ZedsDeadBaby

Makes you feel lonely, eh? Almost makes you want to go out and meet new people who play the game and form relationships so you can get together and be less lonely, eh? Almost like rocket's experiment of removing side chat has already produced in you emotions and desires that no other game has managed to do by taking something away that you are used to getting for free no questions asked in nearly every other online game that has ever been made? The whole "it's alpha we need to discuss bugs" line is bunk. a) bugs don't get fixed on the fly, so just take notes and report them in the bug report forum where someone who matters is actually going to see it. And if you're interested in knowing about bugs, go there and read the forum where text stays on the screen for more than 5 seconds. Side chat as a bug report forum? Silly. Then get off your lazy ass and take it back. Holy shit imagine that.

*sigh* Why must we go in circles like this? If it honestly robs you of enjoyment to be killed, then why not just go play a game in which that's not possible? Your enjoyment will be guaranteed. People who play DayZ and then act like PvP ruins the fun kind of seem to me like people who show up at a concert and then stand around saying TURN THE MUSIC DOWN I'M TRYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION.

I really don't want to argue semantics' date=' but that's not really the defining factor. A sandbox game can have victory conditions provided it does not define specifically how or when I reach them, and provided reaching them does not prematurely terminate my play. Whether you are 'sandboxy' or not depends not on whether your game has an ultimate goal, but on how specifically you define and codify the one "right" method of reaching that goal. Again, it's really about rules vs. mechanics and defined paths vs. open-world roaming. It could, you're right. Though probably not a very good one. As long as that mechanic functioned the same for everyone regardless of their prior behavior and didn't serve to punish only a particular group of players for behaving in a particular way, it wouldn't necessarily cross the "sandbox" line. Right. Good example of a mechanic that's not a rule. Because if you added this, playerscould use it to target murderers, but murderers could also use it to take pictures of players and hunt them down over and over again making their lives miserable, or setting up murder meta-games like "don't kill two people with glasses in a row" or "only blondes today" and all of a sudden the forum would be flooded with people complaining that models should be less unique so this sort of "griefing" would not be possible. So I think we agree? But you still don't seem quite clear on the differentiation. Let me spell it out using your example: Making models more unique: Gives players the power to enforce their own rules and regulations by identifying bandits and fighting back. Good. That means the players now have the means to solve their own problems. Making bandits all wear the same suit: Takes the power out of the hands of players. Now the "computer" is enforcing the law by using an algorithm to decide who is naughty and who is nice. The players are no longer making the decision. Bad. Not sandboxy. Is it more clear now?

If you are ever near any kind of structure that has loot and you don't see zombies, you can be sure they're going to appear in short order so I would recommend staying low and moving slowly until they do spawn, and then building a strategy from there. If you risk it and just try to run past/through, you're going to get pinned by the spawn. Hopefully as DayZ becomes more optimized, the distance at which zombies spawn will increase so we don't have the experience of coming upon empty towns and watching the zeds magically appear.

Yeah, no. You don't alter game design in response to bugs. You just fix the bugs.

I will help you understand in as brief a manner as possible. Communication in DayZ is an asset critical to your survival. Reaching out to other survivors and making connections is more important to long term survival than anything else you can do in the game. Communication is as important to survival as food, water and ammunition. Therefore, giving away unlimited free communication (side chat) has the same effect on the scarcity of that resource as would giving away free water, food or unlimited ammunition would on those. rocket has taken chat out of the realm of UI where all other designers leave it and taken it into the game. Now YOU are tasked with figuring it out in whatever way you can. There are many solutions be they "meta" (join a clan and use their teamspeak) or in-game mechanics (throw a white smoke grenade to indicate friendly intentions from far away). It's up to you now to decide what methods you will use to make contact with other survivors. It's a challenge now, not just a keyboard command. Embrace it.

Yes. In the same way that holding a shovel influences my decision to dig in the sand. But' date=' in a sandbox, nobody's going to come along and put a dunce cap on me if I decide to use that shovel to do something else. There's a difference between influencing by creating mechanics that CAN be used to behave in a certain way, and [b']controlling behavior by adding mechanics that actively 'encourage' or 'discourage' particular behaviors with arbitrary rewards and punishments. Once one behavior is acceptable and another punishable, you are no longer simply influencing behavior, you're dictating it - and you've crossed a line that sandbox games aren't supposed to cross. The bandit skin crossed that line. That's why it's removal was the right step for DayZ to remain true to its sandbox nature.

That's because games are generally not sandbox games. Very few are' date=' in fact. So yes, it's common for rules and mechanics to go hand-in-hand. Sandbox games divorce the two. That's kind of what the name "sandbox" means. Nobody tells you what to do in the sandbox - you get toys and sand (mechanics) and they can be used in certain ways (shovels for digging, buckets for collecting sand) but you can use them in whatever way you wand and nobody's going to tell you that's wrong (buckets for building castles). Except, he's not. It's happening right now. There are literally posts right here on this very forum from people seeking groups or groups seeking new players. Servers everywhere are publishing TS info in an attempt to gain new recruits. Even the hardcore ARMA clans are taking in new blood as a result of DayZ. How can you just sit and deny it's happening? So silly. Okay, so our options are to change DayZ to cater to the "vast majority" of casual players who don't want to put effort into a game - in the process dumbing and watering it down to the point where it will no longer be Dayz... or accept the fact that maybe DayZ isn't designed to appeal to the vast majority of casual players and let them go find a different game to play while an incredibly intense, committed and fervent following remains with DayZ - the people willing to put in the effort and create an amazing new kind of zombie game. I personally prefer the latter option myself. The 'vast majority' have their games already. Why should we let them influence DayZ's development until it just becomes a glorified sequel to Resident Evil or something? This is bunk, first of all. I'm on Day 19 and my partner Day 32 and zombies are a factor in everything we do. We sill need ammo. We still need to help our other friends who aren't quite as established as us gear up and find the basic supplies. We still need to search for vehicles and vehicle parts, and fuel cans - and gas stations to refuel them. Helicopter crashes are a goddamn zombie dance party. We spend more ammunition and medical supplies every day on zombies and zombie-related injuries than we do on players. Zombies remain a factor indefinitely. Second, if people came into DayZ expecting zombies w/o a bunch of PvP then it can only be because they dove in without reading a single shred of information about the game or the experience and just made a bunch of baseless assumptions because "It has zombies it must be like all those other zombie games." Meanwhile every blurb or article or interview I read before I decided to play DayZ stated definitively and without a doubt that you would find death at the hands of players a far more common experience than death by zombies. And this was back in the bandit skin days when supposedly the game was some kind of cooperative heaven on earth.

Sun rises in the east.

Too right! I know wandering around collecting beans and ammo was the most fun I had. No doubt! Nothing else in the game really comes close in terms of excitement. Picking up cans. Picking up more cans. Those were the days! Now' date=' jeez. So bored. I can't seem to find anything to pass the time... [img']http://i.imgur.com/lxnhZ.jpg

I suggest SE. Running E might not work because sometimes you are very far to the NW so E will actually take you along the top edge of the map. E/SE should bring you back to the map in the shortest time possible. But it is possible you are up to 24,000m away which can be an 80 minute run or more so I suggest balancing something on your 'W' key and going to watch a movie or something. Or just click respawn.

You are in the "debug plains." You are somewhere between 2200m and 22000m N/NW of the map proper. Get your bearings and run SE until you see trees in the distance. If you have a map and play on a server with waypoints, you can set a waypoint to know how far you have left. If not, just be patient. 22000+ meters can mean a run of over 80 minutes until you're back on the map. Bet patient, you will get there. Or, just click 'respawn' which I know sucks but is a solution if you cannot seem to make it back.

First' date=' mechanics should not be "against" or "for" anything. That's a rule in disguise. Mechanics are neutral. They don't care what you do with them. Second, the game already has mechanics which, if you so choose, you can utilize to remove almost all of the advantage that agressor wield over you. I've covered many in my post on the incentives to cooperative play. The advantage will always lie with the players who move in a group, play intelligently and tactically, and remain aware of their surroundings. Barring an agressor logging in to the same room your in, firing, and then immediately logging out - an issue that I do feel strongly rocket will need to solve before this Alpha becomes a Beta - the advantage will remain with the players who play more tactically and remain aware. Agressor or not, if you see them first YOU determine the rules of engagement. Want to avoid confrontation entirely? Leave. Want to get the drop on him? Hide and waylay. Want to get fancy and try and bait him into some action? Make a plan. As long as you get eyes on your target first, you almost always win. My partner and I have been ambushed many times over the last 32 days that he has survived. At one point both held down inside a grocery store with a silenced assault-rifle wielding, NVG-using, grenade-tossing crazy ass bandit bastard. Though he got the drop on us (this time), we won and both got out without a scratch. How? There were two of us and we worked together and communicated and the guy didn't stand a chance against us after that. As is simultaneously the move toward "I should find a group of players who are good at this game and befriend them and join up with them because that seems like a much better survival strategy," and then voila suddenly you've got players building relationships and communities as a result of some simple fundamental game mechanics. No designer had to come along and say "You over there! Form groups. We shall call them 'guilds' and this is exactly how they will work for everyone from now until eternity." Nobody had to say "Hey! I don't like the way you guys are behaving so now it's against the rules" or "I don't personally feel your behavior is 'positive' for the game, so I will disallow it via rules cleverly disguised as mechanics.'" No. He just added mechanics to the sandbox and threw us in and people figured out on their own that moving in groups, even small ones, means you are more powerful than individuals in 99% of scenarios.

Except that's exactly what rocket says he has no intention of doing. How long have you been here? Are you really expecting him to just wake up one day and decide that his whole sandbox idea is silly and start implementing PvE servers and a quest system? It's not going to happen' date=' man. Really. DayZ is an unrestricted sandbox and I can pretty much guarantee you it will remain as such throughout Alpha, Beta and Final. Right, so instead of implementing arbitrary, artificial, non-sandbox-style slaps on the wrist and stupid "go wear a dunce cap" type punishments we implement mechanics that create an environment where unrestricted PvP can take place while adding an incredibly interesting, heart-pounding and dynamic element to what would otherwise be a pretty drab world. Heading into town to grab a can of beans, shoot a couple zombies. Hooray! Except, not. Boring actually. But do it under the constant knowledge that at any moment a homicidal maniac might come around the corner and start spraying you with assault rifle fire in a moment of murderous panic? Now THAT'S an interesting trip to the grocery store and you just turned a mechanic that most games solve by having you walk up to a vendor and say "Give me the item I desire for the amount of money that is indicated on your beautiful UI, sir" into an incredibly intense struggle for even the most basic survival items. Indeed. But, why, good sir? Why? Yes, because now it's SO impossible... Well, first, that's already true. Military zombies have armor on in the game already. Second, you need to realize that encouraging cooperation will not discourage PvP. People will simply cooperate AND PvP. I run in a group all the time. I'm never alone. But, I play with the same group all the time and if you're not in it I'm going to shoot your ugly face into tiny individual bite sized ugly pieces when I see you. This is how it will always be. If cooperation becomes more prevalent, then you will simply see more instances of group vs. group PvP instead of individual shoot outs. Which will be really cool. I can't wait. Sandbox rules, player-driven story and objectives, player-enforced protocol and etiquette, player-run factions. Mechanics, not rules. Please don't ask the designers to come hold our hands. We're doing fine, really.

Okay' date=' Sherlock. They made it easy for you. They put the bloody objective right in the name. It's right there. You are literally CALLED your objective and you didn't puzzle it out? As it turns out, anyone can do anything they want in the game regardless of what silly, binary, black and white, artificial labels you slap on their behavior. Everyone is free to do whatever it is they find most amenable and effective to ensure their survival. And I'll give you a super big hint: if one of your objectives is not to kill the people who are actively trying to kill you, then you are going to fail at DayZ in a pretty big way. What is your strategy going into a PvP situation if your "Survivor" nametag somehow forbids you from killing another player? Are you just going to roll around on your back like a flipped turtle shouting "Friendly!" and hoping the person goes away? Ooooo. Let me stop you. Let me just stop you right there. Really. No. Just, no. Stop. Now.

For me it's simple: time. I usually plan ahead of time to play with friends, so I don't want to spend 45 minutes finding my way back to my corpse because I died in Grishino or something. Time is the most valuable thing to me, and that's more at risk inland than it is on the coast.

No, I really won't. I'm going to stick with DayZ and play every day and you're going to have to learn to live with it.

Okay? So, I'm not sure what you're saying here other than you have some really suspect friends? Do you expect/hope that the game will change in such a way that people like this can play it and be successful? I guess I can't figure out what you're driving at. Your friends suck at DayZ. Okay. Either find different people to play with, or find a different game to play with those friends. Otherwise I guess you're suggesting rocket dumb down the design of the game until your pack of ne'er-do-well, mouth-breathing idiot friends can thrive and populate the world? That's one of the people I play with. I have had two (2) survivors in that same amount of time - one alive for 19 days and my current survivor on day 12. We have seen all that and more. We have repaired ~4 vehicles and stolen 3-4 others, some fully loaded with fuel, gear and equipment. We have traversed the map multiple times, sometimes traveling in groups as large as 6 but often just as a pair. We have had incredibly tense standoffs and extremely tense situations. Last time we stopped for gas, in fact, I was jumped from behind by a player I didn't see in the field behind me. I was at 3400 blood and unconscious bleeding to death. My partner came in guns blazing, killed my assailant, stopped my bleeding at 2400 blood, gave me a transfusion and then succeeded in defending me for the remaining ~90 seconds of unconsciousness I had to wait through becasue we didn't have an epi-pen. We killed one additional bandit and got away with fuel and our fully loaded UAZ. It was one of the single most intensely emotional experiences I have ever had in a video game in my entire life, and I have been gaming pretty much every day since Commodore 64 was all the rage. The game is what you make it, man. You hang out with idiots and you're disappointed that you have an idiotic experience in the game? What do you expect? Surround yourself with people who want to play the game the way you do. This has always been necessary since the days when all we could do was get together to play board games - they're more fun when you're playing with people you know and trust and if you don't have those kinds of relationships with anyone who plays and this game encourages you to go out there and MAKE those friendships and connections well then rocket will have achieved something amazing don't you think? See, now. You're wrong again. Why do you assume that your own personal subjective emotional reactions to the things that happen in the game are universal? Don't you think that's arrogant? Don't you think it might be a bit of an enormous consensus bias on your part? I have had emotional reactions to killings in the game. Times when I have been surprised to turn around and see a survivor nearby where I wasn't expecting one and in my panic firing and second-guessing the decision afterward. Regretting that I didn't hesitate even a little in the moment of panic. Thinking about his journey back to where we are and how much time I might have cost them. Maybe you don't consider those things and reflect upon them. I do. Again, we see a running theme. The game is what YOU make it. It's not going to be gift-wrapped and hand packaged for you with a bunch of icons and blinking arrows and sound effects and achievements and I know you're not asking for these things nor would you want them but just for dramatic effect you have to consider that DayZ is setting itself apart in so many ways like this. No in-game communication - almost unprecedented in an online game. Permanent death - how many games this popular can pull that off? Unrestricted PvP in what feels like an almost MMO environment? Even the MMOs who tried to do that couldn't really pull it off the way rocket has with this simple mod that's only in Alpha. But if you approach it like every other game and just ho-hum your way through and expect it to jump out at the screen and shit zombie awesome sauce all over your face then I don't think it's going to happen. YOU have to involve yourself more deeply in the game. Again, if that means finding a new group of people to hang out with - give it a try. It sounds like your friends are dickheads anyway. I think realistic human emotions are the most important part of this mod. The mechanics themselves need not be realistic, but as near as I can tell the point of the mod is to put you into extreme situations that compel you to think, act, and behave in ways that might not necessarily be fully within your normal zone of comfort and expectation. You want to communicate? Figure it out. You want safe zones? Figure out how to make them. You want punishments for rampant PvP? Go guerilla on the bandits - set traps, steal vehicles, and take them out before they take you out. Die too often in Cherno/Elektro? Stop going there. Nights too dark? No, don't just turn your gamma up. Not allowed anymore. Figure it out. This is complete hogwash. I am "most people." I have a job, a family, other hobbies. I don't play DayZ 14 hours a day and I'm not in a clan or a posse. I play with 2-3 other friends occasionally. But we all play to survive. We travel together, move carefully, coordinate our efforts, utilize tents and vehicles to our advantage, etc. We plan ahead nights when we play so that we're never doing anything dangerous alone. We cover each other and never leave people behind. And combined in our group we have had 2 deaths in the last 31 days of the game. You don't need a large group to be an imposing force. 2 or 3 people is sufficient - if you play intelligently. Don't stand on top of each other everywhere you go - so you are all basically one target. Spread out. Take turns raiding buildings while others stay outside. When you're traveling through the wilderness - fan out at least 200m apart so you can scan more area and aren't all vulnerable to a single grenade or one clip of assault rifle ammo. If one person is raiding a grocery store, leave the other out back to watch for approaching players. I'm not going to make the whole list again. It's right up there at the top of the thread. Nearly all of the goals I listed can be accomplished by two people working together. And they don't need to be some kind of wizened ARMA experts either. Cooperation will always be nonexistent if you don't take responsibility for it yourself.

No' date=' I didn't. Believe what you want. It's nothing to me. Aren't you the guy who argued with me for 3 pages about how probability works and left when you realized you had been wrong the entire time? Rings a bell...

Except it's not. It's irrelevant. The people you are worried about don't give a shit if you have a makarov or not. Getting shot back at is actually MORE interesting to them. It changes nothing. Add starting weapons back in and not only will these people kill you late in the game, they will kill you as soon as they spawn. And when you kill them, they will spam respawn until they're close to you and come back and do it over and over again. It's why they play the game. They will not stop because you have a macaroni. Just get off the beach, find your friends and play the game. It all works out in your favor trust me.

I heard this game was just a "PvP fest" and nobody plays it like a zombie survival game. Hmph. News to me. It went away? I never play the game alone. Ever. If you want to play with others, why are you playing alone? I don't get it.

Never played the game before weapons were taken out. Thinks it was better back then. ... Newbies are going to get hunted with or without makarovs. Just get off the beach, find your friends and survive together. You will be fine. I promise.