[email protected]

ugh. so transfusions don't give you incentive to team up? what about having someone to provide you overwatch? what about increased storage capacity? extra guns? someone to flank enemies in a firefight while you provide cover fire? there's already plenty of tactical and practical incentive to team up. the chances of death when you have someone watching your back decrease dramatically. you can go from 100 blood to 12000 in a matter of seconds ffs. there doesn't need to be some kind of mechanic or reward coded into the mod to facilitate this just because people don't realize there's already lots of incentive and instead approach the game like it's a deathmatch. if you can't find anyone in game to team up with, try the survivor forums.

you and i have had very different experiences in dayz. i don't notice any difference between dayz with sidechat and dayz without sidechat except that there's a lot less spam. player behavior seems about the same to me.

no rewards for carebearing? you might make a friend that persists in your life outside of your relatively brief time in game. in game you might have someone to play with who will now watch your back, increase your storage capacity and be able to administer transfusions when you're low increasing your chances of survival. how about a feeling of satisfaction that instead of doing something that immediately and selfishly benefited you temporarily in an imaginary world and potentially ruined someone's experience in reality, you chose to enhance another person's experience in the game and maybe had a positive impact on their experience due to your altruism. people really need to stop looking for hard coded rewards for any sort of behavior, and instead start looking to themselves for answers to their perceived problems in game.

i'm not sure people are accounting for how easy it is to get one hit ko'ed in real life. all it takes is one good shot to the right spot (the vagus nerve, aka the button for example) and out you go. the random chance seems pretty reasonable, and should keep the fear of death in you at all times. also, someone with a pistol who applies superior tactics or aim should be able to take out someone who has better gear.

survey taken.

yup.

the problem here is that people have read the gaming magazines and then didn't research anything beyond that. if people had looked at the objectives rocket had in mind for this mod before they purchased arma 2 oa, they'd be much better served and i'd like to think there'd be lots less bitching on the forums (but probably not). for example, you talk about rule changes, rocket has stated he is NOT going to script in rules or mechanics to force behavior on players. any behavior from the player is their own doing. please read this over and over again, and look at the date it was posted, this is not new information: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/520-the-pvp-discussion-thread/page__st__440#entry6898 if players only play to acquire gear, they'll get bored. if they cannot find something else to do other than kill people that's their own fault. there's medics, traders, supply lines and other things going on right now that rocket had nothing to do with. people didn't bitch that there wasn't mechanics in the game to facilitate these things and look to the devs to make it happen. don't like banditry? do something about it damnit. form an organization. patrol a city or server. to some extent the mod is probably popular due to its coverage in gaming magazines. but i think the reason it exploded the way it did in the first place is exactly because of the philosophy behind it, that being player freedom and what you call his "bullshit" art reasoning. the frustration, the excitement, the disappoint, and the camaraderie that the dayz experience can generate are something you cannot get from any other game i've played pretty much. trying to get players to take responsibility for their own experience, generate their own objectives and not shove storylines and quests down their throat in a game really is like trying to wean people off heroin these days.

"I'm striving for authenticity (the suspension of disbelief) rather than realism." http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/7054-changes-to-female-characters/page__st__20#entry73458 http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/9452-many-players-are-quitting/page__st__40#entry102870 http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/597-ai-death-squads-bullet-lethality-and-delayed-disconnect/#entry7140

is it just dayz or is it also operation arrowhead? there's a couple scenarios in single player that run fps tests for you and give you an average fps. you may want to try running those too to help you troubleshoot.

it's recommended to not have everything set to low i think as it puts all the load on the processor. i've been looking up optimization stuff today, so here, have some links i bookmarked regarding performance tweaks, hopefully they help: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/40357-does-your-dayz-or-arma2-run-slow-easy-solution-inside/ http://www.moddb.com/forum/thread/arma-2-ultimate-tweak-thread http://www.armaholic.com/forums.php?m=posts&p=54150#54150 http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?101124-Operation-Arrowhead-performance-optimizations-comparisons http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?73947-ArmaHolic-ArmA-2-Optimization http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-wargames/166804-arma-2-optimised-graphic-settings.html

sometimes if you stand up and then try to move forward you can overcome being crippled and unable to cross thresholds into buildings. i don't think it always works, and i think it's even less likely with stairs, but it's worth a shot.

things to do other than kill players you say? http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/3910-need-medical-assistance-we-can-help/ http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/14818-freeside-trading-co/page__hl__%2Bfreeside+%2Btrading http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/37040-fort-friendly-social-experiment/page__hl__freeside and they don't want realism and have explicitly stated that, they want authenticity.

varies from server to server for the moment. i know of at least one server set to veteran that shows location on the map, and a few other veteran servers that don't.

i feel like it's helpful to post this information as much as possible so people better understand what they can and should expect out of dayz, and also hopefully cut back on the amount of posts demanding some sort of hard coded solution to something that they perceive as a problem. i'd also like to think it might help motivate people to start trying to work towards the balance they want in game.

skimmed the majority of this thread, but seeing as how there's at least one of these every week i think i got the gist so i'll post what i usually post in threads like this. first, i saw talk of this being a game, it's not being designed as such: wasn't designed to be fun: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/889-development-road-map/#entry9112 not a game: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/108-coop-server/page__st__20#entry6115 antigame: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/520-the-pvp-discussion-thread/page__st__180#entry4308 and on the banditry issue: doesn't want to shove rules down our throats. cruel, brutal, unfair: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/520-the-pvp-discussion-thread/page__st__440#entry6898 not dealing with KOS: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/9105-friendly-survivor-system-hard-coded-friendliness/page__st__20#entry98975 there is no balance: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/3141-banditsurvivor-morphing-to-be-removed/page__st__160#entry32219 anything unbalanced should be balanced by the players: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6487-wtf-is-happening-to-the-server-community/page__st__20#entry67114 most importantly, over and over again - "The bad guys are doing way fucking better at this game than the good guys. Because the good guys keep coming on the forums to post how the bad guys win.": http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/6487-wtf-is-happening-to-the-server-community/page__st__40#entry67159 so, are we going to do something about bandits and kos or just post on the forums about it and wait for something that (hopefully) won't ever happen? are you going to find your own things to do in end game right now or post about it while waiting for rocket to add more content? from what i understand there will be more endish game stuff later, so if you can't find anything to do right now, you can always take a break and wait for the new stuff to get implemented.

not sure i'm authorized for that. it was set up by dr carebear so if you can get ahold of him he can tell you the loation. i can try to make a hospital run for you presently if you'd like.

i dropped off a coyote pack's worth of blood and morphine in a tent set up to service medics.

see that's the main problem. people say lots of things here. do you trust what i have to say about anything, especially regarding the entire future direction of the mod? people can rattle things off all day, but if you have statistics compiled from hundreds of thousands of data points, that paints a picture that will be significantly closer to reality than twenty people who just got spawn camped coming onto the forums and saying "everyone is spawn camping, this game is terrible, it's a major problem, address this immediately, everyone is leaving!" that, to me, is one of the most destructive things about private servers. sure they may give you a better gaming experience, but what's it really doing for future updates? is it helping to make the mod be developed in the right direction? should rocket really be listening to what amounts to a small fraction of the user base who post on the forums or looking at a huge dataset and analyzing it to see what the data says? also, i'm glad you mix it up and play on the hive servers.

sorry, when i say flaws i don't necessarily mean just bugs. i should have been more clear. i mean any sort of flaws in gameplay mechanics or exploitations that could arise due to said gameplay mechanics or hive stuff, as well as bugs. what i'm saying is that you could be a data point that helps the project by adding data to their set so they can then look at statistics and make informed decisions about any number of things. hiding in private servers gives no data to them, it's purely selfish (i do understand why people would be driven there though), and you trying to say that you're just one person is not a particularly strong argument as many people use the same argument to justify their decision as well. the more people with that attitude the less real data the developers will have to work with regarding the future direction of the mod. right now they're actively compiling alt-f4 data as an example so they can develop a solution to this that's based on real data and not just people complaining on the forums. the hive essentially helps them cut through the bullshit. so yeah, you're enhancing your own experience, but at the expense of the project and the real data vital to it moving forward.

that does sound like a solution (at least to financial pressure). i doubt, after the frenzy the mod has seen, that it would alleviate the community or media pressure though. i don't think it's an ideal solution though, as part of the design philosophy is for the developer to stay connected to the community. closed beta would shrink that community to good degree. like i said before, i've dropped 200 hours on dayz in its current (and previous) states, and i'll gladly pay what he's (i think) asking to continue to have a similar experience even if it is unpolished and frustrating due to things like bugs and hackers. as for development speed, if it's on the arma 2 engine or the mod is easily portable to the arma 3 engine, it won't have been 3 and 1/2 months of dev time, it'd be more like 7 months or so if its released in september i think. speed would also likely vary based on how familiar with the engine the team is. if it's nothing but BI vets who helped make the engine or arma mod vets working on dayz standalone, it'll likely go much quicker.

i don't think it's giving in to the economic pressure of the industry, but giving into the economic pressure of keeping dayz running period. stop and think about the resources and scale of what dayz has become... the forums, the hive server, the bandwidth cost of keeping the hive server up and able to handle the load asked of it. there's something like 2235 servers running as i speak (according to dayz commander), and 196,793 unique players in the past 24 hours. that's a lot of servers and players demanding synchronization from the hive server on login/logout, even assuming all players only logged in to and out of one server. without getting some money back for the cost of that, he'll probably go bankrupt real fast.

i've sunk around 200 hours into dayz. if dayz standalone costs 30 dollars, that means i'll have ultimately spent about 60 dollars (dayz standalone+arma2 oa) on dayz. that is, right now at this point in time $0.30/hr. that is many more hours than i spend on the vast majority of AAA games these days, and a pretty reasonable (hours of fun)/dollar ratio. how many hours of play have the people complaining about having to pay more for a dayz standalone logged? rocket hasn't seen any revenue generated from dayz yet (as far as i know), and has had to maintain a system capable of handling approximately 200k unique players per day. that is a very resource (time and money wise) intensive task. i also do not see arma 2 or 3 engine as a liability to the project. if he gets access to the source code, bug squashing will (in theory) be much more effective. others may disagree, but if you've spent a considerable amount of time playing dayz in its current form, ask yourself if its unreasonable to be asked to pay that potential dollar/hour as payback to the devs for the amount of entertainment you've gotten out of it.

i understand what you're saying, and know that it's frustrating to have to put up with the flaws in the current build, but now's the time to expose the hive's weaknesses and help it improve through use, not for hiding out in private servers. right now we need to help them collect data on hackers and flaws so that when it's stand alone it'll be solid and locked down. hiding out in private servers may give you personally a seemingly better experience, but it gives nothing back to the developers who have invested a great deal of their personal time and resources to the mod that you're enjoying. and as far as i've seen they've only asked that we help them test, and in my opinion, that's not too much to ask considering how much enjoyment i've gotten out of the mod, warts and all.

and how are they supposed to monitor this? identify all private hive servers, continually hit refresh and then write down numbers? should they take time out of improving the game to write some code to compile population data for these servers? what about other valuable statistical information like number of players dead to zombies? killed by other players? any sort of information they can gain about hackers? disconnects in combat? etc etc etc.

my take on all this, yes hackers suck and perhaps private hive servers might make things better for some people. but right now, we're testing this, trying to help rocket gather data, if you're playing somewhere he can't gather data, then you're hindering the project. sure, you can make all these anecdotal evidence arguments, but unless you present actual valid data sets it's all ultimately meaningless. i'd also say that since rocket has devoted a whole bunch of time, effort, and money to keep this project afloat, and i haven't paid a single dime for dayz, i should at the very least respect his wishes regarding the project to pay him back. here's what he's said on this issue in the past: "No, private servers aren't allowed...So ask yourself, do you think you are really helping the project? Branching it right now? Is that what this needs? Why did you even do it? To make things better for a few people? This is a techdemo/proof of concept to, oh I don't know, do something really really special." http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/9875-kronzkys-sp-hack-removed-his-words/page__st__40#entry102912