chhopsky

that's not how it works. this is community. you want a server, you host it

doublepost

This is terrible and you are terrible. The fact that you just threw four hours away means that your life is worth something and needs to be protected. Don't try to turn DayZ into a standard MMORPG. It stands to reason that you would become more fit as you continued to run more, more healthy if you continued to eat better etc, so I'd be alright with your character becoming fitter/stronger/weaker/unhealthy based on a number of things as long as that died with you when you died. The entire point of this is permanent death. Life regen is also terrible. This is not COD. You've been playing for four hours, I'm not sure you're qualified to make suggestions yet. The game is supposed to be unforgiving, violent and deadly, and permanent death is supposed to mean that death is final. I do not think you want to be playing DZ, perhaps Left 4 Dead is more up your alley.

Sorry OP, but what you want is crazy and not feasible because time and effort cost money. Personally having played ArmA2 for years before this, I like how unforgiving and unfriendly it is. No-one likes getting killed by a door but since we know that DZ is going to be directly compatible with ArmA3, then I think the effort:reward ratio of aiming for that outweighs any potential increased sales from investing literally millions of dollars in an engine swap. Can anyone think of a game that's undergone an engine-swap that has had a net gain from it? I just think of DNF and a swarm of others that tried to stay relevant and forgot that gameplay > *

As a sidenote, the stats on the front page show 12.8m survival attempts, and 1.8m murders. Realistically, we're looking at a 14% murder rate. One out of every 7.1 deaths is to player on player action. The statistics show that the game is not overwhelmingly deathmatch.

This is called Supply & Demand. Weigh up your capabilities vs the risk vs the reward and act accordingly. You want something this game is not and will never be. If the community support was really so vivid for this then servers would be FILLED with people banding together wanting to take on murderers, huge mobs of survivors would raze the servers of bandits. I cannot help but to notice that is not occurring. Really? I regularly play with 1 - 3 other people that I know IRL and we have no problems. What are you doing wrong? The figures don't show what you're saying. All that said, I like some of your suggestions: 1. I'd like to see more aggressive and random zombie behaviour and greater numbers that would make more dangerous areas that you perhaps couldn't fight off without more people. That would make things feel more dangerous but at the moment I feel greater worry about other players than zombies because I can predict the zombie behaviour. Maybe I shouldn't be able to? Not sure. Random hordes of zombies running between areas chasing a rabbit for example. Or places populated with LOTS of them, with great gear. Needs more zombies. 2. More character customisation would be very useful, yes. 3. Yes, more things to do would be good. It's difficult to craft that tool set to make it not 'event' WoW-Raidey but it's doable. 4. Vehicles are great because of the distances involved, they can make crossing dangerous areas much more safe. Maybe I was worse when I started playing but I seem to remember it being much harder to simply survive now. Maybe I'm being smarter. Who knows!

To be fair, I think this is a very short-sighted view for a few reasons. It may technically be an alpha, but realistically, it's not. Just like how Gmail was in 'beta' for literally half a decade. Aside from the rate of change, DZ has more in common with a retail game than with an alpha. - the mod has sold nearly more copies of the game than the game did in its 3-year run - the developer works for the game developer and is being paid to work on it full time - no alpha, or beta for that matter, is usually ever on this scale - standalone is coming, people are obviously buying the game for day-z We aren't just testers, we are a serious revenue stream for BI. I need to re-iterate that because it's important, our wanting to 'test' has made AS MUCH profit as the original game did. I don't think it's reasonable to complain about most alpha-ey behaviour because we need to accept, straight up, that this is something in heavy development. That should go without saying. It's going to be janky, you're going to get hit through walls, you're going to pick things up and they despawn. Shit's gonna go wrong. BUT. I think we also need some understanding that when there are huge flaws like wilderness debug plains, that can actually prevent a person from playing at all and effectively remove their ability to play the game at all .. that's serious. Bugs that impede your gameplay are acceptable, bugs that kill you and remove all your progress are frustrating and shit for anyone but sometimes we have to let them go. Bugs that prevent you from playing at all should be addressed. Whether we call it an alpha or not, BI is paying for this mod to be made. Enough people are buying ArmA2 to put it atop sales charts again, let's not think that this isn't a product. A rose by any other name. By it's very nature, it's combining things that we've never seen before. It's just also doing that with its development stages. inb4 I call people 'survivors' or 'bandits'.

I saved myself from the debug plains last night by fucking off SixUpdater/Launcher, installing the latest beta manually, then joining ANZ7. That put me in the debug forest which is 5 mins west of Pavlovo.

Great post Megatron, what you're actually describing is Asymmetric Insight. There have been a lot of psychological experiments on this behaviour and it's very important to the social mechanics and dynamics of Day-Z. http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/ "In 1954, in eastern Oklahoma, two tribes of children nearly killed each other. The neighboring tribes were unaware of each other’s existence. Separately, they lived among nature, played games, constructed shelters, prepared food – they knew peace. Each culture developed its own norms and rules of conduct. Each culture arrived at novel solutions to survival-critical problems. Each culture named the creeks and rocks and dangerous places, and those names were known to all. They helped each other and watched out for the well-being of the tribal members." Read more for the full story but tl;dr - we form deep attachments to the groups we make in safety then become intensely distrustful of groups outside ours. Exactly what you described =]

The only stranger to ever really put any effort into helping me, and dragged/protected my injured, ammo-less sorry ass for kilometers to the hospital in Cherno (!!) was wearing a bandit skin. Flagging is silly.

As a third update to this, I can confirm that SixUpdater/Launcher having some kind of network fit during some LAN issues was the cause of this. Abandoning Six, installing the latest Beta manually and then using Launcher to launch the game spawned me in the debug forest, 5 minutes east of Pavlovo, just follow the clouds.

Open regedit, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Bohemia Interactive Studio\ArmA 2 OA Find the binary value KEY. Write the hex value down. Export the KEY registry entry as a file called Person1.reg Edit the KEY registry entry and type in your second key's HEX value. Export the KEY registry entry as a file called Person2.reg Now when you want to switch between players, just double click the reg file and it will ask to install the values. Say yes, now boot up ArmA2 through the launcher. I have seen some funky behaviour after doing this, like the beta patch shows a WRONG CD KEY error but then installs anyway. When I did this, I was transferring the second key from another computer that was dying, so I had the key's HEX value already. I'm not sure if these are encoded or whether you can do a straight swap or how that caper all works. Can anyone comment on that?

Saved myself from debug plains wilderness just now. Sixupdater/launcher had screwed something up, I redownloaded the latest beta patch manually and installed it and I respawned in the debug forest wilderness. From there it's a 5-minute run east (the direction the clouds move in, or sun rises in) to Pavlovo.

The game's not a deathmatch for me, or the people I play with. We kill when we have to, when we feel threatened or when we don't trust someone. This is what I see for the vast majority of players too. So I suppose the real question is, what is it about your play style that makes people shoot you? I know personally, I like to make a point of punishing bad side-channel behaviour by tracking and scaring them. I've been helped by strangers more times than I've been murdered. If you're getting constantly killed by people against your will, then you are simply not being careful enough. I've only ever been killed by one person I wasn't actively doing something stupid in front of, and he had a ghillie suit, in the dark, at night, and I was going for a pig that he wanted. If you want friends, sneak up on people and call out to them from a safe place, let them know you're friendly. I see people teaming up all the time. Take some responsibility - what are you doing wrong?

To be fair, we're not _exactly_ doing that. This isn't a private alpha like with Quake 3, we're talking about a situation where Day-Z itself has sold nearly as many copies as ArmA2 did in its entire 3-year sales life already and is getting huge press the world over. We can call it an alpha all we like, but this is completely unlike any other alpha I've ever played. Kind of like how Gmail was in beta for literally half a decade. You need to accept that people are playing the game seriously already. We expect glitches, to lose gear trying to pick it up, to log out in a barn and respawn on the roof. We expect things to go wrong. But because of the scope of the game and where it's at, I think people need to accept that it's not a traditional alpha and that while we can't save everyone who loses weeks/months of play to a bug, if it's a known thing like the debug forest (which you can get stuck in permanently even if you respawn) then we should at least make an effort.

Are you serious? Have you ever tried raiding a hotly-contested area like NW or stary on your own? Suicide. In a group it's much safer, and you're way more likely to survive chance encounters. Teaming up is it's own reward.

I got stuck in the debug plains for the last three days, tried all the usual suggestions. I remembered tonight that the day it happened, SixUpdater/Launcher threw a weird error and hasn't been working ever since. I've tried the Canada2 trick which doesn't work since the server is dead, and the 'run for 15 minutes ESE' which didn't work either. BUT I ESCAPED TONIGHT! Downloaded the latest ARMA2 beta patch manually and installed it. It threw an error about 'wrong CD key' (?? we have two CD keys on this machine that my housemate and i swap between) but installed anyway. I joined ANZ 7 and it spawned me in the debug FOREST instead which was a 5 minute walk back to Pavlovo .. and I'm free :D

l33tmoaf, I'm risking losing an M14-AIM as well :( One really frustrating thing is that if you disconnect in the plains, it doesn't save your updated position in the plains, it always boots you back to an original starting point. No way to exploit the food/blood loss not saving bug. I ran for 40 minutes last night and didn't make it back to civilisation. Burnt through my inventory not realising it was moving me every time i d/c. Is anyone getting their position reset? The Canada2 fix doesn't seem to be working now since Canada2 is broken. I'm reading reports of other people just getting sent back there every time 1.7.2 so I'd rather not respawn for nothing if I'm just going to get stuck again.

Is this confirmed for all players? I ran for 40 minutes today and found nothing.

I'd like to see more zombie hoards roaming the countryside. Perhaps a bunch of them could start chasing a rabbit or something as a way to 'lead' the pack somewhere and get them to move fast. Imagine you're camping out stary then you just see a horde sweep in .. would make it less predictable than 'oh we know they will spawn near loot spots'?

Rocket has continually said that the idea of Day Z is that you are who you are. The idea of bringing classes into it rather than differentiating naturally via successful vs unsuccessful behaviour is overcomplicating the matter, and IMO will only bring confusion and turn this into WoW. I'd definitely see fit to have you character develop as you do - the more you shoot, the better your shooting gets. The more you run, the longer you can run without getting tired. The less you eat, the more your body adapts to having less food and lets you go longer without it, etc. I propose that we stop trying to shoehorn other game attributes into this and start trying to think of new ways, preferrably without quicktime events, choices, or anything else that's not just letting people play the game and providing tools and stimulus to let people generate their own stories. There are definitely potential ways to customise the characters but if you ever have to choose a class, then the game has failed IMO.

This one's actually really simple to do. You end up exporting two bits of identical registry but with the key changed, then you just run each .reg file to swap between them. My housemate & I do this and it works fine, I forget the exact reg entry but I'll find it tonight when I get home and post.

Last night a group of four of us were raiding Stary. Being ArmA2 vets we were playing super carefully, doing everything safe, except one guy who was new and stuck his head up into the light. He startled someone who just happened to be running past and got himself shot. That brought hordes to the guy, so I rolled out, popped him in the leg and he went down. Zeds ate him. While we were regrouping to make sure there wasn't a second, two guys came past, one with an axe, one with a pistol. If we let them get in, are they going to arm up and become a threat to us? Or will they go the other way? Their movements looked erratic and noobish & Overwatch is low on ammo, we decide to let them go. In the camp they ran into someone else looking for weapons and while there was no shots at first, they got into a fight over some heavy arms. One died, the other ran away, as did the aggressor. They cleared it of z's for us and we swept in and got our ammo fix. The ability to decide to kill, or not kill other players is such a core part of the experience, it's almost mindblowing to me that people want it penalised. It's not 'PK'ing, it's survival. I've met up with plenty of strangers who've been struggling on their own and wanted to team up to survive. I've also had people shoot on sight. That's the beauty, you never know. For me it's around a 70/30 ratio but perhaps if everyone you meet hates you enough to try to kill you.. maybe you're the problem.

No. You have not understood the game if you want this. Stop trying to take an amazing freeform thing and make it boring. No. No. You have not understood the game if you want this. Stop trying to take an amazing freeform thing and make it boring. No. No. No. You have not understood the game if you want this. Stop trying to take an amazing freeform thing and make it boring. Don't you people get it? The distrust and the potential for anyone to do anything to you is PRECISELY the point. If you don't like how easily you die, be more cautious. Be more paranoid. This isn't quake, you need to treat your life like it was real and protect it. The murdering isn't 'a situation', it's part of the game. If you want allies, try to make allies. If you want people to not shoot you, show that you trust them and you're not a threat. If you're sick of people murdering, band together with other people and work together to hunt the bandits. If enough people hated murders, servers would be full of people banding together, but they're not. Every interaction is tense and scary, and it's brilliant.

Here's the thing - this game is a toolbox designed to give a bunch of stimulus under which people will play out their own stories. I'm sorry you can't hack it, but since they took away the starting weapons I've seen more teamwork and meeting up with strangers than in the entire game before it. This is a social game and people are going to do what they want to. You're right, you need to meet up with people who are unarmed to trust them by default. When you've got stuff you've got something to lose and that potential distrust is incredible. It's such a driving part of the game. I've met so many people and had incredibly tense standoffs - some that ended in death, others that ended in teamwork. I'm not going to tell you to go to a forum and find people, but it's not a traditional MMO so it's not PVP or PVE or any other defined thing. The lack of definition makes it, the individual behaviours make it. You need to strongly consider whether or not this game is for you because the people complaining are an extreme minority.