rickenbacker

Keep an eye out for white spots on the edge of your screen. These are either zeds or animals, so if you're not near any buildings, it's probably an animal Turn until the spot disappear, and the animal should be right on the edge of your screen where the spot was. These spots might not appear on hardcore servers, not sure. In general, though, big fields close to farms are good. The cows and goats are easy to see there. Just shoot one, gut it, get the meat and LEAVE the area before cooking the meat. People will have heard the shot and might come to investigate, so move a fair distance before starting a fire.

While the 'that's what it would be like in real life' is unqualified bullshit of the highest order, PvP is a central part of DayZ, and I hope there will be no non-PvP servers, ever.

Well, if you don't want to help playtest a broken and frustrating alpha, don't. It's as simple as that.

Of course it will. It's standard practice to have at least two major wipes in game development; at the beginning of beta and when the game/mod launches. Plus as required in between. That said, if you want to play with your stuff for a while, why NOT save it? Just don't expect it to be there when you log in tomorrow, at least not until after 1.0.

I agree that the weapon set in DayZ needs to be 'russified'. Not sure about introducing all these exotic weapons, though. The M4/M16 type guns should just straight off be replaced with AK series weapons, with the AN-94 the top dog and the AKM at the 'bottom' of the commonness scale. Ideally I'd like to see handguns, hunting rifles (5,56-.308 or maybe even bigger, with and without scopes) and shotguns (the double barrel and a pump, but NOT the bastard Winchester we have today) and the very, very occasional AKM or (even better) rusty old AK-47 in residential and farm buildings, and military hardware in the military bases. The Western hardware could be found only in helo wrecks, which would make more sense. Oh, and hunting rifles in the hunting towers, if that's even possible in ARMA (seems like they are classified 'military' no matter what).

There needs to be some downside to killing others, currently there is no reason not to do so. But artificially limiting the player's abilities is not fun, and is thus not an alternative.

Since it's a game, there are no consequences for killing people, and almost no consequences for dying. So people do. In case you hadn't noticed, 90% of people everywhere are assholes.

The stupidity in this thread is growing exponentially. Unless the patch is relased soon, it's implode and cause a small black hole.

How is this different from saying "friendly" in chat? Both have the same effect, and both can be abused.

Threatening a developer because a patch is late, seriously? Some people (like RNBJ) need to be banned from the internet in its entirety. Hell, take their power away and nail their door shut.

#24 If you find SD ammo for a non-silenced gun, use it on zombies. They can't hear SD ammo, even though other players can. Don't use it at long range, though, it's a much weaker load than normal ammo, and has much greater falloff att range.

Other players. I don't think I've ever died to a door (though I did fall through a fire station wall once, broke a leg and fell unconscious, and ALMOST died before I came to and could bandage myself), and zombies rarely kill me, mostly because I avoid them. The number one cause of my death is nervous noobs that I offer help to, who then shoot me in the face.

Also, if you die, the tent remains for two days, but you can no longer move or save it, just get your gear from it and find another.

If you can't enter it, you can't repair it. That said, there are probably no vehicles in their original spawn locations anymore. They're all stashed off the map somewhere by clans, and since I don't think they respawn, there are fewer and fewer of them to find anyway.

Junk items (bottles, cans and soda cans) can all be used to distract zombies. If you have them in the inventory and hit F you get the option to 'throw', and zeds will investigate where it lands if they hear it. Flares are also supposed to attract zombies, but that seems less reliable, and smoke grenades attract SHITLOADS of zombies. They just love that colored smoke. But I usually don't bother, just crouch-walk (hit X, hit shift twice), and crawl if a zombie gets too close. You'll learn how much visibility/audibility you can have without being detected.

They're entirely random, I'm afraid. I found out when I kept hearing the 'chain link fence' sound in the middle of the forest :). I really, really wish the doors and gates would make a sound when you close and open them, though. Since zombies walk and see straight through doors, and you can't hear another player opening them behind you, they're entirely meaningless now.

I'd love to see you try :).

Of course it's not OK. Report them and have them kicked out, so the rest of us can get on with actually testing the mod, so that one day it might get finished!

It's easier on full servers, because most people are griefing noobs in Cherno. It's the low pop servers you have to watch out for, that's where asshats farm the barracks for loot.

Griefing refers to causing other players grief, i.e. purposely ruining their fun because you get a kick out of it. Or in other words, what the 12 year olds are doing in Cherno when they snipe weaponless noobs for no reason and cover the entire city in duped razor wire.

Inventory space taken up by various things might need some adjustments in general. I mean, a roll of razor wire big enough to block off a street takes up the same amount of space as a can of Coke?

They're easier to see from far away, since the grass isn't rendered, and they show up as dark blobs. So find big fields!

This discussion reminds me of talking to a couple of Blizzard guys about all the crazy theories people had about how to get specific loot to drop. They were basically trying to figure out rules that didn't exist, as it was all random. As is DayZ loot. We humans have a tendency to see patterns everywhere, but that doesn't mean that those patterns actually exist.