Blitzy

Rule One: there are no rules. Welcome to FREELANCE: a European-based group of 15-20 survivors, all working together as a focused, co-operative unit. Unlike other groups, we never started as an established clan/guild; we've all met in-game as solo survivors with our guns drawn, measuring how much we trusted the other, in the paranoia-intensive standoffs that make this experience so tense and gripping. Each of us chose to lower the weapon. Each of us chose to trust each-other with their lives. Each of us have chosen to work together as a team. Weeks later, we now form an impressive unit. With established supply campsites, group alliances and a range of functional cars, bikes and copters across multiple servers, FREELANCE is truly carving a name in the DayZ history books as a shining example of how humanity brings us together in times of crisis. We gel together so effectively because, unlike groups who've grown together outside of DayZ, we've had to learn how to work together to ensure our survival. We know each-other's strengths and weaknesses and we know exactly how we'll all act in a given situation because we've seen it all as we've survived as a group. Together. We're neither ruthless bandits nor shining paragons. We're not interested in making the world burn, nor are we interested in saving it. All we focus on is making sure FREELANCE can look after itself, and we'll do whatever it takes to make sure we stay alive. Together. Other information: - We have members based all across Europe (English-speaking) - We use Teamspeak 3 - We host a DayZ server (EU12 though not necessarily the one we play on) - We accept people from all backgrounds and experience. - We're not an established clan/guild/faction. We're just a group of fun players working together under a common name. Because of our position, we do whatever we can to stay seperate from society and keep ourselves to ourselves, but we're in a position where we could start bringing in new Freelancers who share our common goal. We can't just let everyone in - we'd be opening ourselves up to traitors after our gear. Therefore, we cannot just give you FREELANCE's group information publically. If you're interested in joining, we first need to get to know each-other better. We need to know we can trust you. PM me with a brief message introducing yourself and what you can bring to the team. It's not essential that you're experienced in ARMA/DayZ and we're completely cool with beginners joining up - you just have to be able to somehow convince us you're not going to be a threat to our operation. Regardless of whether you're joining us, or just scoping out the survivor communities, we're grateful you've taken an interest in FREELANCE and we hope you're surviving well in DayZ. Good luck!

After losing connection from the server, I relogged to find my character stuck in DayZ's 'Wilderness' debug area: stranded on an open field with a bunch of dummy PMC models. I had no choice but to delete that character and start anew. The first two characters continued to spawn at the area (this time with no gear at all), though I have now managed to restart a character back on New Chernarus. Date/Time: 26/04/2012 (roughly 08:30AM GMT) Where you were: Northern Grocery store in Elektro. What you were doing: Looting food when I began to lose connection (No message received...).

You're running 4 different Antivirus Programs? Yeowch! I know people do have multiple antivirus installs on their PC but only for on-demand scans. Having them all run at once can't be good for your computer. :-/ As for the porn, hey, you certainly aren't the only one that enjoys a little alone time in front of the computer. But what's wrong with finding a trusted site with the stuff you need, and stick with it instead of exposing yourself to an array of malware-infested websites? That's definitely a Google Redirect Adware, by the way. You should probably get that checked out. http://antifraudintl.org/showthread.php?63666-Understanding-a-Google-Redirect-Malware-Adware :P

Disabling Side and Global was not made by Korathias as a seperate suggestion, from what I can read, but stated as a requirement/condition for this particular 'personal killer reveal' suggestion to work. Personally, I think it's interesting (particularly the killmail concept; I'd never seen that before). The anxiety and paranoia in DayZ does not come from 'who killed you in the past' so much as 'who could kill you in the present?'. Once you're dead, the paranoia fades - you've no more reason to be scared of those around you because you're now far far away in a new land and life. What this does is gives the victim the slimmest shot of revenge. The killer is only reported to the victim - there's no 'punishment' made on the killer and there's no instant public reveal of the killer to the rest of the server. It's up to the victim to hunt down his killer, or spread the word to others that he meets on his travels (no more side chat, remember). Of course, that 'victim' could easily be lying in a bid to get an enemy killed. How can you confirm this guy's telling the truth? The more people a PK'er kills, the more individuals are made privately aware of this PK'er's identity and the more convincing the argument against that particular bandit becomes as the word continues to spread across the survivor population. There's no direct punishment to true bandits. They can still do as they please. What this suggestion does is gives players a slim shot at serving their own dose of justice - and particularly knocks down on 'for sport' PK'ers who kill purely for kicks. Every time you think about shooting a player, you have a choice: is this kill really worth another player hunting me down in the future? And the kick is, that's not even a punishment to some. I'd safely wager there are players out there who'd WANT bounty-hunters and revenge-seekers to chase them down. The common complaint on these forums isn't that there are bandits in the game who kill to steal a player's gear; it's against the people who kill for sport - the majority-labelled griefers, trolls and deathmatchers of this game. With this suggestion, there's no restriction or ban against that playstyle (as pointless as it may seem to some), it just gives the other players a small opportunity to attempt to combat the problem themselves.

As a bandit-hunter, I'm not particularly interested in gameplay 'balance' or superficial PvP deterrent. The bandits can play as they please - it's all a part of the game. There's absolutely no reason why the game should punish them for playing the game legitimately. If anything should punish the bandits, it's us. The players. If we truly want it, it's our responsibility to bring this apocalypse in check and restore order to the world - not 'gamey' mechanics or restrictions. If we do not do anything about it, of course the bandits are going to run rampant because no-one's attempting to face them. WE need to face them. @ROCKET: MECHANIC TIME! I'm in full agreement that it should be down to the players to police this world if they choose to do so, not the developers. This is why I've chosen the playstyle I practice. However, if we bandit-hunters are to work effectively, there's one particular mechanic that needs addressing. We need to be able to differentiate players in some way: Names, clothing, physical descriptions, etc. I don't want to be told by the game who the bandits are; I want to try and work it out for myself. However, I first need the ability to seperate player from player! Bandit reputation gets around. You see in Side Chat survivors reporting sniper fire in Elektro, or people reporting in after escaping alive from a bandit firefight with last locations and weapons. I'm willing to hunt these PK'ers down and tackle this 'deathmatch' problem myself with the means available to me in game - the problem is, I have no idea who to look for. Everyone has the same skin. Everyone looks the same. I'm NOT supporting bandits skins. That's far too easy, and it's unfair on those who want to hide their intentions. I'm saying that there needs to be a way of differentiating players, so I can work out who my prey is in the middle of a crowd without attacking the other survivors (who I have no reason to shoot). I need more information from looking at a character besides a default skin that looks exactly the same as everyone else, so I know the bandit that was described to me (either by name or physical description) is the character I'm aiming at in my ironsights. There are two particular mechanics that relate to this issue: Would this help alleviate the problem perhaps, or have I contributed yet another pointless 'game-fixing' balance idea unintentionally? :/

Alright, before you jump at me because the title implies this is another 'make the sandbox game an RPG!' suggestion, I plead with you to just trust me and go with it. I'm sure it's not as bad as you think! Also, this is absolutely 100% totally most likely maybe definitely a beta suggestion: this is obviously a low-priority suggestion, and game-breakers will obviously need to be consulted first. I'm merely proposing that this is something to think about when picturing the 'final product'. With that, here we go: The problem: Teamwork? Who needs teamwork? When a lone survivor can handle everything by himself with the same proficiency and training as everyone else, what's the point in relying on others? A single man can: - Build/repair a car/bike - Build/repair a helicopter - Pilot a helicopter - Give blood transfusions in the wilderness - Understand medical jargon, and can apply morphine, epi-pen and bandages correctly - Handle firearms proficiently - Handle a sniper rifle proficiently - Handle a rocket launcher...you get the idea - Sprint like a marathon runner, with endless stamina - Hunt a wild animal, carve it up and prepare it perfectly for consumption - Cook anything on a campfire perfectly - Etc etc etc By having the proficiency to handle every single problem/situation by oneself, a single survivor can do all of this without any help or co-operation (regardless of how unrealistic that sounds). With no need for teamwork, could this be what's causing all our bandit problems? Could this be why there's little encouragement to band together and tackle this apocalypse as a team? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The (proposed) solution: Allow people to choose their character's pre-Zompoc proficiencies. Their professions, backgrounds, histories - allow players to select the skills their character had before shit hit the fan. For example, if a player wants their survivor to be an ex-doctor, then that survivor could therefore be more proficient at applying medical treatments (and perhaps even being able to apply exclusive, complex treatment). However, as a downside, they've received little/zero firearms training - and while they can handle a sidearm, they may struggle with an automatic's recoil. HOWEVER, for gameplay/sandbox reasons, these should not be restrictive to a class. Perhaps that doctor DID have some firearms training. Okay, sure, but maybe he didn't learn how to hunt his food in the wild. Or get his driver's license. Allow the player to choose 'traits' (similar to Fallout) that allow for a custom-built character with skills that they are proficient with - but also force the player to pass up skills to indicate they have had little training/experience with them before, and their efforts/labour will not have as much effect as someone who's had the training. For example: If a mechanic's repairing a car, he may have the ability to repair 1-2 parts of the car (such as the engine/fueltank) without actually requiring replacement parts. Or, he may be able to repair the vehicle more effectively than a standard civilian - replacement parts installed by a non-mechanic may only repair from red to yellow. If a pilot/driver operates a vehicle, they may be able to use the vehicle without consuming as much fuel. Bumps and crashes may not do as much damage to a vehicle as someone who 'never had their driving license'. Orrrrr, the car may randomly turn and swerve if operated by said person who never passed their test. If a doctor applies painkillers or morphine, it completely eradicates the symptom. They may be able to treat broken bones with just a splint/bandage, compared to a standard civilian who may need more items to treat the injury. Blood bag transfusions could be made exclusive to doctors (making them extremely valuable to other survivors alive). Doctors may be able to identify and diagnose illnesses on other survivors - even if that survivor isn't even aware they've contracted one. If a policeman/soldier operates a firearm, they get less recoil or shake as a standard civilian with no firearms training. They may be able to run faster, or run for longer, due to military training. A farmer/hunter/butcher may know how to hunt and cook wild animals more effectively than others. Animals that they have slain can be prepared into more slices of raw meat. Raw meat that they have cooked restores more blood/vitality. Perhaps meat prepared by someone unfamiliar with this practice may have the chance of contracting food poisoning, infecting the eater with a selection of various illnesses/diseases. And again, allow players to 'mix-and-match' to shape out the perfect character that matches their playstyle. As such, players will be encouraged to scout out and team up with other survivors that complement their skill proficiencies. A doctor may need some security around. A mechanic may need someone to prep his meals more effectively than he ever could. Survivor groups may need to elect (or recruit, if they don't already have) a 'designated driver'. Everyone will still be able to 'do everything by themselves' if they still choose to operate lone wolf. However, they won't be as effective at the task as someone with the training. Therefore, tasks may take more time or items to complete, or the task may have a higher risk of nasty side-effects - and all of this may encourage some of those lone wolves to lower their weapons and look for help, bringing in that optional (but encouraged) level of teamwork and co-operation that everyone seems to be dying for.

It says you're looking at this from the wrong angle. It's no surprise that people will stop their sessions of DayZ when it starts getting dark. Night's not supposed to be playable - the whole intention is for players to fear it because of how difficult it can be to maneuver through it. The whole point is for players to fear the night, yet have little option but to deal with it when the time comes. Night is just a part of this mod as the day, and it's bizarre to even think of people attempting to disturb that balance! At the end of the day, the amount of people playing DayZ is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how often your server's full, or how many players criticise and complain about some of the mod's features because that's absolutely not what DayZ is about. There's no need for anyone to work towards sales, ratings or player counts. That's because DayZ is not your typical game - the whole point of this mod was to push the boundaries of typical game design and make it as brutal, unforgiving and cruel to the player as possible, regardless of how successful or 'fun' it may be. Rocket: "DayZ was designed to be impossibly cruel, dark, and brutal. It was not designed as a game it was more of an experiment, I prefer the term "anti-game" - in other words the mechanics are not designed to be balanced, or offer a way out for different situations." Player preference has nothing to do with it. The whole point is that you survive in this post-apocalyptic world, and you tackle everything it has to throw at you - the good, the bad and the damnright ugly. Picking and choosing what kind of obstacles you want to tackle, while leaving the 'non-preferred' challenges out of the selection pool, does nothing but destroy the whole foundations of what DayZ was built upon in the first place. It's only natural then, to expect the DayZ community to protest against it.

While I understand the appeal of two teams duking it out in this manner...why is this taking place as part of DayZ and not ARMA 2 PvP for which the latter would be faaaaar more appropriate? I dunno if it's just me, but I thought the whole point of DayZ was to live out an immersive, fantastical experience set aside from the typical 'kills, scores and unlocks' atmosphere of other First-Person Shooters out there? It seems totally backwards to me that people are now starting to bring those mechanics into this mod - what's the point when that experience already exists elsewhere?! The only logical explanation (in my head) is that the character is persistent and there's the whole 'risk loss' factor hanging over your head. On the flipside, I'm wagering the only reason you're so comfortable with challenging other clans is because you've already got the gear you're after. Hey, I'm not saying you're not allowed to challenge other clans here. Whatever works for you. I just don't understand why this has to occur in the DayZ universe where the whole intention is for conflict and competition to break out naturally, and not in the standard ARMA 2 PvP where people have organising these kind of sanctioned firefights for years!

If anything, DayZ would simply be returned to its little 'realistic zombie survival' niche of players and we'd actually be able to join our favourite servers again. This mod was never supposed to reach mainstream appeal and it's inevitable that DayZ's going to lose some players as the 'flavour of the week' addiction wears off. The way the situation with the server load currently is? That's a good thing.

I don't get it, who's providing your server hosting? Because no-one else has to throttle their server connections for players to successfully connect to their servers; it's only a 2-3 minute waiting time as the server gets around to responding to each connection. Just read a book or something while you wait. Regardless of your intentions, it still looks dodgy. Those 5-6 players in the server get into a locked server by themselves. If they spawn onto the airfield, they get several minutes with no-one else threatening them before you let the next load in - and if you're the players connecting first, you get to choose that time limit. Yeah, if I were a patron on your server and you were granting me free-time on the NW airfield before the next load jump in, I'd be pretty damn thankful for your throttling too. On top of that, how do you select the groups to let in? Surely, you couldn't just unlock then lock the server because you're still going to get a horde of connections trying to rush into your server - like opening a floodgate. Are you giving the password to select people? How do you select those people? I'm actually curious just how you operate this whole 'throttling' connection service, and whether it's actually benefiting the server load.

Now we just need to re-name the mod, so I don't have my friends laughing hysterically when I tell them that they should really be getting in on this 'Daisy' action and that 'Daisy' is the best multiplayer experience they could ever have and that I'm having the happiest time of my life 'Daisy'ing it up with my bros. Seriously. Daisy? :P

Just to note, I don't believe your character will die while you're offline - it's only hunger/thirst that progresses, not blood loss. So when you reconnect, your character may be hungry/thirsty but they will not yet have begun losing blood. Blood will only start dropping when you've returned online. The simplest counter against this then, is to always log-off with some food/drink in your inventory. That way, you can relax knowing that no matter when you log in, you'll instantly be able to solve the hunger/thirst issue and you'll suffer zero blood loss. :)

Eeeek, this suggestion has now been posted three times already - all on the front page of the Suggestions forum! While the suggestion's valid, perhaps you could try searching the forums (or in this case, just looking down the front page first) before making another thread? D:

The simplest hint I can give you is this: never run. You're fine to sprint through the woods and the wilderness, but movement through towns should always be at walking speed - always crouched/prone. Crawling while prone will make you practically invisible. Zombies won't notice you until they practically step on you, so you can effectively crawl through entire towns looting unnoticed. However, you'll therefore be moving incredibly slowly and your visibility will be decreased due to the tall grass and shrubs you'll be forced to crawl through. Crouch-walking will grant you a persistent low profile, while still allowing you to move around and keep your weapon ready if/when required. You'll be comparatively higher than proning so you can see over the grass and shrubs, but inevitably, this means everyone can see you too. It's therefore situational. Pick whichever one is required at the time. If a zombie is creeping too close to you while crouched and you can't risk opening fire, then go prone and wait for him to pass by. Finally, zombies are distracted by smoke grenades and thrown bottles/cans. They'll run towards them like L4D zombies to a pipebomb - there's just no satisfying 'boom' at the end of the fuse.

You can commit suicide by pressing Escape, and selecting 'Respawn'. This will instantly kill your character and bring you to the 'You are Dead' screen. I guess for now, this could work as an alternative? It still allows people to role-play the whole suicide out if they want, since they can describe what they're doing in chat, fire a shot, and then hit Respawn.

Support the suggestion. In a lot of Garry's Mod RP scripts, the player has the ability to 'introduce' themselves to nearby people (by pressing F2 and selecting the audible range between 'whisper', 'say' and 'yell'). Before introduction, players only see the physical description of a character (usually written by the player during character creation) when they hover their crosshair over them. After introduction, players can see the name. So it goes from: 'Black hair, grey eyes, a mustache and a gold tooth in the back of his mouth. Always looks so serious. He wears a grey T-shirt, jeans and big floppy red clown shoes.' to: 'Zibbleplix the Zombie Clown' Perhaps something similar can be worked out here in DayZ? Also, to prevent scanning the area for survivor locations, assign it so these descs/names don't pop up unless you're within a certain distance i.e the realistic distance required to notice a person's characteristics or recognise a familiar?

Why should we get to sculpt and choose what haunts us in this post-apocalypse? More specifically, why should a higher-hand be forced to tone down the difficulty because the majority of people are not yet capable of dealing with the situation? I'm not saying it needs to be this hard; I'm saying we shouldn't have the ability to decide what our predators are or how many of them exist. No-one knows what the scenario would be like in a post-apocalypse, but whatever it was, we all know no-one would be around to tailor the threat levels for us. Whatever's out there, we'd be forced to deal with it on our own, with whatever tools and resources we currently had available to us at the time. I vote we go with Rocket, and try to live this thing out. Shit just hit the fan. Shit just got real. Until the authorities can rescue us and control the situation, we'll just have to sit tight and survive - like we always do.

Mmm, we're keeping our eye out for them. However, we're pretty happy with what we're running with now; we've got more than enough vehicles to handle the jobs we need to do and we know there's only so many vehicles for survivors to play with. Unless we lose a car now, we're pretty happy with leaving the rest behind for the others. Don't want to get too greedy now. :P