Smashpaw

Just coming back after not playing for a few months. Notice a few small changes, IE splints, fires, some new guns, etc. But what's missing is the players. Where in the world does everyone go now? I played on a high pop server with a 2 hour reset and ran around like a chicken for 2 resets to gear out in balota. Most of my gearing coming from a guy I managed to sneak up on with a pistol. So now, I am fully decked out with a mosin, LRS, food water etc. I go to balota, cherno, elektro, bere, NE and NW airfield, and I see maybe 5 people tops. This includes playing on several different servers, just trying to find some player interaction. Where is the hot spot now? I remember not being able to make it from balota through cherno and into elektro without getting shot at multiple times. Also, most of my friends have stopped playing, or dont play very often, so I am looking for some new people to stroll around with, preferably other sniper style players. My PC isnt good enough for me to engage in CQC without lagging to high hell.

Dont get me wrong, im not out looking to hunt bambis. But i remember having fire fights that would last upwards of 20 minutes. groups of 5+ on each side, some with M4's others with mosins, One time a group of 11 of us got wiped by 2 snipers coming into cherno. They dropped 6 of us before we had any idea where the bullets were even coming from. But damn, any player interaction would be appreciated. even if it was a new spawn needing some help.

This is an easy fix. Dont even worry about messing with config files. First go to your game library, right click on dayz, and click properties. There is a box at the bottom labeled set launch options. Type this in the box, or just copy paste -cpuCount=4 -nosplash -noPause -maxMem=16384 This will force the game to run through 4 cores ( the max for the game, setting this at 8 will hurt you more), and use all 16 gigs of ram. Next go in game, configure and video. Rendering resolution should be at 100%, and Vsync disabled. Under user interface, match your monitors resolution, and aspect ration. size on normal. Under quality. with your setup, you can put your objects and terrain on high, clouds disabled, and shadows very low. Under textures, video memory on auto, texture detail and filtering on normal. Now the important one. Under rendering disable everything, and HDR quality on very low. put bloom and rotation blur off. Try this and let me know how it works.

I dont mind KOS, I dont mind glitches, bugs, dying for no reason. I effing hate the 20 minute run back into action. That is incredibly stupid for an alpha. You wanna make everyone happy, and fix a lot of complaints about things. Make more spawn points, and give new spawns an ability to pick their spawn location. This will lower KOS a lot, as with there being more spawn points, people wont be able to camp the new spawn. And for those who want to play it safe, they can spawn out in the middle of no where. For those like me that wanna get right back into the action, we can spawn outside elektro. As I said, i dont mind the KOS, bugs, glitches, and anything else. But this walk is incredibly long after dying. Some of us have limited play time, and we dont wanna spend it running. This is only a suggestion for the alpha phase. Once the game is underway, then yes, back to the way it is now.

Just gonna compose a short list of places, things, etc. that new people should know about. If I miss something feel free to chime in and ill add it to the original post. First things first, you need to figure out where you are. There are many ways of doing this. If you have been playing more than a week, odds are you know where you are right away, if not well this map will help tons. Another thing that helps, is the sun is always a southern direction. Pending on time of day, it may be SW, SE, or dead south. But if you are facing the sun, you are facing in a southern direction. http://dayzdb.com/map/chernarusplus#4.047.084 Once you spawn, your best bet is to get outta that town fast. Lots of players like to camp newspawn towns for easy kills, and this will frustrate you. Figure out where you are, and where you wanna go. Ill go more into this later on. Next, you need water. The map shows locations of all the water pumps in the games. You can also drink from ponds and swamps by going into first person mode, and crouching down to look at the water. As of now, there is no need to purify water, so drink until you are full. Once you know where you are, your best bet is to head towards the middle of the map, away from the coast. The coast is a hotspot, and you will more than likely end up dead. Once full on water, you can run for a long time. It's up to you to decide when and where you wanna stop for food, but your best bet is little towns, out in the woods. Some good buildings to look for in big towns are: Firehouses: 4 Big red garage doors, filled with various loot. Odds are you wont encounter these unless you are in a dangerous area. They are a hot spot, best to avoid on a populated server. TEC buildings: Buildings will have TEC written on them somewhere. They offer some good loot sometimes, but again, can be a a dangerous spot. Office/schoolhouse: These look like they had double glass front doors, are 3 stories tall, grey in color,with the third story being smaller in size than the first 2. These have some pretty great loot as well, but again, extremely dangerous. Since these are extreme hotspots, and have a high risk of dying, I recommend only hitting them if you are still a new spawn, and have minimul gear, with nothing to lose so to speak. Odds are, once geared, these will offer nothing you need, except an untimely death. An important thing to watch for is zombies. Most servers are on a 4 hour reset. If you hit a town, and there are zombies everywhere, odds are no one has been through it yet, and it may be safe to scout around. Just stay outta windows, and dont stop moving, cause there could always be that sniper on the hill somewhere. Now onto the small towns, where you should be searching. gas stations/convienience stores: Pretty easy to recognize, inside the little store area, you can sometimes find water bottles, or canned food, and the occasional hat. Log cabin looking homes are mostly junk. I wouldnt waste my time looking in them. 2 story green houses, with double white doors: These should always be looked in when in search of food. Once inside, you can only go up the stairs, into the one little room. Over on the desk is a hot spot for food spawns. houses that look like they have 2 front doors: The one door actually goes to a porch. Again, a great spawn point for water and food. The rest will come to you. After a few hours of play time, you will know what buildings warrant a search, and what can be skipped. Now if you are still with me, you should be full on water, maybe hit a house or 2 for some food, and if not you are fine. Your best bet, head west, far far west. On the map you will see a town on the left called Zelenogorsk. This is the place to get to for various reasons. Even on full servers, very very rarely do I run into another player up here. This place is great for many reasons. First one being, it's huge. There are water supplies, and tons of houses/stores to search. You should have no problem filling your water/food supply here. There is also a mini military base in the city. It's very rarely looted, has a jail cell building, and 2 barracks. You can pick up military gear, backpacks, axes, even pistols and M4's here. And if not, you can head just SW of there to pavlovo. It's only a 2-3 minute run away. Again, very rarely looted, pretty safe town, and decent food/water loots. Just outside of that town, you can see another military base. This is a goldmine. Again, very rarely do you run into another player, and you can literally get everything you need here. There are 3 barracks, which all spawn great gear and guns. Two are inside the compound, the 3rd is outside between the fence lines if you enter off the road headed south from Pavlovo. There is a hospital, and an TEC style building in the back. The TEC building can spawn fireaxes, mosins and shotguns on the staircases. So literally any of the 5 guns in game can be found at this base. If you still need supplies, you can head NW of Zelenogork, to green mountain. It's a huge white/red stripped tower, you cant miss it. There is a military jailhouse here, and again, it spawns military loot. My ideal loadout: While the M4 is a great gun, and with an ACOG it can be a mid range (200-300 meters) sniper style gun, unless you plan on going into cities doing close quarter combat, it should be over looked. I carry the same loadout everytime I play, and it has served me quite well. It consists of a Mosin, preferably with a compensator if you get lucky, and a bipod. I carry a long range and a PU scope at all times. The long range is great when out in the fields running so you can scout out. But that PU is untouchable inside cities window sniping under 300 meters. I also grab a shotgun, and saw it off. The accuracy goes to shit, but it fits in your backpack, ammos everywhere, and its devastating inside buildings. And the pistol is your choice. If you listen to this guide, you should find a .45 and a magnum. I prefer the magnum. It has better range, accuracy, and more power than the .45. I use the mosin outside of cities, and when in a high vantage point inside a city to scout around. The shotgun when I am inside a building clearing it out, and the magnum for my carry all while moving building to building. I have 3 major servers I play on, the TBG clans 2 servers, and the CQF clans server. They are all almost always full, and even so, in this part of the map, i hardly ever see other players, and I am able to gear out, and do as I wish from there, whether it be head to Balota, or the NW airfield for some PVP action. Ill add more to this later, quite frankly I am tired of typing. Ill try to get some pics up of each building type I described, and more as I add buildings that are good for loot spawns. Ill also keep this updated with any info added by other forum members.

SIGH, not a hack at all. I snipe from sniper hill into the city of elektro on night servers all the time. heres a tip, brightness up, gamma up, HDR lighting very low, then go to quality, and turn it all to very high. it makes the moonlight actually take effect, and you can see shapes. granted, if you are against a building, it may be hard to see you, but out in a field, on the road, skylining yourself, you are quite an easy target.

Posing as a seemingly dead guy, after hitting this guy enough to make him bleed all over. As people came to investigate, they would come by being nosy and stop, at which point I would mic up the jigsaw voice from Saw, pull out my axe, and go after them. Some fought back, as you can tell my screen color was really faded out by the end. Other just accepted their fate. Some tried to run, they didnt make it far.

So everyone else can KOS newspawns with guns, so they have no chance, and its ok? I do it with my fists and a melee weapon, and I'm a bad guy.... Lol OK. So i am guessing you have never gunned down new spawn then...

Reduced loot spawns making gearing up take an entire day, everyone does KOS regardless of gear, I was in solnichniy, so most people didnt want that long walk and embraced the death. I spent the better half of the day, running around my 2 favorite servers, gearing up. I think it was the TBG clans servers #1 and #2. after finally gearing up, i decided to play for real, helped a few new spawns, met a guy, helped him through elektro, killed 3 bandits along the way trying to kill us, got him geared up, as soon as he loaded the clip in the 45 i found him, he shot me. at this point it was too late to start the regearing process, so i decided to just goof off and have some fun for the time I had left.

Bodies despawn now, after 10 minutes. And as I said, some people I had to chase through town, and then bring their possessions back to my shopping center.

Not all were new spawns, and this far up away from towns, most people welcomed the death. I even had some full military geared guys walk up to my character, and try to loot him. Needless to say, I continued to play dead with them. also, dont judge my fun. I did this first with my fist, then after beating a guy with an axe, i used it. I could be like 95% of this game, camping new spawns with a full kitted character. They had a chance everytime.

This guy custom builds. I have had him do PC's for me in the past, as he only lives an hour away. This computer I linked is a little more than you wanted to spend ($850) and it AMD based processor, but it will smoke through this game, and anything else you wanna throw at it in the next 2-3 years. http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-FX-6350-3-9GHz-8Gb-RAM-Nvidia-GF-GTX-660-3Gb-Custom-Gaming-Computer-/131095763528?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item1e85ea9a48

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/dayztraders I have set up a group, which once starts filling up, can be used to weed out the good traders. Once large enough, we should also be able to set up security for trades. For example, you want a compensator for your mosin, and find someone with it. Trusted members of the group who have succesfully completed trades will log onto the chosen server, find a safe place for the trade to happen, and set up a perimeter. The people making the trade meet up, trades made, everyone leaves happy. Anyone violating the trade agreements will be killed. To make this a little better, we will eventually have designated runners. Meaning, if you set up a trade, and one of the people turn out to be hostile, and kill you, they will be killed as well. Then our runners will loot your body, pick up your gear, and meet up with your fresh spawn on the server to return it. Yes, somethings may be ruined, but you will have most of it back. This may take some time to get going, and establish a solid group of good traders, but once it does, I think it will be quite successful. If interested in joining, add me on steam [bLAM] Smashpaw, and we can talk about getting you in.

which is why, after the group grows, we can have people on as security. Why is it every gaming community is the same. In leiu of trying something different, they always wanna go straight to the negative and dismiss ideas that might catch and work. I would have no problem moderating a trade taking place. What else do you really do in Dayz right now. Get geared up, eat, run around, eat, find food, eat. Either that or you are killing newspawns, and the occasional geared guy. I spend most of my time sneaking the hills between kambi and elektro, usually more towards kambi, watching for geared up people, who have no reason to be in a new spawn area other than to KOS. And besides, its a private group, and communication is private in teh group. meaning the only people who will know about the trade, are the ppl doing it, and the people providing security.

Need a pristine long range scope. I have food, water, military gear, protector cases, both pistols and plenty of ammo and lots of other things to trade. If you have one, post here and well get in touch on steam.

Got an idea to help make things like this work. Will be posting a new topic :)

Just wondering what kind of FPS you guys are getting, and what your set up is. I am assuming with this being an alpha, most people will know this info off the top of their head, as alpha players are usually dedicated gamers. However, just in case. There are many programs to measure your FPS, fraps is one, razor game booster is another. To get your computer specs, you can either go to www.canirunit.com and pick dayz. Not only will it tell you your specs, but also give you a comparison as to where you are at on running the game. Or another option, is start menu, type in "dxdiag" without the ". Ill start: OS: Windows 7 home premium Processor: AMD A6-3620 (4 CPU's) 2.2ghz Ram: 8MB Video: geforce 9800GT (old school i know) FPS in cities (on the roads): 9-15 FPS inside a building: 15-35 pending on detail of building FPS in the woods/fields 15-22 FPS while staring at the sky: upwards of 50+ I play on "custom" video settings, basically normal, with clouds, and shadows off. reason for asking this, is I have a new setup coming early this week, and wanna know what I can expect.

Ha, I have played on that server, and never have I been KOS'd more in my life. As far as kicking people from servers, well. Our clan has a server up and running, and to my knowledge, as of now, you cannot actually kick or ban anyone. Don't ever believe server names, this one is to draw in new spawns for easy kills.

I understand fully this is an alpha, and as so will have many bugs and glitches. But when I spend 4 hours yesterday running around, gathering gear, guns, ammo, food, etc. and finally get fully kitted so I can be ready to play with my friends today. And then I log in this morning to find I have a new character, it's quite frustrating. I dont mind the bugs in game, I dont mind slipping through walls and windows, dying to a bandit, etc. But simply getting a new character for no reason is too much. Me and 4 friends logged out at the same time, same place, same server last night so we would all be ready to play this morning. Now they have their toons ready to go, and I have a damn newspawn. This has happened to a lot of other friends I play with as well. This is definitely one issue that needs addressed in the next hotfix. This sole issue makes me not want to play anymore. :(

I get the point, as I said. But the point of an alpha, or beta, is to find bugs, and the dev team fixes them. I understand there is a lot of them. But in most early stage games I have played like this, the more an issue is reported, or complained about, the faster that one is fixed by the dev team. I could name a ton of bugs, such as the one where you are tryin to bandage or eat, and you get "you are already using something" or when you pull out a weapon, and it puts it back away. If the dev team working on this does their job properly, they will continue doing what they are doing, as far as game progression. But they will also listen to the players, as to what bugs are the most bothersome at this point in the game, and work on them ahead of the rest. I would just much rather see this bug addressed, before the ones such as being unable to bandage or eat, which do not nearly affect gameplay as much. Anyways, yea, this truely is my only real complaint, (bug that bothers me) for an alpha. So far this game has really impressed me, although I cant say the same about the people I run across in the game lol. Ill be looking forward to beta, when we can all hear people really complaining, not knowing what us alpha guys have been through.

Trust me, I understand. Countless times have I died glitching through walls, off roofs, by zombies cause I was unable to pull out a weapon. At one point I kept the same character alive for 5 days straight, and actually became so bored i went on a high pop server in kambi, and let a new spawn take it all just for the fun of starting over. But man, these random resets hurt :( as far as the server hopping, i have a lot of fun with this. As our server is usually low pop, usually under 5 people, and with the same spots for loot spawns, I can sit in the office building in elektro, on the third floor and watch people spawn in, going for the mosin or m4 that usually spawns there, and take them out. :)

I only play on our clan server 90% of the time. BLAM if you wanna look it up. (Server based in NY, 24/7 day, and 3rd person on) Hence why it takes me so long to gear up, as I scavenge, and thus wait on the next server reset. Half the time, I cannot see servers, let alone change them, without relauching the game. Either server lists dont show up, or everyone I click on I get confirmation of changes failed. Also reason for new account, this is my first post on here. To be honest for an alpha, this is quite playable, so I havent really had a reason to register and post about anything. This specific bug just frustrates me.