SirDoom

If I'm dealing with a hacker, I'll abort. Otherwise, no. I never alt-f4 though. If you're in a situation where you'd be dead before you could his esc then abort on the menu, you don't deserve to live. My usual policy is simple. If someone is firing at me and I don't want to engage, I flee behind cover. Once I feel like I've lost them, I wait a few minutes. No gunshots = safe to log out. Although I will admit, I have combat logged to deal with zombies before. Being in one of those small log cabin houses with a horde of zombies at the only door and a face full of artifacts gets annoying after a while, especially when you don't have time to flush between zombie kills. Oh, and there was this one questionable time where I was looting the barracks at the NWAF. Walked in the last room right as another guy tried logging in. Had the opportunity to kill him while he loaded, but instead quickly exited the barracks, hid in the nearby treeline, and logged off without him ever seeing me. Did that only to avoid having to kill the guy, since never once have I met anyone at the NWAF that didn't shoot on sight, and I am most certainly not a bandit.

Eh. Might be a bit unethical, but so is sniping fresh spawns for no reason other than being an ass. Personally, I end up accidentally doing something like this all the time. When I play, it isn't on one particular server (unless I've repaired a helicopter on said server). Every time I log in, I go through the list of servers and find a nice new server that meets all my needs (not the darkest part of night, decent ping, not empty but not completely full, etc...). Occasionally, this ends with the safe bush I logged out of on server A being within sight of someone's sniping post/storage site on server B. It's going to happen occasionally, all OP is doing is intentionally trying for it.

Well, it's good that people can't just spawn and say "Kamenka? Nope, not this time" and instantly spawn. The downside is that people who spawn there and don't want to be there are still going to find the fastest way to kill themselves and do it anyway. Of course, there's also the "find a guy on the coast who is nowhere near any zombie spawns, break his legs, bandage him, surround him with barbed wire, and let him sit there as a broken husk of a survivor with no power over his own life" factor. That's always a negative.

My ideal server using currently existing game settings. 3rd person on. Croashairs on. Nameplates off. Death messages on. 10-20 people online. Waypoints on. That being said, I'd prefer if a lot of those features were changed. For example, waypoints only for people with a gps, nameplates only visible when in close range, etc...

Eh. Waypoints are one of the convenient non-realistic things that are there to make up for something you could do in real life but can't in the game due to engine limitations. That being said, you should have to have a gps to use them. In real life, a gps won't just tell you your longitude and latitude. It'll tell you exactly where you are now, how far away you are from your target, which direction it is, and give you step by step directions on how to get there. Hell, you can slip it into your pocket and just let the annoying robotic voice direct you to where you're going without even looking at it. It essentially gives you an audio waypoint. Visual waypoints are just a lot easier to use in video games, so that's what you get.

Problem with that is that the whole "game" thing applies to all arguments. Killing someone is alright- you should never get attached to your gear in this game. Finding new gear is probably the most fun part of the game, after all. If you die, it just starts over, giving you a new life to do new things with. Breaking someone's legs and leaving them there with no way to do this though... You gain nothing from that other than watching another person suffer. Not die, mind you, but suffer. Not able to do anything while still alive, but not able to end his own life to start over either. The only thing worse would be if you supplied him with food and a drink just beforehand to ensure he could last as long as possible before dying of natural causes. As long as the respawn button is broken and unusable by the people who feel their current life isn't worth living (I thought the patch notes said people with broken legs were supposed to be able to use it, although from experience I know they can't), doing something like this makes you the worst kind of person in this game. Even worse than the people who sit on the coast watching spawn points and snipe new spawns while they're still in the loading screen. TL:DR- There is a difference between doing something that briefly takes fun away from other players and something that actively prevents them from having fun for a long time. One is a core part of the game (killing). The other is just griefing using broken game mechanics.

I kind of agree on the maps. I'd personally like the GPS to be a bit more common at the expense of taking the GPS-like features off of the map. As far as zombies go, I actually think they should be buffed a bit, but with their movement fixed. Right now, zombies aren't really a threat to anyone with a hatchet. They do very little damage, and the only time I've ever run into issues is when they break my legs on the first hit. Only problem is that they're really buggy. Fix the fact that they move like a kid with ADHD who just drank a whole pot of coffee, buff their damage, and maybe lower the chance of them breaking your legs by hitting you once or twice, and they'll be in a good spot. As opposed to the "This zombie is either going to be a non-issue, or break my legs and cause me to pass out until I have under 1000 blood" area they're in now. Third person... still, no comment. I wouldn't be opposed to having 3rd person servers and 1st person servers, with people getting a unique character on each set of servers to avoid abuse. I do agree that it's really hard to balance 3rd person view, but I'm against removing it entirely. The difference between the two options here isn't as minor as it is with the other features, it's almost like a completely different game mode. Perhaps it should be treated as such.

Honestly, I'm fine with all of those things, because different servers can all have different settings and tailor to different players. The hardcore players can stick to servers with none of those things, and those who want a little more user-friendliness in the game's interface can keep their settings. No harm to anyone in this*. If we're talking about one group of settings for all servers, simply "keep or remove" isn't enough. You'll want to find balance between the two. You want to keep things realistic, but completely removing features on the interface in the name of realism hurts the game. Features should be tweaked and added, but not removed. For example, until detailed character customization is in the game, some way to identify players has to be in the game. That doesn't mean you should be able to spot players hundreds of meters away and know just how far they are away from you though. Simply removing nametags as they stand without adding anything to take their place removes the ability to tell which of the guys standing next to you is your friend and which is the stranger who wants to kill both of you. The way I see it, there are arguments for keeping features, and arguments for *changing* features, but none for flat out removing them. All you're doing is making the game harder to use, and while that might appeal to seasoned vets, you have to keep in mind that when someone new starts this game they are likely to have a hard enough time figuring out how to use basic game controls. I know this game is supposed to be more realistic than user-friendly, but if in reality you were dropped on the coast of a zombie-infested continent, learning how to open a backpack or use a flashlight are not going to be issues, whereas the game interface makes them issues for newbies. *When I say no harm, I mean no net loss or gain. You can make an argument that you could go to a "noob server", gather equipment, then go have an advantage in a vet server. You fail to take into account that the regular servers are easier to use for everyone, not just you. If there are snipers watching all the good spawns on vet servers, there will be snipers who can use your nametag to snipe you even more accurately on the easier servers. On top of that, you could just log onto a very-low population vet server and stock up with no risk of being sniped due to lack of people. Removing easier features won't stop the "stock up on server X for an advantage on server Y" problem. As it stands, all server differences give players is a choice, not any real advantage or disadvantage.

True. When I'm firing at that range without using iron sights, I usually go for body shots anyway. Having cross-hairs at that range does nothing more than having a small sticker on the center of your screen would, just to serve as a "your gun is pointed this way" reference point. This isn't really a problem in first person, since you can see which way your gun is pointed. If 3rd person remains in the game, I would probably prefer cross-hairs to stay just so you don't miss the guy in front of you because you can't tell that your gun is pointed just to the left of him instead of right at him.

Removing those features altogether would be bad, as would removing third person. There has to be some balance involved in standardizing things (as opposed to just saying "okay, the old standard veteran mode is now the only mode"). Making all servers have standard vet settings would make it more balanced, but would also not sit well with a lot of players who prefer other settings. Leaving things the way they are though does promote a small degree of imbalance when swapping servers. Personally, I don't see that imbalance being too big. When I want to gear up, I don't look at difficulty or settings. I find a night server with 0-2 people on it and safely raid whatever I want to. I'm sure cross-hairs, nametags, and third person make killing others easier on certain servers, but there are other easier (and even less dangerous, in the case of low-population servers at night) ways to acquire an advantage on other servers. In that respect, those features are fine the way they are. If you want to standardize servers, I wouldn't remove them, but suggest some changes. Nametags shouldn't show range, and should only be visible at shorter ranges. Or use Panque's suggestion to only have friends nametags appear to you. I've had situations where a 4th guy has logged in in the same building my group of 3 was in, and we were unable to tell which one of us was the odd man out until he had killed 2 of us. That shouldn't happen. Cross-hairs should be there, but only be accurate at very short ranges. After about 5-15 meters, crosshairs should be very inaccurate. They should be for close range combat (like shooting a zombie in the same room as you), not sniping. I don't want to enter iron sights to kill something just outside of melee range, especially if I need to remain mobile. 3rd person is a bit tricky. There are arguments for and against it, and it's hard to take a side. There is no definitive way to say "side X is wrong" here. I can't really comment on this one. It's really more of a game mode than a feature. I guess you could reduce the FoV range while in 3rd person, or lower the location of the camera so you can't see everything from behind a chest-high wall, but I really can't comment for sure here.

OP, I'm surprised you've even got people to reply to you with any words at all. For the past several weeks, every reaction between players I've seen has been the same (not counting players who are already in a crew/squad/whatever). 2 unarmed players- Run from each other. 1 armed, 1 unarmed- Unarmed guy runs, armed guy shoots on sight. 2 armed guys- Gunfight. No words. No warnings. No "Friendly!". No "Give me your beans and I'll let you live". Everyone just kills on sight, or hides if they can't kill you.

I like the key/hotwire kit idea. Wouldn't fix the hoarding issue many people see, but it would make having one vehicle hidden somewhere for your own personal use more secure. I will agree that hoarding is annoying. On the server I play on mostly, I've seen a grand total of one vehicle at it's spawn or anywhere near where people might cross. The only other time I found any vehicles was when I got really lost on the way to the NE airfield, and ended up running in random directions due to the lack of a compass, watch, or any landmarks. Ended up in a camp with about 7 vehicles in it right on the edge of the map somewhere. Logged out nearby, then back in 2 days later. None of the vehicles had moved, and I killed one of the guys who was on at the time before being killed myself. It's literally 3 guys who know exactly when and where the vehicles are going to spawn, and are there within minutes to repair and take them. If you can manage to pull that off, good for you. But the game shouldn't make it as easy as memorizing spawn timers. If the vehicles spawned at more random locations, that would probably do the trick.