phyaran

I'm merely suggesting this as a mechanism for two or more players to agree to mark themselves in a logical in-game manner so they can more easily identify each other. Based on Rocket's Eurogamer Expo presentation the extent to which you can customise your character will be more based upon function than aesthetics, you'll take a jacket because it keeps you warm, not because it looks good. To that end while people will look a lot more different from each other than they currently do, some easy way to identify each other would still be beneficial. As I outlined in the OP, this system raises different identification risks in return for the benefit it gives. Communication is still very much key (as it should be). I do have to disagree with you though MichaelVoodoo, pretty much my entire forum started playing when the mod was released, meeting up with a decent number of people is very achievable and on countless occasions I've met up with 5 or so other players from my group. As a semi-related communications note, personally I'd love to see radios implemented within the game, with a wide range of channels but no way to lock your channel so anyone could listen in. This would promote the production within your group of code words, pre-agreed backup channels and so forth if you think your comms are being intercepted. Alas the widespread use of TS would make such a system moot since no-one would bother taking the risk if they don't have to.

Ok, I've done a fairly extensive check with the search feature to see if this has been suggested before but can't find it so here goes. Essentially, I suggest the ability to tie coloured pieces of cloth to your player character (arm, head, chest, legs etc) as a makeshift group identifier. Your player could rip off a piece of cloth (possibly from a dead body, possibly from your own clothes) and colour it with blood, makeshift dye, grass/dirt or other colouring agent and tie it to your body so your friends can see more quickly at a glance whether you're part of their group or not. I've considered that this system would not be feasible on a large scale if there were only a few selections of colour or positioning, as there would essentially only be a very finite number of combinations, however if the game were to permit multiple cloths in multiple positions (within reason) it would be relatively simple to create a marker for your group which allows you to identify each other at a glance without worrying about using the same marker as someone else, and without ever fully removing the possibility of blue on blue, mistaken identity or false positives. It's also a logical behaviour for groups of survivors in such a situation to do, and can be pulled off with just tools immediately available. The group would still need to put effort into establishing a convention for their markings, and collecting enough materials so that their whole team could be marked accurately, and partially marked groups will still have the imperative of avoiding friendly fire on their as yet unmarked comrades. Some colours would logically be very easy to obtain, such as red, green, brown etc, others could be more difficult to obtain by mixing materials found in the field. Rarer colours would thus be more valuable as they would give less chance of another group having that colour, while more common colours are easier to obtain for everyone. I want everything to follow logically, and reflect how those colours could be generated with the basest resources available to a survivor. Further, groups would have to balance the identifiability of their marker with its impact on their camo. Obviously if you have arms and legs covered in red cloth you'll be really easy to identify but also really easy for others to spot. And yes other players would potentially be able to see your group's marker and match it in order to pass into your group that little bit more easily (I don't know about you but we'd always tend to notice if there was one more person than normal in the group), but fact is that'd be a genuine possibility and a genuine risk in the real world. I would prefer a simple aesthetic system such as this to a complex or imposed group system which cuts the immersion of dayz by overlaying an IFF filter or other system. I don't think it should degenerate into people covering themselves with different coloured cloths looking stupid and unrealistic, and I don't want this because I think avoiding friendly fire is "too hard", it's just a logical step which I personally would take if I were to find myself in such a circumstance. So yeah, that's my suggestion for a nonintrusive and thematic group support system. Please give any comments, suggestions, ideas and feedback.

In my experience (I can't speak from a game mechanic perspective) using ctrl+alt+del and ending the arma2oa.exe process is *more likely* to prevent permanent gear over-write than using abort (also I've seen people describing other situations with hackers where the abort button is greyed out, so not even trying to use it saves time in the event that they have disabled the button). Also being quick is potentially a factor (if you can kill the game before it writes to hive you're more likely to be in the clear), so if your computer chugs on ctrl+alt+del and takes ages to load task manager you're probably better off using abort. Alt+F4 hasn't worked for me in-game for months. This is merely an observation, I can't say for sure that it is indeed more reliable or whether it's just happened to be the case when I've observed it, but it's still standard practice for me to ctrl+alt+del in case of hacking instead of aborting.

Was on the server when this happened, can confirm the details. I ctrl+alt+del'd out and escaped gear overwrite but I observed the dance animation with loss of controls. As I logged I noticed the gun on my back had changed, and was also a KSVK. Didn't check gear menu before logging.

Date/Time: 30/6/2012 ~12:40PM GMT What happened: Logged in to find all my gear (including pack and all contents) had disappeared. Ghillie suit skin retained. Where you were: 98-122 Hillside between Elektro and Topolka Dam. What you were doing: Logged in lying under a bush. *Current installed version: DayZ 1.7.1.5 Arma2 Beta build 93965 *Server(s) you were on: ANZ 10 *Your system specs: Intel Core2Duo E8500@3.16Ghz MSI P45-NEO3-FR MSI Radeon HD4870 4GB Ram @ 800Mhz *Timeline of events before/after error: Logged out from US125 with group of comrades approximately 10 minutes previously, attempted multiple times to log into a server suitable for our intentions (hunting), rest of the group settled on US125, I joined them after eventually successfully joining, and found all my gear gone. Immediately logged out in case the lack of gear was a misread which could be prevented from becoming permanent. Logged into US125 (last known stable server I was on), to find gear still gone.