Target Practice (DayZ)

Hang on... Let me just get my crystal ball and check for you?! Seriously dude, there's no way of knowing. You're just going to have to try it and see. I can say fairly safely that it's unlikely to make things any worse.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=install+dayz+with+dayz+commander

In some ways, yes - in others, no. He's typical of the 'bad' side of the community. They register (usually after a patch), moan, bitch and complain about whatever it was that was changed that they didn't like and then vanish within a week. They're entirely interchangeable and leave no lasting impression on the community or the game other than a bad taste in the mouths of those that have to interact with them. They'll have slowed down a bit in a week or two. However, he is NOT typical of the larger community, which most of the time is actually populated by some pretty decent folk who have a lot to offer with regards to intelligent debate and discussion about the game, and I'd urge you not to judge all of us by this idiot's behaviour.

Interesting point you raise there regarding teaching a cat to read, because it seems I'm in a similar situation right now - you've been given the advice and seem to be of the opinion that you have the skills to help fix the issue you have such a problem with, but instead seem far happier to just sit here from a distance and make vague assertions about the talents of the people who have made the game you're playing. Heck, a less polite person than me might assert that you're just engaging in the time-honoured internet tradition of 'keyboard warrioring'. Anyway, have a pleasant day, I shall leave you to your posturing. :)

*shrug* - you're entitled to your opinions and your right to voice them in a reasonable manner. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think you were overreacting though. Perhaps if you've got as many solutions to DayZ's problems as you suggest, it might be worth contacting the team and offering your assistance and experience rather than badmouthing them from a distance? :)

If you disagree with their method of testing the Alpha, there's always the option of not participating.

Whilst I see your point (and agree to a certain extent), I feel that maybe you've misunderstood what the aim of the Alpha is - it's (as I understand it) a testing ground for features/balances that could go into the finished Standalone. Now, sometimes, a feature like the tackle will be introduced - sadly ARMA II's engine has more or less no way of accurately modelling such a thing, so it would likely need to be hardcoded into the engine or some such (I'm afraid my understanding of programming game engines is fairly limited!), which is likely going to take a fair bit of skill and time to do. Now, it's an interesting feature, and they want to try it out, so they work it in there as best as they can with the existing tools. Sure, it's ugly and does the odd strange thing, but the mechanic is in there, and they can now see how it works and what effects it has on the way players play the game (if it makes them more cautious, whether they change their approach at all). That's my understanding of what they're trying to do - yes, it's not perfect, and yes, it looks ugly as hell, but we are playing an Alpha version of the game, and DayZ is a hell of a lot more complete than most Alphas out there!

He wasn't being a dick. He was quite legitimately pointing out that there is a dedicated thread for asking if a given system is capable of running DayZ or not, and that it would be much better for everyone (including you) if you used it. Don't be so defensive.

What system are you running it on?

Yeah, cannot overstate how much better flying with a stick is - even a cheapo-deluxe like the one I got off Amazon for £12 - having a thumb throttle so I can go from full throttle to engines dead in a split second is just crazy useful, not to mention that it makes precision flying a lot easier too.

Aye, DayZ is currently one of the few situations where Steam isn't actually the most convenient/efficient way of running the game. DayZ Commander is much better for that particular task.

I'm not sure if it's been confirmed by the team or not yet, but I think that the general consensus of opinion seems to be that yes, it'll likely be a simplified version of ToH. The SA engine is apparently a heavily modified version of the ToH engine, so it's unlikely that they won't take some of the awesome flight mechanics with them. :)

Nice idea, Hets - I know I spent HOURS in the editor learning to take off and land a Huey before I was comfortable jumping in one on a DayZ/Wasteland server where other people would be putting their lives in my hands - having someone actually teach you would be much more time-efficient. I'm competent in the air, and can fly/land more or less wherever I need to. I do still use autohover for landings where there's a potential for things to go wrong (ie anything I could potentially collide with), because... well, why wouldn't you? As a pilot, my first duty is to keep that bird safe and working, and if auto-hover lets me do that better, then I see no shame in using it. Having said that, auto-hover should never be used as a substitute for actually knowing how to fly the damn thing - it's a tool to help you, not a crutch to lean on, and you don't want to be relying on auto-hover if you have to take off/land quickly either under fire or without power.

I'm not entirely sure I understand the hate towards OP here. Did he break some kind of rule or etiquette by destroying a helicopter that he (and just about everyone else) had no way of accessing, therefore enabling it to be spawned again and accessed by everyone? Seriously people, glass houses and stones - calling someone a 'typical DayZ douche' and generally hating on them because you disagree with the way they play the game? I'd rather play with him than either of you, if that's the way you're going to behave towards other players just because they play the game differently.

Without a crystal ball, that's impossible to say.

If you want to do it quickly and without ruining too many people's day, get a friend to help - just have them keep spawning and you shooting them.

I think what he's referring to is the 'respawn plains'

The OP was indeed correct with his title - there IS a communication issue. Sadly, that issue is that he's seemingly unable to understand what others are communicating to him. Still, he seems like a nice enough fellow...

I'd certainly like to see some method of slowing heat loss in covered boats such as the fishing trawler - in real life you'd have the option of going below decks or into the cabin for shelter, which although not really worth modelling in-game, should certainly have some equivalent in-game. It would also be interesting to model in sea states for varying weather - you could then have the interesting dilemma of a hungry/thirsty survivor trapped on an island with the options of either making a break for land in heavy and dangerous seas or risking death by starvation/thirst by waiting out the storm.

Yeah, see thread title. I just really don't get the appeal of it, and why so many people are clamouring for it so much - part of the fun of DayZ is having to keep moving to survive - keep scavenging and moving from town to town. There's already a significant problem on many servers with organised clans and large groups hoarding all the vehicles and weapons, despite the fact they're never used, meaning smaller groups and single players are left to either fight for scraps or have to spend all their time searching the Northern woods for poorly-concealed hideouts. You'll end up with a two-tiered game, where the only way for players to get anywhere near the higher-tier loot is to join a clan or other large, organised group. In my opinion, allowing players to build bases is just going to further exacerbate this issue - before we know it, groups of players are staging 'raids' on other players' bases, and we all end up playing Wasteland with zombies. Don't get me wrong, I don't actually dislike the act of base-building itself, I just don't personally feel it has any place in DayZ - much like heavy armour and high-end military weapons, it's alright in the right circumstances, but I don't think that DayZ fits that bill.

Oh yeah, I have no problem with groups/clans stockpiling anything that respawns, as long as they're not exploiting game mechanics to do so (see the 'tent' problem, where people spam tents over high-value loot spawns) - the main issue with stockpiling is vehicles. The 'vehicle' part of a player's DayZ experience is a key one, as it allows the player to be much more mobile and transport much larger items, such as heli spares and so on. It also makes for a key part of the 'social' side of DayZ, too. I've made many new friends simply by stopping to pick someone up who looks like they could use a ride, or by getting picked up by friendly passing drivers. That's simply not going to happen if every vehicle on the map is locked away in some clan's garage, and that's why I'm so concerned about the 'hoarding' issue. It has the potential to alter the gameplay experience rather significantly, and not necessarily for the better.

This thread has been a really good read, with some very good pro-base arguments that I hadn't really considered before. I'm still not wild about the idea of base-building, and will continue not to be until we get a few details on exactly how it's going to work - as much as I have faith in Rocket and the whole DayZ team, implementing it in a way that doesn't utterly break the focus of the game is going to be incredibly tough. However, there's been enough good points made that I can at least say that I'm not dreading it as much as I was before, and that there's at least some hope for the idea. My main concern is that because DayZ is such a player-driven environment - more so than almost any other game out there, giving large groups too much dominance could potentially drastically alter the experience of the game. I'm sure in some cases, this could be a good thing, but having been round the block a few times on the big ol' interwebs, I'm pretty confident in saying that those occasions will be outweighed rather considerably by the bad times. As Fraggle quite rightly said, there are enough real-life advantages to working in a team to mean that DayZ should be no different, however, it's also worth noting that DayZ is a game designed to entertain, and that as such, it's important to at least consider players who for whatever reason cannot or do not play in a team.

Dude, that is incredibly uncool. Someone's asking for advice to help prevent him losing his CD key, and you hijack his thread to try and get him on your server. I'm willing to bet you've done more harm to your server than good with that post. Good job. OP, to answer your question - there's only one way to be absolutely sure you've got rid of that nasty keystealer, and that's unfortunately to reformat again. I know it's a pain in the ass, but it's better than the alternative, no? :) And for those reading this thread, this is the reason you don't download FPS boosters from untrusted sources. ;)

Thank you all for the replies. Some good points made here. :) See, Origins actually is the 'worst case' example here - I hate the way it's been implemented in Origins - it's kind of shovelled in there with no real thought or effort as to what the longer-term goals and outcomes are beyond OMG BUILD BASES YEEEEAHHH. I would HATE to see the SA go that way with it. And as you pointed out (possibly unintentionally) - it's something that is mainly done with friends. But that's just not going to happen. If dedicated MMOs can't manage it, DayZ isn't going to - the nature of the average internet gamer is just too variable, and people/players too transient for anything like that to happen without some truly phenomenal organisation from a very large (30+ member) clan. I see what you're saying though - base building could very well be the tip of a larger iceberg. I'm just not sure if that's the direction I personally would like to see the game going with populated towns and so on - it's a bit too MMO-ey for me. Indeed. That's about the only way I can see this proceeding in a direction that I'd actually be interested in taking part in. That's part of my concern though - clans and groups hoarding stuff is already enough of an issue without them being able to safely lock the stuff away. It's going to get a hundred times worse if they can start doing that. Thanks for your well-balanced and thought-out argument.

I got distracted by life for a bit and haven't updated it in a while, but I'll have a bit of a think and see if I can't come up with some new ones. I'm still looking at ways I can translate it to a youtube series as well. :)