Lukio (DayZ)

Unfortunately chances of hacks being used to find players/objects are quite high. I think there was even a stream of some guy and his friends using some of the hacks to find vehicles. Its stupidly simple to use and BattleEye has a huge blind spot. Yet even without hacks, its quite common to stumble over tents and saved vehicles if you take the time and make it your top priority on your DayZ to-do list. So to the OP - just quit thinking that your camp is safe from being plundered no matter how hidden you think it is or how long it hasn't been touched. It will be found - either by honest players or unfortunately by hackers, the latter circumstance is something that clearly needs to be dealt with. As long as its just a mod for DayZ and all servers are public it will be a recurring thing. It is well known that public ARMA 2 servers are prone to cheaters and players using hacks.

Maybe that person misunderstood the transfer of many characters to the new database system.

Server where it happened? List of players logged in? Screenshot of thousands of bear traps? Did you report it to the server admin / dev team? Its not that I don't believe that may have happened to you, its that based on what you wrote there is no credibility or reference to the incident.

Try not going prone and just zig zag into the next treeline or something that offer cover. I've been fired on quite often and either they decide to follow you and you then gun them down or they give up quite fast. From one encounter I had the other guy told me on direct that he thought I was an NPC and excused himself. I shot him anyway.

I don't want the game to force me into any type of endgame. Some people are happy killing others once they are equipped, others drive around and honk at people. Others sit somewhere in a forest with 7 cars and dance naked around a campfire. Its up to each player what he makes out of it. If you are bored try to do something different than what you think the game is telling you to do.

Imo its not really the inventory system of ARMA 2 that is unintuitive, its using the ARMA 2 inventory system for DayZ which makes it odd. Bringing in RPG elements like looting weapons, using objects out of the inventory, storing & swapping weapons in a backpack are things that the ARMA 2 inventory was never intended for. While I find the idea interesting, having a maximum amount of item slots will not help as long as its ARMA 2 underneath with the weird ways of handling objects. The complete system of how inventory items work in the game needs to be changed, the suggestion only covers one small aspect of the problems. I'm guessing these changes can only come with a standalone version. Please expand the suggestion into a full remake of how interacting with objects and the inventory works in DayZ, its not just the issue of available slots.

I'm missing a reason why this should be brought to DayZ or why it is deemed necessary. Dying is bad so we need a way to negate death, the only real penalty existent?

Let me give you a positive thought on the way. Eventually the people playing the game as "deathmatch" (not going into the definition here) will one by one come to the same conclusions like you and many others have, because DayZ per se isn't made to have a great deathmatch experience and once people see behind the curtains; some (not all unluckily) may be intrigued to go further. It will take time, but eventually it will work out. It has in other MMO style games with PvP and will as well in DayZ. Without rulesets or fixed factions to enforce it, this process just is very slow to move forward.

The next release of <generic shooter name> will solve this problem. Otherwise there never will be a way to entirely remove people who kill other characters just for fun. The only way would be to remove PVP or set some kind of duelling / PVP flags (WoW Style). But I'm sure this is not a good solution.

There are 1000s of DayZ servers and each of them have their own little list of quirky settings, versions and naming. Its totally chaotic atm :-/ I acknowledge the work and money admins are putting in to running a server - but is it really that difficult to keep everything on one level?

Nope. Bringing in suggestions that only benefit one side of playstyle just can't be taken seriously. Personally I dislike bandits, but I at least recognize them as an essential part of the game. Killing other players has nothing to do with a deathmatch, if you want to bring up the term, at least know what you are talking about.

The way it used to be is to download the newest beta patch from http://www.arma2.com/beta-patch.php. Unfortunately some of the newer beta patches for ARMA II seem to cause problems connecting, many servers have various versions and some of the latest beta versions even create technical difficulties. From what I've read most people have had good experiences with beta version 94444.

I'd like to suggest that some different mechanic dealing with character death. Dilemma: We all know that death currently doesn't mean much (except loosing your gathered equipment), it means so little that most people almost shrug it off when their character dies, they just do a quick run in Cherno, Elektro and move up to NWAF or something of the like. To me its contradictory that the game itself can be so tense and harsh, but the hardest thing that happens to your character can be dealt with so easily. It just doesn't feel right to me - maybe someone else thinks the same way about it. Possible ideas to implement this (just something I came up with, I'm sure there are more ideas): To make death more meaningful, after you die you should "come back" very slowly, maybe 10-20 minutes of the screen slowly going from all black to brighter until you see the DayZ logo and then you pop up on the beach. Respawn the player as spectator bird somewhere random on the map, after flying around for several minutes (10-20 again) he will be spawned as survivor on the coast. Yes I know ... CS. You just see your character lying there, being consumed by infected or looted by other survivors for a certain time. In any case it should be non-religious, or not connected to any known religion.

Ok - just to keep everyone on track. This is NOT about penalizing death, once again the suggestions I listed are ideas, not necessarily the way it must be. The main penalty for dying obviously is loosing all your gear and any progress you have made. Its about making the experience of your character dying to have more of an emotional impact, being more significant than it currently is. Its also not about role play, but just being more connected to your character and your previous story you experienced in the game. Maybe its too much to ask from people who just kill - respawn - kill - respawn all the time, but imo it would brilliant to have a proper ending to the adventures you had with your character, not just a "You are dead" screen.

but forgot to communicate to you what my intentions are and just went in guns blazing.

I've given up for the moment, it seems whatever version of the beta I install I'm getting "Wait for host" and each server also has a different flavour of the beta running. Waiting until the dust from the recent update tornado has settled a bit seems like the best solution for me. I just don't have the time on weekends to try out all these different tips & tricks on how to get it working..

I'm really torn on this. There are many MMO engines that offer much better multiplayer handling, security and frameworks for such a massive game that DayZ may grow up to. On the other hand ARMA 3 is really not that far away and it is expected to be less problematic than the ARMA 2 engine + there is the insider knowledge and the great support BIS has given towards DayZ, so not using it would almost be like biting the hand that feeds you. Whatever platform or 3D engine Rocket decides to go with, anything will have better collision detection, usability standars and world physics than ARMA 2 does, so it doesn't really matter.

So when will this end? In the server browser list almost every second server is of a different flavour, has either a different beta version or mod version, different settings and naming schemes, its a complete chaos to me. Personally I think its really time that this mod gets official patches and downloads that sets everything on one beta/alpha version during development cycles. At the moment this has become the most frustrating factor in trying to get things running for me and my buddies, we spend about 2 hours before each session just to figure out which files we need, some have SixLauncher, some have Armarize, others do it manually, anyway somehow half of us end up not being able to play and the other half has a different version of the game or lost their config files, few are able to actually find a server and play (once we've found a server that matches everyone's version and actually is visible in Gamespy / Sixlauncher etc.). Sadly it usually ends with most of us just having to quit and attend to RL issues. Unfortunately most of us have only around 4-5 hours per weekend were we can play this really really great mod :-/ I would dearly wish that there would be one official version and settings for all servers and clients, so that everyone is on one level for testing the alpha or beta, Currently there seem to be something like 30 different levels/settings people are playing on. This has happened to so many other ARMA 2 mods before and its just a really messy solution. For DayZ I'd really wish (even during alpha stage) that we don't just jump from one snapshot to the other like a dog chasing cars. I am not complaining about the hard work and time Rocket and the rest of the dev team have put in and how fast they react and add things into the game, but to the way that their hard work isn't accessible in a unified non-anarchic manner; it makes the state of the mod look extremely whimsy when its in fact quite good. Just as an example a snapshot today as attachment.

All rifles at least have little puffs, but not that extreme as in your video, it seems to be some graphics setting or your video card driver settings that mess things up.

Your backpack stays as long on the floor as other items. Without having any exact number or info, I'd guess it gets cleaned up within the same time as a player body does, so about 15 minutes. What I have been able to do is retrieve my backpack several minutes after loosing it by swimming, so I'm pretty sure it behaves like any object put to the ground.

Actually this game is just out to promote a remake of the song "Da doo run run" by Justin Bieber. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVzmEq1KnVw

Thats an easy one! Exactly 17 minutes and 23 seconds, 79ms.

Ok - but once you die - does it affect you on the same emotional level like for example encountering another player? For most people once there character dies, this does not affect them at all, they just click away the You are dead screen, click on respawn and jump back into the fray, possibly try to do a corpse run. This idea is about making character death also have an emotional impact and cause the player maybe to reflect on the death. This is the word I've been fishing for all the time, not a native speaker :-D Character Death needs to be more significant indeed!

There have already been other suggestions discussing foraging for food.

So what about Bandits that go the extra mile? Who track down players over several kilometres, who set up honey-pot traps, who camp out for 20-30 minutes patiently waiting for the perfect shot? They get penalized? Nope I'm against a honour system of any kind, it would put emphasis to only one side of the medal and that's not what this game is about. Also your suggestion reads like the game principle is frustrating for you, not for everyone.