guntrigger

I'm starting to wonder what the point of playing this game on public servers is. I LOVE it, I love the atmosphere, I love the scaredy feeling I get trying to sneak past a few zombies and moving from place to place with a group of buddies. It's a feeling you'll only get on a random server in my opinion and totally adds to the feel of the game. However, the only time I ever seem to die lately, unless one of our group does something totally stupid or we get absolutely cornered, is due to hackers. The last 3 humans players I've tried to defend myself from have been obviously invincible (multiple AS50 rounds, or a whole magazine of AK-74 rounds at point blank should be enough to do SOMETHING). I've been spawned with every other player in the server at the airfield for a battle royale and I've personally been singled out for being spawned next to one of these invincible hackers for his amusement so he could dance while my shots had no effect. The most recent encounter (just now) was when me and a friend were looting the NW airfield at night (his first time there, my second time - really exciting stuff for us). Then a chopper flies over! Never seen one in action, it was brilliant for a time, he got caught in the spotlight and it came back for a run on him, so I hit it with 5 AS50 rounds and the engine turned off and I watched it going down, it was really cool. Then the engine turned back on, it flew up and over to a dark spot on the runway to land. I used my rangefinder to see him in the dark and range my AS50 (I was laying on the control tower), my friend used his NV scoped FAL to fire at the guy as soon as he got out. My friend died being returned on with a DMR, just as my scoped vision was fading in in the moonlight. I missed him with the first couple of shots, certainly hit him with another couple, kept readjusting and firing and reloading in disbelief as he was being attacked by about 20 zombies and was still concious. Then he got on the helicopter gun and destroyed me. Somehow I survived that attack (broken bone, no blood, in shock) and was just patching myself up as he was strafing the tower in the chopper. I shot at him some more, the chopper went down in a ball of flames and he bailed out safely. As he landed, he was standing up straight as I shot him with one of my last 3 .50cal bullets, then he shot me to death (while I could see 5 zombies mauling him). HE NEVER DIED. I mean, it's given me an interesting story to tell, but it's ultimately tainted by this douchebag having nothing invested in the game whatsoever and us never having a chance against him. What the hell is the point of playing this game at all if you're just going to have god mode and infinite weapons?? It seems no-one except for vigilante server owners cares about hackers anymore. Surely this is going to turn people off the game (as with a number of my friends already) and probably steer them away from the standalone version - particularly if this is their first and only experience of it.

Good replies all! I've thought about whitelisted servers and am definitely going to check out private hives at some point, but at the same time I find part of the thrill to be not knowing who else is in the server and trying to avoid 40 potentially hostile players! Also, I don't generally get too annoyed at hacker deaths, but it just spoils what could have been a great moment otherwise. Particularly the chopper story I mentioned in my first post, which started off being a great moment, but as soon as you realise the other player has nothing invested in surviving (or in this case having a fully working chopper) and/or they're absolutely unbeatable, the fun gets sapped from the situation very quickly. Don't get me wrong, I love starting from scratch and having our group work their way back together (I also don't see the point of killing yourself at spawn - just get trekking its good fun), I just don't understand people's motivation for cheating.

Couldn't believe it myself when it worked! When I found this post my first reaction was probably the same as Maze, thinking all of these people posting with a "trigger" related name were all the same person self bumping!!

Today I've been playing on one server for about 3-4 hours straight. Try to change server to join friends, I get the error mentioned above on a number of different servers (but not all). When I Google the problem, only threads by the guys above appear. Your jovial post about the similarity of these guys names got me to thinking "is it because we all have Trigger in our names?" (my in game character name being that of my forum name). Well... yes actually. I tried joining a server I knew wouldn't let me. Backed out to the Arma 2 main menu on failure, changed my character name to Arse Burger and I was able to join that same server no problem! Apparently BattlEye thinks you're a cheat if you have Trigger in your character name...