EvilFrog

I've been playing Dayz for a long time now, I started back in June of last year I think. I rarely feel the need to post about the mod or changes to it, but this recent change is pretty bad. Pretty much the way the game plays now is run around and collect loot until you get infected, then stash the loot somewhere and kill yourself. There is no reasonable way to eliminate the chance of infection or to cure the infection once you have it. It's pretty much a death sentence at this point. The problem with this mechanic is that it's NOT challenging, it's punishing. Challenging is something that makes you have to think about how to handle a game mechanic and forces the engagement of the player with that mechanic; challenging is something that immerses you deeper in the game. Punishing is a mechanic that needlessly forces the player to replicate effort or to abuse other game mechanics in order to deal with an unnecessarily painful game mechanic. Think of it like this, with these new changes, players are less likely to be risk adverse, since there is no reasonable way to stay alive with the current state of infection for a long period of time in a zombie infested area. It is mathematically better to simply run in grab everything you can, and then suicide in a better area and recover the body if you are infected. The opportunity costs for trying to stock up on enough antibiotics is simply too high to bother not abusing the re-spawn mechanic. This is not "harder" game play by any means, instead it breaks immersion by making the time costs of using an immersion breaking mechanic--respawn--less than using a much less jarring mechanic--finding antibiotics in hospitals regularly. I know that there are larger plans for the mod and more ways to cure or prevent the infection, but adding in the infection system without the counter to it was simply a poor decision.

How is it a private hive when gear from that server updates to and from other official servers? this is definitely on the official hive.

It's not a private hive, it's an official server. These guys run a carebear wonderland, and ban anyone they suspect of PVP... This isn't in the spirit of DayZ and shouldn't be allowed on the official hive. Suggest everyone that likes banditry log into this server and get a few kills before it gets taken down!