DocWolf

Uhm...must be a really unlucky evening: I find canned food or fruits basically everywhere. On the other hand, berries and/or apples are quickly reaching mythological status in my gaming sessions: as far as I can remember no fruit was EVER found by any of my characters on bushes or trees; only lying around in kitchens and such. One of the major problems in 0.49 is that if you aren't exceptionally unlucky you're going to eat a decent amount of food near your spawnsite...enough to start trekking towards other locations without fear of thirst/hunger. And once you reach another town, the cycle repeats: you find a lot of food, eat/drink a lot...and so on. I didn't know 0.50 experimental was out: this evening I'm going to switch to experimental and try it, just to see if it's true you consume more calories.

Many people lament the lack of "interaction" with other players...sometimes they even say experimental servers have more friendly players. Well, think about it: isn't it fairly realistic? In experimental there are many character wipes, so you learn to not be too attached to your gear. You understand also that your "survival" drive is not really an asset, because in a week (or in a couple of days) you'll be on the coast as a noobspawn anyway - not because someone killed you, but because you've been character wiped. In such a situation "surviving by all means necessary" for many people is not a priority...and that means there's less distrust or greed in social interaction. You're no longer surviving Chernarus, you're travelling in it. Even critical issues like dropping dead for hypotermia or starvation are simply minor setbacks: that means you'll simply respawn on the beach sooner than expected. On normal servers, on the other hand...well, they're stable, and you'll have to live as long as possible. In them you have your character who depends on your gear and supplies to survive. Are you going to trust that stranger you noted in the woods in front of you? He's running around with a rifle, what if he's hostile and kills you? Avoid him, don't take any chance. Or maybe is better equipped than you, and that raincoat and backpack will be a godsend gift for your soaked character. He's not looking at me, why shouldn't I snipe him and take his stuff? It's harsh, but I need to survive. Or maybe you just spotted someone in the same town you're looting. Why should you scavenge with an eye costantly over your shoulders? Why should you even divide the town with him? You were here earlier: it's your town. Kill him, take his stuff, loot the town and run back in the woods. Those are simple examples that explain what is perceived as an annoying behaviour. Realistic explanations, someone interested in roleplay should easily understand...I know I'm doing it. I love roleplay, and I understand that the embarassingly contrived "roleplay" many people do in other games (and probably hope to do here, too) is not realistic or even interesting at all. In a post apocalyptic ex-soviet republic full of infected people and piles of corpses are some people seriously telling me that the FIRST thing they would do is waving happily at a stranger and strike a conversation with him?!

I never wrote everyone will group up to have better chances in DayZ, read my post carefully. I wrote that with the planned/announced features, working togheter will be easier for many (not all) players than surviving alone. Finding food will be harder, people will find it's easier group up and send someone hunting while someone else will go looting for canned foods and someone will scour the trees for apples. There will be a revision of the wounds management systems, meaning every single violent encounter will be dangerous - meaning more safety in numbers (for someone, at least, not for everyone). There will be a stamina/weight management systems, meaning that many (not all) players will find more useful at least one or two people at their side to carry more supplies - which will be harder to find. There will be more infected, with a completely different respawn system - meaning, again, it will be easier clear/scout a location when you have more eyes and hands. I understand there will always be people who prefer surviving alone, or that will find easier surviving alone - but if the developers really put everything they're talking about in the game the easy way to survive will be cooperation. Not a riskless choice or inherently good one obviously: there's no guarantee you'll succeed at all, even in a good group. But, as I already said, if the game remains smiliar to the one we're playtesting there will be no need to cooperate or group up: at the moment surviving in DayZ is easy. Other players in such an easy "survival" simulator are liabilities at best, threats at worst...and it shows.

Grouping up in a survival situation is, in-game or in real life, ALWAYS the better option. That's the way mankind became the dominant species of our world. Yes, more people means more mouths to feed...but means also more hands to search for supplies, more backs to carry stuff, more eyes to keep you safe, more brains with ideas or solutions you didn't think, more skills you don't have, and so on. If the group is composed by sensibe people, it will have always more chances compared to a lone wolf. Obviously that does not mean you're forced to group up, especially if you don't know the motivations or the skills of the people you're supposed to join. Badly assorted groups actually decrease the survival chances of their members.

According to issue #0017389 "Only Vilayer hosted servers handling temperature effects properly since 0.49 server stability update" you can see in the bug reporting forum it's a problem tied to several (all?) servers not hosted by Vilayer. I don't know if Vilayer-hosted servers truly have a working temperature system (it's two days I'm searching for one and I can't find them), but yesterday I tested several other servers and I can confirm that regardless of clothing (full pristine, fully clothed with warm items), regardless of character status (full green healthy/hydratated/energized status) and regardless of weather the temperature drops steadily the second you log in, going down until it hits hypotermia. The only way to slightly warm the character is run A LOT; the only way to warm the character effectively is lighting a fire, but leaving it means a quick drop in temperature and the downward spiral towards hypotermia starts again. The bug is classified with an "assigned" status, so apparently the developers are aware there's a problem and are working on it. Post scriptum: what the hell, why this issue and many other important problems have so few votes? Where on hell are all the players? That's an alpha, we're supposed to test things. Why people don't register on the DayZ Bug Tracker and contribute to the development?!

Now PvP is very simple in its design: you spawn, gear up in a day (maybe two) and then hang around populated areas trying to interact with others. Sometimes with words, sometimes with axes and bullets. It's basic because you can easily ignore hunger/thirst (plenty of food everywhere and untreated water/rain does not give you any illness), easily ignore wounds (easy access to bandages/splints and no mid-long term consequences for wounds), easily ignore weather (plenty of protective gear around and no mid-long term consequences for hypotermia and hypertermia), easily ignore fatigue (no rest mechanics, no weight/stamina management system)...now you can spawn, gear up and fight. You die? You spawn again, gear up again and continue. Yes, it's perma-death for your character, but if you have a certain mindset losing your character it's really just a temporary setback. When loot (both civilian and military) will be more scarce, people will gear up more slowly; when canned food will be rarer people will spend more time foraging and surviving; when untreated water will be an hazard people will spend more time travelling to fountains or searching for water treatment systems; whem weight/stamina system will be introduced people will not haul around armouries in their backpack; when hunger/thirst/temperature systems will be tweaked people will spend more time trying (again) to survive); when the number of infected will be crancked up and/or their respawn mechanic will be implemented correctly people will be forced to manage two threats - other players and infected. All this will push (not force) players towards collaboration. There always be KOS, always be lone wolves, Berezino (or some other place) will always look like the O.K. Corral, there will always be mask-wearing crazy players handcuffing you and force-feeding you industrial disinfectant...but the various features of the game will slowly pull most of the players towards co-op and mutual help. This is, after all, the most rewarding behaviour in a situation where surviving alone is hard: to improve your chances you team up and collaborate. Nowadays surviving is NOT hard in DayZ...and it shows: in such a situation, you're not interested in collaboration unless you truly know/trust the other guy(s).

No experimental servers online - Bohemia still have to announce when they're going to be online, so don't hold your breath. As a side note: I'm an experimental server player too, but I seriously don't like the elitist vibe a lot of experimental players have lately. The players over there are NOT more mature or more friendly than the guys on normal servers. They're just a little more curious, and a little less gear-obsessed due to frequent character wipes. Also, the game is essentialy the same - so "less hackers" is debatable. If someone cheats on a normal server it can do the same thing on an experimental one.

I don't know if your forum handle is intentional or not, but hey - I'm italian too. Back on topic: I think Bohemia is not going to leave the game in this state. PvP will be (obviously) a major feature...probably THE major feature of the game. But a lot of the planned/announced features will gradually change its face from the very basic PvP we have now to something a little more refined. You can PvP even with a proper hunger/thirst meter, weather system, lots of zombies, temperature/fatigue management and so on...it will simply be harder. Which is, AFAIK, exactly what Bohemia wants from this game: an hardcore survival simulator. Stuff like PvE...I don't know if there will be something actually worth calling PvE: I see zombies as a simple environment threat (much like a rocky cliff to carefully navigate), not enemies to kill in order to gain something. The same with animals: I'm not "grinding" anything. I kill them when/if I need fur, leather or meat.

Look, I'm not saying you're doing it wrong. The problem, sadly, is in the current state of the game: from the point of view of game features/mechanics you have literally nothing to do except PvP. And i mean literally nothing. You obviously can travel and explore like you do, but there's zero to do in the wilderness - even if all the people and the newspawn of a full server magically teleport themselves in the same location. It would be Berezino 24/7 firefights, only in the woody hills around the border of the map. The game is a survival game, but (pictured not in order of importance): * the player count in server is dreadfully low (30 or 40, now maybe 72) * the hunger/thirst feature is interesting but needs to be harshened - it's easily ignored at the moment * there's no rest/stamina/weight management system * there are no diseases * the wound system is interesting but needs to be harshened- it's easily ignored at the moment * there are no mid/long term consequences for wounds, illness, hypotermia, hypertermia, hunger and thirst * there are no persistent items and/or long term storage areas * players cannot modify the world (you can't write something on walls, plant signs, can't fortify buildings, etc) * the number of zombies is ridiculously low * the zombie respawn system is still a placeholder and very, very, VERY basic in its design * loot system is interesting, but needs to be tweaked Probably I still forget something important for a surival game that we do not have. What we have, instead, is a decent melee system and a good firefight system. That means we have decent-to-good PvP...wich is, at the moment, the only fully fleshed out feature of the game. As I said before: I know it's an alpha, I'm not whining. I'm just saying that considering what we have now, it's (sadly) normal that a lot of people will remain in highly populated areas (the coast, where you respawn) and enjoy the only complete feature currently avalaible. That, obviously, does not mean all those people don't test new items/explore the map/interact with others/try new or incomplete features and so on. It means that for a while they will enjoy PvP, and when new complete features will be avalaible they will change playstyle. Look at the impact of the weather and temperature systems on the playstyle after the latest patches for example...and those are still incomplete features. It's simple, at least IMHO.

I'm not sure why KOS is frowned up by some people - mainly those who wants RP servers in the future. I mean...picture this: your character is either a foreigner stranded in a quarantined country or a local stranded in his destroyed country. In both cases, your character's goal is surviving the apocalypse by any mean necessary. I don't know you, but if I'll ever be in a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of murderous infected people and strangers I'll act paranoid, and trigger-happy. A lot paranoid, and a lot trigger happy. Why are you looking at me funny? BLAM, I can't take chances. Do you have something I direly need? BLAM. Sorry, in normal conditions I'm a pretty decent guy; but if it's kill-or-be-killed I can't afford the risks of trusting strangers. Are you following me? Are you looting the same town? Are you endangering me in any way, real or imagined? BLAM, BLAM, BLAM. It's not a city riot, it's not an economical depression, it's not a time of slightly uncomfortable events...some kind of illness just destroyed a whole country, almost everyone is dead and the few still alive are frothing madmen that will eat your face if they hear or see you. There's no cavalry on the other side of the hill waiting to help you; there's no safe zone. No authorities, no civilization. Nothing but you and your wits, and your need to survive. Are those roleplayers really telling me it's not realistic killing on sight in this kind of situation? Because I love roleplay, and I understand pretty easily this is no social simulator. It's a survival game, and when you absolutely want to survive at all costs...you do bad things.

DayZ problem are not players. We have to be honest about that, the so-called "problem" is the lack of features and mechanics in the game. Truth be told, it's not a problem at all - it's the inevitable byproduct of DayZ being still in a damn alpha build. Players jump in half-hoping that, considering it's a "playable" alpha there will be finished contents/features, and get frustrated when they don't find any. Don't get me wrong: IMHO this game has one of the most fun playable alpha I've ever tested, and I literally love it considering it was launched as an alpha less than a year ago. But at the moment the only really fleshed out mechanic avalaible in the game is PvP, let's be honest about that. You want to "survive"? Yes: there are hunger/thirst meters but they need to be tweaked a lot more, especially considering how easy is finding food and water. Yes: there are various type of damage and fractures, but they are a trivial nuisance even to a freshspawn considering how easy is stop bleeding or fixing a fracture and the complete absence of mid/long term consequences. Yes: there is finally a weather system that influence temperature, but it's bugged. So, "surviving" is still not a feature. Can we interact with the environment, like board houses and/or mark the land in some way? No. Can we at least have a camp with persistent item storage in order to better navigate Chernarus? No. Can we travel via vehicles? No. Can we do...well, anything that is not killing people, both sane and infected? Actually, no. I know it's an alpha, and I'm not ranting. This is only an easy and intuitive answer to the question: "why everyone stay on the coast deathmatching?" - there's nothing else to do, except testing items newly introduced in game, exploring the map and testing half-completed mechanics. TLDR--> people stay on the coast because there's nothing to do outside it, and people deathmatch because PvP in the only fully implemented feature. Later in the development stage, when more features/mechanics will be completed people will do different things...or, probably, current deathmatching players will note that DayZ is not the game they were interested in and will move away.

Some thoughts about the OP: you're running around kitted in milspec gear, with a clown mask and sporting an assault rifle. Military clothes does NOT equal to banditry - at the moment military gear offer the best compromise between wheater protection and storage space. I'm still conflicted about the camouflage factor, as it's highly situational. In some places military clothes helps avoiding attention, but in many other like urban ares they don't. Masks on the other hand...if you conceal your face you're suspicious, both in real life and in game. Especially if you're wearing bright and absurd clown masks. And needless to say, if you're suspicious in DayZ you're treated as an hostile. I have a personal theory about military-grade weapons . Firearms are needed as a protection against other players, not infected. Any gun looted in civilian areas (handguns, shotguns, hunting rifles, carbines, WW1 rifles) will suffice in protecting your character from other players...if you spend time and resources in obtaining military-grade weapons that means you want problems with other players. That means you're suspicious...and that, in turn, means you're hostile. Walking up and down Chernarus in military gear, clown mask and lugging around assault rifles? I honestly don't know if that paints you a "BANDIT" sign over the head, but surely will influence relations with other players. Aggressive players will probably engage you on sight, while more prudent ones will simply avoid you...and maybe ambush you later.

Take a can of food over the tool you're using to open it: the square behind the can should turn orange and the game should pop up a message like "open can of X with screwdriver". Click on it and the can is now open...it will not be filled with food, as any tool except the can opener "spills" food when opening cans. The amount of food lost in this way is directly related to the condition of the tool used to open the can: a pristine tool will spill far less food than a worn one. The tools you can use to open food cans are: * can opener (I've never, ever found one) * firefighter axe * splitting axe * machete * any kind of knife * screwdriver * bayonets All those tools are also weapons and in your travels you'll find some of those items quite easily. A suggestion: if you can, stick to the axes for melee and carry a simple screwdriver as an improvised can opener: in this way you'll avoid ruining quickly your melee weapon using it on enemies and cans alike, and you'll have a very compact tool dedicated to food management. The screwdriver use two squares of space, one on top of the other - it fits basically everywhere. Oh, remember: you can open soda cans and canned tuna without any tool. Hope this helps DocWolf

This is not server hopping - it's playing on different servers, and it's entirely different. If you need to play on 6 servers in order to find a part for the XY vehicle...well, it's fine. If you loot the Pavlovo military base in server #1, then log off and join server #2 and loot the base again, then log off and join server #3 and loot the base again and so on...that's server hopping. And that's what a timer could prevent.

Server hopping in general should be tackled down on the login phase: at the moment you have a 60 seconds timer before your character actually appears in the new server. This could me modified in order to discourage server hopping...an example: when you log off from a server you shouldn't be able to join another server for at least 10 minutes in real life: then, after you log in, you have a 120 seconds timer - two full minutes when the character is already in the server, but the player can't interact with it. This two minutes of forced AFK could endanger the character, something server hoppers hate, and the waiting time of 12 minutes before loggin in a different server should discourage many of them. It's a little extreme, but I suspect server hoppers do that because they're not patient enough to gear up in a classical way. Forcing people to wait before joining another server could be a good strategy to reduce the problem - especially if we imagine assaulting/raiding future boarded houses as a major exploit threat for server hoppers. Another solution could be store 1 character per server. In this way, if you server hop, you start each time as a fresh spawn. I don't know if this is viable, though, considering both server memory storage/performances or possible player or admin abuse of localized characters. IMHO the waiting time idea is worth a shot.

Is it really an issue? I have an enjoyable and playable alpha build of a videogame installed on my laptop. Keywords: enjoyable and playable. The current gameplay experience avalaible is, honestly, amazing if we consider DayZ Standalone was launched as an alpha less than a year ago. There are very few games that can brag an early access as good as DayZ. The current version of the game is not, obviously, a saleable product - far from it. But, again: considering that's an early access alpha less than a year old it's seriously good. Especially if we consider the amount of changes in the gameplay with the various patches. Tell me the DayZ we played in the first months of 2014 is the same we're playing now. I say: don't rush development. A beta in early/mid 2015 could be a good idea.

I was on the western outskirts of Novodmitrovsk, near the cargo container deposit: I was coming from Krasnostav via the woody hills between the two cities. While I'm looking around for loot in the house and the garages, an heavy storm hits the city and in a second I'm dripping wet and very, very cold. I close myself in a garage and proceed to dry my clothes placing them on the ground for a while. It doesn't help - even if I'm dry I'm still cold and in a few seconds I start shaking. Well, the damn rain stopped for a while, so I run outside, chop down some wood and proceed to re-enter the garage to light a fire...I don't like the idea of pumping smoke in the air so close to a city. Before I could light my little campfire the garage doors swing open and...well, there's a dumbfounded player looking at me. I look at him. None of us have weapons in hand, but he sports an SKS on his shoulder, and I'm lugging around only my trusty fire axe. After a very long and uncomfortable second, just as I decide to say the "Friendly. Wanna trade?" greeting he backsteps and lowers the carbine. I bolt outside, sprinting like a madman, hearing way too many shots around me and wondering how is it possible I'm still unharmed. I run in the cargo container maze behind the garage and then turn around, trying to flank him - he surely thinks I'm going to run for the woods near the deposit. Hopefully he doesn't expect me to return to the garage from the road and axe him to death. It's a plan so bold it borders on insanity...but I never managed to kill another player, and the prick opened fire first. I'm sure it's self defence, even if I thirst for the blood of the unfortunate traveller. I manage to return to the garages and catch a glimpse of him looking in the wrong direction. I'm sure I'm going to plant my axe right between his shoulders...well, not exactly. Before I can sprint and murder him for his cowardly assassination attempt, BAM! Server list. WTF? Did the server restart/crashed down before my very first kill in DayZ?! After that little disadventure I try to log in again, but without success. I changed the server, and managed to trek north of Novodmitrovsk: I planned to hit the Clock Tower from north...but when I reached the walled compound/truck mechanick north of Novo I aggroed two zombies. After a quick melee both were dead on the ground and I was low on bandages, but two others (their respawns maybe?) were running towards me. I tried to shake them down trekking towards Karmanovka, but I managed only to aggro two or three Karma zombie as well. Now with a sizeable zombie conga line behind me, I ran towards Turovo where FINALLY the damned snarling beasts disappeared in the woods. I managed then to safely turn back to Novo, this time from the eastern outskirts, and when I'll log in again I'll have to decide if Cernaya Polana is more lootable than Novo.

I'll answer your post purposefully cutting out the rants - your reply seemed a lot more angry than necessary TBH. Well, you managed to list...what, two post-apocalyptic game franchises and a multiplayer map of a game without actual zombies? I seriously can't see how that equals to "eastern european horror is a cliché". Especially if we compare those examples to basically every other horror videogame ever. Sorry, but I assumed we were discussing about a game - not real world journalism. As far as I know when someone create a game the only way to make it work is NOT striving for realism, but for authenticity. That means even if it's obvious that real-world ex soviet republics use western gear, in a game where you want to convey the idea of being stranded in a foreign place you have to represent the fictional setting differently from reality. An example could be using old-style bus and cars models in your eastern european videogame even if in reality such vehicles are a lot less common. Another example could (should?) be western military weapons and clothes - in reality you can find USMC desert boots everywhere: I own a pair, and I'm definitely not a Marine or even an American citizen. But should you find them everywhere in a game set in a fictional eastern country? No, at least not in my opinion. Not if you want to visually convey the idea of being in a fictional, eastern country. No one here is suggesting cutting out wester weapon and/or gear from the game contents. But in this game where you're supposed to be stranded in a fictional eastern country, what should be far more common? ACU/Multicam/Marpat gear of civilian/russian military clothes? Steyr AUGs and TAVORs or eastern weapons? If you want to convey the idea, I bet the answers are the second ones. Don't tell me you're agreeing with me now :)

I'm not sure I'm following you...let's try to look at all the issues Player Super Saturation - As long as the gameplay stay the same you're right: adding more players would over saturate certain areas of the map. Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, the military bases....it could be a nightmare. But at the moment those places are crowded because there are, realistically, only two things to do in the current alpha version of DayZ: killing people and searching for tools to kill people faster. We've already seen some changes in gameplay with the latest patches: respawning zombies and loot scarcity are helping decreasing (not cancelling) the frequency of deathmatch-style gaming sessions. With more stuff added to the gameplay (weight management and stamina for example), things that now are common - like quick marathons to Airfields/Bases and lugging around entire gun shops in backpacks will not be seen anymore... and people will, inevitabily, spread out. TLDR: now having 100 people per server will bring us DayZ: Battlefield Edition. With a more fleshed out gameplay, it could be an extremely interesting idea. Loot and Item Scarcity - As far as I can understand the new loot system can handle multiple players in the same area - and considering what we've already said, that in the future players will not be as clustered as today...IMHO that's not really an issue. The only problem could be for newly spawned players...those will be the only one forcefully crammed in specific zones. There are a lot of possibile solutions, however. Some simple suggestions: * increase spawn rate of basic clothes and low calories food in spawn areas. Strategically place ponds and/or fountains in those areas * let people spawn without hungry/thirsty status, and with a long sleeved shirt instead of a t-shirt * create virtual paths for new players - i.e. slightly increase the spawn rate of low-end good quality gear in certain areas of the map, in order to create "corridors" new spawned players follow more or less consciously to help them relocate inland Those are not, obviously, the only possible solutions...merely some examples. Server Hopping Would Skyrocket - At the moment server hopping works because there are no private servers. It's an alpha, after all. In the future, when DayZ will be in commerce, there will be private servers...and server hopping will not be possible, considering that player avatars will be saved serverside. On a more general note, I agree with you when you propose adding more points of interest...something that is NOT a military base, an airstrip or another city. More rural buildings/areas should be a priority - especially if they really introduce a weight/stamina systems: we need some kind of rest stops if we want to navigate Chernarus with such limitations. More "scenery" should be a priority too: add more (way more) blood in buildings and outside them...more car wrecks, add streets cluttered with gridlocked cars and trucks...add areas where remnants of police and military vehicles imply a bloody battle against the infected. At the moment Chernarus doesn't look like a country devastated by a bloody and futile resistance against hordes of diseased killers - it looks like country-sized version of Chernobyl. It's an abandoned country, not a murdered one. Not sure about spreading spawn points everywhere. IMHO clustering them on the coast helps the developers (and the players) better managing the map zones.

There are a lot of players that keep asking M14, Marpat BDUs and whatnot. Why should the game have so many western clothes and weapons? Chernarus is supposesd to be an ex-warsaw pact country, and considering what we can see around the playable areas it's supposed to be a poor one, too. I understand that in the backstory there was some kind of western intervention in the Chernarus outbreak (New Zealand military berets, UN gear, M4s and windbreaker jacktes with US flag patches) but having too much western stuff is...well, meh. DayZ setting is an eastern, rural country: probably for the first time in ages we're not playing some bland adaptation of the "urban america overrun by zombies" cliché. Let's try to avoid it, if we can. A final consideration: the very last thing we need is more military stuff. Don't get me wrong, I like it and I understand that in-game it's really useful....but come on, this shouldn't be The Expendables: Fashion School. More civilian clothes and more civilian weapons as a first priority. If we want more military stuff (IF) let it be something like 80% eastern stuff (both modern and ex-soviet), 15% european (modern) and 5% from north america (modern) My two cents DocWolf