emuthreat

More proof that Chernarus is a backwards society... Need I mention the conspicuous absence of modern technology like computers, and traffic signals? In Soviet Chernarus, elements organize you by proton and electron count.

There is no cleaning house, there is only moving stuff from the middle of the floor to the corner. A couple weeks ago, I spent about three (1:30 to 4:30) hours at VMB; I cleaned up EVERY piece of loot on the floors and bunks of the barracks. I could not even approach the jail, because of the load created by all the loot in there. I assume that building was the worst because barracks have better chances of finding valuable mags and optics; so nobody bothered to clean it up before it got out of hand. Long story short, by the time I finished cleaning each barracks, new mags and PSO-1 scopes were spawning right before my eyes. The first barracks I cleaned up was a total mess after a couple hours. Moral of the story: Two days later, that public server was taken down, and I lost it all. It probably had something to do with the performance issues caused by all that loot. Lootsplosions are bad. Just Say No!

I'm really surprised at the number of people who don't recognize that the devs definitely have a reason to disable persistence for a few weeks. My best guess is that they are suspicious of how much persistence was responsible for the lootsplosions that would crash your game if you got too close to the jail at VMB. It also makes it very hard to identify how the loot economy behaves on a server, if the items persisting on that server came from someplace else. Maybe they wanted to see how the NEW CLE works, unfettered by the side-effects of persistence. It would greatly simplify the pile of data that they have to slog through to diagnose any problems. Would you want to do all the work necessary to determine how many items on a public server were actually spawned on that same server? I'd probably be inclined remove a HUGE variable, if it made it easier to find the cause of the issues at hand. I am as guilty as they come, when it involves hoarding, and interdimensional salvage operations. Maybe the servers are having problems baecuse of all the bags full of beartraps, extra clothing, food, tools, (do you get the point yet?) batteries I save from each spawn, various magazines and ammo stockpiles. TBH, many of my stashes are eventually abandoned as my AO shifts. I don't know about the rest of you guys/gals, but to avoid the hassle of creating and maintaining a bag drop spreadsheet, I just keep most of my shit on one server, and try to remember which trees I put it in. What if a few dozen people all prefer the same server to keep their camps? Persistence, combined with the common Public Hive, makes a terrible mess of the loot distribution data, and it is all my our fault. So If I had to use logic alone, and withhold my contempt for taking away my favorite aspect of the game, I'd say they probably have a pretty solid reason for this decision.

Well, it has been stated before that 3pp is here to stay, so this whole discussion is pretty much a moot point. Nevertheless, I'll toss a couple coins into this wishing well. Issue number one is performance. If 1pp were to be forced with the current lag, desynch, and framerates, it would likely render the game unplayable for many people. There are many major additions to the core engine that should help soften the edges of 1pp. Things like not being able to see or shoot something outside of a window, because you cannot situate your view at the necessary angle, or not being able to peek over low cover without exposing you entire upper body; these types of issues should be resolved with the new character controller they are working on. IMHO, the only 3pp fix that I think is necessary, would be to render the floating camera as an object following the character. A big, orange orb comes to mind. This way you cannot see others without risking revealing your own presence. Now it would seem odd at first, to see an orange orb floating along above a fence, but people will adapt; as they always do. As a bonus, the main theme of the backlash against this floating orange orb would be that it isn't realistic. I could then argue that it isn't realistic to sit in a bush in the corner of a walled yard, watching everthing that happens outside the wall. Maybe they should scrap both 1pp and 3pp, and try to force us all to play in the second person. Or is the second person perspective already provided by the monitor, that tells us what we are currently doing? You are looking at an apple under a bed. There is a growling noise outside your house. You are wondering if DayZ will work as a text adventure game.

No! You must submit. There is only the one true POV, and his image shall never be reproduced. Infidels will be hunted down and killed like dogs on their morally corrupt, and generally inferior, cheater servers.

Yes, but they are displaced by about 50 to 100 feet. If you know exactly where they normally should be, the loot will be there. I like to lay down and roll side-to-side in the general area; this helps to make loot more visible by flattening the grass. It also keeps my noggin markedly more intact while fumbling around in the middle of a field fo ten minutes.

You sir, have just opened a can of worms. Be careful not to forcefeed any of it to the devs. These forums don't take kindly to strongly worded demands; especially demands of BI to properly enforce their own published server hosting rules. It might have something to do with alpha, only time will tell. In the meantime, try playing official servers. They only rarely disappear, and you will only get kicked once every four hours, like clockwork.

See comment below. Also, try runnig through the woods, farming, or fishing IRL. I have to agree with that; seen a lot of people diverted to GTA. ALSO: Summer; in the Northern Hemishpere, at least.

You must be trolling, right? 1pp is a much richer experience, albeit not so well-suited to the coastal PvP havens. IMO, forcing a clunky, restricted, new version of 3PP is the only acceptable solution. There will be no peace... No peace. This should not be so. If I were to be standing on one side of a wall, while I see you over that wall, I would have an advantage provided by the perspective. You would not share that advantage. Regarding both balance and realism/authenticity, 3PP wall peeking is not a feature that is necessary to, or supportive of, "quality gameplay."

I've noticed lately on experimental that I can sprint around all day and never warm up, but after the sun sets, I have to be dunking myself to stay cool. Has anyone tried a moonlit swim for the island lately?

Of course it's not one specific reason, the same way that it is never just one wrong move that causes a fishing line to bunch up in an unmanageable mess. But there are causes, and there are things that can be done to mitigate those causes. In this case, I'll just assume that it is too complicated to explain, and that the effort required to explain it would be best used sorting it. Still it would be nice if I had some way of choosing a server that was likely to stay online for a couple months.

M107 in .50 cal, with undermounted M98 in .338 cal, with undermount MAC 10. My only question: Why not a shotgun in the middle instead of the redundant sniper/anti-material rifle?

Lol, I'm paranoid enough in DayZ as it is, thanks. I was more wondering if the servers getting taken down was related to loot problems, and if there were any ingame practices that could help to avoid breaking the server. I just want a cure for Vybor backpack cancer.

Seeing as how the wipe isn't coming yet, maybe you could use some help to identify your targets, as well as judge the integrity of the people they have killed. Trust me, you don't want to live with the knowledge that you just killed a man thinkin he was a bandit, but later found that the guy that the"bandit" just shot, was skinning bambis just for kicks just out of your sightline. That was only mild trolling. Everything coming from Grimey Rick is somewhere on the troll spectrum, and often hilarious if you can make out the obscure references.

I once likened this development process to an auto mechanic changing the fuel system, transmission, and exhaust, while re-upholstering the interior; while allowing the customer to drive around in the vehicle. It seemed to go over well.

Is there any information that you might be able to share, that would assist in choosing a more viable public server to play on? I enjoy testing backpack persistence over long periods of time, and needless to say, a server disappearing scrubs all of my efforts. When this just happens to occur on three servers (two official) within a two week period, it becomes VERY notable. I understand that the game is in alpha, and that the servers in question likely got pulled because of loot problems making areas of the map "crash traps." If it is allowed at this time, and you wouldn't mind sharing; do these taken down servers happen for any specific reason? Does anyony survey the landscape on these servers to determine the cause and extent of the problem requiring their shutdown? I am somewhat concerned at the frequency with which the servers that I use go offline. Could this be caused by aspects of my playstyle, such as looting out villages, and leaving any useful items bagged up in an easy to remember bush? I have noticed "lootbombs" develop in sheds and hunter's platforms near my central stash locations.

True, not the end of the world, but it does get pretty frustrating once it happens more than twice in the same month. I can gear up just fine by myself, in fact I started a 1pp experimental guy yesterday, and already have a fully kitted AK74, MP5 and FNX. I'm not too sure that it's ready for stable push yet. The problem with my playstyle is that I do lots of solo loot runs and make bag drops that I can direct other people to via VOIP. So when the server I am using goes down, it's like stealing from charity. lol

Isn't that what server messages are for? I'd gladly move all my stuff to avoid it all going poof, but I'd rather play on a server that was going to stick around. Regardless, I can speculate plenty on my own. I am looking for people to work towards getting this fixed, or suggestions for workaround.

Thanks for the suggestion; at best, it gives me a better tool to cross reference the IP to confirm it is an official server. I switched to the official servers because I had problems in the past with other servers going dark, and using officail servers was the suggested solution. I would be very interested in finding a way to verify the expected service life of the official servers.

Why some servers and not others? What are these reasons they go down for extended/indefinite periods? Is there any way I can research an official server to determine the risk of arbitrarily losing all of my gameplay efforts? WHAT CAN BE DONE TO IMPROVE THIS SITUATION, besides claiming alpha? I fear that years down the line people will still think it is too much to ask that official servers do not disappear. I can just see the game making it through beta, and still people will respond to complaints like these with the tired expression of "don't get attached to your gear." This is a persistent world survival game, and the ability to go back to the same place on the the same server and find what you left there is THE core gameplay mechanic of the finished product. I sincerely hope that it was the lootbombs (which are looking like they will soon become a thing of the past) that made these servers disappear. I can totally understand how after sifting through a lootbomb, and stacking bags full of clothing in the corner of a barracks would, from the perspective of a person examining server data, obfuscate what is a legitimate stash, and what is just crap that people have moved out of the way. But I don't see how this would prevent them from just resetting the server's persistence, and letting us get back to it. I know the game is still alpha, but if they are offering official servers to play on, then they should be usable. I'll satiate your request for a metaphor: If some people found a nice place to camp, and set up a primitive campground, but then it became popular enough for a well-funded attempt to improve said campground; this would roughly paralell the DayZ development process. They offer certain campsites with limited amenities to the public, for a fee, while working to improve the rest of the campground. The official servers are like these "early access" campsites, that people may use before the necessary improvements are made to allow people to lease parcels and build cabins. So if you had paid a reduced fee to camp at this wonderful place, knowing that improvements are still being made, but that you have still paid to use what is available at the moment and offer feedback during the development of the project; would you be okay with having to arbitrarily pack up your camp from the space that had just been offered to you, and that you had paid for the opportunity to test out? I'm not complaining about the dismal framerate, or the lootbombs, or any number of other things that I know are currently being worked on. I am complaining on the apparent lack of care regarding the continued availability of these official servers. I really do not think it is too much to ask that the official servers be usable on more than a week-by-week basis. If the only way to play DayZ includes a chioce between renting your own server, or choosing a group who looks like they have enough money and members to alleviate the dread of their server going dark for non-payment some day, then I would consider that a failure to provide reasonable accomodation for those who have purchased the title, to play the game. I'll now go crazy with a baseball metaphor. Imagine that you have a season pass to a baseball game for only two seats, but then the stadium decides to close that section for whatever reasons. Sure there are other seats to choose from, but the view is worse, and there is no shade, and the drink and hot dog vendors rerely pay attention to that area. You should not have to ask ahead of time if the seats you have chosen will still be available when you want to use them. Nor should you be forced into buying a season pass/party bus package deal, with a private organization large enough to gurantee that the seats paid for will be available. Maybe you have a large project at a DIY pottery shop that you are working on. You have already paid a deposit for all the materials, but you cannot finish the project in one day. Each day when you come back, your project is gone, but the nice lady at the help desk says that since you already paid your deposit, you are free to go and choose a new project to work on. After how many days of coming back to find that your work is just "gone" would you still consider this place to be a good use of your recreational time and energy?

I think DayZ muzzle flash should look more like your time lapse photo. Tracers for everyone too. And where is my 40mm bofors cannons already?!? G Wiz

Last time I found Vybor lootbombed, it crashed my computer when I got within 20 feet of the jail building. As fun as it is filling two dozen backpacks with clothing to find a few mags or PSO scopes, I'd really prefer to see it fixed, and so would my CPU.

That grey, fuzzy screen is part of the reason for the near-vertical learning curve on this game. First day of gameplay: Spawn in, run to barn, slip off stairs and die. Respawn, run towards nearest house, go inside to escape aggroed zombie, get battered by zombie because your hitbox is stuck in doorway, die. Respawn, run through forest, finally find a weapon in a shed, then find a well, get battered while drinking, but manage to kill zed and patch up; run in circles until you starve to death because you can't see well enough to find an apple tree or berry bush that isn't two inches from your face. Respawn, run away from zombie that got a bunch of free shots while you were spawning, get enough distance to climb a ladder to bandage, lay down waiting for zombie to leave, climb down ladder and get bgeaten by a different zombie that you couldn't see because of the grey, blurry screen. DayZ: the game that scales its difficulty UP, when you are doing very poorly. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Define need... Hell, I didn't even start looking until 5 hours after the post went up, and that included running from center map to Pavlovo. It wasn't quite 50, but I will be further distributing them over the weekend. Trust me, it will all get used up. I mostly showed up because I wanted to practice getting into and out of hotspots stealthily, but was somewhat disappointed when I found no competition. Keep your eyes out for special high-value supply drops over the next few days. I'll try to put the first one out sometime this evening. I will provide coordinates, but they will be well hidden. Anyone ever hear of geochching? I'm going to use this treasure as incentive to get people out into the less-traveled corners of the maps. If there's anything in particular that you want, don't be afraid to ask, but don't be afraid to work for it. Make sure to bring a few hatchets or a chainsaw.

I spent the better part of three hours shuttling it all away from there, couldn't get the tent down, left the truck there. Not so much as a challenge from anyone. It was actually a little disappointing. After a game of lay down hide-and-seek with the truck driver, I slowly snuck up on the stash, only to find myself alone on the server. At the most there were seven others on besides myself, and I assumed they were all after the stash. I even kept a gun on me for a couple of trips, which only made the process take longer. I took it all, but you can expect it to slowly turn up in different places as a scavenger hunt; and yes, there will be traps. But who wouldn't risk broken legs for a surpressor east (or ten)?