Target Practice (DayZ)

MAYBE I LIKE THE TASTE >:(

Ever wondered why you don't find any socks in the SA? ;)

And yet you want a shortcut so you don't have to do it. You've almost proved my point there. This is why I don't want this magical 'friendly' marker, because it will give an unfair advantage to people who don't know how to or simply don't want to put the effort in to work as a team Ah. And now it makes sense. You want nametags so you can waste every person you see who doesn't have a nametag. You don't want to have to think about what you're doing, because that would get in the way of all that left-clicking, right? I don't like to criticise those who have the KoS playstyle, as I 1) see it as a necessary evil in moderation and that it keeps interactions between players interesting and uncertain and 2) there are some folks who do it in an interesting and entertaining way. However, the one thing I hate is when unimaginative players (both KoS and otherwise) start making suggestions to make up for the fact that they're not interested in using their brains and actually thinking of solutions to their problems rather than having it handed to them. If you want to play a deathmatch where you scavenge weapons and your teammates are marked for you, go check out the Wasteland mod for ARMA 2. That's not the idea behind DayZ, and whilst the KoS playstyle has its niche, the absolute last thing DayZ needs is a way of making it easier for players to kill other players without having to think about the consequences. That's me done. I enjoyed the debate, and I appreciate your point of view as well as the fact we both managed to disagree strongly without getting personal. Best of luck to you out there.

This could very well be my favourite first post ever.

I'm being perfectly mature. And no, I will not drop it. You are making a claim which I am asserting is entirely untrue, I am asking you to prove it, and you conveniently want to drop it and change the subject. How about you either prove it or admit that you saw no such thing and that you simply got overexcited in your little rant and said something you knew wasn't true?

PROVE. THAT. You are literally the only person that remembers that. Unless you can prove it, no-one is going to believe you. I'm not sure if you're deliberately trolling, sticking with the lie hoping if you say it often enough people will believe you, or if you are actually genuinely delusional.

Back that up with some proof, please.

I re-read after your edit, and to be honest, I feel like you're overreacting hugely. Half of the stuff you're saying makes no sense at all (I think you're the only person that remembers anything about SA being free if you bought ARMA III), you clearly have very little understanding of what an Alpha is, and how much time it takes to rebuild a game engine from the ground up. You seem to think that knowing a little bit about Scripting makes you an authority on game development. By that logic, I quite like watching the UFC and did a bit of Jiu-Jitsu for a while, maybe I should go give Anderson Silva or Jon Jones a lesson or two and tell them what they're doing wrong... You're entitled to your opinions, you're entitled to voice them is a suitable manner, but that doesn't mean anyone has to agree with you. Ranting senselessly doesn't help anyone. All it does is waste a half-hour of your time typing it and five minute of mine responding to it and reading it.

I just noticed - apparently I have a truly enormous scrotum. In-game, obviously. >_>

I would love to read that and respond accordingly, but I don't think my eyes would survive. Gotta use that enter key, son.

Oh god. I remember this. Despite all the therapy, I remember this.

In testing, this was an issue that cropped up when you were using the wrong version. Might be worth checking your cache files in Steam and making sure that there's nothing wrong there.

Part of the fun of DayZ is the exploration. Having a knowledgeable guide player to point you in the right direction doesn't hurt, but there's also a lot to be said for just getting on your bike (or not, they're not in the game yet :p) and going to explore the world. The area around where you spawn is going to be picked completely clean, so head inland and find an area that hasn't been picked clean. The map's more than big enough for there to be plenty of stuff dotted around for everyone. It would be just the same if you'd started playing the mod first - you'd still not know where anything was or where you were 'supposed' to go. Get out there, explore. FIND that map and compass and navigate your way to these magical locations everyone's talking about. And then go back there after you get shot in the face ten seconds after you arrive. I promise it's a hundred times more fun that way.

But why is it unnecessary? Because you don't want to learn to do it? That doesn't make something unnecessary. I get what you're saying, and maybe down the line your suggestion of some way of having a custom 'patch' or logo or some in-game, in-universe way of identifying someone could have a bit of mileage, but I'm absolutely against this suggestion of a magical floating nametag or marker that's just going to be used as a crutch by players who are unwilling and/or unable to work together properly in a group. If you're going to do that, why not just turn off friendly fire altogether and have a 'bandits' and a 'survivors' team? (Alright, bit of a strawman extreme example there, but you get what I'm saying). Erm.... aside from the whole 'counting' thing Mercules pointed out, you realise that you can change clothes, masks, hats etc as well as backpacks, right? That's a lot of potential combinations right there.

Water pumps are bugged in the current release I believe. I think they're fixed in the next patch though. If the graphics are going fuzzy from time to time it's probably an effect of your character's physical condition. If they're causing you problems (I find they give me migraines) you can turn down/off post-processing in the graphics options.

Don't eat rotten fruit next time. :p But yeah, I don't know if it ever goes past that stage yet - I was like that for several hours at one point and never left any pavement pizzas anywhere, so it's possible that they've not actually added a vomit animation/action yet.

But that's my point - there shouldn't be some kind of magic fix-it button for people who can't understand the finer dynamics of working in a group. If you want to change what you're wearing every time you find a new pair of pants then there's nothing to stop you, but you should understand that doing that is going to have a knock-on effect that your teammates are going to have a hard time recognising you. It's the same with communication - I tend to play in groups of 2-3, and we've never ever had an issue with mistaken identity in god-only-knows how many hours of DayZ, because we understand that communication is key. We're not some hardened group of hardcore gamers or ex-military types who take everything ultra-seriously - we're just three gamers who met on these forums and understand that if you're going to work together as a team, taking a second to keep your teammates informed on what's happening is a pretty key part of that. If we're looting a town, we'll tell each other when we're going into X building or when we're coming up behind someone. It's that simple. What you seem to want is all the benefits of working as a team without any of the work that you have to put in. If you want those extra pairs of eyes, those extra weapons, you have to understand that there's a price for that, and that price is having to work to keep everyone on the same page. I do understand what you're trying to get at, and in any other game I'd probably be agreeing with you, but in DayZ I think it's perfect the way it is. It's unforgiving but not unfair, and if you're willing to learn and improve your skillset, you'll reap the rewards.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/221100/ Seriously dude, it took me less time to find that than it must have taken you to type the question. :-/

The thing is, there's already a way of doing what you suggested IN the Standalone. Everyone's wearing different stuff, right? So if you want to be able to identify someone at a glance, make sure you know what they're wearing. If you're rolling in a group, ensure that everyone spawns wearing a red T-shirt or something. Sure, there's a small chance that you might come across someone else wearing a red T-shirt, but that's when communication plays a part. It's absolutely a viable tactic to ask 'is that you?' every time you're not sure. It takes all of a second to say the words 'that you in the orange raincoat with the fire axe?' and then for them to respond 'yep' or 'no' as appropriate. It's not like you're transmitting the question in morse code or anything. How many players are you encountering if you're repeating it that many times that something that simple is becoming a chore? As I said in my initial post, I just think it's a shortcut for the lazy and unwilling to improvise and communicate effectively. I don't buy 'facial recognition' as justification, as in 'real life' (as said before, not a fan of the real life argument, as it's a game, but hey-ho), you might not be able to see their face for whatever reason, or even a case of mistaken identity - we've all had that moment where we've waved at someone then realised with horror that it wasn't actually them...

Okay, we'll start with the 'obvious answer is obvious' response: Alpha. Shit's gonna be broke. If you want a game without issues, this ain't it right now. It'll be fixed in time. Anyway, now onto the actual response. Yeah, I agree that water and food (and particularly rest) mechanics are horribly, horribly broken right now. Good news is, devs are aware and looking into it. You can drink from wells and ponds (although I wouldn't recommend it unless you like the taste of antibiotics), but I think there was a bug with that in the last version that's being patched out in the upcoming version Rocket just announced. I'm not sure what your specific complaint with the loot system is - too much high-grade loot? Loot not respawning? Not enough variety? There's reasons for all that, but without knowing which particular one bugs you, I don't really know what to say. All I can say is that will improve fast. Just over a week ago, there were only a handful of buildings that spawned anything at all. You were more likely to find an M4 in a town house than you were in a Barracks building. Now, it's dramatically improved, and I'm guessing will continue to do so as time goes on. The day/night cycle is a problem. Everything runs off the public hive right now, so I'm presuming everything has to be the same across the board. That means that no matter what you do, some poor fucker is going to be playing an awful lot of night-time gameplay. Once they get the server files out there and get their feet under them a little, I've got no doubt things will even themselves out. Personally, if I was in Rocket's shoes, I'd have perhaps left things on perma-daytime for a while until that particular hiccup and the fact there's so few portable light sources was sorted, but it's easy to say that from all the way over here. I'm sure he was more concerned about just getting the damn game working. :p

Cookay - welcome to the forums. I genuinely hope you stick around, because this is exactly the kind of feedback the Standalone needs. It's not sucking up to the devs, it's not a whiny ranty post about a feature you don't like, it's just good, solid feedback explained in a calm and reasonable manner. It also helps that I agree exactly with you - the biggest issue for me has been not knowing what's killing me and why - hopefully this latest patch will go some way to addressing that.

Meant to get to this thread earlier, but got distracted. Do not like. I'm not one for the 'realism' argument - DayZ is a game designed to entertain, after all, but for me this is one of the very few cases where I'd like to see that element of realism retained. You know how you avoid confusion/friendly fire incidents amongst friends? Communication and awareness of your surroundings. If you can't manage to remember what the guy you're playing with is wearing or to communicate with them to ask 'is that you?', then god help any team you play with. I'm not anywhere close to being a hardcore gamer, but even I've got down the very basics of knowing who I'm playing with, where they're going and what's around us. Adding this sort of thing is a shortcut for laziness in my opinion, and kind of defeats the point of a hardcore survival game. Surely figuring out a way of quickly identifying who your friends and who your enemies are is a major part of survival? As far as I can remember, there's no power on Chernarus. I think Rocket looked into this with regards to what would happen in a 'real-life' situation, and apparently once a power station completely shuts down, you aren't starting it up again any time soon without some serious hardware and technical know-how. If I recall correctly, I think DayZ is set a few years after patient zero, so power would very likely be out. Sadly I can't find sources for any of that, so I'm aware that I could well be talking out of my ass. However, I'm not overly keen on having streetlights etc - I'd rather have no electricity and have to navigate by portable light sources.

Like everything else that is/isn't in the Alpha, there's a reason for it. They're not withholding the server files for shits and giggles, they're just making sure that releasing them won't bork the main hive. It's the sort of thing you can't really test properly for until it's actually out in the wild with tens of thousands of players active. :)

Yeah, I did wonder that as I typed it, and from a realism point of view I kind of see where they're coming from, but it just seems like a lot of pointless mouse-work from a usability point of view.

Yeah, I think within limits, it's a much bigger challenge and potentially a lot more fun. The problem at the moment is that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to anything - I'm often thirsty mere seconds after taking a drink. I'll be tired despite expending very little energy. I think that's the thing that's going to annoy people - there's a difference between difficulty through lack of knowledge/experience and difficulty through poor implementation/sharing of information, and that's the issue here I think. Still, Alpha. Will improve. :)