Irish.

That is an excellent proposition. I have been a fan of the "larger the mag count, the more it rare it is to find" idea as well as your own. To elaborate, the AKM may be easy to find, the ammo is slightly harder to find, and the mags are very rare. The 75 rd. drum is like a unicorn, rarely seen and often spoke of. This way you could say have a high end weapon quickly, one that is easily maintained as an AK should be, but you have to reload it manually cartridge by cartridge unless you happen to have spent enough time looking for a magazine. And only the uberleets would have multiple mags that they had killed to obtain over long periods of time. This would be a great balance as long as more common firearms were easy to arm, but as you stated difficult to maintain. Which quite truthfully in most cases would ring true to their real life counterparts. Even further things like an AK can be drug through the mud. An M4 has known overheating issues after long firefights. Most pistols need constant cleaning to be accurate at any distance, etc.. may just be things that they can offer down the road so all we can do is contemplate, and practice patience through this process.

Yes, I believe default is G but Ive remapped mine to V.. I tossed it into the bottom of the lighthouse and then of course ran like hell from most of them.. this one here near Balota, I felt rather safe at as the player count died down a bit

I agree on many fronts of your retort.. in that scenario I imagine things like the M4 being prevalent, but the MP parts and acog as well as mags being on the "rare" list. That is of course just an example of how I read it. And I think that would work out really well. A good balance must be found between rewarding the hard working, and neglecting the player who maybe has less time. Like binoculars and the Blaze rifle are easy to find.. to counter the sniper who has found himself a SVD with 8x scope after 15 hours of searching for and building it. If you play your cards right, you can get him just as easy as he can get you.. but that balance must be found properly. I have faith that this community will be so loud that eventually a mutual agreement can be found between devs and players on loot spawns and rarity.

UPDATE: TRADED ..successfully! :) Have a 75 rd. drum on experimental servers regular (non-hardcore) that I would love to trade soon. I get bad luck carrying these and the AKM so I always try to give them away for something of more value to me.

Im not saying they should not be good. I want mil-spec weaponry and I want to find it within reason at any mil base. I basically want the mod experience in a polished package. I dont like the concept of rare, not because I want the weapons.. its because of what it does to the game in the end. If you have a squad of 3 that have all acquired the best weapons, and have been playing long enough to use tactics well .. who is to stop them? Well, in the mod just 1 man could. By himself. Because he had a good chance of being equally armed and if he got lucky, let alone good tactics, he may just come out on top. Again, take the mods.. nothing was truly rare save for the really large caliber sniper rifles and the elusive NVG's. Even then they were obtainable within reason if you looked long enough in the right places.. but if just one guy had the right NVG set-up at night.. everyone else was basically screwed unless they were adjusting their video settings to make the dark go away magically. The SA shows promise of being much worse in many aspects due to 1 person being so heavily armed with AKM, Drum, PSO, and grenades... against someone with a bat and a bow and arrow (based on their ideas of central loot control and making items extremely rare). The guy with the bow and arrow has little to no chance if he has been spotted.. so then you end up with the inevitable camp fest near spawn points and loot places of interest. A well armed player gets smart and learns to just wait for the loot to come to him.. you're the guy looking to finally loot a heli crash for your first time and BAM! "YOU ARE DEAD." Easy kill for Mr. Well Armed Player.. insanely frustrating moment for Mr. I just want to have some fun here folks.. it took that poor guy 10 hours just to get his bow and arrow, and crafted pack and cooking items gathered.. Now Mr. Armed to the Teeth player has himself and easy meal, restock and back to the drawing board to do it again over and over until hopefully one day he makes a colossal mistake and someone finally gets him. So its basically a race to get good with the weapons and whoever finds them first will rule the land. I know this is a fact because it used to be my play style.. hunt others in high traffic areas after arming myself to the teeth so that I can find the loot that is tough to come by sometimes like matches and whatnot. I will go right back to it eventually if they make this game the way they are talking about.. Ill eventually find what I need to murder anyone I want. ..Or you could allow players to have some fun, like in the mods, and play how they want.. if anyone can get an AKM with 75rd. Drum within an hour or 2 then nobody will NEED to kill for one if they see a player carrying it, nor will players NEED to camp spots to kill others, or NEED to server hop or exploit the loot respawn system.. they can do what they wish and not be encumbered by mechanics. I dont think you should just find weapons everywhere.. but if you look hard, you should find it within a game session or 2. Not within 50 or more.. otherwise only the prosperous will prosper.

lol, please.... the mere act of my holding them turns them to gold. ;)

Did there happen to be a Golden Pistol to go with those Golden Magazines? ....I bet there was. And it looked like this: You're friend my be colorblind to some degree..

Excellent FIRST POST EVER. :huh:

Ive been on SSD since day 1. ;) Stairs, a desk, large rocks, and ladders have all apparently killed me. The staircase was the most odd as my friend saw it happen and I just disappeared. Poof!

The simple conundrum with making rare high-end weapons in a game like DayZ is this: The more rare a weapon is, the harder it is to defend against. What Frosti points out is true in every way. If you make items super rare, those who exploit the game by things like renting a server and resetting it over and over again until they find the loot they seek that others can rarely have the chance of finding, then those people who are exploiting the game have an unfair advantage over others playing fairly.. even if they are server hopping it is still exploiting something that not every player even realizes exists as an option. The mere act of making items very rare encourages players to exploit the system, causing a fracture in the player base between those that exploit and those that do not. Its not unique to any game, eventually every PvP game will be affected by this. Cheating is universal. But the way to combat it is to not make items so rare, and those that are rare are not OP against other players. Rare items should be things like Axes, and Gas Stoves. Things that make survival easier, but do not make killing easier. If you make weapons prevalent, but using them a severe risk (as in attracting zeds/players by firing your weapon, etc..) then you offer a level playing field as far as self-defense goes. I know this may not be a popular concept, but there is a certain amount of thought necessary to realize what will happen if certain things are done with this game. We have clarified some of it here, but there is much left untouched. I invite you to think about it, and come to your own conclusions about what rare and powerful weapons/vehicles/loot will do to the end game and how it will affect the casual player, the hardcore player, and those that choose to exploit the mechanics of the game to gain an advantage. Then come back and respond with your ideas.. I'd love to hear what each of you think as some of you out there are geniuses and I mean that. Discuss ;)

I figured this would help people (Im sure it will get merged with the update post but lets hope not as it will get buried there) to post down your experience with where the new items spawn as far as locations go. Crossbow + bolts, Ash stick (for bow crafting), 1911 engraved (not exactly new but it would be good to know where people are finding it) and the Binoculars. I have found the 1911 engraved inside the jails so far, and the crossbow bolts in several houses and inside the jails, but have come up empty on everything else. P.S. If you're the type who does not like this style of "meta-gaming" then there is no need to comment.. simply move along, rather than post how you feel people should just explore the map and find things on their own. Yes, they should.. but this is if they dont want to keep searching without any clue of where to look for specific items. Thank you. Discuss.

Can we elaborate on the death messages? Something a little more descriptive other than "YOU ARE DEAD" would be nice.. Something along the lines of: "YOU ARE DEAD..you have succumbed to your wounds." "..you have been beaten to death." "..you have drowned." "..you have been shot to death." "..you have been killed by a zombie/player." ETC. . . . I think this would greatly improve the ability to catch bugs that kill like collision issues. If the message said, "..you have been crushed/fallen/shot." then we would have the ability to know what happened. I dont really see an issue with telling players what killed them. A simple, "You have been killed by another player" would suffice and has little chance of creating a negative response that would detract from the game itself in my opinion. What do you all think of a more elaborate death message explaining why you died?

Exactly. In real life my first question after dying will be, "what happened?" ;)

PEQ2+M4+NVG... that is what it will be for.

DayZ-PETA?

Craft a footstool with a hammer and logs. :P

Yep, thats exactly why I brought this up.. to remind the devs that sometimes info is a good thing. Knowing the player names is horrible and the distance even worse because it can literally allow you to pinpoint down where the sniper is quickly.. but at least knowing by seeing your body, or a message stating what killed you is a good idea to deal with the numerous bugs this game has during its development. Its not like we have sidetext to ask people if they killed you or if pulling out your axe on that staircase did in fact kill you. ;)

In the end you are already going to tell your friends on TS that you got killed, them knowing how is not really going to change the outcome. We do have ears to hear these things with you know.. right? Like you will hear someone walking around you.. or the shots ring out. Telling your friends really does nothing different unless they are km's away and in a vehicle and can get there in 2 mins or less to get your revenge. Even then, does it really change anything? I know it doesnt because Ive played the mods for years now and my clan has never had an issue with not knowing why we died... with the exception of those WTF moments where you have no idea what just happened. It goes like this. deaddude: "I just got shot." clan: "where?' deaddude: "dunno, but Im in Berezino at the school." clan: "k, we are coming.. Ill get your loot man." Now change got shot for died. Nothing changes the outcome.

lol.. but a death message is? I mean, think about that for a moment. ;)

When I log into the Mod, everytime I think to myself, "This is DayZ." When I log into the early release SA of DayZ I often reflect upon the promise and potential the game has, and I hope that it ends up much like the mod. But lately my fear is the focus will be so tuned towards survival, that the PvP element will suffer. Its my opinion that the PvP element is what makes this game so great, the fear of other players and the trust it takes to let your guard down are what bring so much adrenaline and excitement. I rarely get worked up while fighting Zeds. I rarely feel fear or adrenaline unless Im near other players or fearing one has me in his sights. If it ends up being some massive scavenger hunt, survival game that happens to have some slightly annoying Zombies then I dont see myself playing it very often. I play for the social aspect, the interaction between others. I fear them tuning mechanics in the game to try to deter others from killing players, adding in things that throttle the parts of Arma that made me love DayZ. If all of Arma is stripped out of it, and we are left with a simple zombie survival game then the complexity, the adrenaline of DayZ for me will be lost. I dont get into crafting. I mean its a fun aspect, but if its solely crafting.. and I mean it really does come down to that if PvP is diminished, then what incentive do you have to keep playing after you have built a base and stocked up and explored and done it all? I can play games already that have AI to attack me, and things to survive from. I can play FPS games if I want a solely PvP game. But DayZ is currently the only game out there that offers me everything. PvP, exploration, loot finding, survival, Zombies, etc.. When I pull out my rifle, that I spent hours building and getting ammo for, I want to be able to get better at using it over time so that I can rely on my tool to survive. I dont want to just have to accept that the bullet dispersion is going to fuck me no matter what, no matter how skilled I am, so I might as well just never even bother with the gun and go with Melee only. Stay clear of other players and only hunt Zombies and loot. That gets boring fast. Really fast. Oh look I found a car, but what the hell do I need it for if all I am doing is cooking fish and drinking water in the forest? Why do I need a tent if I can carry everything I need to survive on me and guns are fairly useless to stock up on? To summarize it all down to the nitty gritty: I will feel that DayZ is DAYZ when the weapons work just as well and better than they did in the mods. When I can have an 8x scope that is truly an 8x scope. When bullet dispersion is reasonable, when gunsway is manageable, and when the gunplay is on par with games like Arma and the DayZ mods.. and I say on Par but since this is a from the ground up SA I really would hope that they can do better in the end. I want DayZ to mirror realism as much as possible, while still being fun to play. Fun is defined by each person, but for me if over time my skill cannot be improved upon because the game has mechanics in place to "even the playing field for all levels of gamers" then quite truthfully I dont ever want to play that game. I want a game that is punishing, rewarding, and an excitement to boot up each and every time. Not a pain in the ass, frustration fest that is only geared towards one mind set of play style. I want it all. I want medics, bandits, pilots, mechanics, snipers, psychos, bambis, and some seriously dangerous Zombies. I want more "DayZ moments" and less "You got DayZ'D" experiences. I have hope though. Albeit, curbed, slightly cautious hope. Not really optimism, more so patience. . . its still hope that I have for this game. Hearing the Devs say, "We arent making this game for everyone. We know there will only be a small core group that is still around by the time we are finished and thats fine. We want a sustainable game that we like to play, not one that everyone else wants to play" ..both inspires me and scares the hell out of me. (That was some heavy paraphrasing by the way there, Im not taking the time to look that shit up.. someone else can post the proper quote if they want.) It scares me because it says in a sly way that they could give a fuck less about us consumers, and just look at the little things they have done to support that theory.. On the other hand it says we have a vision and not a single person or all of them together can change that, we want to make what we want to play and anyone else can go suck it. That is beautiful, just as long as they remember that our money and dedication put them in a position to actually make that damn game. I really hope they dont forget that.. ever.

EDIT: ..Finally have a pair of binoculars! o.O Pristine no less. What crap luck I was having finding a pair. Finally someone gave me an extra pair. I did not even have to sell my soul, or pet cat. I have 1 large Snickers bar and some Easter Peeps left over that I can eat now also.. Thanks Community and user JaredB!

So no reset? My God this is a good day. :D

Though not bolt, this would still make an excellent addition.. and very good with what is already in game (scopes) But since we already have the Mosin, Im going to guess M1903 Springfield. Yes, I know it will require new ammo.. but thats my guess and what I would want.

This is now the waiting room for those waiting for stable to update in the hopes that exp was pushed forward or really anything.. in the hopes of anything. But mainly stable going online. Check in here to let others know if its up, updated with a patch, still down, or if the sun is in fact coming up. Thank you. :)

30km Walkie Range..