PhilB

Thanks for not yarding this yet. Although I agree OP is most probably a troll I also know that his comments do represent to a lesser degree the sentiments of a portion of the player base, past and present. Way back when Rocket first announced the plan to make a SA, it was not yet known, even by him, how or by what company the game would be made. I suggested the best move was sell the IP to the best possible developer. The idea of Rockstar making a straight up copycat of DayZ still makes my palms sweaty. But I'm genuinely glad how everything's turned out. First, BIS has a great chance now to build themselves into a top tier developer using the success of DayZ and the exposure it's now given to Arma. And they don't have to sell out. The reason so many players are now flocking to these titles is because the product IS quality. I hope in twenty years there's a DayZ 6 and it is freaking awesome and perfect in every way. It seems too self evident to even go into why it is only right and proper that Bohemia has the chance to do that.

This Phil agrees! Glad you bumped this topic. I know it's been mentioned before but should really be at the top of every players wishlist for SA. If they could add just one main river right through the middle of Chernarus it would drastically improve gameplay and map feel. By the time I sprint and loot every good spot from Balota to Zelen to Stary to NWA I'm freaking exhausted, right? If the river had a strong current there'd be a strong risk/reward factor in braving the inevitable snipers for a quick path back south. I'd also envision this river to be realistic in terms of crossing. Only certain bridges and fordable areas generating choke points on the map for great pvp. It's sorta crazy there's no waterways on such a huge map when you stop to think about it. If it were me, adding waterways would be priority #2 for update after launch, vehicles being #1 of course. An awesome river would be so much cooler than all the communal labor involved in getting base building and infections to work correctly.

Will do PC-Gamer people. Signing up! MIght I add a suggestion? It would be great if two servers running opposite time zones were available. I've found one prvt server that is great but the time zone doesn't sync so well for when I want to play. I want to play during server day time when the server is full. Occasionally I like playing at night, but mostly not. Not that you probably care right here on this thread but I'm as legit as it gets. I've never even been tempted to dip into a hacked ammo crate or looted known hacked items from a dead body, no duping, no exploiting. Until recently I haven't even been cool with jumping off the lighthouse at Kamehka to get a better spawn! Sign me up bros!

Well, if it's the same US 303 I'm familiar with, I wouldn't worry cuz I know that server and it is a total hackfest up in there. In fact I just spawned in there just to see. What'ya know I was killed by an invisible AS50 within 3 minutes of spawning in. And no I wasn't in a traditional pvp zone. I was out in the woods. The shots originated a few meters away from me and no one was around all 360 degrees. (this is a joke, so just relax anti-troll trolls)-I wish i was globally banned. Then at least I could make a clean break with this game and move on. Really, you're lucky Tinoshi. My better sense tells me you're a hacker too. At least you had your fun.

Best advice right here: Find a private hive with a high pop. Why? Because a high pop in this instance means really dedicated server admins. It means a small community of dedicated players trust that server to be at least more safe. My most unorthodox advice is actually to stay away from low pop servers. I've found that those are in fact more hacker ridden because it is a quiet place for scripters to practice their scripting. Plus, the scripters know you are in a low pop for no other reason than to avoid them, so they know it is doubly infuriating when they fuck your shit up. And yes, I think I'm the most hacked player of all time in DayZ. I seen it all!

To the OP: I feel your pain, bro. These hackers are relentless and they've fucked you, fucked me, fucked Rocket, fucked BI, and all of us players. I was gonna say I wish these hackers could see the pain on our faces cuz we paid 30+ bucks to play this thing that they've completely destroyed, but of course these jerks are so dystopian, so misanthropic that that is exactly what gives them pleasure. As it is right now, this whole DayZ thing is probably the saddest video game saga ever. It started as this beautiful thing and the hackers took advantage of our innocence. I wouldn't blame Rocket so much, though. He's just some guy. I'm sure he feels like shit for what's happened to his project. I feel bad for him. I'll probably buy the standalone just to give him his deserved money, but I doubt I'll ever play it, cuz I don't wanna go through that heartbreak again of getting so excited about something and then getting my hopes dashed. I bought the game about four days before the hacking became rampant. I think it was at about 350,000-400,000 unique users. I had no idea what was coming. It's hard to sympathize sometimes with all the late comers cuz they at least had some warning. And of course the early adopter had those first two months of fun. I'm jealous of them. I wish he'd sold the IP to a big firm so some of us more fair-weathered friends might have some confidence that this would end in the standalone, but that's a whole other universe now. I feel like, for the hackers, ruining this game has become a sort of epic quest. I don't think anyone can foresee how they're gonna work around whatever new anti cheat systems will be in place in the standalone, but I just know these devious bastards will figure it out and ruin that too. I'm sorta interested in the WarZ, but my long-term hope is that Rockstar games will jump on and do a game like this. I know it would be epic. Maybe they'd make Rocket an executive producer. That's my dream.

I'm hoping I won't get another warning for trolling since I'm on page 3 of this thread and I have nothing but nice things to say, so here goes: OP-I hear ya bro, that sucks. Much sympathy. I get your frustration. Someone went so far as to unequivocally state that you are "a horrible person." That's not true. And sorry to hear bout your grandpa, that sucks. Don't let the haters get you down man. I'm sure after some time of licking your wounds you'll give it another shot. We all seem to come back, lol. But if not, what a wild ride, eh?

Sorry, it is not me but my idiot brother (older brother, mind you) who became aware of my forum use. He doesn't understand how forums work, he thinks it absurd that there is any moderation at all. He thinks it's like an extension of "America", free speech for all. I sincerely apologize for his behavior. I had no idea he created a forum account and spammed it. He literally just told me this morning what he did last night (I was at work at the time). My apologies. His point was to characterize the type of response one recieves when one creates a thread about whatever thing he dislikes about said product. I had typically been that guy for him (teling him to get over it, ignore the hackers, why don't you take a break, etc.). He's pissed cuz I told him about this game and he's one of those who physically deleted the game from his hard drive after a particularly rough day of being hacked. He'd been trying to hide out in low pop servers and got scripted appx. 20 times during his single day off from work that he devoted to playing the game. So yeah, I sorta represent a small group of 'casual gamers' who don't typically engage in forums. I recognize that they don't know how to be appropriate when discussing their displeasure as it is usually a physical conversation I have with them filled with vulgarity, accusation, and just a lot of misplaced hatred. Then I try to articulate the points they have that I think are valid. I don't tell my buddies that I post on a forum as they see this as a pretty douchey thing to do. Unfortunately my brother found out and this is the result. Anyway, if you look closely. The email accout assigned to his pbj420 business is the same last name but different first name and I don't know if you can see Steam purchases but it is the same e-mail account for an entirely different GUID. I've never created an alt account on anything in my life as I hate those types of mentalities. I don't believe in anonymity on the internet. If I was the emperor of the world, everyone would be required by law to only represent their true selves and no one else for this specific reason. I apologize again for his trolling. If I had known beforehand that he was gonna do that, I would have surely stopped him since he pretty much destroyed any credibility I had.

I concur. The hacked weapons circulate. If you're willing to risk Cherno or Elektro, you can find tons of dead bodies with all sorts of hacked in weapons and other fun goodies. Just make sure you immediately log out and return to whatever cave you're hiding in that allows you to survive so long. Really!? All of August survival! You one lucky sob. And don't worry. You are like one of the last fifty of us playing this game legit. You don't suck, it's just that you aren't cheating. It took me some time to come to reality with the cheating (seems hard to believe so many people are so dishonest, I'm naive I suppose). But yes, those noobs with nvg's and thermol scopes and ghillies are indeed cheating. Rocket's initial concept of the game is exactly what you're experiencing. If you are aren't cheating or looting from a cheater, that stuff is really rare!

I feel the OP's pain, much sympathy bro. However at this point I doubt your experiencing combat logging. I suspect that more likely it's a scripter teleporting away or going invisible. I don't know how the scripting works but watching them do it it seems almost instantaneous. If mj is a gateway drug, then combat logging is certainly a gateway to scripting. Alt-F4 was so 3 months ago. It's the same people. They've all graduated to scripting.

I had a similar experience except I was in debug plains. Hackers killed everyone while leaving 3 of us alive. I've been teleported up there many times and took the lead since I'm a veritable expert now at finding my way back to the map. However this time the scripter outdid themselves and sent us really far out there! We ran for about an hour until one of the two people I was stranded with piped in with this offer, "I have a friend who's a hacker and he can help us if you want." Previously I've had a no quarter, no mercy attitude towards hacking but at that point I was outta righteous principle so I said, "Yeah, sure." All that happened was the respawn button was re-enabled so we could suicide ourselves. You might try spawning into a high pop server asking over global chat for that sort of help from the scripters currently in-game (rest assured they are there, lol). Seriously though, you should migrate over to a private hive anyway. You'll respawn anew. Forget your public hive character, he's a goner. I found a really nice private hive recently and the first thing I did was revel in being killed by legit players, many many times. Not to suggest private hives are hacker proof, but they do contain a host of characteristics that make the game more enjoyable.

In response to the forum mods-I appreciate the response and your reasoned feedback to what I said and, futher, with what a few other posters have said we seem to be getting at a consensus. I do regret not qualifying more thoroughly my feelings towards the 'feedback' a poster receives after he makes a post about hacking. So to clarify, hacking questions and complaints tend to generate from new players who don't quite 'get it' yet. In their sheer noobiness of the game, I think it is reasonably okay that they don't have the prescience to use the search function on the forum cuz they don't understand yet what has happened to them or if it is ever happened to anyone else ever. The moderation sometimes seems to be a little uneven. When someone trolls about being angry at the hacking, moderation seems to occur swiftly. However the more reasonable OP's seem to get a serious beat down from other players who are equally nasty in their response (my "get lost you effing noob"). But the mods don't seem to show up in those situations and say something to the effect of, "Hey guys, don't shit on the OP, he's clearly new to the game, doesn't understand the hacking problem yet, let us all sympathize together with our communal plight and instead of yelling at the OP about 'yet another useless hacking post' let's try to give this guy some tips on how he might mitigate his hacker encounters. Or even more, why don't we get real and say, "Hey, this game is awesome, but we're gonna be completely honest here, you might not want to play it all right now. The game is functionally broken right now and to play it in this state would give you the complete wrong impression." Next, I don't think we hijacked the OP's post. I think it is good for a new player to see both sides. If it's okay that one response says, "I've played for months and seen only 5 hackers in that whole time." then it is also okay that he hears from those of us who've given up on the game because (trust me, we're not trolls, we ARE being honest, BELIEVE US PLEASE) we get hacked within 5 minutes of spawning in, regardless of server pop or admin dedication, etc. And that yes, the hacking will continue from thunderdoming, mass teleports, mass kills, god-moding, etc. etc. quite literally every twenty minutes or so like freakin' clockwork. I've never doubted that some players don't have this experience. But please don't ever question my sincerety about my experience with the game. I'm not lying! I have a hacker encounter on average about every twenty minutes of game time. The OP of this thread is a brand new player. I'd prefer he makes a decision now whether he's gonna invest considerable time in the game. If he's fine with rampant hacking, then great. But what if he isn't? Doesn't he have a right to get immediate, unscripted responses (even from trolls like RogueTroopa) so he gets a complete view of the situation without spending hours of time researching through existing threads? For the sake of the future of the game, I'd prefer it if there were no new players at all! They see some videos on Youtube from 3 months ago and go, "Hey, this looks cool!" Then they 'play' something else entirely and get a bad taste in their mouth. I guess I'm looking at this whole thing from a PR perspective and I keep asking myself what I'd do if I were involved in some way with the game.For instance, another response here quite astutely pointed out that there is no sticky thread about hacking. If this was my project, I'd have a sticky thread on every last sub-section! Rocket and by extension Bohemia has been absolutely victimized by these ne'er do wells and I'd be doing everything possible to steer public sentiment in that direction by allowing the deluge of woes from players about this. If I was Rocket, I'd make it directive number 1 that all mods express nothing but regret and sympathy at every corner to every last player who expresses any displeasure about cheating. Instead of the stock explanation about Arma II's software limitations and Rocket's inability to do anything about it, I'd say something like this, "The cheating, hacking and scripting that, in the most severe way, is negatively impacting gameplay is simply inexcusable. We here at DayZ deeply regret the current state of the mod. We share in your disgust at the situation. We don't offer any excuses for the situation and take full responsibility for our 'product'. Rest assured we are tirelessly working towards a solution so that our players may once again enjoy the mod and restore confidence that the standalone will not experience this issue." I fully understand that 'you guys' are not at fault for the problem, but modern business dictates that you must own this. I think the Playstation Network hack is very instructive here. Although Sony was the victim of a crime and, in my opinion, not in the least at fault for what happened, the best thing they eventually did was 'own' the problem and aggresively take steps to restore confidence with their customers.

We wouldn't be so trolly if you guys were more sympathetic. The more you pretend like it's not a problem the more compelled we feel to talk about it. The other part is how disgusted we feel about ourselves for recommending this game to our friends, who are now rightfully angry at us because they feel like they've wasted forty bucks. I just wish you'd put a disclaimer on the main page explaining the issue. It really breaks my heart to see people like the OP here who are excited today and inevitably angry next week. And then they post their grievance here and you guys respond back with this, "Go fuck off you noob" attitude. The OP (and RogueTroopa) is a POTENTIAL CUSTOMER!. Why not treat them as such, just sayin'.

My sympathies bro. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for admins since I know how frustrating it is as a player. It's too bad they censored the IP addresses since it implies their general stance towards the cheating, which is not at all severe enough (being hyperbolic I know, I'm sure they have some legal reason for not allowing public such info). Here's my little dream: they have a database of IP's that cheated during the mod and those mf'ers are permanently banned from purchasing the standalone. It just rubs me raw that all these little jerks will be allowed to play again when the game is released. Where's the punishment!? In fact, I wish all game publishers shared lists of IP's that cheat so that these people would be essentially banned from enjoying anything the industry has to offer. Complete and utter ostracization, no mercy, no quarter!

I'm tryin' to contain my rage and not troll too much. But, yeah, I've been a huge supporter and I'm sorta at my wit's end with the 'mod'. It's taken some time for me to resolve my desire to play this type of game versus the clear evidence that this won't end well for anyone involved, not Rocket or BI or the players. This new genre, persistent survival action MMO, is a great concept. But it's being shepharded by folks who are way out of their league. It occured to me that the worst decision made was allowing this to go forward with BI's software. Rocket should have sold the IP to a large game developer that can truly deliver the content we players' desire. I have little trust that the hacking will ever be stopped. These script people are relentless and simply won't allow a small time game company any success. Without the resources of a large developer backed by a large publisher, the hackers will continue to discover workarounds to any anti cheat devices. For those of you who are still in denial, you may continue to call others cry babies or butthurt or this QQ business, but you must realize that there would never, ever be any standalone game without all of us who explicitly purchased ARMA:CO to play this mod. You might say, "Hacking and cheating are a reality in the game industry, deal with it or find a new hobby." Well, by the same logic, I say, "You Arma hipsters are now the minority of the player base and us noob losers are now dictating the pr sentiment so either deal with it or find another arcane game mod." A moment ago I read a forum mod post to the effect that the developers have discussed this issue at length here in the forums and elsewhere. Really? I'm on these forums, a lot. I haven't read much of anything about the cheating issue. There's certainly not been a firm statement from Rocket condemning the cheating and a demand that it end. I believe there's a climate of permissiveness that's been allowed to develop. For instance, most common response to cheat reporting from mods, "Gah, give me exemplary proof of the cheating or get the fuck outta my forums you noob fucking asshole! Thread locked!" Business is business, reality is reality. You wanna shove that 'it's a mod' crap down our faces, then fine. I'll shove some modern business reality down your faces. You may not be responsible for the cheating, but you are responsible for addressing it, which includes GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY to express sympathy with those who paid $40 to play a hack fest, whether you feel they are justified in their complaint or not.

I have advice for you but it's too late to act upon it. My advice would have been to explore the forums and realize that this game is absolutely fucked because of the hackers. I'm sorry bro you paid good money for something that is unplayable (and don't gimme the 'bought a mod for arma 2 b.s., afterall Rocket has never put a disclaimer on the main download page alerting potential customers that the entire project is in utter shambles and it would be wiser to NOT attempt to play as opposed to purchasing the game and then be monumentally disappointed). Second advice, don't play chernarus. Play Lingor Island. Global side chat is still enabled on Lingor (paying attention Rocket, you're not a genius, why not take a lesson from Lingor). Because side chat is enabled, hacker alerts are immediately made known by one player to all others on server so everyone has an opportunity to log before the douche teleports to you next. Also, it seems that when the hacker has the spotlight put on him in Lingor, they tend to leave the server. These scripter fucks depend on anonymity, and Lingor does a better job of exposing them for the immediate benefit of the player. Third, don't ever think that a low pop server is safer. Trust me when I tell you, if you're 1 of 4 players on a server, the other 3 'players' are all scripting. Last, my best advice if you're gonna make a go of it. Find a private hive server with diligent admins. I found one last night and trust me it was pure joy to be killed by actual legit players. Not that hacking will end there, but you might get an hour or so of real gameplay before you're hacked, which is something I guess. It was a nice server I found but I won't get my hopes up. A few minutes after I spawned in I came across a dead body with a Makarov SD. Because it's a private hive, there's no way that gun came from the regular hive, it was hacked in, in that server. Lastly, see how sympathetic Rocket and his team are when they yell at you for you post here and then promptly lock it. Thanks for the great customer service!

So humorous to see a post about US 1981 because I know that server all too well. How many times have I been killed on that server by hackers? Too many to count. It would be nice if Dayz Commander had a player rating system so one could easily identify which servers have exceptional hacker problems. Instead of logging in to the server and finding out the hard way. Just a simple 5 star hacker rating system. I prefer to spend my time playing the game itself, not trolling through hundreds of forum pages looking for tips on good servers. Sorry to the OP on his experience in 1981. It sucks, because I bet you're like me and that server tends to sort at the top of your server list with a low ping and high population. It looks enticing, but is a guaranteed death by a scripter.

Five minutes ago, I just got killed by my last hacker. I'm done. Good job fuckfaces, for ruining something good.

It's too bad. I'd told friends at work about this game and now I'm telling them not to play. I don't want them to get the wrong impression, or rather the right impression. Which is hackers have ruined the game.

The point is surviving is the harder of the two gameplay styles. It's the nobler path and naturally involves a lot more heartbreak. Every time I get killed I get frustrated and angry. I spawn back in with an attitude of, "Fuck it. I'm runnin' into Cherno and I'm just gonna shoot every mfer I see." But then I get there and I hear some poor noob getting eaten by zombies and I can't help myself. "Where are you, dude? I'll come save you!" I text in direct chat. It's a fun challenge trying to not let the relentless pvp get to you.

Just a thought: One might be adding to their personal threat level as perceived by other players by typing or voicing "friendly". So many bandits use this tactic as a way to draw out unsuspecting fools. Whenever I hear someone yell friendly I bug out immediately cuz I know it's bullshit.

Sympathies, bro. Happened to me a few nights ago. You're on the map. You're north of everything. You need to head south. Pick a day time server with clouds that are easily discernible. Clouds always move east. Use that as a compass. Jam that paper wad of an auto run feature in your "w" and start runnin'! Chances are the hacker(s) teleported you not too far from the end of the map. The only decision now is whether to let zombies kill you in whatever settlement you find first so you can start over or try to make a go of it with what is now essentially a northern spawn, which can be tough food-wise (assuming you got the traditional hacker m.o. meaning they stripped you of all your gear).

Renzo, I don't think you'll lose that hard-core vibe you're looking for if you check out the control schematics in the options menu. Props to you for doin' it old school, though. That's what I did. No online maps, no guides. It took me 2 weeks to figure out the wonky flashlight, lol. I still haven't figured out the range finding part of sniper rifles. I still haven't found a vehicle spawn to attempt a repair. So much to do, so much bumbling and dying to be had!

Congratulations to Rocket and the DayZ team. I couldn't be more excited about this.

Nice post. I generally agree. You've submitted some solid suggestions, especially in regards to tweaking some spawn percentages. Based on our communal dev/player interaction, I have little doubt that this is exactly the sort of conversations happening with Mr. Hall and his dev team. These are smart guys; real "player's devs". I made a similar post about the lack of balance between bandit "questing" and survivor "questing". As a survivor I never need or desire to fix a car or chopper (I don't have the firepower to defend them). I don't need or desire a campsite because anything I'd store in there would be redundant supplies (as OP states, it takes only a few key items to live indefinitely in the woods). If you can survive 30 minutes in Cherno at the outset, the game is essentially beaten for a survivor. However I do find the current setup to be "realistic". In real life, it wouldn't take too many supplies to hide out in the woods for months. Loneliness becomes a factor, though. I find myself reaching a critical point of loneliness. I start having conversations with myself like this, "Okay, I kinda feel like heading over to Stary. Just to see if anyone's around. Maybe I can surveil while a firefight goes down and I can loot what's left after all hostile parties vacate." Or, a lot of times I'll try to raid NWA not because I need anything there in particular but just to see if I can survive it. Logging on full servers in an attempt to survive the relentless pvpers is a sort of game in of itself.