Target Practice (DayZ)

Ah, now it's my turn to clarify my intent - I certainly didn't mean to imply that Navigation doesn't matter - like yourself, I consider it to be one of the key components of the game and part of what makes DayZ so enjoyable, and I'd be utterly against anything that tried to stop that being the case. What I meant was that if I've hypothetically been lucky enough to find a GPS and I'm simply making my way from point A to point B in my own sweet time, it's simply less of a pain to glance at the green box than to have to hit a key to bring the GPS up so that I can follow the arrow that way. It just seems like adding a step for the sake of adding one - it's not like the outcome is any different. It's not something I care about that much that I'd be disappointed to lose it, it just seems like a sensible concession to make. As for GPS accuracy, I know for a fact that for Search and Rescue purposes, HM Coastguard assume a position accquired by GPS to be accurate to within 200m - that's the absolute uppermost limit of inaccuracy they can reasonably expect (not counting outside factors such as poor calibration/damage etc). Most (emphasis on 'not all') handheld GPS units aren't far behind that now, to be honest - I'd be fairly surprised if a halfway-decent model was consistently found to be more than 400m out. It's one of those myths that's kind of stuck around - when handheld GPS units first hit the market, they indeed were very unreliable due to the new technology. However, technology has moved forward since then, and they're now pretty damned reliable, but for some reason the stigma hasn't quite been shaken.

Nah, sorry feller, but this would really throw the balance of the game off, not to mention be utterly unrealistic. Bullets are SO much more than just metal and gunpowder, there's more or less no way you could make them outside of a dedicated factory. Taking that to one side, there's also the aspect that there isn't really an ammo shortage in the game anyway, so there's no real need to have a way of creating more, not to mention that 'lone wolf' players who simply hide in forests and don't do anything other than murder players are already powerful enough without removing one of the very few reasons they still have to actually leave the forests.

1. Trust no-one - assume everyone and everything will kill you the first chance they get. A fresh spawn with a hatchet can and will kill a well-meaning veteran with an M16A4 if the vet lets his guard down. 2. Think ahead - Always make sure you've got your next 2-3 meals and drinks on your person. That way if you hit a run of bad luck while looting, you'll have a little bit of leeway before you have to start taking risks to stay alive. Sure, you don't have a broken leg right now, but if you get one, it might be a long, long crawl to the nearest hospital, so it's better to keep basic medical supplies on your person. 3. Travel light - Don't bog yourself down with stuff you don't need right now like engine parts and tons of ammo. One clip and a spare should be more than sufficient to keep you alive if the worst happens, and you can start looking for vehicle parts once you've actually found a vehicle. 4. Know your surroundings - The forest North of Msta is a very, very different environment to the forest surrounding the Northwest Airfield. Know where you can press ahead and travel quickly and where you need to take your time and be careful. Assume EVERY town/city has people inside it and snipers watching it. 5. Know your enemy - Approaching an area known for snipers? Think like a sniper - if you were trying to hide somewhere where you'd be hard to see but have a good view, where would you go? How about scavengers? Which routes into and out of the town look safest but with lootable buildings on the way? If you can see a good way in, chances are, others can see it too.

This. Decent vanilla servers are SO hard to find.

Why would you even consider drinking a can of something luminous?

Yeah, but I assume that'll be fixed in time for the next update. I would have suggested simply leaving the character in-world for 30 seconds post-kick as a solution, but having been the victim of an AddMagazineCargo kick whilst running for my life through Berezino last night, I can now see the downside to that particular argument. :P

Yeah, that's the hypothetical situation we're dealing with here - not the 'daddy can I have XYZ toy out from the loft' questions that aren't urgent, we're talking about something that genuinely warrants attention within 30 seconds - if something like that happens and your main concern is 'I just lost a couple of hours of gameplay', then you have serious priority issues. Either way, mZLY nailed it - it's a necessary evil. A minor pain in the ass every now and then, but it stops combat loggers and despawners from cheating, so we live with it. I'm sure the funkier aspects of it will be finetuned out.

Haha, man, you guys are assholes. :lol: But to answer the original question, I tend to look at what's in the tent - if it's mostly medical stuff, I'll check it doesn't belong to a server medic and possibly leave them a blood bag and some morphine for emergencies if I can't verify either way. Those guys deserve a break every now and then. On the other hand, if it's full of military gear and hard-to-find loot, it's open day. I'll take everything I can possibly carry, and if there's anything left, I'll advertise it to the rest of the server on a 'first come, first served' basis. Then I sit back and watch the bloodshed. :P

As long as the accuracy was utterly horrible, I don't see why this couldn't happen. Like Chabowski says, it'd be a lot more realistic than the current method where you're limited to trying to get them to crash into something inanimate.

I guess like you say it's probably a system resources thing - I guess the SA will be far better optimised, so something like this wouldn't be quite so crippling as I'd expect it to be on something like the Alpha, which has its moments even on my i7 GTX 670. :P

I can't see any real problem with this, as long as they're managed properly in the inventory system (which obviously we're not going be able to answer until the SA drops). It nerfs NVGs slightly whilst still keeping them a highly desirable item, gives 'bush wookies' a reason to actually go and scavenge rather than hide in the woods, and it adds an extra element of realism to things without becoming a massive chore. I'd be interested to know of any arguments against, as a quick mental game of 'devil's advocate' left me struggling to think of a good reason why you wouldn't have them.

This, for me, is why I can't agree with your personal stance. I have no issue with Waypoints for those who have found a GPS. I consider that a feature of the GPS, and one of the main reasons you'd want to find one. However, I DO NOT believe it should be there as a crutch/shortcut for those players who don't want to learn skills that will give them an advantage, which is what you seem to want. There's no 'levelling up' in DayZ, all players are created equal, meaning that if someone chooses to give themselves an advantage by learning a particular skill, then that's something they earned. I don't understand why you feel it should be given to someone just because they turned up. Finding your location on a map isn't a tough skill, you could go from not knowing a damn thing about maps to 'pretty proficient' inside an hour, and you can justify that by the fact that it's also a useful skill to have in real life. Reading Cyrillic (the language on the signs) is a slightly tougher proposition, but it only requires knowing the alphabet, it's not like you have to learn how to ask someone where they keep their dog biscuits and what time the next train to Moscow is. I've not done it myself, as generally my map-reading has been sufficient so far to allow me to have a rough idea where I am, but if someone's done that/got that skill, more power to them - I admire their willingness to improve themselves. Bottom line is, there's a difference between practicality/accessibility and catering to players who are lazy/unwilling to learn. Players on the wrong side of that line are going to struggle to enjoy DayZ. Players on the right side are going to have the time of their lives.

If you have kids and they need your attention so badly that it can't wait thirty seconds, you put down that damn mouse and you go see to your kids without even thinking about it. It's called being a parent. As for the timer, It wouldn't bother me if the timer was actually 30 seconds (and I've never measured it), but it feels like it's actually taking closer to 45-60 seconds, which does seem a bit excessive. Having said that, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times it's actually been anything even close to an issue for me, as I won't start something I don't want to be disturbed from until I know I won't be disturbed.

Exactly. That seems to be the fair, 'middle ground' solution here.

Perhaps I didn't word it quite correctly, but my intention was most definitely not to compare the use of morphine to the addition of a GPS waypoint, and I'm pretty sure I didn't make that direct comparison anywhere - I simply used morphine as a stronger example of accessibility over 'absolute' realism. The case of the GPS is at the absolute opposite end of the scale, and if you read my post again you'll notice that the comparison I DID make is to the Ammo counter in the top right corner. It's not game-changing, but it's convenient, and it's an acceptable break from reality that you make because it makes it easier to enjoy the stuff that actually matters. Also, please note that in the opening paragraph that I stated that I'm fully in support of getting rid of waypoints until the player finds a GPS. Bearing in mind how hard they are to find, the odds of a player somehow stumbling across one before they've learned to read the map properly are more than low enough to mean that successful map use would be an essential skill if a player wants to survive. Ugh, those two words 'sell out'. Why did you have to use them? Let's look at what a 'sell out' is, shall we? I think we could probably agree that it's someone who goes against their principles and what they initially set out to do in pursuit of money/fame/whatever. That's reasonable, yeah? Now, without wishing to second-guess the man himself, shall we assume that Rocket likes to make games, and in particular survival games? And now let's assume (because it's pretty much any gamer's dream) that he would also like to design/make games he likes for a living, to have lots of people play and enjoy those games, and to make enough money to live comfortably while doing so. Not unreasonable assumptions, I think? DayZ Standalone is probably going to tick those boxes. They could release it tomorrow and it would probably sell like hot cakes. As the hype machine builds up and people who haven't heard of it start seeing it on Steam pre-orders and so on, this game certainly isn't going to struggle to get people to buy it and play it. It's also a game that Rocket (certainly seems to be) is happy and proud of. So why is a little bit of accessibility in the name of broadening the potential audience 'selling out?' It's not, and it's part of why I HATE that term. I know you probably didn't mean it like that, and I don't want to drag this whole conversation even further off topic than it is already, but let's be sensible about our choices of words, because right now, I'm pretty sure Rocket is living the dream (whilst also wishing he'd had a less stressful dream :P).

As in other threads in here, I kind of see both sides of the argument - on one had, there's no logical reason why a GPS wouldn't be available, assuming that Chernarus is a localised incident and not a worldwide one, in which case the satellites would likely be down for the same reason as the power is. In the same breath, there's also no logical reason why the player should be able to have a waypoint pop up on his screen telling him how far and where something is without actually having a GPS. There's no 'real life' situation that the little green box is recreating without a GPS. However, with a GPS in your possession, I think it becomes a slightly different story - it's there as a 'convenience', as we don't currently have the ability in-game to lift the GPS to our face and look at it (although I suppose it could be implemented in the same way that 'K' brings your compass up - hell, for all I know, it could already do this - I've never been lucky enough to find one!). In terms of simply being a convenient way of doing something via the HUD that I would otherwise have to go into menus for, it's no worse than the Ammo counter in the top right corner. Sure, the game could make us open our inventory and individually count the bullets, but what would be the point? For all Rocket's (and some of the more hardcore players) insistence that 'this is not a game, it's a survival simulator' etc etc, we need to get one thing clear. It IS a game. It's a piece of software that's designed for entertainment, and it's also something that the developer is expecting people to pay money in order to play. To that light, you're probably going to want to make the game accessible to as many people as possible, because more players = more money. In order to do that, there will be occasions when you have to balance out absolute 'to the letter' realism for a reasonable and justifiable facsimile - point in case Morphine - everyone knows that Morphine will not cure a broken leg. On the same note however, those with a basic knowledge of field medicine/first aid/whatever will know that with Morphine and a decent splint, the leg would be usable (although don't expect to be sprinting anywhere!) in the short term, although it would be weighed off with potential long-term repercussions. However, that's not going to translate well to a game that people play to be entertained. So we suspend our disbelief and remind ourselves that at least the game is factoring in something like broken limbs in the first place. No matter what, you're not going to please everyone - there are people for whom the game will never be 'too easy' until it's a shot-for-shot remake of Call of Duty Zombie mode. There are also people who will complain that the game isn't hard/realistic enough even if you have to manually control breathing in and out with your keyboard. DayZ is always going to be a balancing act between those two, albeit with a healthy nudge in the direction of the 'realistic' camp.

Nice idea, but takes it a little too far for my tastes - not everyone is an experienced map reader, so to start throwing in things like bearings, triangulation etc as a necessity just to know where you are is making things difficult just for the sake of being difficult. It's not like compasses are hard to come by (or even make, in a pinch), and for my money, the Chernarus map is already a step down from most OS maps. In all honesty, it's not even like handheld GPSes are all that rare these days - almost every phone built in the past 2-3 years has one, for starters. The idea of having the map as an in-game object is a nice idea though - one of the few good things about Far Cry 2 for my money. The big thing I really want to see in the Standalone (and I can't believe they won't have already tried to include it) is to be able to personally mark your map - much in the same way as you can do already by double-clicking, but... y'know... without telling the whole server where you hid that fully-loaded SUV you 'borrowed'.

1. Your default reaction to meeting new people is to ask them "friendly?" 2. Your first thought when hearing a car approach is to find a bush to jump in. 3. You consider a can of cold baked beans a sufficient meal. 4. You visit a local fire station and are surprised that they don't have assault rifles laying around everywhere. 5. Finding a bag of unrefrigerated blood in a cardboard box makes your day. 6. You think you can run four miles on a broken leg with a bit of morphine. 7. You pass a helicopter and think '...yeah, I can probably fly that'. 8. Every time you walk past your local airfield you're on the lookout for snipers. 9. You consider a helicopter crash 'good looting'. 10. You trust some guy you've never even met to pump a bag of questionably-sourced blood into you. Any others? :P

Sorry, that sounds like a rather stupid idea. Do you have a source for this, or did you think saying 'I heard' would be an adequate replacement for any kind of fact?

Repeaters would be a very interesting idea - they'd likely be on hilltops in exposed areas, so there'd be a fair bit of risk/reward in going to places like that to set them up and/or change the frequency they operate on - I can certainly imagine they'd be appealing targets to bandits, as anyone with a radio is probably going to have some fairly decent gear.

I wouldn't be overly enthused by this. I once ran a TF2 server with Multiplay, and their Clanforge system is hideously limited and restrictive. It's a nice idea, it's just very badly executed. Plus I didn't have a great time with their support either. Still, more UK servers isn't a bad thing, I guess.

The problem you have there is that people run long distances for two reasons - to shake off a zombie or to get somewhere when they don't have transport. Even now, walking from one town to the next can take at least ten minutes, often up to fifteen. If you start slowing people down after a couple of hundred meters, that travel time is going to go up even further, and DayZ will become a hiking simulator with occasional zombie outbreaks.

My apologies. I did search, but must have screwed something up, as I got no returns. My bad.

As a slight adjustment to Intensity's idea, perhaps the Military Radios can have access to 'encrypted' frequencies and only certain players can access those channels - would make them much more desrirable and valuable. As for ranges, the problem there is that 500m in Chernarus is still a very small area - not accounting for line-of-sight obstructions such as buildings/hills/forests etc, a commercially-available Marine-band VHF handheld radio has a minimum range of about 1.85 kilometers at sea level. Perhaps if you used that and then factored in the increase in range when on top of hills, it could be a fairly realistic representation of radio use - if you want to communicate with someone who's on the very edge of your radio's range, you'll both need to find higher ground.

Not sure what you're getting at here? If you're suggesting the bandit is hiding in the wardrobe, then I'm pretty sure the sensible course of action is to simply prevent the player from shooting whilst in the wardrobe.