cat (DayZ)

Read some rumors about custom maps in Dayz and I would have some questions about this: 1. Does Dayz currently allow custom maps (or are they considered hacks)? 2. Will Dayz retail or mod version support custom user made maps? 3. 2 is true, will they work like in Counter-Strike, where any server can run any custom map or is there some official channel needed to have a map working and approved I am asking all of this to see wether it will be worth to start learning to use the mapping tools for ARMA2. Any official response from a developer would be very appreciated.

Was reading through this topic and now I am still confused. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/63701-lingor-island-chit-chat/ Could we get some official statement on wether custom made maps will be supported or not? By supported I mean anything from "not considered a filthy hack" to "included into the game at soem point if the quality is awesome".

Is item spawning manually placed on the landscape or does it depend on the buildings placed? The loot tables suggest it spawns items automatically based on the object.

1. What are hives? 2. Assuming I have a map I would like to introduce into the wild, how would that work? Post it on forums and see if admins pick it up? 3. Is there some official statement on that matter?

The lost paratrooper The idea is a paratrooper being dropped over chernarus. I derived 2 different ideas from this concept ------------------------ 1. Player spawn ------------------------ If lucky (or because of a reward) a player gets to spawn parachuting from the sky at a high elevation, and then will land at a random location in the game. This would mix up the spawning on the beach ------------------------ 2. Loot drop ------------------------ A AI controlled paratrooper with high end military gear will drop out of the sky and die after landing, leaving a well equipped corpse to find for everyone who spotted the parachute. This would create highly entertaining dynamic focus areas where loads of players gather to find the precious loot and inevitably fight to the death over it.

If rocket calls us "fuckers" and puffies I am going to use carebear all I want.

Stop blaming COD for everything.

Downloaded the new files. Getting kicked off every server running the newest patch

I do not give a flying flip as an enduser on what gear is allowed or not. If some guy cheats in a VSS and I happen to find it on someone's body then I will happily take it. Not my fault someone introduced the item into the game world by cheating. So everyone calm down, there is no ethical support for the concept that someone could get banned for illegal guns. Besides WTF why is there no VSS officially ingame and instead there is 100 million* winchester rifles from the bronze age of firearms? *Number slightly exagerrated for dramatic effect. Actual amount is probably 90 million winchesters spawned per square kilometer

Often while looting towns in the sout I find myself having to choose between: 1x AKM + 30 rounds 1x M1014 + 8 rounds 1x Winchester + 60 rounds + 100 million* rounds in the house next to it The same goes for handguns: Super common makarov ammo, while the 1911 is super rare. While the makarov is a realistically very common handgun in eastern europe (chernarus was modeled after part of the czech countryside), the Winchester is annoyingly ubiquitous ingame. I hate it because of that, and because it should not be that common because it is a 140 year old rifle from the old west. Therefore I would like to suggest: - Increase availability of other small handguns than the makarov (CZ61 is ingame?), because right now choosing between 1x 1911 + 1 clip or Makarov + 12 clips is not really a choice. I am not demanding more loot, just mixing it up on the low end scale. - Decrease the winchester availability and increase the availability of other smaller weapons like the MP9 or CZ61. *number slightly (0.00000001%) exagerrated for dramatic effect.

--------------------------------- Introduction --------------------------------- I just read that the bandit skins will be removed soon. At first I was thinking „WTF is he doing? Crazy! The game will be rampant deathmatch!“ Then I was thinking about my experiences from last night. I am a bandit, I hunt players. And more importantly I hunt alone. After respawning I found myself on the beach at Kamenka. It was night ingame and there was a rainstorm, visibility was low, you could make out some terrain features and it was not pitch black. So there I was, quite far away from the larger towns, with a makarov pistol and no good gear close by. Walked along the coast when I read some ingame chatter that players wanted to meet at the lighthouse and I knew there was one near. So I moved to it and saw a lit flare, I quickly extinguished my flare and moveed within 100m of the flare. A group of 5 survivors had gathered and decided to move east and loot places on the way. One player carried a flare, which provided an easy target for me to follow. So I stalked them, always a few meters outside of the flare light radius. At one point, there was a lighting which briefly illuminated everything, and it caused me to go prone. One player of teh group apparently noticed something in that bush (me) and ran towards it. When he came too close, I fired a whole clip of makarov ammo and killed him, then I quickly ran away. The others heard the shots but assumed the player ran away to kill zombies and did not bother looking for him. I kept stalking the group for some time then logged out. --------------------------------- Social dynamic --------------------------------- What is interesting about this story is the social dynamics that were displayed. I was a lone player that was out to kill them. But for lack of a good weapon I had to stalk the group, because I was outnumbered 4 to 1 (and later 5 more joined the group). So without them knowing, their pack behaviour shielded them from my attack. I would have probably caused damage with a CZ550, but anything less than a scoped rifle would have been too risky. So why am I explaining all this? --------------------------------- deal with it --------------------------------- I think I figured out what rocket is doing here. He basically confronts players with harsh situations and let's them figure it out on their own how to deal with it. By removing the bandit designation, there is no way to tell wether you can trust a stranger. So what is the only solution to handle it? The guys I stalked handled the situation, perhaps without being aware of it. It was night, my bandit skin did make no difference because I was not visible to them. Their natural instinct to band together with others for protection made it impossible for me to attack without getting at least shot at. --------------------------------- The odd --------------------------------- Let's put it into some numbers: When being alone, risking close contact with a stranger puts you into a 1:1 situation. When a group of 5 has to meet a stranger, the odd shifts to 5:1. It would be very risky in that situation for the lone player to attack as he will be outgunned. However the group has a very low risk when attacking the lone player for the same reason. Now what stops a 5 man group of shooting a lone player they meet? Nothing. The risk of getting killed when you are in a group of 5 opening fire on a lone player is very low. But hey that would open up the possibility for abuse against lone players when you are outnumbering him! Wrong! Because the lone player is a smart animal and brings his friends too! So if a 5 player group meets another 5 player group, the odds are at 1:1. So if both teams open fire on each other it will be very risky for everyone. The basic point is that a bandit player will only attack if he has the advantage over the enemy. --------------------------------- Figure it out b*tches! --------------------------------- And I think that is what rocket is trying to have us figure out: Form blobs of players, the larger the group, the less likely new contacts will try to sneak into the group and murder when someone turns their back. This way you can absorb new players into the group. Groups form the easiest among players that just respawned as they do not have any gear that would be worth fighting over, and being in a group offers protection from bandits and allows access to more contested loot areas. ----------------------------------------------------- EDIT I think it will end up in complete deathmatch, except for if you play with people you know.

The problem is however that this community runs on servers paid by private server owners. So I find it a bit arrogant to to make server owners jump through hoops like this (and talking about how one should be thankful to have this "privilege" is downright pompous). I think the problem is now that the mod is so popular that the mod can allow to force server owners to jump these hoops (who get absolutely nothing out of it, not even a guaranteed playing spot on their own server). I saw similar attitudes on BF2 PR and ARMA2 PR and I find it absolutely inappropriate how server owners are being treated. And rocket basically admitted they can handpick who gets a "license" because the supply of server offers exceeds the demand. And forbidding slot reservation (by kicking) or locking is basically abusing their current position of power. Do not get me wrong, the mod is absolutely awesome, but the way server owners are treated just because the mod can currently afford it is just retarded. If I want to host a server for which I pay myself for others to play I do not like someone to tell me how I have to run it. There are slight exceptions, like preventing cheating.

---------------------------------------------- Introduction ---------------------------------------------- On my last playing session, I was jumped by 7 bandits on balota airfield. SO I swore revenge and after collecting some gear (enfield rifle + binoculars) I camped out in the air control tower and fired warning shots at any approaching bandit. I was able to spot them from 500m and usually managed to produce near misses with my enfield which scred most away. However after some time I heard gun shots below me. I panicked and climbed down and headed towards the rear exit. When I arrived at the staircase I found 2 dead bandits. They shot each other because they got into an argument over loot which was near the staircase. The funny thing about teh story is that they initially planned to sneak up on me, which would have worked, but their greed over the shiny loot made them fight over it and saved my life. While my attempt to create a safe zone for innocent players failed, it led me to several interesting ideas that could be implemented into the game: ---------------------------------------------- More rewarding good-guy experience ---------------------------------------------- Players who actively support others, like give blood or hunting bandits or other things the gameplay can detect as supportive should be rewarded: For example after a player reaches certain levels of humanity, he should get a new „skin“ which would resemble a cop, or wildwest sheriff. The advantages of this would be: -Players would instantly be recognized as trustworthy. -They could facilitate creating meeting places which could serve as „safe hubs“ or trading posts for the „good guys“. Newly spawned players would naturally swarm around these „saints“ and form mobs of good guys to hunt for supplies. Safe zones would be generated on the fly by their presence and people could meet to chat or simply have supervision by a moral authority in order to trade items. -They would even be able to assume moral authority and gather good guys around them to form parties that go out and actively hunt bad guys. In order to safeguard the rank of „wasteland cop“ against abuse safeguards should be in place: -A player who commits murder while being a cop, should get a severe penalty and instantly be branded as bandit and this should stick for a while, because he betrayed a position of high trust. -The rank should be only attainable by persistent display of supporting others. And only by going out of your way of being a good guy. Basically a normal player who is just being an average good guy that never murders could not attain the rank. In order to become a cop, one would have to build a strong record of humanity, by any means the game code an detect „good“ deeds. Examples I can think of are, bandit hunting, giving blood. ---------------------------------------------- Enhancing the Bandit experience ---------------------------------------------- While this topic is mostly about more rewarding good-guy play, the concept of „evil“ is connected to the whole good vs bad thing. Therefore I would like to attach this: On the evil side of things, I would like to propose a more diverse differentiation for the bad guys too: Bandits that prey on innocents but do not prey on fellow bandits should stay as is. --------------------- FERAL --------------------- Bandits that however attack anyone, should be designated „feral“. These would be outcasts even among criminals. For that I would suggest more different variables: --------------------- Bandit honor --------------------- Basically humanity for bandits. If it drops below a certain amount, the bandit becomes feral. ---------------------------------------------- Rewarding longevity ---------------------------------------------- Another point I would like to suggest is to reward longevity of a player. For example for every so and so playing hours a player survives he gets PURELY COSMETICAL rewards, in form of a more bearded looking character and cooler looking „rambo“ survivor skin. This would be a nice visual representation to other players and a way to reflect high survival skill so everyone can see. For example, when people form groups, these guy would instantly be reconized as leaders. These would be applied to all newly proposed „factions“ Innocents Cops Bandits Feral Bandits Depending on technical limits of the game, there could be several levels of survival ratings to represent on the model, each with its own appropriate name: Innocents ( Amount of time survived) 1 – Fish 2 – Survivor 3 - Veteran Cops (Amount of good deeds done) 1 – Carebear 2 – Wasteland Cop 3 – Pathfinder Bandits (Being hostile towards non-bandits) 1 – Outlaw 2 – Murderer 3 – Bandit Lord Feral Bandits (Being hostile to anyone else) 1 – Feral Dog 2 – Hyena 3 – Lunatic Again I would like to state these should be purely cosmetical rewards for everyone to see. No bonus stats or whatever. They would be an extre incentive to stay alive and offer the gratification of making good performance visible to other players (who can not see your stats obviously) --------------------------------------------------------- UPDATE MAY 15 After a discussion in another topic (http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2345) I came up with this idea: Rewarding "saints" with a paratrooper spawn. They would not spawn on the beach but instead spawn on a chute somewhere over the island, with slightly different, not better gear. For example a beretta pistol with one 15 round clip. And perhaps a better backpack from teh start. ------------------------------------------------------------ This would be the ultimate carrot for players to be good guys.| ------------------------------------------------------------

Since the latest patch, I am getting heavy performance hits that seem to appear randomly and last anything from 1-30mins. On my PC I get an usual 30-40 fps in the wilderness near smaller villages, when the performance hit occurs, it drops to a stable 10 fps and stays there, no matter where, and the amount of zombies does not have an effect either. My PC AMD Athlon Dual 2.6 GHZ GF465 GTX 1GB 4GB RAM Vista32 Now i am not complaining about having crappy fps in the large town with that old machine, but that odd performance drop far away from towns is something that was not happening before the patch. Could server load be connected to that? Usually when the performance drop suddenly stops, there seems to be a sudden increase in connection messages, the lower left of the screens is basically flooded with it.

Yesterday the game was constantly stuck in low perf

Also humanity comes back way too fast.

Winchester 1866<-----------

Why not increase the availability of vehicles a bit, while at the same time limiting their cross country usability depending on vehicle. For example: The existing UAZ jeeps take ages to repair and are valuable once repaired. Nothing to change here, they work as is. But let us add in more common smaller vehicles that work without repairs, like bicycles or motorbikes (the "old moto" from OA) These would be instantly usable, but have severe penalties if used offroad. This way it would balance out, because you would have teh advantage of mobility but you would be forced to stay on roads which can be camped by attackers. This way the hard to repair off-road cars still retain their value. Also gas stations would (if they would carry more fuel) by focus areas for gameplay because whoever controls a gas station can control mobility.

I am sure you can see much farther than that. Even during dusk (when the heavy white fog sets in) I was able to spot a guy 600m away (binoc said 600m). And during daytime drawdistance is much farther.

Well the game needs a way to distinguish between good guys and bad guys. Right now there is only bad guys (bandits), and guys that are not trustworthy(survivors). And if you want to have ANY meaningful player interaction that is not limited to killing each other then you need to: 1. Reward good guys 2. Provide a trustable visual cue (=cop skin) Right now I have some very advanced gear and I am far up in the north. If I have any human approach me or see me I will high tail into the woods or shoot the guy if I can see he has long range weapons. Not because I want to be a bandit, but because I want to be safe. After a discussion in another topic (http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2345) I came up with this idea: Rewarding "saints" with a paratrooper spawn. They would not spawn on the beach but instead spawn on a chute somewhere over the island, with slightly different, not better gear. For example a beretta pistol with one 15 round clip. And perhaps a better backpack from teh start. ------------------------------------------------------------ This would be the ultimate carrot for players to be good guys.| ------------------------------------------------------------

Additionally, having to watch the sky for the occassional parachute would be great fun.

Found two different helis. the green one and they grey one (crashed with working m134) however none had the mythic loot everyone talks about. Also when entering the crashed one I was instantly kicked out of it again.

Actually having non lethal weapons would be good for "soft bandits" that only want to rob players without murdering. "Sorry I need that!"

Hey terox, nice to meet you again. What are matches for? And where would one find them and knives, I only found these on dead players.