DAS1337

And people like you were probably annoyed when they took it out. I don't mind it, but a melee weapon would be nice. It's not like it's hard for vets to find a weapon and avoid zombies. However, it is incredibly frustrating for new players, who don't know where to go or how to do it, to defend themselves with just a flashlight. It causes tedium, and that's not good for a first impression.

lol.. Like tents actually work =P

You can't change what people want. You can disagree all you want, but you are in the minority. Server population is vastly increased during daytime, that is fact. I understand what you want, but you can't will everyone to gird up their loins. Those items are all rare. I've probably hit 100 deer stands, often server hopping, and the only one I've encountered is a G17. Flashlight attachments would be far better. Hell, flashlight + duct tape would be awesome, but it's not in the game. The proof that most people will not play in the night is right there in front of you. If you refuse to see the obvious, then I don't know what to tell you.

NO. Most people don't care enough to listen, nor do people get close enough generally to see blood. It's cool, but more fluff than anything in my opinion.

Your post makes no sense. People like myself would love to see dark servers become more populated. Do you not notice that dark servers rarely have more than 15 people on them, even the most populated ones? Do you not realize that the vast majority of people play on day servers? I myself will leave a server if it is getting too dark, as I do not have the equipment to deal with the dark. So, now I have to carry around 10 flares so that I can perhaps survive a night? Or do you suggest that I camp in the woods and stare at the fire for 8 hours? As of right now, night servers, unless a full moon, are nearly pointless for most people to play in. This of course changes if you have the gear to survive and get around at night, which again, most people don't have. Can we get flashlight attachments for our guns? Can we get power station interactivity that turns on power grids, illuminating cities and street lamps around the map? Can Rocket turn down the darkness factor at night a little bit so that more people would actually play at night and feel the immersion that night time should bring? Is wanting a better play experience a bad thing? And yes, you are in the minority in thinking that night time is perfect. You do realize that realism does not apply here, you know, considering morphine does not mend a broken bone in real life. Or we don't respawn in real life. Or maybe that zombies aren't actually real. Realism at the expense of gameplay is a horrible thing.

Aw, the OP wants you to debate with some intelligence, and you just want him to shutup... How cute..

Not really an assumption. You can go look at the server list and check the player count on dark servers. Then check out the high populated servers, what do you know, they are day time. Clearly night time is an issue. Clearly 98% of the DayZ population plays during the day. The other 2% who are lucky enough to have NVG's or the really brave will play at night. If you can't see those FACTS, then there is seriously something wrong with you. Changes need to be made. As of right now, night time is pretty much pointless for the vast majority of players.

Yeah, play on a day server.

Please save the realism argument for something else, as it doesn't apply here. Zombies aren't real and this is a game. Also, we respawn in this game. I can go on, but I think you get the point, or at least I hope you do. I would have Rocket try some things, rather than ignoring a huge problem. This is alpha after all. I am not insinuating that bandit skins was the best deterrent, as it wasn't. I was simply stating that bandit skins actually had an effect on how people viewed others and in some cases actually did deter people from that play style. My idea still stands as untested, but reasonable in my opinion. Whiskey bottles everywhere, right? Ever see one that had whiskey in it? No, I know I haven't. I would suggest adding whiskey to the game. It also allows you to create molotov cocktails. It can get your drunk if you consume it for giggles. It can also be used for banditry. Add a mechanic that gives players the shakes after more than three murders. For reference, I've killed two people in six weeks. So the self defense excuse doesn't really work. Three murders in a 24 hour period should be enough, and if you don't kill someone in 24 hours, your count is reduced. Upon three murders, you get the shakes of guilt. You need to dip into the whiskey bottle to calm your nerves and refocus. It does nothing to stop senseless killing. All it does it requires something for that play style. Instead of just needing food and drink, you also need alcohol to be effective. Is that not a reasonable compromise? The only advantage survivors have is not needing to carry around whiskey, unless used as a grenade. It also gives survivors the decision to actually carry it around. Wouldn't it be ironic if a murderer didn't have any, killed the survivor and looted the whiskey to get back to a normal status? Again, it won't stop murders. It won't stop opportunistic bandits. However, it should reduce the most malicious types of murders out there, who do it for fun and to ruin the game experience of others. You know, the people who run into the nearest town, find a weapon, and kill everyone they can. Or, the people who go north, gear up to the teeth, then come back down and prey on newly spawned players on the beach. Ultimately, there are a lot of ways you can go. But not testing anything in an alpha test doesn't seem like the right course of action. If it doesn't work, then revert, Right?

Just because PvP is an option, does not make it a PvP game. Though I will admit that do to a lack of foresight around PvP mechanics, meaning, no consequences, this game plays like a PvP game.

You act as if a 15 minutes loading time isn't a bad thing..

It's certainly something that needs fixed. I am not a coder nor do I have any knowledge of networking in video games, but if MMO's with ten thousand players online in any given server can load you in, in a matter of seconds, you would think a game with 40 people online would be almost instantaneous. I would guess that it has to do with the servers that are being hosted by players. I'd rather have BI host their own updaters, launchers and game servers.

At it's current state, even if all of the bugs were gone? $5 Obviously I lost quite a bit with the initial purchase of $30, but I believe I made up for it with time played. It's hard to say how much I would pay for a standalone game. I love the idea, but some of the execution is a bit lacking. More like the decisions in the PvP aspect of the game. With every sandbox that I've ever seen in development, the best games are games heavily focused on the PvE aspect of gameplay. When that sandbox focuses too much on PvP or ignores the drawbacks of allowing open PvP, it fails. You can go down the list of the recent notable sandbox MMO's. All you need to do is have the ability to kill others, and it will happen. In order to maximize your player base, you need to make the game all about the survival against infected. Add non-zombie threats, such as bears and wolves. Add power grid functionality, similar to repairing vehicles and such. Add new light source functionality as well, such as attachable flashlights to weapons and dual wielding. Further allowing night play, as it's a major issue right now. Make repercussions for murder. My idea about requiring whiskey after several murders, to calm the shakes, would be a decent compromise. It doesn't prevent killing, it just requires players to think about it. Something needs to happen, again, a death match mod is not the way to go. There are plenty of those out there and most of them do the job better than DayZ. Add base building, not instanced. Open up non-enterable buildings, Arma 3? Allow higher max players and require login similar to MMO's, that force characters to be made on one server and one server only. It eliminates server hopping and players will not be able to reposition. Also, doing this allows people to have multiple characters. Create your own hand-crafted land mass, that allows you to change all names to English, or the server locations native language. How the game loads and the UI for nearly everything should be re-evaluated, remade, and polished. New cheat detection, or lock down your servers like I suggested with logins and everything being controlled by you, not the players. It's your game, you will need to take it back. I probably could go on, but those are the most glaring things in my opinion, bugs being fixed is obvious. I think this would most likely require a new game engine and some seriously talented designers and artists. However, with the amount of people who have purchased Arma 2, and will no doubt purchase Arma 3 if the game is ported for beta, getting the money for something as ambitious as that shouldn't be a huge problem. If that is the type of product I see, I would probably be willing to pay $50 for it. If it got to the point of supporting several thousand players and turned into a MMO, I would probably pay a monthly subscription. Though, and I'm not saying it isn't possible, I'd be surprised if most of the above mentioned features and fixes get done. Prove me wrong, you'll have my money. Don't, and I think you'll go the way of games like Darkfall, but even at a smaller scale. Yikes.

Surely Rocket can see the direction his mod is going in, no? What gives me little hope is that it's been going in this direction for quite a while, and nothing has been done. In fact, one of the few things that helped a little was bandit skins. That was removed. There are some friendly people, but I think that most of them are on these forums. And when you really think about it, it's not that many. I've met four friendly people. Two of them are real life friends, one of them had no weapons and we were in a dark server, and the other one actually had a gun in Balota Airstrip. None of them actually wanted to group with me past a few seconds. I also met someone on these forums that I saved with a blood bag at 2000 blood. I don't count that though, as the arrangement was made outside of the game. Everyone else in about six weeks of playing DayZ, has shot first. Until there are consequences for murdering, this mod will continue to deteriorate into a death match mod, not much different from Counter-Strike. The two things that need to be addressed are consequences for being an asshat, or requirements at least and more end-game style content. I also believe that Zed numbers need to be drastically increased, ideally to force grouping in large cities and make zombies a bit more of a factor. Fix the hacking, fix the tents not saving contents, give survivors melee weapons on spawn and for goodness sake, change the inventory and UI to something that isn't confusing as hell.. It took me quite a long time to really figure out how it worked. It still blows.

Too ignorant to realize that this mentality is going to kill the game. Always has, always will.

And whether you believe it or not, that's not how things would go down. Realism is out the window considering it's a zombie apocalypse game and there is no such thing as a zombie. Do we understand yet? Humans, on the brink of extinction, would kill themselves off? How ludicrous is that? Would there be some people who would betray you? Sure. Though I know that killing someone else for no reason is not something that most humans will do. If zombies truly are a serious threat, enough to threaten extinction, most people would work together to survive and potentially find a cure to the disease. Thinking everyone would shoot each other no matter the circumstances is a thought process that points to idiocy. Realism? Guess, what, we don't respawn in real life. Things would be completely different.

I think there are, but they are so few. And it's Rocket's design for it to be that way. I just got killed by two guys near a deer stand. I killed one of them, they shot first. Serves them right. Respawned, killed by a guy with a pistol as I was just minding my business trying to find some supplies. Respawned, got chased by a guy with a hatchet for 10 minutes. I managed to lose him for a moment and grabbed my own hatchet, but I turned around too late and got killed. I did get a few shots in though and he was bleeding before I died. None of those encounters needed to happen. Only the deer stand encounter made any sense at all. This game will continue to devolve into a death match arena until something is done.

Go into first person. -pitch tent -move forward(or backward) -pitch tent -move -pitch tent -move etc etc etc. It will pitch eventually. The biggest problem I've had with tents is that they don't save after server restart. They will dump all contents and you will have nothing but an empty tent. There's almost no sense in pitching a tent right now.

Unless Rocket does an about face in his opinion on creating mechanics to push players away from being bandits, it will always be a popular way of acquiring items. As others have said, there are more pro's to being a bandit than their are being a survivor. Every game like this has devolved into a death match arena and DayZ will be no different. We just have to deal with it if we wish to continue playing, that's all.

Because some people actually like to play the survival aspect of this game and some people don't like mindlessly killing others. If you can't understand that, it's 'sad' as you put it and 'you need to stop playing DayZ'. It's not a difficult concept.

I'm thinking more like expanding on the new Dayz splash screen.. and making the rest of the screens look more Dayz-like.. Maybe instead of a white bar, a trail of blood across the screen. Change some stuff around. Showing where players are and what they are doing is NOT a good idea.

There's a difference between challenging and outright ridiculous. And most people aren't looking to master this game in seconds and get all the 'phat lootz' instantly. That's just sandbox elitist BS right there. I really enjoy this game, but there are flaws, and some of them do exist in the first few minutes of a players game experience. First impressions are everlasting in most cases. A game that doesn't seem to give you a chance from a new players perspective is not a game that they want to continue playing. If you were given a melee weapon to start, would that make veteran players any less able to get started? No. We can get around with no weapons because we know the tricks, and most of them are exploits. So, basically, people with your mindset on this topic are just interested in making new players frustrated and in turn, push them away from the game. It doesn't affect us, it only affects new players. So please, get the elitist head out of the elitist behind and please try to see from another point of view. Take a step back and perhaps, reflect a little? Think perhaps?

Right now there is an epidemic of missing items all over the place. I can't store anything in a tent and hope for it to save. I've lost some really nice gear recently. I've also had some problems with my inventory. I just recently lost a revolver and a ton of ammo and bandages from my backpack. My friend just logged in today and have nothing but the starting equipment, when he was fully geared in mid-level items and a czeck backpack before logging the night before. Hopefully a fix comes soon.. as it's almost pointless to play. I mean, we all know we are going to lose items through normal means as it is, but if we are going to lose it randomly as well, what is the point?

It actually has been advertised on a ton of gaming sites. ANd the youtube videos can be very misleading. Here's what most normal gamers expect when trying a new game. Being able to figure out what to do without reading forums for hours to learn the basics. I had the luxury of starting my DayZ experience with the Macarov. I learned how to handle myself around zombies before the starting weapon was taken away. I found myself getting annoyed even with the pistol when I first started, so I can only imagine the frustration of starting with no way of defending myself and being new to the game. And to comment on another posters thoughts. Alpha is a tired excuse. We know it's alpha, everyone does. Though, clearly, this starting setup is not working for new players. It's been clear since it has been changed. It's time to either give players melee weapons to start with or get working on unarmed combat. Out of every 1 person that can handle the learning curve as a new player, there are 10 who are so frustrated, they'd rather just not play the game. I love the game, but at least I can take a step back and constructively critique a game that I love.

Yep, can't leave anything in tents.. not whole inventory is vanishing.. but small amounts. Like for instance, I just looted a CZ sniper rifle and a revolver. Took it back to my tent location and logged out, logged into the server with my tent and the revolver is gone and some items that I dropped earlier are in my inventory. Hope this gets a hot fix, because its clearly a game breaker. I already lost NVG, Rangefinder, GPS, M4 Halo and a M107 .. among various other loots in a tent because of this. Not that I wasn't going to lose it eventually.. but setting up a persistent camp is not possible right now. And yes, I did save the tent before leaving.