JimiEZ (DayZ)

Well, d'uuuhh night time is *supposed* to be a lot more difficult to manage, especially if you're a new Beanie. Night time is just as it should be, except the blatant gamma/brightness cheating should be prevented somehow. Think about it: if you were a survivor in "real" zombie outbreak, how would you feel about taking a hike through the zombie infested landscape in the middle of the night? Hell, how would you feel going through some unknown woods in the middle of the night on your own, even without a zombie outbreak? Night is supposed to be scary, difficult and generally horribly sucky (especially for new players). The obvious solution is not to go out when it's dark, especially without proper equipment. Incredible that I even have to spell it out. If you still insist going out when it's dark, well then at least make sure you've geared up during the day. Popping a flare, using chemilights or a flashlight enable you to navigate in the darkness but they also give out your location and this is *exactly* how it's supposed to go.

There are bikes already in ARMA, but I think one reason Rocket has left them out is that they would actually be kind of overpowered, since they make zero noise, require no petrol and can actually move faster than most cars off-road. Tons of bikes lying around would sort of shrink the map pretty quickly. Then again, you would be pretty visible on a bike, so one way of balancing them would be to add a very high zombie visibility to the bikes (like more bars than doing a full sprint).

Sure, you can, if you don't mind sucking like a vacuum cleaner on steroids. :D It's a PC game, designed for PC controllers. If you use a gamepad for infantry movement, you're going to have a bad time.

"Baaww, I can't use my cheat-o-vision"

I'm absolutely loving the new zombie count. For the last couple of weeks it's been wayyy to low on all servers, but now zombies finally are a threat and challenge instead of a slight nuisance. It's fantastic! And to the people whining about getting mobbed after shooting one zombie, here's a thought: don't shoot it? It would appear their perception has changed as well, because I managed to sneak around a lot better than in 1.5.5 or 1.5.6, so while it was at times tense, looting even a large city absolutely brimming with zombies was quite doable. Just have to have some patience and situational awareness.

Agreed. I don't even bother checking barns, regular houses etc. any more because I know there's never anything worth my while in there. Would be just a waste of my military grade bullets to kill the zeds outside for some Makarov mags and beans.

It's simple really. They are so conditioned and used to constant hand holding, instant gratification and linear clear cut structures that they probably find the lack of these things genuinely terrifying and thus opposable.

For me the tension comes from the very fact that bumping into other players is fairly rare, when you're out in the wilderness. If it was a constant occurrence, it wouldn't be nearly as exciting as it is now, when you know that running into someone is fairly unlikely, but still it is possible. You can find yourself face to face with another player any time and anywhere, and you might have hostile eyes upon you at any given moment. Also, you can't just mechanistically calculate that the total area is a and the amount of players is b and thus the density is c and thus the odds of running into are d, because that is assuming that players are somehow evenly distributed along the whole map, which isn't even close to reality. Barring just randomly travelling in the middle of the woods, you probably have a reason of going to some place. Chances are someone else thought of the exact same thing and is there for that same reason, which means that the chances of running into other players is actually a lot higher than simple density calculations will let you believe. So no, map size definitely isn't too big and there shouldn't be more than 50 players per server, unless you plan on completely ruining the atmosphere of the mod.

For me the tension comes from the very fact that bumping into other players is fairly rare, when you're out in the wilderness. If it was a constant occurrence, it wouldn't be nearly as exciting as it is now, when you know that running into someone is fairly unlikely, but still it is possible. You can find yourself face to face with another player any time and anywhere, and you might have hostile eyes upon you at any given moment. You can't just mechanistically calculate that the total area is a and the amount of players is b and thus the density is c and thus the odds of running into are d, because that is assuming that players are somehow evenly distributed along the whole map, which isn't even close to reality. Barring just randomly travelling in the middle of the woods, you probably have a reason of going to some place. Chances are that someone else thought of the exact same thing and is there for that same reason as you, which means that the chances of running into other players is actually a lot higher than simple density calculations would let you believe. So no, map size definitely isn't too big and there shouldn't be more than 50 players per server, unless you plan on completely ruining the atmosphere of the mod.

You TPV noobs do realise that you actually can look around and maintain situational awareness in first person by pressing down the ALT key? Also, if you get motion sickness from the head bob in first person, well you deserve it for being such a damnable amateur and doing a full sprint constantly. Press X for crouched run and TADAAA: completely smooth-as-a-babbys-ass-no-headbobs-were-given movement mode.

They should definitely go. So boring to be able to tell a murderer from a mile away. However, there should be some sort of a replacement system that enables people to distinguish each other, as I have suggested here.

I too find the inability to properly distinguish characters from one another to be one of the biggest shortcomings of the whole mod currently. Yeah, I know you can change the face a bit in the menu, but that's by no means enough differentiation, as it doesn't work further away and it's still kind of hard to distinguish your friends quickly. I think the Minecraft system might be a too complicated, with the server constantly having to fetch texture information etc. but why not at least give each new character a random skin from the several civilian (maybe even some of the takistani civilian skins from OA) and maybe insurgent / guerilla skins already available in ARMA 2 / OA and have it persist until death? Yeah, I realize that not all of them are as equally good in camouflage etc. and some people would still often look the same, but I think it would still be much better than the current Attack Of The Clones we have. You could then probably get rid of the bandit skin as well, since people could actually warn others, something like: "Watch out for the lumberjack in Elektro".

The OP is acting like a dick, but he does have a point. I think it would be best if new characters didn't have morphine or pills. Especially not pills, given how bloody rare they are otherwise. It's actually kind of backwards: you can find morphine from every second barn but pills are way rarer. To make things even more ridiculous, morphine is next to useless as you can't even use it if you're not "hurt enough". Just doesn't make any sense. So yeah, best solution would be either to take the pills away from new characters OR make them somewhat more abundant in general. Or both, I mean, what modern household doesn't have some painkillers lying around these days? However, morphine should be taken away completely from newbs and made more rare, BUT also more useful.

Nope, not in the least. Given how fast humanity currently regens, it's absolutely trivial to sweat off the humanity hit of even a couple of murders in an hour or two. So in order to remain a bandit, you really need to be killing normal survivors at a regular basis. The odds that the bandit you're killing just happens to be one those many alleged "self defence killers" who've just recently turned bandit are pretty damn slim, so 99 % of the time, you're shooting a killer who deserves nothing less. -- Though I have to say that the whole bandit skin system should go, makes things way too boring to be able to tell the killers right away from their looks.

Like others have said: get better or get out. It really is that simple. Also, "bohoo, bohoo, but if the game feels hostile to new players, the mod won't be as popular blah blah :(". That's just it, I and probably many others, don't want this to be a casual friendly Disneyland - burger game experience meant for everyone. There's already plenty of that kind of games that cater for you teary eyed carebears, loaded with linearity, handhelding and "press A to be awesome" - buttons. We want *this* game to be hard, complex and absolutely brutal, so don't try to take it away from us. Got it?

Nope, DayZ is central server dependent online multiplayer only. However, if it's co-op zombie killing in ARMA 2 you're after, I'd point you towards the excellent zombie co-op missions by Cellery called The Chernarus Apocalypse. There's also a single player mission called Dawn Of The Apocalypse. There's also loads of other zombie themed mods / missions for ARMA 2, but the quality varies wildly.

Same as many others, I just generally avoid normal survivors and shoot bandits on sight, because they are nasties all of them and deserve no less. There's no good guy gregs amongst bandits, even though some of them claim so. :)