carpenatedbevrage

1: evoxtom is right. You were probably playing a private hive on one server or another. I know that DayZ commander doesn't reliably display the private hive icon next to PH servers so you may have not even known that you were playing PH. 2: Since when do guns jam in DayZ? I know that someone wrote a gun jamming mod for ACE for Arma II, but not DayZ. 3: Spawn protection? I didn't think there was any such thing on official hive servers. More evidence to suggest you were playing on PH here. 4: You gave a gun to a random and turned your back on him? You must be new here ;] 5: Last, but not least, a word of advice: Learn to love the losses as much as the finds. Loss is an integral part of DayZ. It's always "easy come, easy go." If you find really great gear, don't get too attached to it because you can lose it all at any moment. This is good, though, because if you got to keep all the gear you found, the game would get boring. I played on a server for over a month that had been abandoned by an active clan. In their absence, random players would come and go, but I kept playing the same server. I acquired dozens of guns, multiple tents, several vehicles, and experienced virtually zero losses (never died, only had one vehicle stolen, no one found my tents). Guess what? IT WAS BORING AS HELL. The most interesting part was when I killed 3 players out of the sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time. When you lose gear in DayZ, it should ignite a fire within you to go out and replace it, to take risks for the possibility that the heli crash site down the hill *might* have another ghillie suit in it to replace the one you lost when you died, EVEN if it was due to a glitch. That is far more exciting than hoarding gear for its own sake. For that reason, I have to disagree with you about wishing there were more "white hat" hackers. Learn to love the loss, because that is what drives you to experience the most visceral aspect of the game: that of fighting for the spoils, only to find yourself questioning whether it was worth it. When you murder a half dozen other survivors and all you find is an AKM with no ammo and a bunch of empty cans, you'll understand what I mean.

I'm not usually a big PC gamer except for DayZ, but it seems that this game suffers from more cheating and scripting than any PC game I've ever seen. Aside from the fact that it is apparently very easy to cheat in DayZ, I think there might be a bigger underlying reason for the prevalence of hackers: Cheating at a video game is nearly always a form of griefing. That is, the cheater isn't playing the game anymore, they are playing the other players. A cheater cheats because he (or she) wants to feel powerful, and so by cheating they have made themselves more powerful in the game than other players. This frustrates or even enrages other players, who often express their frustration out loud. This is exactly what the cheater wants because they can see and hear the frustration of those less powerful than them and thus they achieve a level of satisfaction with the game. While other players seek satisfaction from the game, the cheater seeks satisfaction by making others miserable. So why does DayZ suffer from so many cheaters? The answer is simple: because DayZ makes the player feel weak. Most video games make the player feel powerful. This is especially true of single-player games and RPGs, but nearly all games are designed to make the player feel power that they cannot feel in real life. DayZ makes the player feel weak and vulnerable. You can die from getting shot only once, you can easily get cornered by zombies and die with an empty gun in your hand, you can break your legs by falling even a few feet. Many applaud this level of realism in a game, but to the cheater, they see it as not only a disincentive to play the game the way it's meant to be played, but also as an opportunity to cause more grief from other players. It's a disincentive because someone who doesn't have a good attention span or is lazy doesn't want to spend hours collecting gear, they want to experience the best the game has to offer right away. When that gets boring (as it inevitably will), they realize that other players HAVE spent hours collecting gear, and that it would be fun to kill them in such a way that they cannot fight back (i.e. teleportation). This makes the cheater feel powerful because they are invincible against players who are very, very weak. So there you have it. That's my theory, and I bet that if it were possible to actually collect data on the rate of cheaters in games, that DayZ would have more cheaters, even when compared to games that have a similar number of players and a similarly weak anti-cheat system. So what do you do about a cheater? It's quite simple: nothing. The cheater wants you to insult them in side chat because they know you can't do anything to them and that makes them feel powerful. So next time you get victimized by a hacker, don't even react. Let them kill you in some idiotic or embarrassing way. Let them do whatever stupid thing they want to do to feel powerful, and as soon as the opportunity appears, quietly log off and wait for them to leave. What would you do if you found out that someone at your friend's poker game was cheating? Would you swear at him and try to beat him anyway, even though you can't possible beat him? Or would you say "I don't want to play anymore" and take your chips and leave? If you don't give the cheater the satisfaction of knowing he pissed you off, then he will not feel powerful or satisfied, and will choose someone else to victimize instead. I think instead of IP banning, there should be IP shaming. If a player get's globally banned, let them play, but display a server message that they are a known cheater when they log in. Everyone would log out, and the cheater would have no one left to grief.

A bandit in DayZ is someone who has chosen to survive by taking from other survivors. Banditry takes many forms, and can include burglarizing tents or vehicles or robbing other survivors at gunpoint. The latter is usually forsaken in favor of killing survivors for their gear because it's almost always safer than robbing them and you can then have your choice of all their loot instead of just what you know they have. For example, you have no way of knowing if a player is carrying NVGs if they are not wearing them.

Woah dude you need to chill. Sounds like someone's a little too trusting in Chernarus... OP took advantage of the situation for his own gain, and he got 2 of the best guns in the game out of it. What did you do? Sit around a campfire with your fellow survivors and sing kumbaya? Until one of them wised up to the fact that there's no such thing as friendly, only vulnerable, and shot you for your gear? I have survived for over 30 days now (playing almost every day, mind you) by not trusting anyone, and I don't plan on starting to trust anyone anytime soon unless I feel like dying. The victim of OP's banditry was either a fool for turning his back on an armed stranger or a hacker since no one with gear like that strolls around Cherno. Also: claiming that "ruining someone's day" equates with banditry is just so much LOL. Colonel Kurtz is a big boy, I've seen him in the forums before. I'm sure he's not going to fret for one minute about some bambi whining about snipers and backstabbers. Go play Kinectimals, dumbass.

It's a little presumptuous to claim to know how people would act in a zombie apocalypse. Due to the realism you mentioned in your first two questions, the Arma engine is very unforgiving about getting shot, just like how if you get shot in real life, you die. So tell me this: if you are in a situation where society is gone, you have relied on your own wits to survive and haven't seen another human being for weeks, and all of a sudden you're face to face with someone and you both have guns. At the very least there's going to be a Mexican standoff. More than likely one or both of you either witnessed or narrowly escaped a similar situation that ended badly, and so you both decide in your heads that you should try to kill this guy the first chance you get. Why? Risk aversion. You survived this long without a companion, why risk your life on someone you've never met who could cap you in the back anytime he wants? You might feel more guilty about it than in a video game, but you will feel like you have to kill him. This is why serious DayZ players like myself kill anyone we don't know and trust. Not all of us actively hunt players; in fact, I avoid players but if I have the element of surprise then I am not likely to let them go on their way. Think of the people hunting players for sport as the really fucked up psychopaths in apocalypse movies who were either already crazy before the apocalypse or were driven insane by it. There's no reasoning with them, no bargaining, no sense of honor or humanity. The only thing to do is stay far away from them, or kill them before they kill you. I Certainly agree that players who hunt other players take away from the immersion of the game, especially when they use side chat to taunt or bait people. The main reason why this bothers me is because of what you said: realism. People like this are not immersed in the game; they are immersed in trying to be as obnoxious as possible. So to me it's not the killing of unarmed players that bothers me; it's people who aren't participating in the experience, but instead try to ruin it for others. It not the act of sniping or killing unarmed players, it's the intent behind that act.

The weapon isn't legit but if one gets scripted in it should work properly. I've heard of other players having problems getting their thermal scopes to work. I would Google the problem and see if some Arma players know why that happens. But yes, it is a hacked in gun and if someone sees you with it they will assume you cheated to get it.

I agree. Chernarus kind of reminds me of "The Hunger Games." Cherno and Elektro are like the Cornucopia, because if you run straight for those places for the plentiful loot, you'll probably get killed. If you're smart you'll head away from those areas and look for loot elsewhere. Deer stands and barns are my favorite loot spots because I almost never run into other players looting those :]

That would be a hacker. Anyone who has an Arma skin on an official server changed it with scripts.

One does not simply "go afk" in DayZ...

Between your post and your username, I think I can guess what kind of DayZ player you are.

Guys, PVP and banditry are what make this game different from any other zombie game (Left 4 Dead, etc.). Think of every good zombie movie ever made. Land of the Dead, 28 Days Later, etc. The zombies were scary in these movies, but what was scarier? The other people. The zombie genre isn't about zombies, it's about the horror of what otherwise good people will do to each other when society breaks down. Under the threat of a horrible death at the hands of the undead, people will do terrible things to each other. DayZ is the first zombie game that mimics this sort of horror. Watch the Cherno Journo's interviews with players about their first murders. This is why DayZ is the best zombie game ever made: the zombies are only a threat at first. Once you get the hang of surviving, it's the other survivors you need to worry about. Given that, the only type of PVPer that I don't like are the ones who don't take it seriously. Even if they're not a hacker, someone who taunts in side chat after killing someone or tries to lure people with sidechat traps really detracts from the game because ruins the feeling you get from the dynamic I mentioned above. If you're genuinely trying to survive, why would you take unnecessary risks by hunting players without any benefit? A group of survivors might hunt others for sport, and that's a horror in and of itself, but a lone survivor is unlikely to do such a thing out of pure malice, because the risk would outweigh the reward in real life. That said, I never complain about PVP anymore because it's pointless and makes me look like a noob.

As a new spawn, I once ran into the Elektro office building, and ran into another player who was fully geared. Why he was hanging around there I will never know but he didn't shoot me because I was unarmed. I found a Winchester on the roof and came back and shot him with it. I took his M4 CCO and all the other gear I didn't have yet, then I saw another player come inside. He shouted a friendly greeting and I could see that he was unarmed. He axed me in the back while I was taking out zombies. This is why you always shoot on sight.

For zombie control: AKS Kobra and a Glock. I will use SD weapons when I have the ammo, but the dangers associated with trying to farm for SD rounds defeat the purpose (that is, being stealthy). CZ 550 for taking out players :] I have yet to find a goddamn DMR but I want one so bad. I've found almost every other gun in the game but this one eludes me.

Had to have been a cheater. The AS50 usually spawns with only a couple mags, plus no one with gear like that hangs around Cherno. Nice going taking down a fully-equipped player with a double barrel though. That is quite impressive.

Dude, they so are. I just got done with a triple homicide. Heard a car drive up to the NE airfield and shortly thereafter, some gunfire. I didn't see any death messages, and then the two players started typing to each other in side chat and I realized they were in a standoff. One had the car and the other claimed he had a friend in the ATC. The driver of the car decided that he'd rather die destroying his gear than let anyone else get it, and started emptying his M107 into the truck. I was able to figure out where he was from the sound, and killed him with my CZ while he was dealing with all the aggro that his M107 attracted. The other player thought he had been killed by zeds (even though I clearly shot 2-3 times with a gun that was definitely not an M107), so he comes over to loot the body. My zeroing was off so my first shot landed high. The noob gave in to his knee-jerk reaction and dropped to the ground. My second shot was dead on. I wondered if the third player was a bluff or not, but just to be safe I moved up closer to the truck and waited. Sure enough, Bambi #3 came down from the ATC and went straight for the truck. I switched to my M16 and lit him up. When all was said and done, I had an M14, an M107, three Coyote Backpacks, 2 sets of NVGs, and enough ammo to clear out the whole server. Best of all, I found out afterward that the truck was the same Hilux that had been stolen from me earlier that day. My hands shook the whole time and I couldn't calm down for about 10-15 minutes after it was all over. I thanked the other players for such an exciting firefight, and they were all really cool about it and congratulated me on being so ninja. None of them saw me throughout the ordeal until they were either hit or dead, and not a single shot was even fired at me. This was not my first murder, but all the previous times were basically Bambi vs. Bambi. For example, the actual first time I ever killed another player was with a Winchester, but the other player had a double barrel and didn't even point it at me, so he probably would have been friendly if I hadn't shot at him. This was the first legitimate firefight I was ever part of, and I was the lone wolf victor with my choice of the spoils. THIS. IS. CHERNARUS!