Target Practice (DayZ)

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. :)

You're trying to appeal to an already over-saturated market. Ask yourself what YOU do differently to any of the hundreds of other DayZ servers/communities out there. I'm not talking about extra vehicles or starting loadouts or anything like that, I'm talking about something that no other DayZ server out there has, and why people would come to you. If you're serious about this, ditch the wordpress domain. Nothing screams 'not really committed to this' than a project with a website that's hosted on a free site. If you're not prepared to invest a few dollars in a domain and some cheap hosting, players aren't going to be prepared to invest their time in your project. Don't push too hard. If people enjoy what you're offering, they'll come to you and ask to join. If you irritate them by constantly recruiting and hassling people with messages asking them to join, they'll go find somewhere else to play where they're not bugged by over-zealous recruiters every ten minutes. Case in point - I've recently started playing ARMA II co-op missions with a group of players - they play it 'realistically' with a command structure, orders etc, but they're pretty laid back about it, and it's good fun. They're a clan, and it's a private server, but they open it to the public on Friday and Saturday nights, and I happened to be invited to play there with a friend one night. I enjoyed my time there so much that I now visit regularly and am toying with the idea of applying to join and play during the week - not once has anyone hassled me or asked me to join, I've just found it entertaining enough that I decided that it's something I might like to do. That's what you need to do - offer something different to everything else out there, and make it an atmosphere that people will want to come back to. If you do that, you'll win every time. And don't expect overnight results - this stuff happens slowly. Whoever said 'build it and they will come' was most definitely not talking about websites and communities. You have to work damn hard and nurture it without ever smothering it. Good luck.

It's the ARMA engine, you're just as likely to survive as you are to be warped to some faraway dimension never to be see again. It's chaos theory applied to game design. :P Seriously though, the easiest way to find out is to load up a multiplayer editor session with your buddy and test for yourself at the exact location and height you're planning on doing it. That'll give you the answer. For what it's worth, when dropping players off over water, I always tend to fly as low as I dare (often altitudes of 5 or less) and let them hop out there - much less chance of them splattering from that low down.

Indeed, although I would presume that the North, like the South will be getting a bit of a makeover- at the moment, it's the NWAF, NEAF and a whole crap-ton of forests and hills that all look the same, and the shipwreck won't help that, as it's miles away from that central Northern region. Out of interest (can't remember if this has been decided or debated yet), are they continuing the trend of spawning along the Coast, or are they also including inland spawns in the SA? Because if they're randomising the spawns, it'll likely make Elektro and Cherno slightly (and only slightly) less dangerous and pvp-focused.

Yeah, I'd be careful with using Wasteland as a 'like for like' training tool for DayZ. It's a good way of getting used to the pressure of pvp play and finding what weapons work for you, but it's also worth remembering that players in wasteland aren't as careful with their lives as they are in DayZ, and you're much more likely to be using/facing gear that's either rare or doesn't exist in DayZ. Still though, it's well worth doing if you remember the differences between the two - Wasteland is actually very good fun in its own right.

Not keen on putting it too far North - there's already next to no incentive to play further South, adding more good loot spawns/interesting sights up North is just going to make it worse. Not suggesting it should be put 200m off Elektro or anything, but somewhere different would be nice.

I doubt he'd be a one-shot kill with anything judging by the amount of ammunition I've seen him soak up, but it'd be interesting to see how many AS50 headshots it took to bring him down.

I believe you might also need to upload the sig image to a 'whitelisted' site such as photobucket and link to it there. As for the weapon, I also quite like the SA-58 variants, as they're not all that uncommon or hard-to-find, and they're nice and versatile. Another good option is the AKM or any M16 variant. To be honest, unless you're planning on doing a brass-balls charge to the NWAF barracks and shooting your way out, the only reason you'll ever need any kind of primary weapon is for PvP, be it for offence or self-defence. Zombies aren't currently enough of a threat to really warrant anything beyond a pistol, and once again, what you carry will depend largely at what range you're planning on engaging enemies. For cities and other high-population areas, an assault rifle is ideal - preferably an M4/M16 or similar, as STANAG rounds fit lots of guns, and ammo will be hard to come by. If you're planning on lurking in treelines and ambushing, a sniper is going to be much more efficient - the CZ550 is a pretty decent shout, and isn't too hard to find (or at least compared to the other, higher-powered rifles). My personal favourite is the L85A2 (I think that's the one) - usually comes with an ACOG scope or similar for longer-range work, takes STANAG rounds, and doesn't make much more noise than the M16 family. Only downer is that they seem to be pretty rare - I usually find them at the military camps in Stary Sobor.

To be honest, unless you're actively playing a bandit, you've got it spot on - look to avoid confrontation/other players wherever possible, but don't be afraid of shooting if someone's clearly (or even just likely) to be a threat to you. DayZ is a strange beast at the moment, as it's populated by 1/3 players who will just shoot anyone they see on sight, 1/3 'friendlies' who charge around Cherno and Elektro shouting out that they're friendly and then wonder why they get shot by bandits/Kill on sight players, and 1/3 players like yourself, who aren't openly hostile, but are unlikely to go out of their way to engage other players unless they have to. It's really all about what you're looking to achieve - that will likely dictate your playstyle and the way you go about things.

It took three of us damn near every last bullet we had to put him down, I think we were using an M4A3, an M249 and a CZ550, and he just KEPT. ON. COMING. I wouldn't recommend trying to kill him at all, but if you decide to for shits and giggles, I'd go in with heavy-duty weaponry - preferably vehicle-mounted, but at least a LMG and/or explosives of some kind.

Yeah, as mZLY said, your CPU was the one that jumped out at me as a potential issue here - ARMA II (and in particular DayZ) is very, very CPU-hungry - far more so than many other games. The HDD option may help, although I should add that I'm playing on a 1TB HDD (WD Black), and don't have any major problems, so it might not be a miraculous fix. Either way, hopefully the standalone will be much better optimised - your existing system will likely run it just fine. :)

I remember back in one of the many debates about introducing defecating into the game, I expressed concern that it wouldn't take long for some half-wit with a mild scatological fixation to go out there with the express intention of pooping on everything. I never imagined that they'd be recruiting before the feature has even been introduced, though. Please let me know what server you play on so I can avoid it like the plague.