eero.afheurlin@iki.fi

You make your points well and I do agree that it's funny that all survivors are helicopter mechanics (cars etc you can learn to fix by trial and error (especially if we're talking about old-school engines [the modern ECU computer OTOH are a very different beast], with helicopters second chances are pretty slim...) Ditto for the blood transfusion. People spawning with more valuable and varied loot however will probably be a field day for bandits (though it isn't much of a problem, except for the newbies, but thye're the ones complaining on the forum that it's impossible to survive [and I do feel bad for them, I guess nobody told them that they *really* need to learn ArmA game mechanics first so that they can worry about learning the pecularities of DayZ [zombie aggro, where to find loot, etc] without having to sturggle with controls at the same time)

Server kicks would take effect immediately' date=' not triggering any sort of timers at all. The normal logout timer in my suggestion isn't that long, as long as you log out in a (relatively) safe place there is no problem with it. but how ? I have thought about this for a bit and I couldn't figure out any better solutions (see the thread in my sig). Funny' date=' my main problem with servers (EU area) is that they're full, or that they have nametags on (crosshair I try to avoid but might tolerate if every "proper" server with decent ping [sub 70 or so'] is full, 3dp I usually tolerate even though I never use it myself but naturally prefer to play with people who share my ideas of "correct" settings) The timer is not an automatic death, and unless you're all the time in hot zones or happen to get "unlucky" DC during a fight it's not even a very likely death.

It seems to be a problem' date=' maybe less these days but I don't know, anyway that part of the timers is very,very benign compared to the "do not leave the fight" timers, and the first level that annoys clean players can be brought down even more by increasing the exponent part (say 10s->30s->90s ...) I guess if the anti-ghosting measure can be implemented quickly we'll see if the "DC epidemic" goes down or not.

I don't care about kill counts (in fact I play friendly), I care about people actually facing the consequences of their actions (shoot at me and I will come for you [in case you were a lousy shot, many seem to be], DCing to get away from that is just low) and so far I haven't figured out (see the suggestions forum thread but keep it civil and constructive please) any better way to solve the three problems than timers (see the post in my sig) 1. Ghosts (solvable by having a *timer* [and a long one, as in 30minutes or so] that prevents logging back in to server A if has logged in to server B in between) 2. DC to avoid consequences (not just immediate death but also starting a fight and missing the shot then not wanting to continue on a more even footing) 3. server hopping to farm loot There is a fourth slightly related problem which is people spawning in hot zones in supposedly "cleared" areas and then "unfairly" getting the drop on the players who did the clearing, I also comment on it.

I too think the current setup is nice for atmosphere and don't find it a problem I've started 4 times with the current gear set, once lived an hour or so (my stupid mistake with a Z) then lived a week (shot in the back), then lived ~5 minutes because of an inept bandit: I spawn in elektro (thinking: ok, this will not take long) noticed a pistol wielding man following me to a building, tried to find a weapon, nothing, so I get out, get shot but bastard doesn't hit me properly so I'm not out of the fight yet. I get behind cover and bandage myself, when he comes around I run around him a few times (here a hatchet or even crowbar would have meant one less bandit [and a pistol for me, yay!]) and then make my escape, but since I haven't yet invested any time to this char and it's already low on blood and supplies, and there's a ton of Z on my tail (can't really run away from a gunman without attracting Z) so I accept my death as Z-food. The current char is maybe two hours of actual game time, I have a decent weapon (in fact switched weapon already once, or twice if you count the fun I had with the "dinner bell" at one deer stand, but I left it there with the remaining ammo...) and am missing just a few more supplies before I'm can live of the nature again. And I'm by now means an expert player, I don't know the loot routes through the big cities by heart (in fact not at all, I avoid the cities), this char spawned in Kamenka but I did not suicide just to get near Balota (how lame is that?). But I have played Arma (though not a lot) and OFP (more) and in general have some idea of tactics (compulsory military service in my homeland)

Some sort of iron sights would be nice, I'm faily sure I haven't seen a compound crossbow that would not have them (and I used to do archery [though with compound bow and not crossbow] pretty seriously at one point in my life) Anyway, the "on back" idea (I guess it comes from OFP originally) that ACE implements would be pretty good solution in switching between crossbow and some other primary (I also hate leaving my AK on the ground when I have some axe-murdering to do [though I guess putting down zombies does not really count as such but it sound better :)])

On "the other thread" (http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=26504, warning foaming at the mouth from the get go...) someone had actually a pretty smart idea to prevent "ghosting" (defined as disconnecting, then using another server to flank and reconnecting to the original server), have a timer (he suggest 1h) during which you cannot return to the server you came from (I'm not 100% if he meant that this should happen only if you connected to another server in between, probably or it would again be "penalizing" those who just have their connection dropped from underneath them). However it does not solve disconnecting to avoid consequences and does not solve farming (there are plenty of servers to jump around in).

no, just.... no. The zigzaggin is something players can and will do too. Yeas they're a bit fast but that never stopped me from killing zombies with an axe without taking damage (axe because I only wanted to fight one at a time... and yes, just as often I mistime and do get hit once or maybe twice before dispatching the zombie) Glitching through walls will be fixed but is no excuse to act like lily livered coward: In my previous life I had just gotten my hands on a CZ550 and a zombie glitched to attack me trhough the wall, did I DC ? Hell no, I moved away and took care of the problem. Then a bit later when getting out of the building I was shot in the back, not dead yet (he was a lousy shot...) but vision totally blurred (I was already wounded before this) and no hope of fighting back properly, did I DC to protect my "precious" ? Again no, it would have been cowardly and dishonorable so I tried to turn around and then got the hourglass and soon after "you are dead", but it least I had my honor. My buddy tried to flank the shooter with an axe while he was looting but unfortunate timing of massive lag (very lucky for the looter) meant that he missed (and then got shot, "Very sad life, very sad ending too. At least there is symmetry") I don't get the "carebear" vs "harcode" vs whatever dynamic on this forum at all, the only group I feel "hate" for are the cowards who disconnect when things don't go the way they planned, I'm also somewhat annoyed by those that hunt fresh spawns on the coast "for the lulz" but since they're mostly avoidable and don't cause you to lose too much time even if they get you it's a minor problem (except of course for the total newbies but they *really* should get hang of the ArmA mechanics first, DayZ is a very harsh way to learn them and I definitely do not want it dumbed down: there are better ways to learn the basics)

Wow, that "discussion" went downhill fast, though the OP was being more than a little inflammatory. I did read all the previous posts though (unlike some posters). Now, the suggestions forum already has a thread (multiple even, but this one is [still] civil and the arguments are backed by more thant "lol ur a carebear faggot"): http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=23764 Now that does not really go into the feasibility of implementing these things on server side (the client obviously cannot be trusted to police "alt-f4") simply because I have no idea how the servers actually work So I invite everyone to read that, then if you have any (well thought out) *constructive* critisism on my thoughs please share that in a civil manner, I spent some hours of thinking about the angles there, I expect everyone who comments there to spend at least 15 minutes too (just take deep breaths, calm down and start thinking about the big picture).

So I though a bit about the logout timer (see above, defined as clean logout, ie clicking abort and waiting patiently). 1. Default timer is 30 seconds, if you have taken damage (except from bleeding) or fired a weapon (using melee weapon counts) there is a 5 minute cooldown period during which you cannot log out cleanly. 2. Every logout doubles the timer (exponential growth), this means that we can start with a small timer and things are still tolerable to those that want/need to switch server once or twice but the wait gets really long fast if you're hopping. 3. 10 minutes of playing activity (counted as walking, eating food, making campfire, talking on direct coms, anything than just laying there waiting) resets the login timer back to default value. 4 hours of being logged out resets the timer. 4. By moving you can reset your logout timer and defend yourself should something hostile find you. alt-f4 timer is your current logout timer + cooldown (if any) + 5 minute penalty. This means you cannot simply abort from a fight, you need to finish the fight or GTFO to safety. alt-f4 will be even worse. server hopping gets old real fast (30s -> 1min -> 2min -> 4min -> 8min -> 16min -> 32min -> 64min) the first three levels are tolerable for getting together with buddies and then starting playing properly. I also really like the idea of player logins/spawns being announced in some subtle way to those nearby (the kla-klack of a weapon being cocked is probably a suitably scary one :)) and then having 10s waiting period (fade the screen in from white/blank your eyes adjust to stepping from the void to this realm) this should stop people from spawning in and immediately shooting others in the back (and again encourages logging out in a safe place and discourages server hopping for any reason inside potentially hot locations unless your buddies have already secured the location). edit: on a second though 5-7s login timer is probably long enough and even that could be immediately reset if you take damage. Practical effects: To people changing server to avoid night or to switch to play with friends: 30s to 2min wait, not bad. To those trying to get out of fight: must get to safety and wait 5min (+30s to logout) or leave their character helpless for 10min... (alt-f4) Server hopping for farming: after a few hops they have to start actually doing something (to reset the timer) which should be somewhat riskier than just waiting in the corner or suffer even longer timers patiently. Of course that reset can be adjusted to 15-30min of play time as well. edit: the "fight timers" (aka cooldown) need to be long enough so that someone sniping and missing will have actual risk of facing the consuquences of their actions, this is why 30sek (often suggested since many other [mostly melee, close combat] MMOs use it) is way too low, so once they have missed they will need to leg it or risk being flanked (realistically the sniper will get away unless they're facing counter-sniping or just being too stupid to live). edit: why no cooldowm from simple bleeding, it's harsh enough already. I want to give people the chance to logout (after the cooldown if they were in a fight) and organize some help for themselves. edit2: Revised suggestion: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=23764&pid=242558#pid242558

To be fair it *did* start as a free-time project. I don't think anyone is actually expecting you to put any effort to this (other than maybe using suitable opensource license) and definitely not adding infected to ACE.

Just a note' date=' I tried searching for "ACE" both globally and just in the suggestions forum and there are a ton of totally irrelevant results due words like "fACE", "plACE" etc matching. Anyway, I haven't actually personally tried these (ACE, ACRE) but they really sound like they immensely add to the realism and UX (User eXperience: usually meants user interfaces, workflows etc) OTOH the developers have their hands full without trying to integrate a completely different mods' code bases with theirs (or re-implementing the features from scratch [and then fixing all the bugs from said implementations']), it would just be nice to get confirmation that this will probably be done (or not done) in the future. So +1 for this. Anyway here is another, shorter thread that I did manage to find: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=23454&highlight=ACE Edit: Found the XenoACE post: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=24005&pid=216232#pid216232 A shame they seem to really dislike the idea for some reason, so re-implementing those features that we want in DayZ from scratch is the way to go (some also commented that ACE is "too realistic" for DayZ which sound a bit weird to me).

First of all a few definitions, I'm thinking of two timers and mainly talking about one: 1. Clean logout timer (tuning this to make logging out from a fight or server hopping for looting is going to be hard but IMO we should start with something like a minute and then start tuning, I like the idea of being able to reset this countdown by moving, no need to broadcast the countdowns or resets) 2. "alt-f4 timer" or "unclean logout": no matter if it's due to connection loss or game crash or game quit, any loss of connection without logging off properly should cause server to trigger a long (3-5 minutes) timer while the character is still spawned and vulnerable. I fail to see the problem with having a long timer on alt-f4. Back in the days when 14.4k modems were the hottest shit I was playing some MUDs with PvP and losing connection basically meant you died unless you were hiding (should your characters hide skill be suitably high...) or in safe area. Now getting disconnected was easy, someone lifting up the phone in another room -> connection gets fscked to hell (I used to disconnect all the phones to avoid that particular mistake...), also modems being modems and the ISP being less than 100% reliable it wasn't that rare to get a random disconnect, we lived (or died) with it. It might have been annoying to die like that but it definitely was not "unfair". Power cuts: you should have UPS anyway for both your computer and the cable-modem, they *do not* like their power abruptly cut. the ISP has UPSes in their end so this is not a problem at all unless you're being stupidly careless with your expensive equipment (if you can't get to a relatively safe place to log out in the 7-15minutes that is the usual minimum runtime then I guess life is tough, it's not an automatic death however...) ISP random failure: This is very rare, if not you need to switch ISPs or live with the consequences of the disconnection timers. Game random crash: It's alpha, it might crash, no different dying because of some other random bug (except you might not die, maybe zombie oes not find you, maybe a friendly player finds you, maybe you were in a safe place). Eventually the crashes will be rare and thus again preventing abuse is more important to the health of the community as a whole than the "unfair" (not really, the rules are the same for everyone) death of a character. Overruling RL needs: This is not a casual game meant to be picked up and discarded in moments to play a few minutes when you happen to have spare time. So it's priority time: either you get your character to relative safety and RL waits as long as it takes (probably not more than few minutes) or you decice the RL is more important and risk your character being defenseless while the timer counts down. Did I miss some case where "innocents" might be "unfairly" inconvinienced by the "alt-f4 timer" (defined as unclean logout, no matter if it's due to connection loss or game crash or game quit without logging off properly) ? edit: see my thoughts on the logout timer below http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=23764&pid=237147#pid237147

However there needs to be a model for the damage you take (if you're not strapped in to seatbelts even "low" speed collisions can throw you out of the vehicle). 30Mph is what, 50kmh, that's a *lot* of impact energy. A long time ago at a science exhibit there was this "crash simulator" that simulated something like 10kmh crash to unyielding object (you were sitting in a car seat, strapped to normal seatbelts) and danm it hurt even at that speed (they had warnings that you could get bruised). So explosions no, damage (a lot of it, and should you survive, broken bones and pain) yes.

And there was some other comment on there being legitimate reasons to switch servers. I'll start with that: Yes' date=' but not when you are in the barracks, get out to the woods and log out there, then when you log in and realize it's night or something lags like hell: 1. You don't look like a server hopper 2. You don't despawn all the stuff the others came the get (the automatic despawn idea is just bad) As for the quoted comment, I don't think the person you were responding to meant that they would spawn in the barracks, but first find a server, then walk there and then wait for the server hoppers, since you did not want people spawning there at all what is the problem in punishing the server hoppers a bit ? This of course only de-incentivizes farming, the Ghosts (get into a fight, change dimension[server'] move to flank and change back) are a much larger problem AFAIUnderstand. IMO the cooldown timers are the best solution to server hopping for whatever purpose (the legitimate reasons do not require multiple hops in rapid succession, I know I avoid night ATM and sometimes a server has wrong timezone declared so I might change servers *once* in a session), however there are some technical issues with them (and there will be way more technical issues with the "no spawn zones" or god forbid the "automagical loot despawn radius").

Can't tell if sarcastic... (feel free to append to fit your favourite meme) I for one applaud the DC:ers quitting (good riddance' date=' probably less whining too), though I'm fairly sure it will not make a significant negative impact on the viability of the community, quite the opposite I think... Critisism: make it contructive, take it with composed calm (and think properly it through even if at first it seems not to apply to you [we're all mostly blind to our faults']).

33 years old 15 years of various IT work served my (compulsory for all adult males) time in my countrys military used to play tournament paintball on national level (small nation though, USA has more paintballers than we have people... then started building a house and ran out of time and money to practise properly and had to drop out) 15 years of martial arts, a bit of airsoft, a bit of camping etc outdoor stuff. I've visited ~15 different countries so far (mentioned because I have noticed that people who travel a lot tend to be more open minded...) I build all kinds of electronics stuff as a hobby, contribute to various open source projects. played computer games since early 90s, I've played quite a bit of OFP with friends, less ArmA2. I game just about exlusively on the PC, I have PS2 and Wii collecting dust, and basically got them for some interesting exclusive titles. That should be enough to construct some sort of profile. I do not shoot on sight, I definitely do not kill for "fun" in this kind of game (but I do like TF2 and it's just all about killing for fun...) I will return fire, I will shoot if I witness obvious murder I will not shoot first even if someone is interfering with my goals, negotiation time... I will try to help people but will weight risk to myself I could consider grouping with "stangers" that I know only by reputation, right now I have no trusted friends playing DayZ so haven't had the chance to play in a group properly.

as far as I see it there are already huge advantages to grouping (guess why the clans are doing it in DayZ too?), of course you need to trust those people and there is nothing in the game itself to enforce that trust. Just the way I like it. I play solo for now since I haven't been able to get those of my friends who know how to play ArmA to join me yet and we have quite different schedules in life (I just got a baby so that obviously changes priorities). I do not shoot on sight, I help people if I can (thouhg I will consider risk to myself) and could consider grouping with people that I know are honorable by reputation even if I do not know them. However changing things so that it's 1. (practically) mandatory to group 2. adding some sort of game mechanic that makes betrayals impossible is definitely when wrong direction IMO.

Heh' date=' kids playing bandits with crosshair and third person and still acting all hardcore. While it might be a nasty surprise for a first time player (what you mean you didn't read the guide?) that there are savages with guns running around and killing for fun it really shouldn't be all that hard to avoid them if you're smart (and I guess the vehicle noise pulls the zombies away from you, so go Yoink! some loot from the now empty houses...). As the new player guide says, get the hell out from the beach. As it has been stated, this isn't these "modern day" games where you're sheepherded through an easy path of learning simple controls and then the difficulty is moderate at worst (I remember those 90s shooters, damn they were hard, I never invested enough time to be able to properly play them on "hard", medium was challenging enough and forget about "nightmare") disclaimer: I'm a fairly new player in DayZ, on my third life, all the time playing solo and never ran into anyone who had KOS-Policy, one guy helped me to fend off some Z (of course he was after share of the loot but he could easily have left me to die and have all of it) and then we went our separate ways, ran into a group of 3 (one was injured) in a building, after a few tense moments I left them be and wasn't shot in the back (both in the first life when I had a makarov on spawn), second life ended pretty badly when I walked into a zombie at night trying to get away from the beach, managed to lose them in the forest and bandage myself but then was very low on blood and while scavenging on next location (switched to a day server in between after getting fed up with the flashlight and the stupidly black night [which is another thread so do bother commenting on that']) a Z surprises me and I bleed out. Now I'm doing fairly fine, somethingmumble saved my ass once (was very low on blood due to not quite managing to sneak past a bunch of Z). I actively avoid servers with CH on, 3P I don't mind as much but never use it myself. I've played ArmA2 a bit before DayZ, OFP quite a lot (esp FDFMod that has some insanely difficult missions).