ezdaroth

I don't support this, even if I hate the exploitation. Night isn't supposed to be black, there's never total darkness outside, or in any space where even a little light can get in. Because majority of the people don't have calibrated IPS-panels, but instead crappy TN-stuff that isn't capable of showing the difference between "black" and "black+20", you'd have to take out a ton of dark shades, which would make the game look almost cartoony, or extremely "stylished". I vote for summer nights that aren't as dark. A slight blue tint and just a little bit of darkness is enough to give you the idea it's night. Edit: Did a quick tweak of Chernarus screenshot to illustrate my point better: http://imgur.com/gKCdP It wouldn't be nearly as good as the nights now, but I'd still rather play like that than max gamma to not be in a huge disadvantage at night, or take a ton of dark shades completely out of the game.

I refuse to believe any of you is actually so stupid you'd think this is not an exploit. I'm absolutely certain the brightness and gamma settings are there so you can optimize the brightness and gamma for your monitor and gaming environment. That's what the settings are intended for, but unfortunate side-effect is that they can be exploited to gain unfair advantage in the multiplayer game. It can't really be fixed without ruining game graphics and majority will have to use it for fair gameplay, but that sucks and it's still an exploit just like server hopping, disconnecting to avoid deaths and so on. Anyone can do it, but it doesn't mean it's intentional and doesn't have a negative impact on the game.

There's increasing amount of threads suggesting artificial disadvantages for bandits, these include anything from increased spawn times to decreased accuracy and disappearing player loot. My suggestion is to ignore it all and focus on the things that make DayZ a very unique experience - Realism, immersion, survival, player interaction and the lack of rules and restrictions. This will be a rather lengthy post and I'm not supplying a TL;DR, but I'd appreciate if you took the time to read it before replying. DayZ is not a mod for everyone DayZ gained a lot of popularity very rapidly. Many popular gaming sites such as Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer noted it, which resulted in a surge of players. Many of these people bought ARMA 2 and Operation Arrowhead just to play this mod, that is only going through early alpha testing. There's now over 90 000 unique players, which is fantastic. It's inevitable there will also be many players who have wrong expectations and don't have the mentality to enjoy a mod like this. Games tend to be fair, forgiving and packed with action. DayZ is the exact opposite. It's unfair, unforgiving and most of the time nothing happens. Players get frustrated when they realize the mod isn't what they wanted. Sneaking around a dark forest for an hour and losing days of progression to a bullet from out of nowhere isn't something most people consider fun. Unsatisfied player is a vocal player Because the players think they paid for the mod, they want to change the things they don't like rather than just quit playing it. It's only natural, nobody wants to waste money. They become very vocal about it, which results in a ton of suggestion threads. Bandits are easily considered the most unfair part of the mod. Zombies are predictable and you can only blame yourself for alerting them, but bandits may be anywhere, they might lie to you and you can never be absolutely safe from them. This is why many suggest various artificial disadvantages for bandits, to reduce their numbers and make the mod more fair and predictable. Bandit skin was a terrible idea, perfect example of what not to do The bandit skin was an artificial disadvantage to anyone who killed other players. While it successfully reduced murders a little bit, it also took a lot of depth away from player interaction. Seeing a player in DayZ causes a huge adrenaline rush, at least for me. I can't predict what the player will do when he sees me. I have to make a quick decision to hide, shoot or carefully approach him. Each decision has natural advantages and disadvantages with a different outcome. If I approach the player as friendly, he might just kill me, but I can potentially get the most valuable resource in a game, a friend who has my back and is more useful than any piece of gear in the game. If I shoot him, I might alert zombies and/or his friends who would hunt me down, I might also miss and give him a chance to kill me. However, I could potentially get a bunch of nice gear which increases my chances of survival. If I hide, I don't take a risk of imminent death, but I might die later, because I didn't have the friend or the the gear with me. All these advantages and disadvantages are natural, they are based on real-life and make sense. You need to do some risk evaluation and thinking. They are about equally good decisions and you are free to do any of them, but most importantly you can make the right decision without reading some wiki article. If you throw a bandit skin system in the mix, it has a huge impact on this moment. The game essentially tells you "Hey, that guy has murdered someone. You didn't see it or hear about it, but you magically know it. Better not trust him and oh, killing him adds value to your humanity which is beneficial." It breaks the immersion and simplifies the moment. It also places new players in a disadvantage, because they might have no clue about the skin/humanity system. I believe the natural advantages and disadvantages are enough to balance the game. Balance can be tweaked, but it should be done very carefully, should be based on realism and should make sense. Making artificial disadvantages for a certain playstyle hurts the game in general, even if it might be a quick fix to a certain issue. Please note I'm not trying to say new players don't have the right to suggest changes, I'm a new player who got into the mod via RPS article, but I just wanted to share my concern of the wave of new players suggesting something that would ruin core elements of the mod. Share your thoughts.

Why? I already have a reason to clear the zombies - the supplies in the town which help me and my friends survive. I don't want NPC telling me to clear it and rewarding me with an extra can of beans for it. Your ultimate goal is surviving as long as possible and you create the other goals for yourself, which you can change at any point you want.

I'm hoping they end up with a solution where you can loot a journal from a corpse, it's saved as a text file and then the dead player spawns with empty journal again. If everybody just have a public journal on a website it wouldn't be even nearly as special as finding a journal in-game and reading the story of the dead guy.

Starting skins could vary, but I don't see a good way to add other character-based modifiers. If stats would vary, players would kill themselves until they get the stats they want. If you prevented that, they would be annoyed and blame their deaths on bad perks.