beeman

Also, the 1866 didn't fire shotgun shells. Just sayin'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_1866#Winchester_Model_1866 It fired essentially pistol rounds >_> But I agree. If you've got two shotguns that both use twelve gauge rounds, make the ammo be universal. Maybe pick them up in stacks of five but you have to reload shells manually or something. I'm pretty sure that's how arma works normally. I guess I wouldn't know, I never use shotguns when I play normal arma >_> Either way, the difference between an m1014 and an 870 should be largely personal preference. More controlled-fire and a tighter choke vs less accuracy but semi-automatic firing. Edit 'cause leechman posted nanoseconds before me: I think all ammo should be more rare than it currently is. Especially /good/ ammo like shotgun rounds. Slugs in particular. Buckshot can be common 'cause...well, hunters everywhere. Maybe reduce its damage per pellet a bit or something to balance it out.

I've seen this in regular ArmA2, though it's extremely rare. I've only had it happen to me once or twice. I timed out of a friend's game and reconnected...or he saved the game and then rehosted the following day, loading our progress and instead of keeping the server variables from the day before, it was completely upside-down. For him, the custom settings stuck and loaded properly but when I connected, the server loaded the default configs, so I was on a 24 hour clock and he was on a like a 4 hour clock. Real weird man. Maybe that's what's causing this with DayZ. Too bad servers can't have 100% uptime >_>

I already owned ArmA...and ArmA2 since like a year after it came out. Then I got ArmA X recently just 'cause I love ArmA so damn much. If you like the mod, it's really similar to how straight ArmA plays. Well, there's vast differences but the core gameplay is the same. in ArmA, you're a squad leader and you go out and kill the enemy while capturing towns and using what money you earn doing so to upgrade your loadout, build your team's base up or whatever else. DayZ is basically that but a lot more lonesome and free-form...and scary >_>

I try to stick with two of my close buddies. We talk on TeamSpeak while we play this and any other game. Definitely trying to suck some of my other friends into the mod. We're for the most part pacifists. I personally couldn't shoot someone without feeling bad about it. Though I did unload on a bandit on this one server yesterday out of pure fright. I saw that headwrap, man. Operation Arrowhead taught me to fill those takistanis with lead >_>

I think selling the game for twenty to thirty dollars would be fair. No subscription because that's just silly in this day and age. Allow private servers, but not on peoples' PCs perhaps. If that's possible. Like...I don't know, only let people host if they can buy a server and pay for it, you know? Or just sell the server files separately. I don't know, somethin'. That said, if this were to be developed into a retail product, I'd like to see a non-bohemia produced engine get used. Don't get me wrong, I love ArmA to death, but imagine this game in CryEngine. I'd melt with bliss. Even Unreal would be good, I think. Those engines not only look better, but they run better on a wider range of hardware, unlike anything Bohemia has made thusfar. Also, you'd need to do a kickstarter. There will be people who will donate hundreds or thousands of dollars to the project just because it's so popular right now(and will continue to be so). But using a different engine is a must. I prefer CryEngine because it's soooo pretty and runs so well. Just throwin' that out there >.>

The problem with lag is that Bohemia's never been great at optimizing their engines. I remember ArmA1 was horrible no matter what system you tried to run it on. You also had to modify your graphics options in a specific way to get the highest performance possible. Also, somehow any city they put into a game is like a black hole of performance. I mean, ArmA2 is a lot better than it used to be(way back when it first came out) but damn. It's still pretty bad :P That said, the size of the maps is what makes ArmA so good. Well, that in addition to a million other fine details >_> Here's hoping they put a little more effort into cleaning up their code and optimizing everything for ArmA3.

The reason there aren't currently female avatars in ArmA is because Bohemia doesn't want to put women on the front lines. Not because they're sexist or hate women, but because they don't want to see them brutalized by war. It's a chivalry thing, I believe. Though most people won't accept it as such >_> As for me, I couldn't care less either way. There's addons for female soldiers(though they typically look a bit weird) out there. The problem with that, though, would be that you'd have to mod not only the player model, but the armor, weapons, animations, voices. All that junk. Maybe not weapons, but definitely animations in regards to each type of weapon. I think cementing features, stability and content are a much higher priority than adding customization things like this. Or, I believe they should be >_>