oktyabr

You know, I don't disagree with everything you just posted. I like realism and sim too. But the thing that you are dodging around IS the new players... Think about it, the "old timers" have only been playing this for what, a week now? We had the benefit of playing before psychos with sniper rifles and road side robberies became popular sports. But now consider for a minute that not everyone you are going to meet on the server tonight is experienced, in fact many of them will be joining for the very first time. I have personally walked more than a few people all the way through buying/installing Arma CO, up to their first five minutes as a DayZ survivor. There would have been more but already this game is getting a reputation (with people that have never played it) as a PVP deathfest. The fact that you are far more in danger from other players now than you are from zombies, that the majority of your deaths will be by other players instead of the real core idea of this game, is an indicator that something is unbalanced. You won't need special skins for new players because there won't be any.

I would choose pretend to surrender and then take at least one of you with me. I've taken two or three and walked away before. How do you determine what is "enough"? I was once in an attempted mugging (it didn't work out quite like they planned) where they said all they wanted was my food and water... What?!?!? I'm already dead then! Take my guns and ammo???? Same thing! Who's going to *invest the time* to head back into Cherno or wherever trying to find new provisions without even a pistol? Would I prefer you just shoot me? No. I'd prefer you give me the chance to kill YOU. If I die fighting for what's mine, that's fine. I'd just find a way to die and respawn if you took everything anyway so all taking a chance at dying in combat is doing is speeding up my respawn, if I loose. Role playing and all is fine, if that's what floats your boat, but I have time invested in this game every time I play. You aren't just robbing me of my food, water, and maybe the only way I have to defend myself, you are robbing me of all the time it will take to *try* and find all that stuff all over again. That's just silly. Shoot me, let me respawn (please post in global that you just killed me so I know who I'm hunting now), or don't be surprised if I fight you to the death. A surrender option? LOL And on disco within range? H-E-L-L no! I usually disconnect *with* my group. You want us to spend a bunch of time trying to get that perfect 200m apart before we do it?!? What about trying to leave cause my wife or kid needs me, or I get an important phone call, and I'm in the middle of downtown Cherno? I admire any suggestions that might improve the game, and who knows, maybe others like these suggestions, but I can just think of way too many reasons not to myself. The best option you could hope for would be a non-lethal attack that just knocks someone unconscious for 60 seconds or so. Rob them, kill them, that's up to you. Maybe a stealthy strike to the back of the head with your rifle stock.

Our car! HAH! It took hours to find all the parts and two of us ran almost 10k to get just three spare tires back to the rig. It's one of the times I wasn't messing around. We stayed off the roads as much as possible, to avoid zeds and bandits, but those tires and the amount of time we had invested in getting them made them just too valuable. We had a policy of "shoot first and forget about asking questions" if we did run in to *anyone*. Our joyride was short but sweet when our driver tried an experiment running over a zombie and crashed us at high speed into a concrete wall. It was mostly a fatal accident but the zed quickly made sure we weren't getting up for a second attempt.

AMD Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.21 GHz, 4 x 4GB G.Skill Ripjaw 1600, Asus M4A88T EVO, GTX465, thought about an SSD for mapping but currently just run the game on an old 750GB SATA. 10K view distance @ 1920x1080, pretty much all the advanced settings at "Normal". I don't get screaming FPS on any map or mod but it's always playable. How slow can you go, like limbo, is that what we are playing? I don't know why anybody with even the minimum specs is complaining.

That uncertainty and even the decision to end someone else's "life" so you might better survive is absolutely a key component of this game and I really don't have that big a problem with it.

And while unlocking view distance might help those with weaker PCs it can also help those with hotter ones too. Nothing like 10k view distance and good scope.

Woah, I get to be Andrea?!? Stop right there for awhile. I need a sponge bath. Seriously, how about some female skins in this game? Female zed? Creepy, smaller, harder to hit children zed?

On a tangent I wouldn't mind being able to forage a bit more in the wilderness too. Random spawns of things like "wild berries", "tasty roots", "edible mushroom". Could use the same in gardens with a higher probability of finding something good there... could be generic like "fresh vegetable". Hey, just because it looks like a garden of tasty pumpkins doesn't mean it is! The "gardens" are actually an artifact of the map itself which was designed assuming someone had recently been tending them. Several days/weeks/months after Day Zero and they might just be a moldly patch of dead vegetation. And while I'm here, how about a little fishing? :)

Hell yeah! Rain, fog and even a pretty decent lightning flash and thunderclap are already available to this game. It might be difficult syncing the modules between servers though.

+1 also, and yes it's possible Some fantastic youtubes out there on this mod that I occasionally use for recruitment purposes... but then the inevitable happens... everyone is out of bullets and there is absolutely no option but to keep running. I'm sure it's no easy task to get a melee system working on this engine but hey, it's bread and butter to the zombie genre... guys with crowbars, baseball bats, even empty weapons, smashing in zombie heads. And think of that silent attack when you suddenly find yourself directly behind that bandit you've been hunting? ;)

I'm US and have a cruddy ping so you'll never see me on other servers (although I wouldn't mind giving it a try!) I don't care what part of the world you are from. You want to play with me on any server, cheers! That said the obvious solution to the "day chasers" is to kindly ask the US server administrators to please consider syncing and labeling at least one or two of them as "West Coast" servers. Doesn't matter if the server is actually in New York or Dallas or wherever... just adjust the ingame time to reflect a different time zone and it's name in the server browser. (Although I really hope someone in Seattle or LA will bite the bullet soon and put one or two up! I could really use the help with the ping!)

Another possibility is the simple "Forgive player" option that's been used on most games with FF for years. Get shot, get a mouse menu option that will let you forgive it and thus waive the humanity penalty. I, like probably everyone else, have been spending a lot of time brainstorming ideas to help smooth out the PVP and morality stuff. The following are just ideas, I don't even know how good they might be: "Free target" -- Yup, great idea. Get wounded you have some time to retaliate without penalty. Maybe not perfectly implemented yet but I think the idea is right on track. "Wrath of God" -- make a player more attractive to zombies based on their humanity level. Super low humanity, zombies like the taste of your brains better than that n00b you were trying to murder. "Psychopath" -- humanity hits zero you are no longer able to heal yourself. This reflects the mental state of such a psycho that in most real world scenarios expects to die themselves anyway. "Bandits" -- Ok, I don't know the actual numbers and they don't really matter... it's the concepts here that I want to stress... Everyone starts with a humanity level (1000 currently?), kill other survivors and your humanity goes down. Reach a certain level and you get to wear the "bandit" skin. I think that's the gist of it anyway. Improve humanity very slowly by time *in game* (not stored on the server) Improve humanity by killing other bandits. This would be the quickest way to loose that bandit skin and the reputation that goes with it. This alone might help prevent bandits from working together. Some sort of bonus reward for killing a bandit might instantly create a "bounty hunter" role with no other tweaking necessary. "Live by the sword, die by the sword." Improve humanity by giving aid to non-bandits (if they will trust you!) DECREASE humanity by giving aid to bandits! This helps stop bandits aiding other bandits, especially if something like the "Wrath of God" and "Psychopath" ideas are used. Imagine a couple of bandits holding someone at gun point in the hospital trying to persuade them into giving the bandits a blood transfusion. Bandit skin is acquired at a certain level but it should take a much larger increase in humanity to loose it again... perhaps 1000 or whatever players start with. Easy to get a bandit skin, not so easy to loose it. Just my $0.02

I wrote my own guide for n00bs targeted more with those that just bought Arma to play this mod and have really no idea what they are doing. Licensing: Public Domain. Feel free to read, repost, copy, modify, print it, sell it, have it tattoo'd on your rear, or completely disregard, as you see fit. Credit would be nice but NOT required. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oktyabr's Zombie Survival Guide: How to survive your first five minutes: You will die. You will die often. Get used to the idea, it happens to everyone. The average life expectancy is just over 3 hours at the time of this post! That said here are some tips to at least help you survive your first five minutes... 1) You will start this game alone, somewhere along the coast of a very large chunk of land. As soon as you spawn the bottom right corner will flash some text that will only be on the screen for a few seconds. The second line is the most important as it will give you a rough idea of where you are starting. Pay attention to what it says there, write it down if you must! THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION YOU WILL BE GIVEN BY THE GAME! It is very difficult to navigate or meet up with friends if you have no idea where you are starting. 2) The server is synced to "real time" so if it's dark where the server is, it's dark where you are going to spawn too. The first thing you want to do, if you think you are in the water, is swim/walk to shore. Look for the silhouette of the land against the stars if it's night. When you hit dry land or you start on dry land, immediately go prone and get your bearings. This is a good time to look at a map (google "Chernarus map") and look up what the game told you when you spawned. It's not pin point accurate but at least you will have some idea of where you might be! (TIP: there are real maps, and compasses, that can be found in the game and once you have one you can access it with whatever your map key is bound to.) 3) Adjusting your settings: In game communication: Immediately switch your communication channel to "Direct communication" (refer to the binds if you don't remember what yours is). This channel is positional and will only be read when texting or heard, when you are using your mic, by people in very close range to you. You can use the other channels for text but since most broadcast on a map-wide scale you will irritate the other players if you spam them or especially if you use your mic on them! Some people have a hard time understanding that when they key up their microphone on the "global" or "side" channels (the default channel you start on) that they are irritating 40+ other players, map wide, with their chatter. Don't be one of them! Video and sound: If it's night time you may be able to tweak your brightness and gamma settings in the "Video options" at least enough to see the difference between water and dry land. Water will have a subtle reflection of the starlight on top of the wavelets if you are successful. This is very video card dependent, your mileage may vary. The big thing in the "Audio" menu is the music! It's only there for atmospherics... it doesn't tell you a single thing about if zombies are going to attack... it's creepy as hell and I enjoy it but your sense of hearing, especially at night, is extremely important in this mod. Don't feel bad at all about turning down the music volume or muting it all together. When you, another player, or even a zombie moves in this game it will produce sound cues such as brush being broken, footsteps on pavement, splashing through water, bumping into a chainlink fence, etc. Zombies themselves can be quite vocal, usually producing a lot of low moans, etc. When they have "detected" you and are charging their sound is MUCH more aggressive... you will know when you hear that cue! Pay attention to these cues, your life may depend on it! 4) Basic Gear: You start with some basic gear including a pistol, ammo, a canteen full of water (single use), some food, some road flares and some basic medical supplies. Also a "coyote" pack which can be used to carry extra stuff you find along the way. Become familiar with how to access your "gear" (inventory) in the game and how to switch things in and out of it. There are larger packs in the game too, the largest being the A.L.I.C.E. but everyone starts with the Coyote pack and you'll have to find/steal a larger one if you want it. Canteens can be refilled at a well, pond or even the ocean! Simply walk towards the source of water and your mouse "action" menu, which changes as the context changes, will offer you the option of "refill water bottle". Be patient, it takes a few seconds to do this. If you interrupt the process by shooting or leaving the water too soon it may not get filled even though it said that's what you were doing! An empty water bottle has a red line through it in your inventory. A full one does not. Food must be found or killed but you won't need that for quite awhile yet. 5) The HUD: On your screen you will be given a crosshair like icon showing where you are looking. This icon will change depending on what weapon or object you are holding. Weapons generally look like a crosshair. Flares, grenades and other things that you can throw will have a circle instead. You can switch between weapons, flares, etc. with your "toggle weapon" bind. It will also indicate which you are choosing in the upper right hand corner. TIP: Be sure if you are going to throw a flare, etc. that you immediately switch back to your pistol or other weapon! It's easy to forget to do so when you are being rushed by hungry zombies, or "zed", but let me tell you... throwing additional flares at the whatever is coming to kill you won't hurt them at all... The crosshair will also sometimes offer a contextual hint, such as when you point it at a pile of ammo you will see a rifle icon appear suggesting you can rearm there. Doors and gates that can be opened and closed will also indicate that with an additional icon, etc. When you have that additional context icon on the screen you can act upon it using your mouse wheel menu, which will appear on the left side of the screen when you move the wheel. If you want to get rid of this menu just right click. Note: you must have that context icon on your screen for the options to show up in the menu! "Looking" at a pack laying on the ground will usually furnish you with several options including "take pack" (which replaces your own! Careful!) and "open pack" (safer). This context/mouse menu thing seems to be one of the trickiest things to learn about the Arma game series, including this particular mod, but it's actually pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it. If you are injured your mouse menu will provide you with the relevant options such as "Bandage yourself" ("Bandage other" is also possible), "Take painkillers", etc. You will bleed like a stuck pig in this game and will quickly die if it's not tended to! At the same time it's difficult to apply bandages while the zed are dismembering your body so choose your medical time wisely. Your mouse menu should always have at least the option to "Drink water" and "Eat food", provided you still have provisions left, and that brings us to... The status indicators: You will notice on the right hand side of the screen a few different icons. There is sometimes a mod "debug" screen in the upper right but this can disappear or reappear depending on the current update. The icons you should be seeing is an "eye" and an "ear" which will indicate how easy it is for the zombies around you to detect your presence and become "activated". A series of bars indicates the strength of that probability so you really want to see no bars or very few, if you can help it. Stealth is a key factor in survival here. You are almost invisible to zombies when crawling but once they are on to you going prone is just setting the dinner table! Below these are your health indicators; a water bottle, a blood droplet and a fork and knife, representing how hungry you are. Green is good, red is bad, but most of the time these icons will be a subtle shade between the two. If you are bleeding the droplet icon will have a flashing "+" in the middle of it! You will bleed out soon in this mod if you are not bandaged. Once the blood loss is stopped the "+" sign should disappear. When the droplet is very red you are close to being dead. You can replenish lost blood by killing, gutting, cooking and eating wild game you come across, you can also get someone to give you a blood transfusion IF you can find the hospital and someone to help. Hopefully they will soon have it integrated that you will slowly regain blood as long as your food and water icons are green but at the time of this post that's not here yet. Do not waste your food and water! You don't really need to eat or drink until either one of these is quite red. Exerting yourself by running, etc. will deplete your water and food icons more rapidly than sitting still or a slow walk. Remember, you can refill your canteen at any pond, well, or even the ocean. No bad effects (at least not yet!) from drinking sea water either. There are also cans of soda scattered around towns that can be used in lieu of water. Cans of beans, sardines, pasta, etc. are also to be found but food is generally harder to find than a water source is. Don't worry about carrying more than one or two drinks and *always* keep your canteen, even if it's empty, but try to fill up empty slots in your inventory (don't forget your Coyote pack!) with food any chance you get. 6) Movement: Unless you have never played an FPS the movement should be for the most part self explanatory. Note that the faster you move the more noise you will make... pay attention to the bars by your "eye" and "ear" indicators. Arma has binds set up for several different movement actions including "stand", "crouch", and "prone". You can move in any of these stances. There is also a run/sprint bind that may take a bit to get used to using. You can also "double time" by double tapping your movement key before holding it down. Standing, double time run, with the run key held down is the fast way of travel... It's also the noisiest and will tire you the fastest as well. There is no real stamina in this mod. You won't pass out from running but you will hear yourself breathing quite hard and when you raise a weapon to fire it you will notice that it is very difficult to hold the crosshairs (or iron sites) steady until you catch your breath. A "crouch-run" is the best compromise, producing the least of amount of sound for the fastest movement. Crawling, especially around zed, is the safest. Arma also supports "lean" which is quite useful if you aren't used to having it available in other games! Use it. To climb a ladder is a bit different. When you approach a ladder a triangular context icon will appear on the screen pointing up or down depending on the ladder. Use your mouse wheel to select the appropriate "climb ladder..." option and once you have the ladder in your hands press your forward button to climb UP and your backwards movement button to climb DOWN. Note that some watch towers and deer stands you will encounter will seem to drop you back to the ground when you reach the top of the ladder. This is a glitch in this mod that will hopefully be fixed soon. In the meantime simply switch your handheld weapon to a flare (or chemlight, etc.) with your "toggle weapon" bind and you should be able to climb all the way to the top. Arma does NOT have a "jump" action. You can fall off of high objects though, so be careful! In place of a "jump" Arma supports a "step over" bind that is useful for crossing low walls and other obstacles. 7) The Zed: Zombies, or "zed", are not your friends or lost family members. You cannot cure them and it's very difficult to outrun them too. Best thing to do is avoid them when at all possible. In their natural state the zed are most often found shuffling slowly around the area they died or were infected. This usually means buildings, farms, towns and villages. Currently zed do NOT spawn in the wilderness areas but they are working on adding that as well and it is still possible that one might be found there, eating someone that it chased into the wilderness. As a rule of thumb the wilderness is generally safer than the civilized areas. The zed, being once human, have similar senses to ours but not as good. They don't hear as good, they don't see as well (although it's said they have better peripheral vision) and the only thing they care about smelling is fresh flowing blood. As long as they are not "activated" to your presence they are no threat. Do not shoot at zombies just because one is there to shoot at! Gunfire attracts other zombies like a dinner bell attracts a bunch of hungry kids and what seemed like a good idea, just shooting one, can turn quickly into a battle for your life against a dozen or more. Once "activated" a zed will will stop moaning and start screaming, which can in turn activate other close by zombies. They will also run MUCH faster and usually make a beeline for your throat! You will have to develop a feel for how close you can get to a "calm" zed before activating it, usually it's about as far as you could accurately hit it with a tossed stone or so. Pay close attention to your "eye" and "ear" indicators! Too many bars on either of these and you will activate a zed that you otherwise might have slipped by! Crawling, crouched-walk, using obstacles to hide your movement, being careful to avoid making too much noise, etc. are all stealthy techniques that can help you penetrate a zombie infested neighborhood without getting killed. That said sooner or later you WILL have to fire your weapon against a pissed off zombie! ALWAYS aim for the head! In most cases a single headshot will bring them down. Pistols can take several shots elsewhere on the body to do any damage. Bigger weapons are better. They can be very difficult to hit when rushing you too. Expect to die during your first, second, and possibly several zombie encounters, everyone does. The Zed aren't great swimmers but they aren't afraid of water either! Zed do have a slight problem climbing stairs and ladders but this is only to buy you a little time... they WILL come up (or down) after you, eventually. The best bet is to run up or down a hill. Zed can usually be outran doing either of these for a long enough distance. As a last ditch maneuver run like hell towards another survivor(s) and hopefully they will either help you shoot them or will be appetizing enough that the zombies chasing you will go after them instead! Remember the old joke about the two hunters and the grizzly bear... I don't have to run faster than the grizzly, I just have to run faster than Fred! Be advised that some zed will actually be encountered laying down on the ground, as if they were dead! Be careful! If you get too close they can hit or bite you without even standing up! Flares and other light sources: Ok, so you just spawned a few minutes ago, you know where you are, you have an idea of where you want to go, but it's dark as hell out. If you are lucky you may be able to follow the coastline quite a ways without any personal light source but sooner or later you are going to have to use some. Switch to your flares using your "toggle weapon" bind. Click the left mouse button to light one and by default toss it to the ground. You can then pick it up by putting your crosshairs over it and selecting "pick up flare" with the mouse wheel menu. If you hold down the left mouse button you will throw the flare further based on how long you hold the button down. Aim high, hold the mouse button, throw it a long ways. At the moment you cannot pick up a flare and throw it again, only drop it. This also works for chemlights and is the method of using grenades, both smoke (zombies will often chase after a smoke grenade, leaving you alone) and HE. If you drop a lit flare you can also choose "extinguish flare" from the mouse menu. This is useful if you think a party of potential bandits is headed your way. Avoid carrying a light when you can, be very careful how and where you move if you cannot avoid it. You may find a flashlight in the game. These are great, light up a long distance, can be turned on and off and the batteries seem to last forever. Bad news is that you cannot (currently) hold a flashlight in one hand and your pistol in the other. If you have a rifle or other larger weapon you CAN hold the flashlight... just put your revolver and ammo in your pack for safe keeping. There are also some rare weapons that have tactical flashlights built into them. There are also rumors of night vision goggles but I have yet to see them for myself. 9) Foraging for supplies: There are a lot of things to be found in this game and almost everything you can pickup has a purpose, even if it's not immediately useful. You will find most items inside buildings, even in doorways. You can also take gear off of dead survivors (or living ones, if they let you!). You will very rarely find anything in the wilderness except other players and the occasional wild animal. Bigger cities tend to have better stuff than smaller ones but will also tend to attract more people to them looking for the same sort of stuff. Items respawn on a regular basis so if a building doesn't have anything in it once be sure to look again if you pass it a second time an hour later, etc. 10) Avoid the basic n00b mistakes: Many of these will be avoided just by following the tips I've given up above: -Don't travel down the middle of the highway, EVER! Nothing says "n00b" more than a lone survivor carrying a lit flare and making a bunch of noise running as fast as he can down the middle of a highway. - Try to use cover when ever possible. Know you might be fired upon at any time and get used to playing as if there was a sniper crosshair looking for you constantly. - Try NOT to make more noise than you need to. Sound is very important in this game. - Try NOT to use light, except when you really need it. Chemlights are better for carrying than flares. They last much longer and don't light up half the country side alerting everyone to your presence. - If you are in a group try to stay spread out so you aren't all clumped together in one big target of opportunity. Cover each others backs, watch your six if you are at the end of the line. - Close doors and gates behind you! - Remember, friendly fire is ON. Watch your fire! You can shoot a teammate just as easily as you can the zombie that's trying to maul him. - Remember you can apply first aid (if you have any left) to fallen teammates as well as yourself. A good mouse menu context option is to look at a fallen survivor and then select "check pulse". It will tell you if they are dead or can possibly be saved. - Gunfire WILL attract zombies... and other players, for better or worse. The crossbow has a strong advantage here, besides being able to reuse it's ammo (if you can find it again!) - The sound of many flies buzzing around is a good way to locate a fresh corpse to loot. Flies aren't attracted to zombies for some reason, only dead players. - Don't trust *anyone* by default! PvP is a huge component of this mod and there are players who seem to have made it their personal goal just to murder and pillage. It's realistic so that will probably never go away. The devs are working on some sort of "reputation" or "morality" system to help tame down rampant deathmatch but that component will always be there. That said, the ONE goal you have as a new player is to survive! If killing someone for their food, meds or ammo is the only way to help you do that you simply have to ask yourself... is it worth it? Not everyone is out to get you and I haven't played a session yet where I didn't team up with at least one total stranger. Just be warned that encounters with other players have the potential to end badly too. - A common way of declaring your peacefulness is to yell over VOIP (remember, "Direct communication" channel ONLY!) "Friendly! I'm friendly!". Some without mics have adopted the "salute" action to represent the same (it's a key bind also). Fortunately you don't have to kill anyone to get what you need, once you have a little experience and some common sense! 11) Leaving the server: DayZ is being developed as a "persistent" mod. It's not quite there yet but for the most part it works. Basically it works like this... if you die you are dead and have to respawn just like the first time. If you leave the server while you are alive you will then be able to rejoin the server at a later time (in theory ANY server, since they all use a common map and common data base) and you will appear in the same place you were when you left and all your gear should be intact. Your automatic "save" location is updated every sixty seconds and when the mod presents you with a "mod debug" screen you can see how long it is until the database stores your position (and your gear) again. The data base is occasionally flushed as new patches are added to the game code. One day it should be stable enough to give you persistence for days or months even but right now it's anybodies guess how long your information will remain intact. Be sure to check daily for new code updates! And enjoy.

NIIIIICE! Now just have to wait for the servers to catch up ;)