CaffeinatedTech

Once they add the threat of disease from unclean water and other sicknesses, then the level we have it now will be harder to maintain. Also when there's more zombies to sneak up on us and do damage. I like that we don't start at full health/energy/water. It makes the first part of the game a bit more desperate especially when loot only gets spawned every four hours or whenever the server restarts. When that changes, there may be higher population servers too, so it should even out as the game progresses. I also agree with bad_mojo, once the loot pool is diluted more, we will go from deciding which food or water bottle to drop so we can pick up that magazine, to "oh thank RNGesus, I'm gonna eat that right now".

I've seen reports from people using HD4000 that SA runs better than the mod version. There is a guide or two around the place for settings tweaks that you have to do in the config files. Can't locate them right now, but I'm sure you can google it, or search on reddit. You probably have to reduce your resolution too, you may not be able to run it well at native res. If you are just chasing a refund. Don't know, can't help you. Steam billing support is your best bet.

Give us some details on your machine. Maybe we can help another way.

It's Christmas Day where Rocket lives. So unless he peals away from his family, and why would he; then I wouldn't expect anything today. Just enjoy the holiday, or at least enjoy the lower server population.

So one idea I had that could help people to love their character more than their gear is this. Skill progression system centered around crafting and maintenance. This doesn't give anyone a combat advantage so we aren't stretching the already large gap between fresh spawns and kitted out characters. This gives a cautious player the ability to craft better stuff, and maintain his own equipment. The fresh spawn knows enough to work out how to tape a torch to his helmet, but couldn't work out how to build a wall that won't fall down, or how to tan a hide and repair a damaged backpack. Perhaps the largest backpacks in the game could be player crafted by some sort of artisan who has been working with leather for many in-game hours. Maybe he trades them for other resources. He could be a hermit living in the forest, in a barricaded fort he built himself, only coming out to hunt dear, gather water and cut wood. We already have the damage system implemented, we could use that to rank crafted and repaired items. A novice can patch a hole in his backpack if he had some leather, but can never make it anywhere near pristine again. The Master can repair it pretty well good as new and the Grand Master can create a whole new backpack from materials he collected and worked himself. I like the idea of weapon maintenance and degradation too. IRL if you don't keep your weapon clean and in good working order it will jam all the time, be inaccurate and possibly do harm to the shooter. This should be a very important thing for snipers, as without skill you can only do so much to maintain that massive rifle. This makes a really good sniper very nervous about getting killed because he will lose all of that skill and have to rely on other people to fix his weapon. I don't know, this might lead to more people using overlays to show player positions and aim-botting, but hopefully cut down on people trying to Battlefield in DayZ. Spawn, sprint to a military area, get lucky and pick up a nice rifle, run back to Elektro and start blasting newbs? Maybe, but not for long if you can't maintain that beast of a thing. So what do you think. Some of this make sense and sound interesting?

You're not going to stop people from using overlays to show player positions and highlight loot, that's just reading memory that is already available to the client. Auto-aim is just writing to that memory (can be detected more easily), or manipulating the in-game controls programatically. They shouldn't be able to spawn stuff in though, the hive manages items, or is planned to. Teleporting? maybe but is pretty easy to detect. Infinite ammo? they might be able to trick the client into thinking it always has ammo to fire, but if the server tracks all bullets, even if it has to queue them and check them later for performance reasons then it will make it less useful for hackers; provided they can roll back any damage caused by "fake" bullets. God mode? well again they could trick their client into thinking it hasn't taken damage, but if the server is tracking bullets and applying the damage, it is easy to run a quick check to see if everyone has taken the right amount of damage. If you are supposed to be dead, it can stop receiving actions from you. Perhaps the servers just aren't checking as much as they could be yet. Devs could make it fairly secure, but at the cost of performance. Do you want to see that bullet hit that guy in the head now, or a second or two later? So I think the bad hacks are going to decrease as we progress and performance is tweaked. They've said that the limited number of zeds is due to performance, so there is still some ways to go before we see how hacker-proof the game can be.

MagLight, with adjustable beam, held at shoulder level ready to brain zombies with is my solution request. I wouldn't touch the gamma slider if the flashlight wasn't crap. Other people would I know, but they can and will do what they want. The only other solutions I can see include decreasing the realism slider more towards the arcade end. If that is what happens, then so be it. Something clearly needs to be done about night time though, it seems like almost EVERYONE is either avoiding night, or gamma cheating. Both ultimately make the game less appealing to new players.

I agree. Having free night-vision is rubbish. Forcing shadows on will negatively impact low-end systems but if it stops the light from shining through walls so you stand out like a friggin light house then I'm all for it. No one NEEDS that ridiculous amount of gamma correction unless they are cheating at night. I'm with AP_Norris, it should be clamped to a much smaller scale. If they want to up the gamma on their monitor or in their OS, then there's not much we can do about it. If they remove the additional lighting that the clouds seem to offer, then I suppose that is a solution, just let people know the server time in the server browser. New players logging in for the first time who see a pitch black screen and a heap of red writing in the bottom left corner might think that the game is broken.

It's true. and I'm guilty of it too. Before everyone knew about the gamma + clouds thing you could tell which servers were on day time and which were on night from the server browser. Full server = day, almost empty server = night. That's gotta be some sort of indicator that night time play needs some work. I reckon the starting flashlight needs some tweaks.

The servers do have different day times. You just have to find them. Be nice if it told you the world time in the server browser. Sometimes I like to play at night.

One problem with pitch-black night is that the flashlight kinda sucks. You hold it out too far in front of you, so when you get close to a door or wall, you can't see anything. Also you can't hit zombies with it. I don't like the fact that it's see zeds, or try to hit zeds. Not both. Give us nice MagLights so we can brain some zombies. MagLights also have adjustable focus. That could be a fire mode setting, wide focus is good for inside buildings, but you can't see too far up the road with it, medium setting works like the current flashlight, and then a long range setting gives you a tight circle of light, but lets you light up the forest 200M away. One more thing. I don't know if its my settings, I have shadows turned off for performance, but flashlights shine through walls. If there is a possibility that another player is in town with me while I loot a house, there's no chance I'm risking switching on that flashlight if I know its going to light up the whole street behind the wall like a lighthouse beacon.