Askar

My issue isn't with bandits, it's with the general lack of non-bandits. If this game had no bandits, I'd have very little work (face it, noone needs a medic because of zombies) and what little I did have would be rudimentary and boring. In a perfect world, I'd like to see a friendly to survivor to bandit ratio of 25%-60%-15%. That'll never happen, but I can dream. Noone is upset about being shot at (I hope), people are upset because of how often they're shot at in a mod that initially embodied cooperative survival with a hint of banditry. Since that won't ever happen again though, I occasionally feel the need to vent about the number of times I'm ventilated per day. So I think I'll keep on playing, and keep on posting in 'whine' threads. ;)

Follows you around for a few hours, working together to fix vehicles, loot villages, and survive... Shoots you in the back of the head over a four-slot backpack upgrade. Yes, I'm still bitter "Lance."

I'd love to see all of the things OP mentioned return/implemented. However, until someone finds a way to implement those actions without facilitating duping/a number of other issues, than it needs to remain out. It's sad, but because people can abuse it people will abuse it, so it's ruined for everyone. Hopefully in the standalone?

I take it as more of a message that the update has only been out for a day or so and a lot of people haven't gotten around to updating. Also, people tend to stick to a previous patch until the new one is 'confirmed' safe/stable/good/whatever. Once people are more comfortable that the new patch won't shatter the game or ruin characters as some previous patches have, you'll see a lot more people adopting it. Plus there's probably a significant chunk of sniperbandits that are desperately afraid of having to actually play the game now with the new combat system, so they'll slow progress somewhat as some servers will cater to them in the hopes of maintaining a stable population.

I'll admit, I'm in a rush so I skimmed over everything except the title. But based on the title alone, I wholeheartedly agree. I like the underground areas of Namalsk, but as a player-based construction effort I just don't find the prospect appealing. To me, barricading/fortifying current infrastructure in meaningful ways would be awesome. For instance, having a system in place so that it would be possible to barricade a building against not only other players, but zombies, and preventing zombies from spawning within a certain vicinity. Eventually, perhaps entire towns could be reclaimed by dedicated groups. I don't know how any of that could be implemented, I'm no modder. But I find these ideas much more exciting than some tunnels removed from the world.

There's plenty of good servers out there still, just don't expect to find a ton near Australia. When the standalone is released (in a few months?) you'll see a huge surge in server availability in that region. Source: Close friend and gaming buddy lives there. He makes sure to complain to me about the lack of servers any time the population drops.

That lab at night is the stuff of nightmares. If only it contained zombies more often... (I have seen zombies in it thrice, each time they wore a unique skin) Even when there's no zombies within it, that place is creepy at night. Especially if you have a really bright light source such as a fire blinding you to the rest of the facility, and you can hear the shuffling but you're not sure if it's nearby or above you. I'm going to stop writing now before I get too freaked out to stay down here.

I wish the Warm Clothing was white/snow camo in design. More green clothing was disappointing, especially since those clothes shine most in allowing you to live off of the frozen white mountains others would die on. I was hoping to live atop the mountain with my white clothes and my new gauss rifle, but I guess it's not to be. Also, I keep hearing this map compared to STALKER. Coincidentally, I bought STALKER CoP for about two bucks a few days ago... sounds like I need to try it out!

Uh, since when is the Radio hacked in? Last I knew, they were legit, if rare. I found one off of a dead military zombie once in June...

Hero, at least in Chernarus. In Namalsk, it's a bit more ambiguous. I've healed dozens of people and murdered dozens more, simply because it feels good to be the one shooting for a change. In Chernarus, I've got some 20,000 humanity and a decent reputation. That doesn't mean I'm harmless though, poke me and I'll poke you three times as hard. I've only ever killed one person in 'cold blood' in Chernarus, and that was sanctioned and ordered by the party of medics I was working with at the time. Guy had it coming. It takes a ton of dedication to do that though. More times than I can count I've been called to heal someone and find out they're an obvious sniper bandit, only to heal them despite my intense urge to plant a round in their skull. I definitely walk around armed, usually with an Mk48, but most people don't see me before I see them so I get around rather quietly and safely. If I approach someone it's on my own terms, and I've even managed to heal someone who was shooting me in the process, thanks to a timely bout of unconsciousness on his part. I hope he felt stupid, waking up to realise I patched him up after he put several AK rounds into my legs.

AFAIK, you don't. I could be wrong, but everything I know about them says that they're unfixable, you've got to be lucky enough to find the working versions like I have, which is even rarer.

I didn't read the thread to see what everyone else has said, but I like Namalsk for a few reasons. First, temperature is important. Without heatpacks or the elusive warm clothing item, you will need to make a lot of fires and such or you'll get an infection quickly in addition to shaking when you're cold (which is most of the time.) Making fires isn't easy, since matches are highly sought after and rare as well. And, frustratingly, the best places to find warm clothing (which makes you immune to temperature afaik) are atop the tallest, coldest mountain which infects most people before they reach the peak. Secondly, food and water are important. Soda is uncommon enough that many kill for it, and canteens are worth more than assault rifles. Food is often even rarer, and matches are highly sought after even though animals bigger than rabbits are also uncommon. Many times I've been reduced to wiping out waves of zombies with an assault rifle in attempts at getting a can of food off of one of them as I'm starving. Equipment is rare. Sure, knives/hatchets/watches are common depending on where you are, and to a lesser extent so are toolboxes. The other gadgets though (matches, compass, especially map, GPS, and NVG) are incredibly rare. I recommend playing Namalsk without an outside map for your first few tries, as it makes the map much more fun in my opinion. I only started using one once I roughly knew the land by heart and had acquired a map in-game. GPS and NVG are usually found broken, but I shockingly found a working GPS from a tower last night, so they're out there. The best way to get gadgets is to reach the huge city, which often is sadly full of snipers. Which brings up another point. It's hard to get a backpack on this map. Hard enough that you can't really do much with your limited inventory space, so you're encouraged to team up with someone else for their inventory space alone. It's happened numerous times to me so far, where an equally desperate and spaceless survivor and I pair up to take on the world. However, as always, there are still assholes who will shoot you on sight, even if you're a fresh spawn who just made the 20 minute jog to the city. There's still assholes that will pretend to be friendly only to shoot you, and all other forms of dickery. It's still DayZ, afterall. The ambiance and environment are excellent for the game setting, better than Chernarus by far in my opinion. There are a few annoying bits of ambient sound, but the rest is gold. I've been trying to think of dislike for this map but I can only think of two really. First, decent weapons are too common. Every 100m you're likely to bump into an AKM, often better. In a strange reversal, low tier weapons are actually much rarer than their powerful counterparts. I've only seen one winchester, five double barrels, two crossbows, and three lee enfields. Compared to countless AKMs and AK74s, with occasional sniper rifles and NATO weapons thrown in. I did find the supposedly awesome ER7 RFG gauss rifle, and spent about five hours finding a mag of ammo for it, but I got betrayed by a 'friend' I had been traveling with for hours the day before when he saw the weapon, so I never got to try it out (story of my life, never fired a sniper rifle, always get killed shortly after getting one.) The second gripe is relatively minor, in that light sources act weird near a lot of the assets in the map. It makes playing at night doubly hard inside of certain towns and facilities, where your lights may have no effect. There are a few bases in the map where chemlights, flares, and smoke grenades (possibly frag as well?) will fall through the ground into the 'secret' facilities below. All in all, I think it's a great map. Challenging and it does promote teamplay, although most people are too dickish to accept it. I have formed several groups of companions because of the difficulties of this map, as is evidenced in a post I made in the 'Namalsk stories' thread the other day. I'd say you should give it a go and find out what you like about it. Sorry for the long post, in a rush but I wanted to get everything I felt was important down before I left!

I haven't played on the central hive since August, but I had a hero skin with some 20k humanity for quite some time and I never ran into any issues. Besides, if you die you'll still have the skin. It's not like it's hard to get gear these days, last I played I literally walked five minutes into the woods and came across three camps loaded with duped/hoarded gear.

Just got warm clothing and managed to survive an incredibly brutal Namalsk night with a comrade from the other day. I agree that survivability should be reasonably attainable, yet I still think it should be quite the challenge and constitute the number one threat to a survivor. Maybe I'm just lucky, but today a third instance occured in which I managed to team up with another player for our mutual survival, since backpacks are rare, their carrying space becomes far more valuable than their loot, at the very least. I'll admit most of the DayZ playerbase would shy away from such brutal conditions as I'd like to see, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. Anyone who's played since May knows how quickly the community went to shit as more people started playing, and in my personal experience it's the ones that are willing to stick with it no matter what gets thrown at them that are less likely to be assholes. I like that I run the risk of starving to death every hour and losing what little progress I've made. It makes the game challenging and suspensful, and I'm certainly not alone in that belief, otherwise there wouldn't be so many individuals clamoring for similar things. I'd like DayZ to return to what it originally was, and while that will never truly happen, changes like the ones Namalsk makes seem to push it ever so slightly in the right direction. I've only been shot at on sight three times in the past two days, compared to every time I see someone in Chernarus. Many of these individuals I meet are in as bad a place as I am, and would gladly have someone with them to drag their body along when they pass out or to help them carry a load of food and supplies. Sorry for getting off topic here, I'm just really passionate about increasing the difficulty drastically, even if it means most of the player base avoids the more difficult maps/versions. This game originally was full of both coop and banditry, now it's almost exclusively KOS and braggartry. It's far past time we changed that, as countless others have said.

Glad people liked my story, I didn't expect it to be half as well received. The only other thing I can think of worth writing about wouldn't be as interesting, but I may get around to it sometime tonight when I have more time. I rather like how rare food and water are. I wish that scarcity extended to weapons as well, at least to automatic or powerful weapons. I'd rather see almost everyone walking around with double barrels and crossbows instead of the AKMs and up that seem commonplace on Namalsk. The scarcity of water and food is rather compelling in my opinion. I would have gladly traded my AK74 Kobra for a water canteent or a box or matches had I the chance, and I like that the map made me that desperate. If it weren't so impossible to survive, you wouldn't have too many great stories coming out of the map. It'd all be the same old tales of KOS and alt-F4ing that we hear so much from Chernarus, instead of the occasionally engaging story tossed into the mix.

I've played since may (although I too took a break from July/August to yesterday) and I know how it feels. That said, I have found that playing on private hives significantly reduces instances of KOS, especially if side-chat is enabled. It's still common, but either just uncommon enough or I was just lucky enough to get a group of ten people cooperating yesterday on Namalsk, to the point where we all sat around a pond to all pass around the group's only two water canteens in that brutal map. In regular Chernarus, with the centralised HIVE, I haven't played yet. However, I've heard KOS is worse than ever there, which is a pity. Hacking has gone down though.

I came here to jokingly reply to your title with "Medic." Well played.

I'd say it depends on the situation and 'goals' of the server. Sometimes (quite often), the uncertainty of events surrounding an individual's death is much more immersive and enticing than a simple "Bob was killed by Joe with Mk48" message can ever hope to encompass. On the other side of that coin, messages like this are great for catching hackers and other ne'er do wells. For instance, it was integral on a non-pvp server I tried out yesterday in that these messages let the admin know who to ban (provided the incident wasn't self defense or property defense). But in a regular server, I don't want messages like this appearing. They remove the mystery and untold layers of depth from the game. For instance, while working with a group of medics a few months ago, we waited desperately for a firefight to break out near us, so we could kill the asshole who had been under our care and stealing from us without him knowing we were at fault. When the sniper fire finally came, I got the go-ahead to plant my LMG against the back of his head and squeeze the trigger. We killed the thief, atv-flipper, and general asshole without any potential backlash to the organisation (the killing was 500% justified, trust me. The guy even had all the things he said he hadn't taken on his corpse.), all because the individual in question thought the sniper had killed him. This is only an example that I've personally experienced, there are countless better ones out there. The point is, none of this is possible with kill messages. Perhaps allow them to be reviewed by the admin in log form (if they can't already do that) so that they can retroactively ban and report hackers, but there are very few situations where I would approve of them being visible to the general public. And I don't know about you all, but one of my favorite things about firefights in this game is the uncertainty involved. Did I hit him? Is he dead, or dying? Is he perfectly healthy, waiting on me to approach his seemingly dead body? That's immersive, fun, and engaging. I've seen it happen countless times both in ARMA II and in DayZ where a group will clear out another group, and without checking bodies, attempt to progress onwards. Then, sometimes one of those seemingly dead men wakes up. Stuff like that is integral to the experience in my opinion. I'd gladly die to a hacker once a week (or once every three days, as is the norm for me) to keep that intact. What if you're the downed guy? They don't know (with no kill messages, at least) that you're still alive, and they assume you're dead. Suddenly, it's possible for you to fight back and/or escape, because no messages have told them if you're dead or not, so they have to manually approach your body to find out. It opens up even more possibilities. That's my 'other' vote, at least.

Namalsk has too many weapons in my opinion. I would love to see a map as brutal as Namalsk, but with a very urban setting and far fewer weapons (at least the decent ones, I bump into an AKM every 5 feet, while shotguns and crossbows, which should be common, are extremely rare.) That said, I do have a story to tell. Yesterday, my first time in Namalsk, I wandered lost about the forested mountains in which I spawned for hours. My fading knowledge of the map from my ARMA II days left me with a need to explore and discover on my own all over again, so I had no idea where anything was. Eventually, I stumbled across another survivor, being chased by zombies. I killed the pursuing infected and proceeded to give the other survivor my backup hatchet, and thus a comradeship began. After walking through the wilderness and deserted compounds for an hour, we found a busted motorcycle. Over the next two hours, we fixed everything on the motorcycle, and only needed fuel. Failing to find any, we set out to trek across the map (unknown in size or dimension to us, almost everyone on the server was playing their first time on Namalsk) in hopes of finding a jerry can. After a number of close calls, we made it to the old hospital, where we healed up and met a group of four poorly equipped survivors. Since we had an AK74 Kobra and an AKM on us, the other four decided to tag along with us for protection. Following this is a blur of searching and looting, finding nearly nothing, especially not a jerry can. Eventually, our group had snowballed into about ten people, half of which had assault rifles now. We were a formidable party, and we managed to all stay alive despite the scarcity of food and water through sharing. At one point, the entire group traded two water canteens around at a pond to quench their thirsts. However, we grew complacent in our numbers. While walking down some forsaken road, someone in the back of the group shouted "Grenade!" I hit the dirt and began scanning for targets as the explosion deafened me, and as I did so a burst of M16 fire erupted from a rock formation ahead. I quickly began suppressing the shooter, and as I did so the guy laying next to me opened up as well. Someone with a shotgun was running forward, only to get taken down by a burst from two o'clock. Focusing on this new shooter who had foolishly stood up from his bush, I dropped him quickly with a burst from my AK74 Kobra. More fire from downrange, so I returned to suppressing the rock formation once I had reloaded. At some point, someone had gotten close enough to throw a frag up there, and after much cautious peering into the forest, everyone relaxed and began to check on the group's status. It was pretty bad. The grenade had outright killed one survivor, whilst injuring several others. Two had apparently bled to death from shrapnel, as I had seen them shooting during the engagement but hadn't seen them get hit. Two had been killed by assault rifle fire. Only one other survivor and myself had emerged unharmed, with three in various states of injury, but still alive. Thanks to my extensive experience as a medic (just kidding, DayZ has a stupidly easy medical system) I managed to stabilise all three before they bled out, and proceeded to heal them as best I could with our limited medical supplies. In the end, only two were able to be healed to a sufficient degree. One had lost too much blood to remain conscious, and had a broken leg to boot. We didn't have any supplies left, so we dragged him. We dragged him at least a kilometer (or so it seemed, who can say), until we reached a large city. Hoping to find supplies to get us back on our feet, my original comrade and I entered the town to look for supplies, while the other two 'functional' members of the group stayed behind to defend our disabled companion. We scavenged for awhile, but found almost nothing. We met one friendly survivor in a supermarket, who gave us a spare morphine. Intending to go heal our companion's legs, we set out for the other group's last known position. When we got there, we found two bodies, stripped of loot. I don't know what happened to the crippled man, as his body was missing and we couldn't see him anywhere nearby. On our own again, we decided to pursue our original goal: finding fuel for the motorcycle. And thus we went, searching throughout the barren wasteland. At some point we decided to climb the tallest mountain, in hopes of finding a fuel can. Instead, we found a compass and more mid-tier guns. We also found infections, and went back down the mountain half alive. Over the next thirty minutes, we searched fruitlessly for jerry cans, food, and water. The canteens had been lost with the second party at the town, and our food had been used up atop the mountain. Growing ever more desperate, we finally stumbled across another survivor. After a tense standoff, we determined everyone was friendly and began traveling together. It was obvious that this new member was a vulture, but we allowed him to stay. What else would distantly follow two dying men armed to the teeth? In some forsaken town nestled between two mountains, we finally found it. A jerry can, pristine, atop a building. Our discovery brought no joy, however. We had been starving and dying of dehydration for quite some time now, in addition to our illness. Each at under 1500 blood, we knew it was over. Surrounding the area with smoke grenades, we placed our hard-won jerry can on the ground and stood next to it. Saluting till the end, we died. My comrade died first, toppling over as I stood at 500 blood. Shortly thereafter, I too, fell. And that's it. Sorry for the long post, but I felt like sharing an experience that made me miss my lunch yesterday. I have another great one later that kept me up late into the night, but I'm running out of time and don't want to bog down the thread. Hope someone found it enjoyable, it's 100% accurate, at least from my limited viewpoint of events. I can't be sure what killed who or what everyone's intentions were, I just know what I saw. It was my first few hours back into DayZ after taking a 3 month break of disgust. Anyone have any similar experiences?

Check in my signature for medical assistance. You can trust us. Please don't PM me though, I end up with about 10 PM's every time I check the forums. For now, I'm off-duty indefinitely, like the guy above me somewhere.

If the maps are truly worthwhile, I'd be willing to pay maybe five euros. I'm strongly opposed to even than that though, as Rocket claimed the standalone would be very cheap and a one-time purchase. The line kind of blurs here, between DLC and an expansion of sorts. If the maps introduce enough new content or a (very polished) different environment-type then I can see them being analogous to expansions in terms of content while still being cheap at the ~5 euro mark. It really depends on how it's implemented. The type of thing I hate is the type of bullshit companies like EA pull all of the time, charging ~$60 up front for a game and then selling low-content 'DLC' for $10-$15. It's a terrible system, if you want content comparable to games a decade ago you have to pay the $60 and then often an excess of $50 more for all of the content. If Rocket tries to charge for maps, I hope he at least opens up to mod support very soon. Even if it's only the ability to mod in new maps, it would be going in the right direction in my opinion. Look at Skyrim for a modern example of a good system. The up-front cost was naturally high (unfortunately), but you gain access to thousands of mods that can drastically change the game in meaningful ways. However, Bethesda can still sell 'DLC' at a moderate price simply because what they're making is better (for now) than the mods attempting to replicate such features. If Rocket's maps are good enough to merit more money than he'll already be getting simply from selling the standalone, then people will pay for them. If they're not, then people will stick to modded maps, even if they can't use their "main" characters there. If maps are sold, I'd hope they'd be very well polished and have more than enough content to warrant an additional charge. In my mind, that's the way it should be. No additional charges after you buy the game. If you want, make the standalone a little more expensive, just don't ask me to throw more money at you after I buy the game. I mean, I'm all for throwing money at you, but don't make me keep doing it, no matter how little it is. Maybe I just come from an older era, but I remember the days back when you could buy a game and you got everything that came after free, aside from the occasional (usually content-rich) expansion pack at a low price.

I was just eating some pancakes. If only there were some organization out there that would rush to inject you full of wonderful drugs on a whim for some sick sense of amusement.

Check my signature if you're interested in joining a little bit better established group! Good to have another medic in any case, whether you decide to join up with us or not.

In fact, the entire medical system is broken. It's far too simple and it's definitely too easy.

I laughed the entire time I read the OP. I mean, it's a joke, right? I was pretty sure it was a sarcastic joke post until I saw everyone's responses. It either went over all of your heads or the OP really is stupid. :huh: