Tek (DayZ)

PvP in DayZ mod is about situational awareness. This isn't a game where you just run around as fast as you can and see who has the quickest reaction times. It's about patience, it's about understanding the situation you're in, and the most likely things that will happen. If you want to become better at PvP then you need to go PvP so you can learn the following: - line of sight - angle of attack - judging distances - weapons and what they can and cannot do - learn the weapons - weapon damages - weapon damages at range - zombie agro sensitivity - zombie spawn range - how zombies move - how zombies can give you away - your preferred gear setup - how to use terrain and structure to your advantage - and how to ambush people at the right time to limit your vulnerability

This thread sure was good for a good laugh! Some doozy statements in here. Testing this game was the best!

You want a cookie? Does that make you special? So you did kill someone in DayZ? You want a cookie? I agree'd with you up until you said your way was more difficult. Yes, you play the game your way, but just because you choose to not kill anyone and play the game "your" way doesn't make it more difficult. I could play the hero card just as easy as I play the bandit card. One way is no more difficult than the other. The only difficulty comes about due to the consequences of your choices, nothing more. If you want to act all holier than thou, you'll get no sympathy from me. All i'll do is call you out on your BS. Yes, there are other games that have better physics and graphics. But none of those games offer the sandbox, random feel that DayZ gives you. I have to make a decision on if I want to go into that town down there and chance running into someone, or opening myself up to a sniper on the hill. The situation is such that you have to be much more aware of your surroundings than in other games. Then you have to figure out your strategy and tactics based on your gear, which can change all the time... not so in those other games. Nice to know your true feelings on anyone who doesn't play "your" way.

This is why finding a good "legit" server is so important and so very difficult. You have to be choosy and you have to be observant. But once you find it things are good. The problem is the server owners/admins that play favorites make it seem like all admins play favorites (which isn't the case). But perception is huge. Can you define this "too seriously" bit? What do you mean? I play this game because it's fun. But I also play to be successful. So if I use tactics that allow me get the better of you, does that mean I'm playing too seriously? Sounds like some of those bad admins that make all admins look bad. So, vehicles with thermal that are allowed in game (correct me if i'm wrong) took you out and others out not allowed to do that to players around missions? Or is that you saying that's bad form? I'm confused, because if they can buy that chopper from a vendor, then they can use that chopper how they want (without hacking). So you blew up a big clans tank and are surprised that they retaliated against you? I'm confused. If your striker was for "shits and giggles" then why did you spend 12 briefcases of gold for one? Seems like a gross waste of money. I will never play on hive servers again. Hacking and ghosting is ridiculous. Private servers allow admins to control/kick hackers, and you have no ghosting issues. Like I said in the beginning...you have to find the servers with good admins who have actual integrity and morals. Those are the servers you put in favorites.

Vanilla dayz was a flawed mod (Chernarus mainly). The novelty of the game is what drove it for so long. Now that there are other mods, DayZ has become much more entertaining and enjoyable. That of course is my opinion.

If you hate the game for that reason, then you shouldn't be playing the game. Honestly, DayZ IS about PvP, whether you like it or not. The game is about survival from EVERYTHING. If you cannot learn to avoid situations that put you in a KoS position, then that is your fault. I seek out PvP, and do KoS. You have no idea how easy players like you make it for players like me. Simple understandings of your surroundings, and how to move through towns to not avoid drawing attention to yourself increases your survivability by a lot. But you will never learn that ability because you're on here crying for servers that have no PvP, therefore you will always be easy pickings. If you want a no PvP server, than do as was suggested, set up your own server, and run it how you want. I think it's BS to skirt the way the game is designed, but it'd be your server you're paying for, so have fun.

My responses in green. Bottom line is this is a video game in a sand box world where people can do as they wish. If someone wants to spend their days chopping tree's down they can. If they want to collect and horde as much gear as they can, they have that right to. If someone wants to go around trying to heal everyone they see, they can do that to. If someone wants to shoot any person they see on sight, they have that right to do so as well. If it wasn't allowed then the developers would not have put any weapons in into the game. In short, people are free to play the game as they see fit because the game allows them to. It is not indicative of what would happen in the real world, nor does it mean that someone who shoots on sight is a jerk or an ass-hat. Yes, there are jerks and ass-hats in game, but that tends to be how the person behaves, not because they shot you.

What map is the server? Chernarus?

My replies in Green. Miffy is correct when he asks WTF went wrong when they delayed, reinvented, and then released a product that is worse than the mod. When you already have a base to work from, why fix things that are not broke? IMO Dean has taken what was a good idea and let it crash due to what they have released.

Dang respawning kills my realism in game.

Uhh, because KOS is a choice in the game and not a game design/bug that prevents people from playing. Just because someone is KOS does not mean they did not get to play the game. They were KOS due to their own problem of not having situational awareness. That is not game-breaking when that person just didn't do what they needed to do to survive. And that is regardless of how geared/ungeared they are or how fresh of a spawn they are. I can escape just fine as a fresh spawn because I am actually aware of my surroundings and any potential threats and threat areas. So I act accordingly. But because other people can't figure out simple survivability skills it is game breaking to be KOS? Sandbox games give people choices. The choice to KOS that person. The choice to loot a house. But if I choose to loot a house I now have the choice to just rush in without looking around, or the choice of looking around while I go in there. The choice of how I exit the house will also have an impact on whether or not I am KOS. I am someone who does KOS. And it amazes me how oblivious a lot of people are that I shoot. It's baffling. In a game where your primary goal is to survive, and you know people KOS, how can you not be always looking around and playing in a way to make being shot difficult?

The issue isn't a dead body disappearing (though that bug does need to be fixed). The issue is people avoiding being killed, attacked, interacting in any way shape or form through the use of killing the game. This prevents them from being killed/attacked, whether they are geared or not geared. Depending on the person, and what that person was doing, will lead to them just going about their business on a different server or reposition on a different server and then going back onto that previous server. That is a serious problem that needs to be addressed or we're going to just keep going down the horrible road we had with the official vanilla dayz hive in the mod.

No, but private hives prevent people from switching servers to reposition and then log back to the original server to attack someone/some group with their new advantage. It's a bullshit move just as bad as combat logging. I know this thread is about combat logging, but there was a reason I stopped playing on the official hives once private servers came out. And it's becoming a problem in SA now as well. People who can't stand to lose have to combat log and/or server hop to reposition. And I never understood fresh spawns complaining about being killed. THEY DIDN'T LOSE ANYTHING! And it's even faster to respawn in SA than the mod. The issue is people do not know how to handle losing. So they cry.

And that's how those players want to play. It's there time, it's their $30 dollars they spent on this game, it's their choice to do as they see fit. Nothing you say do should "force" them to play other than HOW they want to. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it wrong. This is getting repetitive. People will play HOW they want to play. You are not the god to tell them how they should play.

I fail to see any difference in shooting the person when you have the chance versus tailing them for X-amount of time and then shooting them. If I see someone, and I know I have the advantage, i'll shoot them when the moment presents itself. Whether that's the instance I see them or 20 minutes later after tailing them makes no difference. Shooting someone is shooting someone in this game. It makes no difference if you think it was "KOS" or some other arbitrary reason you want to add to the mix to complicate your way of thinking on this.

Alternate playstyles? Some people KOS, some people don't, some people hoarde loot, some people want to kill as many zombies as they can, some people want to save people with bloodbags, some people want to rob people, some people want to do this or that.... So because some people hate KOS players, you want to advocate for some sort of safety net for the people who don't like KOS? The BEST thing about this game is that it's open world. There are no safe zones, there are no mechanics to allow someone to be safe (except logging off). That is what makes DayZ so great! it isn't some stupid arbitrary mechanic that allows someone to attack one type of person but can't attack some other type of person. Games are best when everyone has equal weight in the world. Games get ruined when a group (carebears) want safety because they don't like PvP (waaaah!) and do everything they can to get it nerfed or taken from the game. Guess what, the game is about survival, not carebear kumbaya singing. If you get shot you didn't survive, better luck next time. And yes, in the real world things would be different... but it's a video game, so people can do WHATEVER they want in the game.

Right... so it's some other person's fault that you had to kill someone else on a beach... can we just blame Rocket for creating the game that led you to having to kill that someone on that beach to?

I didn't say that people are just going to go rushing in yelling BANZAI! I want to win, so even if I only have that axe, i'm going to do so in as best a position as possible. But if I lose, well, I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. So my life was meaningless while that gear I could have acquired was everything. Even if i'm fully geared, i'm going to do what I can to give myself the best tactical advantage possible so that I don't die and lose my gear. In a game where gear is hard to find, gear becomes more important than lives, so people will risk their gaming lives to acquire it, and do things to avoid situations to lose that gear. I'm sort of an exception... I hate to lose. Not because I don't want to lose my gear, but because I just hate losing. I want to win... it's my competitive nature. So if I lose my gear it doesn't bother me so much as the fact that I made a mistake somewhere in the fight to lose. I can always find that gear again someday. And for me, the moment I stopped worrying about my in-game characters life (outside of winning or losing firefights) and what gear I had acquired, was the day the game became so much more enjoyable. But that's my experience. Doesn't mean it works for everyone.

Wait, I thought I was playing a video game..? You mean to say i'm supposed to play this game like real life? The ridiculousness of your statement astounds me. No video game will ever be like real life. Ever! No matter how realistic it becomes. Why? Because I can respawn in a video game and in real life I cannot. There are a lot of things I wouldn't do in real life that I do in this game. KoS is not something I would do in real life unless we at war. Real life won't have zombies either, because well, living-dead is just something that makes for good movies and video games to make money. For the sake of discussion, if we did have a zombie apocalypse my group found ourselves looking down on another group, we wouldn't just go in guns blazing because we can. We would first ask ourselves if it is even worth while to risk our lives (real) to try and rob the group. Nothing says we have to kill them. But when you're faced with an unknown, anything can happen. Afterall, we cannot respawn if someone screws up. That's not to say someone won't get shot if they're acting aggressively. But real life does not equal a video game. No matter how you want to try to relate it, it just won't happen. People get to do things in a video game that they can't do in real life, not because that's how they are as a person in real life, but because it's a video game. If we were held accountable in real life to what we did in a video game, well, video games would be outlawed and the worlds population would be X% smaller due to the gamers being put to death via capital punishment. So then... because someone doesn't have a ready made group it is suddenly NOT that persons fault that he did not survive against a group that outnumbered him? What are you trying to say? Being prepared in all aspects is part of becoming a better gamer. It is not hard to find people to play the game with. This baffles me. People blast away at other people because of the threat they represent, etc. There is more than one way to make friends, and if doing so in game is so dangerous, then do it through other means. Forums, other guilds, generally a clan that is hosting a guild will have a TS server set up. You can hop on with them and become friends and run in their group. Unless you think using TS is cheating. For me there is no downward spiral. I play the game how I want with my friends. If I want to go stalk someone running through the hills, i'm going to go stalk them. That is the nature of the sandbox. I WANT the PvP in this game because of the PvA nature of the game. There are so many variables to account for that it makes it challenging. So for MY game, I am not looking to talk to that other person. You are correct that in "real life" fights don't happen much. Why? Because the consequences are actually consequences. I die, i'm dead. No respawn. So it's in everyone's best interest to actually look at things from all angles and determine if fighting is to you (or your groups) advantage. It may come as a shock to you, but not every fight in this video game is with the intention to loot gear. At that point it doesn't matter if your gear became damaged or not. If it is about gear, it's going to become just another challenge to take you out without damaging your gear. Shot to the head with a sniper rifle would do wonders me thinks. MY GAME is actually VERY fun when all my encounters are fights. Win OR lose it is the challenge of the fight that I enjoy. Zombies are just part of the environment I have to worry about. Players are the real challenge to survival in this game.

This is a video game. Therefore no life will ever be greater than gear. It's the nature of video games. There will always be that understanding that, well I can always respawn and try again. That's why people will risk going for axe kills on someone with a rifle. And that's the way it should be. This is still a video game afterall, not real life where death is everlasting.

This is the single greatest thing anyone can take away from this thread and any KoS thread made.

Oh I understand survival very well. I shoot you dead means I survived and you didn't. End of story. Do groups survive better? Absolutely, it's called safety in numbers. And when i'm with my group (numbers) you can be assured that the chances you are the one that does not survive go up exponentially.

Want to know an even greater secret? Those games you speak of don't have the same Player vs Area (PvE & PvP) as this game. I have to worry about Zombies, eating, drinking, sickness, AND players. It creates situations where you have to think beyond the ability of just shooting at another player. Do I have gear that would allow me to engage that player? Do I have the tactical advantage to allow me to get the drop on that player? If i'm well geared, but have low health, is it worth it for me to engage that player based on my current location/situation? Does that player have friends around? Does the player show that he has situational awareness? So many things go into playing DayZ and hunting other players than just running around and shooting someone. Think big picture, not small picture.

Very valid point... one of the huge reasons why I got extremely dissatisfied with the Chenarus map and Vanilla DayZ. This issue creates the situation that everyone complains about, bambi killing. Why is Balota, Cherno, Elektro, always so dangerous? Because everyone spawns on the coast down south. It creates an area where people are going to be at and not be very well armed, thus making it easy pickings for experienced bandits and/or well geared players to gather to prey on these players who don't have much. And yes, I am all for KoS and banditry, but I would rather it be spread out and more situational regardless of how long a person has been spawned in on that life. Now it takes forever to get North away from these high traffic/dangerous areas because you don't want to run and make yourself thirsty/hungry. Thus you compound the problem of people spawning in the south in these high traffic area's.

And all that boils down to this game is about surviving. From both zombies AND players. I come across a player, I will shoot them as long as I have the advantage to do so. I survived and that player didn't. End of story, better luck next games life. After all, this is a game of survival. Not a game of lets make friends and be merry around the campfire roasting marshmellows singing Kumbyah.