The Feral Kid

There is a new mechanic where you have to manually cycle the bolt after each shot for bolt action rifles (and pump shotguns). This loads the next bullet into the chamber. You can also use it to clear the chamber if your weapon jams (including automatic and semi-automatic weapons). The key to do this is R. If you press R a single round will be ejected from the chamber, and the next will be loaded (if available). I think you are probably pressing R by accident (or it may be another key if you have changed keybindings).

In the second pic there is a guy holding a microphone to the tank. And there is a lot of smoke which is possibly exhaust. I see what you mean about the slab though.

It's not *just* a blank texture though, because all the low ground cover is also gone from the affected area. Yeah it's surprising how it's not too bad looking for "just a bug." Sadly, I have since seen a dev tweet that it is indeed "just a bug."

There is actually "snow" in experimental 0.58. vidpicsI know a lot of people dismiss this as a graphical glitch, but I am not so sure. The snow is in a remote, high altitude northern region (exactly where you would expect it) and covers a large area of the map. I went up there to check it out myself, and I noticed that all the ground cover (all the low ferns etc.) disappears in the "snow" area, so it's not just the ground getting a blank texture. There is a possibility that the devs are experimenting here. EDIT: It's not dynamic snow. But they have to start somewhere, right? EDIT2: My character is there atm, so I can post screenshots if there's anything you specifically want to look at.

Cherry picker is for get over wall of enemy base?

Initially I was fully in agreement with OP, but on reflection I think there are a few nuances to this. This is just as much a problem as the pulse checking. Why was OP able to infiltrate that group in the first place? Why didn't they immediately recognise that there was a stranger in their midst? I'm a big proponent of realism, but it is realistic to instantly know the difference between friends and strangers. The nature of computer graphics makes it difficult, so maybe some mechanism is needed to help us out. In fact, I think you could argue that such a mechanism increases "authenticity" (as Rocket would say) even if it decreases realism. I would actually be OK with a nametag appearing at very close range, but perhaps the pulse checking is even better, because immersion will never be disrupted unless you specifically take that action.

On the weekend I led an ungeared player to the fully geared body of one of my companions, and let him take all the sweet loot. (My mate had decided to call it a night rather than make a corpse run). Him: "Wow I thought you were a scammer." Me: "Now you keep up your end and don't shoot me!" (I had a better gun so figured I was pretty safe).

DayZ aims to be authentic, and that means it should elicit authentic behaviour from players. If players are acting very differently from how they would in a similar real life scenario, then the game will be improved if mechanics are introduced to encourage more realistic behaviour. Notice I did not mention any specific player actions. I just think the game should encourage people to act realistically. I am very open to discussion on what is realistic (and that is an area where we can actually be more objective than subjective).

The game is a simulation which attempts to be authentic and immersive. If people are behaving in unrealistic ways, then the game is not fully successful. A real apocalypse would be just as much a lawless sandbox as DayZ, but in a real apocalypse nobody's going to go looking for PVP because they're bored, or kill themselves in the hope of a better spawn. Some people might KOS out of paranoia, but probably not the majority. I don't blame players for playing how they want, but I do think the game will be better when it fosters more realistic behaviour.

Yeah, you can keep telling yourself that if you want.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding about this system. If there are only 10 of "ultra rare item X" spread across all the servers in the world, that doesn't mean they'll always be on the same 10 servers. If one of those items is destroyed then another one will spawn, and it could spawn on any server. It could spawn on your current server. Or some player might bring it to your current server. There is no particular reason to believe that you are more likely to find the item on some other server than you are to find it where you are currently. If you hop, how do you know you're hopping towards the item rather than away from it? The exception to this would be if you had specific information about a player or base on a particular server. I don't know what I think about that, but it's meta-game information and I'm not sure if it is reasonable to expect the devs to control the meta-game as well as the game.

WTF? I am dumbfounded by the results of this poll. Only 10% of people on average have done most of these things!

Regarding authenticity vs. realism. As I understand it, "authenticity" tries to ensure that players go through roughly the same thought processes as a real person would in the same scenario. If you are going for authenticity then actual realism is not that important, as long as players have to weigh up the appropriate options. So when a player finds a barricaded shack in the woods, they need to think: What is in this stash?How long will it take me to break in?Do I have the tools I need?Will the owner show up and waste me before I am finished?Is it worth the risk?They should NOT be thinking things like: This is a US server and the owner is probably logged off because it is 4am in the states.Likewise, a player logging out should absolutely NOT be weighing up meta game concepts like: When will I next be able to log on? In effect what I am suggesting is that, if authenticity is the goal, then logging out should be a "transparent" choice that (as much as possible) has zero effect on gameplay and does not need to be considered at all. The reason for this is that a real survivor would never spend any time considering the pros and cons of logging out. This applies in all situations, but is particularly relevant here in regards to bases. EDIT: some punctuation.

How about posting a link to the details of this proposed loot system? Otherwise I think you are attacking a straw man.

In game there is a billboard for the movie Escape from Kolgujev. The date of the premiere is 29/8/2009. Something must have disrupted Chernarus around that time, because the billboard was never replaced with a newer one. The disruption could have been the civil war though, not necessarily the outbreak of the infection. So the date in game is almost certainly after 2009.