Rantanplan

1PP servers and a separate hive are no solution to the problem at hand. You just divide the player base and roughly double the costs of hosting and maintaining the hives (on what might be high availability servers, and that over years). It may also increase the costs of designing the game for these two hives (balance etc.). I think it is a better investment to once spend the development time to address the real problem, evaluate it, and maybe find a super solution 1000x better than everything discussed so far... All that the separation achieves is that it reduces the number of players that feel the need to get the issue addressed. And that only temporarily, as with the steady growing player base, the number of 3PP players who demand a change to this game mechanic will grow as well. The separation may just postpone the investment in the design change, but meanwhile maintaining two versions of the game... I couldn't care less about the normal 3PP players, enoying the view of themselves, and having a nice and fair game with everybody else on the server. What I do care about are the people that build their gameplay around such issues. The "best" of those will scout for you with this exploit, then circumnavigate you on a different server (=ghosting), and after they killed you they duplicate the best items they can find on your body. These guys spoil the game for many others, and that's why I'd like their "tools and tactics" thwarted. But preferably in the least intrusive way for the "normal" players. No need to remove 3PP, but improve/reduce/remove the parts that lead to its use as an exploit.

The next twelve people that suggest that a separate hive is the solution, I'd like to have to pay one year the upkeep and maintanance of that second hive. And no, just because they already sold one million licenses does not mean that BI has money to waste... Then there are the people that suggest that 3PP substitutes for the loss of situational awareness in a computer game. True to an extend, but at its current state it does not just augment to a more realistic situational awareness, but 3PP significantly supersedes it. I did this exercise already a few pages earlier, but anyway: Taste is limited to the body and is irrelevant in this discussion. Smell is also not a particular strong human sense. Touch is limited to the immediate vincinity - to substitude that you may light up just about one meter around the player (but not through walls!). Sound is modelled in the game - what is currently wrong or missing there should be addressed by improving the sound, not "super-vision". You can't hear whether someone is carrying an axe or a gun... Vision requires a line-of-sight that exposes a part of you as well (or some technical aid, mirror, periscope,...) There is also a difference in the quality of information from a quick peek around a corner for 5secs with just an eye exposed, or observing the street for a minute from total safety. The increased situational awareness will also cause some trouble in balancing the game. That is not so much balancing in a PvP sense, but PvE. How to make sure that the environment poses the same threat to a player, disregarding whether he plays 3PP or 1PP? If a 3PP player can avoid half the Zombie attacks, should the Zombies then strike twice as hard at 3PP than at 1PP players??? If there are ever meant to be comparable global statistics, achievements, etc, then this is an issue. Also interesting that pure 1PP servers are suggested as a solution. I would be tempted to guess that >50% of the players are not even aware of this issue. Players that have never played the ArmA titles, that don't actively follow the forums (just ~16.5% of the player base is registered here). Also players that only play 3PP - don't they deserve to be protected from players that "build" their gameplay around actively using an exploit against them?! No, it is balanced because everyone can use the same exploit... (just as I was writing this, Jamz brought this up as well)

Well, if 3PP was to substitute smell, it would be a pitch black screens with a dim light depending on the direction of the wind... Taste and touch are local to your body, and can't explain why you would know about someones presence 50m away either. Leaves vision and sound, and these are recreated in the game. If the guy 50m away doesn't move you will have no chance to hear him. And if you want to see him, you have to expose yourself.

And can you also tell me the color of the shirt of that person that is washing the dishes??? You don't substitute a bad sound with supervision, but you fix the sound. And for the smell we may get dogs, don't tell me that you ever tried to hunt someone on your own by scent...

Edit: directed at whoever suggested to lock those settings by the game: That's a difficult thing to do - you can lock the in-game settings, and you can also query the respective driver/Windows parameters. I suggested that a verification screen could be created, that requires the player to enter a multi-digit random number whenever a change of those values is detected, on a screen that is only readable with reasonable gamma and brightness settings. But than they can still change the respective settings directly on the monitor, and it may be difficult to query those hardware settings (anybody knows of such functions?!)...

Seeing requires a line-of-sight from your eyes to the target. If there is such a line-of-sight for you to the target, then there is usually also a line-of-sight from the target to you. In 1PP that is given, you lean around corners, you stand up to look over a wall, or you open the door and walk out to see what is outside the room/building. Please explain me what limited senses have been substituted to be able to peek over a ledge to observe someone 200m away. Must be some kind of supernatural 6th sense to feel not just the presence but the exact location, his outfit and what he is doing... Using a design weakness is a very bad substitution to compensate for another design weakness...

The devices could also come in different flavours, e.g. the one-time foam parts, then the more professional in-ear parts, and on construction sites and workshops you could find the Mickey Mouse style. The latter ones would "collide" with helmets, so either or... With motor cycle helmets you may not need additional protection for your ears.

How about having this floating at the viewpoint of the 3PP players?! Even better if it also casts a ray of light at the area that it scans :P

They already have the Seattle map in ToH, but it would take ages to create the interiors for all the buildings...

There is no correct way. E.g. doors in pubs have to open outward, so that they don't block the exit in case of a fire, panic, ... Keys+lockable doors would also be nice, to deny access to a room, or trap someone inside. But unfortunately this can be circumvented by server hopping...

Why not bind 3PP to a physical device? Something like this: Everybody playing in 3PP would carry one of these thing on their shoulders (slighlty modified to get the "from behind" angle). If they peek around corners or over walls, that thing will be visible to the guy standing on the other side. Collision detection would prevent the peeking through walls. Visibility could be further increased by position lights, you know the red and green lights, to know in which direction he is looking (okay, we might discuss about the lights ;)) With such a device we could also do away with 1PP servers. Just have two types of 3PP servers, easy servers where the player spawns with a "basic" version of such a device, and normal servers where the player has to find a "normal" version of such a device. The basic devices can't be carried over to normal servers, but normal devices can be found in basic servers as well. The basic device could be indestructible, but the normal device could be damaged and destroyed. If such a device is in the inventory, it has to be visibly worn. And then we start the Periscope War! 1PP vs. 3PP - the fractions are already well-established here in the forum. Now we can carry the war into the game! Teams can be easily identified, Elks vs. Panheads. The Panheads would be out to hide and destroy all the devices they can find, including the Elks that are running around with them, of course. And the Elks would do the opposite, hoarding the devices in their bases. Elk care bears would be spread across the servers, bringing normal devices to people whos device got destroyed, team members that got killed... Just think of the possibilities: an Elk scavange team roams Zelenogorsk to collect as many devices as possible. A Panhead scout detects them and calls in a hunter killer platoon to track the scavangers down and destroy their loot. The Elk scavangers are not unprepared, but have reserve squads located in "neighbouring" servers, that they now call via an external social network. Meanwhile the Panheads were not sleeping either, and they activiated the Zelenogorsk battalion, one company to refill the ranks in the server under attack as their men die, the other companies to track down, bind and eliminate the Elk reserves in the other servers. The Elks are already concentrating their Western Brigade in the Zelenogorsk area, also taking strategic positions like Sosnovka, Green Montain, Kurgan, Drozhino... Long story short, a small skirmish turns into the 1st Battle of Zelenogorsk, a fight of hundreds if not thousands of players spread across dozens if not hundred and more servers! Who wouldn't want to be part of such an epic event, and all at the cost of some people running around with a silly periscope device. That's well worth it - if you agree, give me your beans :lol:

The Bambi Song What you go and do You go and give the bambi a gun Now there ain't place to run to Ain't no place to run to When he hold it in his hand He feel mighty he feel strong Now there ain't no place to run to Ain't no place to run One day he may come back Repay us for what we've done Then where you gonna run to Where you gonna run But one fine day All our problems will be solved Bang bang bang We'll shoot him down Give him beans and give him soda Anything to make him think he's happy And he won't ever come for us He won't ever come But if he does And if there's no one else around Bang bang bang We'll shoot him down If he preys only on his neighbors Brothers sisters and friends We'll consider it a favor We'll consider justice done But if he comes for you or me And we can the loot from him Bang bang bang We'll shoot him dead What you go and do You go and give the bambi a gun Now there ain't no place to run to Ain't no place to run Now we'll all be at his mercy If he decides to hunt us down Cause there ain't no place to run to Ain't no place to run If he wants the chances that you took from him And nothing that you own Then there'll be no place to run to There'll be no place to run And if he finds himself to be A reflection of us all Bang bang bang He'll shoot us down Before you can raise your eyes to read The writing on the wall Bang bang bang He'll shoot you down Before you can bridge the gulf between And embrace him in your arms Bang bang bang He'll shoot you down (slightly modified lyrics) Bang Bang Bang

Taking a sip at the water pump is much less water than a swig from a water bottle or canteen, or drinking a soda can. So the time/water may be about equal, but a proper animation would be nice, yes. And don't you ever again forget about the fantastic work of Merino, to create his in-depth videos on Food, Water, Health and Energy.

I posted this in threads in the General section, but I think it is worth its own suggestion here. I think this may be pretty close to what the devs have in mind with the food and energy handling, but anyway, let me quote (with slight edits) myself: (to better understand the quotes, they were posted in threads on the subject of changing the length of the day/night cycle and the possibility to switch between time zones to always play in day- or nighttime)

Except if they go for evil mode and mess with the hive time (HT), the UTC reference is still possible, also "hard" in the server name. If they don't go for the concept of "hive time" or leave it at HT=UTC, then nothing changes with that respect. The player time reference can be handled independently as a separate column and filter option in the server browser. It can also highlight which server/time transitions are impossible (=red) due to a too low energy level, leave you at a dangerous energy level (=yellow), and which cause you no immediate trouble (=green). This also enabled clans to coordinate such jumps over time zones, as everybody can check whether the proposed destination is within his reach. A drawback may be that players can log out after eating to check how much time they just "bought" with that can of beans, by seeing which time zones are within their reach. But that information is a bit "fuzzy", as the player may want to know about their active time, but time zone changes would be based on idle energy consumption (or even less than that).

Elaborating a bit on how servers, server browser and player time could be handled with this. The server browser would not show the time zone as such in which the servers are running, but the relative time offset to the "player time" (PT). E.g. the player could have last played on a UTC+5 server when he disconnected. In that case the server browser would list the UTC+7 servers as a PT+2 (to keep it simple, the list would go from PT, PT+1...PT+23; no need to complicate things with a PT-x) When the game starts and loads the player configuration as the background, that same background would also reflect the time of day he is currently in. In the server browser, when the player selects a server in a different time zone (but not yet joining it!) the background lighting could be adjusted accordingly. This way the player could easily jump from a dusk to a dawn server, if he has the energy to do an ~12h jump. With some food in his backpack, he can make a PT+6 jump, eat some, and then do another PT+6 jump to reach his "destination". Just by browsing over the server list, the player would also get an idea how much time he has till dusk or how long it is until dawn. You could also skip all this indication of the time in the background, but I think that would just lead to PT+1h connect/disconnect orgys until they reach their preferred time of play; it would just creat unnessessary server load. This scheme offers also some options to intentionally mess with newcomers and respawns. If a player dies and does not respawn in the same server but disconnects, he will "lose" the time reference. In that case, all servers in the browser would be listed as PT and the background would not indicate whether a selected server is currently day or night. Only once he connects and spawns to a server, his new time base will be defined by that server. And as a new-spawn has a low energy state, he will not be able to disconnect and jump to a server with different time zone. A scary thought to many, but it is not that bad, as players can have their list of favorite servers, and they know the relative offset between those. Alternatively to that, if a player dies, his respawn could be limited to the same time zone he died in. In that case the server browser would just list servers in that same time zone. He would not be able to connect and respawn in a different time zone. Probably a bit restrictive; I think I'd prefer the first option. If the devs feel particularly evil, they could also change the time base of the hive from UTC to whatever offset the hive may be in, e.g. UTC+5. The servers would be configured relative to the hive time (HT). In a first place that would change nothing for the player and server browser, it would still show the server time relative to PT. What is the difference? Just out of the server name you can't deduce whether a server is currently day- or nighttime. The server could be labeled HT+0, but depending on the HT that could still be a day or night server. And the ultimate evil: well, the devs could decide to "randomly" change the hive time from HT to HT+12, turning all day servers to night and vice versa >:( Now that would be a nice little prank, obviously not realistic, but fun for the evil-minded hive manager...

Where is the invasion of privacy when you willingly and knowingly enter a server that has this option enabled?!?! That would be like dialing into a telephone conference and then accusing the other participants of invading your privacy.

While he is right that other players will always be the biggest threat, balancing will most likely change such that the environment will be a much bigger threat than it is now. Most importantly, there will be more Zeds. And second most important, there will be significantly less loot.

A character that is permanently "online" is no option for someone that plays only 5h per week. And I would like to see the face of your boss when you explain him why you can't make that 2 week business trip to China :P But you miss my main point: With my suggestion all servers connected to the public hive run the normal 24h day/night cycle. But every server can pick his offset at which it is running. An example: you have two servers in England that give you the same ping, one is running on UTC, the other on UTC-10. If the player wants to switch from the first to the latter, he has to "pay" with 14 hours worth of his energy. Did I say 14 hours for a change of 10 hours? Yes, as in-game we don't travel back in time ;) If he doesn't have such reserves, he can't make that time transition. Maybe he can just jump to a server that is max. 6h ahead. But there may also be such a server in London. Or he changes to another UTC server which "costs" him nothing. The admins could "report" to the public hive at which time offset the server shall run. But the server gets this offset from the public hive. To make it a bit more attractive for those that pay for those servers, the offset can be changed once in 24h. On private hives you could drop such limitations. What you probably miss are the (as I think positive) implications of this system: To achieve the flexibility to change time zones, the players will need to pay much more attention to their character. They need to spend more time on scavanging for food and such, instead of just waepons and ammo to otherwise keep camping the beaches or airfields. Neither can they easily jump from a full daytime to an (almost) empty nighttime server to restock on food and ammo with exploiting the gamma hack, to then jump back to the daytime server where their friends are waiting - that 2x change of time zones costs 24h worth of energy! It puts more focus on the survival aspect of the game, instead of being just another shooter with an initial server hopping phase to fetch the best equipment. (okay, server hopping is still there, but more limited with respect to the time zone; he can still freely jump between 20 servers that all run on UTC or whatever time zone he happens to be in) But ultimately you will get more nighttime action because there may be people that just can't "afford" to jump to a daytime server. Loot hoarding will also be more difficult, because tents and vehicles are server bound (if it is like in the mod) => to switch back and forth between your base and whatever other server (in a different time zone) will also cost 24h of energy. You will need to pack a lot of beans to make such a transit worthwhile! Shortening the day/night cycle would hurt this system; with the in this thread suggested 3h cycle there would be almost no penalty to switch between night and day. Do I now get your beans?!

There is a statistic that in the stone age ~3h of hunting and gathering per day was enough to organize the upkeep with food, water, etc. And I would expect that they usually choosed to do so in daytime. (not so happy with it, but here is a german link that mentions this statistic, first section after "Der grosse Kater") Okay, that includes working in a group, but that also means that you need to feed more than one, feeding kids and old ones. Once my character has reached a certain state, he can choose when he is active. That's what my suggestion is about. If he is wellfed, he can choose when he goes out and looks for more food. He can pause for one hour, five hours, or 12 hours if he likes to. He will drain his reserves while doing so, but that's up to him, no?!?! If he is hungry and/or thirsty he loses that luxury. Changing the timezone since your last login is no problem, but it feeds upon your reserves. You have little reserves, you can only skip a short time. You are fully stuffed, you might maybe even skip an almost full day (max. 23h). Or you jump even multiple times, as long as your reserves allow. Do your work at day, and you don't need to be up at night, simple as that.

As you can't apply a saline bag on your own, you don't really need that one either. But maybe somebody else will thank you for it - they usually do so with a bullet ;) With sun, stars and a fair idea of the general map you may also skip the compass. If you have no specific destination, it doesn't even matter which direction you go. As long as there is a road in sight, you may eventually come to the next village or town. (okay, there are some dead-end roads, but going those back should then bring you to bigger roads and ex-civilization).

This is not correct. Put the map fragment in your hand and you can look at it - I think I remapped the associated key, so I can't tell you that one (but not while still in the inventory screen!). Or map it to one of the fast access keys on the bottom of the inventory, and you can call up by pressing the respective number (e.g. 5 if you dragged the map to the fifth slot).

What he says. When I said adjacent pieces can be combined, that means that => NW + NE = N => NW + SW = W => SE + SW = S => SE + NE = E => E + W or N + S end in the full map. Combining=Crafting works by dragging one piece over the other in the inventory, and then you should get the approriate option in the drop down menu (sometimes may take a short time).

And the map comes in up to four peaces, NE, NW, SE, SW. You can then combine adjacent pairs (drag one over the other) to create a S, E, N, W section, and finally to a complete map.

Just because you were on the same prison ship as me doesn't make you my friend! :rolleyes: