. If someone sees you before you see them and gets the first shot off, you've already lost the PvP. Part of PvP is playing tactically, remaining aware, moving between cover, playing safely, and having a team to scout the area around you at all times. Most PvP happens before the shots are fired. Avoiding players is PvP too. Their attempts to find and kill you versus your attempt to avoid detection and get away safely. This game has tons of PvP. If you keep dying in 1 shot, you're probably bad at it. Work on getting better.

That's not accurate. A "full" server is 50/50 plus the 25 people waiting to get on. One server hopper leaves' date=' another connects, etc. Go watch the lobby of any 50 person server. Count off 10 minutes and see how many names on the list have changed. Take out server hopping for loot and that list will remain more persistent. I've discussed why that's a good thing. In what sense am I complaining? I'm suggesting an improvement to the game. Can we not devolve into shouting at each other about it? Nobody's attacking your way of life. Just relax and discuss. What? How is that relevant in any sense to the current topic of discussion? Lets stay on topic, okay? So is disconnect to avoid PvP at the moment. Not everything that is currently "part of the game" should remain part of the game. Alpha is about identifying bugs, weak points and exploits in the system and suggesting solutions. I've done that here in a very reasonable way. I don't have anything to "get over." Where did I say anything about not being able to find weapons? Who do you think you're responding to? I'm not sure you're quite understanding the issue here, let alone the solution. This is not about ensuring access to loot. This is not about "not being able to get" things. Personally I have a Bizon SD, AS50 Anti-material rifle, two flavors of AK, an M16+M203 and an M249. Most in my truck of course. So, I'm doing just fine - thanks for your advice. But this thread isn't about me, and the problem goes beyond just "learning to play."

There should be a choice on login. You can select PvP or PvE. And if you select PvE the mod uninstalls itself from your computer and emails you a list of suggestions for other games to play.

A "few?" Really, dude? You think there's only a few people server-swapping for loot? It's an epidemic.

Okay, fine. So what? You're not going to die if you can't loot the insant you login to the game, right? 1500m is a 5 minute run. Not so much to ask in order to resolve a relatively serious issue in the game, right? You're completely free to find a suitable server, but once you get on it's not imperative that you immediately start picking up loot in the vicinity. If you were actually playing to survive you wouldn't be logging that close to loot anyway - it's incredibly dangerous and only really makes sense if you are either forced offline by mitigating circumstances (rare) or specifically trying to farm loot. A lot of people take advantage of remote deer stands - up ladder, loot, down ladder, relog, up ladder, loot, down ladder... ugh. This is complete and absolute hogwash! I'm effected in a variety of ways personally, some very severe from a game play standpoint: First, it exponentially increases the rates of player logins near high value loot. So while I'm playing - legitimately moving from town-to-town to find loot - I am constantly under threat from people popping into existence behind me because they find it more efficient to server-hop to loot the same location over and over. This has a huge impact on tactical game play mechanics. If I approach a high-value loot location, carefully scouting every possible approach and then "clearing" the building, I should have some assurances that I'm not going to be ambushed by someone logging in behind me. Yes, this will still happen randomly from "fresh" spawns, but the rates will go down by orders of magnitude if we make it less profitable to server hop for loot. See this thread for an in-depth discussion on the many issues caused by frequent logins. Second, server-hopping detracts from the persistence in the world. Instead of a 225km^2 map where people are traveling from place-to-place to vye for limited resources, you have ~6 "hot spots" in the game where people spend all day constantly server hopping in an attempt to gather loot or murder those who are. Once towns or camps are "looted out" and players know they can't simply swap servers to loot the whole place again, they will be forced to travel to another location. This creates a more interesting world, and a more fluid game experience. Players tend to stay on the same server longer, and you can track enemies, be tracked, and engage in more long-term interactions than you can in a world where ~50% of any given server population are just "popping in for a quick visit don't mind me I'll just grab my loot and be off." Likewise, players who camp hotspots waiting for loot farmers to login only to snipe them before their client finishes loading would find far fewer targets - and they might actually have to get up and move around a bit and use their brains to find targets instead of just sitting AFK with their sniper scope trained on the Stary Sobor military tents while they watch Netflix and eat cocoa puffs. Incidentally this also adds more value to vehicles. Once you actually need to travel to effectively gather loot, vehicles will be even higher value assets. Third, in this game's extremely competitive environment it is important to understand the flow of high-value loot and the impact it has on the prevalance of certain items, weapon types, etc. I am personally effected if design decisions are being made about spawn rates and item rarity based on the game when it allows for such a watered-down, cheap and largely challenge-free method for collecting large amounts of loot in a repetitive manner. Don't over-simplify a rather complex issue in order to dismiss a solution that isn't that much of a "penalty" for anyone who is not specifically and directly abusing the system on a regular basis. Again, a 1500m jog is not too much to ask. Just enough to make it annoying for exploiters without really inconveniencing legitimate players much in the process.