Target Practice (DayZ)

I'm not saying it's a new problem, I'm saying it's a severe problem, and it's one that perhaps needs looking at by someone actually involved with the game rather than just complaining about on the forums by the likes of me. :)

Agree with the UI points raised by others - the new icons and particularly the gear menu are a little cluttered, and visually don't really suit the style of the game (IMHO, anyway) Had a mild issue with a 'not dying after being unconscious' bug where I was for some reason dropping into 'minus' blood levels but still being able to move around and act normally, that's been reported elsewhere. As far as gameplay goes, all has seemed good so far. I like the direction things have been heading from a gameplay point of view, so apart from the odd hiccup here and there with bugs, it's all been pretty sweet.

I've now twice encountered a bug where after being knocked unconscious and then killed, I will 'wake up' with the unconscious hourglass appearing on-screen (complete with the white filter), but be able to move around as normal. Not only could this be a huge exploit if I was armed (I wasn't, either time), if you have no way of killing the zombies attacking you, then you're actually stuck in some kind of limbo - for some reason you're not 'dead' (at least until you log out and log back in), but you can't abort, because it registers you as in combat. I actually had to alt-f4 out of the game, because there was no other way I could think of to resolve the situation.

Whilst morse code is a nice idea, in practice, I don't think it's been widely used for many years, so I'm not sure if having hundreds of morse sheets just dotted around would be likely. I worked as a Coastguard for ten years and think I heard something transmitted in morse precisely once. The occasions that morse is used (at least in a maritime environment) is generally in single letter codes signifying a specific meaning, and are often used in fog or poor visibility - for example, Morse letter M (dash-dash, I think) means 'I am stopped', or K (dash-dot-dash) means 'I want to speak to you'. Whilst some of those could be carted across to DayZ and could make for quite an interesting experience, I can't see it being widely adopted - let's face it, we're having a hard enough time convincing the playerbase not to shoot unarmed freshspawns in the face under the guise of 'banditry', so I don't think we'll have much luck convincing them that when someone in the dark flashes their torch in a certain way it means they want to talk. :p

How is saying that someone made an unfunny joke being a pretentious dick? Actually, I don't care. Let's not let one terrible attempt at funny derail a pretty decent thread about a pretty decent article.

Hell, I love a sick joke as much as the next guy, but that just wasn't funny. Not in a "oh my god, you shouldn't evar joke about someone dying that's soooo not funny" way, more in a "Dude, you're trying too hard" kind of way.

Can't tell if deliberately trolling or just really, really stupid. All I can say for sure is that I really, really hope this is just an unfunny attempt at a joke.

I've generally been pretty positive about this whole project, but I have to admit being a little concerned that the zombies are '0% done' - as supposedly one of the biggest threats in Chernarus, a lot of work is going to be needed to turn them from what they are now (a mild inconvenience at worst, unless they walk through a wall and break your legs) into a feasible threat. Personally, I'd want that to be the first thing they sorted - once the zombie behaviour which is going to form a core part of the gameplay is down, then you can build all the player-centric stuff around that. I could be completely and utterly wrong, and I freely admit that I don't know the first thing about programming - it just seems that as it's an area they've had so much trouble with zombie behaviour in the mod, it would make sense to work on it early and get it complete and out of the way so you can build the rest of the experience around it. Either way, I'm still looking forward to seeing what's coming. :)

Thanks for the transcript, it's much appreciated. :)

The simple fact of it is, the vast majority of those players who bitch and complain that the Alpha isn't here yet are going to be the same ones who would A) complain that the ALPHA isn't polished enough and has bugs, and B) Drop DayZ like a hot brick the second something else shiny and well-hyped comes along and distracts them. The fans/players who understand and accept that anything worth having is also worth waiting for are much more likely to stick around and ride out those early bugs and go on to form the spine of the DayZ community. It's pleasing to see that Rocket understands that.

I can still hear the little bells... :( OH GOD THE BELLS.

I had a quick scout around over a couple of days and picked up enough to be able to translate the roadsigns, but I doubt I'll ever get round to learning much more than that unless the need arises. As HerrJon says, the easier way to know where you are is to learn the art of fixing your position on a map - that way you won't have to learn a whole new language every time you wind up in a different locale, but if you can supplement that skill with the ability to read the road signs, then so much the better. :)

Does this mean that Matt is actually Kiefer Sutherland?! Zomg.

Not at all. I agree that in that case he was just being a whiner. If you're going to point a gun at someone, you should be prepared to use it if they don't play ball. You can't force someone to play the game in a way they don't want to - DayZ is not a RP game, and no-one is obligated to behave in any way. However, there needs to be a balance. If everyone was too nicey-nicey and went out of their way to help everyone, the game would lose a lot of its tension - let's be honest, zombies are not a real threat to any halfway competent player. On the other hand, if there's too much KoS, it's just going to turn into one giant deathmatch, and a big part of what makes DayZ entertaining (the social aspect of the game and working together) will be lost, and that would be a crying shame. Right now, things are okay - there's maybe a little more KoS than perhaps would be ideal, but DayZ is popular right now, so that's to be expected. It'll get a hell of a lot worse when the SA gets here, trust me. :P

You need to speak to Vilayer about that. Why would anyone here know? :)

Agreed. A simple 'official' getting started video embedded on the 'download' page would make things a lot easier for newbies. Installing DayZ can be fairly daunting if you're not particularly savvy with installing mods etc.

That's fair enough, and I understand the reasoning behind it, but at the risk of sounding like a whiner, I do think it could do with a little adjusting - I fully support the idea behind some zeds doing nothing - it makes perfect sense that not every zed will simply be wandering round, and the idea of having to grab loot from more or less right under their noses is an appealing and dramatic one. However, at the moment near enough every other loot pile has a static zed right on top of it. I have no problem with having to sneak right past one stood 5 metres away to get to my loot, but it seems overly unfair and a kind of 'fake' difficulty to have zeds physically standing on top of loot piles, especially with the frequency they're doing it at the moment. It's almost impossible for an unarmed/newspawn player to get loot from rural areas at the moment.

As you're currently in the thread, R4Z0R, I might as well ask, as it's been bugging the tits off me - I presume you're aware of the issue with zeds remaining stuck completely static right on top of loot spawns (particularly those outside un-enterable single-story houses, but it's pretty widespread)? Is this a side effect of the problems that the zombies have been having in 1.7.7, or a new bug altogether (or - please god no - a deliberate feature)?

Unless I'm mistaken, this is an intended feature. If you fire non-SD rounds from a SD weapon, you'll still get aggro. I believe it works slightly better the other way round though - SD rounds out of a non-SD weapon will make a noise to you and anyone around you, but the zombies won't react for some reason. Could be wrong though, been a while since I've tested that.

Are you feeling okay? Did you take your medicine this morning? No-one's so much as hinted at removing or warning you, and in fact, they're being considerably politer to you than you are to them. If you have an issue, by all means raise it and let's talk about it, but don't be an ass when there's no need to be, as it'll just escalate from there and the issue at hand will get lost in all the mess.

So. Hypothetically, how would someone tell that said item of food is poisoned? What purpose would this serve? What would the in-game reason be for doing it? What exactly would the 'poisons' do?

This is my biggest issue with a lot of players too - the fact that they have this idea in their head that just because they scream 'friendly' into the mic every three seconds that it'll act like holy water to vampires and send seasoned killers running for the hills. Just because you're friendly doesn't mean the other guy has to be - don't assume anyone's friendly until they've proven otherwise. If you're stupid/naive enough to run up to a complete stranger in Elektro, you shouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be hostile. Or he might figure that anyone dumb enough to be running round Elektro like their pants are on fire isn't the kind of person he wants following him round anyway and shoot you to make his life easier. As has been said before in this thread several times - it's all about a common sense approach. The more selective you are about who you let see you, the less you'll get shot.

Some people get attached to their character - some people play the game just to survive as long as they possibly can. If you've got a character you've kept alive for 95 days and someone comes up behind you, points an AK at your back and gives you the option of starting again from day 0 or handing over your shiny M14 AIM and coyote backpack, it's a choice you have to make. Some people play DayZ as a 'game' and some people play it as an 'experience'. Just because you play one way doesn't mean that the other way isn't a valid way of enjoying the game either.

This pretty much nails it for me - in my experiences in DayZ, I've had more friendly relationships with other players than hostile ones. It's about being careful, making sure you see them before they see you and above all, controlling the situation. If I see a guy in a bandit skin lurking on the roof of the Elektro Fire Station, I'm not going to go up to him and ask him if he needs blood. On the other hand, if I'm approaching Msta and see a guy in the normal survivor skin backpedalling furiously whilst trying to hatchet a group of zombies, I might well decide to call over to him in direct and tell him that I'm friendly and I'm going to try and help him out a bit. On the same note, if I happen to be looting a supermarket and realise that someone's in there with me, I'm not going to cover the door with my AK and wait for him to come round the corner - I'll call out in direct and let him know I'm there whilst covering the door with the AK. If he responds and seems cool, we'll both get on with our looting. If he doesn't respond, I'll probably look to get the hell out of there. Interacting with people in DayZ isn't hard - you just have to be prepared to think ahead and communicate in ways that don't involve pointing your gun at someone.

It is what it is - walking along minding your own business and then dropping dead out of nowhere can be pretty frustrating, especially when you've worked hard for a long time for your gear. Some people respond to that frustration by loading up Bulletstorm or Call of Duty and slaughtering everything that moves for half an hour to get it out of their system. Others come on the forums and have a bit of a grumble about it and what they feel would fix it. It's simply the way certain people deal with it, and that's not going to change. I do agree that there is a bit of a KoS problem in DayZ at the moment, and it's prevalent because the game's currently 'trendy' (god, how 90's is that word?!), and as a result is attracting a lot of those folks who - to put it as gently as possible - maybe aren't the brightest stars in the sky. They've seen zombies, seen guns, and figured that the aim of the game must be to kill anything that moves with your gun, and have no interest in actually preserving their own life - they'll just respawn, go fetch another gun and go back to the big cities again to resume killing. Those guys are the problem, as they're essentially a heavily-armed, unlimited-numbers enemy army - no matter how careful you are, how many times you get the drop on them and kill them before they kill you, they'll just respawn and come right back at you. The problem is, how do you fix a problem like that without punishing 'legitimate' bandit players, who almost everyone agrees are not just a part of the game, but an integral feature?