Target Practice (DayZ)

And I don't disagree with you in the slightest. Go back a page in this thread and read the post I made towards the bottom of the page - judging by your post to threadstarter above, it seems that we share almost exactly the same opinion on the matter at hand. My point was that there's no point getting angry and SHOUTING ABOUT IT, because it doesn't achieve anything other than putting a negative spin on the thread and deflecting away from debate and discussion and towards arguing and fighting - if that starts happening, the thread gets shut down, and the devs won't have anything to go on at all. I would assume that they'd most likely much rather have a balanced and well-thought out thread with point and counter-point, pro and con than they would a locked thread where everyone was shouting at each other.

Agreed with the threadstarter above - there's no harm in discussion about the various possibilities, opinions and feelings about something like this - it creates interesting debate and a chance to consider other points of view. As pretty much everyone has agreed, there's no way of enforcing such a thing, so any debates are entirely theoretical and there's no need to get angry about the fact that the discussion is taking place - if you're fed up with discussing it or feel the discussion has no point, give the thread a miss, it's easy enough. :)

Yeah, it's possible that was what he meant. Hooray for a descriptive and informative first post, I guess. I'm not too clued up on the server side of things, but it's possible that a lot of useful info may be in here: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/55657-start-here-a-beginners-guide-to-dayz-servers-and-administration/

Errr... Do you mean how do you add a whitelist to your server? Because unless I'm mistaken (which is possible!), there isn't a whitelist of servers. Oh, and it's spelled 'how'. :P

Exactly. As good as DayZ is (and will be once the SA hits), it's still going to be a game, and with that comes all the baggage that playing a game online brings - bad losers will ragequit when you kill them, idiots will run around guns blazing like it's Call of Duty: the MMO, and competitive types will use every loophole, glitch and exploit they can to give them that little edge over other players. These are all pretty much inescapable issues with online games, and to date no-one's come up with a way of preventing them - merely ways of reducing their impact. The point is, no matter how realistic and engrossing the in-game world is, it's still a game, and as such there are going to be things that we need to accept as 'acceptable breaks from immersion'. For me, Teamspeak etc falls under that.

Yeah, as others have suggested, this is basically unenforceable, even if there was a desire to do so. Even if there was some way of blocking Teamspeak/Ventrilo/whatever your voip of choice is and the players couldn't/wouldn't use an app on their phones to do the same thing, it would take all of about a week for some clever programmer to come up with a 5mb download that would provide a way around the system. Personally, I don't see it as a problem - it's gaming, and people like to do it with their friends. I don't see how stopping them (or trying to stop them) chatting to each other while they're playing can ever be a good thing.

This one's been suggested a couple of times, and my personal opinion is that it would be a wonderful way of wasting all your ammo and not a whole lot else. Unless you wanted it to be horribly overpowered, it would be realistic to assume that you have an icecube in hell's chance of actually hitting anything person-sized from more than 20-30m away. The person you're trying to hit is going to know that, and will likely just go prone (or even just stand still) and wait for you to burn through all your ammo whilst hitting absolutely nothing, then wait for you to have to stick your head to run because you don't have enough ammo left to fight. It's a nice idea, and it wouldn't break the game or anything like that, but I simply cannot see any situation where it's actually going to be a valid and useful tactic - use it in the open (behind a wall in a field or something) and your opponent will just wait for you to run out of ammo. Use it in a town and your opponent will either just flank you or wait for the thousands of zombies you just aggroed to get you instead.

True, but you, I, and anyone else out there who's been on the internet more than five minutes know that that isn't the way it works - as someone above me pointed out quite correctly, if folks are enjoying the game, they're in-game playing it, not on here complaining about it. Look at it this way - how many long-term forum members have been vocally complaining about the 1.7.7 patch? I'm not talking about guys who registered in May and have 10-20 posts or whatever, I'm talking members with 500, 1000, 2000 posts, folks who have been registered on the forum a year or more. The Rage VGs, the Steak and Potatoes, the Hetstaines. These aren't folks who are likely to come on and create the 'ZOMG 1.7.7 sux WTFBBQ' thread for the 100th time and claiming the game's been ruined forever because relatively small changes have been made, even if they absolutely abhor the decisions, they'll take their time, weigh up what they like and don't like, and then explain exactly what they feel is the problem and usually, what they feel will fix it. Those guys are the voices that are worth listening to, because they're in there, playing the game on a daily basis, and have been doing so for months and months - they're interacting with that community both in-game and in these forums, and what they're feeling is probably going to be an effective barometer for what those invisible players who don't visit here regularly but love the mod anyway are thinking.

I don't think it was aimed at you specifically, more at some of the others - in fact, I think the issue you raised (disappearing wild zombies) wasn't removed for balance reasons - I think there was some kind of technical/framerate issue with them, so they're fixing that before they bring it back. :)

To my mind, it's because the devs are paying too much attention to the QQing. No matter what the devs do, some people are going to bitch and moan about it, either because it changes a feature they liked, or because they just hate change. I would like to see a little more self-belief from the dev team and a little bit more of a firm hand - stop trying to be all things to all people and create the game the way THEY see fit - there's a difference between 'listening to the community' and 'listening to the complainers'.

I shot one in the face with a double-barrelled shotgun. It noticed that. As did every single one of its buddies in a five mile radius. Not one of my better ideas.

Oh yeah, I'd assumed that was the case, that it's spawning zombies more or less on the loot spawns and then they're wandering out from there, but there seems to be quite a few cases where one of the zombies is bugging out slightly and just standing still right on top of the loot, making it more or less impossible to get that loot without either aggroing or killing the zombie. It's not a problem if you're geared up, but for a fresh spawn without a real way to kill zombies and with loot being harder to find, it's a bit of a frustrating one. Edit: just to clarify as well, it's not just inside spawns - I've noticed that they're doing it a lot around the spawns near the non-enterable houses.

Interesting you raise that point, as I've just seen the exact same thing. I was crawling through a small village with only some very basic gear (double-barrel shotgun with no ammo, a can of coke and a water bottle) and out of nowhere a CZ550 shot rang out and pinged into the ground next to me. Not stopping to laugh at how bad a shot the guy must have been to miss a crawling target from that range, I got up and ran like hell, zig-zagging and generally doing my best to shake him. I could hear aggro behind me and figured I'd be okay, as he'd have to lose them or risk losing his gear. But he kept on shooting. He managed to get a lucky shot in and broke my legs, so I turned to look, and there he was, swarmed by zeds, taking aim at me to finish me off. Not two minutes later, he was dead. I just don't understand the logic in that - he clearly had far more to lose by taking the kill - heck, my legs were broken, he could have just run off, lost them nearby and come back to finish me off. I think it's an unfortunate side-effect of the game becoming as popular as it is that has resulted in it attracting those who have no interest in playing it 'in the spirit' of the game, and are simply out to kill as many people as they can. Even more unfortunate is that there's nothing we can do about that.

I'm afraid you've lost me there. Why does killing on sight affect the likelihood of some random guy with an AK opening fire in Cherno? I don't have a problem with KoS players - I don't play that way myself, and I feel like they're missing out on a big part of what makes DayZ what it is, but it's their experience, and they're free to play as they choose. What does annoy me is when they try and justify it by saying 'well I only play KoS because everyone else does and it's me or them' - bullshit. Yes, there will be times occasionally when firing the first shot is a sensible move, but those are generally pretty rare. I have fired the first shot exactly twice, both were at Stary - one was a misunderstanding, and the other was at a guy lurking near the military tents in a ghille with a large rifle. I've been shot at unprovoked more than a few times, I've had some pretty tense standoffs a few times, and I've made a temporary ally a few times as well. Yet still I don't feel that I HAVE to shoot first to ensure my survival. You do not HAVE to shoot first to ensure your survival when meeting other players - if you choose to do so, that's cool, and it's your decision to do so. Just don't make out that you've been forced to do it by other players, because it's a limp excuse, plain and simple.

One of the better posts I've seen on this subject, have some beans. I entirely agree that a large part of the frequency of KoS players is down to the abundance of weapons and ammunition, and would very much like to see how the game would play if these were drastically reduced. I think your assertion that older players are less likely to shoot on sight has a lot of mileage, although obviously we both know it'll never be that black and white - there are older players who enjoy the whole KoS thing just as there are younger players who will go out of their way to help a complete stranger. My personal theory is similar to yours - older players will obviously tend to have more life experience, and through their jobs or their home lives, they'll be used to situations where the only way of asserting control of a situation is through communication and behaviour (as tempting as it might be, you simply can't deal with a difficult client with a few rounds from an AK47!). That kind of thing will translate into DayZ - a player who's confident in their ability to control a situation without resorting to violence is going to be much more likely to use those skills than someone who doesn't have that experience and confidence. I do agree that it would be very interesting to see how a server full of older (25+) players would compare to a server full of younger (14-17) players and how much interaction took place and what forms that interaction took.

I used this excellent video and recorded a 15-minute LP of Kerbal Space Program with no problems at all. And what's more, every bit of software he uses is free.

I think you're misunderstanding my intention. I'm not talking about the whole of DayZ when I say don't use the 'unrealistic' argument, as there's obviously a certain atmosphere and setting that the game has, and in general you want to keep things within that setting - for example, a laser gatling gun would be awesome, but completely out of place, because it's unrealistic for the setting. Where I have an issue is when people say 'X zombie isn't realistic'. Why? What 'real' experience does that person have with zombies that qualifies them to make such a statement? Zombies are no more real than vampires, werewolves or ginger kids with friends, and therefore to claim that a specific interpretation of them isn't realistic is in itself a complete misnomer. Just like Frankenstein's monster, Dracula and any other character who's been committed to folklore down the years, each creator will put their own slant on the myth and modify it as they see it. Whether you like it or agree with it is down to the individual, but to suggest that a given interpretation is unrealistic just doesn't wash, as they are by their very nature unrealistic creations.

Ah, fair enough - I didn't know the exact damage figures, but those seem pretty reasonable in context, so damage is fine it seems - as you suggest, a bit of a boost to range would be helpful though.

No, you're right. The one thing I look for in my zombie apocalypse games is realism. You know, with accurate real-world zombie modelling based on real data that... meh, you get my point. I don't mind whether people like or dislike the new virals, but for the love of sweet zombie jebus folks, DO NOT use 'it's not realistic' as an argument. Anyway, on-topic, and yeah, I'd like to see the crossbow get a little bit of a buff, even if it was just a better sight of some kind - take a look at an actual crossbow being used sometime on a human analog (a dummy or a pig carcass or something) - that is going to do just as much, if not potentially more damage as a low to medium caliber round.

Indeed. The absolute worst time for someone to see/visit the DayZ community is just after a new patch, as all the RUINED FOREVER types come out and start complaining about everything. That's not to say that anyone who doesn't immediately love the patch is a whiner, but there's a mountain of evidence that Rocket would probably be interested in climbing that suggests that many of the complainers simply register to rant, then give it a week and realise that actually, things aren't as bad as they were making out and go back to quietly enjoying the game.

Every time there's a new patch you're in here saying that it's ruined everything forever and that you're stopping playing the mod because of it. Yet the moment the next patch comes out, you'll be back in here saying that you're going to stop playing it. You should be careful with that, less someone more cynical than myself think you're just being melodramatic about a bit of change and will carry on playing regardless. :)

That's actually not a bad idea. I know they're making weapons modular to a point in the SA, so something like this would be a nice addition, and probably not too hard to implement. As long as they don't make them decay insanely fast like they did in Far Cry 2, this could be a good idea.

What's running in the background? (antivirus, firewalls, stuff that sits in your system tray) - it's always worth checking that out just to be sure it's not something silly like your antivirus trying to scan files as they're accessed!

Well, ask a silly question... ;) Hope it works for you.

Oh shit, I must have stayed in the shower too long and somehow ended up going back to 2009. While we're at it, did you guys know that the cake is a lie?