pa_foster

I'm afraid that there are a vociferous few who will shout down any suggestion that makes Dayz appear even slightly less hardcore because it doesn't fit in with their "vision" of how the game should be. Doesn't matter if its a good suggestion or not, if it doesn't fit their vision of the game, they'll haul out all the glass cannons and pointless bullshit they can muster to scream down the opposition. This bloody stupid 90-second wait is all their fault - they cried and complained about people "server-hopping" to cherry-pick loot or avoid getting killed. Boo-hoo. It would be fine if the servers didn't decide to kick you for no reason whatsoever but they do... repeatedly - that, or the game CTD's . But no, they had to have their "fix" for a minor problem installed. So what did BI do? Slapped a plaster on it and didn't try to fix the underlaying problem.

Controlled spawn points sound like an excellent idea. But there are those of us who are not seriously into the hiking simulator side of things that do like to lonewolf. However, more often than not, you spawn in the middle of nowhere and have to hike your way to some likely looking village for supplies, hoping that you don't run into some KOS asshat along the way. And, when you do get there, x-ray eyed zombies with a turn of speed that'd make Barry Allen blink haul ass from like five miles away - running through trees and buildings in their eagerness to eat your brains and all you've got to defend yourself is... well nothing really. I'm not asking for the game to be simplified or made easier (although I do think it unrealistic that a zombie wil chase you from one edge of the map to the other and back again unless you're lucky enough to break LOS) but a choice of controlled spawn points with low loot and low or no zombies might help people ease into the gamea little better. I've been away for a couple of months myself and, I have to say, I'm very disappointed that the problems with zombies simply running through buildings, players dropping through architecture and getting irrevocably stuck (happened to me twice), problems with servers suddenly & inexplicably dumping you and then having to wait 90 seconds to spawn back in, and servers that simply sit there saying "Please wait..." and do nothing still haven't been resolved. Unless these problems are fixed, people are going to start drifting away from Dayz in favour of less punishing survival games (I have at least 2 friends who've sworn off Dayz and uninstalled it and who have advised several of their friends not to bother with the game at all). If that's a repeated trend, Dayz is pretty much screwed for commercial release. (assuming we ever get out of alpha)... word of mouth carries much more weight than you migh think.

I don't think not glitching through the floor of a building is "too high of an expectation" 6 months after release of an alpha. It's a basic, fundamental flaw that should have been fixed as soon as it was initially reported as a bug - and I know that it was one of the early, reported bugs. Yes, Alphas are used to add more content - but they are also intended to point out game-breaking bugs so that they can get fixed. Falling through floors and zombies that can phase through walls? These are the sort of priority fixes that should have been dealt with by now and should have taken precedence over adding Tactical Bacon and a timer to stop server-hopping. Adding reworked meshes isn't difficult - just reskin your basic can with a new label, add it to the loot list and Bob's your auntie. Heck, even adding new meshes isn't exactly rocket science once the basics are in place. Given that these guys have a fund of $20,000,000 plus before the game is even out of alpha-stage - I wouldn't have expected to see game-breaking bugs take a back-burner in favour of what I can only call, "pottering about" with loot tables. Yeah, throwing things is cool - so are the new weapons... but if the zeds are going to chase you through a freaking building and blindside you, all the wepons in the world are worth didlly-squat.

Like the OP I've just sampled the game agin after a long break (4 months in my case). Yes, I appreciate that one heck of a lot has been added, and - from reading the updates - there has been plenty of under-the-hood work done to the programme. However, like the OP, I am distressed to find that certain fundamental problems still haven't been fixed. It took me ages to find a server that would actually go past the "Please Wait" and blank screen stage and, when I initially did, said server promptly dumped me after about 10 seconds - something about not being able to load a texture for something, click okay. And.... BOOM, back to the lobby with you. Then there was a 100 second delay before I got onto the next server - I know that's there to stop server-hopping but when it's nothing I did then that wait becomes very annoying. Still, I got on and started to play. Pretty good - found the wrecked ship but had to log off for a while. I come back and, somehow, I've fallen through several floors of solid metal decking and am now trapped in a section of the hull I cannot get out of. WTF - is that still a problem? After all this time characters can still fall through scenery while logged off? Why hasn't that been fixed yet? Much as I desperately want to play this game, I think that another 4 month hiatus is required while such primitively basic problems are fixed. Putting in timers to stop server-hopping, making throwing things possible, adding new weapons and food (Tactical Bacon.... Mhhhhhh!!) are all very well: failing to fix something this basic is - in my opinion - a failing on the part of the coding team. See you guys in another 4 months then....

Sounds to me that he taught another player to be a complete asshat. Congratulations to the OP, that's exactly what Dayz needs... another KOS-Kitty asshat. I'd give you my beans - but I already ate them so folk like you don't rob me of them.

Much of the urban infrastructure - at least here in the UK - is underground and more is going into the ground every year. So, in large conurbations, there would be very little damage to the infrastructure from conventional warfare - unless an exchange took a direct hit it should continue to function. A number of exchanges - the exact number and locations are, naturally, classified - are hardened and will continue to function even with a nearby EMP - although unprotected electronics such as your mobile/home phone will promptly cease to function. A direct nuclear strike is, however, a different matter since the level of damage is overwhelming and even an hardened exchange would get demolished/incinerated/vaporised depending on its distance from the hypocenter. As I pointed out, mainainence of the network - post apocalypse - would be difficult (not impossible but on a very rapidly increasing scale of problematical) until the point where the necessary supplies or replacement parts are no longer available. Then the local infrastructure will start to break down, followed by the national infrastructure. But, most exchanges nowadays have smart routing: if you dial (for example) Liverpool and an exchange at Wigan is no longer responding, the system will route around the dead exchange in an attempt to find an alternate route. And, with 7000+ exchanges in the UK alone, that provides plenty of resilience. You also need to remember that we've had 50-plus years to contemplate nuclear armaggedon and precautions have been taken to ensure the continuity of communications in the advent of a suden outbreak of mushroom clouds. I do agree, however, that once the system goes dark it's going to take an hurculean effort to restore it and, depending on the nature of the Apocalypse, it may not be possible to do so.

Phone exchanges are very resilient - most have an engine that will start when the mains power fails and maintain service. Even when the fuel runs out and the engine stops, there are batteries which will provide additional "running time". However, by this point the exchange will probably have switched into emergency calls only mode but, depending on the configuration of the exchange, internet (via fibre and copper) should still function - at least until the batteries go flat. Once power is restored - i.e someone manages to get power into the National Grid (at least at a local level) - then the exchange will come back "alive". Alternately, someone will need to keep refilling the fuel-tank at the exchange... problematical at best during an Apocalypse. Locating fuel, delivering it in bulk, filling the tanks (especially if zombies are involved) all this would have to be done at every exchange in the country on a regular basis. Scavaging fuel woud become harder and harder until there was nothing left accessible... then the batteries would cut in again and run the exchange until they went flat. Of course, most exchanges nowadays are automated so all this switching happens without human intervention. So, if the National Grid was restored, all the exchanges would return to service and you'd be able to make calls/get internet access. Of course, getting power-stations up and running is a whole different ball game... As would be maintaining the equipment in the exchanges as older/worn down equipment failed there would be nothing to replace it. There would, as the Apocalypse unfolded, be service interruptions - however these are more likely on mobile phones than on static home-based phones. I'm not entirely sure of the number of calls it would take to overwhelm an exchange but its certainly on the order of thousands of simultaneous dialling attempts if not higher. Of course, much depends on the type of Apocalypse we are facing. So-called slow apocalypses - global warming/cooling, anoxia, plagues, &ct. - would have very little impact on service and you could probably continue playing Dayz right up until the end. However, mass extinction events tend to be... rather sudden. The impact of a shit-tonne of asteroid hitting Earth at umpteen thousand miles per hour ain't gonna leave you much to time get in one last run to NWAF before everything goes away with a suddenness. In the event of a nuclear war (on a global/apocalyptic scale) I suspect even the most die-hard DayZ fan is going to have other priorities - such as not burning to death/becoming a sterile mutation/being literally blown away.

On the other hand, you can go through a small unlooted town and find nothing but Beanie hats, cowboy hats, and hard hats: no food, no weapons, no clothing, no tools, only headgear. Make weapons rare by all means and by this I mean military grade stuff should only be found in military areas - and they should be swarming with the toughest type of Infected that BI can create :P Shotguns and axes should be fairly common on farms, melee weapons should be easiest of all to find. But all of that is academic until the devs figure out what the hell has gone bugger-up with the loot tables/spawning. It's frustrating to have :beans: :beans: :beans: :beans: :beans: :beans: and not a thing to open them with because most of the "tool" type stuff and edged melee weapons seem to have been replaced by yet another freaking bobble-hat!

Happened to me twice today as well. And no, I wasn't server-hopping, or ghosting, or combat logging. I logged out - exactly as BCKane did - in hiding, in bushes, inland, in the middle of nowhere up by Black Lake. Couple of hours later I log in and -BOOM- I'm back on the beach with zero equipment down by Kamyshovo. *shrugs* It's alpha, whadd'ya expect? So i play for a while, food, axe, backpack, usual clutter as I make my way - inland - towards the NWAF. Comes time to log out so I find a nice safe spot (in back of a small house somewhere close to Dubrovka... not in the house but outside at the back). Came to log in a few moments ago and -BOOM- back on the beach down near Kamy again, no equipment... again, pissed off. Alpha or no, stability issues like this are going to drive players away from the game: what's the point in surviving zombie-attacks, pantless clowns, psycho bandits, and every other KOS-kitty ass-clown on the server if you log off and get reset? Screw slapping a lazy bandaid on combat-logging because a bunch of whiny prats can't get their kicks killing unarmed spawns - fix the basic issues with the game first FFS

Either you don't understand the concept of "bettering" something or you just want to troll the poster - I'm not sure which (although I have my suspicions).I mean, you're onviously perfectly happy making Dayz into Dead Linger yet have objections to making it into Rust? How, exactly, does that sit right in your head? Dayz needs its own mechanism for building a base - if it "borrows" from either game, it needs to make it uniqely its own. Or it needs its own, unique, method of building. Building a base in Rust is pretty simple - the building shown in the above video is horribly clunky and needlessly complex. Base-building in Dayz needs to be better than it is in Rust and less "oops, I've not got that straight" than it is in that video. Unsupported structures should collapse - as they would in real life - not just hang there in defiance of the laws of physics. But raw materials should be harder to come by and gathering them (and building your structure) needs to carry the risk of attracting unwelcome attention.

I certainly hope not - it has heaps of potential to be an engrosing and enjoyable horror/survival game. Despite what the hardcore players and those who've been playing the mod think, the game does need to be made more accessible: i am concerned that the current player base will obfusticate the game to the point where anyone who's not played since Alpha won't be able to get into the game at all. Inevitably there will, out of the million plus current players, be those that drop out before the game actually goes gold. It remains to be seen if the final, polished version can draw them back in. Ironically, the one big problem I do see is the actual early release of the Alpha version and the wildly unexpected take up of what is - to all intents and purposes - a completely unfinished game. There exists the possibility that Dayz may have "shot its bolt" and everyone who is interested in buying the game has already brought it. Yeah, a million plus times £19.99 is nice to have in the bank and will pay for a heck of a lot of development but, if no-one buys the game at final release... Not good.

And your problem with my opinion is? The OP asked a question - I answered it to the best of my ability. You don't like my answer - deal with it. You think your opinion is more valid/important/better informed than mine? *bing* Wrong answer. You think I think my opinion is more valid/important/better informed than anyone else's? *bing* Also wrong answer. You think your opinion is more important/valid/better informed than any one else's? *bing* Wait... you couldn't be arsed to answer the OP in your rush to denigrate my post could you? Just goes to show what a sad little troll you are.

Respawning loot and fixed loot tables. At the moment it is rediculous: if you're lucky you can get in just after a server reset and - maybe - find something useful. ATM the dearth of simple things like knives, screwdrivers, and the like to simply open a can of food is so frustrating for me. I just spent an hour and a half playing a starvation simulator watching my avatar slowly and relentlessly starve to death with cans of food in his pockets simply because even the remotest farmhouse doesn't spawn simple tools. Improvised weapons/melee weapon overhaul. At the moment it's a fire axe or nothing for melee weapons. Trying to beat down a Zed with a baseball bat that misses 90% of the time? Phui - might as well go in bare-fisted: I've had more luck beating zombies to death with my bare hands and with most melee weapons. A dramatic reduction in military-grade hardware. Explains itself really - too many folks head for military bases, gear up and log, gear up and log and then make life hell for fresh spawns.Yes, I understand it's a pre-alpha release and yes, I understand it's as buggy as hell but - IMO - the devs should be concentrating on fixing what's broken rather than gicing us the ability to transform weapons into their Hello Kitty counterparts with pink spray-paint.

Do you see, in the list I've given, any means whatsoever of opening a can of beans? No - because loot-spawns are nerfed to all hell and back and I can only smush a can with a baseball bat, not open it because I keep finding yet another freaking bobble hat instead of anything vaguely useful. And, while it's true that there are water-sources, I have no means of carrying water with me because freaking bobble hats leak like... well a woolly bobble hat really. While I get to play for about an hour most evenings, server resets are a relative rarity for me.

New character - about an hour of play time... No T-shirt - had to tear it into rags to stop the bleedinga baseball bat (about the single most useless melee weapon in the game as it never seems to hit its target)2 cans of beansyet another fracking bobble hata pair of cargo pants that, for some inexplicable reason, spawned in a barn in the middle of nowhereI managed to find a can of soda in one town so I haven't expired from thirst yet but the two interior towns up north I visited yeilded bugger all else. I'm happy for all those of you who can find loot because you've time to play around server resets. As has been pointed out, some of us have other responsibilities an can't play for hours at a time. Lack of loot rapidly drains any fun out of the game when you're on a limited timetable. Personally, I can't wait until military loot is rarer than rocking-horse sh*t and improvised weapons are in the game. Load up the areas around military bases with dozens of the deadliest forms of Zeds and sit back and listen to the complaints then :D