theirongiant

Awesome, tbh I've not had a chance to use the walke-talkies much but seems like a reasonable middle ground.

It'd be good as a server event 39 v 1. But I was more planning on the 1 being unaware. Their reaction when they see 39 players would be priceless.

I don't know how many times I can say it but that's fine for you, that's how you want to play the game, this isn't about the merits or otherwise of text chat. Each side has it's reasons but surely the adult thing to do is seek compromise, a solution that suits all parties. I've yet to see a reason not to do it that's anything more than "that's not the way I play and everyone should be forced to play the way I do."

We're only talking about text chat, I think everyone agrees that global voice chat is horrible. Although I do remember playing on a server where 1 guy started doing a parody news report about a battle at Balota but he had an amazing voice. He instantly referred to as 'Awesome voice guy' and everyone on the server loved him speaking over global. I propose that global voice chat be reinstated for Awesome Voice Guy only and it should be global to every player on every server.

I would include everything but I'd make the odds on the higher end loot really, really unlikely so it'd be like a lottery win. It'd make people more likely to loot if they remembered that one time they checked a shed in the middle of nowhere and found something awesome.

It's good for building communities It's good for running server events It's good for reporting hackers It's good for helping newbies It's good for reporting problems with the server* The OP's suggestion was inclusive, he's understood that global chat is a subjective thing and that some people like it, some don't and has proffered a best-of-both-worlds solution that would suit all players. I have far more respect for that sort of thinking than someone dogmatically insisting that everyone should play the game in exactly the manner he deems to be superior. -- edit -- Just thought of a perfect example, I was playing last night and for some reason the 'use' option wasn't appearing on any items. If I'd have had global chat I could have asked players on the server if they were having the same issue and if so restarted the server to see if that fixed it. As I couldn't and I couldn't assume that it was affecting everyone I had to leave it as is, so potentially the server could have been having issues and I had no way of knowing. This kind of stuff happens all the time, it's a fact of life that you run into issues with arma that require a server restart and you rely on your players to report this kind of thing.

I feel you're missing my point a little, I get that you personally don't like global chat and I'm 100 percent behind your right to not have it. The OP is requesting that global chat be there for people who want it, on a server or client level, or not there as the player prefers. The arguments about 1st v 3rd person are far more contentious and have a far greater effect on the immersion than chat would ever have and yet that is implemented as a server option, I don't see any good argument why this shouldn't be.

And you're the final arbitrator of what is nonsense or what is better overall and what isn't? OP's suggestion was reasonable and allowed everyone the choice, I just don't understand why you'd shoot it down, if you don't want sidechat, switch it off but a lot of people want it so why not accommodate them as well? It smacks of throwing your toys out the pram because not everybody plays like you. It's been my experience that it's great for building a community. You switch it off, I switch it on - everybody's happy.

That's cool, you don't want it you can switch it off or play on a server than doesn't implement it but all the OP is asking for is to be given the choice so that everyone can play as they want.

Pretty simple addition, allow a chosen image to be shown instead of the default one while the game loads. Server owners have hee-haw to hold players as it stands, at least being able to have the chance to build a bit of recognition would be nice.

We aren't in the apocalypse, we're sitting in front of computers having fun. For some people that's immersion, for others it's having a laugh. I can't understand the mindset of wanting to force everyone to play it your way, particularly from a game that came from the most pliable and moddable of games, it's success, no it's entire existance, is entirely based off the fact that arma 2 could be moulded into whatever game you wanted to play. I'm all for (text) side chat with both server and client on/off switches. If you don't like it switch it off, if you don't like it on for anyone find a server with it switched off globally, whatever - find a server that matches how you want to play but don't try and dictate how everyone else should play, that's weak sauce.

It's because we just want a hug.

So it's completely true information? #doublenegative

I noticed that the big brick industrial building has been updated to be enter-able, is the plan to be that all buildings are eventually enterable?

very much this, there is going to be 2 questions on everybody's lips all the time, when's the next patch and what's going to be in it. Even if the answer is "dunno":"dunno" there should be a consistent place I can bookmark and check rather than an optimum new media coverage strategy that I need to employ. imo of course.

Just thought I'd throw this out there and see what people thought. Loot storage: I don't know what the plans are for the SA equivalent of tents are but I hope it isn't tents. In the mod the things were almost utterly impossible to hide and were easily spot-able from many hundreds of metres away, even more so if you could get in the air. In the SA I'd hope that loot stashes are a lot more hidden, think Epoch's lockboxes ) although these were still spot-able at distance, it'd be nice if they could be prevented from rendering until they were within the grass rendering distance. That means they would require a bit more effort in finding but it would also mean that you'd have a lot to gain by tracking players back to their bases rather than just killing them and things that encourage non-KOS behaviour == good. Tracking: In combination with the above a simple tracking mechanism could be implemented that could be used to follow recent player movements to give you a chance to pick up other players trails. User has a menu option - "search for tracks", if a player has passed through recently(*) then the player has a 75% chance of detecting tracks and a 50% chance of reading those tracks correctly. Feedback would be something like 'There are tracks leading N|NE|E|SE|S|SW|W|NW. They are fresh|recent|old', if the player gets it wrong then a random direction/age is shown. Player can only test each sector once per 30 minutes. If there are multiple tracks then only the freshest are displayed (new track obliterate older ones). Fresh = 0-10 minutes old, recent = 10-20 mins, old = 20-30 mins. From a server point of view, you'd need to have a hexagon grid over the map (maybe 50m width hexes) to split it into reasonably sized sectors, each sector would hold two bits of info, what direction the last player left in and how long ago that was. The idea isn't to give a bloodhound like path to follow but to have a mechanism so that if you are tracking someone and happen to lose them then you could use this to give you a rough idea of what direction they went. In practice you would scan the place were you lost the player you were tracking and then scan the surrounding sectors to see if they backed up your initial scan, maybe with a third scan a little further out just as confirmation. Point being it would be time consuming and far from accurate but might give you a clue when all else is lost.

Wee addendum: hex's would be over complicating the tracking thing, you would still have 8 cardinal directions from a simple squares grid and the maths would be a lot simpler. You'd could sample player positions at fairly long intervals and draw a straight line from their last known position to set which boxes they passed through. Might not be 100% accurate at longer time spans but for an imprecise mechanic that's not a massive drawback. Ideally tracking would work naturally from the environment but for a simple, light touch solution this would work well I feel.

I don't imagine I'm unique in the way I play. If I'm going through a town quickly I'll make sure to at least try check out the 'best' loot spots before leaving. If players start dumping 'good shit' into fridges then fridges will shoot to the top of my list of non-military places to loot. Finding tents in the mod often lead to high end gear, if fridges become the new tents (even in the short term) then damn sure I'm going to be checking each and every one I can find.

Fair enough if you don't like the idea but what makes you think it would add a lot of server load? No offense, but when you go on to suggest a method that would require every single footstep of every player being recorded, broadcast and rendered it makes me think you don't know what you're talking about.

I thought the fridge thing was just added as a place to check for loot, don't really see it being used as long term loot storage. What I would like to see is camps being something you have to follow players to find rather than being totally obvious.

That's taken just now, even with the filter wide open you're only getting 1 server that is over 50% capacity, what you've got is a lack of servers problem full stop not a private hive problem.

private hives saved the mod when on every public server the coast had an weapon crate every 5 yards and you couldn't go 10 minutes without getting thunderdomed.

I'll agree that selling weapons and better starter kits is weak sauce but I was on a few servers where donators got a special skin, didn't mind that and didn't mind chipping in.

Probably worth adding something into your MOTD telling players to change their name if it's admin or owner, just to give them a bit of fair warning. We really need the ability for admins at least to text chat on global.

There are 1.5 million DayZ players I think the community can handle a little bit of separation without falling to pieces. My point is that the mod thrived on being such an elastic game and from having such a diverse population. If you look at the big name servers and communities from the mod days all of them were pretty vanilla communities. The crazy servers were busy but they didn't have much community, people just used them to blow of steam for a while. I'll say it again though, if you make servers indistinguishable from each other you're destroying the motivation to rent servers and that'll do more to damage the game than a bit of diversity.