Target Practice (DayZ)

In all seriousness, though - walking like John Wayne aside, I'm not all that keen on the idea either. I see what it's trying to do, but I'm sure there must be better ways of working those elements into the game without attracting the kind of negative attention something like this is going to inevitably get. Already on the forums there can be posts found where people are advocating looting tents and filling them with poop, or pooping in campsites etc - unfortunately, as a breed, us gamers can be warped, twisted and creatively malicious at times, and you can be sure that it won't take long for people to do some pretty unpleasant stuff with poop. It's not that it's a bad idea, just maybe one that hasn't accounted for the way people will react to something like this.

I now can't get the mental image of some terrified bambi doing the bombay boogie through elektro with a pack of enraged zombies in hot pursuit out of my head. I'm audibly giggling to myself.

This is actually a good point. There's nothing more frustrating to someone looking to survive than having a well-meaning but utterly clueless survivor buzzing round you like a horny terrier. I had this the other day on a server, and it was a nightmare - the guy genuinely meant well, but he was a walking aggro magnet and ended up making my life so difficult that I genuinely considered putting a bullet in his knee and leaving morphine a couple of hundred metres away.

As others have said, it's a 'would be nice in the future' option, and I don't think you could really make any sensible argument against it (engine limitations notwithstanding), but it's not something I'm dying to see in the next patch or anything.

Got my hands on an M14 the other day and fell in love with it straight away - I'll be doing everything I can to get my hands on one as often as possible. For me, it's the versatility that makes it so good - nice big clips, a decent medium-range sight, plenty of stopping power, and fires as quick as you can spam LMB. It's probably not ideal if you're going exclusively pvp, but for a survivor player, it's definitely top-tier.

It's not my place or right to judge you based on the way you play the game, so please don't think I'm doing that when I say that this whole post is a pretty terrible justification for shooting everyone on sight. So you got sniped at Stary and NWAF, the two most bandit-ridden places in the game (possibly excluding Elektro), and as a result, you now just blow away anyone you see on the pretence that what you're doing is justified because of that? Sorry buddy, but that just doesn't wash. I don't disagree with your statement that the bush wookie with the AS50 on the Stary hill probably isn't looking for zombies, and that's not an unjustified kill by any means. I'd probably do the same, to be honest. However, shooting someone in the back in a supermarket just because he has a gun and claiming it's pre-emptive self-defence is a load of rubbish. I don't have a problem with bandits, as they're honest about what they do and why they do it, and they provide flavour to the game. I just dislike the notion that some players have that 'you can't trust anyone' when they themselves are the reason for that mistrust.

You know that guy who wakes you up at 3am by standing utterly wasted on your front lawn shouting at his ex-wife (who doesn't live there and never has) and how she's ruined his life? That's what you're sounding like, OP. You're accusing BB of lack of info, well why not tell them the name you applied under and help them find out some info on why you weren't whitelisted?

In theory, I have no problem with that suggestion (especially the 'keys' bit, which I think could make things REALLY interesting if done right), my only concern is how much of an impact it would have on performance, as it would be a lot of extra stuff for the database to keep track of. Still, though - neat idea, and much better than I first feared when I clicked on the thread. :P

I was whitelisted within an hour and a half on friday, and even had a bit of a chat about indie gaming with the guy doing it. Methinks OP is removing toys from portable baby-carrying devices at high velocities.

Okay, I did a little bit of searching, and it seems that whilst a lot of people have been suggesting the flare gun, it didn't look like anyone has actually suggested handheld flares (other than the road flares which are obviously already very common), which are likely to be a lot more commonly available, not to mention easier to fire. In particular I'm thinking of two main types that (to my knowledge - I've not been lucky enough to find an M203 in-game yet) don't have an in-game equivalent - the white parachute illuminating flare and the red 'rocket' distress flare. They both have very different uses. The White Para Flare The white para flare is used for illuminating an area at night, and it is ridiculously effective. I've personally witnessed these being used in search and rescue efforts on more than a couple of occasions, and you use these when you absolutely, positively need to light up every bastard for a kilometre or so in every direction. The ones I've seen used (commercially-available maritime flares) can simply be bought by anyone, and you typically get 30-60 seconds of light out of them before they burn out/drop out of sight. Uses In-game, these would be invaluable for lighting up a large area but without being so obvious as a placed road flare - unless you happened to see the flare go up (and you'd have to be looking in the general direction BEFORE the area was illuminated, as the flare doesn't start burning until it descends), you're unlikely to be able to pinpoint the source of the flare, as they tend to go up a LONG way - if you're close enough, you might hear the tell-tale 'whoosh' as it launches, though. These would be particularly useful for blinding NVG-snipers without giving away your position, as well as illuminating a city for a quick raid without actually aggroing every zombie in a ten-mile radius (you could, for example, stand on sniper hill at Elektro and aim the flare over the city - you'd light up the city, but you'd likely be too far away for the sound to draw aggro from inside the city) The Red Rocket Flare Similar to the White Para, the Red Rocket (or just 'distress' flare) is also a hand-launched flare, and works much the same way - launches to about 300m in the air (~1000ft) then deploys a parachute and begins to burn brightly. These tend to burn for about 60 seconds or so. Typically, these aren't used for illumination, they're generally used as a way of alerting someone to the fact you're in distress and need help. Uses The obvious one would be signalling your position if you're in need of help, or simply trying to guide someone in to your location - these things are designed to be visible from MILES away, particularly at night, but they're also easy to spot when fired during the day. There's an obvious risk that the person you're trying to alert might not be the only person who sees it, which could in turn lead to some interesting risk/reward decisions - are you THAT desperate for help that you're willing to tell half of Chernarus where you are? However, for lone wolf players with side chat disabled, it could very well be the only method of alerting someone to your plight.

Nice idea. Have some beans.

Even a bodyshot with a flare is going to mess someone up. I know of at least one poor soul who had a flare literally blow a hole right through him when it misfired. I don't think people realise quite how lethal those things can be at short range. Not that you could reliably hit anything more than five feet away, mind.

Just throwing it out there, OP, but this was on the first page of the 'suggestions' forum: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/125256-handheld-flares-worth-looking-into/

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/125284-i-need-to-know-how-i-will-be-able-to-play-again-if-globally-banned/ Try looking for your answer in the thread you already posted.

$5 says that OP wears a tinfoil hat. Seriously though, how do you manage to find a conspiracy in something that's publicly available? :-/

Interesting. I'd say that's a fairly good example of 'cause and effect' - you got fed up with getting hacked, so you figured that the best course of action was therefore to start shooting everyone else on sight? And now you're surprised that a large proportion of the people that you come across shoot you on sight? Assuming you play most regularly on a handful of servers, it's not unreasonable to assume that people are going to remember the guy who keeps on shooting them every time they bump into him and likely be only too eager to return the favour. It's a vicious circle started by a small number of trigger-happy idiots and dedicated bandits, but perpetuated by people who decide that because the last two people they met shot them that therefore everyone is going to shoot them, and the only cure is to shoot first. Before you know it, everyone's so paranoid and fed up of being shot that they'll fire first just to be on the safe side. I've met more 'friendly' players than I have players who've killed me on sight (defining 'friendly' as someone who has the chance to shoot me but elects not to) - a lot of the time it's simply about establishing communications clearly and early - if you jump out round a corner on someone, then don't be surprised if their reflex action is to pull the trigger, and I don't disagree with that. However, if you suspect you're about to cross paths with another player, it never hurts to call out 'friendly' and to make your intentions and upcoming actions (EG 'I'm now coming round the corner behind you, don't shoot') clear as early as possible. Sure, every now and then you'll get shot by someone too stupid to know any better, but you'd be surprised how often you'll just be carefully watched rather than shot.

If you've downloaded hacks and you're getting that error, it seems that at least one of the hacks has stolen your CD key, and unfortunately, the only way to get a new one is to buy a new copy of the game. There's a moral in that story somewhere, but I'm sure you can figure it out.

I'm not sure where I stand on this - I've been playing since OFP and was never any good at flying Helis, even then. However, with ARMA II and DayZ both featuring them, I figured I'd drop a tenner on a cheap flight stick and give it another crack. After a few hours' practice (and more crashes than I'm willing to admit) in the editor, I'm reasonably happy with 'basic' piloting. I can take off, whizz around the countryside at low-level buzzing cows, and put down in a field fairly comfortably. Where I struggle a little more is the advanced stuff - that bizarre 'emergency stop' turn that I've seen folks doing in youtube videos that looks like if it was tried in real life it would rip the rotors off and stops the heli damn near dead - can't work out how the hell that's done at all. The other one is landing quickly on rooftops - I just can't seem to get the approach right - I can do it in the end, but it takes a good 60 seconds or so of faffing and near-misses, which is more than enough time to either aggro every zombie in the city or to get myself shot through the cockpit by a nearby sniper. Maybe I'm just a terrible pilot, but there needs to be a balance of some kind - Helis should be more or less usable by anyone with a couple of hours' practice, or they're going to be so cripplingly overspecialised that most people will just shoot the things or leave them be. On the other hand, you also need to make them tricky enough so that only a truly excellent pilot can do the really useful stuff like coming in low over Cherno and dropping a couple of people off on the hospital roof, or landing and taking off quickly under heavy fire.

Nice attitude. Good luck with that.

What!? Do your own damn legwork man, and stop expecting others to do it for you. Jesus Christ, some people...

Why did this post get bumped back up from six months ago? If that dude's still lost, he ain't finding his way back.

Hey there Michelle (and also Vidofnir!) - we might be the folks you're looking for - I've got a post up here with our whole 'come play with us' pitch, but to save you having to read all that waffle, here's the short version - there's a bunch of us that play DayZ. We're not a clan, we don't do tryouts or any of that shit - we just like to play DayZ. We're mostly based in the UK/EU with one guy from the US, and we're all in our 20s (I'm 28 and the oldest, I think our youngest is 20). We play... well, pretty much whenever we feel like it, really - I sometimes work nights, so am around during the day, we've got a couple of folks between jobs/at uni, so they're around most of the time - you shouldn't struggle to find people to play with when you're online. Anyway, if that sounds like something you'd be into, give me a shout. Do you have Steam at all?

RE: the 'damage' argument. There was another thread that centred heavily around this, and the general consensus was that weapon damage is fine, the issue is that player health in DayZ is double what it is in ARMA, so therefore weapons are effectively doing half damage. With the higher-powered weapons it's not so much of an issue, but with stuff like the MP5 and the Makarov it becomes a little more obvious, as you can put half a clip into someone and they turn around and shoot you in the face.

And do you have a shred of evidence to support that 'worry'? Because everything I've seen has been indicating that this will not be the case. If you've got some kind of valid reasons for those concerns, please share them, but without anything to support your 'worry', it's just scaremongering and naysaying.

Hehe, nah - it's the same for everyone. The general rule of thumb I always use is 'what do I get in any other current game at high to max settings?' then subtract 15-20 from that, and that's roughly what you'll get on the same settings in DayZ. :D