Atomizer

This, pretty much, this is why people spout "alpha", people could be nicer about it, but the fact is, so many people are bringing up issues that the devs have already announced will be changed, usually in the same way people suggest.

Actually, they are creating all weapons from scratch, they have not brought over anything from the mod/arma2. And I agree, DayZ is survival first, PvP can result from survival, however it is by no means a PvP game. And that's the beauty of the way they handle guns in SA, you might find a gun, but then you have to find rounds for that gun, and depending on the gun, you have to then find mags for it(mosin is the only one not needing a mag), there's only a few places you can find both m4s and mags and rounds in the same spot, but I imagine once they add more guns, then chance of finding the same mag/round types in the same building will go down drastically.

To be honest, I pre-ordered DayZ, and now have access to the alpha, and despite all the missing features and bugs(I dabble in game development, so I am somewhat aware of the process), I am enjoying it a hell of a lot more then the mod.

Its easy to have multiple characters, you just have a second steam account with a second copy of DayZ, people did that in the mod, and people are doing that in SA already. I wish I could just have a second character I use for solo play when my friends aren't around, and one for when my friends are around, however I agree with others in that it just introduces problems. If people want to do it, legit or otherwise, they need to do that ^

There was a patch that added player death if you log out while handcuffed, that looked like it might have been before the patch, but if that happened now, he would be dead, add a "character remains in game for 30 seconds" mechanic, and even if he logged off before he got handcuffed, he would still end up dead(after the 30 seconds were up, since he is handcuffed, he would die, and should leave a corpse)

You do bring up good points, I would love to actually have moon phases though, and new moons should have next to no light, but even during say, a full moon, inside buildings etc should be dark enough to warrant some kind of light source. The other issue IS because of the gamma/brightness issue, you can't prevent people from exploiting it without literately making it pitch black(ie, no amount of tweaking will show any detail), and then only allowing detail when using a light source. Obviously the sky would be slightly brighter to allow for silhouetting. But otherwise, you'd start out with a flashlight, so you can actually see, and then you find gas lanterns, chem lights, flares etc As for batteries, I usually come across a couple, heck in one life I had come across 4 extra batteries, I have stopped picking them up though as currently I rarely need to use my torch. As far as I can tell, the issue with the flashlights, is at night time, there is no shadows at all, I believe that's because they are reworking the night time shaders(correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think arma had shadows at night either), and they haven't added shadows to nighttime yet, thus the light isn't being occluded by walls etc. Once they add shadows to the night shaders, this issue should disappear...mostly.

That's like tracking people who run away from other players, then slapping them with a punishment after they run away enough times. I should have kept it simple, everyone logging out, regardless of if they are in combat or not: 30 seconds, if someone tries to log out to avoid combat(or, "combat log"), their character will remain stationary for 30 seconds, if they are not killed, handcuffed or knocked unconscious during that time, it can be considered that they "escaped". If they log off in a safe place, like in the forest somewhere in a bush, its unlikely someone will find them within that 30 seconds. Any "log off" punishments happen after the 30 seconds, if they were handcuffed or unconscious once the 30 seconds were up, they will die, even if it happens after the player actually left the game. Simple, and I don't see any way to exploit it, but I am only one person, if someone else thinks of something, go ahead and share :)

To be honest, I am fine with any gun, within reason. One thing I would like to bring up though, Rocket has mentioned the possibility of a hive managed loot inventory for exceedingly rare items, in order to control exactly how many exist across all servers, it is usually mentioned in regard to NVGs. But basically the way it works is, you have 200 allowed NVGs at any time in the game, and it is distributed to random servers on the hive, not all at once mind you, but it'll have a low chance to spawn. Once all 200 NVGs exist in game, no more will spawn, until some are lost via item damage or say, despawn from the world, then it will allow more to spawn again, all controlled by the hive, rather then individual servers. For weapons like DMRs, if they are ever added, will likely be part of this system, so you can limit how many exist globally in the economy. Now, last I heard of this was many months ago, its possible this global hive controlled loot spawns might have been scrapped, hopefully not as I like the idea, but just keep that in mind.

There is actually not a lot of processing involved in any of this, a few if statements per player run every few seconds is not going to put a strain on a server. As for everything else, if they want to just keep it simple, in my opinion there should be a constant "30 second" timer for everyone who logs off, at any time, and during that time they remain ingame, no matter how they logged out or the situation, but at the same time, they would need to still prevent joining another server during that time to prevent duplication and other issues. I guess I should have just stuck to the KISS rule, my bad :P Regardless, I don't see any way to exploit this ^

I always go for the hunting backpack, 5 slots don't mean much to me, and I prefer first person especially when moving around, I will likely only play on first person servers once that becomes a thing. Don't limit yourself until then though, as anyone not using third person has a huge disadvantage right now... As for night time, I love the pitch black night times, at least in the mod, because there are many forms of illumination, such as chem lights and flares, seems like there will be a lot more in SA down the line as well, the main problem at the moment with the flashlights is if you're in a building, the beam of light just ignores the walls and lets everyone outside know where you are, I am sure it will be fixed, but even if it isn't, chem lights will have a much smaller radius so shouldn't "shine through" like torches. But anyway, back on topic, hunting backpack, smaller profile, doesn't block much in first person(unless maybe prone), good solid colour for camo purposes, even a green mountain backpack has lighter patterns around the green, so even if it wasn't bigger, it would still be more visible.

Just throwing this out there in regards to the zombie respawn thing. Rocket has said you should be able to clear out a town if you want, zombies won't respawn if there are still people nearby, so you can make a safe place, for a while anyway, people log off, or leave the town, zombies will start respawning, I assume loot will be the same, you won't see loot or zombies respawning near you. As to how exactly it will work, my guess is there will be some kind of zombie population limit on the server, if it is at the limit, no more zombies will spawn(this is for server performance reasons), but at the same time, zombies likely won't despawn either, so you can end up with cool mechanics like roaming hordes of zombies. But as mentioned, it's an alpha, and in fact its at the start of its "early access" life, this will all come later, alpha is meant to last from 6-12 months after all(from what Rocket suggested anyway), so we don't know when. As for zombies being a focus, it's not a focus in DayZ, at least not this early in development, otherwise zombies would already be close to finished, survival is the focus, we are more likely to see wild animals and hunting aspects added, before we see the zombies being focused on. In the words of Rocket: "If you are not convinced that you must buy the game, wait until you ARE convinced"

Melee is fairly straight forward and works pretty smoothly in my opinion, definitely needs work, but overall its very usable, better then any other game that doesn't focus on melee combat(don't suggest things like chivalry, DayZ will probably never have a melee system that good, and it doesn't really need it, though it would be cool), and a hell of a lot better then the mod. You can easily take down a zombie with your fists, one hit in the head knocks them out, then beat them while they are on the ground until they get up, then back off and repeat, just put your crosshair on their head and swing, if you aren't the best aim, practice strafing(moving left or right while keeping the zombie in front of you). I was able to take out a group of 10 or more zombies by simply strafing and swinging a wrench at their heads, and if I knocked one out I would take a few extra shots at it on the ground before continuing to strafe(yes, it was clearly on a recently restarted server, and as I was strafing around I drew more zombies to me). If you have a fire axe, then unless a zombies gets the jump on you, zombies are no threat at all, they need to be more of a threat(but that's a topic for another thread...) Different weapons should feel different, if every melee weapon behaved the same, and only differed by damage, we would essentially have what existed in the mod, or even WarZ. Also, my understanding is the the way the fire axe is right now will change, the animation is "placeholder", no idea what they have planned, and I can only assume the other melee weapons would probably change a bit, but they should still handle differently, not just be the same melee weapon with different skin and damage.

Thing is, "more hardcore" players will join casual servers to troll them, separating them into easily defined categories invites more of this, because now they have a clearly visible target.

Pretty similar to what I have been suggesting, so I am just going to add what I think. Step 1 Essentially, the biggest thing required is to carefully consider how to determine if a player is "in combat", having players nearby should not be considered in combat, as friends wouldn't be able to log out near each other, and can be exploited as mentioned. There is many ways of determining in combat status however: - If you're currently bleeding (you must bandage or you're considered in combat) - If there was someone "Attacking" within a certain radius of you (Melee/guns, pretty much any "hostile" action could count for this, that includes if you yourself did that action) - If you were dealt damage (or dealt damage, whether to a player or a zombie, or by a player or a zombie) - If a zombie is nearby (This is a big one, once zombie respawns are in, will basically count as being in combat unless you wipe out all the zombies nearby, usually would involve having to leave a town) - If shots were hitting nearby within the radius (So if a player is outside the "hostile action" radius, yet shooting at you, it will count as being in combat) That is about all I can think of right now, there might be other ways to determine if a player should be considered in combat or not, but for now that should hopefully give some ideas. Step 2 The next step is to determine how to handle combat logging, which is usually the focus of peoples discussions, so there's already plenty of ideas out there. The biggest issue is legit disconnections/crashes versus alt+f4ing/pulling your network cable out/etc. And also the fact the for some people, there are times where they simply must leave, this is not an excuse for combat logging, and impossible to determine if just combat logging or leaving because they have to. Because of that, I don't think there should be a required log out timer, if people really have to go, they should be able to, but suffer from the punishment for combat logging. So I believe there should be a set timer of say, 30 seconds if someone is considered in combat, when you hit the menu key, you can see the timer, if they click log out it will be considered combat logging, if however they wait for the timer to reach 0, they can log out just fine and are not considered combat logging. I can't imagine a better system for determining when someone determined as "in combat" from the first step, moves into the "combat logged" stage of the second step, remember though that "30 seconds" can be changed if needed. Step 3 Now for step three, the punishment. If you combat log, what is the punishment? At first I was going for a "your character dies" punishment, based on logging out while unconscious or handcuffed changes, this could still work, but the reason its needed for handcuffing is because the person who handcuffed them wont know if the player decided to log off if we try to go with some kind of "character remains logged in for X seconds/minutes", that is also why I didn't put handcuffing or unconsciousness in the list of ways to determine if in combat. Where as if you're still alive, you can still be killed, you're still vulnerable. So I think if "combat logged", the character should remain logged in for 2 minutes(again, amount can be adjusted). Step 4 Now here comes the final step, the character is in "Combat logged" mode, stuck on the server, but what could happen?: - Character gets handcuffed I know this is unlikely, but if someone handcuffs a combat logged character, when the timer expires, the character will get all the "log off" rules applied as if they just logged off, so the character dies, which leads to... - Character gets knocked unconscious More likely to happen, same deal as handcuffed, character dies - Player tries to join another server Should be locked out from joining any other server, this can help prevent ghosting and the like, but the real purpose is to prevent inconsistencies with the Hive, and loot duplication - Player tries to join the same server I really only seeing this happen if someone lost connection briefly, or the game crashed, they log back in to whatever the character state the "dummy" was in. So if they were handcuffed, they would be handcuffed when they log back in, if unconscious, they will log back in unconscious, if they then log off again, their character will die as per the other log off rules. That's my suggestions and thoughts on the topic anyway.

The disappearing corpse is obviously a bug, and is fixed in experimental, so no, you don't get to decide if they get your gear or not(once fixed), its also not combat logging, respawning is broken, so you must leave the server, I don't consider it being a bad sport or "glitching away" your gear, its a bug, it'll be addressed in the next patch, people don't need to wait around so their killer can loot their body, I personally would rather just respawn and keep playing, you can't fault a player for a legit bug in the game. And if you're nice and wait around so the person who killed you can loot, that's fine, just don't expect others to do the same, again, it's going away and corpses will remain. The only way you will be able to "hide your loot" is if you or someone else specifically selects "hide body" on the corpse, unless you have a friend nearby, that means respawning and running all the way back to your body, by then it will have been looted anyway(and possibly already hidden).

To be honest, it's a neat idea, though I think once zombies respond properly to sounds and gun shots are proper ranges(and more zombies/respawns etc), zombies will swarm towards combat zones, regardless of banditry or otherwise. And I think it could take a step towards a more realistic system, if you bleed, your clothes become soaked in blood(at least where the wound was), and you have to find water to wash off the blood, otherwise you will start attracting nearby zombies, rocket did mention the zombies being more animalistic rather then your traditional "dead" zombies, which I imagine would heighten their sense of smell. Granted this does not have anything to do with bandits, other then people being bandits are probably more likely to be in combat often, and as such more likely going to be bleeding often. I dunno, could lead to cool things.

As I have posted about in the past, the biggest combat loggers ARE the KoSers, usually when we initiate combat, there is no combat logging, when someone else initiates battle with us, as soon as they lose their advantage they combat log. We have had a 3 vs 3 battle, I got killed out of my group, then we managed to take out one of theirs, the other 2 combat logged. They initiated combat from north of balota airfield, as we entered south near the barracks, we managed to push up beside the hangers before I died, this was over a good 5-10 minutes, as soon as they lost one of their own, they combat logged.

Well, that's obviously the first thing they need to add before adding anti-server hopping, especially if the corpse disappearing bug was happening(pretty sure its already been fixed for the next build though), otherwise we will be running around in servers void of loot, brawling each other in our underwear

There are other methods of handling combat logging, whats that? you just combat logged? Oh, well see you at the shore because you got KILLED because your character remained in game.

You mean the issues they are FOCUSING ON are not going to be fixed? This is not the mod, this is not limited by an engine they cannot modify, they can and already have, modified the engine as they see fit, these issues are not unfixable without private hives. And in my opinion, there is no discussion in regard to if there will/wont be private hives, its already been confirmed officially that there will be private hives. To be honest however, I feel it is way too soon to introduce them, due to the fact they are also trying to fix any issues that come up, makes it harder when you split the community up and allow essentially "custom" servers that could introduce more issues and confuse things

Thing is, once someone has access to the server software, you can't shut them down, at least without forcing the game to rely on an official database or some such(it would have to actually receive something required for the server to run, if its a simple "call home" check to make sure the server is authorized, that can be cracked). Don't like private hives, at all, however they are officially confirmed, so... whatever. I do agree the admins shouldn't be able to customize at all though. As for the donations thing, pay2win isn't the correct way to do anything, however, after being a broke admin of minecraft for over a year now, they do that to pay for the server, while being able to build a community around it, and the only way to really get donations, is unfortunately to offer something valuable to the players, otherwise you might get a few donations here and there, but ultimately it doesn't even cover the cost of the server(which is the point). Remember, these guys are otherwise using money out of their own pocket to give you a place to play on, it'd be nice if they got donations without having to resort to that, but...well...facts of life. (Oh, and I am talking about random aesthetics, not pay2win stuff, granted there are still those who actually profit from this stuff, and its usually the pay2win servers, but not always the case)

You can't let the client help with how the game is run, even if it's only 1 client. And the zombie count is what they have CURRENTLY optimized for, they will add more as performance goes up, and really, adding more zombies would only confuse matters when fixing them, "did that zombie clip into the wall because we haven't fixed the pathing yet? or because we had 5 zombies trying to force their way into a single doorway?" Also, I imagine zombie respawning will be in before they add more zombies, I think you will be surprised just how many you actually see running around with the same numbers.

I know you can use things on your hotbar that are in containers, however, this becomes really inefficient really quickly, you have to drag the item to the ground, then drag the container in that one to the ground, and so on, until you find what you were looking for, it also limits what items you can store in them to single slot items, or 2 slot tall items. I have no problem saying I stored a second backpack in my first backpack, but since I prefer to use the hunting backpacks, that only leaves 1 row along the bottom in the first backpack, and if I went another backpack deeper, it would get amazingly tedious. So I don't really consider this an issue, not exactly realistic, but not an issue gameplay wise, tedium vs space. Edit: I would also like to mention I don't do this anymore, or at least I haven't the last few characters, because having to drop the second backpack on the ground every time just becomes too annoying to deal with, and usually once you get decent shirt/vest/pants and backpack, you can already hold a hell of a lot of stuff without having to drop and grab.

And a good one at that, which would tie into base building. The downside would be, not just players will see it, but zombies would be drawn to the light if it was visible enough, just as they would a gunshot. So I picture people would build walls around their fires to keep light to a minimum, or even doing it inside buildings, maybe with the ability to barricade/cover up the windows? Heck, for a quick stop, once vehicles are back in, a fairly large group could setup their vehicles in a ring around the fire to block as much light as possible.....

Theres several means of players leaving a server that can be detected: 1. Normal - Player literately clicks exit from the menu, and the client-server communication is closed properly(ie, the client sends a "goodbye" message, and then the server is "ok" and disconnects the player) Anyone who has ever programmed using sockets or some other higher level networking API should know how this works, but hopefully I explained it well enough for those who haven't. 2. Player Drops - This can be literately an internet disconnect, ie, there is no "goodbye" message from the client, the server no longer receives any messages and after X seconds the server will do the "disconnect" thing, but that "goodbye" message is how you can tell if the player disconnected properly, or didn't. The downside, is if a player alt+f4s, it will result in the same thing on the server side, no goodbye message, and the player times out. You can't treat this as a player legitimately losing connection, so you just have to treat it as if the player alt+f4d. 3. Server Drops - This could be a server crashing, or losing its own connection to the internet. The thing that makes this special is because servers must connect to the hive, just as clients connect to the server, if it disconnects properly, it'll send a goodbye message, just as a client would(obviously there is different messaging and security going on here then client to server, but there is always a "Safe disconnect" method). If the hive detects a server has lost connection, it can treat it as a "Free pass" for the players connected to it. Granted, I do not know the details on how the hive system actually works in SA, but it would be similar to this. 4. Server restarts/stops - Server is shut down for whatever reason, either for a restart or maybe its the end of the servers rent period and there is no renewal, whatever the case may be, it sends a "goodbye" to the hive and like the Server dropping, should give a free pass to the players still connected to it(it's not the players fault that the server is stopping). So basically, the server crashing/stopping/restarting should easily be detected, and it should know all the players on that server to act accordingly. And a player who chooses to log out properly, can also be detected, but a random disconnect/alt+f4 cannot really be detected properly in order to separate who legitimately lost connection, and who is trying to cheat the system by alt+f4ing or even physically pulling their network cable out(people DO do this, its retarded but they still do it), heck, it could even accidentally fall out, I have a friend whose network cables "clip" is broken, it doesn't happen often, but sometimes it will slip out and he loses connection with skype/games/etc, sometimes he gets it back in in time, but a lot of games still just drop out when it happens. All this would likely be considered by the developers when they thought of solutions.