therunningmanz

Hi, I just put together some thoughts on DayZ ethics and it seemed like here would be a reasonably decent place to share them. For those that don't know, I'm a Twitch Partnered streamer who somehow, having started making YouTube vids on DayZ at the age of 37 in 2014 managed to make playing DayZ my full time job in 2016. It wont last forever but its been a lot of fun for now! I'm gonna cut and paste something I shared on my Twitter feed below around DayZ in game ethics, glitching and so on. However before I do I just wanna make one thing clear. I have written the below from the perspective of a DayZ player but also with some insight from streaming the game too as that is what I do. Just because I am a streamer, that doesn't mean that I think my opinion counts any more than anyone else's. I'm just one DayZ player, with one opinion like everybody else. Have a read if you want, don't if you don't.... Lines in the sand and hollow victories, some thoughts on DayZ in game ethics.... Hi all, Something I'm often thinking about as a DayZ player and streamer is in game ethics and I just wanted to get it off my chest a bit. I don't see me changing the way I play at the moment, but it is something I seriously consider on a daily basis in terms of whether I play fairly or whether I don't. I have changed over time a little in how I play, I would like to talk a little about exploits and where we are all at with them. I am always thinking about morals in DayZ and whether I am doing the right thing and playing the game fairly. Sometimes I have not been perfect as a DayZ player since I started learning the game, but I always try to learn from my mistakes. I think I have changed a little over time as I have realised some things are wrong. I'm sure there are many DayZ players in the same position. A couple of examples of this would be that when I first started playing I would use the FOV slider to get extra zoom when trying to kill someone. I'd seen it used in a YT video of a massive YouTuber and thought it was ok. Back then if you changed the FOV to be more narrow, you would get massive zoom increases when scoping a player. It was from visiting the r/dayz reddit that I really understood that it was an exploit and so I very quickly stopped doing it and this helped me when the FOV exploit was removed. Similarly about 3, maybe 4 times I have used the "strafe in a particular direction to get almost perfect hip fire aim" bug. The times I used it were to get around cover where I needed to move to the right but I did it in such a way as to gain an advantage with aim. I don't do this any more and have learned from my mistakes. If I'm honest, I was really unsure about using it and it was a conversation with FT whilst streaming that kinda convinced me not to do it anymore. Naturally the players that don't use this exploit will be in a better place when it is removed because they wont have been relying on an animation/player controller exploit to get a lot of their kills. There is always a line to be drawn in DayZ about what any player considers to be fair. The line is in a different place for many of us. As a streamer these discussions come up a lot in chat and no matter what I do there is always someone coming from an angle where they play the game more fairly than I do in their eyes. I don't often feel pressure to perform in DayZ, those of you that watch will know I have more than my fair share of potato moments in the game and that sharing those experiences with an audience can be just as entertaining (or more so) as the "MLG moments." However pressure does creep in from time to time, getting killed by people who are prepared to use the hip fire exploit on a regular basis becomes very hard to swallow when you are trying to effectively play DayZ for your livelihood. It is moments that happen where you feel hard done by in some way that makes us more likely to falter. I don't use the hip fire exploit, it's not OK to do it and gives you just as much as an unfair advantage over genuine players as turning your gamma up massively at night would do etc. I'm not looking to have a go at people that do it, people always have a "line in the sand" in terms of what they do and don't do in game as they play. But for the players that do try to avoid these type of things, all I would say is, it is far better to try to encourage people to change than it is to try and "tell them off." It's far better to encourage people to try something new and to change than to just flat out tell people that they are cheating, or glitching etc. If you get your kills with an animation exploit (for want of a better way of describing it), they are far more hollow than if you play the game as intended. I learned the FOV glitch from YouTube myself and then assumed it was OK before I realised later it wasn't, as a streamer, I don't want to be effectively saying it's OK to a fairly large number of DayZ fans to use exploits that make it easier to kill genuine players in game. I don't do the glitch for that reason, but I don't do it primarily because killing people using an animation bug just gives you a hollow victory. It doesn't make you a good DayZ player, it makes you the one using an exploit to kill a player who either chooses not to do it intentionally (so you won the fight), or they may not even know about the exploit (so you won the fight), or they just aren't as good at the exploit as you (so you won the fight). With any of those three options there is no sense of achievement to be gained from a kill like that. That is the reason not to use exploits, so that you can actually take some enjoyment from surviving a PVP encounter playing fairly, rather than gaining a hollow victory using an exploit. For a lot of people the apple glitch falls inside their "line in the sand" and they are prepared to do it. I think this is not OK. In DayZ we are meant to be surviving the landscape and keeping ourselves alive in a "surivival game." If you take finding food out of the equation by choosing to glitch an unlimited supply of apples then you are robbing yourself of part of the game. It's meant to be hard at times to find food, survival is meant to be hard and in DayZ I think it is only going to get harder. Yesterday when "orange hungry" I cooked 4 chicken fillets before moving on to loot the next town to make sure I didn't go "red hungry" or worse. Using a glitch to get enough food to travel anywhere on the map without having to stop and loot gives you an unfair advantage over players that are actively playing the game. It should be that at times you have to cook chicken to survive! If you loot your way to the NWAF from say Berezino it takes a decent amount of time to do it properly (maybe 90mins or more). If you spam apples, you can pretty much be there in around 20mins. This is not the game as intended, DayZ is not meant to be a "die in PVP, exploit your way back to the action and get stuck in again." People excuse the apple glitch because there is no loot, and they don't want to look etc, or that they play the game for PVP. The simple truth is there is plenty of food in the servers, if you go in most hospitals for example and check inside the clothing there is normally plenty of food. If you make a stone knife, cut a stick from a tree and use it to kill infected, there is a plentiful supply of food to be looted from them when killed. When a genuine player is on their 90min or more route back to the airfield or wherever else they may choose to go, that is when in my opinion the better encounters in DayZ happen. If you are looting around, you are more likely to bump into a fellow survivor who is friendly and doing the same thing, you can trade with, or team up with them, or if it suits your playstyle/mood rob them, or murder them! The "sandbox" aspect of DayZ comes into play far more in the random encounters in interesting places than it does when you've run 20mins straight back to a KOS zone from where you spawned. Any playstyle in DayZ should be welcomed whether it be KOS or "Rene" ;). But using the apple glitch to speed up the "path to PVP" is not what the game is about IMO. If you want to keep the game fresh and interesting, then avoiding the apple glitch and exploring the map as you look for supplies will give you a lot more satisfaction in DayZ and make you a better DayZ player in the long run. Food is only going to get harder to find, if you are already using the apple glitch then you are in for a shock when it is removed and food is even harder to find. Aside from the survival aspect, if all you do is apple glitch your way to a mil base, you are going to burn yourself out of the game very quickly IMO. It becomes a vicious circle of repetition, if you choose to explore the map and take different loot routes you will get different encounters with each DayZ life you live in Chernarus and hopefully keep the game fresh for much longer. Finally I wanna talk about the one thing that falls inside my "line in the sand" currently. That being spamming the well. This topic comes up a lot in my Twitch chat and in writing this, I'm hoping this will be the last time I talk about it (expect a nightbot Twitch chat command linking to here as soon as this goes live!). I spam the well to drink when I don't have a bottle or a cooking pot, sometimes I still spam the well when I have a cooking pot! I don't know if this makes me a bad DayZ player or not, in a small few peoples eyes it makes me a terrible person I think. I really don't know, but I do see a difference between well spamming and apple glitching. This gets raised nearly every day in my chat and maybe, just maybe, this blog can be my line in the sand for not having to discuss it anymore! ;) Here is the difference as I see it personally, the apple glitch/bug requires a series of steps to be replicated to make it happen. You have to kinda "crack the code" to get all dem apples! With the well, all you do is go to it and "middle mouse" to drink and tap the button to drink, that you are meant to tap to drink. There is no series of buttons to press etc. More importantly whether you feel it is realistic or not, when you try to find an apple, the game is designed currently so that you only find one occasionally. This is so that you cant just stand there, search 15 times, get 15 apples and then go anywhere you want on the map. This would be too easy and kinda make any other form of food finding redundant. The well is not like that, when you drink from a well you always get a drink every time! However the in game animation goes through a very painful (for me) "3 scoops" animation to get one drink of water. This isn't very realistic, but I don't really wish to use "realism" as a reason. "Realism" and in game mechanics are never truly going to meet, otherwise it would be a hell of a while before you could harvest any crops you'd grown for example in DayZ! Maybe I'm just not patient enough, but if I sit by a well, press the button once and then watch my character go through the "3 scoops" animation to get a small drink of water I find myself getting wound up in real life, it breaks my immersion in the game and I feel detached from what is going on. That is why I do it, more than anything else. In a game where you can grow pumpkins from scratch to being edible in 20mins, is it really unreasonable to expect to be able to drink freely from a continuous source of water until you are hydrated without going through a series of painful animations that just serve to detach you from the game? The well spamming "bug/exploit" was removed on an experimental patch over a year ago (maybe 0.55 I think) but was then brought back in again before the patch was released to stable. I don't know if this was by design or not, but it felt like it could have been removed then if that was the intention by the devs. Yet we still have it now. On a stream about a month ago I asked Hicks who was in the chat at the time if well spamming was a glitch and he said yes. So in the interest of transparency I guess that means i'm doing something bad and I wanted to make sure I highlighted that here. I would have liked to have had more of a conversation on the subject at the time with him but it really didn't seem the right time for it. Since then what Hicks' said in my chat has been relayed to other DayZ players and streamers some people now don't spam the well as a result. But we all have our lines in the sand at the end of the day. I have a friend who now doesn't spam the well, but for a time they were happy to use a bug that allowed them to get their primary weapon back as a new spawn on the coast from their previously killed character so that they could carry on with their weapon on their next life. Now the friend in question realised this wasn't really on and stopped doing it. I guess that is my main point in all of this! We are all learning as we go, with regards to in game ethics and what feels right and what feels wrong as the DayZ alpha progresses. The trick I guess is to try and encourage good ethics and maybe try to explain the benefits of playing fairly to all DayZ players, including streamers /YouTubers that are not doing it, without it turning into a flaming war about "glitch abuse and cheating!" I do also think there is a huge onus on the devs with some things too. There will be many changes to weapon sway, out of breath, player movement and hip firing etc. We know there are fixes coming for apple glitches and Peter Nespessny tweeted just the other day about an ongoing prototype test to the way apples will spawn on servers which was good to see. How far this goes I guess is down to them. If the well drinking method changes when the player controller comes out so that it is a long animation for each single drink of water then I will of course have to play the game that way. But for now I do not feel like I have bad DayZ ethics for spamming the well and I intend to keep doing it. I avoid the exploits (or learned from my mistakes and now avoid) that allow me to kill players more easily to gain an advantage over others and win hollow victories, I avoid getting an unlimited supply of food which would allow me to get to military areas more quickly and gain an advantage over others whilst potentially spoiling the game play for myself. I'd love to really know what will happen with well drinking animation in the new player controller, I really hope it is a "hold f to drink, release f when done" type of process, the well is after all a continuous and effectively unlimited supply of water in DayZ (how cool would it be if some wells randomly ran dry? "there is no water in the well" as a status indicator would be cool!). However it is going to be in the future, in the meantime I am going to drink from the well in game now like it is a continuous flow of water that can be drunk quickly because that is after all what a well with a tap is. Sorry for the incredibly long load of old waffle! However on the upside if you are Twitch viewer you may not have to listen to the "apple glitch/well spamming" conversation anymore, every day, day after day, after day! Every cloud has a silver lining, every DayZ player has their "line in the sand." Paul

I think it was an exploit with guns and players were "farming" them at one heli. Which is why guns were taken away from helis for now. They shared the "5SKS" type issue in the most recent status report. So they are aware of where they are at.

I've always been acutely aware of how I act in game, for perception terms on YT etc. In reality though, the way I am is the way I am. I believe in playing fair full stop. However I think its only human to have momentary lapses. Sometimes in DayZ we all get salty at a death. If you get killed be someone you can see was out of breath and moved in a way to suggest he was using the aim bug, you get really salty. It's life. When you share that experience with 800 people and many are calling you a noob and many others are laughing, that you don't know the "special technique" etc. It becomes somewhat of a different beast. You already as salty as sin, and it really can get to you in the moment. When that then happens three times in one day or something, you can start to feel a degree of pressure. I completely agree with what you say in general. I have chosen to unfollow people that i've seen hiding in walls etc. However, it doesn't change the fact that there is that little bit of pressure there sometimes. ;)

I use the bug tracker if that is what you are asking. I don't remember actually discussing precisely how to do any of the exploits. With the exception of saying you use middle mouse to drink from a well I don't go into any detail. I don't think we are meant to deny exploits actually exist here as far as I am aware. If people want to learn how to do them I'm not sure that massive novel will be the source they will seek out to teach them.

It's weird how opinions differ. I actually think that that 0.61 is my favorite patch to date. I quite like that sometimes no matter how hard I try I might die as a new spawn. There is only one time this would have happened to me so far in a lot of hours on 0.61 were it not for a friend, rescuing me from wolves. I like the fact that the loot distribution, coupled with new coastal town design and fog etc has changed the dynamic of the game a fair bit. People now have much more of an incentive to travel than ever before. In every other patch to date most of the time the player base has gone off on their travels for 6 weeks or so and then got bored of whatever new thing was just released that they were travelling for and decided to just go to the fashionable coastal PVP town for some murder, death, kill! For the first time, it feels to me like that isn't happening and the game is better for it. I feel I can see the vision for the game and you have to be more prepared. If you've chosen to go inland and haven't got a weapon and haven't at least made a bow and got some arrows then that is the gamble you take on surviving the landscape. If you do have a bow and encounter wolves then you may be able to survive by climbing a hunting stand and killing them etc, you have given yourself a chance. If you are not prepared, you learn for next time. For a lot of the game in the past, you could spawn where you invariably got killed and so it turned into a bit of a clusterfuck for many players of "get killed, mindlessly respawn until you're back in the town you died at, go for revenge." That really doesn't happen anymore, the game has tailored me to be far more likely to just accept the spawn I get and start a fresh, it's also made me loot more thoroughly before going too far from where I spawned. Players that run straight to mil bases as a new spawn have a lot more than other players to worry about, its far more of a gamble now and that too has helped the game from not being more of "the rinse/repeat PvP game" you speak of. In the scenario you gave of a prig spawn, it seems really unlucky that in Dubky, Novoselky, Chapevesk, Ballota, Komorovo or Kamenka town you hadn't found something to fend off the wolves with. Usually by Kamenka base I already have a decent weapon of some sort and a pistol with a mag and bullets, I'm usually at the base to maybe to change my primary to something a bit better. Ballota is no longer a town where people are suiciding to spawn at, so it's not full of new spawns, its a town of serious threats and fully geared players. I kinda like that. The only issue I do have with the spawns is the repetitiveness of the Berezino to Solnichy spawns. It feels like I get them 7/8 in every 10 spawns which is grating on me a little. Upside I guess is that a fishing village spawn, a Skalisty spawn or an Elektro spawn feels so much better than it ever has done before. All that being said, 5000hrs is a huge investment in time! It's a shame to see any player getting frustrated but sometimes a long break is exactly what is needed. ;) Disclaimer: I haven't checked the spelling of the towns mentioned above, i'm sure they are all wrong but I typed them from memory. Your gonna have to put up with that as the reader. Just as you will have to put up with the fact that I just used "your" when I should have used "you're"... ;)

Please can you talk us through how drinking animation will be when the new player controller is in? Paying particular attention to drinking from wells, will it be a "hold f while you drink, until you want to finish, then release f" or will it be more of the same in terms of a "press once and wait for your character to go through three "scooping motions" or similar to get one small amount of water. I love the way DayZ is in terms of survival right now and the direction it is going in general, but the drinking animation really grates on me in its current state. It basically encourages people to spam the well, which if I'm honest I do. I try to play the game avoiding any glitches etc but the animation for drinking is just so painful as a new spawn at the moment. Granted it becomes far better when you have say a cooking pot. I really find the "three scoops for one drink" immersion breaking and it makes me frustrated and come "out of the character and out of the game" if I do it the normal way as I sit at the well. Some information on how this will work in the future would be really useful for some of us I think. Second question - How much time in man/lady hours does it take to introduce a new animation and what are the steps involved right from having the idea to getting it in the game?

Is the round in that mag the same as the mosin round? It sure looks like it. Will this take the long range scope or any scope at all? Second slightly unrelated question. The accuracy between something like a Winchester and the Carbine seem wildly different. Is this intended? I understand why the Sporter and Trumpet wouldn't range to say 400m and be accurate at that distance with an LR scope, you kinda have to over range them. But personally i've found the Carbine (cr527) to be horribly inaccurate even at ranges of around 300m. It doesn't seem to shoot straight like a Winny or Blaze would do. Will this be changed or is it meant to be less accurate?

Hi all, Thanks for watching! TRMZ

No music if that is to be the music. Anyone that doesn't like it will turn off (I would have normally to be honest). Music needs to add to the atmosphere and peak and trough with the action in the game, not just be there as an addition that doesn't necessarily fit what is going on. It needs to add to the tension/action, not just be stuck on otherwise it's best just to leave it out altogether IMO. If you want an example let me know, I wont link it in here as it would be self promotion in ur thread. PS dude you were almost aiming at your feet with the last guy, as you saw when you aimed down site bring that hip fire aim up man! ;) Edit: If I am being honest, I personally would just scratch the footage and play for more. I have deleted good footage cos TS spoiled it. If you are gonna make vids you gotta get ur friends to understand when to keep quiet or have a hotkey to mute them.

Thanks for watching, TRMZ

Thanks for taking a look! TRMZ

I do agree it was a gamble. There was an awful lot more checking my surroundings edited out of the vid though before I ran over. It still wasn't safe but I had done my due diligence.. lol Thanks for watching the vid! ;)

I don't remember doing too much walking. Aside from when I was trying to get a shot at the second guy who was in my treeline? In which case I think I did the right thing, yes I could be seen but getting closer to him would have been stupid. Most of the time you have to get out of your treeline a little to get the shot if they are in the same treeline as you.

Thanks for taking the time SMoss. I'd love to reduce shadow distance but it makes lakes and stream look like a little "1990s" graphics wise so I can't do it! Went through the guide and have tweaked a couple of things. Hopefully I will see a difference tonight! The burning question is... will it improve my survival rate at the prison island? :P

Hi, It's only a quick clip based around one shot showing the reason for the shot but I'd say it's probably the best shot I've ever done in DayZ! I'm afraid it's edited from a Twitch vod which affects the image quality a fair bit..... Thanks for watching! TRMZ

To be fair it's back handed compliment of sorts. The fact that I took out 30secs of footage without people being able to spot it is kinda cool! ;)I thought it would raise some questions to be fair. However a vid that revolves around a split second shot needs to be very short so I took it out as I wanted to fit in me showing the 4 players and me getting shot at instead. I didn't want it to just look like a random pot shot....

You see there is thing called editing, it's quite popular with YTers. Below is a link to an unedited Twitch highlight of the same thing.... http://www.twitch.tv/therunningmanz/v/4639986 Please don't make unfounded accusations of hacking.

Have you monetized this video yourself? There is an advert on it? I really hope you haven't as that seems wrong given all you have done is use others content and the generic dayz intro with some music. Profiting from other peoples work would be wrong no matter how small the profit. You need to do your own content to get subs btw. You really wont get any subs by doing this. People sub on YT because they like the YTer or something about the way they play the game. I would strongly suggest you stick to your own content if you want to give YT a shot.

Not keen on this method myself. Occasionally when you swap backpacks the one with all the stuff in it disappears into the floor or wherever. If you are in a house you can normally find it on another floor or by the entrance but I have had this in the open and lost all my stuff in the past. I do similar to this but I transfer key loot items (such as rags and ammo) to the bag before I make the switch and then double click the rest after I have swapped to the new bag.

I still feel a bit sick about this one! Thanks for watching, TRMZ

BS ;). There are no friendly players at the Island if you are massively out gunned.

Thanks man, I was breaking my leg over and over again whilst crawling forward. I think there was nothing I could do aside from hope to get out of the water before I died. I died from the repeated leg breaks, not drowning. Apparently that particular spot is really bad for this.....

Thanks for watching, TRMZ

Thanks for watching, TRMZ All footage was recorded on a very good whitelist server. Details below:- http://www.insidedayzstandalone.com/whitelisting/