Wiley

Considering the number of repetitive posts, I don't think a pinned thread would do much of anything. If they didn't notice the thread 5 up from them, why would they notice a pinned thread? I just don't understand the mentality that if they don't respond saying, 'Yes, we're aware that roughly 18,000 threads have been posted in the last month regarding hacking, artifacts, and tents.' that people assume the issues are being ignored. One can argue all day that he should've put out a quick patch to fix 1.7.2.5, but it didn't happen. He chose to roll it into 1.7.3. Personally I don't understand why the server admins didn't revert to 1.7.2.4 once they saw the issues with .5. PAX seems to be the end of the trail for cons for a little while. I'm curious to see what the next month brings and how 1.7.3 works.

Idle curiosity... Based on what I've seen, Rocket doesn't seem to have much problem telling people 'no'. If he's no longer supporting the mod, what would telling us the mod is no longer supported lose him again? We've already paid for ArmA 2, and the standalone has been announced so people are most likely going to be waiting for that if they don't already have ArmA 2. What is the logic behind this theory again?

I'm really curious to see where it goes once we have more building tools at our disposal and cheating is way down (if it happens). I don't see why the game has to provide us with goals, when there's potential to do self inflicted goals like, 'Build a town and defend it', or 'Raid the town that other guy built'. How far we can take it is dependent on the tools we're given.

The 99k number is the number of unique IDs that played in the last 24 hours, not the number that have been added. The 1.2 million is number of unique IDs that have ever played the game.

It's probably a combination of people who are: - sick of hackers - sick of artifacting - bored without storage/vehicles - not liking the PVP - playing on private hives(? I assume stats on who's playing private hives wouldn't be tracked by the site) - discovering 'OH! THAT's what 'alpha' means.' and moving on to the next shiny thing - people finding it's just not their cup o' tea The top three are game breakers for many. Simply put, it was a bad set of circumstances for that release to coincide with Rocket being occupied for a month. But, that's what happens sometimes. Due to the hackers I think numbers will stay relatively low until standalone. There'll likely be a surge when the fix for tents/vehicles happens though.

Did you have a session before logging in that had you stuck at the "Loading" screen, and you shut the program down? If so that's why. It puts you in the debug plains to start with, then when loading is completed it puts you at your last known position. If you stop the program while it's stuck on "Loading", the debug plains become your last known position, and it respawns you on the coast rather than off the map. If that's not the case, no idea.

I think it would be a better system than what's there now. Do away with instant heals except (maybe) with blood transfusions. If it were me, I'd set it up so that if you're in a neutral state, nothing wrong with you, but not well fed and watered, you'd regen around 1500 blood an hour. If you keep your food and water topped up, you'd regenerate at a rate of around 2500 blood an hour. Instead of having blood transfusions instantly heal you, boost the regen so it only takes you an hour or so to fill up from empty.

I have had this happen once, and only once in the month I've been playing. The thing that pops out at me that might be the root cause is, I went on a tour outside the bounds of the map tent hunting. This was the first time I've ever done that. I traveled across most of the top of the map, and came back down to the NW airfield, spending at least a solid half an hour back on the map before I logged. I logged back into the same server the next day and saw 'Wiley was killed' and respawned on the coast naked. I wasn't using a ghillie at the time. Maybe it was a coincidence, but that was the one thing that was different from every other play session I've had, and it was the one time I've had the 'spawn on coast naked' thing. HTH.

I sincerely hope the sounds/artwork for the most part are placeholders until they start to actually polish the game near the end. It's what I always assumed, anyways. It does slightly amuse me to put a .45 round into a zombie's torso and hear him mutter obscenities.

One other thing to watch yourself for, and I mention it because I'm particularly guilty of this is when you get something nice, don't start thinking you're Chuck Norris and stop playing carefully. First time I got hold of an Enfield and a bunch of bullets? Got cornered in a building in Kamenka and tried to shoot my way out with predictable results. My first L85 got me killed because I was standing on a high spot and looking at how cool stuff looked through the nifty thermal scope, and ate a sniper bullet.

It's not about 'protecting' or 'defending' anything. The simple fact is, you are wrong. No matter how many times you say it, it doesn't change a thing. It is an open alpha test whether there are five people testing it, or a million. The fact that suddenly a metric assload of people downloaded it and started griping doesn't change where he's at in development. The guy's been at Gamescom and now PAX. Events that only happen once in a while. Yes, it's unfortunate timing that the patch broke saving equipment. Unfortunately it means we have to wait until he has time to fix it. You people act like since they announced a standalone, that *poof* there was an entire team assembled and waiting to immediately move forward on coding. I don't feel like putting out the words to describe that thought process.

Ah. I hadn't stated it in as many words, but my point was that I think wear would be pretty much essential to have along with an item cap. Otherwise the people who run out at the beginning to grab them have them indefinitely, which IMO would be bad. There needs to be something in place so people can't just get the good stuff once and then sit on their asses as far as maintaining equipment/reequipping.

I wouldn't be fond of an absolute 'timer' on equipment. That just feels far too artificial to me. Wear should be tied to usage. The fact that it would happen over time should be a byproduct of usage IMO. Maybe the thing to do for storage is require them to actually 'store' the weapon. Get hold of some gun grease, get hold of a container, grease it up and seal the container, and it won't degrade over time. Sitting in a tent out in the elements, or being lugged around every day degradation would occur. Perhaps only have that kind of degradation occur down to a certain point, so once it's below 50%, time degradation doesn't occur. I'm not quite sure what to make of having stuff be repairable, and stuff coming out of the pool with zero durability. Machining parts for any rifle is a pretty refined skill. I guess there's nothing wrong with it, I just think scrounging replacement parts would fit better than machining stuff from scratch.

That's the ultimate issue. From what I've read, scripting pretty much cannot be stopped on the ArmA 2 engine, period. That means the only way there will be less hacking is in standalone. As far as I can tell, it's that simple.

IMO all sniping really needs is more realism. Crosswind and a bit of dispersion would go a long way to making it better. Some might call it a 'nerf', I'd call it better gameplay.

It seems to me some of the lower tier stuff up to the level of the common AK variants should have really high cap numbers, and maybe a couple of them should be pretty much unlimited. Like the Makarov/Winchester for example. Just kind of thinking out loud here, and I realize exactly what it would take on the technical end of things, but... What if the degradation was only somewhat accelerated? Supposing a system that is kind of like the vehicles, with different components having their own wear life. Say, 4000 rounds through an assault rifle and the bolt assembly is worn out. The number is completely out of my ass for illustration, and different weapons could have different wear rates. Same with the different components. A barrel isn't going to wear out as fast as a bolt. The world starts out, everything's new, everything's shiny. People find their weaponry and do their thing. As time goes on though, stuff gets used. Maybe it takes 100 owners before the bolt on an AK gets used up. However, if I get sniped in a field and don't get looted until my body disappears, the gear I was carrying goes back into the 'pool' for respawning, with all the wear on it still intact. So when it spawns again, it's not brand new and shiny anymore. That way, people will get reasonable wear and tear out of their weapons, but they won't work indefinitely. As game time rolls on, stuff gets worse and worse. Of course, when a component is finally all used up, it goes back into the pool to respawn new.

LOL Dallas. As to the OP, I think it probably is just cyclical. The popular thing to QQ about now is how now that the standalone is out, the mod will not be getting all the attention anymore from the developers and they're just money hungry bad people for not giving us updates every 3 days for the mod now that there's going to be a standalone. It could also partly be that the amount of time it took for most of the relatively casual gamers to download it, try it, try to make it fit their playstyle, get frustrated for one reason or another, and quit has passed.

Wow... No communication: RABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLERABBLE!!! A noncommittal 'After the 6th of September.': Wow we feel communicated with and special and important and a part of the development process! Thank you! Any dolt could've seen that was where it was going, but by God they're terrible people unless they tell you every step of the way. So we can expect to see you at around 1 PM on the 6th yelling 'WHAR UPDATE? WHAR?!'

As I understand it, the thing DayZCommander uses to determine server time is something that has to be set by the server admin, independent of what's actually going on. If it's not done correctly, the time it shows isn't the actual time on the server. Wish it were otherwise.

It's been proposed a lot. I don't understand what's up with search. Topics that have come up a lot can return 0 results when I search for them. As to logout timers, I can't see a downside to it. Engine limitation is something I've heard mentioned for why it hasn't been done, I am hopeful for standalone. IMO regardless of what you're doing, disconnecting should take 30 seconds, period. Less possibility for gaming the game if it's just there, regardless of what you're doing.

Wait... so the guy (singular, one person) who is currently working on the mod is occupied for a few weeks doing other stuff, and hasn't released an update. Therefore the mod should go open source? Are you listening to yourself, MJ?

Ok, maybe my intent came across badly in that post. I was mostly responding to your comment about people not being able to service a weapon in a shtf situation being BS. I was just pointing out that it wouldn't be trivial to repair most of the important moving parts in an assault rifle. I think degradation might be necessary depending on how a system like yours were implemented. I would suggest a number of rounds, with hard use being a factor. Ideally physical damage from impact/bullets could be applied, but that's reaching a bit. I'm not really against global scarcity. The biggest concern I'd have would be stuff getting muled off to characters that are basically there for offline storage. I know you mentioned stuff disappearing if you don't log in every so often. However long it is, balancing that against people who are going to log in every N-1 days to keep their stuff would still be an issue. Stripping it from inventory wouldn't be my favorite. I cycle games on a regular basis and I'd be fairly uptight if the M4 I had gotten fair and square was lost to me because I hadn't logged in in a couple weeks. I don't think it would be that terribly bad to have the item go back into the pool without stripping it from the person's inventory. There'd be some inflation over time, but not like the system as it stands now. And if the person started playing again, that one would start being counted again. Sure, there might be a surplus of different items from time to time, but if some form of weapon wear were implemented, it would eventually even itself out. With the state the game is currently in, there's no really easy way to judge how the current model will impact scarcity. The existence of unlimited .45 and DMR/M14 ammo alone greatly inflates the amount of ammo available to people, to say nothing of duping. The inability for people to have secure storage is another factor. With the current system working correctly, if someone finds your camp, you go from having 5 AS50s to none. You've got to go scrounging again. True it's only a matter of time though.

Maybe I'm wrong, but from what I've seen, it's not a time limit, but more of a distance limit. I find if I empty a building, run away for around 100-200 meters, then run back, it's respawned. That takes a lot less than 10 minutes.

Your posts aren't free, either. I had to buy a computer to read them. How dare you provide me with such lackluster and pointless drivel? I demand better, and I demand it now!

I just disagree that the mods are here to be a punching bag for whiners. When someone's baseless expectations aren't met and they are the 200th person to post another thread about artifacts and get abusive, why are the mods supposed to hold your hand and tell you how much they're concerned for your feelings? "Thank you for pointing out what hundreds of other people have already said, you stooge." should be a perfectly legitimate response to abusive, repetitive whining.