The Riddler (DayZ)

Apologies for their being night time on our server this weekend. We had to mess with our settings a little and somehow it set the server start time to be much later than we thought it was. We were trying to go for the very last hour before restart to be dusk/dark but ended up with a few hours of darkness. Problem solved and back to 24/7 Daytime! Reminder: PERSISTENCE IS TURNED OFF THROUGH 0.52. THIS MEANS NEW LOOT EVERY 4 HOURS!!!

I just changed our server's start time tonight to 16:00 so we have 1 hour of darkness before a 4 hour restart. Two guys lost their stuff. One b/c he logged in too early :lol: ...he knew better. The other logged in, logged out and logged back in quickly and his character reset.....kinda think that was a self-inflicted reset but it was odd and sorta fits what your guys are seeing. He was playing before all that for over an hour.

I'm with Fragnet as well and running a Public - non-persistent server. We have had a few complain they lose their character on our server and we've been able to narrow almost all of them down to player's joining the server too fast after it restarts. Example: server time reading 08:00 after restart (but server start time is really 10:00) - player joins at 08:00 and will spawn new every time. If its a persistent enabled server there could be issues with the persistence file on the said server. I know people sometimes have issues and need to restore the backup of the persistence file which could cause issues with a player who joined before the backup was taken. Things like that could cause issues possibly.

Yes! good times!!! Found these two bad boys today!! by

Unfortunately BA can't do anything. You need to report them directly to their GSP (game service provider). Need server name, IP including port and reason for reporting. One of the admins on here might provide the email list so you can send it directly to all of the providers. Edit: found it for you:

Its a Jungle out there!!!! Holy Shit especially in Elektro!!! Crazy fire fights, crazy cannibals, crazy new spawns. Seriously got nuts for several hours there. Thanks for playing everyone!!!

Well done good sir. Patience pays off in most cases when it comes to situations like that. Great job.

They seem to come and go in waves from my server. When .49 came out we saw a dramatic decrease in the number of people reporting cheaters on our TS, but as we got close to another update, they seemed to come back. I have witnessed hackers over a dozen times having recorded almost every single instance of them mainly so I can gather feedback not only for the developer's but for my own knowledge so I can identify a hacker or not. Sure people can blow things out of proportion when it comes to discussing hackers; I mainly think that is b/c those people are not educated yet on how to identify a hacker which is sometimes half the battle. That reminds me of when I educated a player on our server that a guy who killed him was not hacking and rather it was a server performance issue that caused his death. After showing that player my recorded video of exactly what happened, he then retracted his statement of "I got killed by a hacker" , but fully understood then what to look for when you suspect a cheater.

Happy to see progress is being made for us server owners to have more tools and logs at our disposal. I've been dealing with restart issues as of late and it would be nice to know if BEC restarted the server via the schedule or if it was our provider that restarted for us. Also I am happy to see gun sounds are being addressed. Sound to me is everything when it comes to a game and it sure would be nice to able to hear all those shots again, close range or not!! Happy Holiday's Day Z team; thanks for all the improvements and enhancements the game has seen this year. Here's to another exciting year!

Here's to a good guy and a good group!!!! Check out their server!

Thank you to those of you who reported cheaters this weekend! We successfully captured video of 4 players cheating and were able to get their names and report them b/c of players like YOU! This not only helps the DayZ community but makes our server a better place to play b/c cheaters know to stay away or risk getting caught!

We're also using Fragnet and can say we've been satisfied with them as a GSP. I will also say that their support is quick to respond but I guess it depends on what shift receives the ticket b/c we too have gotten responses back that made me wonder why they didn't look further into the issue when they have the ability to do so and save the reply for when they have more info instead of asking the client to dig further into it for them. I know a lot of that has to do with their KPI's (Key Performance Indicators) they have to take responsibility on; been there done that. The more tickets you respond to, the higher your KPI goes which makes the manager of the team happy but that sometimes leaves the client who was asking the question in the first place a bit frustrated/left in the dark b/c the answers are so basic or only half-answered. That happens with any tech support so don't let my opinion on the matter change your mind on using fragnet. Overall we're happy with them.

I can help answer questions 2 - 4 but for question 1, its hard to determine what exactly it is your doing that is causing this. As for question 2: This is a known issue and is indeed still a problem if you join a server too quickly after it restarted. If you watch the server browser closely after restart in the server browser window, you'll see the server come back up but it will indicate the time as 08:00 followed by 09:20 and then eventually will show the correct time your server should start at. Just wait until your server or any server for that matter, shows the correct time before rejoining. Usually I'll get up, stretch my legs, get a drink, etc etc before I hop back in. This will ensure enough time has passed before you join ;) As for question 3: This is the way persistence is supposed to behave in its current state. If you have it enabled on your server and the server restarts, loot does not spawn new upon restart. Persistence has its own method in which it distributes the loot across the map. Currently there are issues where you'll find areas with no loot at all and other places where you'll find so much loot it drops your framerate b/c there is so much on screen. The idea behind persistence once its working "better" is that you'll be able to store items in a location of your choosing and not have to worry about losing them when the server restarts; all the items will still be there after the restart. With the current state of persistence the way it is, we too don't see any benefit from turning it on currently. The Dev's are working at improving persistence so hopefully early next year we see improvements worth turning it back on; but for now we have it turned off on my server. As for question 4: I really don't think the issues you're seeing have anything to do with public or private. Persistence will behave the same across both and as for the character wipe issue; certainly abide by the rules above I mentioned in question 2; just don't join up until you see the server's time displayed correctly in the server browser. The only other thing I can add in regards to your character wiping every time you play on your server is issues dealing with your server not connecting to the main hive. You might want to explore this thread and see if this adds up to the issues you're seeing: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/167343-servers-with-connection-issues-to-central-hive/ Good luck and let us know if you have anymore questions.

Caught a cheater last night! Name and all :) Good times through bad times. Thanks for playing! Been a great weekend of DayZ'n

Lots of players on TS last night. Thanks for the support guys and thanks for playing with us. We'll be on this afternoon / evening US time if anybody wants to join!!

We don't have one setup to auto-kick but if we find a player at 400+ ping, they gotta go man. Its a just cause for kicking them according to the rules. We always try and let people know their ping is too high via a Global Message and then let them know we'll kick if they don't leave. I personally hate kicking anybody for said reason, but it does effect server performance when you have multiple players on with that high of ping. I am trying to setup something so people can't connect over 300 - 400 ping.

Good to know. I'll give it a try and see if that helps. I too have had my provider (Fragnet) confirm we have no syntax errors and they "should" be working. Only other advise I was given was to restart BEC manually.

Thanks man. I gave up as well for this release b/c its either 0.51 or something with BEC themselves that is causing the issues with restart messages not working. I'll try again and test again when 0.52 goes live on stable.

We have not tried any tests in 0.51 only b/c there was no new news about persistence for this build. I do know from talking with another server owner that they were having issues with their persistence file becoming corrupt when the server hung up. With all that said i'm gonna leave it alone until some more progress is made. The good news is from reading the weekly status report for December, they are planning to work on loot distribution (see below) but it also mentions "redesign/improvements" so I fear it will be a few updates (maybe 0.53?) before we'll see some significant improvements. For now the community on our server enjoys playing without persistence. People get a chance to loot up every 4 hours :) Programming: • Critical inventory fixes • Walkie/Talkie support/fixes • Sound System support • Loot distribution redesign/improvements • Audio/Global Messaging bugfixing • Vehicle simulation diagnostics / bugfix • Character connection issues (protecting players from attack while logging in/before being able to move)

Here is the highlights from the Dev's status report when it comes to programming as of Week 1 of December 2014. It does mention loot distribution redesign/improvements so hopefully we'll see something before the end of the year. :thumbsup: Programming: • Critical inventory fixes • Walkie/Talkie support/fixes • Sound System support • Loot distribution redesign/improvements • Audio/Global Messaging bugfixing • Vehicle simulation diagnostics / bugfix • Character connection issues (protecting players from attack while logging in/before being able to move)

We'll have to wait and see what today's update (if any) brings to persistence. In my opinion we won't see too much based on the state of persistence that the dev's wrote about last month. From my understanding this was just the foundation and now they're going to build off it and stabilize it more, but of course that takes time. We had the exact same issues in .50 with persistence in which the server would freeze and/or our persistence file was wiped and/or corrupt. Fragnet had to re-install Dayz on our box due to one crash's where the server just wouldn't come back up. Ours is off for these reasons until further development.

Good luck with your other server. Its always full when I have jumped on it and hope you get enough support to keep it running! We went through the same thing last month but now have enough support to keep it going!

I'd say that's fairly accurate on "how its supposed to work" but from my own experience running a server with Persistence enabled, the loot doesn't always seem to stay like it should. We've had to restore our persistence file that our GSP (Fragnet) does a backup of each day when we've logged in and found our gear piles gone. It wasn't due to the Wednesday wipe that BEC mentions happening and our GSP mentioned that a server crash could cause issues with the persistence file. For the most part I have not seen any server crashes in 0.51 but we never could put our finger on how persistence behaves and if our gear will stay or not. Also there is the issue of loot "water falling" at certain locations. Just search the forums or even youtube these days for examples where you'll go into a building and find tons and tons of loot stacked up so much that it starts to drop your Frame rate. <<< That right there is the main reason on my server we turned it off. Too many server hoppers camping those loot "water falls" and overall dropping the server population b/c people simply can't find loot. With that in mind, we decided to just turn it off for the time being until its further developed and there is commentary from the dev's on exactly what they've done to "improve" persistence.

Found another VS3 last night in Gorka. Man it must be the lucky spawn point for the VS3 b/c its almost always there!!!! Had a blast driving it last night through the coastal cities. Everybody was shooting at us!!!! :D :D

Hey thanks man! The night cycle is actually something we're trying to fix. I have the server set to start at 10:00 AM but it starts at 3 I believe? Waiting for Fragnet to give me word on what's up. We run 4 hour restarts but if everybody likes a little bit of darkness then we'll leave it :) I only KOS when I see others shooting new spawns or worse shooting at me. I try and give everyone a chance so long as their not pointing their weapon or just acting nervous/strange. Thanks again for playing!