AzrailCross

I like your idea, I do; it's not very intrusive in the end and doesn't force a penalty for taking a break and relogging into the same server when you want so long as you haven't ventured to another server. It's functional, and there isn't anything wrong it; even easily implemented into the code I'm sure; in truth all good, aside from not stopping friends. But I think friend-calling is more of a threat than you imagine, more so than a current player logging to ghost you. As I mentioned earlier I usually have at least two people at almost any given time I can call and usually aren't to far off from me that either aren't online in DayZ at that moment or that we just don't run together much and I'm not even part of a group; can you imagine a DayZ groups teamspeak? The people that ghost you in those long drawn out battles are usually with organized players who have an entire teamspeak room to call on and direct to ghost if they really want to stoop that low. Don't get me wrong, loners ghost too; but the most common has to be the longer battles and those are mostly people whom have an entire group backing that aren't all there when the firefight breaks out and sadly the only means to address that is something intrusive but IMO shouldn't be a GTFO out of our server timer. Won't say it again after this as it'd just be ranting after this point if it isn't already and respectfully will just step out from this thread after this post unless I somehow end up convinced otherwise - but when controlled zones are released it seems the best bet to make that the method of disabling ghosting by having it so anytime you abandon a server for another one at any point - it causes you to spawn at a structure you or your group's made on the server, or if you have none automatically toss you to 'fresh spawn' points as by then they should have been redone to not be quite so predictable/camped. Gratefully won't be much of an immersion killer, as it'd only happen if you've used Server A and decided to hop to server B .. and would happen again if rejoining Server A rather than just sticking to Server A all the time... but worse case your server's offline a while and you end up having to go to another server, starting at a fresh spawn location with all your gear intact and when your favorite server's finally up - you rejoin and end up at your home or groups built structure - or again at a fresh spawn location but no big harm done aside from having a decent hike to the next town; so long as the spawn locations are handled well. Suppose in the end it doubles as a server-hopping hindrance and ghosting killer all in one. Just my opinion though, it's the only real solution I know that should put a complete stop on ghosting at least. Take everything I say lightly though; I'm dead tired and may have lapsed on important details; but seems reasonable enough in my head to be a functional solution that does little to no harm.

Not only that.. but would be a pain for me, I usually travel with at least one or two friends; and at least twice a day without fail something happens I need to attend to; which means informing my friends and getting a heads up on where they are heading, finding a safe spot for myself because god knows i can't walk away for even a minute without some god awful luck leading a zombie to me and coming back dead (happened twice.. not letting it happen a third time.), logging out - which I can do safely. Come back 5-10 minutes later, and rejoin the same server to play catch up, and I know I'm not the only one.

Thought you were the OP for a second! Anyway, edited post and.. Either way, your solution still doesn't prevent *Friends* being called into the server on location to ghost. So, same result ;/ More often than not it's not the same people your currently firefighting with that end up ghosting you, it's their friends on skype, teamspeak, ect being told exactly where the firefight is and being told exactly where to log in to be ready to flank. I can generally call on at least two people at any given time I'm online that aren't on my server but are in my general location if I ever felt like being a total asshat about a game, which just goes to show the flaw. So at the end of it all, there is no non-intrusive solution as I originally said, your solution would actually just make my random life be a determent to my playing DayZ since I have logged out, 5 minutes later come back and see the timer, leave again 10 minutes later, and come back 20 minutes later, leave again 5 minutes later, and come back 5 minutes after that.. not my usual thing, but real life events come up and sometimes one right after the other.

Buh. Ment to edit this post, ended up creating a new one.. I need more coffee :D

For such issues as this I really hope they plan to include a 'report last' option, you die - type some /report Killer /report Killed commands and done. Forwards the killer/killed logs since joining the server to official administration for review. Hopefully with basic info such as location updates, current inventory, ammo, how many shots fired and total shots hit & at which body point, being able to quickly assess if it was a ankle shot that magically is doing 1-shot instant kills or if it's constant headshots or just legit play. Wishful thinking but it'd be 'best of the best' is the servers could basically do what some other games have done in the past, and directly after server restarts compile the logs in a full on video recreation of all occurrences since start up. Essentially allowing admins to 'watch' the firefights and everything else on a whim to look for suspicious activity.

I mulled over this some time ago for quite awhile, and found the only solution I could think of to be foolproof (or at least as far as my thought process went with it anyway..) against all forms of ghosters including calling up a unrelated friend to the current fight to tell him where to go on whatever server he was on and ghost over to the firefight was.. :drumroll: Yeah there really isn't one, not a non-intrusive version anyway. The only actual solution would be to incorporate the 'controlled zone' feature that's planned for the future into being the ONLY places you can spawn on a server. EG. Only allowing you to log into preset points on the map (plenty of them to avoid campers) and the fresh spawn locations (manually choosing which one) or that of actual controlled zones such as a house you've built on the server. Anything short of that and it's likely to end up abused in much worse ways than just dealing with ghosting or the intrusive preset spawn locations. God knows I never want to hear that standalone now has servers announcing who killed who like the mod, just because they gave access to the logs and someone found a way to have it send the information into the game as it happens.

It happens due to server hopping essentially, yes. The end result is you need to keep track of what the last server you were on was for your normal and hardcore characters, if you log in and suddenly your a fresh spawn, revert back to the last server you were on before the current one and it'll properly load your character. If it doesn't, you were actually killed while logging out.

While others have covered it all in detail I'll just put my version in anyway! Step one : Spawn Step two : Sprint through buildings in search of a weapon Step three : Find a crap weapon by odds unless I'm near a Firehouse/Police station - favorite 'crap' weapon so far is the fire extinguisher; bash a zombie just once and they hit the floor; then get easy head-shots while they're laying down, 2-4 should do, haven't counted really ;3 Step Four : Find a Fire Axe Step Five : Never be bothered by a zombie again.

99.9% of the time I refuse to log out in a forest, but rather find a two story building and wait 60 seconds to ensure I don't hear any agro'd zombies before logging out. If I hear them, theres a great chance they won't be able to get upstairs, so it won't matter, but just to be extra safe I wipe them out too. The larger apartment buildings have been even safer hideouts, especially the one with the ladder-elevator. But I haven't ever had an issue with lagging through buildings to my death or issues with ladders so can understand why others are leery.

Until they include a sanity system... and the effects of weed become similar to the effects of drinking bleach. You die. Not because of a zombie initially, but because you saw one, thought "Woha duah" and tripped over your backpack you forgot you'd laid down a moment earlier thus making a bunch of can-of-beans rattling noise because you were prepped for the munchies and just lay there watching it come closer to nahm your face off. This is where the game will then teach you that reading one of the many books such as 'a vindication of the rights of women' (found it laying in a house a few days ago :P) was the better of the two plans, or you know, socialize.

I wouldn't risk carrying it on you, it's entirely within the realm of possibility they'll have battle-eye if not the game itself initialize a check on ammo in the future and anything above a normally obtainable amount might get you a global perm-ban. But that's just forward thinking, better safe than sorry. It's not banning for it yet, but BE bans in waves, not all at once. So hacker's won't even know they've been caught until the wave hits and all of them are kicked to the curb.

Plain and simple server hopping will never be an 'alright' way to play the game. It undermines the whole concept of survival, end of story really. While it's in alpha it hardly matters much, though can ruin the experience of many when they get gunned down by fully kited bandits that even when beaten will just server hop for renewed equipment and be back at full force in under an hour. All in all it needs to be stopped, but it's hardly top priority; since loot doesn't respawn it's half understandable and .. yet still not, on the fence I guess. I don't condone it, but the temptation is there at times. Once loot respawning is implemented, it'll drop down on it's own a bit. But I think - at least - when 'controlled zones' are put into the game like Dean talked about it'll probably be the means in which server hopping is entirely disabled. At least in my imagination if you try to hop to a different server you'll automatically be thrown back to one of your choice controlled zones rather than wake up on a potentially loaded full of loot area that you were just at on the server prior. Who knows, that's just my opinion; it needs to go, but it's not important enough to really worry about until the core issue is resolved with loot respawning.

In the Devtracker there is alot of communication, even mentioning a new EXP build that's over 100mb. Finding the exact report on what all that 100mb is, is another story. They haven't written the report on what all is fixed or not. http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/184068-twitter-senchi-dayz-karmanovka-village-is-done-3100-objects-will-be-added-in-next-patch/ <-- Example.

I can't follow that logic. First person shooter - DayZ has all the elements of a FPS, it is first person - it's a shooter, contains medkits, cover, weapons, ammo, ect. It's also a third person shooter by preference. It hits all the check marks. It has some of the working parts of an RPG, with the inventory management and the thirst/hunger it sort of plays right into the RPG elements to an extent. But MMO? It's certainly not massive - Battlefield series is not a MMO - it's just a larger player count per match counterstrike with it's own twist and persistent upgrades through an XP system. DayZ is hardly any different, it just has no set goals. MMORPG is an even further off concept given any MMORPG you look at you instantly think (and rightly so) - of Elder Scrolls Online, WoW, Tera, ect ect. All of which aren't even remotely close to DayZ in any way shape or form. 40 person max servers instantly exclude DayZ from such a title, even 200 players per server would still not amount to what anyone would consider 'MMO' -- anyway rant over, it just made me raise my brow in bewilderment :P

Personally I see modding tools as a great idea, and the worst idea imaginable like others sort of imply. Having modding tools means GREAT mods, amazing things that the dev's might not think to do - think are to much of a time waster - sometimes even think are impossible to implement as well as mods that simply don't adhere to the idea of DayZ that might be awesome. Basically take a peek at Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim and you can easily grasp how stunning mods *can* be. But in a multiplayer game, modding tools helps separate the community into which mod they like best, and I want to say severely hinders security - but that'd be based on sheer assumption so .. I'll just lean on the safe side of 'can help cause' hacks to be common place due to exposing how the game runs and giving more insight to hackers on how to bypass certain elements of the game. Just my thoughts, and could be wrong it just seems reasonable. Hackers are going to find means to get through anyway, but modding tools opens up access to the core of the game files for deeper examination and take away a layer of defense in doing so.

Just in case it came across any other way, it was ment to just be friendly advice. But on another note.. I can't say I'd know, I never join 'custom' servers I suppose, haven't had a need to :/ Always assumed they couldn't whitelist ect at all, due to it being a server closing offense and a lot of money down the drain; nor can I recall having trouble on Fri/sat/sun at any hour on the servers I do join, but you could easily be right. Just not my experience, I'll take a peek at 10pm sometime :D I only join the US East/Central and sometimes 'West' servers (basically none with custom names, even if they say friendly) which on hardcore yeah, generally 0-4 players with maybe one server at 15-20 and .. I believe only on Sat have upwards of 40. Meanwhile on Normal it varies considerably, finding a 1-10 server isn't that hard, and the pings are always between (for me anyway) 40-60 but if I click them (sometimes) jump to 110 .. but get in it and it's stable at 40-60 again. This occurs all week at least in my experience so far, but perhaps I'm either lucky or wasn't online on Sat 'prime time' hours.. my schedule has been all sorts of screwed the past month.

Little tip that may help, download a backup & uninstall your firewall and *TEST* the game to see if it's not the reason your having trouble finding a server that lets you play, and try not to call BS on this before you try it - I *disabled* my firewall and still had major issues (invisible zombies, inventory items disappearing and being slow, rubber banding, ect.) then put it in gamemode and ALL issues magically went away, might just be my own isolated fix but it worked for friends and not doing it causes the issues to crop up all over again, I don't fall in the floor of buildings anymore (save the huge apartments, those are still a bit finicky) I don't yellow chain anymore, nothing. So take a chance and try it, if it works maybe a new firewall is in order or some tweaking of the one you used will help. Obviously though do at your own risk, suggest not visiting any websites while it's gone :P Though the rest of what you talk about, whitelisting, private, autokick, honestly I have not come across those yet, was pretty sure they aren't even in game and are server-closing offenses if reported *scratches his head* then again I've taken a 48 hour break just because of how much time I've spent in game the past two weeks so maybe something happen in the last 48 hours I'm not aware of.

I'd skip past such a structured system that encourages each account to try three times and then -maybe- stop (let's face it, if your banned today and enjoy DayZ investing another $30 is nothing.) Rather a you get one warning, based on the assumption regardless of evidence that you either didn't know what you were doing was wrong, or were testing and the whole thing was a misunderstanding! ... and then Perma-ban on second offense, no questions asked. Treat the person like a hacker (whom are all perma banned at this point) and move on.

Damn you got me, have my beans and keep quiet.

As far as I know it's still one hit KO -Unless- head gear is being worn. If your wearing a ballistic's helmet or gasmask that's pristine I believe it's like .. 100's of hits, I could be entirely off don't take my word on this one just what I recall reading.. somewhere.. can't even think of where.

.. strangely.. and not sarcastically either.. this. When I first joined I was being killed by invisible zombies, getting yellow/red chained every 15-20 minutes or so; glitching through the floors of buildings often to my death(though I still dread going into the huge apartment buildings.. they still cause issues <.< and keep eating my stuff when I lay things down in them... bah.) then I ended up tweaking my firewall and can honestly say I haven't experienced a single game-killing bug since. No invisible zombies, no yellow chaining, no red chaining unless it's at the start of a session or when the server is restarting, no laggy inventory with items disappearing, no random deaths, no issues with stairs or ladders, the ONLY bug I've had was my own fault for drawing a weapon while crouched beside the apartment buildings railing to try to see if that figure in the distance was a person or a zombie.. ended up teleporting 2 feet past the railing to fall to my death, I presume because my character chose to do the 'run forward while drawing weapon' move and well.. the railing told him to just take a assassins creed leap of faith, it'd be more fun. Lying railing.

Yes really, think about it this way; you paid to get into the game right, to do ALPHA testing, so the game is vulnerable and it's expected to have a bunch of bugs and exploits that'll give advantages to those that know them. As an alpha tester it's your responsibility to report those and NOT use them against other people while the dev team gets it fixed. It's no different than finding out a glitch that allows you to crash a server, it's not productive, it frustrates the player base and causes people to leave/have more issues finding other bugs to report in turn harming the game in the long run. Any form of actively and knowingly exploiting from altering files to see through trees/grass/buildings, duping, to being able to hide inside the walls of buildings to garner advantages over other players and make the experience they have worse is wrong and deserving of a ban. FINDING an exploit on the other hand and not actively abusing it but rather making efforts to replicate it in a controlled situation - then reporting how it's done to the dev's like your suppose to is why we're *here* and the only right thing to do. Anything else is harming the playerbase and the game's testing.

Personally I play both Normal & Hardcore, normal I only log on with my friends while Hardcore I just find good people to join on the fly. I have to admit the advantages of 3PP are rather .. fun dulling in my opinion, I have no reason to go in first person and 'peer' around a door in normal mode, infact it's just a bad idea when I can switch to 3PP and see way more, in the safety of being behind a wall. So IMO? Yes I'd love the "Fourth Wall" be incorporated into DayZ Standalone but with a little more professionalism and streamlining it; maybe in a way that anything that's out of sight of your character be blacked out so you *know* what you can't see, and don't have to assume; wouldn't hurt those that like to stay in 3PP and doesn't give 3PP any advantages over 1PP. The only reason anyone could complain about that is LIKING having that advantage. There is no if and's or but's about it. I hate the massively unrealistic nature of 3PP being able to see way more than is humanly possible and it forces me to use it if I want to be on the same playing field as everyone else, which isn't allowing me to play 'how I want' without putting me at a disadvantage. Sometimes I like being in 3PP sometimes I like being in 1PP just purely depending on my mood, shouldn't feel like I'm gimping myself by playing one or the other.

Plain and simple it's a dick move. Duping/Exploiting should - even in Alpha - be a 100% Alpha/Beta ban at the least potentially a lifetime ban no matter how you look at it. Period. Sure, first time you DISCOVER a exploit if you go and report it properly and never use it again, and get rid of the profits from it. Sure, awesome. You've done your job as an Alpha tester. Meanwhile abusing a glitch to gain an advantage over others is just wrong and encourages other people to leave - people that might have been great testers that'd have garnered major improvements and feedback in the long run. I can't even condone Hero's using exploits of any form, it's a little less of a kick to the mouth knowing they are at least making the game more enjoyable and help others establish themselves but it still ends up being abusive to some one down the line in one way or another, even if it's by someone else seeing the exploit and spreading it further to others; it's just -wrong- to do no matter how you look at it, no matter how little or how much it helps you or others. If it's not suppose to be in the game it should be reported and never used.

Until someone is wearing a shirt that literally has BANDIT written on it I'm not going to assume anyone's a bandit. But rather react based on other things. Catch me by surprise like standing behind me and not having said something, obviously, when I turn around and see you - bullets are first, questions later if I even can keep you alive. (Happen once already, ran around a corner and saw three camo'd men in gasmasks all making a firing line at me but I survived and got the **** out. Returned a day or so later and saw two men in camo and gasmasks run into a building, turned around to a third man in camo and gasmask behind me with his gun out and up having not said a word to me, put a sniper round in his head without hesitation.. his friends didn't like that, was dead five minutes later after unloading my pistol clips trying to flee. Still the right call, better than turning around and hesitating to get a bullet in the head as a prize.) If I'm entering a building and think someone might be in it, I call friendly.. no response? KOS. If I don't think someone's inside and say nothing, but see you facing me with a gun out? KOS assuming you heard me and didn't respond. Just about any other situation the only thing that'll get me to shoot first is if I see your weapon is down, and then it comes up. No hesitation, kill or be killed most of the time. Some exceptions, I'll take the risk if you've spoken and we seem to be having a friendly conversation but your just twitchy.. maybe I'll let it slide, maybe not. But if I see someone far off it's always a choice to either avoid or attempt contact usually by trying to get near out of sight and speaking without you knowing exactly where I am, or peering around the corner gun out and aimed for your head warning you NOT to move and put your weapon away unless your under attack by zombies; before bothering with 'friendly?' but crazily on the same situation flipped if I hear someone pull that with me I'd probably ask '.. are you friendly?' and make a judgement call on the response before deciding if I'm bolting around the nearest cover and try to hold my ground rather than surrender.