blooregardo

Many of these proposals seem kind of draconian, and they give innocent players no cushion whatsoever. In the even of a combat log, maybe something clientside could take note of any zombies that they alerted, then spawn the same amount of zombies in proximity next time the player logs in. For the big wall of text below, I'd only be talking about clientside disconnects in the sense that the player has paused and clicked on the disconnect button, and isn't taking into account server crashes or connection issues. That will be addressed later in the post. I think some punishments should really depend on the frequency of the offense. I like to play in short spurts between classes, and in a game like this, it's very easy to lose track of time, and sometimes more extreme cases of things that demand your attention like emergency bathroom breaks, et cetera. So, another option, perhaps a better one, clientside disconnects would occur after starting a timer that increases with each server during a period of 24 hours (for example: 1st server, "30 seconds until disconnect" second server ~"7 minutes", third 20 minutes, fourth an hour, et cetera). If the player tries to disconnect in or very near, for example, an airfield or city, the timer is doubled. Server hopping in particular still technically be able to occur, but it would become tedious to the point that it would be self-defeating. However, in the event of emergency, the player is allowed to skip once a day. If a player has an honest reason to skip the timer, they could click an "It's an emergency" button (which would quit the game entirely rather than reurning to the menu) and disconnect without consequence. This would only occur under the condition that the player has only initiated a disconnect at most, once or twice that day. After one use, or if the player has disconnected too many times, if the player tries to skip the timer again within, say, 12 hours, that button is replaced with "I'm willing to lose my character". So there's potential for abuse, but very little. Potential combat loggers would still spawn with any zombies they alerted in the previous server still in the vicinity. I suppose it still allows for abuse once a day, but it will at least make potential abusers think twice. If they have abused it and then an emergency strikes, they can still disconnect immediately, but they lose their character as a consequence for crying wolf. As far as connection issues and server crashes*: *(I don't know if the game has it's own way of differentiating client-side disconnects from server-side ones, such as a server crash or player being kicked, but I'm going on the uneducated assumption that it does) Either you're forgetting to take into account that this is not an option for a lot of people, or you're content with the game being exclusively available to certain people. Which is a perfectly valid opinion for a player to have, but that's not an attitude game developers are supposed to have as it alienates potential customers. If you live metropolitan area in Europe or the United States, sure. But in a more rural areas around the world, your options are limited between shit internet, and shit internet. Servicemen and women stationed overseas typically have unreliable internet connections as well. Even in the United States, an enormous amount of people stll use dial-up connections, and while dial-up friendly probably too much to ask for, I doubt the DayZ dev team would exclude a group of people that large willing to fork over $30 just because Comcast isn't available for them in the sticks. To adress shitty connection, I think the game should allow spontaneous, forceful disconnects (bad connection or just unplugging the cable), but in the event of client-side disconnects, disallow the player from connecting to another server until a certain timer has passed. That way, if there's a server crash or some other server-side issue, the player isn't punished for it. If an honest player's connection shits out, they can attempt to rejoin the server and pick up where they left off, and if their connection is still too crappy to rejoin, then the timer won't even matter to them. And if a player is actually combat-logging, they have no choice but to return to that specific server until the timer expires.