OMG (DayZ)

Yeah, a long description tends to happen when an issue is slightly more complex than 'bag ate my gun because it was full and i moved it there'. Also, if you had finished reading you would know that it's not 2 private hives. Connecting to one server seems to randomly load between two different servers, with two different player lists and two different survivor characters yet still display server messages about players who are on the same server yet at the same time, are not. Almost like the 'true' server and a 'ghost' server. Thanks for trying I guess. I suppose i could attempt to make OP easier to read.

Hello. The General Issue: So a friend of mine got Dayz recently to play with me but we've encountered a rather interesting/annoying bug of some sorts when attempting to play together on the same server. What basically happens is that when me or my friend connect to this server we seem to have a random chance of loading up 2 different characters that we've played as. It's almost like the server is actually 2 servers but both of them use the same connection or something, I don't know. Some Background Info: My friend and i decide to play together again as it's been a while (long story short: we met up, died together, got bit lost trying to meet up again and haven't been together since, both of us have had a couple deaths etc going solo). My friend lost one good character to the whole 'spawn on the beach with nothing' bug when you log in sometimes and just accepted that he wasn't going to get this 'good' guy back as he had tried multiple log ins and on different servers and it seems he was gone. While he was doing that, I had my solo character running around and being cool, stole an FM FAL and all sorts of crazy stuff from a bunch of cars someone must have collected (hell i found that mega lewtz pileup after finding 2 Mountain Dew cans, so much for the curse!). Anyways, so on this guy I'm somewhat near Elektro and having a good time. We decide to try and meet up again as he is basically on a fresh spawn so he tries to connect to the server i am on but can't connect so i connect to a server that is also working for him. I spawn on the beach with none of my gear etc and think ok just the bug, i relog few times and nothing. Yet if i log back onto the server that was 'working' for me, I'm still near Elektro will all my shizzle. As we both spawned quite close on the beach i thought screw it i don't really care i just start again with him. We both now have characters that have been 'lost' to that bug or whatever it is. From the fresh spawns we loot a bunch of stuff and have mad crazy time adventures in Elektro. This is where we encountered the bug. When we've had to log out to do other stuff etc, when we've logged back in we have both ended up loading our 'lost' characters'. We also find that if we log out and log back in, we seem to randomly load our 'new' characters. More Details: What also is worth mentioning is that on dayz commander, the server can list say 16/40 people online yet when I log in and get to the player list, the only players shown to be online are myself and a 'blank' name player (so no characters in the name). When my friend connects, he is also in this list. This is the 'server connection' that our new characters are on (lets say connection 1). After that screen, clicking ok goes to the black DAYZ loading screen before finally loading up the character in the world. Yet sometimes we log in and we can see many people in the player list. What is odd is that when we click ok after that player screen, we get more of an ARMA 2 style loading screen (the one with the tanks in the dessert location). After this, it loads our 'lost' characters (lets say this is server connection 2) What is yet even more strange is when we are on our new characters with a basically empty server (connection 1), we still get server messages of players going offline etc when no other players are around, these are players we presume are the ones that are on connection 2. Lastly: I hope some of that makes sense, it's rather confusing. It seems whenever we get the DAYZ loading screen after connecting, it loads our new characters on basically an empty server and when we get the tank loading screen it loads our 'lost' characters on a server that has people. There doesn't seem to be any way to choose which one loads so it's rather annoying if we want to play together using certain characters. This is the server IP: 5.63.147.44:2302 This is one of the servers that always loads my 'lost' character (or I like to say, my real character): 85.114.152.125:10100 If you were wondering: All our files and instillations are up to date. We both own legitimate copies of the game, and neither of the 2 servers I've listed there mention that they are 'unofficial' or not connected to the hive. You could say find another server but then that has been quite a hassle to find one we can both connect to without things going wrong + my friends 'good' character is almost dead so he's not interested in trying to fix him up yet now doesn't want to lose the 'new' character he's got because we've geared up our new ones quite well now. I can't find a single reference of this happening to someone else on the internet so haven't been able to find any help. Maybe someone on this forum has encountered this before or understands what is going on. I don't care hugely for having 2 characters but I would just like to be able to at least choose which one loads when I connect to that server to play with my friend. Any ideas? :/

To be honest I don't see any reason why they should remove the feature. Keep it in, make servers either with the option of third person enabled or disabled. Done. No one really forces you to play on a server that has it enabled. There are plenty of servers for both options. I only play on servers with it disabled because i'm probably not very good yet and don't want anyone having even more of an 'advantage' on me and because i think first person is the 'true' way to play the game. Third person can still be fun so why remove it when it's so easy to have both.

I voted no but not because i'm not afraid of dying. I stealth around all the time and take my time getting around to ensure my safety. However do i punch a kitten if i break my leg? No. It's only a bit of fun and it can also be fun to start again sometimes. The only times i'm not too happy is when i die due to something i consider unfair. I fell through the roof of a building once and broke my leg which screwed me up for a long time as i didn't have any way to cure it. I also fell out of a window (i guess) once which also broke my leg and left me pretty screwed again. I've also broken my leg trying to walk down some stairs when it seems my character decided to zoom down them or something. I know these are just bugs so i accept that. Dying in a genuine way doesn't bother me hugely because then i get to compare the lives i have in the game and get to see how well i do 'next time'. I think once you get to the point where you're more scared of being in trouble with zombies because you'll lose your mega blaster 8000 instead of being scared of being in trouble with zombies because... they're zombies then there's a problem.

Yeah maybe. The poll is just there to make it easier to see how many people agree/disagree instead of having to scroll through lots of posts incase the idea became more popular. Also, if the idea sounds too complicated, that is only because of me having to explain how the mechanic would technically work. The basic idea (in terms of how the player would actually see it in-game) is that zombies can't instantly open doors and will instead have to knock the door open taking a random amount of time which takes longer on stronger doors. With the chance of the door getting damaged meaning you can't just close it again forcing the zombies to try and break in all over again.

Well that can be true. Perhaps then certain doors like the metal ones cannot be broken. You can't 'lock' any doors in this game so the zombies can still push them open. Bigger doors like those ones would need slightly different mechanics anyway because if you had each zombie in range of the door making it easier for them to open it, the big doors like that wouldn't stand a chance. At the same time you don't want to make them too tough or you would be able to just laugh at a couple of zombies trying to get in that don't stand a chance (although that may be more realistic, it might be too over powered for just a game). This is of course all still just an idea that i in no way expect to be bullet proof. Things like this would need far more ironing out first than to call it perfect after just one small post. Also, how do people feel about public polls? I am not an expert and making them so didn't know what i was doing when i ticked the box to make it public (i thought it was making it so anyone could vote). I can't seem to find a way to turn it off after attempting to edit the post so if anyone really cares about not wanting to have their names seen where they vote and can tell me how to take it off i will do.

At the moment I can't explain in great detail what happens when you slam a door on a zombie because I've only done it a couple of times and what happened next for me was the zombie(s) sorta just phasing through the door anyway. I have a feeling that zombies can just open doors like players however zombies, being the masterminds they are, are not the type i would pick for their door opening abilities. It would make sense then that zombies cannot just swing a door open after you frantically close it trying to catch a breath. And so, my idea is this: A 'Knockdown' mechanic on doors that changes depending on the type of door. Basically how this would work is each time a zombie bangs on the door trying to break in, the game rolls a dice (D6). If it lands on say 4-6 the door opens. If it lands on 1-3 the zombie needs to smack it again. The thought process behind this is so that you can still close doors behind zombies but you will only have a 'random' amount of time before the zombies break through. Imagine running from a group of zombies into a shed or something slamming the door behind you while quickly trying to reload or pull out your axe knowing the enemy could burst in at any second. At first I thought the simple D6 roll would be ok but then it would be pretty rubbish if you closed a door only for a zombie to punt it open the next second and so I came up with something that might get around that. This entails giving doors a certain amount of 'Unbreakable Attempts (UA)' before the dice starts rolling. It would also be a bit silly if a zombie can knock down a flimsy wooden door to some shack just as easily as they can a huge metal door to a fire station or something. As a result, the amount of unbreakable attempts is defined by the quality of the door. A small wooden door to something like a little shed could have 1 UA before the normal dice roll per hit would come into play. A door to a house could have 2 UAs Something like a big military door could have 3 UAs. Now then, we obviously don't want to get to the point where doors become too over powered so you can just close one and say bye bye to your problems. Earlier when i mentioned that the dice needs to hit 4-6, you could also increase the chances for break-in depending on the door as well. A small rubbish door might only need a 3-6 on the dice. If that makes it too hard for the player, knock it up to 5-6 for a break-in but for each zombie that can reach the door, roll an extra dice to simulate more than 1 zombie trying to knock the door down (each dice individually still having to hit a 5 or 6). If you wanted to go crazy you could combine it all. Make the door need a 5 or 6 to open but for each zombie that can physically reach the door, use an additional dice and increase the chances by one so 1 zombie would need a 5 or 6 and 2 zombies would need a 4, 5 or 6. Another mechanic I thought of was an actual 'door breaking' idea. Say the game rolls a 6 when deciding if the zombie knocks open the door, the door could 'break' meaning you would be unable to close it. What would perhaps make pvp content more interesting is if the door physically breaks so the top half comes off or something meaning you can still close the door but you would only get 'protection' from the lower half (and obviously zombies can now just open it themselves without needing to dice check). You can include various different ways the door can break ranging from being broken in half, split in half (top to bottom) or broken off completely (all still effectively meaning a zombie can now open it like a player, it just changes how the player can see/shoot in or out of the building). If the game does not roll a 6 but rolls high enough for the zombie(s) to break in, you would of course still be able to close the door again once you've dealt with the immediate problem of zombies in your face. At the moment I don't think there are really any mechanics involving doors in the game/mod but it's the small things that matter sometimes. Also, try not to think of this idea making escaping zombies too easy, on the current A.I. of zombies perhaps yes, but i'm sure we would all like to see an improved A.I. which would mean things like this are not as 'instant escape' as they could be. I will attempt to attach a poll to this thread so people can either agree with my idea or tell me how rubbish it is. Polls are always a pretty solid way to find out the opinion on matters but i have no idea what i am doing so it might not show up. Thank you for reading. :) Edit: Oh and doors would of course eventually respawn if they are broken. Perhaps if no player is in the area around a broken door for a couple of hours they could just respawn.