louist

... And I'm wondering what's different? Loot spawns seem to be fixed, and I came across a hockey stick, a zucchini, and a welding mask, none of which I recall from before, but otherwise I couldn't detect anything new over the course of a few hours. What's the progress been like?

I wasn't expecting anything else from this fine community. Come now, if I spawn outside Electro, naked, soaking, and freezing, I'm going to check Electro. That's a no-brainer. Given the way temperature works right now, you need to grab something to wear as soon as possible. But that's beside the point. Mentioning that I couldn't find an axe =/= equal a no-loot complaint. Heck, if I couldn't find any loot, I probably wouldn't have noticed that the spawns had been fixed. But hey, reading comprehension can be tough, so I wont hold it against you. I managed to play again the other night with a friend, and I'm still not seeing a large difference. I appreciate the added content, obviously, but I'm disappointed to see Zombies haven't changed, or that character movement is still a work in progress. I'll give it another go next weekend, and see if anything jumps out.

People have a way of distilling lists of changes into those that have a meaningful impact on their play sessions. But, in an effort to be less of a burden, I had a look at what's changed since April/May. While there looks to be a fair number of new items and some new towns, I didn't experience much different in my few hours of play. Most of the areas I went through had been picked clean of food and weapons, the fire station in Electro had must have had 15 crowbars, and almost as many fire extinguishers, and I saw only 3 zombies. The inventory was still buggy and slow to react, some items I removed teleported to the room above me, while some others just disappeared... My experiences today were not marketly different than they were last spring, though I did spend most of my time trying to not freeze to death. Couldn't find an axe for the life of me.

I'm in favor of side chat, as an option. Some people see it as not immersive, but that's never a problem I've had. Hell, the most immersive, memorable experiences I've had in DayZ come from the mod, despite side chat, and prevalent vehicles, and so on. SA hasn't left me with any truly lasting memories at all. And that worries me. Yes, it's still early on, but I could say the same about the mod, early on despite the many Micky-mouse workarounds of the mod, the chunkiness and bugs, the hackers, etc, it consistently provided immersive experiences that sucked me in. But immersion =/= realism, and we shouldn't conflate the two.

Then please, call it quits, move on, and find a hobby that you aren't so personally invested in. Simply put (as has been stated many times), there's nothing to stop people from adjusting gamma on their monitors themselves, or using their GPU controls to do it. Bohemia spending time "fixing" the problem wouldn't do anything to stop the people who abuse gamma, but would negatively impact those who have legitimately need it.

Gews has repeated showcased the ridiculous dispersion, pulling data from the game files directly. It's not merely anecdotal evidence.

Congratulations, you just defined "gimmick." The gimmick of Sonic is running very fast. The gimmick of Braid is turning back time. The gimmick of DayZ is zombies. Sigh.

On stable DayZ mod servers you do see this kind of community-building. I've mentioned it a few times before, and I will again. When you have a group of people who regularly play on the same server, you see a mellowing of KoS in favor of more balanced interaction. You get to know people, their habits, attitudes, and play-styles. There are people who I will go out of my way to help out (because they've proven themselves to be cool people, or they've helped me out before. There are others whom I will go out of my way to hunt down, simply because they've shown themselves to be douche bags, or because we've built up a rivalry. None of that is currently possible in SA, and won't be unless we have some way to indintify people. In the server I play on, it's possible with global chat. Bullshitting with people a few hours each weekend goes a long way towards getting to know them as players. That's not something the majority of people want in SA, or at least the vocal forum dwellers, but it's something that does work. A possibility I could see working in SA is a short range mouse-over nameplate, that only appears within, say, 8-10 meters, a distance from which you could easily see and recognize a person. Having it mouse-over only simulates scrutizing a person, while having it only work when right next to a person also keeps most people from exploiting it to locate players in hiding. Is it realistic? Not really. But is it any less realistic than having every other player a veritable clone of every other? No. It's just a compromise within the limits of the engine.

But the exact same situation applies to gunshot wounds and removing bullets. The pain of removing a bullet can also knock one unconscious. And really, if DayZ wants to implement a detailed medical system, removing bullets, cleaning, and stitching wounds should be part of that.

But you still do, don't you? :P

I'd eat there.

Yes.

I understand what the salty air will do to metal, living on the ocean myself, but the level of damage to the cars goes far beyond what a few months of exposure can do. The civil war point is a good one, but it's funny how the only physical damage was inflicted to cars and windows. No other signs of combat, that I can think of. None of the buildings have been so much as burned, aside from the hotel, and that was hit by a plane. Another inconsistency: the power to the streetlights are still running.

Sure, you make that argument, but it's still extremely tenuous, especially in regards to the poor maintenance. That every car was in the same near-death rust-bucket state approaches absurdity. Look, for instance, at Havana. Cold War era cars, poor country, coastal. But you'll find plenty of well maintained cars. But it's more than that. All upholstery, if my memory serves, is absent from the cars as well, something that takes a fair bit of time, even with exposure to the elements. We're talking nylon or polyester, each of which can take decades to decompose. As for the Arma 2 model theory, there are a ton of models in Arma 2 that aren't so rusted, and indeed, those used most by DayZ, even as static art assets (crashes, etc) still had paint, and so on. So... I'm just going to stick with the idea that it doesn't and won't make sense. Rationalizing it doesn't work at the moment, unless you're going to throw probability right out the window.

A good idea? Perhaps not. A necessary one, from a financial and PR perspective? Yes. Rocket talked up the then-upcoming SA a lot, but dates he mentioned came and went without much to show for it. I think, if they waited for a finished product(that is to say, around December 2015, given the timeline they posted at the EA release) I think a lot of the interest would have passed. They also wouldn't have so easily justified the recent additions to the team.

Like many others, I've been playing more of the mods lately than SA. There's simply more unique experiences to be had playing Wasteland and the likes.

The timeline question has been raised over and over again, if you dig through the posts for SA and the mod before that. The mod was pretty much consistent, as none of the evidence contradicted itself. SA is another story. The cars are rusted and completely ruined, something that takes years, I can attest to that from personal experience. And yet there is plenty of fresh fruit, much of it tropical and thus foreign to the region, which wouldn't last a week without refrigeration. The only conclusion we can make with certainty is that it doesn't make sense, and isn't really meant to b

Takes me 60-90 minutes, if I'm looking. Hours if I'm just playing around.

I agree. That everyone knows how to perfectly make a function bow is silly. What if, then, the quality of the bow (and whatever else made) increased as you make more of them and learned, through your mistakes, what did and didn't work? People on the forums have argued that adding character experience to the game "doesn't belong" in DayZ, but having a character become better at such tasks would make sense, and would give not only more worth to a character's life (something that many of us feel is absent) as well as make sense. This would also address the difference in opinion people have in regards to whether or not the average person could make a functioning bow (or anything else, really).

National honor is serious business, but I acquiesce :p Back on topic: Creating a bow, without modern machinery, is undeniably easier than creating a modern firearm. And by-and-large, most people likely understand the basic mechanics of each. That said, is crafting a easy? Is it easy enough for the average person to make by hand? Would that bow make an effective and reliable weapon? And would the average person be able to effectively use it if it were? To each of those questions I am inclined to say no. The annecdotal evidence supplied earlier put aside, I'm doubtful any average person is going to pull it off. There's simply a lot of knowledge that goes into creating a working bow and the arrows it fires. What types of wood should you use? How do you select the proper length and width? What shape should it be? How do you treat the wood? What sort of "string" should you use, and how do you treat that? How long are the arrows? How wide? What sort of feathers, or other materials, should you use to stabilize them? What makes a good arrow head? What shape should it be? And if you plan on making a laminate bow, you run into further complications. What materials are you using? What sort of adhesive, and where can you find it or how can you make it? There would simply be so much trial and error involved that I wouldn't call the process an easy one, and I wouldn't consider a crafting system where you take wood and some string, mix them together, and end up with a deadly weapon a particularly realistic one, if we want to bring realism into the debate.

Some clarifying points are in order: America declared war on Britain, declaring the annexation of much of Canada "a mere matter of marching." It didn't quite turn out that way. What is taught in school isn't reflective of the realities of the war. There has been a lot of informative scholarship done on the war by Americans, Brits, and Canadians. You should read up. I don't mean that as an attack on your intelligence or education; once you get past the abridged version taught to children on both sides of the boarder, you'll find it may be one of the most hilarious and entertaining wars in known history. Neither side wanted to go to war. Britain was fighting Napolean at the time, a much larger concern, and one that monopolized their attention and manpower. A small majority of American hawks (largely hailing from the south) pushed it through on the pretext of British reclamation/repatriation of deserters serving on American ships was infringing on American soveriegnty. The joke, here, is that the British, in response to American complaints, repealed the practice. But the American envoy, carrying news home, was still at sea when war was declared. He arrived just a little too late. And the laughs continue. Do you know who supplied the food, naval supplies, clothes and boots that got the Canadian militia through the first years of the war? Americans. The New England merchants largely ignored the war and continued trading with Canada. America, despite declaring war, hadn't raised any troops before doing so, and failed to inform a number of it's forts along the boarder. The result? A large number of the American forces were volunteers raised in the south (the war was unpopular in New England, and militia forces refused to cross the boarder), who-convinced that the war would be quick and easy-marched without any winter clothes, proper boots, or enough of basic field gear, such as tents. More men, on both sides, died as a result of exposure or disease than any other causes. Likewise, despite America declaring war, the first move was made by a small force of British (mostly fur traders and allied First Nations) who captured Fort Mackinac, which hadn't even been informed of the war. On the whole, though, the entire war was marked by a general sense of incompetence on both sides. The American army was staffed by officers far past their prime, veterans of the War of Independance. The British, meanwhile, left the defense of Canada in the hands of men either too old or Incompetant to fight in the Napoleonic War, or men who had bought their way into their military commissions. Yes, both sides had their share of distinguished and worthy commanders, but they were in the minority. I refer to British North America as Canada, simply beacuse it's easier, and I'm lazy. So, back to your point: there were no winners in the war, only losers: mainly North American Aboriginals.

Which wars, again? Are you considering Vietnam a victory? Iraq? Or do American's still believe they won in 1812?

What's the speed on the processor, and what GPU does it have? If the store doesn't list one, it will be using an integrated GPU, which will allow you to play less graphically intensive games, but will completely choke out with DayZ. I'd also look for more RAM as well.

Personally, I don't see an issue with having consolidated military spawns, nor with leaving the interior fairly empty. Doubly so when loot starts to respawn. An asymmetrical map leads to a lot of interesting gameplay in itself. Those of you who played the mod, especially in the early days, probably remember your first treks up to NWAF, a location that had a nearly mythological reputation early on. It was a major milestone for many of us. Hell, go back and watch the older videos, or read older posts about it if you weren't around then, or didn't play the mod. I fear we'll lose some of that sense of adventure if the map becomes too "balanced" or "developed." In fact, with a lot of military or near-military equipment spawning in many non-military buildings, I think we're already seeing that happen.

How many of those are truly viable, though?