akin

I remember back when I started playing, and the average life expentancy was more than four hours...

Greetings all! I live in Los Angeles, and normlly I have dozens of "green" ping servers to pick from when I play. The LA servers usually have a ping of less than fifteen... So a couple of times in the past week, including today, when I fire up the game, I get a rather slow refresh rate and no servers with a ping of less than 160-170 show up. I just now realized that NONE of the US servers appear to be online...? Is this a glitch on my end (and if it is, how can I fix it?!?!), or is everyone else experiecing this, too? Also, these forums seem to be horribly slow right now... could that be related? Thanks!

Well, my approach is “Oh, there’s someone over there, I wonder if he’s D’OH!! He’s shooting at me!” Not quite sure how I can change that…

Your experiences in the game have been dramatically different than mine. And, tossing out insults at people you’re allegedly having a conversation with? Blaming the victim for a problem these forums, and every other forum that discusses this game that I’ve seen, almost universally agree came about after global chat was removed? Not the best method of getting your point across…

What's wrong with it is the fact that since global chat went away, I haven't encountered anyone who didn't start shooting the second they saw me. I'm fairly certain I mentioned that... it was pretty much the point of my post... Having short range comms does no good if anyone you stumble across at short range starts trying to kill you...

The removal of global chat is really ruining this game for me. When I started, it was a cooperative survival/horror game... most survivors either worked together, or at least didn't go out of their way to hurt each other. There were player killers, true; but you could easily identify them at a glance. Sometimes one would not have "shown his true colors" yet, so you always had to be cautious when dealing with people, but for the most part, folks worked together. It wasn't at all uncommon for strangers to make runs to deliver morphine or blood to injured players. Then, they made it so you couldn't tell who was a PK any more. Things changed a bit, but still, for the most part, a good dose of caution would serve you well, and most of the folks I encountered got along. Then they took out global chat, and the entire game went to hell. Since then, I haven't encountered anyone who didn't start shooting as soon as they saw me. It used to be you could make friends... hell, on the servers where I played, I had half a dozen different folks that I would group with... but now, since you can't talk to anyone, you can't trust anyone. I don't even know if direct comms works again yet... no one has ever tried to talk to me. When we meet, they just start shooting... and I'm leaving my 5.1 speakers plugged in instead of using my headset. Surround sound is just too useful in this kind of game... even if I tried to talk to anyone, who knows if they'd do anything other than start shooting. You can't even see what someone's name is on most servers... for all I know, my old friends may have killed me without ever knowing who I was. Basically, the game has turned into a giant deathmatch, where the only objective is to kill other players. I don't play deathmatches, because I think they're lame. I like team games... back in the days of Duke Nukem 3d, I had to play deathmatches because that was the only option... but once WinQuake came along, and then GLQuake, I've always gone to team servers instead of deathmatches. If they're your thing, fine, more power to you. They're not for me. I'm not talking about global voice chat, mind you... that needs to stay out. But the inability to communicate at all with anyone just really brings the whole thing down. "Oh, but it breaks immersion!" Really? What, sitting in front of your computer doesn't remind you that you're playing a game, but being able to communicate with other players does? Seriously? "Just play with friends!" How? I can't communicate with anyone! While I have friends who play, none of them are on my schedule... I'm a police officer, and I work 11pm to 7am, and on my days off, I stay up all night, too, to avoid screwing up my sleep patterns. I don't have any friends who want to play around three am... “Play on server with teamspeak!” I’ve yet to discover a way to determine whether a server has it available or not before I log in. Kindly provide a list of servers where its daylight during the hours I play, that have it enabled. Thanks! From what some people have told me, the servers I played on (mainly Australian/New Zealand, and European, since local servers are dark when I'm on) may have been different and that the US servers have always been kill on sight. If that’s true, that’s kind of a sad commentary on the American gaming community; but on the servers I frequent, that was never the case… until global chat went away…

Ever since global chat went away, my enjoyment of this game has been diminishing. It used to be that you could talk with folks, and eventually start to make friends and have others to play with. There used to be half a dozen different people that played around the same times as I did, on the same group of servers, and we got to the point where we would meet up with each other when I'd log on... That's all gone, now. Sure, maybe it would have been smart to set up alternate ways to communicate with those folks... but that's not the point. It's basically impossible to get to know anyone now... the only way to communicate is if you're close, and if you're close to someone, if you stop to type, you're dead. The player-killers have ensured that everyone has been brought down to their level out of pure survival instinct... cooperation really isn't possible any more. The only groups out there are using some out-of-game method of communicating, and when you meet one, you'd better hide because they will murder you the instant they see you. There's just no way to make a group of your own from within the game any more... I'm not sure if voice chat is even working again, since I've never heard anyone use it. I haven't bothered to hook up my headset to try it again (my surround sound speakers are just too useful to give up!)... if it is working, though, would it really be any better? The game has devolved into a universal shoot-on-sight deathmatch... something I'm frankly not interested in. Sure, there were always bandits, but you could make friends and group up to face the perils of the world together. Now, unless you have folks from outside the game that you play with, you're always alone, and there's no longer any debating about whether or not someone's trustworthy or anything... it's hide, run, or be murdered. I suppose if the intent is to make this a deathmatch game, well, it's succeeding, and I'll be moving on. While I've always loved online shooters, since the days of Quake... I've always played team games... deathmatch free-for-alls have always bored me. Anyways, sorry for rambling, but please, bring back global chat!

Discovered the problem in my case... while the server was called "Blah Blah Blah DayZ 1.7.1.1", it was actually running 1.7.1.4... when I upgraded out of frustration and tried it, everything was fine...

Apologies, but after reading two pages of this forty-page thread, it had already turned to forty-one pages, so I'm not going to be able to sort through it all. Also, the search feature isn't turning up anything helpful when I look for "Hatchets"... So I've played for about three hours on the new update (blahblahblah.4) My first question is, obviously, about hatchets. Huh? I had one when I logged out, but when I logged in I didn't. I found one eventually on the floor in a building, but when I tried to pick it up I was told that my inventory was full or something. There was not only room in my tool slots, but there was room in my regular inventory, my bandages/pistol ammo inventory, and my backpack. Later, I found some shotgun shells on the ground and when I hit "G", I discovered that they were actually hatchets? I picked one up and then tried to right-click it, and it disappeared out of my inventory. I was able to put one in my pack, but the third vanished when I attempted to pick it up. When I got out in the middle of the forest, I opened my inventory, opened my pack, and tried to transfer the shotgun-shell-hatchet to my inventory so I could use it to chop wood. It vanished. This is a problem, since food and drinks still aren't spawning... I have six raw meats that I was looking forward to cooking, but now I can't... the low food is especially bad since every single slap from a zombie causes bleeding... Oh and the zombies can still see through walls, though it appears that they can no longer attack through them, which is some small relief. So... hatchets... what am I missing? Zombies... still seeing through walls... And, zombie attacks.,.. I think increased damage was a good idea, as too many people (myself included) were just kind of ignoring them. But the "special effects"... bleeding from every single slap, and all-too-often instant unconsciousness on the first hit, even if I had 12k blood... if you insist on leaving the blood-causing slaps, at least increase the spawn rate of bandages, and... PLEASE let us start getting food and drink again!

This just started happening to me today... and yes, I'm on the same version as the server...

+1 on watches. I found FIVE watches in the Cherno grocery store last night. Oh, and, no food or soda. Let alone canteens, empty or otherwise...

The lack of anything to drink is getting ridiculous. Thanks to a seemingly increased animal spawn rate, I now have seven cooked meats in my pack... but nothing at all to drink, and I'm sure when I log in next, my red drink icon will be flashing and I'll be taking damage. I explored two medium-sized villages today and found quite a few weapons, several tons worth of empty cans and old bottles, and no food or water at all. There was a well in one of the towns, but there doesn't seem to be a way to drink from a faucet...

Okay played for six hours and managed to not get killed. I searched all of Cherno... literally. I found a lot of weapons. A ridiculous amount of watches, compasses, and the like... five watches in the grocery store? Really? And, a SINGLE can of pepsi. No food whatsoever... I really hope that gets fixed...

errr... seemed to me he said that after he finally escaped the death zone of the coast, he played for an hour, but found only cans and empty bottles. That would match my experience so far this evening. Helpless against the bandits who all have weapons and think it's fun to massacre defenseless new spawns, and if spotted by a single zombie with it's super-vision, you're helpless to defend yourself. And little to no loot...