galekast

I am running at anywhere between 70-130 in the wilderness and around 45-60 in towns and cities... Specs are: i7 4790K OC 4.4ghz, Gigabyte R9 280X 3gb, 8gb ram, playing off a 250GB SSD,, Having to play at 720p though as my 42" just black screens DayZ at 1080p, think its something to do with the refresh rate as I never had this problem on my old 32" tv which could cope with 1080p at 60Hz...

Had an awesome 2 hour session this morning.. Few server disconnects but other than that, fine.. Logged in up in the NE unnamed village, looted that, headed down to Dobroe where I found a Repeater and some bits and pieces.. Found some rope so decided to ditch the Repeater for an ashwood bow and some custom arrows.. As I was looting Karmanovka (full of stuff by the way, including a nice hunting jacket!) a random Italian dude came wandering over saying hello.. I was wary as he was armed but we got chatting, I gave him some beans and he proceeded to make a garden patch and grow pumpkins for us! After 20 minutes of discussion and growing we went our separate ways with a backpack full of pumpkin slices and full bellies! Bloody awesome, I truly love this game at times for the randomness, and after being KOS'd twice last night it has restored a bit of my faith in people! Off and onwards, skirting Novo and off to Nagornoe now I think! If you see a dude in a green hunting jacket and black dry bag, say hello :)

I had the totally opposite experience on a pretty much full 1pp server... I found nothing on the coast, precious little at Msta but then continued West to Guglovo where I started finding some items, then Novy Sobor which I looted for a while and found plenty.. After that I just headed North and basically found everything I need. Food, ammo, meds, I even have a MP5 and a PM73 Rak (2 guns which I have seen once in my whole time playing) with ammo and magazines. So there is loot there, just sounds like you got very unlucky.. As others have stated, I have yet to find any 6 slot trousers but that is about the only thing I am missing.. Toying with the idea of hitting up the military bases for the first time in forever to see if I can grab a hunting backpack but I will probably just continue exploring the North side of the map!

Don't know if it's a new thing or something people have spotted, but I got a new status effect pop up today after I ran off a too high drop.. It came up with the usual, my leg hurts, my feet hurt and when I went into the inventory it had an orange "chipped bone" status.. I took painkillers and changed shoes and the messages stopped but the status remains. I don't appear to be any slower but who knows how it will affect it. After a while the messages came back so took more painkillers.. Maybe I just have to manage it til it heals up of its own accord? Other than the lack of zombies I am really liking this build.. Found my first landmine today which I placed in the middle of a random main road, though it was way up North so I doubt anyone would have triggered it! Found a few bits and pieces, various parts for guns etc.. I am yet to find a SVD or VSS (Although I assume these are heli crash only?) so I have been running round with the Trumpet and exploring and seeing what I can find.. Food and drink was scarce early on but as I made it to Novy Sobor then headed North from there I found more than enough supplies in the various areas (Grishino inparticular though I didn't mean to end up there!).. Only problems I have had are that I don't appear to be able to drop anything I put into the hot bar.. So I had binoculars, compass, trumpet and pickaxe in the hot bar.. None of those items can be moved in my inventory or dropped at all.. I can still use them as long as I don't remove them from the hotbar, but the binoculars I did move to change the order and now I can not put them back on the bar or manually take them into hands... Very annoying!

Regardless of what is easier, you shouldn't hop to get geared up.. That is not what the game is about quite simply.. If you do that, you take away so much from the DayZ experience that you might as well just go play Battlefield or COD or something along those lines. The idea of DayZ is for it to be a struggle, for you to have to survive and slowly build up your gear and items until you are at a point of sustainability and survival.. It should not all be given to you and to play the system to find more loot quickly is weak beyond belief.. I am of the opinion, if people want to go do deathmatch PVP then they should have to find the weapons and ammo to do so on that server, not hop about until they are fully geared then try their luck on a higher pop server.. Its pathetic, cheap and completely against everything the game should actually be.. Unfortunately, lazy, immature people for whom the survival aspect is "too hard" will do it until it is abolished.. Hopefully sooner rather than later.. For now, I am sticking to the private hives until they figure this out as I know a) all the loot is (probably) fairly acquired and b) I won't have to worry about a train of hoppers spawning in behind me everytime I go loot a military area!

I have an idea but I do not know if it is viable or achievable.. But if it worked it could stop the server hopping we currently see or at least diminish it to those with amazing amounts of time on their hands to do nothing but wait... Basically, if every item has its own id (I believe I read this was something that might happen to stop duplication? Though I could be wrong) then basically what I would propose is this. You run into a barracks, grab a shiny AK 101 and some mags etc.. Your typical server hopper then runs off a little way and logs out nearby to go do the same thing again.. What if, items had a timer as such.. So if you pick up an item, for 30 minutes that item is ticking down as such.. It is still usable, it is still lootable by others if you are killed. Everything about the item/weapon/clothing functions as normal. However, if you log off a server and onto another before that 30 minutes is up, you lose that item. It is deleted on joining the new server along with any others in your inventory that haven't been a part of it for 30 minutes.. (or however long really, could be any number).. Now this timer would be tied to a central clock that would track when you picked it up etc.. So the timer would still run even when you log out. Meaning, if someone grabbed some gear and wanted to log out for the evening, they could without fear of losing it as long as it was 30 minutes until they logged back in again on a different server... Obviously if you log back in on the same server then you the timer would be fine and you would still keep the item regardless of how long it had been (eg/ for server restart etc).. This would mean, anyone hopping would have a 30 minute "down period" between grabbing any items and changing server, meaning only those who want to literally wait 30 minutes between logins would ever be able to server hop if they want to keep anything they find each time... I know this wouldn't eradicate it as it would only punish those who actually pick up items and not those who quickly jump between barracks and leave when there's nothing they want.. However, it would stop people grabbing a gun and jumping straight to a high pop to pvp with their ill begotten gains. I don't know if its feasible, I don't know if it would work, but it could certainly help a little bit.. Or just KO for a set period anyone the game notices has jumped between servers more than 3 times in a set period of time, though this would be a risk most would take as I assume most of these hoppers will be jumping to low pop servers where they are unlikely to be found... Actually, better plan.. If someone jumps a set amount of times in a certain period of time, KO them for 10 minutes and automatically dump them into the highest pop public server that has player slots available :)

Soooo bored of this now.. It is a survival game.. Just because you can't have a backpack full of food, ammo and enough camo clothing to hide a small army, does not mean the game sucks.. You are supposed to have to work for it.. So go work for it, go hunting for that precious gear you need so badly and actually get a bit of a sense of achievement in your gameplay for a change.. As I said, it is a survival game, you need to forage, work for food and drink and survival items.. If all you want to do is go have gun fights in Elektro then go play Overpoch (not knocking it, its fun, just it's not what DayZ is meant to be!)... DayZ is meant to be a struggle, a challenge and above all else, is meant to give you a sense of achievement just for surviving for a decent amount of time, not how many kills you can rack up in a session.. If all you want to do is shoot people, there are sooooo many games out there or other variations of DayZ mod for you... If you want a survival game that is going to get tough and rewarding then hang about here and enjoy where the game goes! I know I will be! Loving the difficulty and I am loving the struggle to survive, makes such a nice change from spawning in and being fully geared in 5 mins... Guess all you "leetBanditClans" will have to work a bit harder now or just farm your "public" servers a bit more...

And dubstep, don't forget the dubstep...

Meh, while it is in alpha, let people bash each others heads in while dressed in bright pink dresses! Keeps them away from me, unless I am bored and running around in my favorite bright pink raincoat.. That is the colour of friendship I will have you know, never been attacked by someone in bright pink! If you are wearing bright clothing and not on the coast, then you have nothing to hide and we can best friends :) In all seriousness, just let people do what they want. I don't subscribe to running around the big cities pvping or any pvp in my case in general, but if people want to do that for a bit of fun and a laugh then let them do so.. It will change eventually I am sure.. And personally, I think the dresses are fantastic, personal favourite being the blue one, soo camo :)

If I can find the supplies to do it, I am going to do just that now...

The main problem you have at the moment isn't necessarily the difficulty, its the loot system. Survival should be the aim of this game without a doubt, but as others have said, with the loot the way it is, and the way hunger and thirst work it is very difficult to survive that first 15 minutes at the moment. I have no problem looting, avoiding zombies and trying to stay alive, that part of the game is my favourite aspect being as I pretty much avoid PVP if I can. The problem is the initial hunger impacting on survival probability. It is rare/improbable you will find any loot besides chemlights where you spawn. If you move further in land the initial houses and villages will have been picked clean also. So to have a chance of surviving you need to make it extremely far in land or up to some of the northern villages just to find some food. Because it will be impossible to cook or grow food until you get further in land as there will be no tools, cooking untensils or axes to make campfires and if you find some matches at the moment, guard them with your life! As others have said, yes the mod was unforgiving, but you could survive, you could find a tin of beans or a soda and keep yourself going. You didn't need weapons to survive initially other than from other players as you could stealth everywhere, grab a little food and head off across the map. The problem here is, the mechanics in place for survival (hunting, cooking, growing) are impossible to achieve early on (which is as it should be, it should take time to get everything you need for that) but that is not balanced out with being able to get an initial amount of items to get you going. I am not advocating axes and M4s for everyone on the coast, but even getting the materials to build a rudimentary bow to hunt with before you starve to death is nigh on impossible. And even if you do make one and do get some animal meat, you wont be able to cook it because you won't find a cooking pot or tripod until you head in land, which will require sustenance to make the run in land, and then we just circle back around again to the main issue. Yes survival should be the focal point of this game, without a doubt. Anything that takes the emphasis of the dumb deathmatch crap people love to do over and over again is a positive. What needs to be fixed is that initial period of starting out. You need a chance and with the loot as it is, there will be people who just starve to death over and over again and then wonder why they are bothering to play this game. Even just removing the initial hungry rating would be beneficial, it would give you a slightly bigger grace period and give you the opportunity to move away from the looted spawn areas and find a bit of starter gear to get yourself going. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens in the next couple of updates. As I have stated elsewhere, I love the update, it just needs a little tweaking and improvement to get it working how it should be in my opinion.. Oh and maybe not having zombies glitch hit me, but thats another discussion :)

I generally play on servers with below 60 ping average and my internet connection is rather good, I still get the desync, lagging and telekinetic zombies... However, I get the impression that is not something that is going to be fixed by ping although it probably doesn't help those with higher pings. Personally I am enjoying this update up to a point.. As others have stated, the hitboxes/animations/speed of the zombies and their innate ability to hit you anyhow and anywhere is rather frustrating, especially when you appear to be out of range or have dodged successfully. But, they are moving in the right direction, the increased numbers make stealth play a must in towns and cities and even the odd village can be treacherous if you aren't careful.. The lack of footsteps is doing my head in but hopefully that can be hotfixed or patched next time around so we can hear them at least. Their stamina system is fantastic, making them run for a while drains them and allows you to drag an entourage around with you which is a lot of fun! I have found they are glitching through doors a lot more though that may just be desync not catching up with their position after I shut them in somewhere. However, I am yet to actually manage to lock one in anywhere due to this which is rather frustrating. With regards to loot, some of it seems very random, however, I managed to find a PM 73 Rak or whatever it is called and a mag in one police station in the north of the map so I was rather ecstatic as I had never seen the gun before! Food and drink is not as scarce as people are saying, its just not available on the coast. After I ran in land from Berezinho, I hit Kraznostav and found nothing and just about made it to Gvodzno while starving and found some food and drink there fortunately.. I am all for the scarcity of food but that does need to be balanced out a little.. As I didn't find a projectile weapon of any sort until Severograd, hunting was out unless I made a bow. Unfortunately I didn't find a hatchet until Gvodzno and by then I had enough food to last me a little while. So while the scarcity of food to force growing and hunting is a good inclusion, the fact is the materials to be doing these things are nigh on impossible to find early on and will probably be only found in land, meaning that by the time you make it somewhere like that you will either be starving/dead or be in a village where you can just find food anyway. There is going to need to be something done with this as spawning in with a relatively small window of time before you starve and there being a distinct lack of canned food or tools/weapons to make your own food means a lot of people will be dying very, very quickly.. And thats not taking into account I never found a canteen, pickaxe, seeds or any cooking utensils or matches on the whole run that I did so I wouldn't have been able to cook or grow a damn thing. A little balancing would be nice, but I am liking that the deer stands are now worth visiting most of them time! But overall, I am quite excited for the future, a lot more polishing is obviously neccesary and I know these are only the early implementations of the systems they are putting in place, however, everything is developing rather nicely in my opinion and in a few updates time I am sure the stuff they have put in place today will be running a lot more smoothly.. I do agree however, that performance has taken a hit.. Going into Severograd dropped my fps to 29 roughly and that I was not pleased about.. I haven't those numbers since an overloaded Epoch server on my old AMD processor! My 4790K 4.4 should be dealing with that a lot better than it did today, but I guess Alpha is Alpha and that will eventually be sorted up to a point too.. But this update has definitely hit the performance a bit and I feel for anyone running an older rig at the moment as it must be a frustrating time! But this is what we are here for, checking it all out, giving feedback and the such like :) Oh, and try luring a group of 10+ zombies out in to the wilderness with you, when they all start slowing down its fantastic.. I managed to get them spread out in a line like they were arm in arm marching down the road and loved every minute of it! Its like watching one of those zombie walks people do :)

Well I had a great time today, admittedly messing about a bit, managed to get a good 10-12 zombies to follow me from Cernaya Polana to Turovo... Started as a bit of an experiment to see how many of them I could lock in the firestation but alas they glitched through the door after I closed it annoyingly.. So instead I decided to herd them along to the next town and see what would happen.. They followed me pretty well, their stamina dropped off and they started moving at just over walking pace which was nice.. Some guy on the hill followed my progress from a distance possibly wondering what the hell I was doing.. It all came to a rather tragic end when I shut myself in a house in Turovo to try and find some food and drinks and my new found infected buddies glitched through the door and trapped me in an upstairs bedroom.. It was fun while it lasted and I shall never forget those guys and gals and their wacky ways!

I actually really like that idea. I know it probably wouldn't be accepted by the majority but it is a good idea to stop the ghosting and such like. Besides, logging off in a town is a terrible idea, best to go find a tree or something to hide in! But I definitely think the idea of spawning you outside of the military zones is a good one, yes its not perfect and yes it may only be 1km to run but its that 1km the server hopper will have to run and potentially be seen. And as the hoppers wont exactly be proficient in dealing with players seeing as they are clearly doing the easy option, hopefully they will get murdered and lose their precious gear!

I like the idea personally, especially after reading the dev thing where they said weapons will spawn with different attachments or magazines etc. That sounds like a fantastic idea and finding a partially modded AKM would be great. I think the weapon parts should still spawn though, mainly in the military areas but give them a small percentage chance to spawn in the deer stands, hunting huts, military vehicle wrecks and a very low potential chance everywhere else (like a 1% chance in a house for example to replicate the chance of a survivor having dropped it there)... Although I will miss the PSO scope as I have not seen one in weeks! But I think you are right, certain weapons should spawn with sights attached, like the SVD.. And the potential of finding an MK12 equivalent with a tricked out M4 would be fantastic, truly love that gun in Arma 2! Although I am yet to hold an M4 since the first month of the Standalone release!

Not true at all, my friend who I play DayZ and DayZ Mod with only ever has issues in first person. He has everything that could potentially cause motion sickness switched off but there is something about the movement that causes him issues in this game. And its only DayZ that does it, he can play other FPS quite happily.. *And on topic, that looks way too close to a Resident Evil 4 style view point, the first game of the series that I truly hated and didn't finish, mainly because of the view point and the fact that the aiming always felt off to me when viewed from that angle. Probably just me, but would there not be a way to have the 3rd person view we have now that would draw in close and limit the movement when close to a wall or something like that? Eg, something akin to Metal Gear Solid when you take cover and the view closes in on your character.. If you are pressed up against the wall the camera snaps behind you lower down to limit what you can see? Plus wasn't there already a script on the mod that put you in FPS if you went prone to prevent this sort of thing? I am sure I played on a server like that?

Ah thank you very much :) I will get round to reading them when I get a little bit of time. The loot distribution for the military areas how you described it sounds a lot better than the current system. I can imagine it wont exactly stop the hoppers but it may at least deter them a bit. I still think removing them from the area would be a good last resort idea if they cant find a better way. But if this helps it then so be it. But thank you for explaining it and I will have a proper look at those reports later on :)

Yeah actually, that is smart.. In fact, other than introducing a longer and longer timer, it is the only intelligent way to prevent server hopping in high loot areas that I have seen. Cleared out a barracks, checked the area is clear, go looting, killed by a guy spawning behind you... That is bullshit and you know it. So why not stop them being able to do that? If they had to make that run from 1km out from the barracks then they may well start playing properly rather than gearing up on low pop then running to their favourite PVP zone.. Oh and there is no need to be quite so rude or arrogant in your responses, if I was incorrect then fine, but don't start your post like you did when I was just throwing out an idea. What would you do to prevent the server hopper issue good sir? And finally, do you happen to have a rough idea when the dev report with the details about the loot would have been posted? I would like to read it in full. Edit: For some reason I typed "incorrect" as "in correct".. Changed it.

No, the answer to stop server hoppers would be to stop them logging off in high value loot areas.. For example, NWAF, any of the military bases etc.. If you try to log off there it shouldn't give you the option to abort.. If you CTRL+ALT+DELETE or whatever out of the game then it should teleport you 1km away in a random direction. Basically, if the game detects that you are logging in inside a military spawn area then it should move you 1km minimum away from that area.. Then all those server hoppers will at least have to run back in and risk getting spotted, and they won't do that because they don't want to be seen or get shot.. Obviously there will be the odd person who gets d/c and gets moved on reconnect but I would rather the odd person got punished unfairly than allow people to just server hop like they currently do to gear up... As for the random loot, totally agree, it should be randomized in all the houses and warehouses and stuff like that, but the military spawns should remain as they are, that is what they are there for.. It would make no sense to enter a barracks and find a load of childs briefcases or pink raincoats or whatever..

But you can not move items from private to public servers, so surely that makes any private server null and void with regards to the central loot economy?

As far as I understand it, and I may be wrong, any server on the public hive would be subject to the central loot economy.. Those on private hives would not as the loot obtained there could not be moved over to public servers and vice versa.. That sounds like it should be correct anyway..

Off of the main page "DAYZ is a gritty, AUTHENTIC, open-world, survival horror hybrid mmo game".. Strikes me that if the Devs want authentic then that would tie in with realism.. No you can not have 100% realism, there has to be game mechanics of course, but removing things that would realistically be in such an environment takes away from the experience for everyone! Hell I haven't held an M4 since the first months of the game when they were everywhere, but that doesn't mean I want them removed..

Someone said about the army just leaving guns behind.. No you are correct, those surviving soldiers would have grabbed as much gear as humanly possible and got out of there.. But what about all the not so lucky soldiers, those who killed by the infected and left behind or became infected themselves.. I can't see the army rushing around grabbing their bodies or gear when a horde of infected are rushing up.. So yes, a lot of stuff would have been left behind, its the simple fact that not everything would have been cleaned out in time.. The majority of the military areas on the map show signs of a struggle and destroyed vehicles, so whose to say those soldiers there didn't just hop on the first heli out of there and only grabbed what they could! Why would there not be full auto guns in those areas or at the subsequent heli crashes? In my opinion, for there NOT to be military grade weaponry in what was basically a warzone would be far less immersion breaking and unrealistic. If you don't particularly like full auto guns then don't use them and avoid them, I'm not a massive fan either and I tend to stick with the SKS or my trusty bow... But that is no reason to want to have them taken out of the game entirely. In fact, I would be shockingly disappointed if that was the case as the realism argument gets pushed out again and again for most things, but then some people want everyone fighting on the same level.. And to whoever said about the real world situation, no I have never been in that situation, but real armies and groups have been when they have had to get out of an area quickly, and you can be damn certain that while they would have grabbed what they could, a decent amount of stuff would end up being left behind in a rushed evacuation.

If you were banned for killing the owners, isn't that server abuse and shouldn't you officially report the server for such a thing?

Got to say, you are wrong. In a real world situation, which is apparently what everyone would want, there would be plenty of automatic weapons about. AKs and that sort of ilk, while not exactly plentiful, would certainly be available. And the heli crashes are a nice way to add weapons that perhaps wouldn't naturally be in the country. But you can not turn around and say that it would only be old rifles and shotguns as that clearly wouldn't be the case. Yes it can mean death if you get spotted by someone with an M4, so be careful and don't get spotted. Saying that, I can count on one hand how many times I have met someone in the last 6 months with an M4 or AK to be honest. So I don't know where you are running around but I am clearly in the right areas not get fully auto'd to death! But you can not remove weapons that would feasibly be available to someone in that situation just because you don't like getting shot by them. Besides, if they ever fix the server hopping bullcrap of people getting looted up then M4s will hopefully be a lot rarer on public servers. If you play on private servers I find them to be very rare to the point of not seeing a single person with one so far! AKs yes occasionally but not the M4s.. Edit: That was a ramble, sorry!