Ylilordi

My phrasing was poor. I meant "every other game I've played in the US servers". I don't play DayZ on US servers due to latency issues. I disagree with you on the latter point. I never said I intentionally will let myself be shot and lose because I'm such a care bear. What I mean is playing without KoS mentality and surviving is much harder and requires a lot of skill, patience and planning. You have to be very aware of your surroundings, position snipers or observers in overwatch and do everything you can so you won't be suprised by other players who will often shoot you without question. Most times you can just avoid the other players when you track their movements well enough, but if you have to confront them you can have a sniper and yourself aiming at said individual and ask whether he's friendly and act accordingly. Not shooting on sight doesn't mean you offer yourself to be shot at, but only that you have to play more tactfully. Everyone and their brother with a Makarov can just shoot on sight and I think this reduces the overall excitement and enjoyment of the survivor interaction element. So if you pick this easy way, it demonstrates you only care about yourself and your gear. This kind of behavior could turn the game into a loot gathering game and reduce meaningful survivor interaction. It is a sign of weakness to allow a few betrayals and PKs to frustrate you into being a bandit. If everyone did this, soon we'd have nothing but a bandit filled deathmat... oh wait, shit. I recommend not killing on sight to everyone not classifying themselves as a bandit. It adds more meaningful player interaction and it also requires you to play more carefully. I restate my case: only caring about yourself and your gear is not the best mindset for this game. It belongs in there as anyone can play the way they want, but it should not be the only mindset, lest the deathmatches continue.

I'm pretty sure people on the internet aren't qualified to diagnose psychological problems and that even trained professionals in that field would detain from making an analysis based solely on forum posts. Me and my friend got fired at today in the woods by a bandit in a ghillie suit. He missed his first two shots and immediately ran away when we fired suppressive fire at his general direction, then he disconnected. Typical bandit, amirite guys? Jokes aside, I think the attitude of players has changed to more PvP oriented in the last few weeks on SE servers. When I started, I met helpful survivors almost with any character I played with and we would sometimes team up for hours. Nowadays most players seem to shoot on sight so we avoid other players, open ground and towns. I would imagine that the US servers are even worse because every game I've played the US servers seem to have more rage/bm/and unsocial behaviour. Maybe most players have become so good at dealing with zeds and looting that the game becomes boring for them without constant PvP? I never shoot first, which I think will cost me many "You are Dead"'s in the long run. That's ok, cause I want to be a good guy. Just shooting everyone on sight is the easy option, and as we know the easy way is for the weak.

Here's my two cents on the night visibility issue. As I see it people have been arguing about realism and playability, so I'll look into those separately. On realism: Some people have argued that the pitch black nights are realistic. This is in itself true, because when certain conditions are met it really gets that dark. The thing is this kind of darkness occurs extremely rarely in those latitudes(The amount of pine trees on the Chernarus map suggests the map can't be all that much south from the Northern Tropic). I've worked for the Finnish military for 5 years, and in my experience there has been only one instance during a night op when it got so dark you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face. This occured, when: 1) It was late autumn, which is the darkest time of the year before the snow rains in 2) It was the middle of the night 3) There was no moon or starts, and it rained 4) We were moving trough a really dense thicket, the kind where you can't see the sky when you look up Even in those conditions it was possible to barely distinguish basic shapes on the open after your eyes had adapted to the dark. It was still extremely dark. Even with 2G NVGs it was really hard to see shit, because there just wasn't all that much light to enhance. So it was really special to have that kind of darkness In DayZ the kind of darkness I'm describing happens almost every night, at least for me. So I think the pitch black nights in themselves aren't unrealistic, just the massive frequency of them. Also the NVG's in the game allow you to see extremely well during pitch black nights. I cannot say whether this is realistic because I have no user experience of 3G NVGs, as the ones in the game seem to be some type of AN/PVS-series. With 2G NVGs you wouldn't be able to see much more than with the bare eyes. I understand complete realism isn't the goal of this mod, and that's fine. More important is the way the darkness affects playability. I personally think the nights are a bit too dark. When it is pitch black and you don't have your gamma up it really is impossible to see anything without a set of NVGs or flares/chemlights/flashlight. I think this is not the best choice, because if you don't have NVGs(most don't) you will have to use flares or other light sources to do basically anything. Looting buildings is tough without light because you can't distinguish walls, doors, staircases and whatnot. Light draws zeds and also bandits, so light sources can't be used all the time. Also at least in my games the zeds appear to be aggroed just as easily as during daytime, and when aggroed they will chase your shit with great accuracy even when you're running completely blind and shouting curses over TS. If you meet bandits with NVGs you're dead, simple as that(it's probably wise to avoid cherno/elektro and airstrips during nighttime though). So without NVGs or light sources you are completely blind during the darkest nights. The way I see it should be is that it gets really dark, but you can distinguish basic things like: - Am I in a road/field/forest? - Is there a building 3 meters from my face? - The zombie 1 meter from me punching all of my shit, where is he? - Am I in the ocean or not? etc. This way you wouldn't be completely helpless without additional light. This would be good for players starting at night and people who'd like to do basic things without exposing themselves to bandits. You'd still have to use light sources if you wanted to actually scout some areas and do some proper looting etc. Also the frequency of the darkest kind of nights should be reduced, so they'd become more unique and scary. Currently the black nights are business as usual, so it takes a lot of the scariness away. So that's what I think about the darkness issue. I understand the problems I'm having could have something to do with my video card(GTX 560), or my general unmanliness compared to the ITGs around here. Also I realize some of the issues have more to do with the ARMA II engine, rather than the mod. I really like playing DayZ, both on day and night servers. They are a different experience, and both are exciting in their own way. I still think night playability could be improved with the changes mentioned. I really hope the conversation around this issue would revolve more around actual gameplay and development suggestions, rather than the insults and internet dick waggling contests it sometimes becomes. To quote rocket: "Chill out a bit and try and have some decent discussions. There has been some great ones, so lets all try and keep a level head ". Have a good day and enjoy DayZ!

We were playing with my friend today at about 16-17 GMT on SE9 and died to bandit fire. First my friend dies next to the hangar in balota Airstrip, getting the "You are Dead" and all that jazz. He joined again and respawned inside the hangar we're we had been before with all of his gear. I also checked out his corpse and the corpse also had all his stuff, so all of the items effectively duplicated. Same thing happened to me a few minutes later. I died and spawned to a location I had been to a few minutes before. I also had all of my gear. This was all about 10 minutes before a server restart. I don't have any idea what could have caused this, but I'm guessing it's a server-side issue because both me and my friend had the same thing happen. Has anyone else had similar experiences?

It's still pitch black in some of the swedish and german servers, and it's supposed to be about 10-11 AM in there. Hard to say whether this is intended, but it's frustrating that you can't see anything even during the day.