Mod's looking pretty good overall. I find matches to be unrealistically hard to find though. Something get tweaked there? I really don't know what to think about the zombies. I like them being difficult, but the glitchiness added with their strength just make it aggravating.

So far I'm really liking the changes to 1.8, but have noticed a few small things and one that just about makes me want to smash my keyboard too. Keyboard smasher = melee weapons. In real life I CAN hit a whore in the head while she's blowing me. If there were whores in DayZ that wouldn't be true. ;) Smaller issues: Zombie damage is a little too extreme, especially coupled with the melee weapons uselessness. It takes as many handgun rounds to kill a sick zombie person as it does hits from his hands to kill me. WTF?Did zombie attack animation get sped up or more glitchy, or is it just more frustrating because I can't hit them with a melee weapon now?Stay away from survivor camps - they mega spawn a dozen or more zombies, multiple timesSurvivor camps should be gem finds, like helo wrecks or something. CZ's and clothing.Does duct tape and string even spawn?EDIT: I didn't mean to post to this thread, but I guess it's bug related too. Sorry if it's out of place. Meant to put in feedback.

Kind of stinks the way ArmA (a game based on tactics and shooting) forces us to leave tactics behind on some of the most basic things. I really wish there was a way to animate while moving, but since there isn't I have to vote for instant. Unless there's a way to at least delay the switch [while moving] for 2ish seconds. My biggest reason for wanting the realistic easy swapping of weapons is to deal with defending myself from bandits. I want to be able to switch from melee to firearm quickly if someone starts shooting at me. The last thing I want in that scenario is to have to be glued in place for 4 seconds. The instant change may seem too unrealistic, but so is being a statue for 4 seconds. Anyone who has actually done any firearm training would know that you don't hesitate to switch in a dynamic environment, and 4 seconds is more than twice the amount of time you want to take to switch weapons.

The store glass is especially glitched. I've seen this bug several times. I've even had it happen through the big glass windows.

This is an old thread, but I'll drop this here anyway. The store glass is glitchy. I've been shot inside the store several times and not been able to hit people outside. However, I've been in other buildings and shot people in the store through the glass in my building and the store.

ACE already has the ballistics/wind, and it's accurate to real life. I have a hard time trusting the realism of this, where windage is adjusted in mils in the video. A mil is about 3.44 MOA (Minutes of Angle or Arc). A typical rifle scope is adjusted in fractions of MOA, because at 1000 yards just a single MOA is about 10 inches of movement in point of impact. So, if you're adjusting by MIL at 1000 yards, every tenth of a mil is going to move your point of impact relative to the scope reticle by almost a yard! That is assuming that part is done right. These scope adjustments should be done in 1/4 or 1/8 MOA. Although some rifle scopes, like those found on the M24/M40 have differing per click ratios for elevatation and wind. Seriously, I'd rather just see ACE recoil, accuracy, scope adjustment, range cards, etc.

I have this problem as well. I used to never hit full GPU use (even with ArmA2 w/o DayZ). Using the startup option -winxp got that fixed and ArmA plays pretty well now. But I still often see times while playing DayZ that my GPU and CPU (all cores) are below 60% use (plus I have an SSD and plenty of bandwidth) and my FPS sucks. [Note: Also, if you play windowed, turn off all the screen decoration shit (Aero). It seems to cause the same issue (at least for me), that running without -winxp did. Even if you use -winxp while windowed, it brought those symptoms back] There doesn't appear to be a hardware bottleneck, it seems to be a bug that maybe the drivers or game are waiting for something unnecessarily. Basically, my hardware is sitting there twiddling its thumbs and waiting for the game to give it something to do, so the FPS drops. This happens randomly, different servers, locations, number of players, etc. I play a lot on private servers with side chat and I often ask if anyone else is experiencing it, and the answer is always no.

Blippy's issues seem to mirror mine. My GPU is at low utilization, my CPU is at low utilization, as is my network, and my HD is an SSD. Something is either overloaded, or there's code that's waiting for something when it doesn't need to be. I lean towards the latter, since there is no evidence of the former.

It would seem that the wind is way underpowered or the atmospheric pressure in standard ArmA is almost non-existent then. A mere 1.6kph breeze would blow an M118LR bullet about 23cm off course at 800m under average temperate conditions. I've never missed by near that much from where I aim in ArmA. I've witnessed no discernable wind drift when shooting.

ACE would make DayZ better in every way (as it does with ArmA already).

Just reading this interview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/08/17/day-z-standalone/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RockPaperShotgun+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%29&utm_content=Google+Reader "... we don’t want a point-based system because one of the things that works well in Day Z is that if you are good at some things in real life then you are also good at it in the game. For example, if you can read the stars in real life, then you can read the stars in the game ..." Hopefully that sentiment carries over into long range shooting, and possibly other areas. There are things in game I don't do because I don't do them very well. I say, why should long range shooting be any different? :)

I have noticed no wind effects w/o using the ACE mod in ArmA. I'm all for realistic ballistics becoming a thing in DayZ, but it would be kind of ignorant to add wind w/o a way to measure it. Server desync/lag can do screwey things, perhaps it was that?

I think the M24 can at least be assumed to be using M118LR, which is pretty close to Sierra Gold quality. I shoot M118LR and Sierra a lot and the differences aren't that far off. .25 is too tight (I agree) even for M118LR though. Maybe .50-.75.

I enjoy your satire/trolling. But I read an article today that said that that is exactly how Rocket started DayZ. As a survival game w/o the zombies. Personally, I would love to see that happen too. But also have DayZ. I would like there to be a version w/o zombies, but [with the freed up resources of not having NPC's] allow more real players. Just a plain old post-collapse survival game for people who want pure PvP/Survival. One thing that the zombies currently break with PvP is that they give away your position because they don't spawn unless there's a player there. So I can sit at the far end of the NWAF, or 1000m from Stary tents, etc. with a sniper rifle and dick around until I see zombies. Then I know there's a player there and it's time to make a kill. I hope this is fixed in the standalone version, but I'd still like to see a version with no NPC's too.

[Also includes some tips for snipers and non-snipers] I've seen a growing number of calls for removal of god-weapons and making sniper rifles harder to find, or removing them altogether, this worries me. I can understand the sentiment. We all hate hackers because they have the power to ruin the game unfairly with a single click of their mouse and end your life. As sniping is currently implemented in DayZ it's not too far from a hack itself. I play primarily as a sniper and I want to see it become a lot more difficult for my kind. It's currently not fair to other players because sniping is far too easy to do effectively. Anyone should be able to find a high powered rifle and range finder easily; putting a round in some new spawn in Cherno from 700m should not be easy. Don't limit the availability of the gear, make it more realistic to use. Sniping, marksmanship, and external ballistics is one of my real-life fields of knowledge. I've played the ArmA series since it came out as Operation Flashpoint in 2001 [yes I'm old]. The environment, realism level, sniping (and on an unrelated note, helicopter flight) were the things that drew me to it so much. I used to create small missions to practice sniper/spotter roles with people, as well as having competing sniper teams hunt each other down. This worked well because everyone was on a level playing field with equipment and environment. It was about the tactics and strategy, not the shooting (which everyone could do equally well with similar equipment). In DayZ that equality goes right out the window. It's you and your flashlight against a world of Ghillie guys with AS50's and L85's who need only to set their scopes to your range and spam shots at noobs until they run out of ammo. Why should you be required to have the skill to evade all the dangers of DayZ, while they aren't required to know how to shoot long range? ** The cowbell you always wear for snipers/bandits ** Before we get into that I want to mention an issue which gives snipers in DayZ another huge advantage over their prey. There's a game mechanic which you can't escape (no matter how sly you think you are) that gives you away. You may as well be walking around Cherno with a road flare at night, even during the day. The zombies. I'm sure most of you know that zombies only spawn when players are within a certain radius of their spawn points. Well, snipers and regular bandits know that too. A sniper/bandit can lay prone over a thousand meters outside any deserted point of interest on the map (visibility permitting) and when zombies appear, they know there's a new victim to pick off. You can be the stealthiest player in the game, and they're still going to know you're there because of the zombies. I hope this can be fixed at some point by having zombies be present even if a player is not around. As a programmer [not a game programmer] I understand the overhead issues surrounding this. Perhaps in the standalone version [where Rocket has more control over the underlying code] zombies can hurr-durr around all the time, but only activate their visual and audio scanning when a player is in their vicinity. Or maybe the raytracing can be done client side from the player to the zombies which would then check to see if the zombies are facing that direction when the player is visible to them, thereby triggering the aggro.(?) I read somewhere that Rocket started DayZ as purely a survival (without zombies) mod. I'd love to see a version of DayZ with more players and no NPC's. I'm not sure it would be as popular, or even if I would like it as much as DayZ, but NPC's always find a way to bring a game down. Would be neat to see what DayZ would be like without them and the problems they bring along. ** Sniping and realism ** As for the snipers; DayZ is supposed to be hard, but not unrealistically unfair. It's supposed to be hard for the right reasons. In a real world post apocalypse of any kind there is only going to be one out of several thousand people able to make accurate shots at distances beyond 400 meters. Per capita there are more people who know how to fly planes and helicopters than know how to shoot like this. Realistically, if you were a survivor among 100 [or less] others, the chances that any one of them would have the skills or patience needed to be a successful sniper are pretty damn low. If people want to be snipers in DayZ, make them learn. Just like you have to learn the map, learn how to get around zombies, use the gps, DMR holdovers, helicopter flying, etc. It's not extremely difficult to learn, but difficult enough that if people had to learn it there would be a much more realistic ratio of sniper to non-sniper survivors. People could still easily pick up a DMR or hunting rifle and be effective to a few hundred meters/yards. What should be fairly common in DayZ (especially considering the number of deer stands) is the equipment. Rangefinders that work out to 600m and Deer rifles with adjustable scopes should be common in just about any rural home in Chernarus. Rangefinders that work to 800m and beyond should be somewhat more rare, as should match grade long-range rifles and ranging scope reticles, like the mildot scopes found on US military sniper rifles. Finding the equipment shouldn't be the hard part, using it effectively should be. When a bullet is fired from a high powered rifle many external factors influence where it's going to hit. Some of these things ArmA does a fair job at, but simplifies so much that anyone who can range a target can hit it [my 13 yo son has a 34 day character with an AS50 and a lot of kills to prove it, and he doesn't know anything more about applying external ballistics to shooting than most other people]. A few facts about long-range shooting: Every rifle and ammo pair has it's own accuracy to a certain degree. The measurement is MOA (Minute of Angle/Arc) which roughly equates to 1” at 100 yards. A common deer rifle/ammo pair might shoot within 2MOA @ 100 yards. This means that it will be able to hit a 2” target reliably at 100 yards. At 200 yards it becomes 4”, at 800 yards 16”. Match grade ammo and barrels on higher end rifles and sniper rifles are commonly closer to .25MOA. NOTE: There are other factors such as transitional phases to and from stable flight. When a bullet leaves the barrel of a rifle it's not stable, and when it starts slowing to a trans-sonic/sub-sonic speed it becomes unstable. I don't think this stability is very important to emulate in-game. Wind has drastic effects on shot placement. A 1mph breeze (depending on angle/direction) on a 175gr M118LR bullet fired from an M24 or M40 will blow the bullet roughly 10 full inches off course over 1000 yards [depending on atmospheric pressure]. Several factors determine how this works with different rounds and calibers. It's even more of a bitch in real-life when wind can be blowing multiple directions and speeds over the path of your shot. Repeatedly firing a rifle causes the barrel temperature to rise. The barrel reacts to this by warping. As the barrel of a gun gets hot and warps, it throws off the shot and this can be quite drastic depending on the barrel and distance being shot. Spamming with a sniper rifle decreases your accuracy. Time should be required to cool the barrel to regain accuracy. Non match grade rifles (like the CZ and DMR) should be way more prone to warping (and slower at recovery) as match grade sniper barrels are thicker and have more surface area to dissipate the heat faster. Sniper rifle scopes do not adjust by range. They adjust by fractions (usually ¼ or 1/8 MOA). The reason is that [depending on atmospheric pressure due to mostly altitude and temperature and incline shooting] a bullet may take quite a drastically different path in flight because it faces more or less air resistance and gravity. A marksman would have to adjust his scope dope MOA to accommodate for these differences. When you adjust a rifle scope, you're moving the crosshairs to where the bullet should hit. Under different circumstances (even on the same day) that scope will have to be adjusted differently for the same range shot. Recoil in game should not return to on-target so well. This increases the need for a spotter for follow up shots after a miss. The spotter should have a mildot reticle spotting scope centered on the target and tell the shooter where the bullet splashed so the shooter can adjust his follow up shot to be on target. Currently it's way to easy to do as a single shooter. Due to accuracy and velocity degradation I would like to see DayZ adopt a damage model where shots are more likely to miss at extreme ranges and do far less damage based on MOA. The AS50 [for example] is listed as a 1.5MOA shooting solution [pretty horrid for sniping]. At 1000 meters it's far more likely to simply graze a human size target than provide a direct kill hit. A headshot being mostly improbable. Running these calculations requires very little (almost none) overhead at all and could easily be factored into the game. In fact, there's a mod for ArmA called ACE which does some of this, as well as other great changes to other areas of game play. The simplicity of sniping in this game steals away from its authenticity more so than it does when playing regular ArmA missions where everyone gets their gear from the beginning. Until you get that gear you're just a target. You better forget about the zombies and just run, because the snipers know you're there, and you're easy to hit if you're not moving. Zombies are going to kill you slowly [if they even catch you], the sniper has an unrealistic ability to end you most instantly. Running [by itself] isn't enough to throw the sniper, partially due to the issues I listed above [especially warpage and recoil], but also because it's not hard to note the distance a target runs in mils while counting the time it's going to take the bullet to get to them, then simply lead them by that many mils and shoot. I've made enough 700m sprinting headshots in game [that I know I never would have made in real life] to know it's way too easy in game. I would like to see DayZ at least adopt a skill level per server [like ArmA has with recruit, veteran, expert, etc] in which the expert level has realistic ballistics and sniping mechanics. I think most players would appreciate this as when they're fresh spawns trying to work their way up to the good loot they aren't going to be such easy targets for snipers, and because of the difficulty required to accurately snipe there won't be nearly as many, certainly not as many effective ones. Likewise, those who really want to snipe in the game would love the challenge of learning the craft. After all, it's how difficult and unforgiving that DayZ challenge is that draws most of us to it, and learning external ballistics isn't really rocket science. There are even numerous applications for PC, Android, iOS, and even Palm to calculate your shots. I currently use Shooter on Android [in real-life] to generate range cards for my rifle at different temperatures at my altitude. I made some remarks about the availability of rangefinders (and other gear) on reddit and was told by someone basically not to be a carebear and learn mildots. My argument was that rangefinders should be more available, and that mildots aren't nearly as useful in the game as they are in real life where there are several common things you can measure and use for rangefinding via mildot. Getting accurate range off a distant prone target where you're guessing the height isn't nearly as accurate as measuring the mils of the stop sign, car wheel, or door frame he's next to, which you know the exact size of. Not to mention the problems introduced when mildot rangefinding at an angle.. By then I had a rangefinder for a while and used it to reverse measure some common things in DayZ, such as the window frame of the firehouse, the store glass, different doors and windows on different structures, vehicle wheels, etc. So I could mildot different items from my hide and draw range-card maps to different things. I knew if someone was by the store they were 800 meters away, with a glance at my card. While his comment was funny [considering], his spirit of not wanting DayZ to turn CoD is something I agree with. If you want that kind of sniping and unbalance and unrealism then go play any other FPS. Without changes like these to make sniping more difficult/realistic the realism of the survival aspect for the non-sniper will suffer. TL;DR: I put time and thought into this. Don't like effort and earned accomplishment? Then this game isn't for you anyway. Read it, you'll probably learn some shit even if you don't agree with it. P.S. Rocket, thanks so much for DayZ. I had all but given up on everything except ArmA/ACE until this came along. The environment and survival/scavenging portion of this post-collapse scenario has me hooked. I would still love to see what that article I read claimed was your original vision, basically DayZ w/o the zombies. I'd play both of them to death.