mercules

What competition? So far all we have seen is poor knock-offs with poorly thought out game play and WORSE interfaces. :)

So... Addressing some of the biggest complaints of the Mod and trying to fix them will not has nothing to do with whether the game will be good? :huh: Buggy inventory system and poor interface has been a complaint since day 1 of DayZ. Player interacts, or lack of any that don't involve an immediate bullet, has been a big complaint lately. Item degradation goes back to the player interaction and complaints about finding something and then having nothing else to do besides find someone and shoot them. Having to constantly replace gear and having the chance of ruining the gear of someone you shoot will change the game interactions.

I will happily force play-styles on people... we don't want Farmville influencing how something like DayZ plays, for example. We don't want people to get ammo from a Candycrush mini-game in DayZ. We don't want DukeNukem quips when you shoot another player or zombie. We don't want to play DayZ on a Battlefield 3 map. All those things are play-styles.

This is what I meant when I said: I'd be happy if BI made it a $5 a month subscription and eliminated privately owned servers.

Yes and no. In Epoch you can "trade" your way up into a decent gun instead of running the same loot spawns over and over but that really isn't any easier. For example a DMR is 4 gold and the ammo 8 silver on a server that doesn't have tons of vehicles and all the other things you can find on a private server making it easier, you are talking about finding a few good guns and trading them in and saving up. That is 4 AKs for the gun and a little under an AK or M16. Now 8 Lee Enfields = a DMR mag so you tend to go to the places you might find a DMR anyway unless you get lucky and find a vehicle you can get to a trader in a good condition and sell. The issue is that more than half the Epoch servers out there have towing and 400+ vehicles so it's easy to make gold on them. Saving up to buy a locked vehicle and then for things like Plot Poles to protect your built structures from being simply removed or someone building up to them(build a ladder over a wall anyone) is a serious investment in time and energy on a server where a normal amount of vehicles spawn like 50 and a single person can't ferry numerous vehicles over and over. The OP needs to not play on the "Self Bloodbag - 1000+ vehicles - custom loadout - Tow&Lift" servers.

"Do it again! Only... less dying this time."

Two things, both in Breaking Point which I no longer play. So Breaking Point has an Aircraft Carrier not far off shore. It is fully of decent loot but you need a chopper to access it. Sad thing about it is that if the server resets with a chopper sitting there, the chopper blows up. Soooooooo... One night bored I fly out to the AC as no one is online to snipe me. I run down to the front end(death sentence when people are on) and then run back and start grabbing useful ammo and guns and loading up my chopper with what I can. Suddenly things locked up. I waited and it looks like the server shut down. Server shut down... Helicopter blows up on reboot... anticipation huh? I log back in after it comes up and there is a lot of smoke and no helicopter. I've had this happen before and basically died trying to hit the water and swim to shore so now I am stuck. I know that no friends will be on soon and we don't have a second helicopter so I would basically be stuck until they found one and could fly out and rescue me. Instead I start hopping servers as it is a Hive System. First I pick empty ones. I guess everyone knows they blow up on restart and so avoid leaving them there and logging out. Then I move to occupied servers. I wait patiently until I hear a chopper coming in. Finally one lands and I watch it from cover to see how many people. One guy seems perfect and I am about to ambush him when I hear a second chopper. It lands further down the deck and I wonder if I am going to watch a fight. Nope, they are friends and start looting together. I wait until the one guy is inside or on the upper structure and so can't easily help the other and for his friend to be in a good position. Finally I get my chance and I pop out of cover, mow the one down and hop in the bigger chopper. The Little Bird is down the deck and I am sitting there waiting for the rotors to spin up and watching for the second guy. I finally launch up in the chopper, spin it around and strafe down the deck launching the missiles in it(yeah it had missiles) and blow up the Little Bird so he can't follow me. I fly up to near where on the other server we have some tents and vehicles, but not too near, then answer their upset messages in Side Chat. I thank them and let them know where their chopper will be sitting. Even left them a silenced pistol with a bunch of ammo as a gift but they were less than thrilled with me. Believe me I got off that server in a hurry. Next one was again Breaking Point. My buddy and I were hunting freshspawn snipers around Elektro and are opposite sniper hill in the trees across the valley. We were just leaving the area when we hear vehicles. 4 guys show up in two HMMWVs. We were in a bad area. Lots of tree trunks but not a lot of hiding area. 4 of them heading towards a good sniping position overlooking Elektro? We made a choice and since they were nice enough to bunch up and stop for a second to do something we opened up on all 4 of them. Three down right away and the 4th put some bullets into my tree before I dropped him. My friend finished him off. We took their GPS and their vehicles but were kind enough to leave their bodies since we checked and they are not officially "bandits" according to the humanity thing, we each had 2 murders. They were NOT happy and side chat lit up for a bit while we raced away in our stolen cars.

Sorry, there is Sci-Fi and then there is Science-Fantasy. "Proper Zombies" as you guys are calling them are Science-Fantasy zombies, undead beings that are brought back to life. The "Infected Zombies" of "28 Days Later" and "Quarentine" are Science Fiction zombies, in other words they are much more reasonable from a realistic point of view despite lacking the proper means to create them now. We are talking degrees of unrealistic here, but I, for one, prefer the more plausible zombies. It is the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars. One is plausible(in fact there is a theoretical warp drive design out there) and the other fantasy. I hope they continue to use the more plausible "Infected" and not the silly "Undead".

I think you completely missed my point. Don't have servers hosted by private individuals. The servers need to be hosted by Bohemia or something else or else there will be someone who will abuse the system on their server. Despite being an official hive there are many people who can't handle the temptation to use whatever level of access they DO have to influence their game play. During SA start it will not be on privately hosted servers and that will eliminate "admin abuse" because the "admins" will be either trusted volunteers who will not want to lose the privlege of working with the DayZ development team or getting actual paychecks for their efforts not some "dude" who dropped $30 for a server and feels he is owed some advantage.

If I hadn't found an M14 and other decent items I would have believed it had been looted and someone dropped it there to pick something else up.

Where is the vomiting smiley? Some people like "undead zombies" and some like "infected zombies" I prefer the later like those in "28 Days Later" and "Quarentine" since they are more probable(still extremely unlikely) than "undead zombies".

Imagine there are 40 zombies heading in your direction and you can't easily glitch them out or lose them by running through a building. You have two guns but can only fire one. Standing next to you is a complete stranger who seems scared but otherwise not threatening. So you would honestly try to shoot 40 zombies yourself before they reached you instead of giving this other guy your pistol and keeping your rifle so you could both shoot the zombies down and survive? How foolishly paranoid are some people?

Does this go back to the FPS adage of, "When I shoot you it's skill... when you shoot me it's hacks, lag, or some other nefarious doings."?

1. Meleeing people, since most play on 3rd person view servers, tend to forget that they might be shaking from pain and need painkillers. 2. if you were getting "overburdened" then you were carrying too much crap for too long and only REST will clear up the issue. If you hear your heartbeat find a safe spot, hit the dirt to be less of a target, and wait for it to go away... then count to 20 slowly. Otherwise it will come right back up. Drop the crap you can't carry far like Cinderblocks, main rotors, tank traps. While useful for repairing and building the only slow you down if you are not actively doing that. If you have a vehicle that is a different story, but until you do, don't bother. Epoch uses the reality system and it is very easy to wear yourself out and even kill yourself because you can pass out from it and doing so while being chased by a bunch of zombies or shot it is fatal. ;) 3. It needs more annoyances, as you call them, because the game is about survival and that means making tough choices. Epoch for example. You find a Fuel Barrel in a barn and you know there is a helicopter you passed in a field about a klick away. It is otherwise in a condition it can be flown although it might need some more work to be fully safe. The Fuel Barrel is heavy and will slow you down... a lot... and you don't have a lot of ammo but this is your best shot at getting a helicopter which could get you to somewhere you can gear up easier. So now you have to shoot the zombies you avoided coming into the barn because they won't take long to get out and with the heavy fuel barrel you will have to stop and take breaks. So, you could pass up the helicopter and ignore the zombies or take them out and get the fuel barrel up to the helicopter.

There is a huge contradiction in your statement there. If the zombies are a threat then the other players won't be the "big threat". Why do I say this? How many zombies do you see and how many players? Zombies will be a lot of smaller threats but look to be much more of a threat in the SA as they can run while inside buildings and are supposed to have much better pathing allowing them to run you down and kill you. You won't be able to hide in a bush/pine tree or shoot them carefully as they slowly walk towards you in a building or go in one door and out the other and lose them. You will have to deal with them and they will be a threat and probably a more urgent threat because they will not be cautious like another player would be and there will be multiples to deal with. Also, it looks like you haven't checked out SA. Zombies will no longer spawn near loot. You can be anywhere and have a zombie wander into you. They will spawn on server start and then continue to spawn slowly as they are taken out. This means no more camping in a pine tree for hours outside of spawn areas sniping because a herd of zombies could walk up behind you without you being aware of it and swarm you when you fire. They look to be a persistent and active threat which will make certain ways of playing the game less viable.

Solution... don't have admins. The issue is that even official servers are hosted by "people" and for every trustworthy admin who will play level and fair there will be one who will find away to use his ownership of the server to his advantage. Looks like, at least at first, Stand Alone might resolve that issue.

I found a crash site on Sunday. I was heading towards a string of Deerstands I knew were in the area because I STILL need matches( I have found duplicate maps, binoculars, knives and such but can't find one box of matches). Clear a rise and there in the middle of the field is a bonfire of color in the middle of a rather dark night. I immediately dropped my glow stick and extinguished it. It shouldn't have been visible too far away since I was using blue, but that becomes a high risk away. I did a quick search of the area with binoculars(wish I had Range Finders with their NV mode) but it was too dark to really be sure so I decided to just go for it. I was in a more remote area, very few players on at the moment, and there were a lot of zombies so out came the AK and I took them down as I approached the wreck. It was worth it, I got an M14 Aim and DMR mag was well as a Main Rotor and some other sundries. Hear that? Legitamate M14 not one looted from glitched spawns. :)

Then the vast majority of Bandits are "lousy" to use your term.

Please don't ever try Starbucks coffee then. They over roast their beans and most of their processes really ruin coffee. The thing most likely to end me will be trying to make sure the people I love are safe. My kids live about 2-2.5 hours away by car. Roughly 120 miles from me. If there is a panic it will be difficult to reach them so unless everything breaks down when I have them... I've got a half dozen places I could try and hole up here although up there near them there are more so I would likely bite it on the journey. Luckily I still have a pretty good collection of books not yet on my kindle so I might be able to keep from going crazy from doing nothing but surviving. Then again, might be my glasses being broken or me running out of contact supplies that might do me in. I'll be like Piggy in Lord of the Flies.

Blaming the "victim"? Imagine that. Well officer, he was dress like a newspawn without a backpack but he had more than a flashlight in his hands. You can't blame me for him walking around all provocative like that, I had to shoot him.

The AR has more potential deadliness, but you can die from a pistol shot just as easily as an M4A1 as many players have found out. When you see things in side chat like, "WTF? I just got killed by a pistol. LOL." understand they can happen. I've killed a guy who had an AK with a revolver. Saw him running for the corner store so I ducked around the corner in one of the rooms and kept still and quiet, he went right past me and I unloaded into the back of his head. Going into the city where you don't have clear sight lines makes almost any weapon, a danger to you. That is why I have to respect those that actually enter the city to hunt and don't sit unseen 600 meters outside in a pine tree with a DMR.

I used to repair small engines in college at a job I had. I know how to cut hair properly, held a license at one point. I can gut a deer and cook it after stalking it. I can clean a gun and strip those I am familiar with. I was a first responder and am still certified in CPR and First Aid. I can take a computer and other electronics apart and do some simple repairs that require soldering. In highschool I helped my dad build and plumb houses as well as maintain his rentals. There are a ton of skills most people have that they can draw upon. Most the people I know have been through gun safety classes and know how to shoot one and I don't like in Texas. Some of us could actually use melee weapons effectively from Kendo or things like SCA. Heck I have friends that can actually forge blades from stock metal and a couple with enough machinist experience and tools that given the specifications from a book they could mill a crude gun. On the other hand I have friends that are actual dentist or EMTs. Even so I think such complicated weapons have no place in DayZ. Rifle, shotgun, pistol, heck even a tazer are good. Automatic Rifle and such are fine but more rare.

:rolleyes:

I would just be happy to have seasons.

It's a bit ironic that I can hit people on the move a bit better than I can hit people who are still. I'm not talking about people standing upright or even crouching in a location but people on the move. Not sure what it is but I spot someone breaking cover and running for the next location and my reactions kick in and line up the shot for me. My wife watching over my shoulder the other night said, "Nice shot." after I saw sudden movement at about 400 meters, went to the scope as I spun to line up the shot, and fired. Then I couldn't hit a person who's head and shoulders were out of cover, they didn't realize I had angle on them and thought the shots were coming from my friend in front of them. I get the feeling I think too much about my shots. ;)