Keshik

I'm at a road block here and some help from people that are currently running more than one character would be much appreciated. I've done my searching and research and am trying to set up a second account. I have two CD Keys bought through Steam. I'm using the registry method to swap between them and use the same install directory. Now, here is what I have purchased and installed and at what points I exported the registry: My main steam account has Arma II, OA, PMC, BAF. I purchased only combined operations for the second account (Base + OA). I uninstalled everything, logged onto the second steam account and reinstalled only arma II + OA. I then exported the registry entry. I uninstalled everything again, logged into the first steam account and installed arma II, OA, PMC, BAF. I then exported the registry entry. The first steam account (the one with the additional expansions) has a longer registry entry with references to said expansions. This works fine. Those expansions are encrypted (i think?) to that CD key. This is fine with me. The second steam account (CD Key) has a much shorter registry entry with NO references to PMC or BAF. This would be correct seeing as how I didn't purchase the expansions again (or install them during the arma install for this CD key to get them encrypted) The first steam account works great. I can swap the registry entry back and forth and am always able to play using this CD key. When I load up the second account's key registry entry (again, with no references to PMC or BAF), I'm getting PMC errors. My assumption is because the second CD key which is not associated with these expansions is attempting to load them. The research I've done on this subject supports this. Errors: On game start: Failed to load file...\air_pmc.pbo - decryption of headers failed game continues to load On load: No Entry bin\config.bin/CfgVehicles/Soldier_Crew_PMC.scope On server connect: You cannot play/edit this mission; it is dependent on downloadable content that has been deleted.cacharacters_pmc These just seem like the typical errors of the CD key attempting to load the expansions but being unable to. Now here is the real question I suppose: Why is key#2 attempting to load these even though there are no references to the expansions in the registry entry? I'm fine with not having them load and not getting the high res textures. I just can't figure out how to do so. Like I said, I'm fine not having the expansions load on the second key but I also read something about being able to do so by loading the expansions as a mod w/ their own @directory. I tried this method (instructions weren't very thorough) but since the information was already encrypted it wasn't functioning. At this point it seems like I'll have to reinstall again and just not install PMC and BAF to get this to work. I think that might work as neither CD key will be attempting to load them. However since I've paid for those expansions, I'd like to at least use it on one of them. I went longer than expected and if the information I provided or my questions aren't clear, I'll be happy to clear them up. Thank-you I see you online LVG! Any ideas at all? Since I didn't read the sticky earlier, here goes: *Which version of the game did you purchase? STEAM or RETAIL or MIXED: 2x Steam *Are you running an Arma 2 OA beta patch? If so what version?: 94364 *Which method are you using to launch the game? I.E Sixupdater/steam/batch file: Both steam and sixupdater *What is the Error/Problem you're having? Please provide screenshots if possible: See above *Your PC specs: i7 920 @ 4.4, 12GB, GTX480 @ 950 old but still works great *Your Operating System: Win7 *Have you looked at these threads?: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=18588 yes

Server hop some more and come crying on the forums every time you're kicked for server hopping.

vilayer seems to have pretty good customer reviews. Pretty sure the "hive" isn't jacked up for them

Sounds like a server hopper. I'm quite glad you didn't get any items off of his corpse. Optimally you should have been kicked before you even got the kill, but you lucked out on that. Keep server hopping for your items, maybe you'll get that AS50 from some other dude you happen to spawn on. Hopefully he's not an admin and you can cheat the system more.

Point two: Spawns in airport on a server with 1 player on it. Then he said it was dark and needed a flashlight to see the guy he killed so no NVGs. In order to need a flashlight to be able to see a corpse on the ground it must have been really dark even w/ gamma all the way up. He said he had to drop a 1911 to pull out the flashlight so it obviously wasn't equipped previously. This leads me to assume that he wasn't running around much prior. Sounds like server hopping to me.

And the fact that he specifically had to say that he was sitting there for a few minutes. People who don't server hop wouldn't even think about having to say that. edit: server logs would be cool to see though. If he's legit then blacklist the server because that's bullshit. I've had it happen to me before while biking around looking for helicopter spawns. Killed an admin at a crash site and all of a sudden the server reboots. I never thought to report it though, just never bothered to go back there.

Let the server admin know to check the logs.

Sound like you were server hopping and lucked out with a kill. If so, glad you were kicked from the server. If you were legitimately on the server and got the kill, then blacklist this shit.

If you do that, you'll have people gearing up on PVE servers then moving to PVP servers. If you lock your choice permanently, then you'll run out of things to do. Once you get the good loot, you're left with nothing to do. Edit: then of course, you'll still have the trolls join the non-pvp servers and troll people trying to survive in the methods I described in a previous post. They are:

Some people just want to watch the world burn. In a sandbox game, you have to allow for that - and prepare for it. Perhaps I've been lucky, but I haven't ran into very many people that do that. The majority of people I run into are as scared of me as I am of them and it usually ends well over direct voice communication.

I don't know - I can't speculate on what this guy's intentions were in telling you that and playing a different way. All that I can comment on is that, in my opinion, the game can be played multiple ways and isn't only about "deathmatch" until you get to a certain point in gear. What my night normally consists of is hopping on with some friends, getting in a vehicle and driving around looking for crashed helicopters. We'll attempt to kill anything we see on the way around the map. Once we've gone around the map, we might hit up the NW airfield and loot it or camp it to kill people coming there from the south for gear or server hoppers. Sitting on the hill top in Electro with an AS50 and ghillie suit killing people with Makarovs is, in my opinion, lame. However, where do you place rules in an area without rules? Where do you draw the line? If you start implementing rules in some places where does it end? I don't know... I've been a long time Eve Online player so I really enjoy the sandbox of this game. I can appreciate it more than someone with no experience with a sandbox style game.

You're right, anyone can kill anyone at any point in time. But once you get the gear there is nothing else to do BUT kill others.

Thing is, once you get gear there is really nothing else to do in game besides kill other players. Once you get the items to hunt animals and get some canteens, it's impossible to die from hunger or thirst. After you go through the barracks a few times and hit up some heli crashes, there is nothing left to upgrade. There is zero reason to go into any city for upgrades. You might have to go into a city every once in a while looking for vehicle parts but that's about it. This just leads to roving bands of people looking to kill other players for sport. Be it finding other bandits to kill or just survivors looking for gear. Even if you die, you and your buddies have a camp set up with multiples of everything. All you need to do on character creation is just head to camp to re-gear. There is zero replayability in the game unless you go hunting for other people. I'm not going to lie and say that I kill other people to upgrade gear or to play the part of a "real bandit" because that's not the case. I'm sure there are some on this forum that will say that the end-game is not a deathmatch (though that is not a real applicable term when comparing it to real deathmatch modes in games like Quake). However, there is a lot more thrill and adrenaline when killing others (not the newbie spawns on the beach) in this game as you have the potential to lose everything. The heart beats faster and it really is more exciting than another war-based FPS. There are videos that Sacriel42 does on youtube that really display this feeling. Tracking a couple people for 20 minutes hoping to kill them while constantly worrying about getting outflanked or other people attracted by the sound of gunfire. Sure, it sucks for people on their first few survivor characters (and it sucked when I first started playing), but if you punish or remove this gameplay aspect, you'll lose a large playerbase. The thing is, this is the gameplay that everyone will reach at some point in time. By removing it or punishing it, you are essentially limiting everyone to a few playthroughs at most. Also, if it's removed, you will have less (or no) people inhibiting your ability to get to "end-game" thus compounding the problem. TL;DR: In the current state of the game, you cannot remove the PVP or even limit it. If you want to tone it down some, then you need to replace it with something else to do once you have the gear and vehicles.

If a troll knew you couldn't do anything about him when you're both playing survivors, he could ruin your gaming experience far more than simply shooting you. Loot your tents and take your vehicles with immunity. Make a lot of noise and keep pulling zombies onto you, eventually getting you killed. A few could stand in the doorways of a building you're in and keep you and your friends trapped. Run up to you and empty your backpack into theirs. A team of bandits could use a "survivor" buddy to stay with you and track your movements. Think you're creeping thru the woods? Not when you have some random troll following you around standing up and making noise. There are a hundred ways someone with immunity to you could make your game experience more miserable than simply shooting you.

What happens when I choose the survivor "faction" then go on a killing spree?

Thing is, there isn't much else to do after you get geared up besides to go and find people to kill.

I've had 1 power cut in the last decade' date=' are you seriously suggesting that's an issue for a large number of players? [/quote'] Yes, it's called the entire state of Florida. Hurricanes and Wet Season thunderstorms fuck our shit. So you're suggesting DayZ let exploiters ruin the game for 100% of players because you won't buy a backup genetor or because you get maybe 3 or 4 power cuts a year that have an outside chance of kicking you while you're raiding a barn in berezino? Get real son, this post has exploiter written all over it. These arguments about power cuts and hamster powered internet connections are franky hilarious. I don't know where in Florida this other guy is, but here in Tampa it's more like 3-4 power outages per thunder storm, not per year. Say... Maybe one bad thunderstorm a week or two. I'm not going to buy a backup generator like you suggest. The power going out isn't for an extended period of time, just for a few seconds to a minute. Battery backup is fine. However not everything is on battery and even though the PC stays on, everything else shuts off. But... I'd rather stay logged in for 30 seconds after getting disconnected due to power and actually get some more kills when people quit out than not have something like this in place. I'd be fine with a disconnect timer and i have crappy thunderstorms here.

You trust people now?

I like rule 3A. I think it'd be pretty funny. I don't believe water bottles can be refilled in the ocean, though I haven't tried. I have refilled them at every lake I've visited, as well as the waterpumps as you listed. As far as your last tip on killing zombies: One entrance buildings work fine to kill them. However, I prefer two entrance buildings such as a farmhouse. You can run straight through the building and lose most, if not all of the zombies. They will walk slowly through and lose line of sight. Edit: other than that, great guide!

I'd just like to know what kind of skin the OP wants to implement for people that murder others. If it's the same as the skin from last month, I'd prefer to start off a new character in that skin. It's way better than the "white sleeves" civilian clothing. However, what happens when you equip a ghillie suit or the camo set? Also, if you implement this skin change, I can definitely see more people murdering others, just to get a new cool skin. Since it degrades over time, you have to keep murdering. If i were starting a new character, I'd immediately attempt to get a few murders just to get rid of the white sleeves and blue pants model. In reference to the guy that said the heartbeat wasn't working on his friend - You need more than 1 murder for the heartbeat to be audible. You need a few - just like the OP's proposed changes require. The differences are that it's not persistent after death and I don't believe the audible heartbeat can go away once you get a few murders, but I'm not sure on that last part.

Anyone?

So, I've read through all 24 pages... For the flagging people as bandits: The current system is enough for me (heartbeat on bandits audible when you mouseover them). I *personally* don't want a system that changes their skin or makes it any easier to determine who i can "trust" - Only I can determine who I can trust and I don't need the game helping me out with that. If you change their skin to the old models, what happens with camo and ghillie suits? Setting up hunts to track bandits down for revenge - or the "bounty" system won't work either. People generally won't fight unless they think they have the upper hand. It's just a smart way of doing things. With the current game mechanics, people that don't want to fight your hunting party would just swap servers. That's the end of that. People that DON'T swap servers to avoid you are probably pretty established in game and will have an ambush set up with their friends for your hunting party, gaining the upper hand. I really don't think the game is as bad as you describe. As recent as this past weekend I started on a new life. I spent a half hour in Electro looting buildings then ran off into the hills. I ran into a couple people in Electro. One opened the supermarket door, saw me, then immediately ALT+F4'd, and another I had a conversation with and was friendly. However, when I say "ran into", I don't mean running at each other yelling "friendly". I spotted them and followed them around for a bit before making contact. No need for the game to tell me who is friendly or not. Pretty much everyone in game is as scared of you as you are of them. It's just how it works. I'm actually surprised one of the guys didn't actually attempt to kill me. We were taking the same route through Electro and I was a couple minutes ahead of him. He was only getting things I passed on. This game isn't an MMO - there are 40-60 people usually on a server. Things like city control or massive survivor camps would probably play a very little part in the game in it's current state. If the area was expanded considerably, a few hundred people playing on a single server, and more than one "best loot" (besides choppers) point were around, then things like sector control and large survivor camps would be more worthwhile. The full corpse loot and having to restart from scratch combined with the fact that you can't trust anyone instantly is what attracts me to this game. I really don't want to see it dumb down. This is, for all intents and purposes, a niche game. If you really want to cut down on the kill on sight gameplay, you do it by providing more benefits to cooperate. You don't fix it by punishing people who kill others. However, I do agree with the fact that camping the beach and waiting for someone to spawn in is very lame. However, I don't know how to fix that issue, but I think it should be allowed. I'm not a big fan of game developers implementing a ton of rules. I'd rather the playerbase work it out themselves. Maybe my perspective comes from being an Eve Online player and I prefer the sandbox style gameplay. For the longest time Eve had jack for a tutorial and the learning curve was steep. That's what I like about DayZ. Anyways, I guess what I'm getting at is that more rules and regulation is never good. Especially in a post apocalyptic region where there are no enforcers of the law. I'm sure there is a good solution for what you perceive is a problem, but no solution comes from punishing people. TLDR: If you really want to cut down on the kill on sight gameplay, you do it by providing more benefits to cooperate. You don't fix it by punishing people who kill others. -Kesh

So I reinstalled without installing PMC and BAF. I thought uninstalling the game would remove any reference to these expansions. For some reason the game is still trying to load modules from them. Anyone know where these references would be located so I can remove them? I didn't see any in the same registry directory that holds the CD keys... Thanks. Update: after 20 minutes of searching through the registry for links to PMC or BAF I decided to just rename the BAF and PMC folders. The game is no longer attempting to load the modules. I didn't realize the game pulled everything from it's folder and assumed it would need some kind of registry entry to load them. I am able to swap between characters by swapping CD keys in the registry. It's working great. However, I am no longer able to load PMC and BAF at all or I'll run into issues with that second account/key. Anyone know a way around this? I've purchased one copy of each and would like to load it on at least one of my OA cd keys.