Rags!

Well, this has been a fun read.

If you got my point on this matter, you would agree with me.

I saw the title of this topic and I was all like "Yea, tell me about it."

It's rarer than it used to be, but since AKM magazines aren't spawning anymore it seems (which used to be the best way to get SKS rounds in bunches of thirty)...the best way to get your hands on SKS ammunition are boxes of twenty rounds that I find once in a while in rusty jeeps. Pickup trucks can have ten round stripper clips for the SKS as well, though those are pretty uncommon as well. SKS's themselves are far more common than their ammunition. I don't go to military bases. I'm too smart for that. I don't know from experience how much SKS rounds can spawn there.

Guns shouldn't take damage over time or use. This is an idea that seems in your head like it might be a good one, but in the scope of the game it wouldn't benefit anything. It would actually hurt things. Hear me out. Guns shouldn't degrade over time. Why? For starters, how would you measure that? Time since it spawned into the server? Since it was picked up? Either way would be a bad idea. There are a bajillion hidey holes in Chernarus where a Mosin or SKS or pistol might sit for ages until it is found. If weapons started degrading once they spawned in it would only encourage servers to have more and more frequent restarts in order to make sure the guns and equipment that spawns stays fresh and usable. This disrupts play and oversaturates the loot economy. Let's say that a gun starts to degrade once it is touched by a player. That's even worse in a way, because now you haven't just found a weapon to use...you found a timer. And that timer is ticking with every step you take, every move you make, every vow you break, every claim you stake. Do you like to lay low, skirt the outsides of towns and play otherwise somewhat intelligently? If guns degrade over time just by their existing, then you are only encouraged to attack and play aggressively since if you don't do it soon...you'll soon just be back to square one as a bambi. Just with dirtier shoes. What if I don't kill people on sight? What if my gun is just for defense and just sits on my back 99.5% of the time? Is my friendliness going to be punished with an actual game mechanic? Lives in DayZ don't last for real life days and weeks, months, or years. They last for a couple afternoons, half an hour, seven hours, a number of logins over a few days perhaps. (There are exceptions, I know.) Guns can break, rust, all that...but they aren't fragile, either. Not so much that you should have to worry about your gun just not working a few hours after picking it up. Guns shouldn't degrade from use, either. I own a 1927 Mosin Nagant rifle. 1927. That thing is 87 years old. 87. That's when DayZ development started (joke). It's been through a freakin' World War. It's banged up, it's scratched, nicked, but it still fires and shoots like it was made yesterday. It's solid metal and wood held together by sheer Communist confidence. God knows how many rounds have gone through this rifle in 87 years, how many hands have held it, how many Nazis it may have killed...the point is that while you still have to maintain a gun, in the scope of your character's life and the life of the server in DayZ just don't last long enough to justify this kind of degradation to metal and wood and plastic. I understand it would make every shot seems more valuable...but so would making ammo less rare. So would more Zombies. This would basically give an objective and technical penalty to both shooting your gun...and not shooting it. You state, OP, that jamming should happen when dirt and grime gets into your weapon. But how would you prevent that? Not moving? Staying indoors? All this would do is encourage less mobility. But the worst sin in this idea is that it adds... ...dare I say it... Randomness...to combat. You shouldn't aim your gun at somebody's head where you have been hiding and have it misfire and blow your hand off. You shouldn't hear bullets whiz past your head and turn the corner with your shotgun and have it just not work because the computer's metaphorical roll of the dice gave you the shit end of the proverbial stick. Want a better solution? Guns spawn with varying levels of wear and tear based on what kind of weapon it is. The more complex, dangerous, and the more moving parts it has...the higher the chance that it will spawn in less than Pristine. I'M NOT SAYING THERE SHOULDN'T BE SOME LEVEL OF GUN REPAIR OR MAINTENANCE, but guns shouldn't get damaged from just having it or from shooting it. Maybe if you get into water you have to wipe it with a command? Maybe if you prone too much you have to clean it with another command? We already have ammunition that has different states of wear. Maybe the ammunition should be the focus instead of the firearm? Maybe it, too, should spawn in different wellness states. I think that firearm maintenance in this game should be like hunger and thirst and temperature. They should always be nagging at you, and should be catastrophic if you ignore it.

Dat sarcasm, tho.

Thank goodness there's a fix for all my broken cans of spraypaint.

When I get that message, I play anyway, and my character is not reset and is just how I left her.

Finally, you can repair Vests with Duct Tape. It took the tape from 100% down to 95% and it said that you've "reinforced" the Vest with the Duct Tape. It stayed Damaged, though.

One of the things I'm really liking so far is the lack of intense brightness of your character's appearance in the Inventory screen. Items, too, seem to have a much more dull and less shiny hue to them.

This update has some very strange new trees in it.

I don't think that this is a bad idea, though there's stipulations to that. I know that there was a time when I had taken the incredible risk of entering the Balota Airfield Jailhouse to look for some goodies. I could have sworn I heard footsteps outside, and I was looking at the door cautiously. Well, somebody apparently had been server hopping and the cowardly piece of scum spawned inside of the building behind me and killed me. The key is to make sure you couldn't hear spawn ins too far away, or at least always make sure that if somebody spawns into the same building as you it is made aware to you. The problem about implementing this now in DayZ is that servers restart or crash or you just disconnect all the time, so if you're trying to be stealthy or at least not be seen, a random server disconnect means that you'll have to risk making noise as you spawn back into a server to resume your sneakery. Honestly, I wish they would implement spawning back into servers in the same position you had left them in (standing, crouching, prone).

I think you should be able to patch Raincoats with Duct Tape. This should not, though, affect the actual appearance of the Raincoat by displaying patches of Duct Tape since you could just put the Duct Tape on the inside to reseal the coat. Duct Tape has approximately 3,527,419 uses in real life, so I'd like to start seeing some implementation for this handy tool.

Or maybe I'm just smarter than you, so smart things come more naturally to me than they do to you.

90% of playing Tactically in this game is covered automatically under Common Sense.

Your survival shouldn't be left up to dumb luck based on randomizations of loot spawning or probability. If I die, I want it to be because of another player or zombies or something that I at least had some level of control over. This isn't real life survival. This is survival in a video game. What I'm essentially saying is that the whole point of survival is indeed to negate the effects of the elements on your character so you don't die to them. Hunger is negated by eating. Freezing is negated by warmth. Maroon 5 is negated by good taste. Dying after frantically running around for half an hour because you spawned into a server that's precipitating and not finding something as commonplace and basic as some matches because some code made it impossible for you to get them is bad game design. A game can be hard, difficult, challenging, but I draw the line at Impossible. With bad loot spawning, it can be literally impossible for you to survive. If you spawn into a game where it's raining and no matches spawn, you're fucked because thanks to poor loot implementation, your only luxury is in choosing whether or not you want to freeze to death or starve to death. If it's raining and you spawn into the game, you know you have to go outside to find food, so that means you'll freeze to death if you don't find a raincoat, matches for a fire, or some other waterproof clothing. Not finding an item that you need that does not exist in a place your character can get to has nothing to do with player skill. Finding these items for survival forces mobility, which has an inherent risk to it in and of itself. The need for items for survival should be the base factor that drives players to interact with each other, either in hostile or amicable ways. The DayZ experience isn't spawning and dying in the rain because the loot code didn't provide you with something you NEEDED. If you make it punishing for new spawns like that (Nota bene: not challenging...not difficult...but punishing, because I'm all in favor of difficulty and being challenged) then you'll only encourage 24/7 no rain servers. Just like there are 24/7 daylight servers. Just like there are 1 hour restart servers. Once you die in a raining server, people will just leave and go to a non-raining server where they have a chance and don't have to rely on the luck of the draw that a raincoat or matches spawned within reach of them.

I love the fact that things spawn in high numbers, so long as the items that spawn aren't necessarily detrimental to other players. Clothing and basic tools should be very easy to find, but any weapons more powerful than an SKS should be pretty difficult in acquiring. Or at least require a risk to get them. Rope, Screwdrivers, Duct Tape, Rain Coats, Matches, Beanies, Hoodies, Boots, Spray Paint...all these things should be very easy to find. They don't really affect one player's ability to hassle or kill other players. Loot should be everywhere so that opportunity exists in every corner of the map for people willing to go out and seize it. But as long as guns and ammunition don't spawn as commonly as they do now...I think DayZ is headed in the right direction here. With certain kinds of looting being absolutely essential to survival in some instances, like rainproof clothing, matches, etc., you shouldn't have to spawn into a server as a Bambi and cross your fingers that you just happen to find some very basic low-tier item that you need to not Freeze.

If by "Global Events" you mean "Winter" I'm game.

It doesn't seem so useless when I kill people with it.

Instead of the game aiming for perfect realism, I'd rather have real fun when I play the game.

How's the PC building coming along?

Every? Every single time? 100%?

If I'm close enough to the ocean to fish in it, I'm running the hell away from it.

I've had the same problem on this side of the pond as well. I would join a server that had NO loot in it, and then I would just leave the server and join another and then...voila. Everything's right as rain.

I only found ONE. A server glitch/hack/bug/whatever occurred where all the players would spawn as strong black women who don't need no man by Vybor. While everybody else was going "Oh, shit what happened" me and my friend dashed to the Veresnik military base and then straight up to the NWAF. There was a smoking helicopter there with many empty magazines and about ten loose 5.56 rounds.