voxframe

Realism is fine until it starts to break down the playability of a game. There's a level where it pushes beyond what the average player is willing to tolerate throughout their experience. Again, I'm normally a huge advocate for as much immersion and realism as possible, but eventually it kills the spirit and enjoyment of the game if pushed too far. It's a "Game" after all, some rules need to be bent in order to bring the experience down to a game level, otherwise fuck it let's just go run off into the woods with a bat, some beans, and a raincoat. Some shortcuts need to be made in order to bring it to a level that the audience will tolerate. Your average (the ones who make up 85%+ of the game's audience) isn't going to stomache much more than an hour worth of struggling to meet up with a single friend. Most average players only play for an hour or two a night. The majority of the people here are a little more hardcore, but as the game progresses, there will be more and more causual players who won't have time/patience for that. (And while most of us would reply with "well fuck them anyway", they are what will make up the majority of the game's income when it does go live, so they make the rules in the end) I like the idea of having a challenge for everything, but it reaches a point where it becoms too much. I admit, I've suicided to get better spawns, many times. And after a while of playing and not getting a decent spawn, knowing I've got another hour of pissing around to meet up, most of our group goes, "Ok fuck this I've had enough for tonight, let's just go play something else" and the entire group hangs it up for the night. It's a tough balance, and currently it's at the limit of what I would call tolerable. Any more and groups will bleed off fast if nothing is done to simplify things for them. If you're a lone wolf, it's not bad at all. But from a group perspective, it's a mess.

While I agree with you that it takes away from the "Gotta go rescue our friend" mentality and fun... It becomes fucking tiresome fast. (Sorry to be blunt) It's as "authentic" as Arma 3's latest fatigue updates where your character has a heart attack after sprinting 100 feet. While yeah that's probably a lot more realistic, it's maddening to the point that it takes away from the core enjoyment of the game itself. I'm a big advocate for realism and immersion, but it's so distracting/problematic that it renders the game more of a pain in the ass, than an enjoyment. As for the "10 minutes to meet in the middle" argument... I don't know what kind of speedhacks you're using, but no way that's possible, especially when one guy is a fresh spawn. It's 30+minutes at the best of times. The fresh spawn has no chance just ramming through the woods trying to make it. Especially now with rain/temperature. Once the mechanisms come into play properly, it will take a solid hour of intense work just to stabilize yourself from fresh spawn, and that's staying in the same city. Meeting and maintaining a group will be impossible under mechanics like that. Maybe if you're a 4-5 hour per night player, yeah. But for anyone who isn't going to dedicate their life to the game, teamwork is just going to be impossible. To make things more constructive... Asides from "NO", what would make this work? What about "group" configurable spawn cities? (I notice DayZ has no group workings really, but maybe set something up where people can declare themselves as part of a group, and when you are in the group, it can be declared to only spawn in one city etc?) This doesn't work well when it comes down to the group being on the other side of the map though. Maybe give the fresh spawn a choice of spawning within a couple KM radius of an area? So if you chose Electro, well you could wind up there, or one of the 3-4 directly neighboring cities? With that in place it may be possible to punish suiciders as well? (10min wait timer if you jump off a building after spawning?) I'm sorry I don't have better ideas of how to fix this, but the current implementation is dogshit when it comes to meeting up as a group (And it's only going to get much worse with the new survival mechanics). We will see a huge increase in "Lone Wolf - KOSers"

Looks like this issue has been sitting in the bug tracker for a while. It's ACKed but doesn't look like it's moving. I would think this would be a very simple fix as it's already working with the fireplace, probably something as stupid as a variable not being passed correctly in the code. Come on guys, these are easy fixes I would think. This one has been sitting for nothing.

As a side addon, collecting wood sucks lately due to axes self destructing after chopping 3 trees. I kindly hope they fix that little metric. I've chopped down trees before with axes, maybe mine was made of Adamantium or something, but it didn't break after 3 trees... Nor 10... Is it just me, or are they rare as fuck too lately? Firestations used to be perfect for them, now I haven't seen a fireman's axe in a week.

+111111 It's a pretty big immersion killer when almost every house has a fireplace/burner... WITH a bigass pile of chopped wood next to it - And you can't use it "Shit, this nice dry chopped wood is no good, gotta go get an axe and knock down some trees" "Looks like I need to build a campfire on the floor here, right next to the nice wood stove, wouldn't want to use that now would we" It's an even bigger immersion killer when you find a CAMPING STOVE, sitting on the KITCHEN STOVE, and the kitchen stove doesn't work! "Forget about that pussy kitchen stove, I'll just use it like a counter to hold my camping stove"

I find the focus is currently far to sided towards guns in general. We have a bunch (OK variety isn't amazing) but they are operational. The focus should be shifting more towards survival mechanics. - Medical items as listed above - Broken weapons that need parts (Like actual bolts/triggers, not just scopes/flashlights) like the vehicles. - Rare/broken ammo. It's nice finding full boxes everywhere?? Why not a couple rounds here and there. - Scope tuning, etc I find there's a pile of resources being pumped into guns, and it seems like everything else is being pushed aside. (Ok everything is getting work, slowly, but it's kinda off balance) I'd rather see a fully operational medical/health system in place that works, along with other intricate survival items. (The stoves/hunting/heat/fires are great steps forward, now to make them sing) Sorry to come back to the medical system again, but it's very sorely lacking, and not much seems to be happening with it. Make it something that takes actual talent and commitment to deal with properly.

Yeah I'm hoping this is just for testing. The current mechanics/variables are terrible. My shitty walmart shoes don't explode after walking 10KM... So military hiking boots shouldn't after 2KM. I'm all for immersion and realism, but at the current stage, it's anything but.

Funniest shit I've started doing is messing with the voice. (Yeah I know it's old and cliche) But the lion king music over voice while running the streets in your underwear in the middle of a battle zone is always hilarious. Another good one is simply hiding and scaring the living fuck out of people over voice with crazy sounds or voices. (Sit somewhere that is pretty active but hard to see unless they're on top of you) Random sound effects like dog barks or Terminator quotes... Car horns/starting. You would not believe how many times I've gotten people to scream "HOLY SHIT THEY ADDED CARS! I CAN HEAR IT!" A few others are my "secret sauce" of comedy. You'll know it when you hear me lol. A single quote that took down a gang of bandits ready to kill me... (Best slobbering/vomiting zombie voice I could manage to produce) "Hmmm the rotten kiwis and disinfectant kinda tastes like Bath Salts... Could I lick your face??!" While lunging at them in my underwear punching. They certainly didn't die, but the guns went down and they keeled over laughing. Sometimes humor will save your ass :)

Perhaps YOU (who may know what you're doing) won't make phone calls to the information listed. But giving that out as advice here is a really bad idea as it can potentially cause a torrent of calls/contacts to the wrong people when some dickhead server admin breaks the rules.

Could we perhaps have the zombie system fixed first? How about the horrible mass of bugs released into the latest stable branch? Could you guys perhaps stop for a moment, fix all the annoying bugs that people have been screaming about, then look into forward progression? Sorry to spit fire, but I'm not sure what's going on over there in the way of priorities lately. Normally in development, you don't move anything to the "stable" branch unless it's actually something you can call stable. The zombies are way OP at the moment. I love a challenge and realism. But if you want to crank up the difficulty, fix the rest of the stupidities like zombie wall clipping, hits from 10meters, and other blatant stupidities that should have been addressed before moving to stable. I also really dislike the new login timer. If you want to nail the hoppers, I'm totally in agreement. BUT make arrangements so that if a person joins the same server, they don't get nailed with the stupid timer. This fixes the issues of disconnects etc (Which have become common again I see). Also perhaps some server admin tools that people have been screaming for? I notice there's a lot of restrictive/challenging aspects being introduced, but completely at the wrong time where the game isn't ready for it. The timer being a prime example. The timer is needed (And I even agree with 600seconds!) but this is NOT the time to put it in place when the server/client session communications is still problematic. You just rolled a new system for this, test it before clamping down on it! You guys are polishing the windows, when the foundation for the house isn't even straight. I'd much rather have a limited but stable/realistic game experience, than a clusterfuck of a mess that it is now.

I like the creepyness factor of the telephones ringing! BETTER? Make them WORK! Random phone in Elektro rings in the darkness... Answer and it's someone from Gorka screaming about crazy hoard of zombies coming their way... Or just heavy breathing and a gunshot. Truth be told though... I just want the random global sounds GONE! Also some variations of the ambient wind sounds. Right now, if I'm up in NWAF... I still hear the sea shore. (Last time I remember anyway) I should be able to crank it right up and hear next to nothing in some secluded parts of the woods etc.

Agreed! This is a bug, that for all intensive purposes, should be considered GAMEBREAKING level. The servers cannot be properly admined, thus chaos and hacking is rampant. That's GAMEBREAKING. I would much rather see development of new items/tools/etc completely STOPPED until something as basic as this is fixed. The forward momentum is great, but there is a massive threat that can easily be solved by spending some resources on a part of the system that is terribly neglected. I used to consider "hackers" and "cheaters" more of a myth than anything else. But in the past week or two I've come across so many that I can't even count them. It's so blatantly obvious as well. It's not de-sync or some small glitch. When I see a guy go from one end of Elektro to the other, in under 5 seconds, then suddenly appear NEXT TO ME on a rooftop and headshot me... All within 10-15 seconds... BULLSHIT. When we have 2 guys pinned down inside a building, with 5 of us on the outside with WALLS between us and the building (I'm not talking the building walls, but brick walls in the streets) and within under 3 seconds, the two of them take everyone out, without a single missed shot, without going to a window, and without exposing themselves... BULLSHIT. This game is nice, but it's getting very old very fast. The admins need the tools to do their jobs properly!

It's true I seem to be posting quite negatively (As was pointed out a couple messages back) lately. Not my intention, but I do have some heavy gripes about the game. It's a hard balance when you're asking for money, then if you deal with server hosting, you're being asked for more money... And things start hitting the fan. Yes it's alpha, that's understood. But you're asking people to pay, so you do have some sort of commitment to live up to. (Which I think they ARE doing a good job of) But the communication is messy. Simply put, there are things that could be smoothed out communication-wise.

There's more to it I think than just desync. (OK yes maybe some form of desync, but from where?) I'm on a 100/100meg fiber line with crazy low pings (I average 8ms-10ms to anywhere in north america) - So client pipe isn't an issue. I average 40-50FPS and smooth handling with less than 50% CPU - So client machine is most likely not an issue. This leaves the server itself. I experience RBing solo on a server, or on a full server. Regardless of time of day since restart. Regardless of my character's items or equip. I do notice that servers from some hosts, tend to be worse than others. Frag, vilayer, are among the worst, and multigame being the better. My bet/money is this is based purely on server CPU/Load etc, rather than the communications between client and server. High or low pings don't seem to make a difference either. (To an obvious point, at 600ms+ you're gonna have problems regardless) Another big notch in the theory, is that many times the entire group that I'm with RBs at the same time. That's not client/server comms. That's the server itself taking a puke somewhere. A crazy note.... I can actually "feel" (if that's a term) it in game play when a new client joins a server or quits just from the lag jitter/bubble they create just as they load into/outof the world. That's CPU/Load based as well. All that to say, I don't think the RBing is coming from the way the server/client is relaying positions and telemetry, but rather something that was changed internally on how it handles or tracks all of that info.

It's funny as I see the exact same polarization in my line of work(Network Sysadmin) when dealing with certain equipment vendors. What stops the BS dead in its tracks, is active participation, involvement, and commitments/promises by the vendors/developers in the forums that contain the screaming. Trolls no longer have fuel, and whiners are fed. Period. Peace. I haven't been around for long, but already I see a serious lack of public participation (At least stable/standardized participation) on behalf of the dev team/leader. Get one guy who can actively respond in here, issue hard commitments and statements, even if they get broken (Shit happens obviously) people will understand when there is communication. Right now the announcement threads are ancient, a bazillion pages that nobody in their right minds will read, the dev blog is kinda/maybe active, the twitter account is random jargon... Etc. That's not communication kids. It just takes a little, consistantly, and people are happy. Ignore the crowd, and you will have an angry mob with nowhere to vent.

Oh I agree... I signed up for the rules... What I didn't sign up for was bullshit cheaters on the server, that I am powerless to deal with. They should nicely put that in the print "Sorry but as a renter, you have no power over cheaters, so if they ransack your server, too bad. You can't stop them or your hosting company will stomp you" I too have to agree, I've seen BE kicking a shit-ton of legit users for stupid reasons, but I've never seen it nail a single hacker thus far, and the numbers are growing, not shrinking. Yes it's all Alpha stupidities, I know. But have a consistant public server release, just as you do with a client release. Or give admins the means to properly target a problem individual. They abuse the power, THEN the hosting company can stomp them legitimately. Sorry for the whining, I know this will eventually get fixed, but it's a pretty damn basic request. I'd like to use my mouse and keyboard with the game, oh look they got that implemented...

Agreed. It's useless having a history tab unless it can tell you WHEN in history you used it.

Dislike. It's a pain yes... But a much needed and appreciated one. Makes death that much worse.

And yes I know... Alpha alpha.... But this is real money being pissed away. Release the software so people can come up with their own solutions at the very least. Convincing hosting companies to drop prices because "Alpha!" ain't going to happen.

I'm just really pissed about them not releasing the server software yet. I don't know what's holding them up either. Can't get a straight answer directly from them on the matter. But as a server admin, something needs to be done to identify users. Nametags, or some form of persistant ID tag of some kind. Normally I agree with the concept, "If you want it private and do what you want, put it on a private hive" ... But not in this case, as we as admins, don't have the godamn tools we need to manage these. It would be different if these were 10-20$ a month rentals. Who cares! But the server rental prices are downright stupid! I promise this much, the second the server software is out (They've at least confirmed to me that it IS coming) I'll host these things at a much better price (I sysadmin an ISP, resources aren't an issue) Sorry for the rant, but I know what it's like to admin a system, get your balls crushed from both directions, and not have a single damn tool at your disposal to deal with the situation... Meanwhile decent money is being pissed away.

No.... NO.... and NO! This isn't call of duty, and there's no reason to know who killed you in the game. This will just start bullshit wars, more admin abuse, and general retaliation stupidities. NO!

I would absolutely like to see more shotguns (MOSSBERG BABY!) At the moment I find the game far too military heavy when it comes to firearms. It's like the civilians never heard of a gun before. The sporter 22 is a good compliment to this, but let's face it, the classic boom-stick should be the most common. I also hope they introduce different shotgun ammo variants. (Slugs, buck, bird, etc... dragonsbreath? lol) Classic pump action mossberg should be a no-brainer though. And common as hell.

Wonderful discussion! You have my beans sir! (Please drop this reply to keep topic clean if needed) I'd like all of the ideas above, but I'd also like to see them integrated more/better with the existing medical facilities (Hospitals, clinics, etc). I'd also like to see the hospitals expanded physically. Right now 90% of the building isn't "built" yet and we can't go in doors/rooms/etc. I'm hoping they get completed. For the heartbeat/unconcious "metering" this could also be done visually with screen "drooping" or loosing gamma "blacking out", even mouse movements that become sluggish/jittery. Even a few character noises (Grunts moans gasps). Dropping to the ground, etc. IV administration to yourself, make it possible with something to hang the bags on. (Hospital can have hangers etc). Beds in hospital can be used for resting/sleeping with the above idea. (People can be restrained to bed with rope/duct-tape/cuffs) - For the medical sadists out there. What about, dare I say it, An outbreak of some kind in the game that can be spread.... Perhaps something to kill the patient and turn them into a zed? (OK that's dreaming, but imagine you have an entire hospital of people, suddenly they turn...) Vial of blood from a zed, injected into a person? I'm also on the side of people wanting a load more clothing/bags/emblems/etc for medics. Thanks again for the topic.

I'm assuming this is a widespread issue? The only "relaible" servers I seem to be able to connect to are the Gameservers.com ones. The rest either give me "Waiting for host" and never go anywhere, or as in the case of Vilayer servers, they give me errors about PBO files not being signed properly. I don't mess with any of the core files of my game and play on a completely "vanilla" install. I don't cheat, I've never been booted/banned to my knowledge. I don't get any form of errors asides from those (Which come exclusively from vilayer, no others). Am I the only one? Suggestions? Perhaps a complete re-install of the game? Thanks!

Nope not in experimental either. The problem seems to have gotten slightly better last night for what ever reason. I was finally able to connect to a couple Vilayer ones. Still no go for the majority of non-gameservers.com. Fragnet as well seems to be boned for me. Ahh well. Was a good night of gaming last night!