dev0

Thanks for your feedback guys. I reposted the bug as non-private: http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=3007

This isn't a question/thread about DayZ directly but a question regarding the usage of the DayZ bug tracker found at http://feedback.dayzgame.com/ and reporting sever bugs through it. I believe I have found a glitch that allows for duplication of items. In the spirit of "responsible disclosure" I do not want to post publicly details about it before it was fixed. To make the devs aware of it I created an issue on the bug tracker and marked it as "private". Now I'm not sure if a] private means it's private to only me (as in only I can see the issue) or if the team is able to see it and b] I fear that nobody might notice it among all the noise on the tracker. I did add the tag "duping" which I would assume is tracked by somebody, but up until now there has been no reaction and I want to make sure this is picked up by somebody. If anybody could point me in a good direction? Thanks, dev0

TBH I believe the foremost reason for the night-time servers outcry is thast people can't tell if the server is a night-time server or daytime server before connecting. I created an issue on the DayZ SA bug tracker. Vote up if you agree that we should be able to see the day-time on a server before connecting

I am living in Germany. Germany is infamous for its very strict youth protection laws, especially regarding display of violence in games and films. In Germany, games and films receive an age rating, similar to the PEGI rating. But if they are especially violent they may be refused the rating. Media that does not receive an age rating is considered restricted in Germany. You may still buy such media, if your are at least 18, but public display of such media is prohibited. So you are not allowed to advertise such media, display it in shelves or report on it in magazines, etc. Basically you commit commercial suicide if you do not get an age rating in Germany. For that reason most companies release special low-violence versions of their games in Germany. I am pretty sure a game that allowed you to shoot children - even zombified ones - would not get an age rating in Germany.

In fact, when I talked about this with my Squad, we also talked about camo nets, bear traps and spring guns or makeshift mines as a means to secure a vehicle (or stash in general). I am well aware, that camo nets have been suggested throughouly, so I decided not to suggest them again. Regarding spring guns, I am not sure how to technically implement them in a way that would work: how do you set them up, how do you place the trip wire? Wheel clamps just seem like the easiest to implement while providing a reasonable strong effect. I can see how a wheel clamp might just make any possible thief into a vandal, simply destroying the car or rendering it unusable by e.g. shooting all tires. So a wheel clamp is not an automated underground parking lot with security doors. Point taken. But nevertheless: an immobilized vehicle is better than no vehicle. A destroyed vehicle is better than a vehicle in possession of some stranger. And in the end, the incentive to move out and simply steal a car from someone is still lowered, since it will actually cost you something to do so. This will have an effect on how many people ever even find your vehicle, since it will have an effect on how many people are willing on investing these additional resources to steal a vehicle. People not interested in stealing a vehicle will not move out to find one.

Please reread my paragraph. By removing the wheel clamp forcibly he will break the wheel that was clamped. If he does not repair the broken wheel he will not be able to easily take the car. Repairing this wheel is the investment the thief has to make, to be able to steal the car. That's what this suggestion is about: raising the cost on the part of the thief in stealing the vehicle.

The whole point is in forcing the thief to break the car before he is able to steal it. Giving it a "workaround" by allowing it to be removed without breaking the wheel would stifle the sought after effect. Also, requiring the crowbar the to remove the wheel clamp would give the crowbar an actual use in the game. In the end though it does not matter if a crowbar or a toolbox is the item required to remove a wheel clamp, as long as the tire breaks while removing it forcibly.

You're missing my point, maybe I did not make this clear enough. Currently repairing a car and keeping it up and running is a huge investment. You have to find a car wreck, search and find all the parts to repair it, get the fuel for it and finally find a decent hiding spot. Stealing a car on the other hand requires absolutely no investment on the part of the thief. In the simplest case he simply stumbles across the vehicle and takes it. No investment at all. In the most expensive case he travels around the well known spots for car hiding and takes the next best car he finds. The resources invested are still very low. By forcing a thief to actually break the car to steal it, you force him to make an actual investment in stealing the car. Either he has to be carrying around a crowbar and a car wheel all the time, or he has to pick up those items, after he found the vehicle he is going to hijack. This greatly increases the resource investment for the potential thief. Stealing a clamped car, is not simply something you can do by chance. You will have to invest time in it. Yes, he can still steal the gear, gas, whatever. But he won't be easily able to just grab the car and drive off with it. He will actually have to invest ressources himself to be able to gain control of the car. This will greatly change the value of vehicles for the positive. Most of you probably don't give a f*ck about vehicles, just as I usually do. I did explain why I don't give a shit about vehicles. The investments required far outweigh the benefits you reap - if you haven't simply stolen the vehicle by chance from someone else. Wheel clamps can shift this balance sheet a bit towards the positive. Wheel clamps would add to the game, and not remove from it. It has a positive effect on the value of vehicles, it adds a reason to the game to actually ever go back to a barn later than 30 minutes after spawning, it adds choices for the players owning the vehicle ("should I get out and look a long time for a wheel clamp, or should I simply find a very good hiding spot?"), it adds choices to players finding vehicles by chance ("shall I simply leave the car, blow it up if I have the resources to do so, or shall I venture out to find a crowbar, if I haven't got one yet, and pick up a replacement tire and actually steal the car?") and it makes venturing out to steal a car an entire small game scenario for itself. I don't see any reason to not add it. I see a couple of good reasons to do so.

You would probably not find wheel clamps in most locations available in DayZ. But then again it is highly unlikely to have historical Enfields just lying around in residential areas, rotor assemblies in random factories or DMRs in Deer Stands. Does it really make any difference if I need a car so badly? I don't think so. But if it really makes a difference to you: personally I don't need a car. I don't think driving around in them is much fun, I don't think investing the time fixing them and keeping them running is worth the effort, due to their sound level and visibility they are death traps and most of the time you will hardly enjoy them longer than your current session, since they will be stolen. No, I really don't need a vehicle in DayZ that much. You are absolutely right to grenade the shit out of a car you cannot take. In fact, when I find tents, I will take anything I want and then remove anything else of considerable value (mostly endgame weapons) and explicitly save the tent, to prevent the stuff from reappearing after the next restart for the same reason. Nevertheless people setup tents and place their stuff in them. People will want to clamp their cars for exact the same reason as well: if I can't have it, you shouldn't have it either.

Heads up I want to state that I am aware that there was a thread on this topic before. In my eyes the idea was not fleshed out well enough and the general presentation of the suggestion was less than mediocre. For this reason I am posting my own thread on this topic. Cars and other Vehicles are a valuable asset in DayZ. They are rather hard to get hands on, and even harder to keep your hands on. In the last couple of days me and my squad fixed repaired about 4 vehicles and stole another 2 or 3 from their stash. All of them where stolen from various locations around the map from us again by now. This is the reality for thousands of players every day. And I believe in it's core this is a good thing. However, since obviously every character in DayZ knows how to hot-wire a car (or keys are always kept behind the sunblind), there is only one way of securing your vehicle while you are offline: hide it, as good as you can, as far away from any spot a person could randomly pass by. And here I believe DayZ could do better. Randomly stumbling across a car and stealing it should be possible, but also I think it would be nice to be able to secure a car against random stealing, at least to some degree. If you head out, well prepared, to look for a car and then steal it, you should absolutely be able to, and no game mechanic should prevent you from doing that. But if you just stroll around the landscape and come across a car you should not be able to easily steal it, if it's owner has applied some security measures. Such security measures could come in the form of wheel clamps (aka wheel locks or immobilizers). Wheel clamps can be applied to any car, making the wheel which they are applied to unusable. Wheel clamps can be removed in two fashions: either regularly by unlocking it or forcibly by using a crowbar. Removing it forcibly however, would render the wheel it was attached to unusable, making it harder to relocate the vehicle after removing the wheel clamp. Finding a wheel clamp Wheel clamps would be very rare industrial or farm loot spawns. Making them only farm loot spawns would balance them out gameplay wise a bit better, since you wouldn't be able to find them easily while looking for the other parts to fixup your car, requiring you to search for them separately and thus actually invest additional resources to improve the security of your vehicle. Wheel clamps would take up three inventory slots (they are heavy and bulky after all). Applying a wheel clamp To apply a wheel clamp to a vehicle, you need to have the wheel clamp in your inventory and be adjacent to a car while looking at it. The action menu of the car will then show a "Clamp <wheel>" option for each wheel on the vehicle. E.g. a motorcycle would show a "Clamp front wheel" and "Clamp rear wheel" option. Clamping an already clamped wheel is not possible. After selecting the clamp wheel option, your character would perform an action animation, just as it does when you fix a part of a vehicle. As it finishes the wheel clamp is removed from your inventory and a wheel clamp appears on the wheel. The wheel of the car is now clamped and rendered useless for as long as the clamp remains attached. Driving with a wheel clamp A vehicle with an attached wheel clamp will behave as if the clamped wheel was broke down. Also, driving with an attached wheel clamp will actually break the wheel it is attached to, rendering it useless even after the clamp was removed regularly. Lastly, it is not possible to replace or remove a clamped wheel at any time. Removing a wheel clamp regularly To remove a wheel clamp regularly the character who has applied the wheel clamp will have to approach the vehicle again and select the "Unclamp <wheel>" option from the action menu. Note that only the character who has applied the clamp is able to remove it again regularly (as if only he had the keys to the clamp). If the character dies, it won't be possible to remove the clamps regularly anymore. After choosing to remove the clamp regularly the player will perform the typical action animation, remove the clamp from the car and place it in his inventory, given he has 3 slots available. If the player does not have 3 slots free in his inventory, the unclamping will fail with the message "Not enough inventory slots". Removing a wheel clamp forcibly If you are not the player who applied a wheel clamp or your character who applied it died, you will have to remove the wheel clamp forcibly. Removing a wheel clamp forcibly requires you to have the crowbar tool on you. You will not be able to remove a wheel clamp forcibly without a crowbar. Approach the car you want to remove the wheel clamp from and select "Forcibly unclamp <wheel>", where <wheel> is the clamped wheel. Your character performs the action animation and removes the clamp from the wheel. However, removing a clamp forcibly will always break the wheel clamp as well as the wheel it was attached to. You will need to replace the wheel with a fresh one, before you will be able to use the vehicle normally again. Although this mechanic is pretty fleshed out with only a couple of loose ends, details are subject to change (e.g. rarity, spawn locations, duration of animations for applying, removing regularly and removing forcibly, etc). Please provide me with feedback and your opinions. If you like it, please tell me how you like it and how you would use such an item. If you don't like it, please let me know what your concerns are or what you would change, to like it more. Thank you, Daniel

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Stop server hopping and you will stop spawning at the beach.

If it currently does not cause any bugs keep it. I was the guy who asked the question regarding above ground construction on the IGN Livestream. I strongly believe that the game should focus on above ground construction instead of implementing underground construction. Maybe reduce spawn chance of barbed wire, increase spawn chance for toolboxes a bit. This should balance it out.

If you ever read or wrote a scientific paper, you should be aware, that the format in which the references are given is the way the scientific community is giving references to scientific papers. Just sayin' (as an academic researcher - to hop on the bandwagon of "I know cool stuff, bc of my job"). Use google scholar, your university's library and whatever other resources you have at hand to look up the actual papers. I don't know. In fact I haven't read those papers. If you are really interested you should look them up and read them. What I am trying to say is, that basing weapon damage on ballistic trauma through permanent caviation alone does not seem to be current state of ballistic sciences. The fact alone, that there have been so many high profile scientific papers published that seem to come to conclusions that are not in line with your "data", should provoke some amount of critical thinking. Kind of, yeah. I described, as I said, secondary effects of ballistic trauma (which btw. might or might not be caused by permanent caviation alone). The point I am trying to make is, that even if we adjusted relative weapon damage to be in line with permanent caviation wounds, it would not fix the damage model, for as long as gunshot wounds would not leave you with big feckin holes that piss blood all over you. Let alone the fact, that the as far as I am aware the ArmA II damage model does not take lung, heart or spine traumas adequately into consideration, which would be far more important, than an relatively fixed penetration damage model imho. You have two tries to guess.

I was more referring to this part: Regardless, the actual problem with weapon damage is, that the trauma usually does not kill the victim directly, but secondary effects, caused by the trauma, like shock, organ failure or blood loss. These secondary effects should receive care, not the initial penetration damage.

I see what you did there. Why do you use multiplication for lethality, why don't you add the numbers instead? Is magazine size really a factor for lethality? Don't all weapons have a significant large enough mag to kill a player? Isn't weapon range more important in most cases than weapon damage? But it's raw value in meters is usually smaller. Maybe you should use centimeters instead of meters? I hope you get the point why randomly selecting some weapon stats, crafting some arbitrary formula out of thin air and trying to compare the effectiveness of these weapons based on the result of the formula is not going to get us anywhere.