Bluegobln

Bumping this because I haven't been playing recently and would like to come back to a fresh game (not that I cant make it fresh for myself, but I just think it would be better if everyone had a fresh start together). Call it selfish if you want, I guess it probably is. lol... I also agree with the people in this thread that feel more frequent, maybe even scheduled wipes should be the norm. Season based wipes with rankings/ladder sounds nice, but even just per-patch wipes or similar time frame would be good for the game and community.

I'm not sure as I have not looked into the modding community for this game (ArmA 2) but are there tools and people out there making custom maps? If so... I see no reason why we should not jump on this right now - obviously we're not being told to, so whether they chose to use our work or not isn't up to us, but if the quality is high and people like it why the heck not? Multiple maps for the game might also be interesting, though there are many routes to handle the complications of doing so I am not sure if any of them are really "neat and tidy". If nothing else - we should draw up maps, post them here, make suggestions and tweak things until it's known what is ideal or not. One thing I would like to see is have multiple (as in 3 or more) locations with roughly equal levels of high end loot - absolutely increasing access to the best stuff and giving no-one a clear advantage for camping the "one good spot" to prevent other's looting it. So yeah, draw some maps! :D Edit: Ok lookie here: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA_2_Terrain_Tutorial

This I actually agree with.Make loot spawn anywhere. Any loot, any place, any time. Make it so the airfield is no better loot than some random house somewhere. Rare loot is rare, period. Nobody camps airfield. Nobody barbed wires specific buildings (well they might but there's not a lot of benefit that way). Make spawns selectable so people don't suicide to respawn. Make spawns all over the map so people can know where they are spawning and not have to spend time reorienting (unless you play THAT much that you know where you are instantly - everyone benefits from this evenly). If there is a problem with people spawning near where they died so they can get revenge on their killer, though I don't expect that will be too much of a problem, then prevent respawn within a certain distance of where you died.

You... "shut" the door yourself... and you're thinking this guy could not possibly open it himself? Even if you shut the door with barbed wire or another obstacle he could open it with a toolbox...

Seriously, it should. This kid needs to learn his lesson before he's the cause of something... nightmarish.

I like the idea of murders causing you to have increased respawn timer. I think it should be exponential, for example: 1 murder = 15 minute 2 murder = 30 minute 3 murder = 1 hour 4 murder = 2 hours 5 murder = 4 6 = 8 7 = 16 8 = 32 At the point where you've got 9 murders without dying you're going to be locked out of the game for almost 3 days if you get killed. It certainly makes for an interesting choice for those who want to murder others. Before you judge, realize this: each person you kill most likely has anywhere from 15 minutes to 15 HOURS put into their character to acquire items, weapons, and survival necessities. You just GET THAT FREE OFF THEIR CORPSE AND COST THEM THAT TIME. So assuming let's say each person you kill has 5 hours played on their character. That is a very conservative average in my opinion unless you're camping coastal towns in which case I think more severe punishment is just fine. First kill costs you 15 minutes for the 5 hours lost for the other player. Your second kill costs you 30 minutes... that's practically the same thing, completely tolerable. Your third kill finally starts costing you real time, 1 hour. At this point based on the above average you've cost OTHER players 15 hours of gameplay for your 1 hour + 5 hours of gameplay yourself (if you die). Take this to the natural point where it starts to turn strongly against the murderer - 7 kills nets you 8 hours delay compared to the 5 cost your kill. You also most likely have 7 people's gear from looting their corpses. The only abuse potential I can see is for groups of people to take turns killing other players and then killing each other, holding the loot, and running back from their respawn - thus allowing them to keep killing but keep their respawn timers low. I think that is also an acceptable trade for what it costs them. (Especially if they are a long ways inland)

FYI - barbed wire to block off a building is used as a cheat. No, it's not an exploit if you use a tool kit to open it when you want access, but the VAST majority of people abusing this are simply server hopping and blocking off individual servers' buildings so the loot will be preserved until their next go around. I completely disagree that a server owner / operator should not have the ability to reset their map when they see fit. You own your character, and what you carry should be preserved cross server, but vehicles, tents, fences, etc. are part of the SERVER not your character. If a server is decided to have different rules than other servers what is wrong with that? Disallowing wire fences, vehicles and tent stacking are no different than turning 3rd person on or off, allowing chat, or that setting that makes zombies visible through walls with a white orb thing. They drastically alter the way the game can be played on that server - no different. I'm all for PVP off servers too. Obviously if they exist they should be labelled as such, and maybe have separate character loot (so people dont just use them to gear up). But I see no reason they should not be allowed to exist...

You're so wrong. You're so so so wrong. This game SUPPORTS banditry. It has like one or two base mechanics that support friendly / cooperative play. Oh... and those mechanics ALSO support cooperative BANDITRY. Voice chat? It attracts zombies, and of course bandits in the area will immediately know your whereabouts. Bandits shoot on sight, even other bandits, so they will never be concerned with this mechanic. It is also impossible for the total combined murder count GAME WIDE to be higher than the BANDIT KILL COUNT. Why is this? Because in order to become a bandit, you must murder. That means at best it could only ever be 1 bandit death per 1 murder death - unlikely. But bandits can get dozens of murders before they're slain, and still each bandit death only counts as one successful bandit kill "point". That, my friends, is straight up skewed in their favor. Yes, any half intelligent person can understand that and do the mental math behind figuring out how much of a badass someone is that has a high bandit kill count... but the masses don't care. One number is simply easier to get, and bigger, than the other - and thus it is the PRIMARY of the two. I'm not Anti-PVP, I'm not Anti-Banditry... I'm Anti-unfair mechanics, statistics, and gameplay designed to favor such behavior. When you're literally FORCING a good natured person who wants to play as a friendly cooperative survivor to play as a malicious, downright evil murderer just to even REMOTELY enjoy the game (read - keep a character alive more than 10 hours of play) - that's a really poor design choice. This needs to be fixed - not just for alpha, beta, release, but because at the CORE of the game if you don't keep this balanced the game will degenerate into a pathetic FPS mess. Friendly and cooperative players are what keep the game alive. Without them the only players left will be assholes who just enjoy griefing one another. ---- Things that will guarantee more players play nice, even bandits: - Make the only sources of STRONG healing in the game, as in better than cans of pasta etc., require multiple players. - Even up the kill counts - if a bandit has 15 murders, any player that kills him should get 15 bandit kills (or points rather, I am in favor of renaming it to "avenges" or something similar). - Add in more multi-person gameplay elements similar to helicopters, that give advantages to groups of players over solo players (this naturally supports both but is not supportive of solo banditry). You mean like logging out to escape, arming up by server hopping somewhere, or not going into dangerous territory?At some point you and those like you have to admit that the INTENT of the vast majority of banditry is to prevent other players from enjoying the game as it is INTENDED to be enjoyed. The remaining few percentages of bandits are trying to make the game more interesting, and will genuinely play by the rules, and even on occasion decide not to slay someone they've encountered out of mutual benefit. PVPers are not bandits, they are stealing this game for their own devices. Play as a real bandit, or don't play at all. And above all this game needs to have some serious penalties applied for the many methods of cheating. The vast majority of this cheating is done purely to support malicious play and PVP - undeniable truth.

You need to find a way to heavily discourage or even outright punish players for doing this. It's ruining the game. I am unarmed, just trying to get lucky and find a pistol in town... and some guy with an assault rifle spawns into the same building as me and of course doesn't hesitate to just murder me flat out. So many people do this it makes ANY and ALL legit play pointless. The only way to even play the game is to play this way, because of these people. I mean, it's bad enough that murders are so highly encouraged by the game, and being friendly has minor benefits at best that are completely negated by the huge disadvantages. This needs to be priority number one. Zombies can be avoided, even the REALLY nasty ones - cheating cannot. Discourage murders, give them penalties and make it hard on them. Give more bonuses to being friendly / cooperative.

I think the rampant cheating is in general really pathetic. I wanted to play as a more friendly person - denied that. Being friendly gets you killed in many, many ways. I wanted to play as a legit player, no cheating. I've also been denied that as I run into cheating bastards left and right. --- There are ways to make trees invisible. I had a guy snipe me through thick woodlands, his first few shots hit trees before he finally got me. He was probably on a hill a mile away just picking people off as he pleased. I'm 99% sure of this because I saw where the bullets hit the tree, and it was like... nothing but green, and more green, and more green... his shots were hitting like 8 feet off the ground so he had to be above me on a hill. I also only ever heard the impacts, never the shots.

There also needs to be STRONG penalties and downsides to being a murderer. They get satisfaction out of the suffering of others - they need NO OTHER BENEFITS THAN THAT. They don't need loot, they don't need a murder count, they don't need the freedom of silent running against the requirement to chat when playing as a friendly (advantage). They simply don't need to be rewarded, but the game VASTLY rewards PKing and bandit action over being a friendly player. 4 hours of gameplay just to get enough ammunition and supplies to make an ATTEMPT at going inland, and I get picked off by some asshole just fucking chilling in a goddamn hunting stand. Why do people do that? Because they CAN. We can't stop that without ruining the gameplay... but you CAN make them play that way against the odds rather than it being the favored and most rewarding method. I geared up and went on an adventure... I could have hung out in Cherno and sniped "newbs" all day, but I don't care for it. Fucking horrible people need to suffer for their murdering ways, like the rest of us suffer for our friendly ones.

Too heavily favors group play, too heavily favors PKing, and too heavily punishes in-game friendliness overall. Pretty much, unless you're Judge Dread, you should be in VOIP with a buddy or three and be out to kill everyone not in your "party".

Removing new players items actually made the problem worse rather than making it better. Now instead of having a chance but being a target, you're just a target. Not to mention the completely zero chance of surviving zombies unless you manage to evade every last one through buildings / behind rocks and trees (which doesn't happen as much because of the new SUPERHERO HEARING ZOMBIES!!)