Blaaaaaaag

The plan is to eventually give us a reason to want to carry around a raincoat, right? I sure hope so, anyway. Get the sniffles if you wander around in that weather and aren't dressed for it.

The biggest problem with nighttime, as I see it, is that none of you seem to enjoy it anywhere near as much as I do. Same goes for hardcore mode. Consequently, hardcore servers that are set at nighttime are empty ghost towns, with such a low chance for any real interaction or drama. Nighttime is great if you want the zeds to actually be a problem. You can't just punch them in the head and be on your way when you can't see them. Even when you find an axe, your options then become either 1) shine your light on the zombie, and see where he is, but be unable to do anything about that, or 2) have your axe out and fight the zombie that you can't see. Realistically, you either wind up just running away from most of them, or kite them to somewhere that you can make out their silhouette, or near those faint little streetlamp things that are dotted around the land (near barracks' in particular, if you don't know what I'm talking about), so that you can see them *just* well enough to axe them down. The very first thing I did after dl'ing the latest patch was join a hardcore server. I found one where my ping was ~30 and the population was around 20/40. (I haven't seen one anywhere near that full since patch day, sadly) This server turned out to be pitch black, but I didn't care. I'm a man, after all. My pubes have pubes. I can deal with this. All I can see upon spawning in is a distant treeline on a hill, silhouetted against the night sky, and a shadowy tree shape a little closer to me. Past this near tree is clearly the coast road, and sitting upon it, dead still, is a flashlight that is turned on. I pause for a moment to consider my options, and the fate (or possible nefarious plans?) of whoever owned that light, and decide that I should sprint inland, ignoring all the coastal towns that will no doubt have been looted clean by now. So I run, toward the treeline and up the hill. I've gone maybe half a mile, and I've got zombie aggro. I have nothing but my fists and my flashlight. I'm in an open field, I can tell that much, but I can't see the zombie that's after me, not at all. So I keep running. Eventually, it's groaning dissipates, and I reckon I'm away from it. By now I'm pretty thirsty, and decide I need to make finding a water pump a priority. A little ways in the distance, I can *just* make out a house. I approach it slowly to check it out, use my light sparingly to determine that there is indeed no water pump in the yard. Inside I find an orange striped shirt and a toque. Great. Onward then. Sometime while I'm running, I hear the sound of my footsteps change. I'm on a road. I shine my light to see where it goes. I pick the direction that feels most like it continues on the way I've been going, but face the side of the road while turning my light off so that if anyone saw me, they might not guess which direction I set off in. Using a flashlight makes me brilliantly paranoid. Down the road I go, Westward, in the inky blackness. A little later, I find myself at a small village. I can see a road sign, so I make my way up to it and shine my light on it. It says Chernogorsk is 3km down the left fork, and Vishnoye 1km to the right. I barely parse this information before I hear the groaning again... time to sprint! I leg it up a hill and do a wide circle back. I figure that I must be in Mogilevka, and I know there's a water pump there, so I'm desperate to find a few moments of peace to make use of it. 5 minutes or so later, I've lost the zombie in the hills on the edge of town, and I'm sneaking back to that water pump. On my way back down into the town, I take note of how many zombies are still loitering around, making sure I'm ready to run like hell at a moments notice. I drink my fill at the pump, then check out a few nearby houses. I've now got myself a backpack, a few food items, a hacksaw, and some other odds and ends. And then a head torch. Hell yeah, I think. This is actually a seriously useful item now. In the land of eternal blackness, the man with the head torch is king! Groaning again. some zombies have figured out where I am, time to go. As I'm running out of town, it occurs to me that I've got a bit turned around since seeing that last road sign. I look to the sky, and see the big dipper more or less directly overhead. I spin myself around until I'm lined up to see the North star, and off I go. I know where I'm headed, Vishnoye, then the new military base south of the NW airfield, then the airfield itself. Hopefully. If I live long enough. In Vishnoye I manage to find myself a fire axe. Between that and my headtorch, I'm now starting to get a little bit comfortable. It took me 45 minutes or so, but I finally have the tools to take on a zombie in the dark. It's still something I want to avoid doing, I'm not interested in telling all the other players on the map where I am, so naturally I keep the light off whenever I don't need it. For a good few hours, my heart was beating a little faster than usual, despite no actual drama coming about. Eventually I made it to the NW airfield, and got to loot it in the dark, with only zombies as company. Being alone at the NW airfield in the pitch black is it's own sort of scary and intense, as you can never be sure you're really alone, or that someone isn't about to log in close by. And if someone's across the runway lining up your running silhouette in their mosin's scope, you're not going to see them. Now though, I'm in a situation where I'm near to Lopatino, I have an M4 with a light on it, a 45 with a light on it, plenty of ammo, food, etc. Zombies were a serious threat before I made it up that far, now though, I can take them on easily. And since humans tend to avoid hardcore in the dark, I guess I win? I dunno, kinda wish someone would show up and give me a scare, maybe shoot me and send me back to the coast so I can do it again. I enjoyed that little midnight expedition more than anything else I've experienced since picking up SA a couple weeks ago. I was afraid for my life every step of the way. It was fantastic. So can we get a little love for nightime, please?

Haha, I do both those things, I play with my settings at default (well, other than rotation blur and head bob) and only play first person no matter what server I'm on. I guess I'm a bit of a nihilist, but then again, so is anyone who plays this game. I also play War Thunder's arcade battles in cockpit view using a joystick, because that's immersive and fun, despite the fact that you have a serious tactical advantage in 3rd person using a mouse. I dunno, I guess I just don't understand the head space of people who play this game and keep score. For me it's not at all about k/d's, or even survival, really, since it's all so temporary anyway. I want to have interesting experiences that make good stories. That can be tough when I'm the only one around:/

That's where I found the only one I've seen so far, it was on the top shelf of the corner shelves. It sort of blended in, I thought. I stared at it for half a second before it occurred to me that it was a shotty.

Well, with the example I gave, the 'hero' bandit wouldn't ever lose his 'hero' status, he's not the one doing the killing, he'd be a faceman of sorts for the rest of his group. The point is, that even if you see someone with a hero skin, you can never know for sure. But whatever, let's throw that example out. Would you care to pick apart the other dozen or so examples of how this could be abused that someone else posted a couple pages back? Or how about how anyone wearing a 'hero' badge is going to be a massive target for the "90%" of people on the server who are only interested in ruining his day? I'm normally friendly, but I dislike your idea so much that if it were ever implemented, I'd go hero hunting, all day every day. Heros are notoriously shit at defending themselves, it'd be like shooting fish in a barrel.

To repeat, THAT WON'T WORK, AT ALL. Such a system will not function as you intend it to, it will be abused, and you'll come back here crying. Creative bandits will group together, let one of them kill all the others in the group enough times for him to get a hero label, and then have no trouble luring bambis to their slaughter. "Hey, there new spawn, as you can see, I'm a hero, my golden locks glistening in the sunlight, and look how big my teeth are! Hey, I just saw a Mosin in that barn up the hill, let's go get it! Then we'll meet my friends!"

I imagine this is only a temporary situation, that'll probably be resolved within weeks, certainly by the time beta hits next year. So, hang in there, buddy! You can make it!

Not really relevent to the rest of the discussion, but the answer to that question is this: No. If you bump into someone in a military building, that's a hard contact and a battle will ensue. One of you will probably die. That's sort of already a rule that should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's ever bumped into other players at an airfield. That's where squads go for pvp, if you're there, then you're looking for trouble. If you're doing it right, you won't be surprised by the presence of another player in close quarters like that anyway, you'll have had that player called out by your squadmate who was watching the windows of the building for a few minutes before you even approached it. And you'll be iron-sighting and leaning your corners on the way in. The only fire that you'll experience that will surprise you will come from unseen players, 50+ metres out, who managed to sneak that close.

Protip: Don't try to make friends with the guy who was just shooting someone over there.

Seems a little hypocritical to me that you accuse 'bandits' of not wanting such a system due to their supposed fear, yet you want this system in place to alleviate your own discomfort. For the record, I think visual identifiers for this stuff are toxic to the elements that make this game unique, interesting, tense, and fun. And I'm not a bandit, I play friendly or avoidant for the most part, although I also accept that if I want to go to the places where the guns are to get a gun, there might be someone with a gun there, and he might think that I want to get myself gun so I can shoot people with it, so naturally a gunfight may happen.

Yes, and you just missed it. It can be hard to spot the stuff spawning in hangars, I hold right mouse while running through and make sure i get a good look at all 4 corners. I've found two of the M68 scope post-patch, so they're definitely out there. Also, when you're at the tent areas, look for the two-story net covered towers, those still spawn loot. I actually don't know if those structures exist at the Balota strip, but there are 2 or 3 of them at the NW airfield's tent city.

I like my zombie apocalypses full of bright, light-hearted strolls through fields of tulips on warm, lightly breezy afternoons. The sun warming my face, tummy full of beans. None of this difficult or unpleasant stuff, please. I'm not here for a challenge. Also, make game perfect right this minute please and thankyou.

I quite like night just how it is. IRL, I've been in the middle of the woods on a moonless night away from city lights, and couldn't see my hand in front of my face without a torch. Stepping out of the woods and into a clearing, I could then see my hands, but not my feet, still too dark for that. I'd say it's pretty accurate. Presumably, like in Arma II, there's a full lunar cycle? If so, then on a full moon, you'll be able to see just fine, outside at least. If they make the nights any brighter, then what reason would anyone have for carrying a torch, or any light source for that matter? It adds another layer to the survival, one that I enjoy. First thing I did when the new patch hit was find myself a hardcore server with a low ping, turned out to be pitch black, so I rolled with it. Spent my first half hour, maybe hour, running scared. Couldn't see zeds without my torch raised and pointed at them, couldn't fight them with the torch in my hands. The first few zeds that I killed had to be lured near to those faint little streetlamps you see on poles occasionally dotted around Chernarus, so I could see them and fight them at the same time. I've never been so enthused to find a headtorch. I was even more enthused when I found some weapon flashlights. Dark nights give these items so much more value. Oh, and a protip for those that think the torch illuminates too small an area: Firstly, it's a weeny little department store torch, of course it's going to be crap. Even Maglites and other reputed industrial or professional instruments don't do a whole lot better. Second, when it's pitch black and you need your torch to see, try turning your f.o.v. way down, you won't need all that unlit blackness on your screen anyway, you're not gonna see anything there.

I think this is just a case of you're doing it wrong. You need to be in better shape than simply not thirsty or hungry, you need to actually have 'healthy' status, and keep your energy and water up. Seems a lot of people just eat and drink to make the warnings go away, but if you're doing that, you're leaving yourself in pretty rough shape. Those reminders will keep you eating and drinking the bare minimum for survival, as long as you don't lose blood or health, but to be truly healthy and have fast blood and health regeneration, you need to eat and drink a lot more initially, then just keep yourself topped up as you go.

Gotta disagree with ya, OP, this is a great change. I was on the fence about setting up a second Steam account and buying the game again just to get a second character to mess around with when I'm without my squad. This is like getting a free copy of the game. I'm thrilled about it.

I hope this means bears are next.

*sigh* If you want to have fun with this mod, pk'ing isn't the answer. If you want a man-shoot, there are far more fun games in which to do that. Try Arma 2, it's excellent, and all about shooting men. If you want something that's just a cathartic pvp release, well then you're spoilt for choice. Would you like to know my secret for having fun in DayZ? It's all about attitude. I'm not here to collect all the things, and I've accepted the inevitability of death. I understand that this mod is at it's most enjoyable when it's causing you to experience raw emotions you otherwise don't get to feel, and giving you stories to tell. You don't win or lose DayZ, so there's really nothing to get frustrated about. You participate in stories. Not every character in every story gets to live to see the end, accept that. Occasionally you have to be the guy in the red shirt. There are all kinds of roles that are thoroughly unexplored, in my experience so far. I've got a list of characters to portray in future attempts. Next time I play with one of my groups, I'm going to volunteer to be "the guy on the other side of the town madly firing an Enfield into the air", to help them out. That character isn't going to last long, and that's perfectly fine by me. tl:dr, rather than adopting the same play style that everyone else seems to have (that is frankly making the game more boring to play with strangers, regardless of whether you enjoy pvp or not), try coming up with your own unique way to play, at least for a character or two. Try out crazy. I've had a couple characters that only carried around melee weapons and packs full of empty cans, while trying to befriend every other player I came across. Those were great times.

If you have an imagination, and approach this game as more of a tabletop rpg that happens to have guns in it, rather than a shooter with zombies, then when you run out of objectives, it's due to a lack of imagination on your part. It would be awesome if there were more options for creating structures and defending forts, but if you're not imaginative, you'd still just wind up building each thing once and then find yourself in the same position again. If you think the point of this game is collecting all the gear and racking up kills, then you will get bored pretty quickly.

'cept that guy isn't Russian... He's an American shill for CoD, iirc.

I like it better this way. Not every character I start up now is immediately successful, but so what? Gives you a taste of the death and pain that will inevitably come. You can die just as easily with a gun.

I've got a pro tip to add: You can conserve ammo by hunting (silently) with a hatchet or crowbar. It's also a great cathartic release, let those goats have it!

I've met quite a few people in-game that have then become my friends. At least a half dozen now. Try using the direct chat, and don't just shoot every single player you ever see.

It's at the south end. If you're crawling, you'd best hope there's a box of supplies out back or on the roof (and remember to remove the other loot that's "under" the box first, then look at it again). In my experience, it's impossible to get through the front windows without functioning legs.

M14 is a beast as long as your target is close enough to not be obscured by the dot in the sight. I say carry both as well, but if there can be only one, then go for the M14, as it's just that much cooler, and you'll feel slightly more like a boss.

I'm reiterating something I've heard elsewhere, as I've never had the nvg's to test this, but supposedly it doesn't blind nvg-wearers like a white light does. Also, apparently the cone of light is less visible, making the source of the light less apparent to observers.