Gibbonici

I don't. I think seeing other players' humanity would mean the game would be playing a large part of itself for us. Figuring out whether you can trust someone is a huge part of DayZ, and it takes balls and trust in your own intuition. It's not easy and the game would be diminished if it were made so.

Why not? See my previous post. I've been playing for a while now and have been gunned down maybe ten or so times. I still let encounters with others play out, and communicate when I feel I need to. I'll also shoot if I have to, but *only* if I have to.

This is a great idea. It would also be cool if the Examine Body thing (or whatever the option is) tied in with it, so if you stumbled across a dead player in the game you could see if it was someone you knew. It's a tiny thing really but it would be a very nice little detail I reckon.

It had been a good day. I'd survived a couple of encounters with bandits, found a dead guy with beans and a compass, and had struck lucky in Stary Sobor coming away with a full set of equipment and an assault rifle. As I was leaving Stary Sobor, I heard gunshots close by and a couple of zombies ran past to find the source of them. I stood up and made my way through the houses and out toward the woods above the town. I found a vantage between two trees and stared down at the town with my newly acquired binoculars. There was a guy on the main street, heavily armed and surrounded by dead zombies. I watched him for a minute or so and then two other guys came down the street and joined him. Not wanting to hang around in such obvious woods, I decided to head east toward Berezino, checking out nearby Novy Sobor on the way. I took a long route round to approach the town from the eastern end. I didn't want those three guys from Stary Sobor behind me while I checked the town out. This way, if they did come into Novy Sobor at least they'd be in front of me. So I came off the hill and crept into the small wood by the eastern-most house in Novy Sobor. It was looking good; there were several open buildings nearby, which meant loot and boltholes should I alert any zombies. I had a good look around to make sure there were no half-hidden hoppers or crawlers (or worse, bandits), then I crept up to the house. I got inside and was about to check the rooms when I saw something move through one of the windows. It was another player, well armed and well aware of me. I raised my rifle and stared over the barrel at him. He did the same and for a few moments we faced each other with both of our lives in the balance. I didn't want to shoot him, partly because I didn't want to alert the zombies I'd seen around the back of the house and partly because I'm not the kind of guy to kill people 'just in case.' At the same time though, I knew he could shoot at any given moment. Self-preservation kicked in. I ducked below the window and started backing up to the front door with my rifle trained on the back door in case he came in after me. I slipped out and moved slowly and quietly to the side of the house. I peeked around the corner, weapon raised, but he wasn't there. I started crouch-walking away from the house, facing forward, moving backward. I was just about at the open shed when I heard the strangulated cry of a nearby zombie. I slipped inside the shed just as the zombie swung into view. I absolutely didn't want to give my position away, but the zombie was on me. I slung my rifle, took out my pistol and shot the zombie in the head. I left the shed without even checking it for loot. My luck held out; not only had my gunshot not alerted any more zombies, but I was also out of sight of the house and the other player. Across the yard there was a barn and further to my right a long cattle shed, both decent places to find supplies. The one snag was the fifteen or so zombies which shambled between them and my shed. I watched them as they moved, waiting for the moment when I could sneak between them with at least a chance of not being spotted. All the while I was desperately conscious of the other player who might be moving to outflank me after hearing my pistol shot. The moment came and I crouch-walked across the yard, watching the nearest zombies with my pistol raised. I don't think I breathed once as I went. I got inside the barn unnoticed and let out a sigh of relief. I turned to look back the way I came and saw the house directly opposite. Through one of the windows I saw the other other guy sneaking, his own rifle raised, evidently searching the building for me. Conscious of how visible I'd be against the white-walled building outside the other barn door behind me, I moved to the edge of the barn to minimise my silhouette. The other guy moved past the window and appeared at the next one. I raised my rifle and drew a perfect bead on him. I could've ended it right there and then - two or three shots and he'd be my concern no longer. But there were zombies to consider, and my conscience. Not to mention the three guys I'd seen in Stary Sobor... My finger hovered over the mouse button, my palm sweaty with the tension of the moment. I let out a long sigh through gritted teeth and went to the keyboard instead. "Guy in the house in Novy Sobor," I typed. "You friendly?" I put my hand back on the mouse and waited for a reply. He was still in the window, no longer moving. A message came up in chat: "Friendly," it said. "Cool," I typed, "I was worried for a moment then." "Are there any beans in here?" he asked. "I dunno, I saw you through the window and backed off before I had chance to look," I replied. "Did you get zombie aggro?" he asked. "I got one," I typed. It was stupid really, tempting fate like that. Such was my sense of relief at the guy not being a bandit that I had completely forgotten the golden rule of barns - stay away from the walls. Close by, just outside, a zombie growled with sudden interest. I moved into the middle of the barn and listened for the angry zombie's movements. It turned out to be one of those clever ones. As it reached the little side door it stopped, turned and came shambling in toward me. There was nothing for it, I had to shoot. The other fourteen or so zombies were out of the calculation. I switched back to my pistol and fired. My first shot missed by a whisker but my second hit home. It flopped to the ground and an uncomfortable number of zombies cried out with murderous rage outside in the yard. They were in before I knew it, six at the wide back door and four or five at the side door. I didn't even bother trying for headshots, I just blasted away with my M1911, giving them one shot each and moving to the next before going back to ones I'd missed first time. I risked a quick glance behind me and saw more coming in through the two doors behind me. It seemed as if the entire undead population of Novy Sobor were coming for me. My pistol clicked dry and I switched to my rifle. I threw it onto full auto and began firing short bursts into the swarming mass of undead fury that poured into the barn. I emptied my mag, reloaded and turned my attention to the zombies behind me. I heard a few shots, several zombies dropped and the other guy ran in between the rest of them. He crouched down next to me and started firing at the zombies behind me. It became a massacre. The more we fired, the more zombies poured in, and the more zombies that poured in, the more we fired. I don't know how long we were fighting them off for, but I'd long switched to my pistol before they stopped coming. The last few stragglers came in and we dispatched them in short order. I reloaded weapons while the other guy searched the barn. "You still need beans?" I asked. "Yeah," he replied. "Check my pack, there should be some in there." "Thx," he said. He came up behind me and rummaged in my pack, then I heard him tucking into beans. "I never ran out of beans before," he said. "Yeah, sucks when it happens don't it?" I typed. We crouched in that barn for a while, two kindred spirits surrounded by death in the middle of a world that belonged to the dead. "I'm gonna split," he said, "the shooting probably attracted the scum." "I hear that," I typed. "Thanks for the beans," he said. "No problem, thanks for the support," I typed back. "See you around." He went east toward Guglovo and I went north, back into the hills.

One thing to remember when considering the psychological effects of killing someone is that our characters are the sole survivors of a global zombie apocalypse. Given the things they have seen I would think that they're pretty numb to death and brutality by the time we get to play them. For me, DayZ is more like The Road than anything else. Everyone alive is fucked up to some degree or other and all the behaviours we have in-game, from living in the woods and avoiding others to camping in Cherno shooting random people for beans and giggles, are consistant with that world and situation. I'm not a bandit (I've only ever killed one person and that was life or death) but I think the DayZ experience is richer for the threat of being PKed. Sure, it sucks when it happens but we're all going to die sometime. That's kind of the point. Besides, all good apocalypses should have psychos running around in their wake; it's the law.

Done. The results should be interesting.

I think the temperature mechanic has a lot of potential but it feels mis-paced at the moment. Night and day last 12 hours, the map takes a considerable to traverse and it can easily rain for 3 hours at a time. This sets the pace of the game. But temperature drops far too quickly for this time-scale and the weather conditions. Sure, if it was a -10c blizzard then it would fit - but it's just a bit of rain. If temperature dropped at a tenth of its current rate it'd be much more realistic, especially if there were a variety of potential effects as it falls.

I've played for a couple of weeks and have only killed one other player, and that was because he shot me first at close quarters inside a building. I've never been shot by someone approaching with their weapon raised, I've always gone on the principle that if someone was pointing a gun at me at 50yds without shooting then they're probably not going to shoot at 10yds - and I've always been right on that. Shooting on sight is weakness, IMO, and doing it out of potential self-preservation makes it more likely that you'll be killed by a player later on. Why? Because every time you shoot someone who has no actual malicious intentions, you make them more malicious next time. Killing people is easy, holding back your fear and letting trust built in those situations is hard. Every time I've been killed by other players it's because I was a risk-free target - they saw me and saw an easy, unaware kill. I've got out of those situations many times too, if I see them before they kill me I'll shoot back a couple of times then leg it.

I've not been in 1.5.8.2 yet, but I know from lots of wildcamping and trekking experience in real life that you can almost always find something to make a fire with when it's dry. Perhaps instead of having to find wood in-game for all fires, you should only need it for lighting fires in the rain, representing the need for a bit of dry kindling to get started.

The old bearded guy is in definitely in there. That's my character's face.

Totally agree, and I've been playing games since the 1970s.

I'm loving the game so far, and the only things that annoys me about are all due to its alpha status so I'm not really annoyed by them. Those glitchy, buggy bits are to be expected, and in all honesty, I'm surprised there's so few given how early in it's development DayZ is. Like the above posters, I've lone wolfed a lot. The larger zombie spawns caused me some problems at first but now I can generally get in and out of most places with minimum fuss. The respawn rates cause problems but I wouldn't want the number of zombies reduced. Sure, there are some places that I have to walk away from at times because the zombies own the place in too great numbers, but that's how it should be in a zombie apocalypse. It's their world now, not ours. Funnily enough, I was teaming with a mate at the weekend and found it immeasurably more difficult to get in and out of towns because we were twice as likely to attract the attention of unspotted zombies. We ended up sieged-in in a barn on the edge of town with barely any ammo between us. We logged there for later but when we came back our position had been reset back to the coast (alpha stuff).

Since I started spamming V at the tops of ladders, the world of ladder climbing has been my unbroken legged oyster.

I read somewhere that the spawn rate isn't working as intended at the moment and is one of the things that's due to get fixed in the imminent 1.5.8 update.

I'd be happy to buy the box and pay a monthly fee as long as the servers were run by the company and updates came regularly. I also be happy with a buy the box and pay for my shit, as long as said shit was cosmetic and/or service based (paying for extra characters and such like).

I imagine the scatter pattern would be quite tight.

First time I got a Lee Enfield, I thought cool! This is the gun that saved Rourke's Drift. So I slope out of town and head back into the hills to do a bit of food shopping in the villages. It's a rainy evening, an hour or so before dark but it's still pretty gloomy. I leg it up the hill into the treeline, zig-zagging to evade any cheeky little bandits who might spot me running. I get into the forest unscathed and start wandering in the vague direction of somewhere I thought I knew. Eventually I spot a rootop over a rise at the edge of the forest and I sneak up to have a look. It a small town, I don't remember the name of it but I do remember the number of zombies that occupied it. There must have been 30 or so. Luckily they were pretty spread out and I could see from the top of the rise that there weren't any hoppers or those nasty little crawling bastards lurking in the long grass. I plan a route down into the village and head off. I crouch walk to a tree about halfway down then raise my Lee Enfield to continue walking and aiming. I get to the first building and make my way around it to the main road. I glance around the corner to see if there's any obviously enterable building nearby. I see none so I continue along the road, crouching and walking the whole way. I come to a house with a fenced yard and slip through the gate, fully intending to sneak around the house and move along the outside edge of the village. I get to the corner of the house and look round the corner. Not five feet away there's a zombie. I duck back around the corner and sidle backwards but it's too late. The zombie runs out to the fence, growling and snarling like a mad dog. He turns and charges at me, I raise the Lee Enfield and fire. Before the zombie hits the ground I hear a dozen others nearby as the shot alerts them. I try to find a decent position to defend from but they're already coming. I line the gate up in the Lee Enfield's iron sights and fire into the raging mass of zombies that is gathering there. Round after round hits them, the rifle's report echoing through the village and beyond, and zombies fall left and right. I can't believe how many are trying to get to me. No matter how many I kill, the horde doesn't seem to diminish. The Lee Enfield ammo runs out and I switch to my Makarov, which turns out to be empty. I reload while moving backwards and end up with my back to the fence. The zombies are pouring through now and before I can get another shot off they're on me. I'm bleeding, my legs are broken, my vision is all over the place with the pain. And I pass out. Ah shit, I think as I bleed out under the scrum of zombies, it was the Martini-Henry that saved Rourke's Drift.

Yeah, I don't think it's working at all at the mo.

If they could see anything on their own servers you'd be able to play on yours.