Nekan

I don't ever shoot first, just can't do it knowing that whoever I shoot will have to start over again with nada. And I won't return fire on a warning shot, either. You can tell who wants you dead and who doesn't in this game, hardly anybody will miss a shot on a target that isn't moving. So when that shot hits the ground near you, just high-tail it out of there and cut your losses, chances are they wanted to scare you away, not start a fight. If I get caught with my pants down and the person is giving me orders, I happily obey them, better to listen and stay alive then try some Rambo bullshit and end up dead. So he might take a couple supplies in my backpack, so what? He deserves them, he got the drop on me, not the other way around. Edit in reply to 'Nerd': Someone telling you to 'sit' or 'stay still' is not lingo for 'I'm gonna shoot you.' It's lingo for 'I already had a shot, but didn't take it because I'm not an asshole and am trying to not kill you.'

Alright, story time. I play on a rather bad laptop that was not made for gaming, much less ARMA2. But I get by. Playing on a laptop also means resorting to using the mouse-pad instead of an actual mouse. It can get difficult for me sometimes, but again, it's playable and the game is far too fun to just give up because of little things like framerate. But enough about such things, on to the story! I had just respawned from a hacker teleporting the server to The Thunderdome and killing everyone, and when I spawned I had absolutely no gear in this dark, unforgiving world. Not even a flashlight! So I headed to Elektro and spotted a flashlight. It was obviously another new spawner so I ran up and teamed up with the no-mic, him giving light support while I shot the many zombies that had us cornered. After surviving that we were the best of friends, looting all of the now strangely zombie-free quiet town. The grocery store and the church had been blown up, but the hotel alone gave us enough that we could travel North with our newest friend from the school. We pretty much played follow the leader with the chemlight all the way to NW Airfield, talking to a guy in sidechat that had actually survived the massacre of Thunderdome and was happily looting, but was stuck in by the walls around the fort. When we all finally arrived we spotted a heli that had been blown off to the side. (The hacker had been spawning mass-vehicles in the middle of thunderdome and was blowing them up on us.) It was fully fueled and repaired, so we obviously wanted it.. except for a small problem, no flight experience. Out of the four of us, not a single one of us had ever flown, with the exception of the guy that -had- done the tutorial, but said he managed to flip and die even with auto-hover on. He was not chosen to fly, and eventually I stepped up! It was rather shaky at first, inching my way from the outside perimeter of the walls into the inside of gear central with auto-hover on, and an even sketchier landing across the blown up rustyard. But once we landed we all hopped out and grabbed pretty much everything we could to make a hasty retreat into the sky, this time actually having to turn off auto so we could go forward. A few thousand meters later and we had picked up a fifth to our happy little group, loaded him out and gave him a seat. Now's when the lesson kicks in.. We ended up at NE airfield, and after looting I stopped at 150~ meters high and checked my map so I could set a waypoint back to Cherno for more rescue missions. When I hit 'M' again, chaos. I don't know if you've used a mousepad before or not, but sometimes it will glitch out and when you lift and re-press on it, and the cursor shoves itself to the bottom of the screen for a moment. This is what happened when I exited the map, going directly into a frontflip from a small altitude. Panic quickly settled in, but after doing a full front-flip I thought I could balance it out again, which was wrong. A fresh spawn of zombies set my FPS just low enough that I couldn't pull back up in time, sending us into -another- frontflip to which we hit the ground hard upside-down. We were still in sidechat while we yelled to our deaths, to which the entire server got their share of laughs I'm sure, and we ended up laughing at ourselves too, because the gear didn't mean all that much to us. Needless to say I won't be flying again anytime soon, unless of course I get the proper training and an actual mouse. But as a solo player it had been one of my funnest experiences so far on DayZ, I was happy enough just to find strangers that didn't shoot me in the face on sight, so teaming up with a group for the first time was certainly worth it! (Even though I ended up killed us all, sorry again guys!)

I'm obviously new to this game, but can we have the option to turn down our visibility to increase performance? Whenever I alter it I don't notice any real difference in sight range so I'm not entirely sure the option even works at all, which leads to a lower FPS than desired. I understand that it would leave some at a disadvantage if we got to choose our own visibility, setting it as high as we wanted, so could we just cap it at 1000 and then let us choose to bring it lower if we want, so that we can choose a higher FPS over sight range?

Got some binoculars and turned on 'Peeping Tom' mode, climbing up onto a destroyed castle and looking over a town. I saw a guy running away from several zombies, it didn't look like he had a weapon to fight them off with. Another survivor ran up and shot the zombies down one by one, until they were all dead, and then started to check the bodies. The guy that had just been saved pulled out an axe behind the savior's back and hacked away at him, took his gun, and ran off. I couldn't even believe it when I saw it. Who honestly does that? I know you want a gun and all, but killing the guy that just saved your life? I don't care how mentally messed up you are even in the situation of a zombie apocalypse, your mind would be able to register that someone just -saved- you. Far too much senseless PvP, if this is to be considered a simulator and not Battlefield with zombies then stop just killing other players for the fun of it and -survive-. You got bored? Then stay up north and fight other players that stand a chance, pretend that they're other military soldiers that are out for your heart, don't come back south with a high power sniper rifle and all the military equipment you can handle to shoot players that are going to Elektro for the first time(Civilians). Maybe I'm in disbelief because I play the role of medic. Earlier today I saw a guy with broken legs, crawling around inside a building looking for help. After establishing I was friendly(He had a gun, I was still scared), I put my back to him and offered my morphine from an earlier hospital raid. He only took one of them and healed himself, thanked me, and walked off. I can only hope that he remembers that the next time he's thinking about shooting someone that's just innocently trying to get by. So far the best way for me to earn the trust of a -decent- human being is to just turn my back to them/look at a complete 90 degree angle away, and start talking over the mic. I believe that it's a lot harder for someone to decide to shoot a person in the back -while- hearing their voice then it is to blow a silent player away that's pointing a gun at them. And it honestly works. If I run up to someone with a weapon out, I get blown away instantly. If I make contact and turn away while communicating, the amount of PvP deaths decreases significantly. The moral of this QQ story? Stop shooting friendly players in the face for no reason. You don't have to trust every player you see, in fact, I discourage that. In a real apocalypse I would be extremely cautious, but I wouldn't mindlessly kill everyone like a maniac. Keep your eyes on them, and attack only when you feel threatened/are attacked.

Wow, this got quite a bit of activity since I posted! :D There's been a few people proposing ways to modify the game and stop banditry, I don't want this at all! I just want people to understand the basis of why this game was made, to simulate survival in a zombie apocalypse. Once that is fully understood by someone, I want them to treat their player as -them- and think about all of their actions. If you're aiming a gun at someone's head in game, just think to yourself 'Would I pull the trigger in real life..?' For most people the answer will be no, and you'd lower your gun.(Unless you were defending yourself of course, in which case, defend yourself!) If everyone stopped the senseless murder and treated this like a simulation, there'd be alot less player killing and a LOT more robbery in the woods. I would love to be robbed instead of killed! I get to keep my position -and- most of my items? Hell yeah, take my beans! Instead of trying to stop banditry, why not add other ways for you to get the things you want off players! Something like sneaking up on someone and knocking them out for a good minute or so, letting you take what you'd like and run off. It's probably a flawed idea, but I'd just like to see things added that will offer alternate solutions instead of simply murderering to get a bite to eat.

In the situation I observed, a friendly player went out of his way to protect another human, choosing to use his bullets to save someone. And instead of being thanked, he gets betrayed. If someone had just, out of nothing but kindness, saved your life, I guarantee they have enough kindness left over to share their supplies. What I'm saying is that you don't have to kill, just -ask-. I keep plenty of supplies on me, I would gladly share if I was asked, because I can easily hunt another animal/refill a canteen at a lake for food and drinks. But instead of communicating, most players think the ONLY way to get what they want is to kill other players.

I got DayZ yesterday after watching an unhealthy abundance of youtube videos about it, and was off on my extremely low FPS quest to survive. My very first life, I didn't die for awhile. Made it all the way to Elektro by some weird miracle, looted some three-story building and stayed there for quite awhile in the dark, throwing flares in every direction out of boredom. Eventually boredom grew into curiousity when I lit up the grocery store, and I climbed down from the roof to cross the street and start looting once more. I got a good amount of things added to my toolbelt, FINALLY got a weapon to defend myself, then.. *Bang, bang* Shot twice in the back with a rifle, and fell over. I still hadn't learned chat yet so I laid there helpless, unconcious and staring at the hourglass to wake up. The guy that had shot me crept up out of the darkness, and I assume he started looting me because he stayed still over me for a moment. I figured he thought I was dead, until he pointed his gun at me and -slowly- started to raise the muzzle up to my head. "Nononono!" Was what I was yelling at the computer until he finally pulled the trigger, ending my first DayZ experience. That one moment created so much tension that I had to keep playing. Sure, I wish that my very first interaction with another player had been friendly, instead of leading to my death, but that's the whole reason I wanted to try out this game. The emotions that it brings out of you are so crazy that I keep loading back in everytime I die. I don't think I'll ever have it in me to kill another player(Unless he/she shoots first of course!) simply because I know that I wouldn't want -my- loot all gone just because of a showdown. I guess that ends this nub story, though if anyone read this far, care to answer a question? Sometimes when I log into a server, my old character is gone and replaced with a new one. I shrug and start looting on the new one, and when I finally log out of that one and join a new server later that day, I'm back to my -old- character and all of his gear. What's going on with that? Why are three different servers for some reason sharing two saves?