venthos

You needed DayZ to prove this to you? You've got a long and frightening road ahead on the internet if you're just figuring that out now. I stopped reading your post after this, because I can already tell the remainder of the thread is for naught and I can address its entirety right now. As Rocket has stated, he absolutely agrees with your statement that 'rules' need to be setup. Guess what, those 'rules' are intended for us (the players) to create and enforce. It is not for him (or any other dev/designer) to arbitrarily setup and balance/enforce as a game mechanic. That's what makes this game so amazing is that we (the players) will be left to enforce everything. Check out one of Rocket's recent interviews where he even re-states this in saying how he loves the EVE format and is striving to accomplish something somewhat similar. http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/21/interview-the-standalone-future-of-dayz-and-what-it-means-for-players/ Further, he states that the current mechanics/gameplay account for 1-2 days worth of play time out of his long term vision for what the game will be. In his vision, entire cities/towns will be able to be created from nothing and leaderships/rules set and enforced by the players with no arbitrary game mechanic restriction dictating what they should be. If you want the game developer strong arming everyone into playing "their way", find another game. With DayZ, we'll be playing it the way the community as a whole (or more specifically, the players on the server) collectively decide it should be played. That's way cooler than some forced mechanic. With that said... bye bye! (Also, it's Alpha)

Hahaha I love that's all you can come up with now as a retort to my posts. Yes, clearly I am affiliated with Vert Hosting. It would be a great business decision to berate a former client in the very same thread that they made about "my" company. Mere hours after "my real user's" post, too. I am just a random person of the DayZ community, unaffiliated with any hosting company of any kind, who hates irrational incompetent jerk wallet admins who are self-entitled. Having run that data center for years, I've run into too many of you to not speak out when you're hurting upstart businesses with your garbage. I have no opinion of Vert Hosting, but I have one of you. I'm making it known. Hilarious. I requested that you dig yourself deeper, and you've done just that. It couldn't possibly be that I'm trying to avoid a public flame war that results in a moderator coming in and yelling at the both of us, could it? Naw, that'd be applying that thing called "logic" that's so foreign to you. HAHAHA and you just updated saying I'm taking it "off-topic"? Who is the one who evaded my giant post with a "clearly you're Vert's CEO!" fallacy. You're classic, man. Now you're telling me that if I don't like what you have to say I should just be quiet and not read your threads? D'awww, sorry for standing up for logic and reason, my good sir. Carry on with your irrational rage.

You could have fooled me by buying managed hosting and acting like a wallet admin. You certainly make no effort to display any sort of IT competency in your posts to even convince me that you are capable of anything beyond Microsoft Word. So, please accept my apologies if I don't believe a word of what you're saying. I like that you imply I am still in school when it's clear that's where you should be. Your original post (since edited) incorrectly used "you're" and you're spouting off terms like "bro" (Yeah, yeah, "Grammar Nazi". But you brought up education first, sir. You made it fair game.) Hah, and as I'm typing this you just updated another post riddled with typographical errors and more nonsensical wallet admin garbage. Did Vert Hosting agree to, in their terms of service or otherwise, guarantee and watch over the database? It sounds like you're making a lot of the same wild assumptions I see $5/month shared hosting wallet admins make. You can't even talk about databases in proper terms, either. "The files" are not updating. Hilarious. If you want to play the e-peen waggle war, not only have I run and managed an entire data center floor of hundreds of racks for years, but I am a developer. I've seen you "wallet admin" folks time and time again. If you had the knowledge you say you do, you would have leased an unmanaged server and set things up yourself. Not only would it perform better (especially with your "13 years experience") but it would be cheaper and easier. For someone as "amazing" as you, it makes zero sense to purchase managed. Don't even pull the "time" card. You've already admitted to spending more time in the ticket system than it would've taken any amateur admin to maintain their own unmanaged box. That's why all of my stuff is leased unmanaged and maintained by myself. Your move, wallet admin. Dig that hole deeper. Although, I welcome you to take this into PM with me so that we don't continue to gum up Vert Hosting's threads. I just felt the need to defend them against someone who is clearly irrational and incompetent.

...as opposed to giant hosting companies that spring up with thousands of clients from the ether to give out free hosting to the masses? Did you read anything you typed? Your post comes off like you think every company is a scam except for if a Google sized web hosting company spontaneously poofed into existence and offered free hosting. Anyway, back to gwbrewer... From what FiX posted, and from the tone of gwbrewer's post, it sounds like to me that gwbrewer is a "Wallet Admin". Someone who knows virtually nothing about server operation other than how to punch in credit card details to submit payment. Learn some basics, sir. It'll go a long way. Your logic is also greatly flawed. Who cares if the MySQL DB is locally or remotely stored? How does that negate the fact that DayZ itself is Alpha and buggy? If DayZ's own logic for performing SQL queries is buggy (and it sure as hell seems to be at the moment given the Hive update issues in 1.7.2.5) then it doesn't matter where your MySQL server is or whether or not you're using Rocket's hive. You seem to have very little understanding of how things work, further backing up my "Wallet Admin" theory of you. I've never used Vert Hosting and would only ever run my own server from scratch vs. a server-in-a-box host anyway (in fact, I run a DayZ server right now), but wallet admins who yell at hosts really irk me.

Oh oh oh. I love these "let's protest by quitting until <x>!" threads. Also, the self-imposed beacon of entitlement via the "my posts are ultra important, therefore they are written in green" is a fantastic touch. I give this an 8 / 10. Trust me, sir, no one will miss you. You aren't "sticking it" to anyone. Neither Rocket, the servers, or anyone else will notice you've stopped playing for any amount of time. The care factor is 0. Most of us (well, sometimes I question this) are grown ups about this and understand what it is. It's an Alpha mod. Things are going to break, break often, and break in ways that makes you want to fill up your in-game canteen with tears. It's the nature of the beast. If you can't handle it, move along, just like you're doing. But, don't begin to think you're a special snowflake who has to make a soapbox post about how you're leaving because the Alpha development isn't up to your standards and you're appalled/angered. Just close out your DayZ game window, and move on. No need to spew an ocean of tears on the forums. With that, I will continue paying for my DayZ server as well as playing DayZ despite the (expected) bugs, because I love this mod and where it's going. If I can help out as an unofficial alpha tester, all the better. :thumbsup:

*randomly smashes fingers on keyboard to act like he's doing work* Done! You can access these new rewards simply by mousing over the bandits you kill, scrolling your mousewheel, and selecting "Gear" or "Open Backpack". Enjoy. This feature has already been rolled out live.

So... pretty much like you'd expect a real zombie apocalypse to go down then, where the penalty for trusting the wrong person is your life? Okay, then. Sounds like we're perfect here. Want to make friends and be buddy buddy with new people? Run around with a group. This may initially require you to start playing DayZ with a known out-of-game friend (again, sort of like finding family/friends first and foremost during a real post-apocalyptic situation). When there are more of you than there are of them, they are forced to listen. If they kill one of you, your friend will be able to kill them right back (and guard your stuff). There's still a risk, but it cuts down on it. Amazingly, this is also the same type of strategy you'd use in a real post-apocalyptic situation. Imagine that?! As long as the penalty for death is severe (permadeath, in this case) people will continue to act this way. Either because (1) they don't want to risk their own death and will therefore distrust virtually everyone, or (2) they understand it will make people rage the hell out on the forums and spew forth an ocean of tears. Your only way out of this is to reduce/remove the severe penalty for dying in DayZ. If you do that, you neuter the core mechanic of this game and turn it into "DayZ - Fischer Price Edition". Those of you complaining about distrust/player killing (even the PK done out of pure enjoyment) are clearly playing the wrong game. Please, go elsewhere. The rest of us are having a spectacular time. As Rocket has stated several times, this is an anti-game. If you apply cuddle bunny fluffy rules to it like other heavily balanced/carebear centric games, you've already misunderstood this game and should probably bail out and find a new game to play.

Check their public forums. It looks like BattlEye just mass banned everyone using that very hack today. It's full of tears of people who spent money on the hack only to be banned. It looks like they even made an announcement pulling the hack off their "store" until they "update it so it won't be detected". It looks like BattlEye is using the "honey pot" approach, which is hilarious to watch. Let everyone use those hacks and feel safe until a large populous of them are hacking, then swing the ban hammer to get the most bang for your buck. If BattlEye keeps that up for a bit, the inconvenience of re-buying new CD keys will wear on them. Oddly, though, the hackers on the forum claim to have some Russian site that sells them for $9 a pop. Either way, excellent to see a wave of bans went out today!

To each their own. Not everyone has the knowledge (or is willing) to sysadmin an entire box. I just can't stand the "training wheels" feeling of game server control panels and require the freedom to customize and install whatever I feel is beneficial to me.

I don't know how someone could so clearly and entirely miss the concept of Alpha due to their blinding rage. This thread is amusing. Continue on, I have my canteen ready to fill with your tears. Tell us more about how an Alpha mod isn't polished and bug free. Do you have a newsletter? I'd like to sign up for more new and exciting revolutionary reports.

This is why I have never and will never go with a 'pre-packaged game server' product that's essentially the game server equivalent of Shared Hosting in the web hosting world. You get nothing other than a control panel and therefore are at the mercy of the host to manage your server for you. You also can't install any customizations beyond what the control panel allows. If you can afford it and have the knowledge, move to an unmanaged VPS/Dedicated Server and set things up yourself. You'll remove the bottleneck and be able to actually maintain your server as you desire. It's not all that much more expensive, I'm paying $60/mo for an unmanaged 3-core E5-2690 VPS w/3GB RAM. But yeah, when purchasing a pre-packaged game server with control panel only access, you're essentially reduced to a "Wallet Admin" as I call it ;) Basically just providing a credit card/funds and not much else. For service quality, you really need to handle it yourself with your own unmanaged server.

1) No. It's not needed in DayZ, neither do we need people bunny hopping around the game like a twitch-shooter 2) What? Why? What does this add of value? Spend dev/graphic artist time elsewhere. No. 3) *insert size 100 pt font "NO" here* Vehicles need to be rare in this game. We don't need 3-4 cars all at once playing mario kart in cherno. It means a lot to have a car, and even more to crash/lose it. Everyone doesn't need to be homogenized into an MMORPG style sameness. Get some buddies, find a vehicle, enjoy. 4) No for the same reasonings as #3. We don't need more modes of transportation. I'm waiting for someone to ask for "Quick Travel" at the rate people are whining about vehicles :P 5) Agreed. This is valid and a good idea. 6) And we're back to terrible ideas again. No. It doesn't take long to pick the mid-point between you and a friend(s) and meet up. Heck, if you've been lucky enough to snag a car it's even easier to rejoin your friends. Travel means something in this game, and it needs to stay that way. Even from spawn. I thought you said these were amazing suggestions? :P

What a dick move, sir. I mean I will fight against all of the "I hate PvP/I hate snipers/I hate kill on sight" people to make sure the game remains with mechanics that will allow you to continue to do what you just did. The game shouldn't dictate who/what you can kill. But, still, that was just plain mean to do. Especially with something as high value as a helicopter when all he was trying to do was ferry around some of his servers' players and get them a chance to ride in a chopper :( For example, I admin a server and just got a bus the other night. My first thought was about how it'd be fun to ferry newspawns or anyone else around a bit and just try and get some people to experience vehicles given their rarity. But, I knew I would never do it because someone like you would detonate my bus on sight :P from out in the trees. Like that admin, I wouldn't kick/ban anyone for doing that to my bus or restart the server to try and get it back. The bus' flames would be put out with my tears, though. What happens in the game, happens. And the ability to detonate someones vehicles in game for no reason SHOULD stay possible. It's just a real dick move and a shame that you chose to do it to someone just trying to give people on his server a fun time. This thread makes me sad :(

I suspected that might be the case with disappearing vehicles (I noticed it on 7999 and below instance ID servers with vehicles before the 8000+ instance id thing was noticed/fixed). This is also why I haven't restarted my server since. It's actually kind of neat in a roundabout way in getting "around" the 7-day respawn time temporarily and letting more people play with cars ;P I gather the devs are already aware and workin' on it, though. It seems it spurred through with the 1.7.2.5 update. On a somewhat related derail of the topic, may I ask why everyone has these constant scheduled restarts going on? I operate my server with absolutely no scheduled/routine restarts. The only time it's restarted is for maintenance/updates (needing to tweak the .cfg or update the Dedicated Server beta files/DayZ mod files themselves). Perhaps ARMA2 servers are different, but with my history in IT it's generally considered a sign of an overloaded box/inexperienced admin/etc if a service/daemon requires or benefits from regularly scheduled server restarts. Is this not true with ARMA2 servers? Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, as Windows Server sysadmin is brand new to me. I come from the world of Linux where daemon restarts outside of those required to release locks on files you want to update, re-read configs, etc. are otherwise considered a red flag of a poor quality sysadmin/overloaded box/etc. Understandably, from that point of view, I am shocked when I see servers with messages about rolling restarts every 4 hours. I guess if the goal of said server admins is to clear/refresh DayZ loot piles to makes the game easier I can see that. But, any technical reason? The best reason I've seen so far in this thread has been implied by the fact that, once the 8000+ id issue was fixed, the only way to get vehicles to spawn was in fact to restart your DayZ server. But yeah, if anyone can itemize why I should be constantly restarting my DayZ server every X hours, I'd appreciate it. It just goes against the grain of everything I know about sysadmin to do that. haha. But, if it's required to ensure my players can experience DayZ properly (like the cars not spawning unless the DayZ server were to be restarted) then I shall have to do so.

Locking your server for 5 minutes maximum for maintenance/restarts is acceptable. Locking your server so you and a friend can login and find/repair/test vehicles and tents is not. Regardless if it's under the pretense of testing, you're obtaining items and moving around in-game with no risk of other players logging in and being in your area. That type of behavior is explicitly what is trying to be avoided by not allowing servers to be locked. It's in the rules. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/62195-server-hosting-rules/

Even if they were... so what? The game is Alpha. If you are coming into DayZ, in its Alpha state, with any mindset other than that everything you're doing is simply being an unpaid alpha tester; then you're going to have a terrible experience. Players' time and server admins' time/money are essentially being donated for large scale testing. That's it. No special snowflake stuff over here. I just purchased a server over the weekend (which is pending instance ID approval), and my mindset going in is that I'll experience a whole host of bugs and potential outages as a result of the ALPHA state. You won't see me complaining that "I spent money!" because it's an invalid argument. I'm doing this on my own accord because I enjoy the mod. I fully accept the financial risk and responsibility regardless of the stability of the mod. The DayZ team owes you nothing special. You are *not* entitled to a bug-free Alpha. DayZ team has taken in $0 for the mod. When it's beta you can start to get upset, and after release of the standalone that you've paid for, then -- by all means -- go hog wild with rage. For now, comments like that just make you look like a three year old in desperate need of a juice box and box of animal crackers. The DayZ team has already posted that they are aware of it and pursuing a fix. Calm... down...

Who cares about Windows 98?! DayZ's very success is contingent on whether or not it supports Windows ME! :(

Quite a lot of angries there, my good sir. Might I suggest you simply stop playing DayZ and alleviate the obviously stressful experience you're encountering? Alpha/Beta tests aren't for everyone. Especially those who feel self-entitled to a bug free game at every stage of development. Take a break, grab some animal crackers and a juice box, and watch and after school special. Perhaps that might be more your speed. Many of us are having an excellent time, including myself. Despite you poking fun at it as if it's an invalid excuse, the mod *is* in Alpha. To answer your question, Rocket will have my money the second pre-order/pre-purchase opens for DayZ standalone. Not only do I enjoy the game, but I support Rocket as a developer for his firm stance on his development principles with not letting people who want everything handed to them ez-mode influence DayZ.

Do I *feel* that it should have been fixed earlier? Perhaps. But my feelings don't take into account the reality of DayZ's development. I don't know the codebase and what time he has available for the project. Remember, this guy is getting $0 in from all of this and won't see anything until DayZ standalone. Combined with the Alpha state, that means to me that nothing is "owed" and it's not on him to provide us with timely fixes beyond what he can provide in the time he devotes to DayZ. In Alpha. he works as he works and we're volunteering our time to test because we enjoy it. Delaying fixes arbitrarily won't help DayZ, but I somehow doubt that's the case here. Once he's accepting our money, then you have the right to start demanding explanations for delays. A lot of people seem to treat Alpha as merely a word and still expect a mostly bug-free and rapid-fix product. It's insanity to me. For all I care, Rocket could just flip us all the bird tomorrow and say The Hive is going down for a week to fix something and I would say NONE of us have any justified reason to be legitimately upset at him. The truth is, people would RAGE the hell out and *demand* explanations and in-game compensations! The public at large astounds me when it comes to a feeling of self-entitlement; and i don't mean just limited to gaming.

And I'm a developer ;) So understandably I will come to the defense of Rocket when I feel he's unfairly being harped on. I hadn't mentioned anything about cost, and I don't think you originally did either. Could you clarify the whole 'free' thing? (I'm not trying to be facetious. Serious question.) I would argue that the Alpha/Beta "get out" is more a product of the massive spike in indie game development by just a handful, or sometimes one, person. Such small independent dev teams really can't follow a dev studio schedule and wait until everything is fully polished. The developer(s) have a lot better chance of gauging support (and getting amped up to code more if it's well received) and also getting a lot of ideas/feedback beyond their own. Whereas the past the public would never even SEE a game in this stage of development, it's now commonplace for indie devs. Because, well, it works and it's one of the few realistic approaches to developing something like this with the limited resources at Rocket's disposal. Minecraft kind of paved the way with the first big successful indie development of this type of development plan. Their Alpha was riddled with bugs, and their Beta had its problems too. If it were developed by a game studio, you wouldn't have seen Minecraft until late beta or initial 1.0 public release. If DayZ started off as a standalone backed by BE, it still wouldn't even be out for public consumption right now. That's the pro/con to the indie development cycle. You get to see the game and shape the game quicker, but it's going to kick you in the dick a LOT with bugs. The very fact that people are whining so hard about alpha bugs/etc. is actually a testament to how much people love and want to play DayZ. If no one cared and was silent about it, that means people just really didn't enjoy the game anyway and it was no big deal if they couldn't play it. Beta will be better. I even remember a post from Rocket where he said if he botches a Beta build with something catastrophic, you have every right to scream at him. The rules are different in Beta. Ease up, enjoy the testing phase. Things will get better, and I still love you. <3

The BETA will generally be more stable and consistent than ALPHA. In fact, by definition and the procedures of development that's exactly what has to happen. If Rocket continues to develop like it's in Alpha... then it'll just be Alpha still and it will not have moved to Beta. Alpha -> Beta isn't just a name change taken lightly. When the declaration of Beta is made, development procedures change. Your inability to process basic logic regarding this is astounding (Google is a powerful resource, my friend!). You may want to read up on the basics of the development process so you don't make such assine statements in the future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle Just read the description for "Alpha" and "Beta". I feel like you think Alpha/Beta are just arbitrary names that indicate "LOL, A BIT CLOSER TO RELEASE DATE NOW! ^_^". Read, learn, and enjoy the power of logic and reason that I hath bestowed upon thee. ONWARD, my son!

The argument "Well you just don't have to play on PvE servers, it's optional!" is bogus. As I've stated earlier in this thread, and has others have pointed out, isn't it painfully obvious that PvE wouldn't/couldn't be a simple "lol pvp flag off!" mode? The game wouldn't work AT ALL with such a simple toggle. Everyone would hit end-game gear their first day in game, get bored, and quit. The game's difficulity would have to be tweaked in PvE mode and the mechanics behave differently to make it challenging and fun without the PvP element. This means you fork the game into 2 unique games, doubling development time and halving development resources. This is why we're so vehemently against a PvE mode. Go play a different game if you want PvE.

Is this a trick question? Starting a fire would be one of the most sought after capabilities in such a world. Matches would be among the first to be scavenged from residences and would indeed be quite the rarity. None of the tools are meant to be ez-mode pickups. It's a luck of the draw. They do not need increased drop rates, nor does anything else. Finding <uncommon/rare> items is pretty much the object of DayZ itself. If you make things more common, you largely defeat a core element of the game's design. However, luck seems to dictate that you will find 4 more boxes of matches in rapid succession once you finally do find your first box of matches. That seems to be how it goes. "Oh, you don't need this anymore? Let me spawn dozens of them for you :D". Oh random number generator, you cruel mistress.

To me it sounds like you may have (inadvertently) logged onto a private server either on your initial character you got gear on or the new low-pop server you moved to. Always be careful about that. That's really the only thing that could explain being prompted to make a new toon when you were otherwise perfectly fine when you logged out on the prior server. Did you try immediately going back to the server you last logged out on with items to see if you had them there? As for random items missing, there are some legitimate bugs that can cause bags to eat weapons and the like. But, the biggest thing is to wait a few minutes after acquiring any new items before disconnecting so that the hive has time to update your gear. That should solve most of the 'random disappearance' problems.

See, that's my problem with any sort of character advancement mechanic. I always see that the individual proposing the idea provides an example of "This is how it will punish a bandit" or "This is how it will punish a well established character!". Case in point, your example about punishing a well established character with a tent/vehicle/campsite. It's toted as an attempt at "leveling the playing field" and "protecting the little guy". However, you seem to gloss over the fact that the punishment is more severe for the less established player. This is precisely the opposite of what you state as your intentions. Examples: [1] Player A with tent and/or car and/or well stocked teammate(s) dies. They run to their tent and gear up and grind/farm (wow do I hate using this in the context of DayZ. Makes me shudder) the skills you've laid out in the OP. Inconvenience: Minor. With gear in hand immediately, it's just a pure time grind to resume their prior skill set that presents zero risk and will be lightning quick as compared to a character spawning in with no gear. [2] Player B is a player who lacks any sort of storage beyond their own personal inventory that has died. This person was quite well geared to the teeth, they just didn't have any "reserves" via tent/whatever. Not only do they have to work at getting basic gear/supplies together just to survive, they now have the added burden of their skill set. By the time this player even gets a remedial set together, Player A is back in business with their skill sets where they were pre-death. Inconvenience: Significantly higher than the well stocked player The end result is that Player A is now given even MORE of an advantage by being able to widen the gap between them and players without tents/vehicles by having the added skill sets that they're readily able to re-max after death while others are scavenging for gear. If you punish the non-tent/car players too much, they simply won't play DayZ anymore. Some will complain, but most will be silent and just give up and move on. You can't just think about what would be most convenient for yourself or your clique of people that you run around in DayZ with. You need to think about this from a "how will this ensure DayZ continues to grow or remains well populated so that I *can* play with others?". My main problem is that these class, leveling, experience, skill, and other character advancement systems are toted as "Hah, bandits will think TWICE about getting killed now!" when the punishment they describe is always more severe for the less geared survivor. This is not to say that such a ratio of punishment is invalid/wrong, but it's contradictory to the goal you've set outright. I continue to say that character advancement in DayZ would ruin a lot of its charm for me. I love the fact that everyone is on even footing "character" wise with the only difference being pure items. I do NOT want an MMORPG/FPS. I do not want to gain skills/level/achieve anything with my character other than finding loot. I love that even the well decked forest sniper will go down like a rock if someone has the tactical wherewithal to get the jump on him. I sincerely hope that no character advancement mechanics are ever introduced to this game. Simplicity is what makes this game so amazing. Every darn shooter nowadays has experience/advancement. DayZ is a bit of nostalgia for me with a throwback to the games of ye old '90s where whether you've played the game for 3 months or 3 days, your characters' in-game capabilities are no different and the only advantages you get are pure items (that aren't restricted from anyone) and pure player skill. I appreciate your coherent and calm reply, as I know many can get really irritated when someone disagrees with their idea. I hope I'm conveying my responses in a similar fashion. My goal isn't to get you to "change your mind" and have you tell me I'm right. I only wish to convey that there is opposition to a mechanic like this so that anyone reviewing this suggestion understands it's far from unanimously desired (with my reasons/justifications stated).