TheRaptorFence

PDW. I'm a hatchet guy when it comes to zombie killing in cities but I keep the PDW for towns. It's iron sights are nasty, but its sheer volume of fire means if I need to hit the panic button I have the means. The ammo is plentiful, plus it's great to dissuade a player who might be gunning for me while I'm popping zed heads before I bring out the big guns.

This is true. I met my first Berezino survivor today as I was leaving town and all we said to each other was "Friendly!" I feel like he didn't want to deal with me and I didn't feel like shooting up anyone after having finally geared everything i wanted. I think a lot of survivors use it as their loot city for when they run low on certain supplies (I use it for magazines, medicine, and the occasional oddball item) and they aren't looking to get higher tier gear. If they want to do that they're heading to the northern airfields or castles.

I don't try any "robbing" tactics. Have before, but it never ends well for one of us. I'd rather know I have the upper hand at all times, and if that means a bullet to the brain then so be it. I'm not going to trust a guy I just robbed to not go looking for the first gun he finds and track me down because I effectively stranded him without his loot and he knows where it is (with me, of course!). No, I'm going to lobotomize that sucker with a 5.56, and honestly if someone was to do that to me I would totally understand. I don't cry when it happens, I just relish the run back to my caches and hope someday I find the man who gave me the gift of lead to repay him that kindness.

While this is virtual reality and an actual scientific experiment is a bit...difficult to pull off in such a scenario I wouldn't be surprised to find anthropologists and sociologists studying the interactions of players in DayZ (as has happened in WoW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident#Models_for_real-world_research), especially because there is a lot of authenticity to the interaction itself. It's true people don't go around shooting each other in real life, but the point of the game is to simulate an apocalyptic event beyond that which has been seen by mankind in thousands of years. Disasters such as the Japanese tsunami and Hurricane Katrina don't cut it because there is still a government to fall back on, a world which still exists beyond the event itself. I couldn't definitively say one way or another that DayZ's player interaction would hold up in a zombie apocalypse, but then again I don't know if I could say that until a global disaster on that apocalyptic level happened.

As evil as it is I'm happy that its moving people out of the cities. I feel like every time I went to a city it was a death sentence, so eventually I just stopped doing that. Have you ever even gone up to the castles such as Zub and Rog? I swear, there's so much military loot there and no one to stop you. Or even places like the base outside of Balota Airfield where there used to be only 4 deer stands, but now there's hospital and military loot as well. Maybe it's just me, but no bambis or casuals will go there, but I still hear shots coming from the control tower as two people duke it out over loot spawns that are long gone. I feel like people just aren't used to really getting down close to the ground and searching towns and villages, especially since early DayZ was all about running until you saw an enterable building then looking for loot. Last night a player was astounded when I told him that his "deserted" city had loot spawns outside of the doors of buildings. He came away with more beans and water than he could carry. If you haven't already look up an interactive DayZ map to understand just how many spawns there are and how many you as a player may be running past: http://dayzdb.com/map#2.139.060

I remember my very first time I ever dealt with a person. I was just getting the hang of the game, trying to make my way to Cherno (I was familiar with Arma2 and thought it'd be smart to head to the biggest city...) and had just found my first gun, a Makarov, and thought I was the shiz being all sneaky and stocking up on beans. I heard a person say something....was that my name I just heard? I turned around and this guy was saying "Hey, Raptor, hey..." and when I turned around he blew my legs out from under me, instantly crippling me, and then ran off laughing. I tried to crawl away but the zombies ran to his blast... But that wasn't the turning point for me. No, I thought I could be the courageous one after that. I could be the hero. I could be the one to hunt people like him and put them down! So I played and played, always saying "Friendly!" and sometimes getting a good response, and sometimes and axe to the skull. Until one day I was in Electro, had fresh-spawned, found a Kobra and was making my way out of town. I hadn't seen anyone yet and decided I could make one more pass through the supermarket...and as I ran up I froze, seeing this guy with a Lee Enfield in my face. My gun was raised, so was his, we just stood staring at each other. I was telling myself "If he shoots, you shoot." And he does, and surprisingly misses. I pump a half-clip into him, he's dead with a headshot by the third bullet. I run up to him, all jittery from the encounter, and start looting him when I turn back and realize that there is a dead zombie behind me, with a couple buddies waltzing through the door. It hits me...this guy was trying to save my life, shooting the zombies behind me that I hadn't noticed. I'd killed...a friendly. The guilt hits, I'm just talking into direct as if he can hear me, telling him I'm leaving his body intact, so sorry, and then shots fill the air, an AK-74. I'm thinking "I'm dead, I'm dead," but it just impacts glass. His travel buddy had seen the encounter, thought I was a bandit, and was trying to exact revenge. He ran me all the way to the firehouse by the factory, shooting the whole time. I got to the ladder, climbed to the roof, watched as he desperately tried to fend off zombies with his sidearm cursing at me. He went down not soon after. It was here that I realized there is no good in DayZ. It doesn't matter what you do, how much you give, how much you team, how many you save. Because in the end, we all die...we all end back crawling out of the surf. It doesn't matter if it's a zombie, or a bandit, or your teammate ran you over. Because in DayZ, we can't ever win, we can only die... ...And if I'm going to die, I might as well speed things up for everyone else. Because it won't matter, in the long run. Everything burns. Everyone dies. And if I'm going to die I'm going to spend my life surviving at the expense of others. So, how did you choose the dark side?

I never touched ground in Berezino until today, and I believe I have fallen in love. I built a loot circuit comprising Berezino, Dubrovka, and Krasnostav and ran it for four hours. In those four hours I never saw a single soul and picked myself up two tents worth of middle-upper grade loot. Though Dubrovka and Krasnostav are great, Berezino is imo the best city in Chernarus. First, it has a great amount of loot. 3 tree stands, 9 military spawns, two supermarkets, a church, a hospital, an office, a pub, and some nice barns and factories (in addition to the medium and minor loots). Second, all this loot is more spread out across the rolling hills than either Electro or Cherno. Coupled with the lack of tall buildings and steep hills means snipers are less of a worry and any people within the city are less likely to bump into each other. Line of sight is so small I'm sure I passed up a few people in my runs. Third, the loot is INTACT, with all the spawns full to the brim. While Cherno and Electro have some great spawns I was able to sweep Berezino five times, and four out of those five I came away with my pack bristling with guns, medicine, and tents. My goodness, the tents. In my first run I found eight. Eight! I was always happy if I found an AK in Cherno without dying. Here I was having to pass up AKs for the better loot next to them. Fourth, the place is deserted. I know that it was frequented by at least two other people because on two trips I found loot that I hadn't touched had been taken, and my last time someone had pitched a tent. However, i didn't see or hear a single soul, and never had any trouble dodging bullets like I had before. This was on a full server the entire time. Even though I've put in probably 50 hours or so I have never had this sort of luck before, and while this was on a private server the loot spawns were DayZ vanilla. Does anyone else have this sort of experience in Berezino, or am I just an extremely lucky noob to the northeast?

I've always loved DayZ's spawn points on the southern beach, which has a few benefits to it: -An instant PvP zone for people who want to jump each other -A certain amount of finesse required to grab gear and get out of these hot zones -A great starting point for noobs to get the basics down and learn by trial and error (the hard way...with a bandit's bullet in their face and a zombie chewing on their leg) -A nice transition from frantic pace to uneasy tension as a survivor heads north with their loot There are some disadvantages though that I see in these spawns: -That PvP zone? Yeah, that's ALL it is, 24/7, and heavily trafficked. -Many players never get to the "survival" stage where they settle down with a group or a tent because they are stuck in that constant loop of spawn, attempt to loot coastal city, die, repeat. -Loot in these areas is gone the second a server restarts as people grab and run, leaving very little reward in the "looting" aspect. -Few people ever explore the rest of the map. For many people the PvE aspect just isn't as interesting without players (and I'd say rightfully so), but it's sad to see so many deserted areas that imo are more deserving of heavy traffic than the southern area (I personally have been enjoying the northeast of Chernarus a lot lately). -It's the same strategy: Grab loot, head north. Can't really head south, and sticking around is a death sentence. Not much variety. Does anyone have any ideas as to how the community could make this better? One solution I was thinking of would be to extend the spawn points up to Nizhnoye or even Berezino. That way the cities are thinned out, and both Berezino and Krasnostav get some more traffic. Another solution could be to instead move the markers inland in a more random way. Keep some on the beaches, maybe even the majority, but have a few that spawn inland, maybe even deep inland. I'd be interested to start a game in that area between Cherno and Stary Sobor where there's no really big cities and looting isn't as simple as finding the biggest building and going to it. Just throwing some ideas out there. I really do think the spawns are good where they are, but I'm getting the juices flowing to see if there might be a better place to put them.