FVin

At this sad stage of DayZ's life, I seriously hope you don't honestly believe that's why you were shot at.

No. The players are placed in a apocalyptic environment where, for the most part, they're encouraged to cooperate to survive. A few bad apples here and there are expected, which is why we have the "bandit" concept. And because of that you can't just safely assume you can trust every survivor you run across. Don't forget, paranoia is supposed to be a major component of this game. Who can you trust? And how do you know an ally will never turn on you? Unfortunately, because of the way the players have chosen to play, the entire paranoia concept is shot. Everyone is KOS, because you're not really being paranoid when everyone *is* actually out to get you.

Yeah, it's trying to tell us that it has a lot of annoying bugs that need fixing before it's even remotely ready for primetime. I think about that every time my character's legs break because I went prone near a structure and the game decided to go all stupid on me. But we already knew that, so the additional memo was worthless. What's your point? ;)

Last night (pre-update) I logged off on the server I normally play on (let's call it "server-X" for simplicity). When I logged in after updating (as server-X had updated already), I was placed back on the coast, nowhere near where I had logged off at. Actually, I was placed right next to a house of a small town on the coast, and by the time I had control of my character zombies were already aware of and chasing me. Clearly no server hopping was involved there. A bug's a bug.

Bit of a bug. Last night (pre-update) I logged off on the server I normally play on (let's call it "server-X" for simplicity). When I logged in after updating (as server-X had updated already), I was placed back on the coast, nowhere near where I had logged off at. Actually, I was placed right next to a house of a small town on the coast, and by the time I had control of my character zombies were already aware of and chasing me.

From comments he's made in the past, Rocket seems to want DayZ to encourage a lot more cooperation between players. That was his reason for removing weapons from new characters.. so they would cooperate with one another from the start. But all it did was make them easy pickings. Unfortunately, these minor changes and cosmetic tweaks are just not going to get the job done. The internet is filled with too many gamers who find amusement in griefing their peers, and the only way he's ever going to be able to counter that is with some drastic, immersion breaking rules. All MMO-esque developers face this same challenge. Lots of them have cool ideas that are inevitably ruined because you just can't give players nice things and expect them to play nicely. Unless your sandbox is filled with safeguards enforcing nice play, all it's going to attract are bullies.

Ah, I see the confusion. In the current state, yes, DayZ rewards players who treat this game more like a death match than a zombie apocalypse simulator. And Rocket has done very little to fix this problem, but he's made it clear that this alpha stage of the game is more about testing the viability of the game (the goal being a standalone product) than fixing these issues. The alpha is, after all, just a rough experiment. However, if you listen to his interviews he makes it pretty clear that he wants DayZ to be more about survival and cooperation between players. He has, for example, stated that the reason he removed the starting pistol from players was to encourage new characters to work together to overcome the environment. Not that that happened..all it did was make new characters easy pickings for griefers. Point is, if everyone just kills everyone else on sight then the entire zombie/survivor/bandit concept goes right out the window and you're left with a deathmatch game riddled with zombies on a large map. That's going to get boring quickly, and I think Rocket knows this. Eventually these little tweaks he's making in an attempt to encourage the players to focus on the environment as the adversary (rather than hunting one another) are going to give way to more drastic changes in gameplay mechanics. They have to, or most anyone who came here looking for a zombie apocalypse survival simulator is going to turn their backs on this game. Because there are far better PvP/deathmatch-style games out there, and they are a dime a dozen. Now, seeing as the standalone version of DayZ is (according to Rocket) 2-4 months away, if he manages to hammer DayZ into something closer to his vision in that time.. then yes, treating this game like deathmatch map is ultimately going to get frustrating for that user (or feel incredibly feature-shallow), because that's not what it's designed to focus on.

No.. pretty sure I typed exactly what I meant to. Why, what do you think I meant by my statement?

If all you're after is a FFA deathmatch in the city.. you might as well just fire up ArmA 2 and drop the entire DayZ mod altogether. You'll have access to more maps (including the one DayZ uses), more personnel equipment, more types of gear, more vehicles, better respawn mechanics etc. And you won't have annoying zombies getting in the way. And ArmA has a crazy number of mods available for it that can improve sounds, gameplay mechanics, etc. If you listen to Rocket's numerous interviews, you'll know that DayZ was really designed to encourage cooperation between players. Obviously it's not doing that very well, but the point is you're trying to fit a square peg through a round hole and (because of that) you're always going to be struggling against the setup and limiting the amount of fun you could have if you followed the advice mentioned above. You also might want to check out All Points Bulletin: Reloaded. Lots of modern day urban combat happening there, and it's free to play.

It's a display bug in that the fire isn't supposed to be that large. It happens in ArmA games occasionally. I've seen it obscure entire valleys, including the towns nestled within them. Pretty annoying when you're far out on a ridge trying to snipe enemy soldiers down in the town who are being obscured by the graphical effect. People usually suggest that restarting your client will resolve the problem, but some say it requires a server reset. I tend to believe the latter as the former has never worked for me.

It would be interesting to know how many of that million actively play. So many players grab ArmA, fire up DayZ, and then promptly quit after playing it once. And yet their momentary curiosity forever counts in that 1 million unique players figure. Honestly, if we're going to try and predict how many gamers will bother to check out a game advertised as a zombie apocalypse simulation.. I wouldn't be surprised if that 1 million figure doubles or even triples. But the stat is relatively useless; there shouldn't be any surprises that gamers would be interested in the concept (if not the actual game). The usage statistics for the last 24 hours say ~179k unique players. So, let's be generous and define "actively playing" in this case as someone who plays DayZ at least once a week. In that case, how many active players does DayZ have? That's the real question.

Well, it sounds like that after the next patch they're going to be focusing on the standalone product release. He said September would be on the early side, but could realistically see it coming out not too long after that (and before the end of the year). So, I would guess that the end of DayZ as a mod is maybe 2+ months away.

Grabbing ArmA 2 CO for DayZ would be a waste at this point. The developer has pretty much made it clear that the current serious problems with the game can't be fixed as long as DayZ is a mod, and is depending on the standalone version as a solution. Grabbing ArmA 2 CO for a cool multiplayer military sim experience though, that I can recommend (as long as you're into that sort of thing).

There's really nothing for Bohemia Interactive to be embarassed about. ArmA wasn't designed to be a quasi-MMO style game with persistance on a hive server structure. It's a military simulation that you can play with few friends. Why worry about security and hacking in that type of environemnt? DayZ has simply outgrown the intention of ArmA and is being abused because it a) stuck its neck out in a way that was never intended or supported and b) because a loot-based zombie apocolypse game that has unregulated PvP attracts a certain breed of gamer. If anyone has anything to be embarassed about, it's the players DayZ has attracted. Despite having the same vulnerabilities, you don't see rampant abuse and griefing in ArmA because the people playing that game are looking for a rich military sim experience. They're more about teamwork and less about being @$$hats.

ArmA is actually a great game. It often attracts a different type of player than DayZ, though (the latter apparently attracts the type of player that likes to grief and cheat). People who play ArmA for ArmA are usually looking to have a cool, somewhat realistic, military simulation experience - not wreck everyone's fun with B.S..