s4pphire

The M16 ACOG is nice and all but it's too situational to be useful all-round. At long and short range it just won't cut it. I'd suggest an M4A1/A3 CCO or similar which isn't too hard to come by. If you're really determined to keep the M16, losing the M24 and replacing it with something like an M4A1 CCO SD would be the only worthy replacement to even out the pros and cons in my opinion. However, you'll end up with two situational primaries and the switching could become tedious. Then again it comes down to play-styles and no one can really tell you what will work for you.

The gamma exploit was fixed in the latest patch, it barely makes a difference now. So yeah, you really don't want to play at night if you don't know the map or basic game mechanics. Learn how to deal with it at day first.

Start off playing on a low-population server and learn how to avoid zombies through stealth, once you're confident with that and know the general building/loot layout, you can be a lot more aggressive and lose the zombies chasing you through the use of buildings and other line of sight techniques (crawling over the street to avoid zombies in a crowded area is asking to get killed on a server with a larger amount of people). You can loot an entire city without killing a single zombie even if you are chased by many, once you can deal with that, you can add PvP to the equation.

I usually play in a group of two, yet I have 'owned' between 10-20 vehicles, mostly stolen. There are only a handful of vehicles which can be remotely hidden, it really isn't hard to come across them if you put some time and effort into it. Blaming people for hoarding vehicles is quite silly too, with the amount of .50 cals around currently you must be absolutely retarded to drive anything but a bicycle or motorcycle around the place with more than 10-15 people on the server. We took out four active vehicles in the past two days alone, and there is nothing whatsoever you can do if you find yourself in that situation, so what other choice do you have but to keep them hidden unless the server is almost empty?

The M4 is the better all-round weapon, it will drastically reduce the time you spend inside a dangerous area as well as not giving away your position and its shortcomings are similar to those of the L85 (range and accuracy suck). Thermal vs all-round viability is what it comes down to and for solo-play the M4 should be much stronger if you approach the area with patience before going in. As for the M9SD, while it's a nice weapon and all, it's just as shit as the other handguns and you will be out of ammo before you even realize it.

What you're saying might be true for high-pop servers but servers with ~20 people during peak-time don't seem to be affected by this problem. I have never encountered a hacker on a low-pop server, except for someone who saw me through trees in a very, very suspicious fashion hence I aborted just like when a hacker teleports me. The difference between certain servers is brutal, at this point you are asking to get killed if you insist on joining high-pop servers. Find yourself a decent low-medium server and you'll probably avoid most of the problems you're currently experiencing. From my experience in many situations people claim someone is cheating just because they don't entirely understand what happened, but more often than not it probably was a legit kill and given the current situation, it's hard to tell the difference and it simply comes down to a 'maybe'. Fact remains, this won't change much in the coming months and all you can do is deal with it or wait for the standalone.

While the alpha/beta argument is valid, this issue can be considered game-breaking and should simply be taken out until it can be fixed. Corpses on the ground aren't worth the problems they are causing.

If it's a 1.7.2.5 server I would guess that it returned to its spawn location. However, it's hard to know for sure since the cause can be anything really, some servers don't spawn vehicles due to a hive issue, others respawn them at 1.7.2.4 locations if the vehicles had a previous 'owner' and the server was upgraded to 1.7.2.5 so all you can do is check spawn points or where you found that ATV. My suggestion is to ignore vehicles until it's fixed if you know your server is affected by the problem or there will be tears after server restarts.

Not from my experience, although that may vary from server to server. You could test it but I wouldn't go out of my way to repair a vehicle only to have it despawn.

On 1.7.2.5 the vehicles seem to respawn at their default locations and saving one will cause it to get replaced by something else in the saved location while the original is respawned at the actual spawn point. V3S converted into a tractor for me, PBX into an ATV. The 'cloned' vehicles don't survive the next restart though, from what I saw. In essence, ignore vehicles until it's fixed.

Tents work on 1.7.2.5, only the first save works, though. So as long as you don't place a tent in a position where it can collide with terrain upon restart, it should work. I have lost many, many tents and items due to going out of my way and placing them inside trees, on slopes, by testing the tent with a trash item and then losing all items on the next save after I thought it would work etc., and now I simply place a tent on a flat piece of terrain away from trees and save it with everything in it.

Thermal in group-play is insanely effective, that's fine though; there is no need for minor or even moderate PvP balance. It adds an extra layer of risk and expands spotting potential, and counters bush wookies effectively. Something as extreme as the AS50 TWS is an abomination and shouldn't be available, but the L85 is a terrible assault rifle and on top of that it's extremely rare (despite all the duping, it's still not as common as most people make it out to be). The bottom line is that it's rare weapon that shines in a squad environment, and will most of the time be used in encounters of experienced people.

Once I got crushed between the bench and the ceiling in the south barracks.

Or, you know, join a low pop server and run through Cherno/Elektro and loot everything you need in about five minutes. Running through either on a 40+ server is usually suicide and if all you want to do is avoid the pvp, there's no reason to expose yourself to it. Although, just like you run a high risk of dying there, so does the sniper; if you know where to look, there's a good chance you will end up fully geared after killing him. Then again, you can avoid getting sniped if you know the common spots and position yourself accordingly, read: not going on rooftops, sitting out in the open and crawling around the place is usually enough. From my experience, the majority of the people I kill are those who are greedy and feel inclined to visit every rooftop, sit still in the tower of the fire station. Then there's the kind who run towards you in a straight line begging to be killed, those who feel that killing that zombie in the large open area while standing still is a great idea and the smart ones who make a large turn and approach you in silence, who will often walk away with a nice chunk of gear.

So, this server I've been playing on for a while seems to change names every two days or so. With every change of name, the server also seems to change its ID as tent and vehicle positions are shifted, meaning that if I have a tent at position A with the first name and a tent at position B with the second name, the tents (and vehicles) will work accordingly depending on the current name of the server. Is this a bug or actual admin abuse by using two IDs and switching the server's ID?

You went into Cherno with that gear, that's one of the dumbest possible things you could do.

If everybody in the game was friendly, the game would no longer be intense and nerve-wrecking; and that would completely destroy its purpose. Assuming that the game had no PvP aspect, would you really go out of your way to walk through a treeline rather than an open field? Would you sit outside the place you want to loot for a good few minutes to make sure you're alone? No, I didn't think so. The game essentially is a survival simulator, I know I wouldn't continue playing if it wasn't for the PvP aspect that makes you feel like every moment could be your last.