Max Railgrave

Can't really make a comparison for you, 3rwww1. The Minecraft community raged pretty damn hard though. There are people today who say that Notch "can't code." Whether or not that is the case, I don't know (I haven't looked at his code). Either way, Rocket seems to care passionately for his mod and his vision. He'll stabilize it.

I would make or find #DayZ IRC channels based on time zone to meet people looking for groups. Ham radio would be an awesome idea, though. Maybe using a radio is the same as voice chat but broadcasts to the entire city. Although since there's a limited number of radios in the city it also reveals your location to anyone who's memorized their locations. Something like that. I'll post it in the Suggestions forum. (EDIT: Never mind, that won't work. How the hell would people respond?) If I remember correctly, Rocket has stated he doesn't care about metagaming (external maps, TeamSpeak, IRC, etc.)

Some programmers like to super stabilize everything from the get-go. Others like to sandbox it up, see how their players react to different stimuli and concepts that are added. Rocket seems to be taking the latter approach. Notch (of Minecraft) took the same road. Minecraft, when it was in alpha, broke nearly every update. People raged. A LOT. Hell, I was one of them. Then, when it stabilized later, we rejoiced. It took a long time, but it was stabilized. Adding features first and stabilizing later is just a different way of looking at coding. If Rocket thinks he can stabilize it afterwards, then he can. If that alone was good enough for Notch (and look how FSCKING POPULAR Minecraft is!) it's good enough for DayZ. In a few years of development, when DayZ is in or past Beta, few will be those who desire the first Alpha releases of DayZ. They're always free to create their own zombie game, at any rate.

The passionate debates raging on really show how passionate people are for DayZ. It's a game many of us have never seen the likes of before. DayZ is a game which has found a very powerful niche demand. There's few games like it, which certainly fuels gamers' passion for it. There's plenty of reasons to be vocal: - It's the zombie apocalypse simulator you've always wanted -- or you think DayZ has the potential to become that. - You are having fun and, knowing it's in alpha, you want to offer suggestions to help it become more fun. - It's the ONLY zombie apocalypse simulator of its type available right now. - You love the game and you therefore feel as a player that your opinions are valuable. - ... too many more to list ... It can be frustrating that Rocket wants things done his way. He listens, but he reminds that it's his mod, and complaining is a privilege. It's no secret he didn't want forums to begin with. It is likely not everyone who plays DayZ uses these forums, which means we're possibly the vocal minority. However, backlash has a silver lining. Since there are currently no alternatives to DayZ available, dissent or ideas beyond the scope of DayZ will inevitably lead to DayZ-inspired programming projects. One programmer with a different idea is all it takes. These projects will define a whole new gaming genre of its own: the multiplayer online zombie apocalypse survival simulator. DayZ is the first of this new genre. As long as players are vocal, it will not be the last. As I type this, discussion is underway on a DayZ-inspired adventure/survival mod for Minecraft. The first wave of imitators are already being brainstormed.

I partially agree.I think rotational blur started getting added to games because older CRT monitors would naturally blur moving images but LCDs don't (they have a peculiar "doubling" tearing effect). You can see this for yourself: Disabling TF2's Motion Blur generally has no visible effect when playing on a CRT. As for view bobbing...agreed. Thankfully we can turn that down. There's only so much the human eye can do with night-time dark adaptation when the moon is not out. In a completely electricity-deprived area' date=' there is NO background light pollution from lit up towns/cities, and that means that no full moon = pitch black. That being said, it appears to me in my experience playing that ARMA2's HDR features do a great job compensating for bright things, but not very well for dark things. Then again, I've never jacked my HDR setting to maximum. Could ARMA2/DayZ be tweaked to replicate human night vision better (have it take 2 minutes for your eyes to adjust from light to darkness)? Maybe. It would open up a new tactic for combat at night: [b']Shining flashlights into an enemy player's eyes to blind them so that they have to take 2 more minutes to be able to see anything!

That explains a lot, Caspar. I've noticed that newly restarted servers are sometimes the ones with the best FPS. And I VERY often hear flies buzzing around already disappeared corpses in cities I visit, which led me to believe that the bodies were not 'actually' disappearing after death.

I have the same problem, except they're micro-hitches occurring once every second, and they're only with DayZ (not normal ARMA2). It seems to be server dependent. Some servers have it really bad, other servers are smooth as silk. When I start playing, I have to hop servers repeatedly until I find a perfectly smooth server. Usually servers with less hitching are the ones with fewer players/zombies on them. Less than 12 players and it's smooth as butter; over that and it starts to slow to a crawl. I therefore suspect that some servers are unequipped to handle the mod. Either that or it's my CPU. I'm on a Core 2 Quad Q9300 which isn't the best processor out there but it's no slouch either. Since I'm always switching servers to find the ones with the best FPS...Rocket's newly proposed anti-cheat system worries me (kills character if it switches servers too much). Maybe Rocket needs to set high standards for server hardware...

I'd like to chime in here - Freelancer (the video game) had its own problem with Disconnect/Abort players ruining the game whether by using the command, or pulling their internet connection to force their character to timeout. Having players persist for a while after disconnecting/logging out/timing out completely solved the problem for that game. I can personally attest to its effectiveness after playing that game for over 4 years. The downside of course being that your character can die to your internet having a hiccup. But the majority of players probably won't have that happen to them.

Re. OP: If I were in your position I would report them anonymously to administrators to get them banned from the game. Slaying them will teach them nothing. If you feel this strongly about what they are doing, blow the whistle on them already! Besides, it doesn't matter if they're your friend or not. If you don't speak up and do something, you become part of the problem. Once Rocket's "player remains in the world for a while after disconnecting" feature is implemented in 1.7.1, this problem will not be an issue anymore. Zombies will tear apart disconnected players where they stand. This form of disconnect protection worked for Freelancer (space game), it'll work for DayZ.