oompah

wait - say that again, i didn't folow exactly... You think the cities will be full of snipers all sniping at each other building to building then?

LOL - really bro?

since there might not as many "hot spots" and people will be spread out a lot more you'd have to figure sniping won't be as popular a thing to do. i mean in the mod, yea sure go set up on the hill above elektro and have fun with it, but there should be FAR less people running around elektro now - I guess it all depends on if new hot spots develop or if the diversity of loot and locations does keep every spread out - I like the idea of less sniper spots

you have to wonder in the big cities with all the high rises providing great sniper locations, once the game is fleshed out and there are proper sniper rifles, will players avoid those cities as to not just be sniper bait? Will snipers then quit going there also? These new enterable high rises are really going to change things

but the map has expanded by 20% - isn't that what we were told? And it does make a difference: aka comparing a barracks to a town/city - when there is a location to loot and it's one building you will encounter players there, but if it a set of 20 buildings, spread out, all enterable - 3 or 4 people could be looting and never see each other. When a tree falls in the forest and no one is there does it really make a sound?

you see people a lot now because everyone is at starry, the airfields, or the other cities along the coast. How often do you see people in vybor? I understand your concern of player density but you underestimate the raw size of the map - it seems "small" to you because everyone is condensed, the current map might as well be 50% smaller because so much of it is dead space

well I think your point is you dont want to encountering people as often, and I agree - pvp experiences are best when they are rare. Probably in the SA players will spend more time in the closest area to them rather than all running to NWAF it's a good debate though, will 100 players on the new cherno feel the same as 50 on the old cherno? Would you rather play the game knowing there is a high probability of seeing players in certain spots and very low probablity of seeing players in other spots, or see the entire probability smooth out over the entire map. interesting disucssion really, because i think the pvp stuff early on was really really engaging and hooked people. I know for a long time i woudl avoid starry and NW because I was scurrred of getting killed, then later I would go there looking for action. Seems like in the new cherno you might more often see people at less predictable places

I'm like you though, I want player versus player interaction to be rare and suspenseful - I don't want to constantly be running into people

also the map is now broken up with more usable locations, more towns, more buildings - not as much dead space - so while basically 70% of the old map was ignored - since it was just woods, now that number is much smaller - it's almost reversed (if I remember right) - now only 30% of the map is woods. So basically the player population will be a lot less dense since not everyone will be in one of 5 hotspots. 50 players on the new cherno now sounds a lot more naked than in the mod

no i thought the map did grow by a fair amount right? Didn't they also add an island? (can't remember the name - it's the PVP map in the mod) - oh it's Utes even without all the new buildings and such the map still is like 20% larger - amiwrong?

well total square footage of exploration just grew by a very very large number when you consider #1 most buildings are enterable #2 there are a lot more buildings #3 the buildings are much larger (high rises) so even if the map is only slightly larger - there is much much more square footage to explore and hide in - you could have 4 or 5 people in the same high rise and never see each other also they were talking about adding the ability to go under water in useful ways (like Arma 3). So if that also happens 50 players on a server might be a tiny number

I know a big problem for us was just getting conencted to a server and that server being online - we might have started on US 69 but tomorrow find it's offline etc... Or we are playing and suddenly our ping is 2000 ms and we had to get off - we might have spent an hour or two JUST getting together and meeting up. That was always a big pain for us - work is over and we wanted to play Dayz for a few hours - how long was it going to take just to team up and find each other. If when you switch servers you are randomly coast bound without gear - man that would suck

yea loot harvesting on an empty server is a problem, good point. I would still perfer to see a way to make server hopping work by allowing a player to stay in their map spot (especially since the map is so enormous and it takes so much time and energy to get to some places) and retain their gear. There must be a happy medium. I play with my son at various locations - we play at my office sometimes, sometimes at home, other guys at the office play also - we might not play for a week - I don't even remember the server I played on last, we are on different computers a lot (speaking of the original vanilla Dayz here). Would be a real bummer to be crafting an excellent story - fight up to NWAF - come back a day later and be somewhere on the coast, gearless I guess you end up either catering more to the casual player or the hardcore player base in how you handle it

and I also don't like in-game created trade shops and outposts, unless they are just non functioning prop locations - like the hospitals and such. I don't like the NPC character driven trader center and so forth in the mods of dayz - someone said it well, let's players create their own if it evolves organically and never introduce currency - allow that to evolve organically as well - (aka players will invent currency and trading posts if it is meant to be)

just to keep things going and I am bored at work #1 all the major cities should be near the water assuming you all care about immersion, almost all major cities IRL are near water ports since that was a major mode of transporation for goods/trade etc..., cities all sprung up around major ports. #2 I fully agree with the opinion that you should respawn in the same spot you logged off when hopping servers. However there should be a way to prevent that being abused. You could possibly introduce a back off and wait algorithm based on how regularly a person is doing it. If you are logging back in on another server for the first time since last week, then no penalty. If you are logging back in from 30 seconds ago into another server there is a penalty (maybe you are forced to sit out a cool down period, maybe you can not pick up any new loot for 5 minutes) - if it is the 3rd time you've done so in 5 minutes the penalty escalates. There are many ways to give players the conveanance of logging into whatever server they want and at the same time prevent malicious use of hopping.

oh and btw - the game looks freakin' awesome in that last stream solid work boys

I just think they want the early access release out as soon as possible. "as soon as possible" being hard to define as core parts of the game are a work in progress. relax, go get some fresh air, when they decide it's good enough for an early access release it will be out - good lord how many more people are going to insist on a hard and fast date - THEY DON'T KNOW

sorry to be repetitive (if I am being so) - but last I heard the BI team was going to do a big stress test Friday and re-evaluate things after that. Did that happen? Were the results positive?

I dunno is it just me or does the whole "selecting people to pre-early release alpha test" outrage crack anyone else up? I mean, shit Rocket it's your game do whatever you want. It's very nice of you to ask for opinions, but damn dude do whatever you think will get you the best results.

hey guys you are just going to have to accept a few things #1 Rocket and the other guys posting are just trying to give you some information. #2 Sometimes they change their minds. I get a pretty good feeling here that when they do (change their minds), they are just doing what they feel is best and not trying to hurt or alienate anyone. Honestly get over quoting him from 20 days or 6 months months ago. What they are doing (making this game) is a pretty tough task and... things change, their ideas change, their approach changes, target dates move etc.... Sounds like an early release is happening within the next month or so - just try to take a deep breath and relax...

I really don't think Rocket knows when. I know that when my group works on apps (we write cloud software) we really don't know when they will be ready - you have a good sense of when you are closing in on the finish line, but it really isn't ready until it is ready - like he said one seemingly little issue can actually be complex to reverse engineer and something that seems like a real systemic issue is fixed in 5 minutes amazingly. It sounds like they are feeling like they are getting close. I will say one thing from experience here - once they do release the early access they will begin fixing and improving things very very rapidly - morale will be high, feedback will spur them on and I believe they'll enter a phase of accelerated discovery and improvement

very awesome thanks for taking time to feed the train...

not calling you guys goofy for wanting a game, calling you goofy for acting like you are owed or entitled to it

you guys are goofy - Rocket and his team/the studio/BI whomever could just decide to wait 5 years to release the game or to not make the game and kill it off. You are not owed or entitled to anything. What the hell is going on in this world?

where was is stated the studio is closing for two or three weeks over the holidays? I would imagine from Dec 23 to Jan 2 there won't be a full staff in there, but are they really closing the entire studio down? my guess however is there is almost no chance the early access will release in December; it appears they still have work to do and things will be winding down soon. I would totally speculate here but if they are close to having the core parts in they want for "launch" then they'll want a few months for more QA and polish. If they are very close today I'd say we will be looking at a March time frame. Thing is I am ALWAYS wrong about stuff like this so here's to some good reverse juju