miscology (DayZ)

25 dollars is pretty cheap for a game as richly detailed and moddable as Arma. If you waited for Standalone but decided the game was too difficult or boring, then what? You've wasted your money. If you buy Arma and you decide DayZ is hard\boring, well there are lots of other mods to play. If you discover the Arma editor you can design missions as complex or simple as you want. Once the Standalone is released DayZ mod will still continue to grow. It won't be possible for SA to please everybody all the time. New features can be implemented much faster in DayZ mod, however, Standalone will be more secure. There are huge advantages to both.

Starting with a gun Pros: You have a gun. Fun times. Starting without a weapon: More challenging. Fun times. Writing long articles. ???

Pointless killing is only a problem because the features that will balance it haven't yet been added. - There's no ability to find out who did it, track him down, revenge kill etc. When players know there are consequences for their kill they'll think twice. - Also, there's no ability to incapacitate somebody, like tying them up, knocking them unconscious, pinning them down. This would stop a lot of the killing for loot. Put in those and you restore balance.

Poor organisation. Major Lag. Watching 6 streams. Everybody dies during lag\desync. Great, as in accurate, advertisement for DayZ

Head up to the inlet past the NE airfield. It's nice there, and I've found some ATVs and camps around there.

Guess learning to survive in DayZ is Trust Noone. Most of us learned that from Day 1 when dupers used their AS50s to kill us on sight. If you've got an AS50 or L85 in a tent, you didn't find it legitimately - it's a duped or spawned weapon kept there as a spare. No tears shed.

I like to hang out in the wilderness or northern areas, solo, therefore need a hunting knife, matches and hatchet before setting out. Last night I had such trouble finding meat that I easily died at the next zombie encounter. It was a 4 day character and I hadn't been able to find what I needed in any supermarket or apartment I visited. I can always find 2 out of 3 in one city, but rarely all three. Last night I finally found some matches, but ran for hours and couldn't find a single animal to gut. I finally found one and it despawned as I approached it. :( Is it just me or is wildlife really rare.. in the wild?

For the love of God just use the Steam Overlay trick! Hold down W. Press Shift Tab simultaneously. Click to close the overlay. Done.

They're already logging Alt-F4s with a recent patch while they decide how to punish players who do it. Rightly or wrongly, people do it as a tactic, so until there's a fix, use the opportunity to motivate you to learn to be a better shot, or avoid conflict altogether. There's a Sniper Range map you can get for Arma 2 that allows you to practice every gun in a target range. Learn headshot kills.

If there was a system to know who killed you and track them, would you look for revenge? I still remember the name of the first person who killed me. He tried to hold me up like a mugger. I ran and hid, got a few Makarov shots in him, but he got me in the end. If I meet him again, I'll kill him. If you're a murderer and you knew that everytime you killed someone they could identify and track you later, would you still kill as often?

I was looking around my home town of Edinburgh thinking how perfect it would be for a DayZ setting. It's got a large central city, with a sprawling superb, plus a castle, and seven large hills surrounding the city. Every hill can be seen from 6 other hills, so sniper hills have an extra challenge. It's often cold, windy and rainy, fitting my favourite weather in DayZ. Lots of hills and interesting areas for DayZ players. There's a great coastline, a large river, huge old bridges, mysterious islands and lots of interesting mountains in the distance. There's an airport and old WW2 airbase that used to keep squadrons of hurricanes. The towns in DayZ are unrealistically small, making me wonder if the DayZ engine can support them. However, if DayZ is going to venture into other world's I personally would prefer something that really feels ancient, decayed and apocalyptic. What do you think? Is this the direction DayZ maps should go, or are you a fan of the Lingor Island setting? Google Image Gallery for more pics.

I don't like bandit skins, since you can't tell who's a murderer in real life just by looking at them, but it's a useful stop gap until there's a better way for players to find and punish murderers in-game. The biggest reason people kill is because there are no real consequences, which is pretty unrealistic.

I laugh when I saw that it took you three shots to kill an unarmed player with an AKM. When you're that bad at a game, even an unarmed player can be a threat to you. I don't blame ya. Kill the sheep too, just in case you trip over one.

Mind the Gate. While prone my head was hit by the opening gate. I was already severely wounded, had no more bandages and died.

Thermal doesn't work behind glass, and buildings, but that's about it. In the cities you can use cover, but if you're in the open country you really have very little hope. If he's a good shot he'll take you out before you know his location. If you figure out where he is, then Zig Zag could work, especially if you bring zombies with you. If you're close he'll run. If he has buddies, you're dead. When they fix the duping the L85 thermal will be so rare, and fall only into the hands of good clans, so you won't ever have to worry about it really. Make sure to remind ever person you see using an L85 that unless they found it themselves at a heli site, then 99% chance it's an illegitimate dupe or hack. They probably won't care but i get the feeling the developers are tracking these guns and making lists, checking them twice. By Christmas time - who knows....

I'm disgusted by this man's kindness and compassion and sense of fair play. I think I'm going to throw up at what a friendly person you are. I pray for a real zombie apocalypse so I can shoot you in the face, and live a lonely paranoid life.

I'm torn. I disagree with bandit skins coming back, since it kind of messes with the realism a bit. It's not like real murderers have a particular "look". However, this will mean murderers are easy to identify and kill which overall will be an improvement. A player today told me he was only sniping in Elektro because he wanted to kill bandits. I asked him for his stats. 12 murders. 1 bandit kill. Suuure.

You stayed in the same spot after an Alt F4? What are you? Retarded?

The game is more challenging if you take the same respect for life in the real world and apply it to the game. Shooting people is fun, but it's not the same as challenging. In real life I run half-marathon+ distances every week. It's not fun.. it's challenging. Men like a challenge. It makes us stronger, better people. When you kill someone in-game, you're killing somebody who like you, worked for hours to get to where they are. I think it says something about a person's psychology if they enjoy taking that away from someone, just because they can. I respect people who'll sit in a bush in a ghillie and let a group of people walk right by them unseen. That's what real snipers do. That's fucking tense shit! A great feeling when they don't see you. It's not the only way to play the game of course, but it's challenging. I like things to be challenging, to be hard, and not taking the easy way out. I like following a code of ethics, and trying to work within that. Killing is too easy. I don't expect everyone to think the same way, just like some people think I'm crazy when I tell them I did an 18 mile jog. However, I respect people more when they like a challenge.

Most of these arguments are pointless. Fix duping, retroactively remove all AS50s, and then that's the right time re-evaluate weapon balance. Right now, high powered gear is everywhere.

Most camp sites I've found have a huge amount of rare sniper rifles. If they ever fix duping I think long distance sniping will become rare again. I'm watching a stream right now where a team of three people with guns they earlier raided from dupers tents are sniping people half a click away. AS50 guy: "Enemy with AK 47 running across the field!". 6 shots later. "He's down!".

I'll likely get flamed for this, but that's the nature of the internet. Can't complain about human nature. :) This is a bit long, but if you put aside the frustration that we all feel when someone Alt F4s you might see how this can make us all better players. Let me start by saying I've never Alt-F4'd on other players. It never occurred to me to do it until I heard Rocket talking about it. "why disconnect during the exciting part!?" I thought. I've been a bit of a DayZ addict the past couple of months so in addition to my own play I've watched about a hundred hours of players streaming over the past few weeks. They all bitched about Alt-F4. Guess what. They all did it at some point, usually followed by a justification for why it was fine in that situation "scripters", "fuck 'em, they did it to us first", etc. I found that justification an interesting insight into the psychology of players who might DC on me. Given the opportunity I think many experienced players will do it - they might even be the most likely to do it. Like I said, as a noob, it never even occurred to me. I'm used to people rage quitting AFTER being killed. I'm inspired a little bit by the TV show Caprica where there was a virtual world with a twist, similar to DayZ, based on realism, with no rules. The server recognized you by your DNA. If you got killed you were banned for life, therefore people valued their lives nearly as much as their real ones. If they were in trouble, they disconnected. I liked that, because it added drama, and forced the characters to be smarter when hunting them down. Why is this a good thing in a game? Well, it's Player vs Player. Not Avatar vs Avatar. The only hard coded objective in game is to survive, and you'll likely go through many Avatars learning to be good at this. The first time I was shot by a punk-bitch while unarmed, I escaped, bandaged up, grabbed an axe, gathered a horde of zombies and chased him. He couldn't decide who to shoot so kept running. He begged me to stop over the mic, but I kept on the poor fucker. Eventually he disconnected. The military would call that a tactical retreat. . From an Avatar vs Avatar perspective, his avatar held onto its life and weapons. We both lost some blood. I lost nothing else of value. A better turnout would have been to kill him, but I never wanted to do that in the first place. He was no longer a threat. From Player vs Player perspective, I feel I won. I put him on the defensive and forced him to leave. His objective failed. My most recent DC was a player after I killed his buddy. I'm guessing he wanted to protect his gear.How can this make everyone a better player? If you're the guy who Alt F4s, don't just reconnect on a different server and continue being a punkbitch. Think about what you could have done differently to survive that situation? I'm inviting you to think about how you can kill me more effectively. Ironically this will negate your desire to disconnect in the first place. Why?Because I'm thinking what I could have done differently to kill you before you disconnect. I'm remembering players like you, and coming up with counter-defensives. If you snipe me and I live I'm figuring out how I can reach you unseen, and kill you before you disconnect. If I shoot at your team and kill you, and your buddies live I think about how I can take everybody out faster. I load up Arma 2 missions and practice faster kills with the weapons I suck on. I don't know how good I am, but I'm already better, and for me that's the fun part. I think there can be improvements made to the disconnection exploit sure, which I can elaborate on if anyone is interested, but even as it stands I'm fine with it. It's not in my personality to whine about exploits, since I'm only interested in what I can control. I can't control scripters, but I can practice stealth and getting head shots. I'm not claiming to be a good player, I'm just trying to put a positive spin on an exploit and use it to my advantage.For me, the players are just better armed versions of the zombies. I know many of them want to kill me, so I'm going to make sure they don't surprise me. If they do, they better be prepared for any tactic I might use, otherwise, tough shit. You're playing me, and I'm playing you. Not your avatar. tl;dr; I don't play DayZ to kill, but to survive against zombies and bandits, so if your survival tactic is to Alt F4 when your ambush backfires, my survival tactic is to make sure all your ambushes backfire, and head-shot you first.

<p><p> Actually, right now I'm near the black line in the North East exploring. I have a gun for defense, but not because I'm looking for people to kill, though right now I'm looking for camps :D. I don't have much else, honestly. No map, compass or anything like that, but I'll keep them if I find them. I actually do enjoy the survival aspect, but that doesn't mean surviving with the bear minimum. Your method of playing it is valid, but for me, it seems counter intuitive if your objective is to survive. I like scoping out a supermarket or location looking for human activity, then deciding if I should be stealthy or avoid it entirely.

You could watch dymoxide's stream. He puts together teams to find and build helicopters. I learned a lot from him. You will need a team though. http://www.twitch.tv/dymoxide