Bororm

I see comments like this quite often but I think it's important to remember that this is an alpha test. I know that gets thrown around constantly, but it is true. What is the purpose of disabling a feature just because it doesn't function properly, especially in terms of ongoing testing of stability and performance, when the entire idea is to fix it? The user experience isn't important right now beyond basic function. Doing things to make the player's life easier shouldn't be a priority at all. They're building a game here, and removing a key mechanic simply because it's inconvenient doesn't make sense. To put it another way, they could remove physics (and vehicles, and grenades and chemlights and everything else dependent on it) and get stability perfect, then reintroduce it and have to start all over. They need to throw all these mechanics/features in then sort out stability instead of wasting time constantly trying to make things smooth. Mechanics come now, polish comes later. And by the way, they aren't "totally" broken. They actually work alright, they are just super laggy. Play a fresh restart server and see how smooth everything works. Eventually they'll get it that way on a full server hopefully.

I'm fairly sure they've even stated that a large amount of client side performance hit is due to the rendering of buildings and how culling currently works. It has a lot to do with your client rendering all the shit inside buildings (furniture etc) even if you're not seeing it. I suppose you think the giant fps drop when you enter or even look at town is just coincidence?

I wanna see crates that can only be carried in the hands/loaded into vehicles. That way in the future when there's more vehicles we can have people transporting boxes of large quantities of junk. And ferrying said boxes to and from the vehicles. It would encourage team work and provide for interesting encounters.

Where?

The only thing that bothers me is when your character takes some extra steps due to funky animations, or due to a glitch you fall off. I don't have a problem if it's my own fault and I don't have a problem with the distances really.

No one's talking about constant player interaction. When was the last time you ran into some one in the woods in the middle of no where in the standalone? When was the last time you had a fight that wasn't in or immediately around a town? The only one's I've had in recent memory are with hackers using ESP to teleport to me. Another problem to throw into the hat is run speed. You spend more time in towns and less time getting there.

Yeah I did. I was also in doors. And funnily enough, when I did get warm I did it sitting in the rain (by the fires), since the gorka jacket/hunter pants I put on instead were waterproof. Which is another topic but I kinda think it's silly how much better that sorta gear is. I think you should eventually get damp at least, as even if you're wearing waterproof clothes you're gonna end up wet irl sitting in the rain =P

You're nitpicking and getting off topic with your quotes. You're backhanded questioning my experience and calling me a scrub in a roundabout way. What is being posed is the following: more available loot (enterable buildings)=more time spent in one place=less time travelling=less encounters out of towns You have said there is no correlation between enterable buildings and player encounters in reference to that topic. Which is objectively false. So until you can concede that point, you can bring up situational circumstances that skirt the topic all you want but I'm done trying to point out the obvious. The posters above me seem to grasp it and simply disagree. Which is fine, and I'm now curious as to their playstyles. In your case however, there's simply no point in discussing with you if you can't get on the initial point of the thread especially if you're going to degrade into backhanded comments.

I'm curious, do the people who like spending more time in towns also prefer urban/close quarters pvp over the medium/longer range and more rural based engagements?

I'm sorry badash but if you're not going to put in the effort to actually follow what is being discussed, and not take the extra steps in the thought process that we've tried multiple times to point out I just don't know what to do for you.

Let's also say you are going to another town because the coastal town is looted. The same issue still applies, and is part of what Bullet_Catcher is pointing out, that once you get to that next town that hasn't been looted you're staying there a while. Far longer than you would have in the mod, before moving on again. Which again, is less time spent travelling, which leads to less encounters outside of town. And with pretty much every little town being viable to loot, it spreads the population as pointed out. So again, you've got more people stationary in more sections of the map for longer periods of time. Leading to less encounters between towns/travelling. I spent about 45 minutes looking for matches in Lopatino the other day, I finally found them in literally one of the last houses I checked. You know how incredibly few enterable structures lopatino had in the mod? I would have been in and out of there in a couple of minutes in the mod. That's easily 40 minutes if I'm being generous of me staying in one fairly out of the way town, that I would have likely have spent travelling in the mod.

That "special case" is that you want to camp the coast, which a lot of people do, because surprise surprise that's where the majority of people are due to a large number of reasons. One of those reasons is that there are more buildings to check, which is the topic at hand.

You're talking about a specific scenario, which most people who have experience avoid by picking a server that is likely to have loot to begin with. I'd argue that most people aren't going to go beyond the coastal towns if they are empty of loot, and will simply server hop instead. I don't understand how you can't comprehend the simple math of more places to loot=more time spent looting in a single place. If you acknowledge that then it's trivial to extrapolate that more time spent in one place=less time travelling. Saying it has zero influence is ridiculous. A better argument would be that the buildings themselves aren't the problem but the loot is. However there's no indication that loot isn't going to be untied to structures (that would be dumb any ways), but at least it would follow a better line of reasoning then "no it has absolutely no effect." You can seriously spend as much time as you would have spent in a playsession of the mod looking for vehicles/crashes/mil gear around the map, in a single town in the SA. You can spend hours looting a town in the SA, where as unless you were loot cycling in the mod, you are going to spend a fraction of that time. Did you even play the mod?

Because as it's been stated numerous times, you can spend way more time in a city now than the mod. There's less incentive to travel between towns, because there's more to do in each specific area. This might lead to more interactions in those towns themselves, but it reduces travel which in turn reduces interactions outside of them. There's a ton of factors that have already been pointed out adding to the issue, but enterable buildings are one of the most significant ones. And again, it's not to say the buildings themselves are the problem, but that they play a huge role. To say that population is the only thing that influences frequencies of player interaction is pretty absurd really. You could cut the population down to 10 people, remove all loot from the map except for one location, and where you do you think those 10 people are inevitably gonna end up?

I had heard they do spawn on persistence servers and that the loot even stays between restarts, even though the crash itself is gone.

Unlucky, kinda. They spawn but I believe it's 3 per restart. Look at the dayz db map to see how many potential spots there are. I've found 2 in the same area before, all a matter of luck though checking the map you can see some areas you'll have better odds.

Anyone tested it much this patch? I used to use it a lot but have been taking a break from it. However, there have been a few times I've used it and it seemed off again. Shot a guy 2-3 times extremely close range and he didn't even bleed (in fact, he quite blatantly told me "hahaha I'm not even bleeding loser!"). Had other encounters where it took a lot of shots to kill some one too. I've also tested shooting it against various walls and it seems to not make a spread once again. The impact doesn't leave a mark on the wall, but the dust kick up is a tiny concentrated point. It's an extremely different pattern from the pump shotgun and is reminiscent of when it was bugged. I'll try to do more actual testing myself when I get some time but considering its history I'm just wondering if anyone else is having similar experiences.

There needs to be a balance to it. You need to expect there to be loot at least, or else where's the incentive to go there? As it stands, I do not expect any decent loot on a full server at a military base. And because of the way the spawn system currently works, I also can't expect there to ever be until the server restarts. It shouldn't be easy or a guarantee, but you need hope. It's incomplete though obviously, but they'll get there.

I think a lot of people are missing his point, he's not saying enterable buildings themselves are bad. He's saying they lead to fewer encounters outside of major towns because you can get "stuck" spending so much time in one place. This is a true statement. You can spend hours simply looting in the biggest cities, where as in the mod you would have had to scour multiple towns to do the same amount of looting. Causing more travel and more chance encounters outside of said cities. I mostly agree with what you're saying bullet_catcher. You acknowledge that it's not the only factor but a big one as to why you don't see as many people around the map, and I agree with that but we also just need to wait for those other factors to be sorted out too. A higher pop cap is planned, and while initially I think they were aiming for 150, I believe they've since stated that something closer to 100 may be ideal. We'll have to wait and see how that plays out. Loot respawn currently is super wack. So the reason you don't really see people going to the nwaf on full servers is because they already know it's going to be empty. You're more likely to run into players at the mil bases on a low pop server currently because otherwise it's basically pointless. Loot currently respawns, but it's really slow and unreliable. On the same note, there's not a lot of incentive to hit non coastal cities because you can get all the gear you need on the coast. Assault rifles are pretty much the only reason to go to mil bases, but again with the spawn system it's extremely unreliable. Map layout has changed a lot making some towns that used to be popular, less so. Stary is probably the greatest example. In the mod it was the stopping point from the coast on your way to the nwaf. It had valuable buildings like the tents and market and was a midway point. Now Stary is pointless, but the dynamic has shifted. If you spawn up in the high north east you'll probably take the northern highway and hit those new towns. If you are going from cherno you'll probably go through balota, more towards zeleno and up through the vybor base. That said, people don't make these journeys nearly ass often or as quickly as in the mod. And you're absolutely right that a large part of that is that you end up stopping in towns and buildings on the way. Any ways, you're completely right that encounters happen less often outside the cities and that enterable buildings play a role. I really miss the feeling of not knowing if I was gonna run into some one on my way from town to town. Now I can pretty much almost guarantee I won't. Those non urban fights were way more fun for me too. Let's just hope they can increase incentive to travel in various ways, and also get a higher stable pop per server since the map itself undoubtebly could support it now.

Clothes matter a lot even with fires for this. I sat by 4 fires for a very long time, constantly "warming up" but never got warm enough to actually get rid of the shakes. I was wearing a tactical shirt, short pants no shoes. It was only after I put on a bunch of other gear including shoes and gloves that I was able to warm up while sitting by 3 more fires for a while longer. My guess is that even though I was warming up, I was cooling off at a similar rate and my temperature wasn't able to increase enough. So I'd add that extra note to your guide, that you need to make sure you actually have decent clothes on too if you're not seeing a difference. I don't think splints actually help with the shaking. They are different effects. It can't hurt to try, but the sway from a broken arm is a lot different from the actual shaking of being cold.

Ahh my mistake!

On a serious note it might have been dead already. I've seen deer die and stay standing up.

For what it's worth, the guy claims that it's how some people used to use bows in combat. It's not a hunting technique. I think there's a lot of criticism that it isn't actually true but I haven't cared enough to look into the whole thing. Just saying though, for shooting zombies assuming it is an actual valid method that was used in the past it seems decent enough to me! Close range, faster shooting. It also doesn't mean you're incapable of taking slow shots, they aren't mutually exclusive skills...

I partially agree with this. It has definitely changed the dynamic of the game, right down to pvp being super close quarters focused where it was mainly mid to long range in the mod. Arguably close quarters combat is the worst type of combat in these arma based games (some people like it, I'm not saying it's terrible but due to a combination of things it is the weakest aspect of combat). I don't know that I agree that there's less interactions though. I think forcing close proximity of players, even if there are a ton of hiding places gives rise to more social interactions if less pvp interactions. In the mod, you could potentially see every where a person was or was going to be quite easily, as their options were limited. This meant shooting folk was really easy and chance encounters were more sparse around towns. I think in the SA, more situations arise where you run into some one and with added places to hide it gives the potential for a greater sense of security to actually talk to each other. It also provides more incentive to stay in a particular town for a longer period of time for reasons other than camping, which potentially leads to more encounters. It's all still very situational as to where you are on the map though, some towns are better than others. I do agree that they've added more towns than they probably should have and I would have liked to see more focus on interesting landscapes instead. Most of the new towns are actually pretty cool, but it just seems unnecessary to have so many. My hope is that when barricading actually becomes a thing, where it's the preferred method of base building, that we'll see a use for these tons of structures. You might decide to make your base out of some house in a random town. He noted this: And he's right. The map is the same size but every enterable building that wasn't before adds more useable space. And every multistoried building that is added likewise adds more space. So they effectively have increased the map size.

Yeah that was my intention, once I get around to it. If some one else beats me to it that'd be good though. If some one could even just shoot a wall with one and see what the shot pattern looks like it would be helpful.