Swi1ch

Hi, when I launch DayZ Mod through Steam, whilst clicking the 'use beta patch' option, the game launches fine and reports that the Beta patch is active. However, clicking on the multiplayer tab causes the game to freeze at 'receiving data'. If I launch DayZ through Steam without the beta patch option, I can enter the multiplayer menu with no issues. I am using the most current Beta patch for OA. I have Arma2, Arma2 OA and DayZ all freshly installed and run at least once. My searches for this problem turn up a few results, but I can't find any that relate to using the Beta patch, and none of them have any solutions other than reinstall Windows.

Fostering team building and making the game a nice friendly co-op game are two very different things.

I think it's fine as it is at the moment, and the deadzone works great. If you are carrying a weapon and want to look over your shoulder and behind you, but want to keep your weapon trained on that point, just aim at it. If you want your aimpoint to traverse with your view, push the deadzone to maximum and that's relatively accurate depiction of where you can aim your weapon without actually turning.

In the current state of the game, I think it's fine. It's hardly difficult to get off the beach and to relative safety, and you don't lose much if you do happen to get spawnkilled. It also gives just enough information to players to get their bearings without handing it to them on a plate.

Pretty sure this wouldn't work for voip, but the different ranges for different types of text chat actually kinda makes sense. Even more so if there was a (very) brief indicator on the hud to show approximately which direction the talking came from.

You would still need subsonic ammo to be completely silent, and i'm pretty sure anything above a .22 or maybe a low powered .38 would just cause the bottle to explode rather than achieve any sort of suppressing effect.

It would make sense if it led to something deeper, but as the game is somewhat static in terms of where loot/zombies spawn, the only dynamic is the location of players, and I doubt players who have established camps want to broadcast them to just anybody. Good idea as part of a larger game mechanic, but with the state of the game right now, this is just a way for people to see even more penises than they usually do on the internet.

Realism has to have boundaries, and whilst i'm all for realism, adding increased recovery time as a mechanic doesn't really add anything (In the current state of the game). The hunger/thirst/temperature mechanics add something to the game because they force the player to make important choices based on realism that have effect the player differently depending upon their choices. Increasing recovery time doesn't do much other than increase the time it takes to travel from A to B. The chase situation is the only thing I can really think of that would be affected by this, but it seems kinda minor to me. Either you lose sight of the guy you are chasing and thus he gets to hide and ambush you, or you don't lose sight of him and you should probably be able to just shoot him anyway. It's just not really a mechanic that fits well into DayZ, imo. Something along the lines of max top speed/max time sprinting based upon carry weight would be a better mechanic, as it forces the player to make choices about how prepared they want to be for every situation vs their ability to respond/remove themselves from situations. The choice of not running too far in case you get chased, but not shot, and can't get into a position to return fire seems kinda thin to me.

Preface; this is less of a hard suggestion, more of light theorycrafting. Ways to add a flavour of direction to DayZ that complement its core values of harsh difficulties and paranoia. I should also point out I would never consider having something like this as a standard DayZ implementation; it would be for clans or groups to try out for a change of pace or general experimentation. The original idea was the thought of trying to escape Chernarus. You need to repair a boat, and in order to do so you would need to collect the needed parts and the 'winner' would get better spawn gear or something like that. Now, obviously that's a horrible idea with all sorts of potential problems. There would be no incentive to betray other players, unless the reward was split in which case people would only betray at the last minute. There would be issues with players deliberately acquiring the needed items and logging off etc etc, a terrible idea. The anti-thesis of what (I believe) DayZ is about. So a better idea (although, not perfect). There is a device in the world that repels zombies (ZRD). It emits sub-sonic pulses that stops zombies getting close to the player who carries it (Or whatever reason, bare with me). Upon server restart and game start, one player at random spawns with the device. Everyone else spawns with a locator; at a set interval, say 10 minutes, the ZRD emits a ping that sets a note on every players map at its location, with a time stamp (A reason to have a watch!). If the player dies or logs off the device is dropped to the floor and continues to tick over to its next ping, that will be marked on the map as 'dropped'. The player could also manually drop the device. So the purpose of this? It adds a light goal and scenario to the game. It encourages both co-operation and betrayal; The player in control of the ZRD can reap the benefits of looting unmolested, but he knows that players will be hunting him, and thus needs to decide whether the risk that a player might betray him is worth having the extra manpower around when the hunters arrive. For the hunters themselves, it will obviously be easier for them to overpower the device holder if they have a larger group, but they then have to worry about betrayal from each other too as the device is so valuable. As the device pings the map as just 'dropped' regardless of whether the holder died, logged off or manually dropped it means tension around rushing to pick up a dropped device as it might be a trap. It wouldn't undermine the core ideals of the game, as survival is still a challenging priority. There would still be no 'end' to the game, it would be pure sandbox and players could choose to ignore the device entirely without compromising on their regular gameplay. The biggest benefit is that this doesn't implement any sort of time limit, something that most goal oriented ideas have and suffer from. Anyone have any similar ideas? I feel DayZ is a breeding ground for cool scenarios that fit with the nature of the game. I know there's a tonne of flaws with this idea, and the 'realism' aspect sticks out a bit, but I'm more interested in promoting discussion.

Welcome to DayZ. IRL at night you would have an advantage with NVGs against someone without them.

I'm opposed to this idea. In DayZ I love that you are not constrained by RPG stats, aside from things that would equally affect everyone; hunger, thirst and health. If you can aim better than another guy, it's because you can aim better than another guy, not because you have a better stat. This idea to me feels like a stat that controls the way you play the game, whereas real people's response to isolation would vary significantly between different people. Sure, hunger and thirst differs between people but not really to the extent that social interaction does. It's also something that people can adjust to; over time you can get used to less and less social interaction (I regularly happily go several weeks without any human interaction). I would be more be more in support of this idea if there was some sort of compromise for eschewing human contact (Perhaps increased sensitivity to human sounds, as they stand out to you more or something), otherwise a player is being needless forced into a certain play style that is not essential to surviving.

Pretty much agree, see Fridge Logic in sig.

Edit. The OP is below, but I believe I might not have been completely clear in it about my suggestion. The idea is not to have zombie spawn rates increase by a set amount per survivor, at one time (For example, each player increases spawn rate by 10 seconds and 20 zombies whilst he is in the town.) This would be a horrible idea, as the game would remain static; player heavy towns would be impossible and therefore boring. The idea is to have a dynamic system that changes over a longer period of time, so a week for example. After a week is up, the towns with the highest average player traffic get a increase in spawn rates, and the towns with the lowest average player traffic get a decrease in spawn rates. This would mean that over-saturated areas would become non-viable and players would have to move on to survive. Eventually, as different towns fill up, this would come full circle, as the towns that have been left behind would see a decrease in player traffic and thus a decrease in zombie spawns. To stop the current static state where you know where is safe, where isn't and where you can go get stuff. It would change. OP: So I was pondering just now about the current typical activities of survivors ingame, which the vast majority of consist of; deathmatching in Cherno or Elektro, or going to Stary or NW Airbase for gear. I was thinking that players need a reason to go elsewhere, but to add story or quests would ruin the spirit of the game, as the goal is simply to survive. So I pose to ye this; what if zombie spawn rates were based on player traffic in an area, and not just on that one server, but on all? Right now, most player traffic is in Cherno, Elektro, Stary or NW Airbase. Let's FLOOD these towns with Zed (Backstory; Zed are attracted to food ie: humans, or whatever). I mean more than 1.5.7 rates, I mean if you fart in Chero you get eaten. What will this accomplish? A dynamic metagame. It will become impossible to survive in these over saturated areas and will force players to move elsewhere. The players ahead of the pack will find the best areas more quickly, and as more and more players (And more zombies) flood in, they will move on. Common, well trod routes will emerge and die as the human populace relocates and relocates again. Wars will break out in less zombie infested towns over the supplies there, until it no longer becomes possible to fight there. Players who are paying attention to the migration paths of both living and undead will be able to get in quickest to the valuable places like military camps when they're beginning to become less saturated. Gogo metagames!

Kill on Sight Solutions? - Implying killing on sight is currently a problem.

Implying it needs fixing.

NO. I love difficulty. Repeatedly respawning to find a weapon is an RNG grind. Grind and RNG /= difficulty.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2012/04/23/robert-bowling-opens-game-studio.aspx April 23, 2012 Robotoki’s first project, which will be revealed later this year, is slated for release on next-gen consoles, PC, and mobile devices (iOS, Tablet, Android). Seems fairly legit. However; “As a developer, our focus is on creating a universe first, experiences second, and game mechanics last" Good luck with that. No one needs those mechanicy things anyway.

Deer Stand count as Military for possible loot drops, so anything you can get in other military places (except barracks/downed heli) you can get there.

So, I had a Fridge Logic moment; There's a lot of discussion on the subject of Bandits in DayZ; both the humanity mechanic, and the action of firing upon or otherwise being hostile to other players. After hearing Rocket refer to DayZ as the 'Anti-Game', I realised that we have all fallen into the same conditioned box of thinking. Side note; Rockpapershotgun did a 3 part review on a game called Pathologic, which is definitely an 'Anti-game'. You should read it if you care about games at all. What do I mean by this? I mean that games have conditioned us to think in certain ways (And I don't mean this in a 'put on your tinfoil hat before the ten year old who saw GTA kills everyone way). An example of this: You're playing an RPG. Skyrim, Fallout, whatever. You're wandering around, and you see the entrance to a cave. Unless you've never played a game before, you immediately know a few things; 1. The cave has bad guys in it, that will likely grow larger in number or power the further down into the cave you go. 2. The cave may begin or be included in a quest that relates to the main or a sub-plot. 3. The cave probably has shiny things in it that you can pick up to sell or use. That's how a typical game would handle a cave. In DayZ, or an 'Anti-Game', that cave you stumbled upon might; 1. Take you ten minutes to travel through, only to come to a dead end. 2. Have a few enemies a quarter of the way in, and a single can of beans right at the end. 3. Just kill you as soon as you walk through the door, because you're not meant to go in there in there, at all. These sort of responses are difficult for players (including myself) to get used to, because they are not in line with what we 'know' about games. How does this relate to DayZ? Well, because the vast majority of us have fallen into a bucket that we can think only within. Conditioned views of 'what the game is'. Some standard bucket thoughts go something like the following; 1. This is a game where I team up with players to kill/survive vs zombies. 2. This is game where I kill players, with the added challenge of avoiding zombies. 3. This is a game where the goal is to find the best items available in the game. None of these are right. However, none of these are wrong, either. DayZ doesn't fit within our normal boundaries of what a game 'is'. The closest I can come to for what I think what DayZ 'is', is a game where you try and survive. That's it. Adding anything to the end of that is just a method. So how does this apply to Bandits? Well, once I started thinking about the game like this, I realised it was somewhat out of place to have this arbitrary point where a player become a 'bad guy'. It's sort of like a punishment (or reward, depending on your point of view), and thus you perform an action and face the consequences of it in a really 'gamey' way. People with bucket thinking want this consequence to be amplified (Longer respawn times for players who kill other players, negative side effects on their character, stuff like that), because they have decided that this is the 'wrong' way to play. Opponents to that line of thinking typically cite 'realism' as the reason for allowing Banditry. Fact is, the reason Banditry is allowed in this game, is because it is in the game. It is neither right nor wrong, it just happens in this particular game world and mechanics. To punish or reward the choice to kill players make no sense, because that is pushing players towards a particular route. There is no route in DayZ. A good example of this is moral choice systems in games, where it is clearly better to pick one or the other, or to only go with one to maximise the benefit. The benefit of any action in DayZ is entirely dependent upon the situation, and this is where it's role-playing strengths are most apparent. A pure 'innocent' player is at some point going to have to make the decision whether or not to temporarily go 'bad', and kill a player for food so he can survive. A pure 'bad' player is at some point going to have to make the choice whether to co-operate with people so he can survive. In the end, it is moral ambiguity that is what makes DayZ super interesting. Your mechanical choices at any point only affect that point in time; you sneak into a town and grab some loot. Once you're out of the town, that choice is now near irrelevant. Your role-playing choices however will carry over from before; you shot some guys and have decided to go 'straight'. This will have a constant effect on what you do but this is never enforced by the game. We are all bandits, and none of us are bandits. We're not supposed to be one or the other. We don't even have to pick. It just is, and that's all there is to it. Post needs editing badly, but in my world, editing is not needed.

I'm so glad I created this op before this patch. Forums are full of QQ KILLING and general bucket thinking. Also, I found a quote from Rocket which fits this thread nicely: