Rantanplan

Almost there - only players that are on your and have you on their friend list: to make stalking more difficult. That may be an interesting factor once global statistics become public and some "specialists" want to hunt down the current longest survivor. Or whomever else else they might be after...

People in your vincinity can talk to you, with CAPSLOCK (default) you can talk to them. However, don't be surprised if you hear some odd puffs or bangs instead - many people just don't know about proper ways of communication and interaction, but simply kill you instead :huh:

You don't want to - that's the whole point of the early game. You get the survival situation in unknown territory forced upon you. Think of a school trip in a bus, like from Prague to Constanta. You just slept, you don't know how long, when the bus crashed and you barely escaped alive. As you slept the last hour(s) (don't ask me how you did that in a bus full of school kids!), you have no idea where you are, maybe Czech Rep. Slovakia, Hungary, Romania??? You are the only one that escaped from your bus which went up in flames, and you feel hungry and thirsty. Make Chernarus the transit country and continue with your own story. Or better yet, come up with something on your own, but keep the survival and unknown territory in the start of your tale ;)

There is another game with a fairly open development cycle underway, Star Citizen. Feel free to compare.

If you are so scared of new-spawns, why don't you just go inland???

Not sure whether this is really possible but maybe the gamma tweaking could be handled like this: - In the in-game settings, every time the gamma/contrast/brightness is changed in a special window affected by those changes a random number is displayed that the player has to enter to confirm those values. - the game captures ALT-TAB or any other option that sends the game to the background, and when the player returns to the game he has to perform the same random number check before continueing. That would leave the gamma tweaking to multi-monitor configurations and background tools that would do the adjustments via random key combinations.

For a squad such an option makes it way too easy to identify their squad members, no more doubts or friendly fire - you mouse-over=aim anyway, if no tag pops up push the fire button...

I virtually closed the same topic yesterday with my post, let me try it again :P I added the last point a bit later, but rethinking it, one could consider the server-bound cars/stashes an "incentive" to play on your favorite server despite nighttime. "Custom" day/night confiugurations should be limited to private servers/hives. Public servers on the global hive should run the correct day/night cycle.

You forget about those people that leave the house "in order" under no imminent threat, to leave Cherno for the countriside where their relatives are waiting for them ;) They even locked the door, so that you need a Firefighter axe to open it > :( Random doors are a very nice idea, as I would no longer have to close all the doors behind me so that nobody knows that I had been there already. Some people may have been very surprised how little useful loot and food spawns sometimes in the villages :P

If you mean a complete pack of rice and filling up on a pretty much empty stomach, then yes, that is a good start. But it is also only that, a start! It may just get you to the "Healthy" status but not much beyond. Once you are there, keep eating, eating, eating everything you find along with drinking the sodas, and if your happen to be not full, fill further up with water till full. When you have reached the healthy status you have still a reserve of ~16000 more energy that you can fill. If your goal is to become a long-term survivor, you should try to do so. Getting the energy well beyond the "Healthy" threshold will allow you to recover from serious injuries that may leave you virtually blind from the blurring, with just a canteen of water ot two (assuming you aren't already thirsty).

Gaming the system may be to run toward them and punch them while running in circles around them. (Edit: you see the honest player I am, logging doesn't even come to my mind :) ) Running away, from a gun: zig-zag toward cover (1st prio) or concealment (2nd prio) from melee: If you have a bit of distance you may try to climb a ladder and maybe exploit by attacking at the moment when he comes up to you but has not yet his weapon in hand again. But this may put you in a trap, with no route to escape. Alternatively pick up some zombies on the run - they may give him something else to do and buy some distance between you and him.

You can join us right away then, as this puts you in the same shoes as the player down on the road that is being observed from a hidden sniper with virtual periscope view. Sometimes you are at the weak end of a design issue, on the road or being stalked without hearing it, the other time you are on the winning end with the observation/stalking advantage. But to counter one weakness with another is a very weak argument.

People have to understand that day/night cycle, sun, moon, stars positions are all correctly simulated in the game! We have an autumn map that is located at 45°N 30°E (if it has not changed from the original Chernarus). Autumn implies that we are near autumn Equinox or later, so nights are about equal or longer than days. You can also navigate by sun or stars, or you build your own little Stonehenge for sun observation and date definition (until server restart) ^_^ However, if you start messing with day/night cycle, you will complicate or make it near impossible to do such things. So my vote goes to 24h cycles. With that said, I also want to have free reign on when my char is active, whether he is a night owl or an early bird. It could be made that (hardcore!) way, that every change in time zone consumes an appropriate level of your nutrition level. That way you could always jump time zones as you like, as long as you are still well-fed; before you really join you could get a warning that it would make you starving if you enter a certain server. (worst case would be a 23h jump) It could also be an interesting option to beach the player at a random time (=server) and only once he has achieved a certain level of nutrition, he may change to his preferred time zone/server (hey, his friends could come and pick him up and bring some food and drinks along)... Of course, the time would have to be clearly visible in the server browser. Interesting options for role-playing, probably less so for PvP focussed players, or private servers/hives :P An issue to solve would be how you carry over vehicles/stashes etc.

You realise that you are currenly playing an Alpha version of a game to be released in a distant future? The devs have given us an Alpha version and it is up to us to show them bugs/problems/weaknesses/..., make suggestions for fixes/improvements/... They haven't even really started to balance the game, as they are still working on other issues that will have a significant impact on game balance, e.g. the number of Zombies. Why it is the way it is right now? I don't know your background, but I am playing with different evolutions of this game engine since 2001. The memories from back then are a bit shady, but I think the described issue has been present since day 1. It has been brought up many times over the years, but it has never been changed. Why? I don't know. My guess would be, because the devs had other and more important things to do. With a community that was never big in PvP, the screaming may have never been loud enough to justify (significant) effort to address the issue. But that does not mean that the devs have not seen that there may be an issue with the current implementation - but whether they will change it now, who knows...

*double post*

Running in a mostly straight line, but trying to get something in the line-of-sight between you and the Zed. If he loses sight of you for a little time, he will stop chasing you. House, bush, tree, geography, everything helps. In the DayZ mod it also worked to walk up a steep hill, I haven't tried that yet in the Stand-Alone game, and it is also only something I would suggest to an ArmA veteran who can judge the slope and knows how to get up there fast. Ninja'd x2! :rolleyes:

A good chance for the Taloon Backpack are also the pubs: You may find a pub in almost every village, some (and also the cities) have multiple of them.

Some amazing research you have done there, very informative and well presented too! I took you by the word and keep eating everything I find. And if I come across a pump, I fill up to the top as well (I usually don't touch my two canteens, only on very long hikes, but even then still before I get a thirsty message). In fact, I am always at the edge of being full/stuffed/... pretty much all the time. If only I knew when I maxed out on energy as well, then I could leave some more food behind for the next survivor. Maybe we need another feedback that states that the trousers seem to be a bit tight-fitting :D

But even then there may come a time when this may cause issues, e.g. when introducing global statistics - need to be divided as well. And hopefully there will never be achievements to unlock something (as is the trend in many other games...)

But PvP is not everything, and the shown difference (=exploit) makes it difficult for the developer to balance the PvE game. How do you balance the zombie thread so that a player has statistically the same likelihood to die from a zombie attack, disregarding whether he plays in 1st or 3rd person view??? The 1st person player always exposes himself when he peeks around corners, so he will get attacked by zombies much more often; currently the 3rd person player can avoid such situations much easier. So, to balance the PvE component of the game, for 3rd person mode the Zeds would need to be stronger or in much higher numbers, to pose the same threat as in 1st person mode. Obviously that will never happen. The only answer that we have today is by dividing the community - from a developer point of view not a nice option either...