Double_Back

Private hives 'saved' this game for me and I imagine for many others as well. I was pretty much done with the game at one point because of rampant hackers/cheaters/scripters, but I've been playing on the same private hive for a while now and havn't died once to a scripter nor have I seen any. I'm sure some are, but the admins are active and do a great job and at least the teleporting, laser beams shooting from their eyeballs, mass kill a**holes aren't running rampant. At the VERY least, what cheaters may be there have to be somewhat discreet.

The DMR is awesome as long as you don't fall into the trap I notice a lot of players using it do: at 500+ meters, the high rate of fire and large ammo capacity will not make up for poor marksmanship and poor shot selection. I've encountered DMR "snipers" several times and every one of them missed the first very poorly aimed shot while I was running and, sure enough, each first miss was followed by that distinctive DMR boom in rapid succession. Like any other sniper rifle, you have to actually aim. There's something about the DMR that makes some players forget everything about basic sniping. While not a one hit kill to the body like the .50 cals, I rarely see a player not get knocked down by the first shot - at least when I've used it. After that, it's easy to finish them off. Like someone mentioned previously, the M14 + DMR combo is DayZ nirvana for me, too.

Depends on my mood and where I'm at in the gearing up process. But, my #1 dictum always applies: I never trust anyone. That doesn't mean I KOS, but I don't team up, I'm not giving you medical help, and I'm not turning my back on you. I'm a loner and I keep it that way. When I'm a relatively fresh spawn, I'm agressive. I'm entirely focused on getting my basic supplies; taking chances I won't later on. I'm not going out of my way to PvP, but if I see an easy opportunity to aquire better gear by shooting someone in the back, I'll take it. Once I gear up with basics, I'm move north to hit military spawns and stop by my tent if I have one. As a loner, I'm usually an opportunist PvP-er; generally avoiding a fight if there's much risk to me. As long as the other player isn't doing anything too stupid (having his back to me 25 meters away or closing on my position), I generally just avoid the other player. All this changes if I get my hands on a sniper rifle. At that point, I'm looking to hunt. I never, ever camp for coast spawns. I camp places in the north decently geared players will most likely visit and not normally the obvious places like NWAF and Stary. I want high end gear. Popping new spawns (aside from being lame) isn't worth the risk. I pick my camping spots carefully. I know the rifle I'm using. I know the various ranges from my hidey hole. It won't be an obvious spot like "the highest spot in sight". I will have cover. I will be in a spot that doesn't spawn zeds to tip players off. I constantly check around me so I see someone getting too close and always have an escape route. I will always have an assault rifle or LMG as a secondary in case someone does get too close. I check to see if a player has a buddy before I shoot. I will not shoot unless I'm confident of a first shot hit. If I don't have the shot, I don't shoot. Wait for the next one or move on. I will watch the corpse for a while after a kill and wait; making sure the coast is clear before approaching cautiously and looting. Hit or miss, I'm moving on to another location after I fire in case the victim comes back for revenge or tips his buddies off. Yeah, I "camp". But, snipers in real life are "campers". I'm not looking to have a shootout with other players. A shootout means I screwed up. A man could get killed doing that. I'm looking to kill them and take their stuff and that's somewhat more difficult with them shooting back at me. I'll wait, hide, evade, etc. just to get that one good shot. I really enjoy it. It's a lot like hunting in real life. Sniping has taught me a lot about the game and player behaviour. More than anything else, it's taught me how NOT to killed by snipers. There's some really basic SOP, that if players will always follow, that will keep 95% of the snipers out there from getting you. Funnily enough, when I get bored of this, I think I'm going to play as a medic for a while.

Exactly the same thing happened to me today.

Until duping and scripting are removed from the equation, it's pointless to discuss how rare/common certain weapons are. We still don't know how ".15% drop chance" actually translates in game because cheating/exploiting/duping have skewed the game-wide inventory way, way beyond what the real numbers would actually produce. So, we're just banging our heads against the wall raging about what weapons should or should not be removed. Once duping and scripting are gone, I think we'll see a lot fewer players risking their legitly aquired, super high-end gear picking off fresh spawns in Cherno.

I've never, ever received a blood transfusion. I've always relied on those four legged ones you see in woods and fields. Nature's blood bags! No second person needed and I've never been shot by a cow - not that I don't keep a close eye on them.

Private hive is definitely the way to go. The one I play on the most appears hacker free at this point. I've played on it for almost a month and it's been great. I haven't died once to a hacker, nor have I seen one (have seen banned players attempt to joinand I know hackers have been found and later banned) and that's with the server being well populated most of the time. Due to server-wide mass kill grief hacking, I'd almost given up on the game. I played several private hives and narrowed it down to two I liked that fit my style. I play mainly on one with the other as my 'backup'. There's a lot of variety on the private hives. Just search and experiment till you find the one that suits you. It's nice to finally be able to play on a well populated server and only be worried about honest players with honest weapons. Now I actually bother to make a camp and repair a vehicle; knowing that it may actually last if well hidden. What's also fun about a private hive is that you see a lot of the same regulars. So, you begin to learn who is who and what type of player they are.

The funny part about private hive servers is that a lot of skiddies seem to think that means "No Battle Eye" server. So, they join them and start hacking away. Maybe they think it's "safe" and they can't get global bans in a private hive. I first started playing on my current home server (private hive) just a day or two after it went up and the scripters were getting banned by the truckload the first week or so; mostly by BE and some I think were banned by vigilant admins. Fast forward a few weeks and the server seems practically hacker free (at least the most obvious ones).

Think a good portion is due to private hives. I've played exclusively on a private hive the last two weeks or so. It's been awesome. Loads so much faster. No deaths to hackers so far. Tents save and don't dupe weapons. No ghosting or server hopping and I haven't seen a single player combat log yet.

Before it was nerfed a few patches back, I preferred the 1911 over any other side arm. It really was a no-brainer. Plentiful ammo and there was no need to bother head-shotting zeds. Now, I prefer the G17 because it holds more considerably more ammo and is way more accurate. Prefer the sights, too. But, that's after my initial gear up and I've found plenty of mags. But, very early game when I'm doing much more scavenging and zed killing, I prefer any of the pistols for which ammo is plentiful (Macaroni, 1911, revolver). Usually, I'm only using my sidearm on zeds and going for head shots. The only thing that matters to me at that point is ammo.

Some of the "obvious" tents are probably placed by newer players - or new to that side of the map. I remember when I first started playing months ago and put some tents in places that I now know are laughbly bad spots. I remembered thinking at the time "This is a great spot! It's right between two trees. No one will ever find it!" I think my first "awesome" spot was raided in less than 24 hours. The best way to learn how best to place a tent is to spend time looking for tents. Great for learning what NOT to do. I definitely learned not keep all my eggs in one basket.

Unless he has played every minute of the game on your computer while you stood over his shoulder watching him the entire time, you don't "know with 100% certainty". Also, you don't know he was specifically banned for the AS50-TWS. Your "friend" could have just been globally banned for something else around the time he aquired the weapon. There can be quite a time lag between the detected cheating and the when BE actually issues the ban. I love how so many of the incidents were "a friend".

All things being equal, I vote a big YES. At this point, a database enema would do some good. BTW, I currently have every single piece of gear I want - all aquired 100% legit. There is not a single item I don't have that I want: DMR, M14, coyote, NVGs, rangefinders, GPS, ghillie, etc. Would hate to lose all that work, but I'd happily sacrifice it for a DB wipe. But, if it it will interfere with the dev's development/evalutations, and keeping the current DB is all part of their plan, then no. Right now, I'm looking forward to the stand alone and support whatever is necessary to help it's development.

I love spawning in Kamenka. Unless you like running the Cherno/Elektro shooting gauntlet and then heading north into the loot-desert forests just north of there, what's not to like? You can get off the coast quickly while practically never seeing another player and the ones you do see there will almost always be fresh spawns. There's a good industrial spawn and decent residential loot in Kamenka. The big upside to that spawn is that there's FIVE deer stands within just a couple hundred meters from the road that leads directly north to Zeleno - EIGHT if you take the short detour to Bor. There's a relatively quiet supermarket (easy to scout before you head in, too) in Zeleno, several nearby barns, lots of residential spawns, and two water sources for canteens. You can easily hit most of those spots before you need your first can of beans. From there head north to Pushto (church + supermarket) and then Vybor (supermarket + office building) and check the crapload of deer stands scattered around that side of the map. Once I run my route of the "Western Three" of Zeleno, Pushto, and Vybor, I rarely ever lack any of the basic survival gear, an Alice pack, and decent weapons. From Vybor, head east and you're well positioned for prime crashed heli-hunting and/or a detour to NWAF or Stary. Or head west and look for player tents scattered on the western edge. The only downside is there not being a hospital in any of those towns to grab some morphine; though I'll often get lucky hitting all those deer stands,

I've been playing on a private hive the last couple of weeks and I love it. Tents save properly (every time) and gear doesn't dupe (yeah!). The only glitch I'm still seeing is the tent dupe glitch. That sucks since I placed my tent carefully and had to adjust it once before being happy with the placement. Now the first tent keeps popping back up and I can't get rid of it, making my spot easier to see. I don't know ebough about the server mechanics to know why, but the server I'm playing on seems to havedone something right.

Found pretty much everything as a natural spawn except for rangefinders, rocket launcher, and satchel charge. I've only ever found rangefinders in player tents. Found plenty of NVGs as natural spawns, but no rangefinders. It's weird, but items seem to come in waves for me. I'll go a long time and never see an M107 or DMR, for example, and then suddenly run accross 2 or 3 within a couple of days. The most common for me is the AKM. It was the first military grade weapon I ever found and still is the weapon I most commonly find in deer stands. That damn thing is everywhere.

We were spoiled early by Rocket and now, like spoiled children, we're accustomed to a ridiculous standard and pout and throw a fit when it's not met. We were spoiled over the summer by almost weekly (sometimes daily!) patches and regular feedback and interaction from Rocket. How many mods and games offer that? I've played games that went years between patches with barely a word from the devs other than "Here's the new patch" when it's released. No feedback, no engaging of the player base directly at all, no word of future patches, and no support at all. We've gone a few weeks(!) with no update and relatively little feedback (think he might be busy with something???) and the forums are full of rage. Rage over something they didn't and haven't paid a penny for.

You missed where he logs in to a low pop server, climbs to the factory roof, gets set, logs out a few seconds later, and then immediately logs back into higher pop server where there's "more traffic". He even says that was the reason. Very classy.

Specifics matter in discussions like these. "Banned" - banned from what and by who and under what circumstances, exactly? "Legal" - Governmental laws/ contractual rights (User Agreements) or "rules" (set by a users/server owners and admins/mod creators)? Details matter.

He failed to ask the obvious questions first: When did the server agree to provide any player with a free, unconditional, and unlimited right to play on their server? Obvious answer: Never. Does the owner of a server have any legal obligation that requires he allow anyone to play on his server at all? Obvious answer: No. None at all whatsoever. Rather difficult to lose a "right" one never had to begin with. The server is someone's home. If they allow you come in their home and play cards with your friends, he reserves the right to ask you leave at any time for any reason. Doesn't matter that you bought the deck of cards. You're still free to take your deck of cards and go play somewhere else. Many young people seem to have a tough time with the concepts of "rights" and "privileges".

I'm not aware of anyone that's been banned from playing the game for cheating. They can still load their copy of Arma2 and play as much as they like. They can still play online on many servers - even host their own games with their friends. They can still run any script or hack they like. Has anyone been banned from that? Banned from playing online on servers that use BattleEye? That's a different matter. That's the only thing a cheater is banned from. So, your question is actually: Is it OK to ban players for cheating from joining servers that voluntarily choose to use a 3rd party anti-cheat program?

I ALWAYS hide any body with a weapon I come across; even if I'm not responsible for making the corpse. That's one less weapon in circulation close to me. I always imagine someone is 5 minutes behind me, picks it up, and shoots me in the back with it a few minutes later. That just won't do at all. That, and I don't want corpses laying around making people even more nervous and alert. Correctly or not, when I find a body, I assume anyone I see within 1000 meters did it. No one is 'owed' their gear after they die. Sorry.

I've only been caught once with a broken leg and without morphine. Another player shot me in the legs with a M4 SD in the middle of nowhere and then HE alt-f4-ed! Never understood why he did that since he could have easily finished me off. I nearly bled out waiting to bandage myself because I didnt want to stand and give him another easy shot. Spent an hour tracking and cooking a couple of boars to get my blood back up. That's no fun with broken legs. I was far from any city with a hospital but, I did a mental calculation and figured it was better to crawl my ass all the way straight to Berezino to the hospital where I'd almost certainly find morphine rather than take the small chance of finding some at military spawns criss crossing all over the map. Took me about two hours of crawling, but I made it. My heart was really pumping the last 1000 meters. "Please don't let me die now." Took a few re-tries on the hospital ladder since I kept falling back into prone at the top and getting stuck. It was a haul, but a nice sense of satisfaction when I finally did it. Aside from moving so slowly, the other pain the the ass is that it's harder to navigate when your LOS is so low to the ground. Needless to say, I learned my lesson and I don't take any chances with morhpine now and stay well stocked.

I doubt many people believe their tent will never be found by anyone - ever. The idea is to place it somewhere that reduces the chances that it will be found soon or often and extend the useful life of the tent. I've found plenty of tents way out on the edges of the map and either found nothing better than I currently had or only took one weapon or item from several available. Yes, that person's tent was 'found' but they didn't lose much or nothing at all when I found it. A 'good' hiding spot is the difference between your tent being randomly discovered once every two weeks or five times a day. Once every two weeks and it might remain a viable re-stocking place for a while. Several times a day and it's just a waste of time and gear.

I liked the old bandit skin system. The one where your entire skin changed to the 'bandit suit'. The humanity system wasn't perfect (self-defense without getting hit first, for example), but there was some sort of logic to the system. It didn't handle the exact cut off line between bandits and non-bandits perfectly (a player without a bandit skin might have just been a murderer recently re-spawned), but a serial killer certainly looked different. Now, my humanity jumps all over the place with seemingly no logic. There was less of a KOS mentality back then. No doubt. If that particular humanity/bandit skin system was the biggest reason why - who knows for certain? I've murdered people in this game and if I got a bandit skin for it - it didn't bother me. It added to the game. Personally, in the current state of things, I assume everyone is going to kill me on sight; bandit skin or not. Back in the days of the bandit suit, there was far more uncertainty about if a shoot out was going to happen when players met - if the other guy didn't have a bandit skin. There was more evaluating of the other guy's intentions intead of: I see another player! Fire! Fire!. Again, I can't say for certain if that's the reason or if the game just evolved to what it is now regardless of bandit skin/no bandit skin. I don't know why muderers are so opposed to bandit skins. Hell, embrace it! Want to be an outlaw? Be an outlaw. Other than making it easier to kill other players, I'm not sure why killers are so adamant about facing repercussions for being a murderer - especially a mass murderer. Never bothered me. I think it would be cool to have a skin for those with 5 or 10+ murders. It would be a badge of honor for some and a source of increasing tension as you become a marked man. I don't mean a penalty like slower movement or anything too gimmicky like that - just a skin - a skin that looks realistic, doesn't penalize the player's visibility, and not silly like a black and red ninja suit or glow in the dark "bad guy" hat. As for being 'realistic', well, it's not realistic that every person is dressed almost exactly the same and 90% are the same sex and age. In 'real life', we'd be able to describe someone: man/woman, tall/short, age, scars, tattoos, brown jacket, etc. It's also not 'realistic' that a man or group could roam a relatively small geographic area commiting mass-murder without some of the locals noticing that people keep getting shot in the head and getting wise to it. Then having the killers simply vanish to an alternate dimension (aka: another server)? Uh, no. Eventually, the killers would pick up a local reputation and, barring a 'normal' way of describing people, a bandit skin might be the best way of representing this in-game.