Zarathustra (DayZ)

Yes, I remember. Depressing wasn't it? I never wanted to see side chat disappear and foresaw people missing it if it left. Apparently it improves immersion. Though in a game where most people are communicating with their friends on teamspeak, I fail to see how other players communicating with text on the side of the screen diminishes the immersion to any greater extent.

It would also be useful for allowing players to communicate any sightings of hackers. As it is, if I see a hacker, all i can do is disconnect - I can't warn anybody else!

This was the old bandit skin:

I don't really want to see more barracks as, like you said, it means the proliferation of high-end loot. If we were to relocate one of the existing barracks though, I would recommend placing it at the NE airfield. Green Mountain is not far enough from the coast, and too near the NW airfield.

Getting killed by cheaters. I can stomach everything else that's happened to me in this game, but not the deaths inflicted by cheaters.

Yes, the hacking is now rampant. I've managed to avoid Thunderdome, but it seems it's only a matter of time before it gets me. Today, the text "HAXXX" appeared on the center of my screen in white letters. I've no idea what this means, or what was going to happen next, so I immediately logged off.

Just bring back the global chat. I miss global chat.

If you didn't miss with any of those 4 bolts and 10 rounds, then it was probably a hacker. Anyway, don't use the Crossbow for shooting players. Use a high damage weapon. Most of the assault rifles will kill a player in 3 or 4 shots and most of the sniper rifles will do it in 1 or 2.

Not anymore. The Lee Enfield used to kill in one shot, but, since the Arma patch nerfed it, it now it takes two shots.

http://dayzdb.com/database/compound-crossbow http://dayzdb.com/database/g17 A player starts with 12000 blood or hitpoints. The Crossbow does about 3555 damage with each hit; the Glock 17, since the weapon nerf, does 889 damage. It would take about 4 Crossbow shots to kill, or 13 rounds form the Glock (!). Either some of your shots missed, or the player was a hacker. Oh, and head shots with any weapon are instant death.

Heh, the person who gave you their beans is called 'Fluttershy <3' - a 'Brony'. I don't think that reflects well on your argument.

1. Giving each gun a 'life' requires that they every weapon have a unique entry in the database for tracking its state. This would probably put more load on the central server and affect the player in other undesirable ways, including possible frame rate drops. Weapon duplication bugs and weapon spawn scripts are - I think - the main reasons for the ubiquity of high-powered sniper rifles and other supposedly rare items like NVGs. None of your suggestions will fix these. 2. I feel anti-material rifles have a place, the problem is that they are far too common. This is for the reason given above. If they and their ammo were rarer, I doubt you would be as bothered by them. I would support removing them until their scarcity can be assured, i.e. until weapon spawning scripts are eradicated. 3. I don't want the game to assume my incompetency with guns. I might agree that aiming with sniper rifles is a little easy in that it doesn't seem to adequately account for weapon sway, but I trust that the modelling of recoil is realistic and reasonable and it does seem to require some player input. I feel like we're playing different games here: I can assure you that trying to hit players at more than 20m with a AKM on full-automatic is almost impossible. Also, I do not (and I think most players do not) want to be in the situation where I line up a target, correctly account for range and movement, fire a single shot, and then have the game decide that the bullet will not go where according to natural laws it should, because: "Hey, you're a survivor, not a soldier! It doesn't matter if you aimed correctly, we're going to have that decision on the bullet's flight path be decided by a random number generator to reflect your lack of training!"

Why try to decrease that? 25% sounds perfectly reasonable to me. That's a significant minority, but a minority nonetheless. I don't think anything could get me to stop playing (mostly) solo. And anything that did would probably lead to me quitting.

Yes, Alt-F4 is the bane of this mod. I don't know why fixing it isn't Rocket's main priority. It should be easy, as you say, to force people to stay on the server if they Alt-F4.

Use DayZDB.com, it has a handy map feature so you can see exactly where you can find all the weapons. M14 seems to appear on Deerstands, Barracks, Fire Stations and Hangars. http://dayzdb.com/map#3.055.108;item=M14%20AIM

Taso,I feel you're making this more complicated than it need be. The resources it would take to distinguish between those who spawn a nuke-armed Hokum attack chopper or those who spawn a light transport helicopters are too great. We would need jury panels assessing what cheats were used, what weapons were spawned, how they were used and what the motivation of the cheater was before determining an appropriate punishment. This might be in important real life when we're talking about crimes like murder, but this is a game. We need to stick to a simple principles that everyone can understand: Spawning weapons into the game is cheating. Using weapons that have been spawned into the game is cheating. Cheating is punished. But that's still using cheat weapons. If you agree that this is wrong, and what is wrong should be punished, then you have to agree that we must punish those who use such items. Edit: I understand that we fundamentally disagree on this: You feel that the advantage conferred by a 'hacked' weapon is the most salient point, and that possessing weapons that do not confer any advantage is acceptable. I feel that this is a bad precedent; that it doesn't matter whether a weapon confers any advantage at all, only that it has been 'hacked' and that we must use the weapons that Rocket has provided with - and only those weapons/items. My concern is that obscuring the simple distinction between cheat weapons and Day Z weapons will result in more of what is perceived as 'harmless' cheating, which is still cheating and still introduces weapons or items or methods of play that Rocket did not want us to use.

I'm afraid that I do not understand what you are saying here, though I feel that it probably has something to do with my not being precise in the helicopter example. I was assuming that the helicopter is the one Huey model that exists in Day Z. Using any other helicopter from Arma is a using a cheat item, and should be punished. I understand what you're saying regarding ignorance of the wrong committed, perhaps I was a little too hasty in calling for bans. But you agree then that it is wrong? In your original post you said that it was fine to use such cheat items as they were essentially earned. I still feel that it is acceptable to be tough on those with cheat items, even if it means a little 'collateral damage'. Ideally, the database would be queried, characters with illegitimate items would have those items removed and be presented with an in-game warning about picking up such items. Then their name would be added to another database of potential cheaters and further transgressions would be noted and tallied. If this is too difficult to implement, I am still in favour of querying the database for those with illicit items, and then killing them (resetting their character). They'll learn after they've lost successive characters, or when they come crying to the board, why they kept getting killed.

Sophistry. If you kill a 'hacker' who has helicopter and take his helicopter, the helicopter remains a sanctioned weapon/vehicle/item. Even if he spawned it using cheats, it is quite unreasonable to think you could possibly distinguish it from a legitimately sourced helicopter. If you kill a 'hacker' who has a cheat weapon (it's quite reasonable to call all weapons not intended for use in Day Z cheat weapons) and take his weapon, that weapon remains a cheat weapon. You know that this weapon is not allowed in the game (items that don't belong to Day Z do not have a description), but you continue to use it. You are cheating by using this weapon, even if you did not spawn it; ergo you are a cheater - you deserve a ban. You guys are lucky I am not responsible for investigating cheating. I would be running daily queries on the character database, and handing out automatic temporary bans for having non-DayZ items. Do it more than once? Permanent ban.

I believe you, but do we feel that we should spawn with body armor? If body armor is going to be included then it should be be something we have to loot. It seems silly that players would spawn with something as effective as body armor but no gun and few supplies. I think Rocket should raise the weapon damage again or lower player health. If he wants to include body armor, that's fine, but it ought to be loot and rare loot at that.

Oh come on! "Or 1 round to the head"? How about we just make players invincible except for bullets to the head? Fenrig is quite right, 13 bullets to the torso to kill a player is ridiculous. More time to kill players means more time to log off in combat. If Rocket doesn't fix this - I'm out. Yes, yes, you don't care. I know you don't. For me this is the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The now ubiquitous logging off has become more than I can bear, and this Arma patch has just made it even worse.

Oh, please! So because the game isn't exactly like real life in every way, it's ok to completely dispense with realism? Realism was clearly one of Arma's guiding principles - it's a military simulation. I think we can safely presume that a certain authenticity is what Rocket was looking for, especially since most of what he's done to the game (with the exception of zombies) has made the game more realistic still, at least with regard to survival. Presumably you'd apply the same fallacious argument if Rocket introduced magic and spaceships and giant, firebreathing Marsh Warblers? Requiring so many bullets to kill Z or players harms the immersion and is inconsistent with the nature of the game.

Sigh. Sidearms are useless and lower weapon damage means logging off in combat is now even easier.

Terrible, terrible change. The game is even easier now for people who log off in combat. And Ol' Faithful (my Enfield) has been reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Well, I have been playing the game for some time. The loss of my wonder weapon may induce me to take a long break from the game. Also, it's likely logging off in combat is going to be even safer and easier if the guns are less lethal now.

Ah, ok, thanks for clearing that up. I won't be playing until it's fixed though. I demand one hit kills with my Enfield or I'm throwing my toys out of the pram.