emuthreat

Asked and answered in above post... 24 hour day servers are the worst. I hope the post 1.0 will make it very difficult to get rid of night times on servers. DayZ is supposed to be gritty, hard, and realistic. Night adds to all of those things in a significant way. Taking away night time is easy mode. Easy mode in DayZ defeats the purpose of DayZ. Though I will admit that when streaming, it is necessary to put some filters on the broadcast so the viewers can at least see what is happening. I really gotta wonder about those couple of viewers who stick around to listen to 20 minutes of footsteps and breathing while running through the woods at night... In case you missed it. The above quoted portion of the response from ImpulZ leads me to believe they are skeptical of hacking, but may need to start looking into fixes for players falling through portions of the map that we were never able to access before. Places such as rooftops seem to fit this category. I can only imagine the havok it would bring if a fair number of players discovered an exploit to drop through the roofs of various buildings.

THIS!!! Sooooo much this. Last week I looted Tisy; cleaned the place out; stuffed to the gills. I ran down to the barn house by the road and saw a bunch of zombies. I was double carrying and didn't want to make noise, so I decided to sprint through them and go into a house to drop the gun and get out a melee weapon. I got aggro, took a couple hits and made it to the door, opened the door and ran inside and closed it behind me. I got bugged into the hinges of the door and got smacked a lot through the wall and door; opened the door to try to shoot them, but couldn't move to get an angle to shoot them. I died, and lost all of the loot i was carrying. How do you guys think this type of thing will be received by a new player who thinks they just bought a finished game because it was released with a 1.0 label?

1.0 implies a finished product. I don't care what BI have said this means in their current internal parlance; what matters is what consumers are going to think it should be based on this labeling, and how they are going to react at what they see that it is. There is an entire profession dedicated to this subject. It's called marketing, and is a very well established concept with tons of industry norms. In fact there are many guidelines for marketing and advertisement of products, to ensure that people who give money for goods and services know what to expect when they are buying. So when a player hears that DayZ just released the 1.0 version, and finds that half of the guns, fishing, and bows and arrows are out of the game, many will feel that they have been lied to. It does not matter that DayZ Devs have made clear what beta and 1.0 mean to themselves. What matters is public perception. Calling the game 1.0 while it is missing most of the guns and vehicles, and numerous other features that people have seen and played in previous versions of the game is an unforced error. It is a terrible mistake of labeling that we could all see coming since they announced beta/1.0 (not the same thing, why are they calling these the same thing) to be released by end of year 2 months ago. I'm not upset about the current state of the game. I understand that all of this is new to them again, and there are lots of complicated things to make work together. These things will take time. That time is called beta. It is not called 1.0 and beyond. I don't know if they can't see the bad reviews and bad press that this proposed labeling of the 1.0/Beta release is going to bring, or if they understand and just don't care. But either way, the DayZ 1.0 steam reviews are going to mention them selling half a game and calling it done, mine included, even if they do plan to finish it later.

Congratulations on the promotion, Mr. Froman.

As far as I know, public servers can be decommissioned when the host needs to allocate a rented server. This has been an issue for years, and I was under the impression that they had taken steps to ensure a secure and stable offering of public servers for viable persistent gameplay. @RaptorM60 @Baty Alquawen Do you have any input on this? Do official public servers have any safeguards to ensure that players aren't completely gambling on whether or not they are wasting their time by playing on any specific official server? Is random loss of all persistent progress still the status quo, is the hosting company gets a new community server account and does a bit of eenie meenine miney mo?

Sometimes if there are multiple items on the vicinity, you will scroll down to see all the contents and it will stay there afterwards. Just use your scroll wheel to get back to the top, and it should be back to normal until you loot another pile of 3 or more zombies in the same spot.

I've been waiting patiently for years, and still have not heard even one word about sandwiches from the devs. Nothing in the beta checklist; that's fine. I don't expect to open a full-service deli while basebuilding and persistence is still being hammered-out. But they could at least let us know if it is on the post-1.0 feature prospectus or not.

Isn't there some merit to the .45 ACP for traveling so slowly that it won't cause a through and through hit, but rather be more likely to transfer all the kinetic energy into the target? I've read that 55 grain 5.56 were known to fragment or yaw upon impact, which appears to be consistent with the M193 packaging shown in game. Is this a moot point, or is there some merit to the argument of full transfer of KE on impact? Most SWAT teams now carry carbines rather than SMGs, as it has been found that even uninsulated 3/4"drywall will cause 5.56 to tumble and start losing KE very quickly, alleviating concerns of *cough* overpenetration *cough*. This begs the question of whether SMGs are largely obsolete, when overall size isn't an issue.

Breaks into liquor store by climbing onto roof and dropping through ventilation hood. Calls police to rescue him, because doors are key-bolted from inside, and there is no water inside.

Sure it's all WIP and in need of balancing, but that shouldn't stop constructive feedback on how to balance things. Basebuilding needs to be worth it. As it stands now, the time taken to dismantle a maximum reinforced wall is still under 5 mintues, as far as I know.

Have you ever TRIED to break a sledgehammer? The only weak points are the handle and attachment epoxy, which in quality models, are extremely tough. Even a hickory or ash handle would leave you taking multiple breaks from body aches, before you could successfully destroy one from intentionally careless misuse. I agree that bases should be harder to break into, though. How long on average would you say it takes for a player to loot a mine or grenade? 2 hours, 3 hours? How about getting a car located and running well enough to smash a wall? Maybe that is good indicator of how long wall breaching operations should take. But please. I don't ever want to hear about wearing out a sledgehammer or crowbar ever again. If your durability experience with tools has anything to do with harbor freight, just know that those are not tools, and they belong at the bottom of a harbor. If you ever manage to bend or break a crowbar from natural human use, consider it an accomplishment to apply such force, or an embarrassment to own a tool of such inferior quality.

Both are WIP again. Nobody knows how it's gonna turn out. Lots of stuff is missing or muted for now, to work out new bugs. I think at this stage, everything that is complained about will be considered for balancing, within reason. Point of this is, that sickness, broken limbs and organ hit zones, and any other things of the sort are all very new to running live, and will need to be added gradually. Still not much use yet, in talking about what DayZ is "is".

From Feb 27 SR: Let’s jump to the ongoing work being done on the new damage system and ballistics. In the dark past, the old damage system used the so-called hit points (basically plain points positioned on a body, where the distance between them and the hit impact was compared in order to determine to which hit points the relative damage should be dealt). Now, in the new damage system, we are using hit zones, which are defined by meshes. That allows us to properly depict shapes of every desired component, leading to accurate hit detection and allowing us to incorporate terminal ballistics of projectiles to calculate the proper damage that should be applied. DayZ is an authentic game, and I’m convinced that range combat should definitely underline this direction. Hit zones obviously correspond with basic individual parts of character's body such feet, legs, hands, arms, torso, and head. There are also additional hit zones for vital organs - brain, heart, spine, lungs, and liver to deepen the representation of the character body. In real life, damage dealt by projectiles to the human body is very complicated and it’s fairly impossible to simulate it in game, so some necessary simplification is in place. Each hit zone has its own health which may or may not affect the global health of the character, as well as optional vital attributes. A player character cannot directly die just by shooting its limbs - our goal here is to avoid unreliable situations like shooting the character 10 times to its feet in order for it to get killed. However, as projectiles' penetration leads to bleeding wounds, the character will die indirectly by bleeding out without a treatment. Also, limbs can be fractured if their health falls down to zero, leading to restriction in character movement unless treated by attaching a splint to the fractured limb, which will heal it over time. On the other hand, damage the torso and head can lead to direct death (global health at zero), as well as indirect death by bleeding out. Vital organs have relatively low health, and destroying them leads basically to instant direct death, which opens a way to encouraging shot placement in combination with ammunition used, depending on current situation.

Yeah, I think we are on the same page. Bases have not been very viable because it is too easy to exploit poorly designed game mechanics to remove bases in a matter of minutes. Ghosting is a major problem with the public hive in general. The advice I've always gotten was "try playing on private servers." It's on the developers to decide if they want this to continue to be a possibility. To a certain extent this is still the preferred manner of unsporting griefing tactics used even on private servers. Go to a known base in the middle of the night, don't despawn anything, just log out in a corner and wait until the server is full. Log back in, spray everyone down with automatic fire, and log off. Repeat until dead, and then gear up and try again. These problems are more than just basebuilding, and not easy to solve in a way that won't cause other issues. But to me, the simple solution is to make a selection of public servers that are not part of a hive. Problem solved, as far as ghosting goes. As for combat logging as an ambush tactic, I remember when players would make a weapon action cycle noise upon login; but in cases of accidentally logging in near another player, it gives an unfair advantage to the static player. Assuming that hived servers are to simply be avoided for basebuilding, we are only left with durability and difficulty of forced entry. Sure people can come to visit all friendly and then "crash," only to log back in to kill people cheaply later, but once you kill them, they need to come back and do it again; and you might just let them in far enough to shoot them in the head in the comfort of your base. In the village, we told visitors not to log off in the base, because combat logging attackers were a daily occurrence. I've shot dozens of players in the head, just because their game crashed while they were standing in a corner. What can one do, but apologize and store their gear? This is a simple enough fix for login issues in a base. if i don't know and trust you, and you log off in my base, you will log back in on the coast. Problem solved... Unless their game crashes or the server kicks them. Do we need something like @Arthur Dubrovka suggested, by which a player can only be given server permission to log back in in a defined area by some shared ritual of confirmed base owners? It would be nice, but I wouldn't say necessary.

I remember spitballing ideas on here months ago about what kinds of ways to break into bases might be implemented, and the idea came up of needing multiple tools to successfully breech a base. Something like the sledgehammer would be almost indestructible, but very inefficient at doing and real concentrated damage. It would make sense if a crowbar (also very hard to damage from normal use )could be the most efficient tool for loosening up the first layers, with an axe as a less efficient and more easily damaged/consumed option. Maybe something like using a shovel to undermine the posts, and then use a sledgehammer to knock the wall down would also be appropriate. I do a fair amount of demolition IRL and almost always start with a prybar and then a sawzall to weaken key points, then use either a sledge or a 3-4 lb cross peen hammer like the ones found in game. I never use an axe, because good ones are somewhat expensive, and easily ruined from misuse. But a splitting maul... Lots of possibilities there... It would be good if they could somehow code in a methodology, or order of operations, with scalable success rates based on the tools used and the order in which they are used. Start off demolishing a sheet metal clad wall with an axe, and you should expect to lose some blood in the process without heavy working gloves. At any rate, standing there spamming a tool should either take a very long time, or destroy the tool before too much meaningful progress is made; requiring the breeching party to come well-prepared. As it stands, demolishing base elements is much too easy. I think you are onto something with a base bulletin board. Makes me wonder how difficult it would be to make a board where the person who erects it can add other players to the list, by having both players present and click the same prompt at roughly the same time. Not sure what the utility would be though... Yep, I tend to agree, depending on your definition of what "raid" means. Breech entry, take as much as you can carry, rearrange the furniture, so to speak; maybe ruin a few things for fun. All part of a good endgame play loop. But being able to completely erase dozens of man-hours of work in a matter of minutes, well that's a different story. The concept of despawning is just so... unrealistic. Make the destructive players have to take their time; build a fire, put items into the fire until they are ruined, remove the hot items safely or take damage, to make room for the rest. Hell, even take out the stockpile of firewood in the base and build a REALLY BIG FIRE to destroy more stuff at once. My main issue is how easy it is for a player to abuse game mechanics and take an entire base out of existence in a matter of minutes. For a little perspective, I've been jointly responsible for building, defending, stocking, organizing, and continually rebuilding a very public base on a very popular server for over a year now. We counted it as a major success to have the base still standing when the EU players come back online, and a fuckin' miracle to not have to completely rebuild for more than a week at a time. It takes a lot of effort to maintain a large base, especially when there are periods of a few hours when nobody can stand guard. Even with a 24 hour guard regimen, all it takes is one successful attacker to kill the guard(s) and throw everything on the ground and get far enough away for decay timers to activate before the night watchman can make it back from the coast. Hell, I bought a second copy of the game, just so I could keep one on deck to log back in after running my coastal spawn partway back, and stick around hidden close enough for despawners to leave; and then go about the mundane chore of erecting all the tents and putting most of the good gear back in place for the next shift. One of my most memorable moments in DayZ was arriving at base just minutes after all the EU players logged off for bed. I had only a shotgun, and there were two people inside claiming to be people who I knew they were not. I spent almost a half hour, creeping around the perimeter, taking sound shots through tents and metal walls, until they managed to hit me enough times to ruin my last 8 shells. I had to leave to loot for ammo and heal up a bit. I came back to find about half of the tents laying on the ground, as we got in the habit of painstakingly stuffing them full of bark or single stack of common ammo to frustrate despawners. The funny part was that all of our clothing and gear tents had piles of ruined pants, vests, boots, helmets and jackets inside; as evidence of every shotgun blast that found it's way through the walls. These fellas spent a half hour, ruining our stockpile of clothing by soaking up shotshells I was firing at them. Even though they tried to despawn the base, I spent the next 20 minutes laughing to myself at every ruined article of clothing I found, while re-erecting all the tents they had tried to despawn. Even though that was a particularly fun night for me, because of the comical way it played out, it is indicative of the biggest problem with DayZ persistence as it relates to basebuilding. It is just too easy to play as a completely disruptive force. There is absolutely no balance regarding the time it takes to gather and organize materials for endgame play, and how much time and effort it takes to completely erase all of that progress. If you plop down a couple tents in a grove of trees and come back from a Tisy run 4 hours later and find it all gone, it's reasonable that someone could have packed it all off to their own base If a large group of cooperative players spent half a day and a collective 36 man-hours making a large base and it is gone in one hour without supervision, then that speaks to a major imbalance in the gameplay mechanics. I have A LOT of experience with basebuilding. From strings of solo-built stash networks, to small collaborative efforts that get big eventually, to a truly major undertaking in terms of DayZ basebuilding capabilities. I fully understand and accept that players will rob or destroy bases; it's all part of the game. But there should be a balance, and heretofore, there just isn't. And I hope you can understand, it's not just me. There are scores of regular players on the private server I call home, who have their own bases and regular zones of control. Come by at night, take a few tents, and all the best guns; eat all the food, poison the stored water stocks, etc. No problemo, it's just pat of the game. Log on in the middle of the night, and erase the entire progress of two or three large groups--Every. Fucking. Night. ...You gonna get blacklisted on that server. It's unsporting, abuse of game mechanics; just generally being a dick for the schadenfreude. It's a lot of work; for the server owners and admins, who have to process the reports; for the players who have to continually rebuild their bases every single fucking day; for the boots on the ground who have to record the incidents and check pulses and submit tickets with ironclad proof and timestamps. And it is all unnecessary, because the game handles basebuilding in such a way that wanton destruction and glitch abuse is far easier than it should be. And I think that is what is at the core of this discussion. That basebuilding is not yet viable in a balanced manner. The risk-to-reward scale favors destruction far more than organization. I'm sure they can find an appropriate balance of effort required to make a base, compared to the effort and time required to completely erase it from the server. Spaghetti help us if they ever implement a good simulation of wildfire.

^^^THIS^^^ Base elements need to be about 10x as durable as they are now, to balance the effort need to build a base, compared to the effort required to dismantle, or even just breech. At the very least, the time needed to demolish a wall should be about 10 minutes. Combination locks are nice, but at this point nobody is going to try to guess the combo, when they can just spend 30 seconds with a crowbar. As far as ownership mechanics, I don't really see a need, or a way to realistically implement it. What are they gonna do, have base totems that the one true owner has possession of, which they can grant access to others by letting rub the buddha's belly. Stronger locks and reproducible keys would be one good way to share base access. But this is a moot point unless they seriously increase durability of walls and gates.

You've been around long enough to know that private servers are the longstanding answer to the problem of ghosting. Perhaps BI will support a number of official servers that are independent of any hive, to prevent ghosting into bases. But thank you nonetheless for the sarcastic and disingenuous response. The advantages of building a base on the public hive are aligned with the needle in a haystack principle and reliance on the notion that people only server hop military areas, so your forest compound should take at least a few weeks for anyone to discover. At which point they will tell all their friends, and host a special twitch stream in which they dismantle the base and despawn all of its contents. Because let's be honest, that's all bases are good for, right? Sandcastles to kick over, and nothing more. The degree to which you have no idea what you are talking about is staggeringly hilarious to me. I've easily had 90% of my entire PvP experience on this so-called peaceful cooperative server. Believe it or not, some players come there because they found out that there is a place where they know people will be; because these dumb fucks actually advertise their presence. Did you hear that? A group of players is dumb enough to actually tell people where they are in DayZ; and after getting killed, they go back to do it again. I suppose if they were useless people wouldn't build them. But hey, somebody's gotta put in the work for salty cunts to come and despawn, amirite? That's at least one approved use by your standards...

Dude, you posted here asking what the point is of bases, and are they good for defending anything. I answered, with an explanation of how cooperation can make large scale base building viable. It's a game, plenty of people play plenty of different ways. (Hek bro, some folk even play a variety of ways depending of the day and what server they are on). There is no right way to play in absolute terms. But if we are to infer that by designing the game with certain capabilities and content, that we are intended to utilize that content, then I conclude that it is desirable behavior for players to use persistent storage, vehicles and basebuilding elements in pursuit of enjoyment of the game. That's the purpose, right? We are talking about a game, which people play in their spare time, ostensibly for fun... I don't think I am making any inductive leaps when I say that destroying and despawning things just for the sake of making them go away is unwanted behavior from the viewpoint of people who spend time building, organizing, and storing them. I don't know where you come from that the concept of cooperation to build and maintain a persistent presence on a server is somehow anathema to the intended purpose of the game; that stalking and killing players, and scuttling any attempts to prepare for the future, is just what's natural and right... OF COURSE the people who build things are going to be upset with the people who destroy it. If someone kept coming to your house every night, and letting the air out of your tires, would you just shrug it off and say "welp, everyone's got his own way of livin; I can't be upset that he finds joy in what he does?" Most reasonable people would want to find the person and stop them, no? If you want to RP as entropy incarnate, just accept that there will be people interested in interfering with YOUR preferred mode of play. That's all there is to it. It may come as a surprise to you, but sometimes when players meet in game, they cooperate instead of kill each other. And by this random quirk of nature, they may indeed meet other players who cooperate, and before long, those players come to know and trust one another, and may even tend to view unknowns as the enemy. In some aberrant cases, these groups of softened lumps of dough actually shoot other players for no good reason other than they can't be bothered to talk to strangers while moving valuable cargo. This confuses the hunter-killer players, and makes them angry that those who choose to play the wrong way have the gall to defend themselves; let alone dare to share resources in an apocalypse scenario. What nerve! Sometimes these folk make it their business to interfere with any attempt at civilization being restored in their world, and take to relentlessly harassing the organized and cooperative players; who in turn respond by keeping watch, and investigating suspicious people. Some of these fellas get ornery enough that they lose their good sense, and crawl inside of walls, or phase in and out of existence and kill them off one at a time, to punish these care bears for daring to be friendly to one another. All manner of demons and apparitions will come a-wreckin if you leave something built long enough. In some such cases, the ghostbusters must be called to enforce the natural laws of nature, and the offenders are banished for practicing witchcraft. For reasons unknown, even when some have been banished for witchcraft, there always seems to be a steady flow of new people; some cooperative, some destructive and bloodthirtsy, and some that are a bit harder to pin down in any one category. Not sure what their problem is, gettin all hateful towards a bunch of folks with plenty of food and drink, story and song, who'd give 'em the shirt off their backs if they'd just stopped shootin' long enough to ask. Maybe they just hate life. Mebbe they miss they's mamma. Or mebbe still, they just ain't been properly socialized yet. In any case, we take 'em as they come; leave 'em as they go.

Done just fine on servers open to the public. of course we have to rebuild from time to time, and get dozens of attacks per day. But that's just how the game plays. Sure people log off inside, and we mostly shoot them before the animation completes. People log back in and shoot a few people and log off. And then they are banned for combat logging. Sure, plenty of people play the game like antisocial dickheads. And they are treated accordingly. Destroying everything you find is not really any viable survival tactic, it's just being a douche; disruption for the sake of being disruptive. It's not a way to make friends, but some folks aren't looking for friends. It's also not a way to retain access to some of the better servers out there... And since you mentioned it, yeah, your playstyle would definitely get you put on a priority kill list. (not sure how that works out now that pulse checks are not in game anymore)

A base is a way to define an area that you and your group intend to keep under control, and to physically control entry and sight lines into that area. Bases can be raided, despawned, or for the ambitious, reclaimed and defended by a new group. Personal bases are difficult to maintain, especially with players who make it their goal to scuttle everything they find. Shared bases, between even a dozen regular players can be viable over the long term. Sure people can log in during the night and early morning hours and try to destroy everything, and many times they have. But eventually, someone will note the pattern and make time to respond. Catching and identifying the people who make their fun by destroying what others have built will lead to that person or group finding fame of the wrong sort. If you've ever found yourself the target of an entire active server population, you would know that the options are not very fun after a couple days. Basically all you can do is troll people, with increasingly poor success rates; as the playerbase eventually becomes familiar with your name, schedule, and whereabouts, and generously shares this information among allies. Bases are viable but only for large and organized groups who can all get along and share. It's almost like having something worth protecting is the first step to rebuilding civilization...

I took this to mean "I would if I could." If you really have played every patch, you'd know that players preferring daytime is par for the course. In every previous patch, on exp of official servers, you can join a hi-pop play until night falls, and then watch as you become one of only three people remaining on the server through night time I can only think night time being so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face was exactly what they were going for. I can still navigate with little difficulty if there are stars, but have serious troubles if overcast; haven't played with the full moon yet. Regardless, I do think some balancing passes will come, after they've sorted out this malarkey with persistence.

You playin full servers friend? I know a place where you can easily meet people. But I'm not allowed to talk about it here....

This is what we in the business of laughing at difficulty complaints call a classic case of Git Guud Deficit Disorder. They will probably balance lighting a bit more, but the darkness is just another challenge from now on. Playing on daytime servers only? Well that's your choice to lose out on half the fun. Personally, I get a much greater sense of accomplishment from mastering the difficult parts of this game, rather than avoiding them. I can fully understand if you don't know the map very well yet, how it can be frustrating to find your way in the dark. But it just means you will have to plan ahead and take things a bit more slowly at night. Hey, it's safer in the dark too, so you can loot in peace. Hell, I know the map like the back of my hand, but STILL got lost myself the other night. It was overcast, and I only had one flare, and I waited too long to craft any torches. MY MISTAKES. Today, I managed to run from Svergino to Kamensk base with a single glowstick. I kept it in my pants for the most part, because the stars were out. I took it out to make sure I didn't miss the road; saw the guardrail straight away; saw the guard tower a while later, outlined among the trees. Both of those things felt like an amazing accomplishment. I looted the base carefully, concealing the light while traveling between tents and containers; dropping the light on the floor when I caught aggro, so I could back off and hit the zeds in the light when they crossed it. I even managed to spot a landmine that someone had place in a barracks doorway. Because I was careful... @eugenharton @Baty Alquawen Regarding land mines: Are we supposed to be able to disarm them manually? I got very close and tried to interact with one, and eventually ran over it and killed myself to make sure it was not bugged. I can think of one other method to try neutralizing them, but it is kinda noisy.

DayZ just got a lot more challenging. I was running back to base with planks after meeting a random player. It got dark. We got lost. My single flare didn't do a damn thing to light the way. ran around in dark until my energy and hydration got too low. Looks like I'm going to have to change the way i do some things...

Have a pleasant demeanor, join a group, find success through cooperation.