h4yw1r3

I don't have the standalone yet. I just haven't decided to take that plunge yet. But I've played a lot of DayZ on BMRF servers and have been a member of the BMRF community on and off for awhile now. The fact that they have a private standalone server now may actually push me toward purchasing the game. BMRF is a great community. A lot of good people there. The admins are good guys, and they do a great job. Definitely one of the better communities and server groups I've taken part in.

I'm hoping to see some atmosphere improvement in the SA as well. Things that improve the "feel" of the game. Maybe change the look of a couple of smaller villages or portions of larger towns to have a large part of the buildings burnt out. Maybe some extra sounds with an omenous feel. Some footsteps, a creaking door, moaning winds, window shutters slamming repeated but at random in the wind, or distant screams. Maybe twigs cracking or distant wolf howls in the woods similar to the JSRS sound mod. Maybe add the random, player triggered spawn of AI survivors that zombies might see and attack. Maybe the screams and footsteps mentioned above come from them. Might even make it so 1-4 zombies remain to cannibalize the corpse. Could even spawn the AI with some basic, lootable survival gear for brave souls that might beat back or lure off the zombies in order to loot the dead AI. With no name tags, the AI might even lure KoS style players to spend some valuable ammo and give away their presence.

I'm all for any tools that help admins keep a server clean of hacks and the script kiddies who can't play without them. I'd hate to see good admins shackled over what the bads ones do. Give admins whatever they need. Nothing more, nothing less. The important thing to me is finding a good hive with good admins, as free as possible from script kiddies. If a hive has bad admins, then those admins will run their server's population off as players become aware. That or the server owner will remove the admin privileges from the offending admins if they're smart. Me, I know I'll find the communities with good admins where I'll want to play. Just give those admins the tools they need to keep the servers clean. Given any doubt, I'd rather side with admins over script kiddies. I've no doubt that many script kiddies that have been banned by good admins will be arguing against any tools that might be used to catch them, and playing the "bad admin" card to do it. I'd rather give admins the benefit of the doubt over giving it to the script kiddies.

You mean CoDZ? No thanks.

Eh, I have mixed feelings about ammo rarity and the melee system. Neither will be conclusive for me until I actually experience them first hand in the SA. I understand the concepts behind ammo rarity, and pretty much agree with them. At the same time, the SA is built off an engine designed to be a 1st person shooter primarily and with no real melee system. I understand that Rocket and the SA dev team have worked on the melee system. Still, the engine wasn't designed for it. So when it comes down to it, I really don't want to experience a primarily melee style game play in the SA that was built from a shooter engine. I play a lot of shooters. I like shooters. I came to DayZ and loved the mod because it was a zombie apocalypse survival style shooter with good hardcore aspects. I want the SA to end up as hardcore, or even more hardcore than the original mod or some of the harder mods like Redux. And I want zombies to actually be a threat instead of a minor nuisance used as a player radar. But I still want it to be a shooter. If the SA combat experience ends up largely running around spamming a couple of generic axe swinging animations, I'm going to get bored fairly quickly and end up sticking primarily with the mod. I just hope they find the right balance.

I looked into this mod awhile back. I'm a fan of mods like DayZ Redux and DayZ+, or any other mod that actually makes the game harder rather than dumb it down like most others do. Unfortunately, there's no good private communities that host DayZ Despair here in America. At least I haven't found one yet. I only play private hives with could communities. I only speak english, so the community and it's forums has to speak primarily english in order for me to understand and get involved. Not to mention my ping is way too high on European servers. I'd love to try the mod. Just waiting on some more support for it. If the developers want to spread it's popularity, they should try reaching out to some of the better private hives and communities for more support.

Death match style game play exists because there are death match style players. I don't see that changing. But death match style players who play on BMRF servers would have to be idiots if they're plaything there because they can donate and get a pistol with a couple of clips when they could donate the same amount on many other communities and recieve AR's, ghillie suits, and coyote/czech packs. Like I said before, no one is forcing anyone to play private servers, or donate to one if they do. To each his own. But for myself, if it weren't for good private servers like BMRF and a couple others, I wouldn't even be playing DayZ. Sure, you still get an occasional script kiddie, but nowhere near as many as the public servers. And when they get caught, you can post in the thread that springs from the ban to get your character rolled back if you were killed by the script kiddie. That's a bit of a comfort for me. DayZ deaths give it it's edge and harcore nature, which is why I play it. I don't mind being killed by a legit player, but if there's a way to avoid losing hours, days, and even weeks worth of play to some script, that's a big plus. And with the separate databases for the servers, you don't have to worry about ghosting or server hopping for loot. There's also a progressive ban system, starting with a 24 hour ban, for those caught combat logging or glitching. So if a couple of convenience items given out for donations help keep these good communities, servers, and admins going, I'm all for it. It's definately worth it to me. I've tried playing on many private hives, and there are plenty of real pay-to-win and/or poorly administrated hives out there, but I don't play those past finding it out. I play the ones I consider the good ones. If you like the public hives, or have found a good private hive that can offer what you want, that's great. But the public hives had me hanging it up for two months til I tried my first good private hive, and I haven't looked back since. The only reason I commented on it at all was because you were mistaken about BMRF's donator perks and casting that community in an unfavorable light due to that mistake, and giving it an undeserved rep for being a pay-to-win hive.

My statement didn't need to be corrected. It was right as I said it. The donator perks haven't changed by gameplay. I spawn, scavenge what's nearby, and move inland. Even if it's just a couple cans of food and soda. I've done that since a couple months into playing DayZ, and do it still. Donator perks haven't changed the way I play. And those snipers are there for easy, low risk bambi kills. If you are one of those, then I can see why it might affect your gameplay. And if you don't play servers like BMRF because of that, then I guess that's another plus to BMRF in my book. So again, if some donator puts a bullet in some bambi camping sniper, then they've earned the gear for taking out a geared out coward with a pistol. I've taken coast snipers out with pistols and shotguns and lee enfields, and even an axe a couple of times. If I know one is there, I just hit one of the barns or markets on my way. I don't need to spawn with a weapon.

No need for apology. It's an easy mistake to make. If you don't look at the page closely and recognize how they laid it out, it can be easy to come to the conclusion you did. I did the same at first glance when I loaded the page for the first time, but I caught the color scheme they had going on. And when you've seen so many private servers that ARE pay-to-win, it makes it all the easier to presume the same of other private communities.

This seems all a matter of your personal gameplay. No one forces you to donate, or accept the perks if you do. You can still play to survive. I do. And the donator perks doesn't have any real impact on my gameplay. It isn't pay-to-win. If the situation did arise that some new spawned donator runs straight up Dobry and kills a sniper, then that's actually a plus to me. I'd like to shake the hand of any survior that takes out a worthless spawn camping sniper who is too afraid to risk combat inland where other players might have a decent weapon. If that's the only way a bambi camper can use a sniper rifle, the rifle should be in someone else's hands. More importantly, those convenience items handed out to donators is a very small price to pay, as far as I'm concerned, for a good community of well admined servers, free of server hopping and ghosting, and where combat logging and glitching is punished. If BMRF wants to throw a bone to the donators who help them pay for their servers and their time administrating them, then I have no issue with that at all.

Sounds like yet another CoDZ server. I'll pass.

You think a pistol with a couple of mags and an ACU (12 slot) pack is Pay-to-Win? To each his own I guess. I guess if I spent my time after spawning running along the shore without first looking for a weapon and I came across a donator who had also just spawned with a pistol and 2 mags and he killed me, I might be able to make an excuse and say he paid to win. But I wouldn't, since I don't do that. But if it did happen, I still wouldn't call it pay-to-win since it's not something that would happen even close to often. Hell, I'd walk up and let a donator kill me with his pistol just to reward him for donating to one of my favorite DayZ communities. I play a fair amount of my DayZ on BMRF servers, but not enough that I donate considering I donate to my own community (but my community doesn't run any ARMA 2 or DayZ servers), and considering that I play on other private servers about as much. Personally, I think BMRF's donation perks are very fair. You don't start with anything but convenience items. No rifles, not even a shotgun. I can find most the perk items after a trip through a market, a barn, or a factory. If they can make some money to help pay for and run their servers without handing out rifles, ghillie suits, and coyote/czech packs the way actual pay-to-win servers do, then more power to them I say. I think BMRF has a great community with well admined servers. I generally play BMRF's vanilla DayZ 1st person server. From time to time, I'll try playing the 1st person DayZero server, but as I mentioned above, the useless zombies in DayZero turns me away after a short time. But that isn't BMRF's fault. They run some other DayZ submods like Epoch, but I don't play Epoch on any community as I don't care for mods like that and Overwatch and Aftermath or any other variation that dumbs the game down. But from what I see of BMRF's donater perks, you don't get anything better than a pistol with a couple of clips even on mods where you can hardly take a step without tripping over military loot.

@OP I pretty much agree with you on the vanilla pros and cons, but I feel I need to add a couple of cons to the DayZero mod. At least they're cons in my book. DayZero: Cons: - added a bit too much military loot spawn locations - can gorge yourself back to full health with food - no infection - mod is built off an earlier version of the DayZ mod that caused me to stop playing due to zombies being no threat at all, and absolutely useless for anything other than a player radar. - tall grass removed The combination of no infection and worthless zombies pretty much make the mod unplayable for me. The grass thing is annoying and dumbs the game down some, but I could live with that considering it helps many player's performance. The added military definitely dumbs the game down. And if the DayZero devs were going to allow gorging on food, they might as well have added self blood bagging. I'd prefer a restricted form of self blood bagging, such as the one incorporated by DayZ Redux than gorging on food. At least self blood bagging on Redux required you to be in a medical facility, had a long animation, a re-use timer, didn't return as much blood as when someone else did it for you, and you risked tearing an artery. Gorging on food might be slower than most self blood bagging, but it can be done anywhere. But with restricted self blood bagging, at least you had to risk getting into a medical facility and back out again, along with tearing an artery and killing yourself.

No thanks. Not interested in yet another CoDZ server.

No thanks. Anyone that has played many so-called F2P games know that F2P really means F2P2W, or Free-to-Pay-to-Win. Free to play games are a cancer eating away at the gaming insdustry that has been spreading far too quickly. It might be different if free to play models chose to allow only cosmetic and other non-pvp changing items to be bought with microtransactions. I don't mind at all paying a monthly subscription to play a game. At least everyone stays on equal footing. But I'm not interested in dueling credit cards.