herrjon

Sound like someone didn't fully read the disclaimer that was around everywhere. It's an alpha, and there will more than likely be interruption of service, which includes having to reset the database and kill all the characters. I am fully prepared to be naked on the coast again when I go back in today.

Except the daylight servers I refer to are in my own timezones when I play on them. People are hosting their own servers now and are aware that all the dev servers are synced to one timezone. Therefore, at least some of them, are making it day when the dev servers are night, and night when the dev servers are day. Sure there aren't that many at the moment, but as more and more non-dev servers pop up, the less the problem will become, even if the devs don't change anything about the day/night cycle. And honestly, as far as the ping issue goes, that really only comes into play for the vast majority when dealing with Australia/New Zeland. Most players are NA or EU, and connecting across the antlatic gives most people 100-150 ping, maybe 200 if the server is bad. Yeah it's not the best connection ever, but it is plenty playable. For the cases of those who can only reliably connect to servers in their timezone and work during all daylight hours, I feel sorry for you, but we can't cater to all those fringe case, especially during alpha phase.

Except that's not what an alpha is for. Alphas are buggy, confusing, and have a lot of placeholder mechanics. They don't have any sort of tutorial or intuitive way of learning typically, because the mechanics are always changing. So most early alphas are difficult for people who are "new" to it and haven't followed development, and that's not the game's fault. That's where forums and whatnot come in. They should be used for people finding out how things work and discussing it, not whining about already known issues in a place the devs won't actively look. Sure, the game in difficult to learn, and sure starting in the nighttime made this harder, but should we have server be set to 24/7 daylight to cater to new players? No. There are daylight servers out there, at reasonable times, you just have to find them. If your friend feels he can't play right now, have him come back for the beta and try it out, when the game is more intuitive and put together.

His argument wasn't that those 2 are the same, but more of, where do we draw the line? How far to we go to cater to a certain playstyle at the cost of the game's true vision? If you need proof that it is hard to do, look at what happened to the mod with private servers. First it start with 24/7 daylight and spawning with makarovs again, then we'll just add a few more vehicles, then let's just add some barracks here and there, and I guess we can add some Apaches and tanks for funzies, and people are going to need some sort of rifle at spawn now. I should hope you're getting the picture. Once you start giving things away, it's hard to stop people from wanting more. It's better to hold the line and keep the game true to itself and let the folks that want easymode adjust or go back to the mod.

As of right now, all dev servers are still synced to Czech time, but now that there are people out there hosting their own servers, those are offset. There are daytime servers out there now, just have to look for them.

I started playing last night by toggling walking on and holding down shift to run, and it helped my hunger/thirst by leaps and bounds. I'd walk inside buildings and between close buildings, and only run to cover long distances, since walking across an open field is asking to get shot. Hardly had to eat or drink while I combed through Zelenogorsk for a first aid kit.

DayZ Commander is a small little program that allows you to view and sort through servers and easily download all of the different DayZ mods outside of steam. You can of course just manually install dayz by finding the download torrent for it and find servers with the in-game browser, but Commander is much more easy to use and is trusted. Not sure what you're on about steam being unreliable, but I won't really get into it here.

That's all well and good, but take your complaints and put them here http://feedback.dayzgame.com/login_page.php That's the bug tracker, where the devs actually go to look for feedback. You really think they're going to sift through this mess of a thread to get people's feedback? If they did that, it'd take another year just to read through everything. There time is obviously better spent actually developing the game, so the bug trackers allows us testers to more efficiently report bugs. Essentially complaining about the game at length in a random forum thread is at its core, pointless.

Yes, how dare they give people an easy way to purchase from the core site. What an evil company. /sarcasm I've seen your post of your big "gotcha" screenshot, and I'd like to point out that any sort of advertisement or really anything having to do with SA has "Early Access" and "Alpha state" plastered all over it, and that's not even including all the places the disclaimer is put in bright boxes, bolded letters and all caps. If someone really just insta-buys SA without realizing what they're getting into, it's not the fault of BI trying to lure them in, it's their lack of reading comprehension and basic logic. And if they "write a bad review" anyone will a brain will know it's BS.

This is my experience with SA nighttime. I spawn in, it's night. I take a look around (still default settings) and notice and can see quite a bit. I think "wow, this is pretty nice. Much better than the mod nights." I sort out the flashlight and try it out and thought "wow, I can actually run and keep the flashlight in front of me!" I then continued to loot and play with my mates until the sun came up on the server and played a bit during the daytime. The point being is, the default night in SA is much better than the mod, and the flashlight is leaps and bounds better. Yes there aren't chemlights and flares right now, but neither is a lot of stuff. I'm sure they're on the way. I think it would be a good move to set the game time to the server location time, and that may be on the table, we'll just have to wait and see. I am fully against any public hive 24/7 daylight servers though. It's against the point of the game, and people need to just learn to appreciate the night. It is playable without gamma/brightness sliding. And for those complaining about batteries dying, shut off the flashlight when you're outside. Saves on power and keeps a lower profile against other players.

I'd recommend getting off the coast if you can. I got up to Zelenogorsk I found loads of great loot. You can try switching to a different server as well.

I've found one, didn't seem to silence it that much, but it could be the fact that it's "worn" or I'm not using low-velocity bullets, but it did help a little. That and it looks cool.

zombie and loot spawns are inconsistent at the moment. Sometimes you'll find nothing, others you'll find loot out the wazoo. Also depends if it's been looted before. And zombie counts are just generally low right now, just part of the alpha for now. I have heard from people there are more inland, but I can't speak to the truth of that. If you aren't finding absolutely anything, try playing on a different server. If you want a more consistent game, play the mod for now, which is actually the forum you posted this in, and not the standalone one.

If you have an item on your hotbar and have it in your hands, just press that key and it should un-equip it and leave you with empty hands. Then just press space to raise your hands and punch away. I've only used a shovel and the fire axe for melee, and I did have a bit of trouble with the shovel, but that could be due to it being the first thing I killed a zombie with. Not sure about baseball bats, but I would assume it just takes some practice.

I had matches but lost them, so I didn't have a chance to try myself, but if you haven't already, make sure to interact with the matches and wood anyway you can, i.e. combine, put in hands and right click both of them or scroll wheel out of inventory, set wood on the ground and scroll, etc. There's a lot of different ways you can interact with objects that actually make sense when you get down to it, but it seems counter intuitive at first. Also remember this was a bare bones release, and a lot of features are planned on being added but haven't been yet for one reason or another, but the items still exist in game.

Go ahead and head to the teamspeak server ts.tmwdayz.com and we'll help you out

When it's ready essentially. They've tried to commit to release dates before, but they didn't feel it was up to snuff for an open alpha. Don't worry though, you'll know when it's out. I will say though, SA starting out will be bare bones mechanics, and probably more buggy than the mod is atm. If you can't handle that, I'd just get Arma for the DayZ experience. It'll probably be on sale again around Christmas.

Kind of what Gesundheit said. There needs to be incentive not to just KoS and take things without worry. If you just make being a bandit harder, people just see it as a challenge. If you give people a tangible reason to interact with others or even just rob over KoS, it would be better. They've been making decent steps in SA with things like the gear damage system, but yes, we do need more. I don't think we can do much in the mod however, apart from taking it upon ourselves to not KoS and show random people that you can talk to others and walk away better off.

If I can contact them safely, I ask them if they need help. If not, I just hide or run and leave them be. I never say "FRIENDLY! FRIENDLY!" because all saying friendly means is you don't want to be shot, but doesn't ensure you won't shoot them. If I make it apparent that I can be of use to them alive, they're more inclide to cooperate with me and reply back. I refrain from "teaming up" with randoms though, because as time passes I become more uesful to them dead, and it gives them more opportunites to betray me. It is true you can't trust anyone, but that doesn't mean you still can't interact without gunfire.

This. Specifically one I know of is in the pub in Elektro. One can lay prone in the top floor and use alt look and 3rd person to watch everything that goes on in the supermarket, the office building, the intersection and some of the front of the hospital. Teamed with a gillie spotter on Dobbry hill and perhaps someone watching the back door, the team can have a full view of the main part of Elektro with little to no worries, and can get the jump on nearly anyone. One of the reasons I don't bother looting Elektro.

One tip. It's a different game, prepare to die.

I'll rephrase, used to be rare. Before they reworked barns and deer stands, the CZ-550 had a .5% chance of spawning in barns only, and barns used to have fewer spawn points. Now it's 1.41% in all barns and 4.39% in deer stands. Even so, I don't prefer it as a go-to sniper. The lack of mil-dots just doesn't do it for me, and the ammo slot efficiency is too low. At least the M24/M40A3 (the other 5 bullet mag bolt-actions) allow you to pack 4 of their mags in DMR mags. And your wood stock being bad camo applies for the CZ as well. It's really just a novelty weapon, at least for me.

It is a rare gun, I found it the other day spawned for probably the 2nd time in over a year. The only other time I've had it is off the pick-up truck. But yeah, I do agree the M14 over the FAL.

A donation is a gift, without the expectation of anything in return. A transaction is the exchange of money for goods or services. If people want to charge for custom loadouts and whatnot on their server, that's their choice, but it just bothers me when they call it donations when they're really running a business, non-profit or otherwise. Anyways, more on topic, I'd say the M4A1 CCO. Yes the FAL deals more damage, but the M4 has a larger mag, a sight, and it's quieter to deal with zeds. Also, if the M14 is up for grabs, I'd get that over the FN FAL. Same damage and mag size, has a sight, and much more common ammo.

For just basic pistols (M1911, Revlover, Makarov) and backpacks, you'll want to look for residential spawns and supermarkets. Hopefully you know what the supermarkets look like, then you have the red and orange brick buildings, apartments, the pub or corner store, and the school or office building. If you're planning on fending off zeds with a pistol, be sure to always get headshots, as they do piss poor damage when hitting the body. I also find it's a good policy with the pistols to never try to deal with a horde larger than 25% of your ammo. The reason for that is, you assume you'll miss 1/2 of your shots, and chances are you'll aggro just as many with your shooting. So if you have an M1911 with 4 mags, don't try to make your last stand in a building if you've got more than 7 zeds chasing you, as you will probably end up trapped.