logan66

This. I thought the forum was down for several days :(

No - we never talked about video until after admin started kicking in mass. First, no one in our crew bothered to hide a body. We were simply shocked when the admin stated that hiding bodies was against the server rules. Whether or not we agreed with the rules was not the point of my post - as I stated, I agree that private servers can make up whatever rules they want. The post was to make sure other players are aware that you have admins who kick players for typing exactly 5 words in side chat - "Wow, dis admin be crazy" - which was said in response to an aggressive and antagonistic admin who was confronting multiple players discussing the surprising and controversial nature of the "no hiding" rule. I think it's important for players to be aware of not just the rules of a server, but the hair-trigger disposition of the admins as well. And I think even private server admins should consider that their actions can and will be discussed outside of the server they rule with iron fists. Also, you might consider posting your complete server rules, as well as the conditions for kicking and banning, in this thread for reference.

Sorry, bodha, but I and entire crew of 7 can confirm admin power tripping. Certainly you can make whatever rules you want, like no one can question the sensibility of the apparent rule of "no hiding bodies". And you can kick people for questioning the fairness of admin kicks. But, we can also make sure other players know how you choose to run your server. BTW, we have the whole thing on video. [edit] And just to be clear, I'm not complaining about my kick, since I asked to be kicked after the admin started power tripping.

Incredibly slow load times right now.

Yes remove. Negatives outweigh positives.

This gets my support. In a survival game, death should be an extremely undesirable experience; something to be avoided at all costs. It should never serve as a quick transport mechanism, a la Riverworld's "Suicide Express".

Can we get a confirmation of whether the L85 was intentionally removed from the mod, or just from existing inventories (anti-duplication measure perhaps?) , or a possible bug? Would be nice to know for sure.

Question: do server admins have another way (besides global channel) to chat with players, and vice versa? If not, how are players and server admins supposed to initiate communication with each other? Sorry if this was answered earlier in the thread, but I wasn't able to wade through all the name calling and abuse. For what its worth, I always support giving players a choice over forcing one play style preference onto all players - as long as my choice doesn't adversely affect your experience.

It is starting to sound like today's American political campaigns in here. I wish there was an easy way to filter out all the name calling, label and dismiss, and "if you don't like it leave" posts from this thread. It would likely reduce the length from 28 pages to about 12. That would certainly make it easier to keep track of the actual ideas and/or debate.

Sorry for the long post. Editing is not my strong suit. ------- tl;dr - Use game mechanics to equally facilitate alternate play styles by improving communication & recognition, resource sharing, and possibly a humanity-to-reputation system. -------- I'm not sure I agree with changes that would encourage or discourage a particular play style. Rather, I'd like to see some mechanics changes that put the differing styles on an even footing. I think there are two primary axes (axis plural, not chopping tool) of play style that are out of balance in terms of game mechanics support: communication and resource sharing. Communication is easy to support for the lone wolf, kill-everyone style of player; it's not needed. Meta-teaming using 3rd party tools is also easy to support since no game mechanics are required. Impromptu, in-game communication is where the problem lies with the current system. Direct communication seems like a good way to handle this - if it worked. Direct VOIP seems very hit-or-miss in my experience. Most of the time, I see no evidence that people close to me hear anything I'm saying. I'm not sure if that's my problem or the game. Direct chat doesn't work at all. Even if they both worked, they would be difficult to distinguish from all the meta-chatter going on. While I see the appeal of non-RP social chat, it tends to diminish the immersion. Another aspect to communication that's lacking is the ability to recognize other players. You may play for days with a team, but it's terribly difficult to recognize your teammates by sight. A new person could run into your view that looks virtually identical to your teammates and you would never know until too late. The constant "is that you" also disrupts the immersion for me. My solutions to communication: 1. Fix direct VOIP and chat. 2. Either remove or significantly differentiate global VOIP and chat (perhaps allow unsubscribe to channel?). 3. Find some way to share tags between players- either explicitly using a "share tag" feature, or as a result of close proximity for a defined length of time (perhaps add a range of visibility to prevent miles away identification). Resource sharing is also problematic. For the lone wolf, it's not needed at all. For people working together, it's a real challenge (not in a good way). Bugs cause drops to disappear, and every time I've tried to put more than one item in another person's pack most of the items disappear. Collecting and protecting resources is also not possible, unless I'm missing something important (entirely possible). AFAIK, tents are big 'ol "hey come loot me" signs since they are very difficult to place, especially in hidden/protected areas. My solution to resource sharing: I'd like to try it with existing systems, but without the bugs. Until I do that, I'm not sure adding more items or functions is necessary. As a side note, I think the humanity-to-reputation system has merit and would approximate some of the natural consequences of extreme behavior. Mass murders and saints would get a reputation and become recognizable, while the majority of the masses would remain anonymous.

Same issue. I tried deleting my player profile and creating a fresh one - no effect. Every time I spawn, I have a different number of zombie kills (and headshots), and different blood value. No matter what the blood value (had between 300 and 1900 on different spawns), the droplet indicator is blinking and screen is blurry.

Perhaps a simple translation of Humanity to Reputation would be feasible to implement? People in the middle ranges are anonymous, while people at the extremes are recognizable - either as known killers or known "saints". The automatic triggering of reputation from killing or helping seems like an approximation of rumor and information sharing without requiring the in-game mechanics. And it would be harder to gimmick than 3rd party voting (i.e. witnessing). Also, perhaps recognition could have a threshold of proximity - you have to be close enough before you get the indicator (color of name?). I agree that without any consequences for helping or preying upon fellow survivors, the game will probably degrade into nothing more than deathmatch + zombies. My 2 cents.