Mookie (original)

It's a personal thing, but if I turned up to a trade and there were other people around, I'd probably pull out. Sounds it was a closer call than you thought...

At the risk of being flamed, I'm not so happy about it lately. Two points: Things happen that can't be avoided/are simply not BI's fault - like the stash wipe last month, or the DDOS attacks. But I do think players could have been better communicated with these cases. With the DDOS attacks, for example, hard information about whether it was safe to login was, to say the least, sparse. No one expects hour by hour updates when the team is working to fix the problem in the first place, but very large chunks of time went by. At one point we were told (again via Twitter) that it was good to go. It wasn't. The dev comms tend to involve new funky features - "x is coming", "y is on the way!", etc, etc, helping us all to live in hope. But in the main, they are not great at talking about issues that really affect how the game is played. It's the opposite of a big deal, but case in point, there were several glitches or features of 0.58 that were not in the patch notes and we had to find out through trial and error. It's been said here before (not by me), but there is sometimes a real sense that the devs do not care much, if at all, for the time that players sink into the game. That time represents how much we enjoy DayZ because it has so much potential. Perhaps things are improving on the comms front - I hope so.

One of the more fundamental problems with persistence is that depends entirely on the server in question being maintained. Twice in this patch I've had servers taken down, or broken down. In the most recent case, having apparently learned my lesson from the disappearance of a clan server, I stashed my M4 and other high value stuff in a barrel on one of GamingDeluxe's official UK servers - thinking that an official server stood a higher chance of remaining consistent, or at least existent. I was wrong - the server has disappeared entirely. I realise that persistence is a bit of a lottery, but having recently struggled to survive a bout of cholera, this is (to put it mildly) quite annoying. I'm wondering whether there should be some sort of mechanism to at least give people fair warning where server owners are about to take them down.

You already have something - it's called gravity. The longer I play the game, the more I enjoy the challenge of it, and the less inclined to seek 'convenience'.

I feel your pain. And if it's any consolation, I had an 'official' server (Gaming Deluxe UK 5-71) go dark a few weeks ago. This wasn't me being an idiot with my server settings - it just disappeared. But it came back up a couple of weeks ago - and my little stash was perfectly intact. I make a point of spreading my stashes around now - two on what seem like long-lived clan servers, and two on official ones.

I really want to see DayZ make progress, and hope very much that it does. But a huge amount of impetus seems to have left the game, compared to when I started playing 18 months ago. BI's communications with the playerbase seem to lag further and further behind and I'm not alone in wondering whether this reflects a gradual disinvestment in the project. This forum itself has become less and less interesting or active in recent months. This is reflected in the number of active players, which has been on a downward trajectory for much of this year. I probably have close to 3,000 hours in game, but at the moment I just can't see the point in playing. Meanwhile, announcements of new content, RPGs, helicopters, etc are unlikely to be able to tempt anyone back - at least for the time being. My biggest personal dislike about the game is the huge frame rate variability and lack of optimisation (which are particularly bad if you live in the north of the map). The sooner we can get the new engine and the infected back, the better.

Damn I love this game (sometimes).

Updating.

Sheesh. :huh: I think there's an obvious tension between your/Agathor's account and runnick's. If what Agathor says is good for both blood loss and shock damage (and it certainly seems to be from Agathor's results), I'm not sure what damage runnick is talking about - although he does seem to know his onions. Ultimately it seems that the idea that running with more items helps prevent you taking damage (both shock and blood loss) must be wrong...

This hasn't really worked for me since about 0.55. Before that it worked - just displayed your guy or gal in all his/her glory. Then it started showing them with random things in hand (a cooking pot or a frying pan, in my case, for weeks on end). Then after the DDOS attacks it showed me as a freshie every time (which was a bit disconcerting) Today, for the first time in ages, it seems to be...working. And my character seems to be breathing, which is nice.

Not quite, and they are not 'prejudices'. I agree with your little lecture about semantic relativism, if not with the slightly pompous way you've expressed it. But it seems to me that these huts are probably neither Quonsets (sounds Native American to me), nor Nissens. They are in Chernarus after all.... I don't want to get all Quinean on you, but you over there are probably quite right to refer to them as Quonsets, while we over here (on our dank little island) are equally right to refer to them as Nissens - because those are the things within our experience that they look like, whatever the angle at which their walls meet the ground. The problem with these huts is that in a way they are named after a proper noun, the 'correct' version of which is probably quite elusive. The attempt to enforce such a 'correct' version doesn't necessarily follow from your lecture about nouns in general.

I'm not sure this is right Keno. There seem to be good (if marginal) reasons why having fewer inventory items, or using protector cases and ammo boxes will increase the damage you take from any given hit to the piece of clothing they are within (although the case or box should provide protection to the items within it). To quote runnick's excellent post from a different thread: "When you are hit with a melee weapon or projectile, DayZ checks to see what part of your body you were hit in and what clothing/gear is worn there. It then damages the clothing/gear, reducing the incoming damage based on item condition and armor stats. It then checks to see what was in that clothing/gear's inventory and damages each item, again reducing the incoming damage slightly (based on the hit item's condition). It does this for every article of clothing or piece of gear in the slot you were hit. So, theoretically, having 10 1-slot items in your Plate Carrier as opposed to 1 Protector Case and 4 1-slot items would offer you more protection as DayZ treats the 6-slot Protector Case as 1 item (for a total of 5 items)."

Even 'official' servers can have problems - the server holding one of my stashes disappeared completely for a week. Then (miracle!) it reappeared and (even more miracle!), my stash was still there. This issue about servers being unilaterally admin wiped, or vanishing without trace, seems to me to be a serious problem with persistence. But, hey, it's DayZ. Edit: If the poster above me is right about barrels being left open...well, I didn't know that...

No offence intended, but you are using three lots of sticks aren't you?

Double carrying gets really old, really quickly (plus you run a little slower). In addition to Rauchsauger's point, it's just a huge pain in the arse to be constantly putting that gun down to do things. Then, sooner or later, you'll forget that you've it down to do something and will end up losing it. If you go full ghillie, you can't use a backpack at all. And ghillie stuff (even just the headpiece) makes you hot - very, very hot. Get military boots - they have a specific storage slot for the combat knife (not other boots have this). However, in many ways the improvised stone knife is one of the best single things you can carry - it will open cans, and skin animals (pretty efficiently), and take bark and branches from trees. And it's only one slot...

OP you could improve things a little: 1. As Dagwood says, dump the mountain backpack for an improvised one (burlap sack, rope and three sticks to craft). You trade off slots for stealth/camo. 2. Your hunting clothing is not waterproof and you will get hot in it. You will still get hot in Gorka clothing, but not as much, and at least you can run around in the rain in it. 3. Yes SVD/UMP is one of the best setups, but it also occupies a lot of space (12 slots for a UMP IIRC), depending on how many mags you want to carry. You really only need two mags for each, perhaps with some loose rounds. And then ultimately you'll need a stash, so you can put your spare uber-guns and gear there (just in case you die...)

British army FN-FALs (ahem, L1A1 SLRs) were fixed to semi auto only because the auto was almost impossible to control. And most AKs have selectable semi/auto IRL. Not in game though...

I don't quite understand the logic here. You 'like the availability of those guns' (meaning M4s, etc, I assume). But 'the current setup allows us to hunt for the more favourable guns' (well, no, people just farm the huts for them). Hunting for the rarest guns is what crash site running is all about...

Update: Have: Full Smersh set (P) M4A1 (W) Dallas mask (P) M65, olive (W) Gorka helmet (P) AK101, with polymer stock/rail guard/Kashtan scope (all P) AK101 mags (full) SVD mags (full) Seeking (all P/W): RIS handguard x2 Magpul stock x2 CQB stock x2 ACOG x2 Compass (P). Seriously. Thanks

This is very good news. The loot farming and total focus on those huts is not healthy. I'm really looking forward to the FN-FAL, depending on what attachments it will take. I think the artwork confirms that it has a rail. I also hope they don't make it auto.

Mags spawn at the Nissen Huts. So does just about anything else you can put on an M4 (apart from the bayonets, which are not currently in game). I think I've recently realised why people aren't very good at finding M4s in the huts, but won't say why. I've found four in the past 72 hours.

I don't think so, no. The dynamic seems a bit like the usual char reset, when an individual server can't communicate with the public hive, but in this case right across whole swathes of servers. You were wiped if you tried to log in late Friday, early Sat and in some cases on Sunday. On Sat morning, I thought I'd just landed on an unconnected server, got out quick and tried somewhere else...it was logging into the second one that did for me I think.

The game's been working for me for the past 24 hours or so. If you're still coming up fresh, you've been wiped. But your stash should be intact (well, mine is anyway...). I guess this is one benefit of persistence. Mind you, if our stashes aren't being wiped by BI, or by disappearing servers, our characters are being wiped by DDOS asshats.... <_<

It's seemed ok for me for the past six hours or so, although I was wiped twice at the weekend.

Updating. Also, another good trade with the Miln. Further edit - lost the Winchester :blush: