SpaceMidget75

Have to say, I agree completely. It was an honourable design choice to aim for a real life simulation but it doesn't work in-game. I could only play DayZ in the evening which meant as far as my DayZ "life" is concerned, I never see daytime. Hardly the realism rocket was striving for. On top of that, the inevitable consequence if it actually being a game and not real life, means that if I want to I can easily avoid this design choice by simply finding a server that's running daytime - making the the 24hr system even less useful. Finally, because gaming time is precious and it is easier to play in daytime, I simply avoid night altogether. The final nail in the coffin IMHO for a 24hr cycle. Being able to sit down for an average gaming session (3-4hrs?) and have it be either night or day, as well as have the possibility to experience the transition between the two just makes sense. I'm sure the global server stats will speak for themselves.

I disagree also. When it works it works well but when is doesn't (and sometimes it definitely doesn't) it breaks all sense of immersion. IF this is working on some kind of visibility variable (which is a good idea) say from 0-200 and you then apply a chance of detection to that variable (again, fine in principle) you need to make sure you cap the lower & upper ends so that detection either never happens or it always happens. If you don't, you get the behavior that we're experiencing.... If you run right past a zombie (say visibility of 180) there's a small chance they won't see you. THIS looks stupid - they should always see you. If you're hundreds of meters away (say visibility of 2) there's a small chance they will see you. THIS also looks stupid - they should never see you. On top of that I'm still seeing zombies detect without line of sight or even worse as the guy above just mentioned, laying still in a building. It suggests that their hearing detection is off somewhere.

I just want to re-stipulate that in no way am I complaining about tougher zombies - thats good! -, but they're still seemingly seeing through walls into buildings even when i'm prone and not touching the keyboard. They are also sometimes "seeing" you even when prone, from so far away that its completely unnatural. Sometimes they're not even facing. I just think the Visual stat needs tweaking a bit.

I'm sorry to say, and I haven't complained about a single update so far, but I've got issues with 1.7.2. I'm all for zombies having line of sight and hearing but something is very very wrong with this patch. I've lay prone inside a building and up a ladder with no agro, only for a two zombies to see me from outside, through a wall 5 minutes later. They've then come running in the building and up the ladder. I've hid inside one of those little single room offices, prone, with no agro. Could hear a Z outside behind the building. He suddenly agros and walks through the wall and attacks. Had zombies spawn immediately next to me. Had Zs on two occasions agro from a distance where they were only a few pixels high and i was ether prone or crouched! They've literally come running over a hill and into the doorway im in from half a mile away. They're still sometimes running in the opposite direction before turning to attack but that's hardly a big issue at the moment. I'm not suggesting for one minute that they should be nerfed back to the 1.7.1 but there are issues at the moment that I'm sure more will notice as they play it more. I've also noticed a real lag picking up gear or moving it to your person in the gear menu, and a few dupe items which appear to be related to the delay in the items being picked up. Thanks for listening. EDIT: I've just read brites post and it seems to verify what I've seen!

Some thoughts... The game, it's too dark.* I have a day job and kids. The ONLY time I can play this game (even on weekends) is, at the earliest, after 9pm. The simple fact is that with a new character without nvg and after the beta patch, the game is unplayable. That really is all there is to it. I'm all for stopping people using gamma to play more comfortable at night (in fact i'd say it was a must for this sort of game), but night play needs a solution. Now I'm not sure what the perfect solution is and things like having flipped servers means people can avoid night altogether so here's my idea... Make the day night cycle 23 hours. You still get the realism of NOT seeing a full day during play and people still can't hang around for 30 minutes until daytime like in other games. What it does mean, is the following: 10pm Monday IRL is 10pm 10pm Tuesday IRL is 9pm 10pm Wednesday IRL is 8pm. I can now start a new character! etc etc 24 days later it's synced up again. * As an aside, I was in Sardinia when there was a power cut on a cloudy night. I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face - and no, my eyes didn't adjust.

I have to strongly agree with the people saying that we shouldn't have a bandit skin. I've just recently bought Arma 2 to play this mod based on all the press it's been receiving and the thing that really appealed to me was the sim aspect of it. Being labeled as a bad guy breaks that. Unfortunately, none of the reviews mentioned this bandit system. Almost all post-apoc movies and books have this aspect of having to figure out for yourself if people are friendly or not. Obviously if they attack on sight they're not and you should make sure you're in a position to fight back or hide (or have some friends with you which I'll discuss in a bit). If they don't attack on sight, you'll need to use other aspects to decide if you trust that person or not. These two types of "bad guy" are in everything from The Road & Book of Eli, to Mad Max, Walking Dead and almost everything by Romero. There are a few things the game can do to help people decide and they've all been mentioned. The main one being getting local chat working so you can converse. But custom skins would be a nice touch too. As for the argument that people will never be friendly... As mentioned above, the game should be layed out in a way that helps this to happen. Basically, "safety in numbers" should be necessary in certain situations. Entering areas with lots of Zombies and approaching new potential recruits are obvious examples. Allow this to happen via clever, open design (like Eve) rather than through fixed game rules. If the game persists in keeping a player killing tag (and I really hope it doesn't) then at the very least it must reset the bandit tag on death. EDIT: Joining with friends also appears to happen quite a bit and proves that the game wont turn into a Deathmatch.