hoorah (DayZ)

It seems to me like closed doors slow zombies down a bit at least. Is this true, or is it just my perception that they are slower? Either way, yeah, its irritating, especially since they can see you through walls. I was looting a supermarket once and heard the zombies constantly aggroing around me. Had no idea if they were coming into the store or just flipping out on the other side of the wall. Terrifying. A tip for the OP. I NEVER carry around more than one food item if I have less than 12000 blood. Maybe its just my play style, but I very rarely find myself in a situation where I've gone through the hunger indicator TWICE and can't get to town. So, if you've got food, use it up. Being at low blood doesn't just mean you have fewer hit points, it means you have a better chance of being knocked out or having a broken bone. Also, this is something that took me awhile to learn, and I still have trouble with - try not to be a pack rat before looting. For example, if I'm about to loot a supermarket, I drink all but one of my sodas and all of my food first before I head into the store. That way its easy to just jump in, take everything I want, and jump out rather than deciding what I want to keep in inventory at each loot pile.

Came across a survivor the other day (actually, I almost stumbled over him). He was just standing there, so I guess he was fiddling with his gear. Would have shot him immediately, but he had a crowbar. So I said in voice chat "Run out in into the field and away from here. You leave, I let you go, we each go on our way. Pull a weapon and I kill you" Nothing happens for about 10 seconds, then the guy pulls out a makarov. Bad move when someone has an enfield pointed at your head.

Most of the time I run straight into cherno or elektro without a gun on a fresh spawn. Its the 'I have nothing to lose' mentality. I might change that plan up if there are 40+ people on the server, but with 10 or less its straight into the big city on a spawn.

You're right, I am arguing semantics. Its just a personal preference in word choice, thats all. I would choose to use words like experienced to describe someone that does well at a game, or just simply call them a good game player. I'm not saying that there is no skill set involved in playing games, but I wouldn't consider someone that does poorly at a mental exercise 'weak'. Video games are simply a form of entertainment, and I personally don't feel that someone's performance in one is any reflection of their character. Honestly, I have a pretty low opinion of anyone that describes themselves using militaristic sounding words when in the context of a video game (not just in Day Z, for any video game in general). I don't particularly think someone excelling at a video game makes them in any way strong, elite, dangerous, hardcore, battle hardened, or tough. I don't mean that as direct criticism of your post because yours wasnt that bad. I have however, seen some posts on this board that just make me shake my head in disappointment. I am sure, however, that those people don't particularly care for my opinion of them, and thats fine.

At the end of the day, its still just moving around pieces of ivory, x's and o's, or keystrokes on a computer. Yes, there is significant strategy involved, however, 'strong' or 'weak' are not words I would use to describe any of them. They're just games.

True, but my point is that I don't think hunting other players for fun is what I would consider realistic. Taken within the confines of the game, if you really, really wanted to just survive, you could set up shop at a town (or just outside, on a hill) with a supermarket thats not frequented, like Lopatino. Go in carefully, get beans/water, get out. Sit on hill until food runs out. Rinse and repeat. Or, just camp the supermarket in a corner. Chances are, on a server with 20 people on it, you probably wouldn't even see someone for hours, and if you did, you could probably stay hidden. Wouldn't make for much of a gameplay experience though.

I believe this more and more every day, and it has nothing to do with Day Z either.

The only problem I have with this is in a real-life situation, once I found some sort of long range weapon, I wouldn't be moving tactically through towns, looting airfields, or stalking other survivors. I'd sit myself in some church tower with my beans and my rifle FAR away from where anyone else is and stay fcking silent. All day, every day. Theres only so much fun to be had sitting in some town in the north that survivors rarely frequent with some binoculars and a rifle for hours on end.

Its just a video game. There is no 'weak' or 'strong' about it.

Wow, I can't remember the last time I saw a 16 gauge. Do you have trouble finding ammo for it? All of mine are run-o-the-mill stuff. Few 9mms, 380s, and 223s from springfield and ruger. Some sort of 12 gauge is next on my list.

Honestly, once you get comfortable finding a middle of the road primary weapon like the 1866, an enfield, or even a double-barrel, and then find out the buildings that are enterable, zombies become a simplistic exercise in outsmarting the AI. With no weapon, a trail of 4+ zombies chasing you makes you need to lose them by running in an out of buildings hoping they can't track you, or trying your luck at hitting them with a hatchet and not losing too much blood. With a gun? Find a building and let them all funnel in slowly, easily picking them off in the head, then go on about your merry way. Not much of a challenge to it (unless you count having a zombie surprise you by clipping through a wall a challenge).

To be fair, that is currently being done by people hopping into low populated servers, getting the gear, then going to the more populated ones.

1 - There are only a few actual buildings you can enter. One is the symmetric barn. Another is the small residential unit with the dark wooden frame and the small door thats recessed under an entryway. These are just two examples, but they are repeated identically throughout the map. As you play more, you'll start to recognize the enterable buildings and be able to separate them from the ones that are just scenery. 3 - If I break a leg, I don't have morphine, and I'm not in a town with at least a supermarket - forget it. Respawn. Maybe I have too little patience for this game, but I'm not crawling for hours in some test of 'how long can I hold the w key' 5 - Not sure anything can be done about this. AFAIK, number of zombies is a technical limitation in the game, the engine can't handle more than 800-1000 zombies. If that were split up all over the map, the towns would have like 5 zombies in them.

You're not from the South, are you? ;-) There are more gun shows down here than, well, I can't think of a comparison. But there are a lot!

I prioritize medical supplies (especially morphine), bandages, and painkillers over ammo. I can ALWAYS run from zombies instead of shooting them if I run out of ammo, but have morphine. If I have ammo and no morphine, it will be a long, slow crawl to my eventual death, because I will probably run out of ammo then too! So long as I have at least one food and one drink, I eat what I have and don't carry more. Rarely do I find myself without food and the hunger indicator blinking.

Thank you for saying this. I don't understand why people think a games popularity is a bad thing. I played a game awhile back called zombie panic source. The learning curve was steep. Nothing like day z, but compared to L4D, it was pretty difficult to survive. It was a mod and not relatively well known. Then, valve decided to feature it on steam (instead of some convoluted way of getting it installed). All of the sudden, there was a huge influx of players and the bitching started like nothing I've ever seen before. "All these new Steam kiddies...." "OMFG so many noobs" "Why are these new people ruining the game?" Now look at it - hardly anyone plays anymore. Now the 'hard core old timers' are the ones that started when it was featured on steam, trying to keep the community alive.

When I ran six launcher to get DayZ, my windows firewall popped up asking me if I wanted to allow rsync to access the internet. Rsync is a program used to move files across the internet or a local network. Your antivirus program is probably picking up the rsync script thinking its a virus installer.

Yar har fiddle dee dee!

Hitting a man sized target from 800+ m is into the extreme levels of marksmanship. I believe to qualify as an expert marksman in the marines its a man sized target (or maybe a 12" circle, not sure) at 1000yrds. Not that this has any relevance to what you're doing, just throwing that out there.

I guess this is a matter of interpretation. In a way, yes, you know you are exploiting the AI because it has trouble with line of sight and inside buildings. In reality though, if you were being chased my zombies that had trouble tracking you if they couldn't see you, or were too deranged to figure out where you went if you went inside a house, would you not use that to your advantage? I guess it depends on if you consider the zombies' behavior a bug or not. Since zombies arent real, I'd say its up to you to decide. I personally think either is valid. Most zombie movies (if you want to consider this as a basis for reality) have both people attempting stealth and people 'making a run for it'. Now, if zombies, for example, couldn't see past an imaginary line dividing two flat pieces of road, then yes, I would say you are exploiting the game mechanics.

So my play style has always been a loner (all 3 days of it so far). My friends don't play this game and I don't 'team up' with randoms I meet in the field. I don't shoot on sight either, I try to just stay hidden for the most part. This whole 'why does everyone always kill me' whining is all over the forums, I felt like I didn't need to make the situation worse if I didn't have to. Anyway, I was playing last night on a server that happened to have its own teamspeak, so I logged into that just to hear the radio chatter and get an idea of where people were. I was leaving cherno headed north when I hear a bunch of people saying they're looking for medical supplies. I had just passed 3 blood bags, which are useless to me without friends, so I thought, WTH, and talked to them on the mic. Met up, gave them the blood bags, restored my health, gave them morphine. They were very grateful. Asked if I wanted to tag along to Balota, I said sure. Between the tents and the airfield, I'm in the trees keeping my eyes open while they're running around looking for loot. I notice two survivors running from the airfield towards us. Not being familiar with team play or the group, I ask them if they know those people. Nope. They have weapons? Yep. Drop em. Lined up the iron sights on the m16 and pop pop....pop. Then pop pop.....pop. Both down. All this after I swore that if the other person didn't see me I would make every attempt to avoid them or just take a deep breath, not be attached to my stuff, and take my chances. I guess at this point, it wasn't just me, it was the groups safety as well. Shortly after, I spot another survivor running away from the airfield, bleeding, with no weapon, headed north. He got to live (well, at least he didn't die by me). After all that was over, my first thought was

Ha, yeah I don't feel guilty about it. That's what I thought was so surprising - I went from very anti player killing to 'meh, no biggie' in an instant. I'm still not going to be a dick though, if I can avoid killing I will. If I'm with a group though I'm going assume we can't stay hidden.

Keep in mind that some of the videos on youtube might be done at 1080, where others are only done at 480. Can make a big difference, but you probably already knew that. As far as some having better graphics than others in the game - it all depends on the detail settings the person making the video chose. If he's running on an older CPU/GPU, he might have the graphic options set lower. Also, some people making videos might set the graphics lower temporarily, as recording a video will cause a loss of performance, which generally makes for poor videos.

Thanks for the tip. Is there a way to see what version of the beta patch you're actually running, just to be sure in case something like this happens again? I have the same pro blem. Tried to log on, couldn't. Checked the arma beta page, looked at the version, and it was the same one I downloaded myself and installed a few days ago, so I figured I had the newest. Came to work, checked the forums, and found out about the steam update. Would have assumed I had the latest version otherwise. I will try the steam integrity check tonight and then reapply the beta patch afterwards and see if that works.

Ha, that was the part of the adventure I left out. Like I said - I've been playing for 3 days for a total of about 6-7 hours. Go prone. No, don't vault. Get down. WTF! No, not the gear menu. Ok, WTF menu is this now? Ok, cancel. Cancel. No, not the main menu. Go back to the game. Okay, now go prone. No, not crouch, prone. Alright, prone. Fortunately I had hidden the majority of my body behind a tree before I did this.