ThugAim

These hacks were annoying in ArmA 2 a few years ago but in DayZ they add even more frustration. You can ban them but ArmA 2s protection against hacks has always seemed a bit poor (I'm only judging this by the fact I faced hackers weekly for a year when I used to play ArmA 2 a lot). Hopefully ArmA 3 will have better protection or the mod can be fitted with safeguards, either way I love this mod, keep up the good work guys.

Ok guys I'm going to tell you/show you the most horrific thing that has happened to me on DayZ to date. I logged onto a European server around 8pm GMT yesterday with a friend of mine. I had been drinking a little and it was getting dark outside of my window. I had my speakers on and me and the friend were talking on skype, trying to meet up in game. I was low on blood around 3800 at the docks in Elektro and I lost connection to the server, when I reconnected I was passed out for some reason. Then I realised all around me were black figures. Great I thought zombies spawned on me now I'm going to die. Then I realised they weren't attacking me, but they were moving around me. For some reason I took ages to regain conciousness, when I did come to what I saw was utterly terrifying. Around 10 priests running around me, my first thought was zombies, but they weren't zombies, they were alive. I tried to get a screencap but soon learned that ArmA2 doesn't like print screen. I moved away from the priests and they followed me. I was freaked out but I thought ok this is kinda cool, then I heard a voice on the speaker, it was Russian or some kind of Eastern-bloc language (I couldn't tell). I was freaked the hell out, most likely it was someone on direct communication but I saw no one but the priests. Soon enough a large group of zombies was migrating towards me and the priests, the small jumping zombies sprinted towards me at a huge speed even though I was not moving and far from them lying down. I ran and the priests sprinted after me, we sprinted through elektro industrial area together until I got caught in a bush and got knocked out/eaten. During this whole thing I was ranting on skype to my friend about it, he was sceptical and asked for screenshots which I couldn't provide. Then it happened. He saw old women in the forests he was in near Rog Castle. That wasn't the end though, he saw priests as well, but wait for it. WITH HATCHES IN THEIR HANDS. We thought it was hackers or something crazy but we soon realised they must be AIs. I had re-spawned near elektro and headed back into town to find out more. The rest of the night resulted in horrible sightings of large groups of priests, standing their watching, waiting. I found a group in all-round-defence around a building, the ones on the outside in prone and one in the middle standing, watching. I stood on the fire station in elektro and watched as a arrow-head formation of priests attracted zombies from all around, the zombies were slowly (not aggro) moving towards the priests. They didn't attack the priests and the priests didn't attack them, they stood there. I looked at the debug monitor and it showed there were only 30 zombies alive, I realised it was getting late and lots of people must have left the server (I checked later and there were only 6 people on). Soon the number raised to around 60/70 and I looked around and more and more zombies were coming to the priests. I counted around 40 zombies around me and realised most the zombies in the server were near me. Me and my friends first thoughts were that they were bugged AIs accidently spawning in the game like zombies. Then we thought maybe hackers had hit the server (we decided against this). Then we thought the server owner had edited his server somehow (we also decided against this). The more and more we watched the priests the more we began to think that they were not just spawning but they had some kind of AI in them. What are the chances of the AI that spawned being old women and priests (creepy priests) instead of something less scary like Russian civies. The way they brought zombies, I thought to myself, it's like a mistake in the coding of the mod, the priest. The priest puts itself on servers and creates masses of priests who are ring leaders for the zombies, calling them from the undead to take the server as their own. The priest is like agent smith, the minion priests are other agents. Either way it was terrifying (it should be implemented to the game, zombie ring leaders that call zombies to them then walk through towns/woods with hordes behind them) Needless to say this was one of the most horrific things that has happened to me on DayZ. I checked and it was 4am GMT. I went to sleep and woke up this morning. I have scattered photos and videos we managed to get of the priests in the end, I'll link them below. On a side note one time I spawned I didn't have the normal skin but had the skin of an American soldier with digital pattern, knee pads etc. and no backpack. When I died I went back to the normal skin (I have no pic of this, I died before I installed a program capable of capturing ArmA2). Also the priest used side chat and sent messages you see on ArmA such as "Check your fire" etc. The weird thing, side chat is disabled. Pics: http://i.imgur.com/EJQzL.jpg http://i.imgur.com/T7IN7.jpg http://i.imgur.com/LH7Ve.jpg http://i.imgur.com/rvqLn.jpg http://i.imgur.com/qJ6Cp.jpg http://i.imgur.com/v4eOd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tuVLH.jpg http://i.imgur.com/NgKAE.jpg http://i.imgur.com/rJgxh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/YIiMZ.png http://i.imgur.com/P0JMQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/HpyZS.jpg (my favourite) http://i.imgur.com/tv7bS.jpg http://i.imgur.com/i2u23.jpg http://i.imgur.com/aDXUa.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RTyIw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/rV706.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OAfiu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/IcZCZ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JUSNY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5u5Nh.jpg http://i.imgur.com/jDHdR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/prVQj.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JaXCK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/lDVC4.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oTlOy.jpg http://i.imgur.com/iu5nO.jpg http://i.imgur.com/I3ZAK.jpg http://i.imgur.com/O5qXR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/CwIqR.jpg http://i.imgur.com/fcUI2.jpg http://i.imgur.com/1Gl20.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Q7hf8.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JLpIw.jpg http://i.imgur.com/oLZMA.jpg I will upload a video later and post a link here. (EDIT: It's uploading now, pretty bad quality video because I didn't have time to set screencap program up properly.) Good luck out there guys, beware the priest.

If you swim then just before you reach land tap prone a bunch of times you can swim through the land. This "glitch" doesn't really offer any unfair benefit to someone other than it being funny but yeah it's a bug. I found a video that explains it better than me (some inappropriate language):

Then report it in the bugs/suggestion area, not the general discussion.

This is why they should develop more in depth difficulty levels for servers. The difficulty levels/settings could vary loads of things ranging from strength/amount/eyesight of zombies to things like food scarcity. This way people who like more food and easier zombies can play that way and people who like tactically playing the game like a survival game can play their way. Everyone enjoys the game. Everyone is happy. Less people posting threads like "dis game sucks now, the update ruined it, too hard, too easy, too much, too less, things were different when I first started playing, I'm scared of change." etc.

Firstly, it's in alpha. Obviously the AI stuff is going to be far from finished. If you have a problem with the game just send some constructive feedback such as "oh I've noticed zombies are a bit too challenging and seem to wander towards me even if I am being stealthy and have no sound/visual output". Don't write feedback such as "zombies too hard, dis game sucks, wah wah wah" It doesn't help anyone, if you really have a problem with the game and want it fixed then make your feedback mature and constructive or it won't be listened to. Also finally your comment "shooting a rifle inside a town will make all the zombies in the area swam to you" made me laugh. Obviously this will happen, have you ever fired a rifle? They are incredibly loud and can be heard from a long way away. Add that to the fact that zombies have better hearing than humans (I think?) and are hungry for flesh, then of course they will run towards a loud unnatural source of sound, because they will probably think that it is FOOOOOD. Side note (not directly relevant to the game but to zombie apocalypse's in general): I laughed at the idea of you thinking it is acceptable in a zombie apocalypse to fire you rifle in a town. Non silent weapons should be a last resort (can't wait for melee weapons to be implemented) surely you have seen enough zombie movies to know that.

I don't mean to be offensive and I love the idea of writing stories for games (I have done similar things many times in the past.) but as someone who studies English seeing all the comma splicing, grammatical errors and random tense changes made me cringe. However I presume that English isn't your first language? Anyway It's probably just me, I always notice/get annoyed by that kind of stuff. Other than that great work in my opinion.

Ok after seeing this thread I decided to make an account on the forums and reply, so this is my first post on here. Here's what I think: -Game purchase only (sort of like minecraft), maybe a DLC for ARMA -Studio developed but with plenty of community feedback -Both community and studio servers Ok you will probably hate on me for the next things I say but bear with me. I think you should be allowed to host private servers personally. I have a gaming community that I play with (roughly 500 people) and we like to play together. We don't work together in the game (there are still plenty of bandits and pvpers), but I like knowing that the other players in the server are decent players (unlike a lot of people I have seen spamming chats, using cheats or glitches, disconnecting to avoid being pvped, etc.) I know you can implement things into the game to stop this stuff happening, but let's be honest, we all know it will always happen. Playing with my gaming community prevents this and makes my gameplay much more enjoyable. I also enjoy seeing the same people every so often on the server. However, this is not possible to do a lot of the time, freedom given to players to host servers and edit them how they want is restricted. To enjoy my game with my community a lot of the time I end up having to run cracked servers, which I really don't want to do but it is the only way I can do it. I have run cracked servers for games such as minecraft, killing floor and teamfortress and many more. Yes I did buy the games and support the devs, I have an official copy of arma2 purchased for full retail price, and no I don't gain any monetary benefit from hosting these servers (infact I lose a significant amount of money out of my income to host them), I don't charge people to play on them or anything like that. But I end up having to play around with the files and host cracked servers and I really don't like it but it is the only way to enjoy the game with my community. Currently I run a day-z mod cracked server (here comes my ban...) I have only got the 1.6 version to work at the moment and I hate having to do something that is disallowed and looked down upon by the large sum of the community but it is the only way for me to do this. I looked at the requirements for hosting a server and I just don't meet them because I want much more freedom in how I operate and edit it. I realise a lot of you won't understand why I would do this and would prefer to let the day-z devs control the servers but I will always host my own because it is how I enjoy playing the games. At the moment however hosting my own involves breaking terms of services (and probably the law?), doing something the devs and community disapprove of (even though I love this game and support it so much). What do you guys think as members of this games community? Would you mind if people were allowed to run private servers with their communities or friends, servers that they could edit freely to their own desire, without restrictions or rules? Surely it wouldn't affect you as a normal player, as you would not play on these servers unless invited to one and it would not affect the devs as the servers are run at the cost of the private people hosting them. So why do I have to go to such dirty methods as running a cracked server just to have an enjoyable experience? Thanks for any replies or feedback.