TheThinkTanker

If only. If only. Perhaps, instead of running naked through Cherno, you could bike through Cherno while playing Brodyquest or something over Direct chat? That could be a worthy substitute. Or perhaps you could get a bunch of people together and have a "dance party." Everyone gets to play a single song of their choice over the direct chat, and the group just goofs off and rolls through Cherno / Elektro / Stary Sobor / Berezino, looting and looking for friendlies to grow the party. Once everyone has had a turn to play something over the chat, then we cycle through and essentially just listen to fun music in a group out loud. Yeah, you'd be a target, but you might also get a huge group of people choosing to do fun stuff.

I... have to agree. Maybe we should specify that these are quests that will somehow involve other players or something, and will therefore create the DayZ stories we all crave. Or would at least be fun instead of frustrating.

Yeah, that doesn't sound like a fun way to troll people to me. You have to watch My Name is Earl, and nothing's worth that.

Lol, school and a new baby (my first, a little girl) are actually the exact reason I haven't been playing as much.

I want to add my voice to this: I can vouch for Cherno Journo. The guy is not a hacker. It would undermine the integrity and purpose of his mission as a wartime journalist in Chernarus. The entire point of meeting in-game instead of just grabbing people's stories over skype or written on forums is to play DayZ as it is meant to be played, meeting in realtime the way a real journalist would want to in such a setting. Cherno Journo for prez 2012. The guy is not a hacker.

Not really. I'm a married, socially-average male that enjoys MLP:FIM. It's a show I can watch and enjoy with my daughter when she's older (currently 1 month). We really shouldn't judge each other based on one facet of our personalities. We should treat each other as multi-faceted, complex human beings because that's what we all are. Except you over there, Tom. You suck.

Because one facet of a person's being (Gender, ethnicity, things they enjoy, etc.) should not exclude them from being a part of other communities and enjoying other things. It's the same reason why it's okay for girls to play videogames. One facet of your personality does not and should not define you completely, should not define what you supposedly do or do not do. It would be terrible for people to treat you as if all you did was play DayZ, right? There is much more to you than simply DayZ. Just as there is much more to every person. Human beings are all deeper than simply one of their defining characteristics. The truth resists simplicity,

Just throwing in my two cents: Cherno Journo is legit. He was easy to work with, very accommodating in setting up a meeting time, and let me blather on and on about the philosophical nature of the game's open-world and lack of goals, as well as the moral implications and internal emotions of my first murder. All while sitting on a hill next to a campfire in the rain. It was downright neighborly. Support his project. Set up a time to do interviews with him. I promise he won't shoot you.

I think people really need to understand that DayZ is not a finished product. It's as if a lot of people bought Arma2:CO as if they felt like they were buying DayZ and expecting a pristine experience. But that's just not how games (and pretty much ANY software) ever really gets made. DayZ was intended to be a small experiment built within the closely-knit Arma community. It was a mod that wanted to do something interesting. I'm pretty confident Rocket's goal wasn't to change the freaking world the way DayZ kinda has, it was to make something he thought the Arma community would like as a Mod of the Arma engine. A mod that even before it got popular was nowhere near finished. It's still nowhere near finished, but it had that magical combination that worked for over a million people. And why is it nowhere near finished? Because of the sheer numbers of players that are playing the mod. Rocket's time is spent putting out fires for a mod that was intended for 100, 200 players tops. All his development time is currently spent just making sure that the mod is stable enough for the huge demand that has been put on it. So that WE can all play it, even if it's not perfect. If you read all of Rocket's interviews since DayZ exploded, you can tell he's exhausted. He's working as hard as he can to just keep the mod working for the million+ players who want to play it. And with an alpha-testing group that big for an unfinished mod, is it any wonder there are problems? Is it any wonder that the players/alpha testers (because we need to remember that's what we are) have found problems Rocket probably never dreamed of? Is it any wonder there are bugs? Is it any wonder that the code is still choppy and has holes for exploits and hacking in it? Of course it's imperfect. It's UNFINISHED. This is what every videogame and every piece of software looks like at this stage in development. If you don't understand that, then now you can learn. If you DO understand that and still whine about the imperfections of a MOD that's still being developed, you're either willfully oblivious, a troll, or a self-entitled soul in need of maturity and soul searching. One last thing that has been pointed out numerous times: Rocket knows about the hacking. He knows, alright? And he wants to fix it. But it's kind of a big problem. A problem that would likely create new bugs as it fixes old ones (because that is how all game development works!). And it is his first priority for the standalone, which is the only real place he can combat the hacking problem. Cut Rocket some slack. He deserves it. He made a mod that is fun to play even in its broken, imperfect Alpha stage. Not many game developers can claim that.

When you start seeing canned beans as not only food, but post-apocalyptic currency AND a vote of approval. "You have my beans, sir."

"You have my beans, sir." "BEANS! YAAY!" "Friendly in Cherno?" "Did my hatchet just shoot?" "Dude, either give me some morphine or put me out of my misery and let me respawn." "How to salute?! ...Nevermind."

Can anyone confirm this? I've looked but have not been able to find a definitive statement on whether or not you can sell an alpha build and constantly update it through steam before it's fully developed. It would be awesome if you could, that would allow not only the DayZ standalone alpha to release and update regularly on Steam, but it would give the same opportunities to other promising projects currently in alpha development (Overgrowth by Wolfire, etc.). I hope Steam is willing to change their agreement to accommodate minecraft-esque development!

Nightmare Moon, or the Mare in the Moon. Right?

I'm down. I just discovered the show after hearing so much about the bronies online and from the HumbleBronyBundle. I've got to say, friendship really IS magic!

These ideas are so much simpler than what I had in mind! I was thinking we should just have a melee weapon slot (maybe in the standalone), but having a hotkey like for binoculars, maps, compass, watch, etc. for switching to flashlight and hatchet is much easier. This really needs to happen.

Instead of putting the melee weapons in the small arms slot, why not have a completely different slot for melee weapons? I mainly use the hatchet for my main weapon now, and it would be so much easier to easily switch between a zombie-killer (hatchet), sidearm for whenever a handgun is useful, and a real weapon to defend against bandits. I realize this is probably more likely to happen in the standalone, though. So for the time being, it would probably be easier to just be able to equip hatchets in the small arms slot.

Um, welcome to game development. Welcome to software development in general, really. That's pretty much how everything gets made. Like, everything ever. EVER. It's important to remember that the game/mod isn't finished yet. Didn't you know that when you installed the mod? Bugs (and fixes that create more bugs) are just the name of the game at this point.

Try hitting the servers marked "Veteran." I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but every good experience I've had with a random that doesn't shoot on sight has been in a "Veteran" server. I don't know if it shows that in the server name on SixLauncher, but DayZCommander shows which servers are "Veteran" and which are "regular/noobie" servers. And stay near the coast or in the cities, where people are. You'll have a better chance of running into a friendly rando looting through a city. No, I'm not trolling.

I have to admit, I actually really love watching this community troll itself. It brings me such joy. OP: Would read again.

Graphics honestly don't matter to me at all. It doesn't bother me that the standalone will only be a LITTLE prettier, I'm much more interested in the things that impact the gameplay: bigger, more complex map, improved melee and unarmed combat, more enterable buildings, more interesting weapons (find-at-home type weapons) and a new inventory system: One where I can easily switch between a hatchet, sidearm, and main weapon. I honestly hope some stuff with the zombie pathing stays unresolved though. Running zombies indoors makes my heart shrivel in terror. It would make zombies a bit TOO dangerous. You have to be able to shake them SOMEhow without going mano-a-mano, but some of the proposed pathing fixes Rocket has talked about will make them nearly unshakeable! Perhaps slow them down? I've been hoping for more news to come out of Gamescom. Good job keeping track of all of it, Max!

Not necessarily a "Nice Guy" story, but more of an explanation why I will never be a bandit. I'd heard so much about the amazingly unique experiences offered by DayZ, like people teaming up with randoms and creating impromptu groups. I guess it was my naivete that let me think that was the norm. I thought most players wanted to salute and team up, for the sake of having an amazing experience. So I bought ArmA2 CO and installed DayZ... And was promptly murdered a few times in Cherno. Every interaction I had with a player character ended in bloodshed (usually mine, for waiting to find out their intentions before shooting). And I became bitter. I'd done everything right! I'd called out, "Friendly." I'd been unarmed and completely harmless! But it didn't matter, these players were out for blood for the simple reason that they could. I began to think that those amazing experiences, the stories of friendship and chance meetings and veterans mingling with noobs, taking them under their wings, were lies. They were the myths of a bygone era, and then men in those tales had been replaced with animals in the form of men. Survivors at any cost. It wasn't fun. I was running through Cherno after having raided the church with a hatchet and a revolver, hoping to make it out of this hellhole alive and disappear up north, raiding villages along the way, when something magical happened: I saw someone, someone who looked like they had a TON of nice loot, and they DIDN'T SEE ME. He was crawling out of Cherno, keeping a low profile behind a bush. My bitterness welled up inside me and I thought, "This is the first, and probably the ONLY time I will ever get the drop on somebody. I should take him out, take his stuff, and flee to the north." So I took aim and fired my last three revolver rounds at him. 15 feet away from me, and I missed. I missed so badly that I think my target thought it was just gunfire from somewhere else in the city. He didn't look around and see me, he just kept on crawling behind that stupid bush. My heart leaped into my throat as I pulled out my hatchet. It was now or never. It was kill, or be killed, right? That was the law of this land, and that was what I told myself as I ran forward towards my prone victim and began hacking away at him. One stroke: I broke his leg. Two strokes: He was bleeding like crazy, and had turned and fired on me with his assault rifle. Three strokes: He was dead, his spine severed and his head caved in. I was in shock. When I came to, covered in his and my own blood, I managed to bandage myself with shaking hands, and began rummaging through his ALICE pack. Assault rifle, Blood bags, Epi-pens, Morphine. It seemed as though my victim had everything he needed to save his own life except the luck to not be spotted by a bitter coward. I took it all. I took it all and tried to run. I left my hatchet next to his broken body as I fled aimlessly, not north but west along the beach, simply out of fear. Unfortunately for me, the gunfire had attracted a small horde of the infected. My unsteady aim with the assault rifle drew in even more. The infected offered me as much mercy as I had offered a nameless survivor whose only crime was holding nice equipment and failing to spot me. I was dead. I logged off and stepped away from my computer, but the thought that I had committed murder in a very real way would no leave me. Sleep eluded me that night. Work passed by in a blur as I thought about what it would be like to actually be crawling away and have a madman with a hatchet appear out of nowhere and cut you down, as you lay helpless on the ground. I imagined an axehead snapping my bones into pieces as I lay prone. And then I imagined what it would feel like to actually BE that madman. And then I remembered that I already was. Yes, it's only a game. No, I didn't really kill anyone. But a life was ended. Someone very real had their day ruined and lost everything they had worked to achieve in an instant because of my actions. Not only that, but I had completely destroyed this person's future potential. And I'd done it without evening bothering to find out if he was a threat. I didn't even TRY to talk to him. And I didn't even HAVE to try to talk to him. The option of just letting him crawl away unharmed had always been there. But I just... acted. And no previous bitterness could justify it. Since then, I have felt compelled to somehow atone for my actions. It has compelled me to get back in the game and live a peaceful life (or at least a life of self-defense) and shun a life of "survival-at-any-cost." But I've also had very little human interaction in-game since then. I've still not had one of those mythical experiences where two humans meet and salute one another, and protect each other as brothers in arms. I've adopted a different, weaker strategy. I always run now. And I cower in fear of one day meeting myself. But I can never be a bandit.

A torch is a common word in the UK for flashlight. So what he is saying is that, to limit the light coming out of the flashlight and make yourself less visible, you can put a sock or other piece of cloth over the flashlight. Less light is visible.