Rich (DayZ)

I rather like the idea of a horde of zombie boy scouts or hikers roaming the woods (or another group that would plausibly be there: lumberjacks, a military patrol, highway maintenance crews... any group that was in the wilderness together when the shit hit the fan). It would also be good if they had better loot on them; I'm sure a band of scouts would be carrying matches, hunting knives, maps, compasses and tents with them!

This isn't a bad idea. It would certainly work for groups of people working together to have a designated 'medic' on the team, and it may stop people disconnecting if there's a chance they can resuscitate their friend who got ambushed rather than just run away and save themselves. This happened to me not so long ago: a friend and I were ambushed by a bandit. The bandit killed my friend, I killed the bandit, and then sat there for 15 minutes waiting for my friend to corpse run.

Not quite. I would say: 1) Don't speak enough English. 2) New to the game. I was probably being unnecessarily pejorative here; it's more about being a noob than an idiot. 3) A flawed default option and a confusing UI make simple communications unnecessarily hard. 4) They will lure me into a false sense of security and then shoot me in the back, despite my obviously friendly intentions (therefore ruling out self-preservation as a sole motive). I guess 'Prick' is as good a word for it as any :) Remember, these aren't reasons why someone would shoot me and take my stuff, they're reasons why someone would not respond to any comms, but hang around the vicinity long enough on a near-empty server to seem friendly before shooting me. Really, the whole point of my post was 3), but my irritation probably clouded it. In summary: Please, dev team, can you make the default channel 'Direct' rather than 'Global'. At least then I would know people were deliberately not talking to me, rather than just failing to communicate for technical reasons.

You know, I actually laughed out loud at your caricature post. It was pretty funny. In fact, I almost gave you my beans! But then I read this, which indicates that you've actually misunderstood what I said and are now basically insulting me. Here's the thing. I think the MECHANICS of the game are flawed. I think the game should default to the Direct channel and give people a reason to cooperate. Otherwise, as I have said elsewhere, people who can't communicate are more likely to be aggressive. I think the main thing I have a problem with is your enormous array of blatant assumptions about my motives and situations (and you say I'm presumptuous!). I don't just run up to people and demand to talk. I haven't insulted anyone in the community. I haven't complained that people don't "dare" to talk. You have set up a strawman version of what I originally said and attacked that. It is disingenuous and unhelpful. As I said, I liked your original satire, but you've gone beyond that now. So just to make things clear, here's what happened this morning that pissed me off enough to write the post. I spawned in a shed north of Cherno with another survivor already there. He had his torch out and hadn't seen me. Instead of shooting him, I said "hi, I'm friendly", took out my torch and wiggled my upper body. He looked at me and did the same. I typed "Do you speak English?". No response. I typed "Use the direct channel, Global doesn't work." He seemed to pause for a bit, as if he was typing; then there was no response. "I'm just looking for car parts." I said. There were only THREE people on the server at this point, so it was an unlikely meeting to begin with. I was hoping the lack of competition for plentiful resources would be a deterrent to violence. He had a rifle on his shoulder. I figure he probably had enough that he wouldn't shoot me for what I had. We both moved around the barn for a minute. I thought the tension was starting to ease. Then he shot me in the head without saying anything. So yeah, I was pissed off. Not because I died or because I lost my gear (again), but because now, whenever I see anyone, I'm going to have to shoot them straight in the face. When the mod first came out, I actually enjoyed the uncertainty and tension of meeting another survivor, and I guess I was just trying to bring that back in the early hours of a dark morning on a near-empty server. Stupid of me, clearly.

I didn't mean to be overly accusatory. I actually think the problem is one of language or people typing on Global Chat. When people can't communicate, they are more likely to become aggressive, so really this is about making communication easier. I've probably clouded that issue by being pissed off about constantly getting shot for my efforts when I've clearly had the drop on someone but decided to let them live!

I'm not actually trying to recruit. I don't want to team up with them. I have friends I play with already. I'm just wondering why people never talk back when I've decided not to shoot them. I honestly think it's the Global chat thing to blame.

I've spent the last few days NOT shooting people I've come across, and instead trying to talk to them. Nobody ever talks back. Some have run away, most have turned violent. Why is this? Possible reasons: 1) They don't speak English. I play on European servers early in the morning. But I would expect anyone to be able to type 'hi' into chat in response to my greeting. They don't. 2) They don't know how to. Some people are idiots and haven't bound a PTT key or a chat key. 3) They don't realise Global chat is turned off. This is a key one, I think. On launch, the game defaults to the Global channel, but Global chat is turned off. Do people even know? They can see themselves TALK on global chat, so it's difficult to blame them for not realising no-one else can. This morning I joined a server and spawned in a barn next to a guy with a torch. I flashed my torch at him, did the upper-body wiggle thing, and he wiggled back at me. I tried typing, talking and telling him to use direct chat. Eventually he shot me in the head. Can we PLEASE default to the Direct channel on spawn? I really think a lot of people have no idea how to change channel, or even that Global doesn't broadcast. I sometimes see them pause as though typing, but I never see anything. Why isn't Direct on by default? 4) They are arseholes. Honestly, I have become so enraged at nobody even trying to talk back to me anymore, and then getting shot, that I am giving up. Until there is some kind of incentive to directly cooperate, I am going to shoot everyone I see in the face immediately. Sorry, but this morning drove me over the edge and now I'd rather talk to a zombie than a foreigner who shoots me when he can't understand what I'm saying.

I had the temerity to crawl under a tree. Only it wasn't a tree, it was the Whomping Willow from Hogwarts, or possibly an Ent. It smashed me in the back, broke my legs and robbed me of about 8000 blood. I crawled into the nearby town, but that just ended up being free delivery for the local hungry zombies.

FYI, I used my last one on a friend who had a disagreement with a door he opened! And I wasn't driving a car. I don't have one. I spent an hour running, crouching and crawling across Chernarus dodging Zeds in fear of my life. And it turns out it was all a dream!

Since my cat learned that jumping on my face early in the morning resulted in earlier breakfast, I've started playing for the occasional hour before I leave for work. The servers are quieter, it's a good way to wake up and the solitude of the game fits the quiet of early morning. Unfortunately I had that hour of my life deleted today. The server I was happily creeping around on, EU404, either crashed or rebooted after an hour's play and, when I reconnected, it was like nothing had happened. I don't really mind the lost gear. Gear comes and goes. What I really mind is that all my new stories never happened. I can't tell anyone about how, in a hut in Novy Sobor, panicked by the howling of zombies outside, I accidentally wiped my backpack inventory by picking up a new ALICE pack before dropping my old Coyote patrol pack. I can't tell anyone about how, sneaking into the Stary Sobor encampment, a former USMC mixed martial arts instructor (I can only assume) saw me and smashed my knee with a single blow before I could dispatch him. I can't tell anyone how I dragged my shattered leg around the camp, on my belly, to find an M4A1 and G17 among the trash and dead bodies. i can't tell anyone how I crawled forlornly into town in a vain attempt to find medical help. I can't tell anyone of the elation I felt when, 15 minutes and 8 zombies later, I spotted that hallowed, thin tube of morphine lying inside a hut. I can't tell anyone, because none of this ever happened. 10 minutes later, crossing a field under a rising moon, the server stopped responding. And when I logged back into another server, none of my progress had been saved. Even logging back into EU404 when it came back up saw me back in Guglovo, cold and hungry, clutching my Lee Enfield as though it had all been a bad dream. So, TL;DR - How often do servers sync your character with the central database? How come I lost a whole hour? Is there something wrong with that server? Should I avoid playing on it again?

Yes, and this is clearly where we've been going wrong, because that's exactly what I said in my reply to you. Perhaps my initial disagreement about ammo restrictions (and I guess we'll have to just agree to disagree about that) blinded you to the rest of what I wrote, which was, in essence, that this is a video game and therefore the real life consequences of shooting someone do not apply. I agree with you that it's bad if this game becomes Deathmatch. I agree with you that there is not enough incentive to cooperate. I agree with you that it is too easy to resort to gunplay to solve all problems. One of the things I loved about the mod initially was that you never knew, when you first saw someone, if they were going to help or hinder you. Now you do. If they're carrying a rifle, they're going to try to kill you (or often enough for it to be a near-enough certainty). So the only thing we disagree on is the ammunition thing. It would have saved us both a lot of time if you'd noticed that to begin with! :)

Well ok, now we're getting somewhere. Perhaps you should re-read MY original reply to you as well, because I'm arguing for many of the things you seem to be. That was certainly my intention when I wrote it, so I was surprised by your dismissive reaction. Here's a very important quote from the post you link to which effectively sums up what I said: Grouping up has great benefits, while solo play isn't punished. In other words, the risk/reward ratio of befriending a stranger currently means it's not worth taking the chance in DayZ, whereas it is in MineZ. Your suggested idea of reducing the incidence of ammunition to address this question of 'weapon instrumentality' is what I was disagreeing with. It will not work. it will make people more likely to hoard guns and shoot each other to steal weaponry. So while I applaud your initial stated desire, I think your suggested solution is wrong for all the reasons I articulated in my first post. Now can you respond to those arguments without dismissing them offhand or insulting me?

Usually, a reluctance to simplify and/or repeat an initial idea is a sign of a) arrogance and B) a communication problem. Quite clearly, your initial post didn't do a good job of explaining what you mean, otherwise you wouldn't keep having to say this throughout the thread. Trust me, if people don't understand something you've written, that means it's your problem, not theirs, even if it makes you angry and they must be stupid. Clarity of communication is almost a greater skill than clarity of thought. So, giving you the benefit of the doubt, I will ask you again. I am being as considerate as I can be, and this is a genuine query. What, in a paragraph, was your original proposition?

Once upon a time, a man woke up on a beach with nothing but a torch, a bandage and some painkillers... The beauty of DayZ is that the rest of the story is up to you. It's a world full of potential for stories (just see how big the thread on stories is) and creating a back-story smacks a bit too much of 'Single Player Game' for me. More colour would certainly be welcome, but not necessarily story. But if you want a story, write one. DayZ is the kind of game that was made for fan fiction. You'd certainly have no shortage of potential readers.

Internet High Five!