walrus2517

I quit Chernarus a few months ago after practically memorizing the map and getting bored (roughly 120 hours of play). After a 6-8 week hiatus I came back to find the fantastic DayZ Commander and a bunch of new maps which have really gotten me back into it again (another 100 hours in the past 6 weeks). I've been piloting helis on Namalsk the past few nights and having a blast. As for SA v. Mod, I plan to play both too. I have my concerns about the SA and really like the direction some of the offshoots of the mods, and even maps like Namalsk, are going. I feel there will be plenty of room for both.

I respectfully disagree on both points. It was a great feeling to be the only one on that server who was comfortable flying so that I was of great use to everyone, but those stories would be far less common if flying becomes more difficult simply because there won't be nearly as many capable pilots to write them. For instance, I had another great flying experience last night on the same server, but if the ToH controls are implemented, I won't have these opportunities. As for the difficulty of flying, you are correct that anyone can go into the armory and figure out the controls fairly quickly, but when you are actually in the mod, you better know what you are doing or else you will crash, destroying however many hours of work you put into that character plus the work anyone flying with you lost when you killed them because you didn't really know what you were doing. Last night I was flying an Mi-17 around trying to load it with medical gear but wasn't used to how much bigger it was. I not only crashed and killed myself trying to land, but crashed into and destroyed the grocery at Vorkuta on Namalsk, which if I'm not mistaken is one of only two groceries on a map where food is rare. EDIT: I misread the point you were making in regards to amateurs wasting the helis because they don't know what they are doing. This is a problem, but even if you add in a take off procedure, they'll just press buttons or look it up on youtube really quick to figure it out then definitely end up crashing because the flight controls are much harder too. The main thing I've noticed is how reluctant people are to piloting. We've had ample helis on the server I've played on the last few days yet no one wants to fly. I keep telling them just to take an hour in the armory to get the basics down but it isn't the controls. Most seem unwilling to take on the responsibility of another character's life. When you snipe someone from 800m then laugh as he whines in sidechat about losing all his gear, it's just part of the game. But when you have 5 players in your heli each with 10+ hours invested in their characters, suddenly those landings that seemed so easy in the armory are a bit tougher. Finally, getting back to the ToH controls, controlling the thrust or whatever it is when moving vertically to land was my biggest problem too. I had the same issue where my kb would seem unresponsive at times then suddenly I'd go slamming into the ground. It felt like an inconsistent 2-3 second delay in the controls and was the biggest frustration I had (and why I haven't had any desire to play the demo again).

"Horrible" is harsh. I think Arma is a nice balance between the elementary ease of the mainstream titles (CoD, etc.) and the complexity of a simulator like ToH. Try the ToH demo on Steam if you haven't already. Unless you are already trained on flight simulators, it is very difficult with a high learning curve.

Digging this thread up from the grave to relay my experience yesterday because of its relation to this discussion... I logged on Sunday morning, my character near death on Namalsk, with just 6 or so other folks on the server, when a guy I had seen the day before and knew was friendly agrees to meet me, administer a blood transfusion, and ends up driving me to a UAZ I could have. We teamed up for a few minutes then went our separate ways. Fast forward 8 hours to last night. I still have the UAZ and am raiding A2 with another guy I had randomly teamed up with when my savior logs back on, this time on TS with about 4 friends. It turns out I'm playing on their server. He tells me where a heli is because in his group of 5 friends, none know how to fly. Even the guy I had teamed up with, who was an Arma vet, said he hadn't flown in 6 months and didn't recall the key bindings. So out of 7 people on a server, I was the only one who could fly. I told them I was an amateur with just a few hours of practice, but that was better than everyone else, so we drove to the heli and I pulled my flight stick off the shelf. What followed was the best 3 hours of DayZ I've had yet, and I just broke the 200 hour mark this weekend according to Steam. I ferried them from place to place, picking up new friends as they logged on, dropping folks at vehicles, hitting their hidden tents, spotting heli crashes, looking for warm clothes, etc. We were playing at night, so at times the cloud cover would make things so pitch black I was flying completely blind (even maxing gamma and brightness didn't help). No one ever complained, even when I flew slow as hell and took 2 minutes to land because I was being so cautious (not only was I contending with the darkness, but the heli wasn't the Huey I'm used to, but some modern one, and you couldn't see jack from the cockpit, so I had to fly 3rd person, which I hate and haven't practiced with). By the time I logged off we'd hit just about every point on the map, killed about 600 hundred zeds, and had everyone well geared. And this, albeit belatedly, brings me to the original point I was making. While it may take just a couple of hours practice to become adequate at the Arma flying mechanics, the majority of players still haven't put that training time in, and with helis being rare and people not wanting to die, even amateur flying skills are still at a premium. If you take that away by making the controls exponentially more complex, you take away a large facet of the game that people enjoy.

Don't jump to any conclusions based on the few facts currently available. Also keep in mind one of, if not the top priority for the SA is security, so keeping things locked and simplified, at least in the early going, may very well be a necessity.

Best of luck but you don't really have anything trade worthy so I wouldn't expect many honest replies, certainly not for the level of items you are requesting. Antibiotics are rare but its hard to catch a cold in Chernarus. The M107 is a good find too but everything else you list is common loot.

Am I wrong for thinking there will still be a strong DayZ alpha mod contingent even after the SA is released? Certainly if the SA is only limited to a few maps there will be enough people still wanting to play the community maps that the original mod will survive. I know there are several custom offshoot mods with their own tweaks and features being developed that I'm guessing aren't going to stop just because the SA comes out. I'll definitely be buying the SA and I'll definitely be playing the SA, but I think the original mod will survive for awhile on its own.

Other people have posted about mouse acceleration problems in Arma 2. Do a quick Google search and you'll see plenty of posts about it across various forums, including this one. You are correct it is an issue with the Arma 2 engine. Personally I've learned to live with it and just adjusted my play as it isn't a huge problem, at least on my end.

@Terrorviktor - Yes, I remember the forum the days after that update was released; when zeds had 180 degree field of vision, could spot you prone from 300m, and were still faster than you. I remember a few folks saying they loved it. I also remember 80% of the servers not updating until it was fixed (and a few that had upgraded reverting to the previous version). :) I respect your opinion regarding the difficulty and know there is a crowd like you out there of the same mindset. And again, I'm not calling for a CoD level of difficulty. There are areas of the game where I would like to see the difficulty ramped up. But as I said, the success of DayZ was due to its accessibility using an engine notorious for its learning curve, so exponentially ramping up the difficulty will drive away hundreds of thousands of players who have loved this mod just so a few tens of thousands, if even that many, can get a little more enjoyment out of it. I have no idea but I don't imagine this is a direction Rocket aims to go.

Remembering the order they need to be pressed; waiting the correct amount of time between presses; and doing all of this while someone is sniping at the chopper you just spent 3 hours repairing? That at least takes a bit of skill. @Terrorviktor & @Michaelvoodoo25 - Moving from helis to the argument on overall difficulty, I think you need to keep in mind that the mod needs to remain at least remotely accessible to the regular gamer. Arma was never very popular because the learning curve to join the multiplayer crowd was very high. Day Z was successful because anyone can play it. It was a great bridge between the overly simplistic CoD crowd and the overly complex Arma crowd. The game you two are driving towards would be an overly complicated environment requiring teamwork in all phases, too similiar to regular Arma MP. That would drive away a great portion of the Day Z player base such as myself who even after 175 hours still enjoy just logging in with a new character, collecting loot, looking for vehicles, and avoiding snipers. I have no problem making some things more difficult. I love the changes on Namalsk with greater temperature effects, fewer food and animal spawns, etc. But I also enjoy Namalsk because the other day I found a chopper at the airfield, repaired and fueled it using supplies I was collecting with a tractor I had repaired, and spent 30 minutes just flying it around and giving a few folks a lift, finally getting to show off the basic skills I'd gained in the armory. I eventually left it with the last guy I gave a ride to and his buddy, one of whom said he was just an amateur pilot like me but could at least get around. It was one of the more enjoyable experiences I've had, and given all the stories this mod has given me, that is really saying something.

I have no problems making the repairs more difficult but I don't get the "realism" argument when it comes to flying. It's true I can't fly a heli in real life, but I can't accurately fire a sniper rifle, skin and cook a cow, or sneak around evading zombies either (*wink*), but I can do those just fine within a game. We're talking about a game where the theme is a zombie apocalypse, high grade military gear spawns all over the place, you can eat an entire cow in 2 minutes to replenish your health, and half the people just run around killing everyone they see. You can personally play in a realistic manner if you want, but it's still a game to everyone else. My argument isn't against making flying a chopper harder (disable auto-hover, 3rd person, etc.) but against making it a total flight simulator so that only expert pilots or players that have friends that are expert pilots get to enjoy choppers. I simply think there is a middle ground between the current setup in Arma, which isn't too difficult, and a real world flight simulator where you have to spend a minute going through a full checklist just to take off. And I disagree learning to fly from within the mod would be awesome. Why train there when one mistake kills you and destroys a heli you spent hours repairing when you can train offline?

Well, I played the TOH demo briefly last night on the "Trainee" level but let it do the automated startup so I was just trying to fly around and see how it handled. I really sucked. I eventually got over the initial handling hump but couldn't figure out how to properly increase and decrease thrust without slamming into the ground every time I tried to land. Even just turning in midair led to me stalling, losing power, or whatever was happening, and just crashing to the ground several times. I worked at it for about 90 minutes but didn't make much progress. The worst part is that it wasn't fun (though in full disclosure, I've only enjoyed a few flights sims in my 20+ years of gaming). I realized how hard it was going to be about 10 minutes in, and whereas I would've quit in the past because I wasn't enjoying myself, I kept at it to train for the standalone. But it was work and I already don't want to play anymore. This is a very frustrating development for me because I've really enjoyed flying choppers in DayZ on the newer maps where they spawn more often. I'm going to give it a few days then probably try again but at this point I'm really, really hoping that servers are given the option of making it easier, if that is possible. I haven't tried "Beginner" level to see if it is really much easier so this may not even be an option, but flying a heli needs to remain accessible in my opinion. Most of the people replying, based on the knowledge level of their replies, seem to be good pilots, so it's understandable you want things to be as realistic as possible for your own enjoyment. However, I'd kind of like to hear if anyone who doesn't already know how to fly a heli wants the difficultly ramped up exponentially, particularly to the point you have to put in multiple hours of offline training and keep written notes handy just to take off and land without killing yourself.

You are correct. I wasn't aware the decision was finalized. I will definitely be trying the TOH demo to get used to it. I still stand by my overall point that flying shouldn't be so overly complicated only a few specialists are capable. As for auto-hover, thanks for the info. I guess my problem with it wasn't the feature as much as it not working realistically from the way you describe it, mainly being able to switch it on a full speed to come to a nice, quick stop. I tried strictly keyboard but the controls were way too jumpy and imprecise. Maybe it would work better with a mechanical keyboard but there was a reason I kept trying with a mouse. My flight stick is just a cheap sub-$20 one I picked up years ago but it works really well in Arma. I really only use it for the precision movement though. I keep my left hand on the keyboard for almost all of the controls.

I forgot to mention Namalsk is the first place I've starved to death. In Chernarus food and animals are plentiful so I was scarfing down beans as soon as my food meter turned pink. In Namalsk I wait until it starts flashing before wasting a can of food. Animals are very rare too and there is only one location with a hospital (I think) for blood bags so don't plan on shooting one of the cows that spawns every 100m on the other maps to replenish your blood. I think the easiest way to put it is Namalsk is the first map to add something to the mod. The others, much as I appreciate and enjoy them, were just maps people added loot to. Namalsk actually incorporates new features and its own changes to the way the mod works. It makes for a slightly different experience than the rest.

Keep up the great work! Thanks!

I know they updated the temp system in .6 to fix a few glitches so maybe you were one of the lucky few who didn't have to deal with it. After catching a quick cold on my first visit to that mountain army base I never went with less than 3 heatpacks, but even those didn't do much good (another change in .6 is improved heatpack effect). I've probably put 15+ hours into Namalsk and I've gotten the shivers within 10 minutes of climbing a snowy mountain every time. It isn't a huge deal because the zeds didn't seem to notice my coughing beyond 10m or so and the shivering still isn't as bad as the shaking relieved by painkillers, but it is something new to deal with. Here is the changelog. I like what he's doing with it.

Nah, the first two hours was just frustration trying to fly with a mouse. I finally gave up and dusted off my flight stick. I will add that my initial influence to learn flying was watching some of the large Arma battles on youtube, where they are limited to first person, so I learned to fly without using 3rd person. I also tried to learn to land without using auto-hover, but in DayZ the risk of crash is too great so I still use it in the mod. As for "expert" status, I flew the other day with an expert pilot in Namalsk, riding as he dipped between treelines and landed quickly and smoothly without auto-hover. I've seen them fly on youtube. After 5 hours of training and 30-45 minutes of actually flying in the mod, I"m giving myself "mediocre" status at best. :)

The one control that makes choppers too easy is auto-hover, so I wouldn't mind that being taken out. Being able to switch on auto-hover does make landing far too simple. I guess the point I'm trying to make is there needs to be a happy middle ground. You don't want a kid playing DayZ for the first time to be able to fly a heli with just his arrow keys, but I still disagree it should be something someone has to be an expert at just to do. I feel like a lot of the folks replying are clan or group players who know at least one good pilot, or the type of player who doesn't mind scouring the forums for a pilot, but the majority of players don't have the time to access all of these options. They just want to play the game, and, whether you agree with it or not, helicopters are part of the game. The obvious solution, and hopefully one they can implement, is for the servers to be able to choose the flight mechanics. I imagine most would stick to the standard Arma mechanics but if some expert servers want to use the TOH mechanics go ahead.

I love the new sounds; the children crying for help, the wind blowing, etc. They really add to the effect. As for the temp changes, you have to be in the snow. Go walk in the snow for 5-10 minutes and you'll immediately start shivering, making it much more difficult to aim. If you don't find warm clothing you'll even develop a cold. Heatpacks are a necessity. There are more random military loot points, such as the large towers that generally spawn good stuff, but only a few barracks. This seems to lead to a bit less PvP because the military loot isn't as concentrated. I think the big appeal of Namalsk is the cold temperature effects of the snow and varying terrain. Snow, woodlands, fields, huge bridges, etc. it just feels different than the rest of the maps. Add in a few other differences, such as the lack of food, and it makes for a very nice change of pace. I've enjoyed most of the new maps except for Takistan, but I think Namalsk is my favorite outside of Chernarus. EDIT: I should also add the person or group putting Namalsk together is actively updating it. They tweaked the temperature effects a bit more with .6 (released yesterday) and even added random zed spawns in the woods. It's worth checking out.

@painfulleap1 - It sounds like you are already an expert pilot so what seems easy for you to remember would still be very difficult to the average, or even above average DayZ player to recall. Plus, if it takes that much just to get in the air, I can only imagine how much more complicated everything else is, particularly landing. Yes DayZ is supposed to be somewhat of a simulator and it is built on a military sim, but it is meant to be accessible to the masses as well. You can argue for realism, but we're still talking about a zombie apocalypse with high grade military weapons all over the place, so you have to remember it's a game too. There are other places for expert pilots to show off their skills, so I don't think making everything overly complex for the rest of us is the way to go. DayZ is a zombie game, not a flight sim.

I appreciate the point you make but I think flying a heli is difficult enough as it is. I haven't played TOH but I did watch that tutorial video and it shouldn't be that complicated just to take off. It's true that right now anyone can just jump in a heli, hit the thrust, and get going, but I want to see someone land their first time without crashing. I quickly learned after losing a few characters to crashes to ask if a pilot has flight experience before jumping in with them. With the new maps helis aren't as rare as they were when it was just Chernarus and I've actually found a few recently. I don't think any flight lasted more than a minute before I crashed, usually just trying to land. I ended up pulling my old flight stick out of the closet, plugging it in for the first time in a few years, and loading up the armory to practice. About 5 hours of flight time later I feel like I'm an adequate pilot, good enough to get around and land without killing myself, but I still have plenty of close calls and every landing is still a shaky affair. I just don't see the need to make it so complicated only a small handful of TOH/Arma expert pilots can actually enjoy helis. I think the vast majority of players still aren't full time clan guys who can have a few pilots readily available whenever they need. TL;DR - Helis are fun. Don't make them so complex no one can enjoy them.

Its running wonderfully on my Android 2.3 tab. Blazing quick app makes it easy to get the info I need. Fantastic job! Haven't been through everything but I did notice one typo. On the M4A1 Holo, under Magazine Type(s), you have STANAG SD Mag listed twice, instead of listing a regular STANAG mag.

Many, many thanks. I'll install it when I get home this evening then let you know how it works.

Looks sweet. Any chance you can post a link to the apk? Google Play doesn't work with my older Android tablet.

If you are still on the forums then you are obviously still interested in the mod. Join a private hive and it will solve a lot of your problems.