FlowerChild

Man, from experience: please consider swinging the banhammer in a very wide arc. I understand caring about and wishing to stay in touch with the community, but you're starting to remind me of myself about a year ago when I ran into a similar(ish) situation, and it took me a very long time to come back from that. There's no reason that you need to put up with this kind of flack from people you are providing free gameplay to. If they aren't contributing anything constructive to your effort: fuck'em. As an added bonus, it feels real good to ban the bastards too :)

How about a 24 hour respawn timer on death? Suddenly it has consequences, and that much more reason to try and avoid it. It forces players to stop and think about their own actions and what they can do the next time to avoid the same fate, and definitely discourages DM style gameplay. It might also make defense of permanent installations more feasible, as you won't be as concerned about players respawning and coming back to continue the attack, and it would give you more of a chance to relocate once your position is discovered. Maybe too hardcore for some, but in terms of experiments, it might be interesting.

Rocket, I just wanted to say that you're my new modding hero. I'm the author of a fairly popular Minecraft mod (Better Than Wolves) and similar to you I've also worked as a professional game developer. I've been following your mod with keen interest the past few weeks, and some of my users have been pointing out the similarities in our way of thinking, so I just wanted to chime in and voice my support for your whole creative process and your absolute pig-headedness in refusing to allow popularity determine the course of the mod (an attribute which we very much share and which I believe is absolutely crucial to maintaining a creative vision). This thread in particular has just been downright classic IMO, and I've found myself cracking up laughing at several of your responses today, especially knowing they could have very well come from my own lips. My personal favorite so far: Preach on brother :)

I see. So you like night-time because it provides you with the opportunity to tweak your settings to negate the lack of visibility and gain an unfair advantage over other players. Yeah...that's definitely a great game-design argument for leaving things as is.

I realize that this probably doesn't fit the long-term design of the mod, and that you guys are probably experiencing a huge influx of new players due to recent publicity, which is causing unanticipated problems. But honestly, in your shoes I'd probably just fix the time of day to daylight hours until a more reasonable solution can be found. The server problems going on right now are making the mod next to unplayable unless you are willing to play exclusively during nightime hours. It's really a shame, because the daytime servers are pretty much all overloaded, while the nighttime ones are virtual ghost-towns. I purchased Arma 2 specifically to play this mod yesterday, which is probably the first time I've ever bought a game just for a mod, so I REALLY love what you guys are doing here. I managed to get a bit of play in last night on a night-time server, and was looking forward to playing during the day today, only to find out that it's really not a feasible option. I really hope you'll consider cutting your losses and make a temporary sacrifice to the design to restore playability.