Target Practice (DayZ)

Yeah, that sounds like zombie aggro. There's a bit of a known bug at the moment where you'll hear zombie aggression sounds despite being a long way away from any zombies. Sometimes it's a bunny wabbit, sometimes it's not. But yeah, it doesn't help your nerves (or sanity) when that happens, particularly for newer players! :)

It's a difficult one - sticking by roads/tracks obviously makes it easier to find towns/houses, but obviously also exposes you to a higher risk of ambush/bumping into an unfriendly player. I suppose it's about balancing risks - sooner or later the risk of death by starvation/dehydration will become greater than the risk of being killed by a hostile player, and that's when you have to make the call. That compass will help a lot though, particularly if you can find a map (try petrol stations and wrecked cars) to use it with, although you'll probably need to find a town before you can reliably pinpoint your location (unless you happen to be a particularly adept map reader!). The knife's a handy find though - at least now you'll have an option for opening cans of beans besides the rarer-than-rockinghorse-shit can openers. There's nothing worse than being on the verge of starvation, finding a can of beans and then realising with horror you have no way of opening them! Also, talking to the trees (or at least referring to them as 'you'!) is probably a bad sign. The hallucinations are kicking in already. :p

You're unlikely to come across many (if any) players up there at the moment, mainly because most players at the moment seem to be more interested in running round Balota firing their M4 on full-auto. However, whilst it would be silly to say that you definitely won't be shot on sight up there, your odds are probably slightly better, as anyone interested enough in the game to actually explore Chernarus rather than deathmatching is probably going to at least ask a few questions before popping you in the head.

Hah! Well, that's one of the many fun parts of DayZ - each and every death will teach you something, whether it's that zombies can walk through walls (at the moment!) or that a compass is a very handy thing to have indeed, you learn something new every life! Good to see you've got the right idea though in getting off the South coast and exploring inland a bit - not only are you much less likely to get shot on sight by someone geared to the teeth, but you're also much more likely to find loot. That is, assuming you can find a town. :p When I get lost, I simply pick a direction and start running in a completely straight line until I see something I feel might lead me somewhere useful (roads, power lines, a tower/mast in the distance) - if you turn every now and then, you'll probably end up going in circles!

As you've highlighted already - right now, not very much. I've been taking some time to just wander round and explore Chernarus - a lot of stuff has changed since the mod, so I've been taking it all in. Once a few more key parts of the game are implemented, your options will expand a bit, but right now it's a bit of a case of 'make your own fun'.

I'm not sure the idea really fits all that well with the experience DayZ is looking to create. It certainly isn't something I'd want to come across in-game - this is a survival game set in a country where an unknown infection has turned the population into bloodthirsty maniacs. They're not even 'real' zombies, as they're considered living, so I'm not really sure the inclusion of mythical creatures and magic meat is really going to fit in. :)

Yeah, it can take a little while to get your head straight and work out where you are and what you're supposed to do. Did you play the mod at all, or have you jumped straight into the Standalone?

Welcome to DayZ, folks! Any questions, feel free to give me a shout either in here or via PM. Only too happy to help. :)

Not necessarily. If there are no good ones, you just announce 'none suitable' and go find a professional solution.

This would actually be pretty cool. An alternative would be for submissions to be included on a specific radio channel.

One of the few things I consider more annoying than the current excess of kill on sight players are players who assume that because they aren't hostile that everyone else on the server isn't hostile, and then proceed to get incredibly butthurt when someone doesn't play the way they want them to.

Well obviously they need to be fixed before the game moves onto beta. What I (and although I can't speak for him, I assume Max) am trying to say is that in the current state of the SA, it's a very minor issue. Other issues like getting the zombie numbers up to an acceptable level, getting them respawning properly and then getting all the various other systems in place have to take priority over a bit of 'ghosting'. It's the same with server hopping. No-one's denying it's an issue, it's just not a priority right now, so it'll be tackled once some of the bigger problems have been solved and it moves up the list a few notches.

What Max said. Once they've got the zombie code to a point where they can put the number of zombies they actually want on the server and they've got all the related features and tweaks working, that's the point when you look at sorting things out like the glitching. It's been said a thousand times before over the past week, but one more time won't hurt. DayZ is not at a point where you should be playing it looking to have a glitch-free and entirely playable experience. At this point in time, we are little more than glorified testers, and each and every one of us accepted that when we handed over our money and then accepted it again every time we click 'I understand' when the game launches. We are not here for a smooth and seamless playing experience, we are here to deal with whatever the developers throw at us for the greater good of the finished product we paid for.

^ This is probably the best and safest way to group right now - find a like-minded player on the forums and meet up with them on a server somewhere. It's just so much easier and hassle-free than trying to find someone who won't blow your face off just because they have ammo and nothing to use it on. Hopefully that aspect of the game will improve in time as more features get enabled. :)

It's certainly possible it could increase in the future. I know in the early days of testing, the max player slots on the test server was up around 120 or so, although it's worth stating that performance hasn't been tested with that many people on it. AFAIK, the largest gathering we've had on a single server was somewhere just north of 60, and that was in testing shortly before launch. There's a lot of optimising and performance to be done between now and then, though - they're not even operating at 50% zombie capacity yet, so it'll be a while before they add more players. :)

I like the idea of night-time play, but in its current state, the SA just makes it too much of a pain to be worthwhile, and there are two main reasons for that: 1) Trying to navigate enclosed spaces is nearly impossible with light sources working as they do currently. 2) Zombies are still able to see me from 200m away and run through 2 houses and a bunch of fences on their way to clobbering me. If those two issues are fixed, I'd probably prefer playing at night, because it allows savvy and alert players to see approaching lights carried by other players and therefore gives them the chance to ambush/avoid them as appropriate. It also makes raiding high-player-traffic areas a lot easier, as the darkness provides an extra element of cover.

Hi there. Could you please take down the link, as people will follow that link to use the hack. Instead, if you PM the link to a moderator (or to me and I'll forward it on to a moderator for you), and they'll make sure the devs are made aware. :)

+1 to this whole thing. Like yourself, I believe that the concept of 'learned skills' will add another layer of depth to characters, in particular things like medical and mechanical skills, as not only will it allow players who choose to play that way the benefit of being more efficient at their chosen skills, it benefits the wider playerbase by encouraging interaction between players - if you're badly injured and require extensive medical treatment, do you trust your unskilled buddy to do it, or do you put a call out to find a skilled medic to come and help you? Found a broken down car in Elektro town centre? It's going to take you 6 minutes of standing out in the open to repair it, but bring in a player who's an experienced mechanic, and you can be out of there in 4. I also absolutely agree that these skills need to be 'fringe' benefits - things that may save you a bit of time or allow you to reduce a bit of risk in a specific aspect of gameplay, but not something that will give you a distinct 'tangible' advantage over any other player in an immediate life-or-death survival situation. The last thing I want to see is a 'aiming' perk where I can't hit anything over 100m away unless I've spent 5 hours laying on my belly in a field somewhere shooting zombies for target practice (pun unintended).

I think you're probably thinking along the right lines here - whilst I can't speak for the man himself, it certainly seems like the sort of thing Rocket would be wanting to implement and be enthusiastic about.

I think at this stage, particularly until the new hive-wide loot system is implemented, it's very difficult to know exactly which way things are going to go. Having X number of a specific weapon in the entire game will have a drastic effect on the way people perceive that weapon and the way they use it. Personally, I absolutely believe that the amount of ammo and weaponry in the game is excessive at the moment (and was in the mod as well) - if I find a gun, I want that to make my day. I don't want to look at it and go 'meh, might as well take it, I don't have anything better', I want to be delighted that I was even lucky enough to find one. I then want to spend the next day or two hunting for ammo to use in that gun. In my eyes, it will almost single-handedly fix the excessive kill-on-sight issue, because the majority of players aren't going to have the patience to spend days scouring every last nook and cranny of a server for any kind of firearm, and they're certainly going to be a little more careful with what they do with the ammo. Yes, there'll be a few dedicated KoS players who'll stick at it and go about their business as usual, and I actually welcome that - I've said many times before, I do feel that KoS has a place in DayZ - maybe just not as prominent a place as it has right now. Part of the thrill of DayZ is finding an item that you didn't have before that dramatically increases your chances of survival - we all know that little hit of excitement we get when we find a bigger backpack - that's what finding a gun -any gun- should be, only multiplied by ten. Right now, it barely registers any more significant than finding a water bottle or something similar.

Yes, it's a known bug that's affecting some players/servers. Unfortunately there's not much else I can say other than 'the devs are aware and working on it'. :)

+1 on this. I can't tell you how many times I've wished I had a pair of binoculars when trying to approach a town.

So, NO evidence whatsoever AND homosexual slurs. Yeah, I think your word will be sufficient. We'll get him banned from the internet right away, sir. Sorry for the inconvenience.

They're planned but not implemented yet. :)

Yeah, it's worth re-iterating this - the game DayZ is going to be is not the game it is right now. At the moment, it's largely incomplete, it's buggy, and there's not enough to do, meaning a lot of players are killing time by uh... well, killing. :p It's going to be hard, it's going to be brutal, it's going to be frustrating and you're going to die an awful lot, sometimes without even knowing what you did wrong. If that doesn't sound like your idea of fun (and who could blame you!), maybe waiting might be better. If you like a challenge and don't mind dealing with bugs, frequent character losses and so on, then welcome aboard! :)