lherron

There is zero incentive to let someone live. It's pretty simple.

Wow. That spiraled out of control quickly... nerd rage!!!!!!! Obviously this mod has a million issues (rooted in the fact that Arma 2 is pretty poorly built), and it's chock full of little bugs that can wipe out days and weeks of progress in a single click. Anyone who has played for any amount of time knows that. I don't blame the OP for venting, though it does muck up the forums with unconstructive flame bait. Why can't we /shrug and move on?

Ever since I downloaded the beta the game has been pretty much perfect for me, in terms of connection issues. Not sure why you're having trouble. I'd full uninstall and follow these directions: http://teamsaints.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1 I'm sure you'll be fine.

Well, in a way you're lucky. Because it's happening everywhere else.

I want to give this thread 1 million stars.

Hey, great thread here. Just like the one I started last week. People in both threads came up with some really smart ideas. How about this proposal, which is closely related to what you guys have been talking about: There is a radius around all major points of interest. The radius is posted by devs so everyone can learn them. They can be called "danger zones" or "no sleep zones". - If you log out or DC inside the radius, a system message appears to anyone nearby, and your body remains there for 5 minutes. You are unable to join any other server during that time. ---This is to prevent people from DCing to avoid confrontations within points of interest. - When you log back in (after logging out within a "no sleep zone") you are teleported to a random spot, 0-50 meters away from the perimeter of the "no sleep zone". ---This is key. No one will ever appear inside of the building you are in EVER AGAIN. And people can't hop servers, to gain a tactical advantage on you. - If you log out inside the "no sleep" radius, you cannot return to THAT same server for 15 minutes. ---This is to prohibit abuse of the "teleport" feature. Someone may see a gang of people roll into town and they want to teleport out of the area. But that server should be off limits for a longer period of time. This is the best I've come up with at this point. The key is to accomplish 3 things: - Make it harder to farm via server hopping - Eliminate DCing from high risk areas. The only way out should be to get yourself out on your power. - Create a game where you can tactically approach a high risk area and be confident that if you prepare and execute properly, no one can kill you by simply spawning in the middle of your operation. It's definitely not perfect yet, but if we keep spitballin ideas and come up with something awesome, perhaps it will stimulate the Dev team's own ideas. Then we've done our part in making DayZ a better game.

I just exited the north side of the Balota airfield deerstand area, fresh with a GPS, pack, ammo, etc. and someone had laid a wire fence down inside the sandbag wall texture. I vaulted over. Instant death. Even if it had just broken bones and shit, I had a ton of med supplies. Game is so dumb sometimes.

I've been playing DayZ daily over the last month, and I have quite a few thoughts about the game, but I will save most of them for another post. In short - DayZ is amazing, and I hope (and think it will) serve as the catalyst (along with Minecraft, which I think has some strong parallels to this game) in bringing the "sandbox MMO" genre to the next level. I haven't had this much fun playing a game... possibly ever. Onto the post: DayZ is still buggy, but for the most part it's very playable. Every patch is two or three steps forward, one step back. It's great to see them take an aggressive approach with the game (over the last 3 weeks especially), and I appreciate that. Now, we all know this mod is an "experiment", and just reminding yourself of that helps to relieve some of the frustration when dumb things happen in the game - it does for me at least. So, when I say "To fix server hopping, or not to fix server hopping" I mean that philosophically - what's better for the health of the DayZ franchise in the long term? If you were to launch DayZ as a retail game right now, it's by far and away the biggest flaw in the game, nothing else is even close. (DCing is second.) Server hopping prevents any sort of serious strategic maneuvering, and simply allows endless griefing and farming. For a game that strives for realism and rewards meticulous planning and execution, it's the most subversive, game-breaking loophole you could possibly create. One of the reasons DayZ gameplay is such an awesome experience is because it is endlessly brutal and unforgiving. That brutality is amazing and essential to DayZ, but only when it is served up by the game mechanics - not by the exploits. However, I play through it because I know how much time and effort it would take to fix. It's just a very hard thing to tackle from a game dev perspective. So, my question is... should they try to fix it? You have to assume that if they fixed server hopping (I will post some ideas below) the game would grow even quicker. I know several people that love the idea of DayZ, love the gameplay, but don't have the time to rebuild 3 days of progress because someone served hopped and snuck around behind them, or spawned while they were looting a tent, or killed them while loading. They refuse to DC out of a hairy situation because that's what the entire crux of the game is - the heart racing moments. Who can blame them? So the real question is not SHOULD they, because they obviously should, no one who's played the game would answer "no", but how much new content and bug fixes should they sacrifice to do so? Not an easy question. Here are some ideas: #1 - All cities and major locations (castles, airfields, etc) have a radius around them that you cannot spawn inside of. The zones will be posted by devs for all to see. If you log out within a zone, upon relog you will spawn just outside the zone (as close to where you logged out.) This solves many issues right away. PROS: - You can actually execute strategic ops on targets in high traffic zones, since you're able to clear buildings with confidence. - Greatly reduces farming - Greatly reduces log-on kills in buildings/loot spots. - Makes fencing items much more useful. CONS: - You can't log out in cities, unless you want to roll the dice on your spawn. I personally think this is a nice side effect, and people will be even more willing to venture into the major cities because the fear of new players spawning around them has been eliminated. - The dev time/man power issue. Is it worth it, or even possible to code given the team working on the game. --- Sorry, this post has gotten super long. Just wanted to put some thoughts out there. I love this game, and I am happy to play it as is until Arma3 or DayZ 2 or whatever the next iteration of the game is released. It's very possible the best decision for the long term health of the franchise and genre is to just play it as is and deal with the exploits. Just spitballin here. -LH

I'm sure it's a topic tossed around by the devs, likely a code/performance issue I'd guess, but it would be awesome to have wind. Sniping is far too easy. Would you vote yes or no for wind..

Yup. Hospitals #1. Use this for everywhere else: http://dayzdb.com/map

If you think that is bad, this game is not for you. You gotta be resilient to play DayZ, bud. Expect to work hard to find awesome shit, then lose it all in one mistake - or maybe not. Sometimes there's nothing you can do to prevent a death. Like in life. DayZ is a brutal yet visceral and satisfying experience. Approach it the right way, and it will be one of the best video game experiences you'll ever have.

And the circle of DayZ is complete.

Bizon SD. Have one in my truck for covert situations, but it's very meh for a super rare spawn. Plus ammo is hard as fuck to find.

Out of curiosity, why not all major cities?

[Please save your "COD carebear" comments for a different thread. If you want to engage your brain, read on.] As we all know, each server has a true day/night cycle linked to its geographical location. This adds realism, makes the game more hardcore, more unforgiving. This brutality is the essence of DayZ, and it's what we love about it. However, in practice, all it's doing is creating logistical issues. Here is the logic: By having true day/night cycles, we impose a harsher and more realistic game environment on players. This is the mission of the game, therefore day/night cycles are good. Except this logic is flawed because you can't actually enforce that players log onto servers that they geographically reside in. In reality, all it does is drive the majority of players to daylight servers, further exacerbating the technical issues of this "experiment". I couldn't find an actual discussion of this issue on the forums (just a bunch of whining), so I created this thread. I'm sure there are those that disagree, and I'm curious to hear your opinions. Considering you can't enforce that people play on a server during nighttime, why do you feel that this feature should be kept? I think the most simple solution would be all daylight and all nighttime servers. YOU ALREADY CANNOT ENFORCE PEOPLE TO PLAY ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. They are already choosing to play in daylight or nighttime! (edit: this is a bad solution because of persistent non-player stuff like vehicles) Another solution, more of a compromise, would be to create a lopsided daylight cycle, maybe 20 hours daylight, 4 hours night. You would retain the feeling of anticipating dusk/dawn, etc, but would increase the number of daylight servers at a given time, and reduce the current amount of server swapping. Yet another potential solution would be to put ALL servers on the same day/night clock, regardless of geographical location (since geographical location is meaningless anyway, when you aren't forced to log into your own geographical server...). This, of course, again, would radically reduce the amount of server swapping. I kind of like that solution the best, actually. Use logic. Illogical responses will be ignored. UPDATE: Here's a great solution posted by Lev: "If you want all players to be on a level playing field, then the solution that will work is having a global DayZ time that is enforced via the hive pushing time updates to servers. Then slowly shifting the DayZ time (perhaps +3 hours every day or something so a full cycle in 8 days) in such a way that a player who lives at x and plays only during y to z will experience the full day and night cycle if they continue living at x and playing from y to z."

Rocket: Sorry - I searched specifically for your posts on the issue but didn't find them. Thanks for the clarification. We can now consider this discussion theoretical or for a much later release, and not something that will realistically be implemented in the short term. I'll make an edit to the OP. Worbat: Yes, as a poster said above, that is the issue: People like playing during the daylight, because they can see better. This is responsible for a large portion of the "server hopping" - maybe 20-40%? This server hopping/extra traffic is one of the large factors contributing to the connection issues many players encounter. Therefore, make a better (yet still brutal and realistic) day/night system, reduce the server hopping, make the entire game more stable and user friendly from a connectivity stand point. Sorry that wasn't clear. Tea leaf: I love that suggestion. It alters reality slightly which some people will be always be opposed to, but it's close enough for me. To the people who don't know what a fallacy is... it's an idea based in incorrect logic. The fallacy at hand, that many in the community believe, is: "Having server Day/night cycles tethered to their time zone makes Dayz more realistic". ***The key is that we are striving for realism.*** It's a fallacy because what actually makes Dayz more realistic is the fact that at some point, darkness falls, and we are then playing in darkness - not the fact that servers are tethered to their geographical location. There are ways to retain realism while alleviating server hopping. Please, if you still don't understand this, post why you don't understand it, and someone will explain further. Please refrain from trolling or empty comments. To those non-contributors who drop useless one liners in: why not post an actual, coherent argument, then everyone wins. Thanks. But please do post it. I want to hear why people like the current setup (having servers tethered to their timezones). We can move on from this being a thread with "suggestions", as Rocket has made it clear it won't be changed any time soon, and make it theoretical game design thread. That's more than OK.

I don't think you understand that most of us don't consider this a problem. You don't think it's a problem that people constantly bounce around servers, putting unneeded strain on an already fragile setup, making the game unconnectable or unplayable for many people? Again, this isn't a game design issue, I DO NOT WANT TO CHANGE THE GAME........... It's a technical issue. I want it to be easier for people to CONNECT AND PLAY this amazing mod.

RaymondThorne: Hmm, I didn't really consider that it would be a technical issue. It seems like an easy thing to modify, but admittedly I don't know much about it. Nya: Failed logic test... spectacularly. Lev: Just as you said "If players don't want to play in the dark there is nothing forcing them to." Exactly right, you literally have no control. They can simply log out when it gets dark and switch to daytime server, exactly as most people do. So why have a day/night system in place that puts TONS of strain on the server population? That's the fallacy - that people think the day/night cycle is responsible for making the game "harder". What actually makes the game harder is PLAYING AT NIGHT. That's the disconnect. My point is that there is a better solution than the current setup.