Bakst

Damn, that's really weird. I actually submitted a support ticket to the DayZ dev team weeks ago, but they haven't responded. Guess they're pretty busy with other stuff, it's still just a free mod and not the standalone so I get it, but it sure is frustrating not being able to fix this issue. Maybe you should contact Battleye about this, they might be in a better position to help. For me, unfortunately, it makes no sense to keep working on the problem when it's my friend who has the issue but doesn't care to deal with it (everything works fine for me, except that I lost a good hunting buddy). But I sure would like to know if you make any progress. Check the ban lists to see if your cd-key or GUID has been blacklisted, and then shoot Battleye a message asking for help with the problem. That's the only advice I can give at the moment sry =(

oy I must unfollow this topic asap

Oh by the way, maintenance is coming to the DayZ standalone. You will be required to keep your guns in good condition to prevent them from jamming; equipment degrades gradually over time and also as a result of usage and damage taken (helmets, kevlar vests, knives, etc.); and the vehicle maintenance system is getting an overhaul so that fuel is rare and maintenance more difficult, but with the trade-off that vehicle spawns are more frequent. At least, this seems to be the current thinking based on Rocket's AmA session on Reddit and other comments from the devs in the Suggestions forum and elsewhere.

Okay, totally valid point as stated above, but why remove the chopper? Why not fix the landscape instead?

Honesty and modesty on the DayZ forums. I feel like I'm going to wake up any minute now. I'm with you on that. Most people would probably agree that something needs to be done, although I think a few tweaks to the landscape and rendering system would suffice. I suspect the standalone will be better suited to address this problem and I doubt it will ever be "fixed" in the mod. How did you get your wife to play DayZ? I turned my fiancée onto Skyrim but have yet to kindle the zombie spark in her! In any case, your group sounds awesome =] Are you open to teaming up with strangers from time to time? Sounds like we might get along out there in the battlefield. I'm just asking -- I understand if you're not inclined to play with random people from the forums. Oh yeah!

I think perhaps one problem here is that players put a lot of time and thought into their camps (understandably), and as a consequence they think their camps must be super-secret when in fact they are pretty easy to find. There are only so many areas of the map that make sense for hiding camps, and those areas can be canvassed in relatively short order by determined players like Skinup69, chopper or no chopper. The airborne search is simply more convenient, and cooler, and also faster but only marginally so. It's definitely not a game-breaking advantage, no way.

That's very true. There are many such disadvantages here, for example irl if I've got my back to a wall or tree I can sense my position relative to the object just by touch, so I could answer the question, "Am I fully covered?" without having to turn around and look at the tree to determine my exact position. The list goes on. The only real solution is virtual reality =]

No? When I say exploit I was thinking more along these lines: lol ;) So you're referring to the fact that from the air you can see through the not-so-dense canopy of most forests in Chernarus, or what?

I play on vet servers with no crosshairs, nameplates or magic maps, but I have yet to play on an expert server with 3dp off. When I think about it, this would probably serve me well, since I use 3dp pretty sparingly and other folks who have it on all the time are liable to get the drop on me. Usually I only switch to 3dp when I'm laying prone or crawling around, since there's always grass in your face in 1st-person view. I almost never use it to look around corners and prefer instead to use the lean function. Also, I like the fact that you can't completely get rid of the head bob, because dammit human feet just don't carry you across the landscape like a gliding camera on rails! I understand that it's necessary to counteract the fact that your visual and spacial awareness would be much better irl because you're able to use all of your senses (touch, smell, etc.), but personally I could do without 3dp. But taking it out now that people have gotten used to it would of course be mayhem. Hence, to each his own.

I've never been much of a camp person to begin with. When I started playing DayZ months ago when it was even more alpha than it is now, tents and vehicles were so reliably buggy that I never even bothered to try and save them. I just acted like they didn't exist! In the current build tents and vehicles are more or less working now, but I still haven't bothered to set up a camp because it's a risky strategy, and as a lone wolf I have everything I need on my person. Now don't get me wrong, I do understand the usefulness of camps. I helped set up a big one once when I was rolling with a clan, only to have to relocate it because someone found us out. (The clan guys were surprised as hell, like somehow north of Krasnostav is the ULTIMATE secret bandit hideout LOL! But this was a lame group anyway: they temp kicked players off their own server just to safely refuel the UAZ -- *so* lame!) I'm talking about camps because my point is this: I like that the chopper is a camp-busting tool -- no camp should ever be completely safe -- but being able to spot things at a distance by exploiting different rendering distances for objects and terrain is borderline cheating and should be addressed in future updates. That exploit is the problem, not the Huey itself.

I did hear about something you might wanna try (my friend does't have the patience for it so I have no idea if it works): Wait until you spawn in the debug plains, then run ca. 20km south/southeast until you reach the regular map area again. Once you're back within the bounds of Chernarus, pick up an item and wait 5 to 10 minutes for this new gear to sync with the hive. Now log out, wait a bit, and log back in again. According to some reports, you should be gtg. Btw it's hard to find your bearings in the debug plains without a compass, but there are other players who have written about it so a quick search on the forums or google should help you find the map area. Please let me know if this works! I'd really like to get my friend back in the game, it's lonely out there all by myself haha ;)

By the way, your friend's "program that allowed (you) to change CD KEYS" sounds like piracy to me. Just sayin, you wouldn't wanna end up on Battleye's ban list or anything. Edit: While I feel your pain, I think you should prepare for the worst and kiss your old character goodbye. Even if you do eventually manage to play with the corrupted cd key again, your character might be dead -- or he might not be. The point is, new cd keys cost money, and this problem is caused by no fault of the player. At least I'm assuming you're no script kiddie... I know my friend isn't.

Agreed. Magic map scares me more than any zombie.

Oh. My. God. At last someone with the same issue! When you searched for the answer on the forums you probably came across my lone post ^^ I had been playing with a rl friend of mine until 3 or 4 weeks ago when this exact same thing happened to him: a weird script (at least we think it was a script) apparently takes control of his character, next thing we know he shoots me dead in an uncontrolled rampage, then he gets a blue screen as he attempts to exit the game, an since then he has been unable to play because it won't load past the "Setup Complete" screen. Sadly, my friend is so frustrated by the experience that he isn't willing to troubleshoot the problem properly. I hate to be that guy who goes on forums and is all like, "PLZ HELP ME"... but I gotta be that guy right now :)

yep, an apt description. i added in my 2 cents worth of thoughts for what it's worth, but any normal discussion has been drowned out by the flam0rz. oh well, on to the next topic =p btw i'm referring to this thread, not the DayZ community as a whole

I read the OP but not the 33 pages of comments that follow, so I apologize if this has been brought up before. Pen and paper is an excellent idea, but what about Polaroid photos? An instant camera (aka Polaroid) makes the most sense, since there would hardly be a way to develop film or print digital pictures in a post-apocalypse world :) You would need to find a working camera, film, and possibly batteries. Then you could take pictures of whatever you want. Keep the photos, pass them along or leave them for someone else to find. Players could use the camera to document their deeds, share loot locations and hideouts among friends, recon enemy locations, mark players for elimination, and so on. By the way, this suggestion is based on another thread I read today. There are several others who have already suggested this. Edit: The amount of film should probably be limited per server to avoid clutter. For the same reason, it shouldn't be possible to put up pictures on the walls and such; photos stack like any other item. Also, most instant cameras need batteries so you'd have to keep those handy as well.

okay i just realized this is all in this thread -- it's under -AND A VERY SIMPLE SUGGESTION- when you scroll down a bit. However the idea about photos is not in there, perhaps that could be added.

I'm not so sure about that. While it sounds cool in principle, in practice it would cause mad clutter as everyone puts their pictures up everywhere. In order to keep things sane, pictures would need to be stacked just like other items, and the amount of film (or like, SD cards, lol) should probably be limited per server.

It recently occurred to me how awesome it would be to have books and/or notes in the standalone, so I did a search in the forums and this post came up on page 1. I realize there are other threads on this, but I will just add my 2 cents here. I think it's a fantastic idea, I can only hope there will be books or notes in the SA! Of course, you have to be careful not to clutter up the world too much, so I'm guessing there won't be any pictures on the walls. But otherwise the photo idea is totally amazing. First you'd have to find the camera, film, and batteries (for digital cams) and then you could take snapshots of whatever you wanted. This simple idea opens up all kinds of possibilities: not just documenting deeds both good and bad, but also sharing loot locations and hideouts ("Go to grid xyz and look at this picture, the base entrance is near that tree"), targeted killings ("I've got a grudge against the player in this photo; take him out!"), recon & espionage, you name it. Beans for reviving the discussion. Is there any official word on the idea from Rocket or the devs?

Hey thanks that's some useful info. I didn't know it takes a downed chopper 7 days to respawn, is that really true? The DayZ Wiki says that any items placed in the PBX will instantly sink into the water. I've never found a PBX (only that slow-ass "small boat") so I can't say. Personally I wouldn't mind if there were at least two of these high-end vehicles per server, because on many servers the admins are the ones hogging the Ural. I don't have a grudge against admins -- on the contrary, they're awesome for hosting our servers! -- but it's either them or some clan hoarding all the good stuff. At least that's where the helicopter comes in, as you can use it to spot the slow and vulnerable Ural. All in all I think the system isn't too bad, and a lot of people's complaints could be addressed with the addition of more vehicles and a few tweaks to the maintenance system (making it more complex and challenging).

k whatever man. this is unproductive, i'm out

lol excellent! authenticity, not realism; a game, not RL. And yet, it will be forever discussed on the forums.

Is it still that bad? Seems to me like Battleye has been clamping down on the duping in a major way. I haven't been hit by a script kiddie in weeks, but I constantly see "script restriction" messages from BE. I know there are still many duped/scripted weapons in circulation, but it's only a matter of time before things normalize. I thought off-map vehicles get wiped and reset during server restart (i.e. they don't save off the map)? Two helis per server would be cool. Any more and it turns into a heli DM :)

"Realism" is definitely a loaded term, and Rocket prefers to call it authenticity, that's what the devs are aiming for: authentic experiences that accurately reflect real life situations without the need to model every last detail. Quoting the man himself here: In that sense, being able to fly a chopper is plausible enough -- assuming the guy has some kind of military background, which would explain why he can handle almost any type of gun and read maps, not to mention being fit as hell (running crouched like that all the time would DESTROY a normal man's back in no time -- believe me, I tried during my last paintball session!)

So I gathered from some of the more relevant posts on this thread that the chopper is the ultimate camp-busting machine and also provides an unfair advantage in locating other vehicles by radar. I've only flown a heli twice in my time on Chernarus and never used it to locate camps (believe it or not that never occurred to me), so I can't comment on that, though I certainly believe it. But these are issues that can be easily fixed with a few tweaks, rather than taking helis out of the game completely. Imo that's the way to go, because having airborne threats really adds excitement to the game. Like I said: I'd like to see aircraft stay in DayZ and hopefully they will have a larger role to play in the SA, albeit tweaked so that they don't provide a totally unfair advantage.