BlindProphet

Damn you. That was my first thought when i saw the thread title.

One of the guys who runs the private hive I'm on fixed the tent and vehicle saving in 1.7.2.5, and managed to at least reduce some of the artifacting. So someone is working on it...just might not be Rocket and company atm.

Eh its not that bad. I've had issues finding things before all depends on luck. Took me about a month to see a M16/M4 variant, could only find AK's regardless of where I went. Wasn't until recently when I went downed heli hunting that i actually found one. Elektro bandits I came across usually had AS50's so never really found 107's for myself. Couple other people I knew found 107's though durring that time though.

Welcome to DayZ?

I couldn't care less about my stats and your post there makes me want to hunt you down and kill you over and over again every time you spawn just because...

Going to point out that you can have negative humanity and still be a survivor. There is a threshold. Just FYI. Inside Cherno and Elektro? I've seen mayyyyyyybe 2 fully kitted out people in all my time playing, dying respawning at these cities, ect. I've seen a few moderately geared people. I've gone into these cities moderately geared. But I have seen actually geared people twice since I've started playing. And when I've got good gear I see zero real reason to hit these places as there are far easier places to get said loots that you could get there far more reliably and safely. And by safely I do mean easier to cover/better cover/less places with good sight lines to the good stuff. So really I have no idea what you're talking about. Yes I do occasionally go back to those places but only with throw away gear -if- i bring any gear to begin with. Especially in Electro there are very few places where you can get any decent equipment without a sniper having a good line of sight on you. As for being able to charge the sniper...sure its possible. With no real fear for their life? Ehhhhhhh....you lost me there. Not sure I'd call that a service to the community. Hence you're not really a bandit. Just a prick. Yes. The only difference is without sniper rifles I have to get just a little closer to kill you. Its not all that more difficult, or less safe. Same principles still persist. If I see you before you see me it doesn't matter if I have a sniper or not.

Going to point out the obvious that you miss. The mod is not a product of BiS. Spend that money on the stand alone? Sure! Spending money on something they have 0 control over other than the base client platform for? Well that seems silly despite how much money its bringing in. If you'll notice though they've been spending plenty on improving the platform in support of things for DayZ, but why would they spend money on something that is in no way shape or form theirs?

Bandits are a godsend to the game. There is a difference however being a bandit, and sitting around the main coastal cities and popping new players/fresh respawns. Yes you're adding 'tension' on being in one of those cities killing people who have no chance. But the 'tension' is one sided, and has about the same difficulty as taking out zombies (until someone flanks you on the hill and kills you for being a dick). Now on the other hand, laying in wait elsewhere waiting for them to hit up location x and then ambushing them when they do (even if you are 800m away) is more akin to banditry. You're actually adding suspense, tension, and all those things that make playing with other players in DayZ actually enjoyable. Yeah it does suck walking into such an ambush but at the same time if you'd actually spent more time scouting and making sure it was clear you might not have been taken out. But you also end up with the feeling of suspense too in that situation. They likely have as good of equipment as you, or better. They're probably being careful, they're probably scouting out to see if the coast is clear. They might be coming from the opposite direction than you're expecting. Its the exact opposite of sniping freshies out on the coast. Now can you end up doing hilariously awesome things in the main coastal cities as a bandit? Yes. Holding people up at gun point for their beans, forcing people to fight each other to be able to leave, taking over part of the city and setting up a bandit camp... Yeah they may only have a mackarov or 1911 but at that point you're down in the thick of it, and someone could end up coming up behind you, or raiding your fort or whatever. Theres suspense there both ways. Unlike that asshole up on the hill who might as well be shooting zombies for all the skill it takes to camp freshies.

Just going to point out your classifying what is essentially a deer hunting rifle as a 'military' weapon. Secondly making the AK the best thing you can get generally without great luck is not going to make killing more of a challenge. Assuming it does what you think it will (which I highly doubt) which is make people engage in closer range battles its not going to make killing people harder. It'll make it easier. Closer targets (what you're looking for with what you're stating) are easier to hit last I checked. Now instead of dodging snipers where you generally know where they'll be and what their sight lines are in cherno and elektro you have to worry about the guy with the shotgun waiting for you to look for loot so he can shoot you as you come into the room for kicks. Limiting range does not increase tactical options.

Just going to point out this doesn't work for everyone...

Going to point out I've seen people taking out zombies accurately at 400 meters with the dinnerbell while those zombies were feasting over a friend and I was moving in to get in to bandage and drag him out of there. So that really wouldn't change things... More to the point...Military weapons don't make engagements longer than 300 meters. Its the sniper rifles that make the engagement ranges generally longer. And really its not that hard to find a CZ550 and learn how to use it, and thats not a military weapon.

This is true if and only if the bandit who shot you did not hide/camp your body. This is true if and only if you have a full set of replacement gear in the tent/car. This is true if and only if you manage to make it back to your camp. This is true if and only if no one has found your camp in the time it takes you to respawn and get to your camp (or while you were out away from your camp in the first place). Not being able to set up a camp that works takes away from the experience. I started on a new server recently, ended up giving away a L85 not because I didn't want it but because I didn't have space to keep it around, and with tents not saving its not like I could store it for when I had ammo for it or I needed it for something. As is I hate that I'm carrying around a SVD and M14 AIM. I use the SVD during the day and the M14 at night as the SVD can't be used with NV or I'd just use that. I'd much rather feel safe keeping it in my tent and swapping out when needed. And lets assume I die here my camp is minimally 10 kliks away from the coast and I know of at least two other player camps between coast spawns and mine and traveling the safe route from the coast is at least another 5 kliks on top of that because of all the meandering around to less traveled areas. Not quite what I'd call a quick or easy trip. So yes I'd get to regear, assuming I got off the coast. Assuming I didn't get lost. Assuming I don't get killed along the way. Assuming no one finds my camp between when I die and when I actually manage to make it from one end of the map to the other. Assuming I manage to find enough supplies along the way not to starve/die of thirst (several times I've made it off the coast without a hatchet, hunting knife, or matches being found despite raiding everything possible. Had the worst streak of luck with that on the server I'm on now where the last time I respawned it took me 3 major towns, and 3 small towns before i finally found a hunting knife). Now sure, some people will have camps closer to the coast, that are easier to get to and less dangerous to get to. But when you make blanket statements like that... I think the lack of being able to set up a sustainable base to survive the apocalypse at makes the game less fun.

Honestly... Am I willing to shoot unarmed people? If me and my team have anywhere near halfway decent gear and they find us? Yes. Why? Because they're a threat even if they say friendly and beg for their lives. Why? Because last time we encountered this, at night raiding somewhere, and let the individual go because he had nothing to threaten us with five mins later we were pinned inside by a helo and some guy chucking flares, smoke grenades, and frag grenades in on us. So my policy is "I don't care if you're unarmed. If I've got decent gear, and you spot me I am not taking the risk unless you give me a really damn good reason." Now when I don't have anything decent I've run around with complete strangers I've met and had a grand ol time dodging sniper rounds and trying to get anything better than a mackarov.

Mountain Dew economy...

Here's the thing... It is not realistic for me if I'm looking to trade something that I throw it down on the floor out of my control. Nor is it realistic for me to let you go through all my stuff. If I was surviving the apocalypse and you suggested that? I would shoot you in the face several times because you are obviously a god damn thief and bandit. There's nothing stopping you from trying to shoot me after we trade stuff to get yours back... Just as there's nothing stopping you from getting shot by me... Also...This is also the game where we can stuff a main rotor assembly in our backpacks. Seriously... your 'its not realistic to have a mechanism for trade' falls apart when you realize you can fit an item in your backpack that is several times the volume of your pack...much less run at Olympic marathon speeds while carrying it.

I just want to point out to everyone a fact that everyone seems to miss. Who's fault is it that the game is in the state its in and rocket is not spending all his free time working on stuff for the mod? The answer is very very simple. Every. Single. One. Of. Us. Yes, it is our fault. Why is it our fault? Simple. We popularized the game. From youtube videos to word of mouth. We caused the game to go from being entirely a niche game to hitting over a million unique accounts. You know what that does? That draws attention. The more people paying attention to you, the more the demands are. The more the demands are the more you have to start managing the conversation more. The more you have to talk to people. So everyone upset that Rocket is spending time at conventions and doing interviews and the like? Its your fault he's there. You're part of why the game is so popular. Why theres so much attention being focused on the game. And with that attention there are demands that get placed upon his time that you inflicted upon him with your enjoyment of what he created. This is why we can't have nice things.

The 'zoom' is to represent the narrowing of ones vision and the focus down the sights of a gun. Now your eyes don't actually zoom in when looking down the sites like that, however if you do get tunnel vision. You acutely focus on whats down range when you're actually focusing on it. You see that much clearer but you stop consciously paying attention to everything else so you don't really see it. This is an actual thing. Its how our brain and eyes work. The game simulates this by narrowing our field of view and zooming in.

Just curious as to how you're sure this won't affect the game in a negative way? Increasing the number of items that it has to pick from can adversely affect the rarity of loot one way or another. And putting them in and tweaking spawn rate of such items, as well as possible locations could very much adversely affect the game. Also it may not take much time but it does take time to add such things in, and set them. Time that is better spent in other areas.

Oh really? No school has started for anyone? Interesting. My boss took his daughter up to college today so... My brothers kids start Monday... So yeah I hate to break it to you, just because you haven't started school doesn't mean that it hasn't for others, or they aren't in the process of getting ready to go back etc. Fact is there was the steam sale. Fact is the game has a high learning curve. Fact is a lot of people expected a less buggy experience. Fact is several large Beta's are currently going on. The fact is there is not just one factor at play here. Are the bugs hurting the game at the moment? Sure. Are the hackers hurting the game at the moment? Sure. Correlation does not imply Causation.

I'm going to point out that I did not say at any point there were not people who weren't playing anymore because of the hacking. I'm sure there are some who have done so. But its not just a simple issue of all these people are leaving because of hacking. There is a ton of stuff going on at the moment. Several huge beta's going on at the moment, new game release, TF2 updates, school starting up, and so on and so forth. You can't just point to one thing at the moment and go "THIS IS WHY!". Because its not just one thing. Which was my point. Its not just one thing, or another going on right now. There's lots of stuff happening that wasn't happening a couple of weeks ago. And to me a couple of weeks ago I felt like I couldn't go to a server without running into thunderdome or some other nonsense. Now I run into them on occasion but doesn't feel as constant. Maybe its battleeye (lol) maybe I'm just having better luck. Either way...I don't think its just the hackers, or the glitches that have caused the number of players each day to drop a bit. And no ones provided any evidence to the contrary.

People getting jobs. People going back to school. People getting ready to go back to school. People rocking out and playing darksiders 2 since it just came out. Team Fortress 2 released a big update. PlanetSide 2 is in beta testing.... There is a ton of things going on currently on why people might be taking a break or not playing DayZ every day. I know I have friends who've been working later than usual so haven't been playing. I have some friends who are taking a break because of the bugs. I have some friends who are taking a break since they're douchebags who have planetside 2 beta keys and I don't. All my friends who play DayZ were all off playing TF2 last night. So yeah not just a simple 'Oh people aren't playing everyone must be fed up and leaving'.

Just going to point out its hard to stop 'hackers' before they actually do something. Same with every other cheat protection program. It can only stop what it knows about, and only stops them when they actually do something at that. This is not Minority Report where they can predict the future that you are indeed going to hack and thus ban you before you ruin someones day.

I'm not sure where "Zombies need to be the threat" argument is coming from, because its absolutely false. Now Zombies do need to be an almost ever present hazzard. They need to be constantly there, constantly something you have to deal with. But they don't need to be super dangerous by themselves. Heck to me Zombies should essentially be along the lines of an environmental hazzard, like weather. Why? Because there's only ever going to be so much you can do with zombies, and they're never going to be a real threat. Players and their interactions are the threat. Not knowing if that guy you just saw duck into the building is friendly or not. If he's going to backstab you in the next hour or not. And so on and so forth. The popularity of The Walking Dead has essentially proven this to be something awesome. Now to the guy who's going to be a bandit till everyone treats the game different... So you're telling me you're going to perpetuate the style of play you hate until people you're forcing into that style of gameplay that you hate stop doing what you're programming them to do via your actions? Well enjoy that...

Well the issue with any anti cheat system is it can't really do much until someone actually cheats or goes to cheat. If its known before hand and they try something sure it can grab them before...but in general such systems only really catch people after they've done stuff. Kinda like laws. Laws don't prevent Bob from murdering John and instead generally serve to punish him later.

Its not really all that far fetched of a metaphor. A mod is essentially window dressing on a game. It uses the engine, and so on and so forth, it can modify the engine to a degree but there are very large limits there. So very much like a woman and a dress. The dress can be made to push out the tits, suck in the waist, accentuate the ass, show some leg, and so on and so forth, but it can't overly change the woman underneath, and the flaws she has are still going to be present the mod can generally only cover them up or accentuate other things to distract you from the bad. As for my implication of all that, came from reading your post (Perhaps wrongly!) that you were upset about the whole 'its alpha' bits and things not being fixed. If I read it wrong I'm sorry. Oh heck no its not solved. But I'm happy for progress towards it being solved. Its better than nothing. Before the .5 patch I literally tried everything people were saying would 'fix' it and none of it worked. On occasion I wouldn't get them but 99 times out of 100 I had to be glad that I'm not prone to seizures as I walked close to any of those areas and cheered whenever I managed to escape them alive. Now at least things seem to be mostly better and I can atleast fiddle with things and get them down to 'ok I can at least get out of here' if not 'I can probably do what I wanted to do here in the first place'. Well thats fairly simple. Games are funded. Game developers/Publishers hire QA staff to do testing and find major bugs. Theres a fair amount of money invested in such things. In the mod world you generally don't have a staff of testers, the money to hire quality ones, and so on and so forth. Now could you in theory get a bunch of volunteers to do this? In theory sure. But then there's still infrastructure to support it, bug reporting/sorting/verifying, servers for this testing, as well as tracking the different configurations you have and so on and so forth. And then you still have to worry about quality of testers, the amount of testing they can do at any given point, etc. Its generally not practical to do this as a mod team. And as for rolling back etc? Well it wasn't an actual released patch at first. It was 'hey I need you guys to test this out and give me feedback before I actually release it'. So why roll back if you haven't moved forward? Then everyone jumped on the bandwagon of moving it out to everything and now we are where we are. Personal experience with it, everything got better...save for tents eating my stuff. Load faster, graphical glitches are managable, etc. I've actually had more battle eye issues than actual patch related issues. All this seems to hold true for everyone I generally play with (10-15 other guys). Biggest issue we keep running into is battle eye...well that and explaining for the past couple of days 'OK this is how you install the patch...no stop doing that thats the wrong way...listen to what I'm telling you to - GOD DAMN IT STOP DOING THAT ITS NOT GOING TO WORK'. Swear I had this conversation no less than five times... 'No six launcher updated it i've got the patch' 'Bet you it says .4 there not .5 and that you can't actually connect to a .5 server' 'oh wow you're right' 'What did you think I was lying to you?'