Static (DayZ)

Date/Time: 10:14 EST, 13th August Server: US 137 I'll give you the full story, as it was quite a fun experience all in. It started with a fun adrenaline burst and honestly I'm not sure if this first incident is the same guy as later, but the coincidence would make a casino swap the dice. I was heading north into the wilderness, decent supply of food and water but still lacking any weapon beyond an axe. I hear a shot very close nearby, so get up from my crouch and just start running, I look back over my shoulder and there's a bandit about six feet behind me keeping pace, with what looks like a big M107 sniper rife. Ut oh. So I think, well, lets go out in a blaze of glory, my trusty axe has taken down eleven zombies so far, it could do with some real justice and he's not going to be able to shoot while he's moving. I'm betting I can probably chop him to pieces by the time he's managed to get a decent bead on me, so I flip around and start chasing him. Cue Benny Hill music. This goes on for a bit, I get so close at one point when he hits a steep section and slows, that I swing but it misses. A little later he stops looking behind as he focuses on running (veteran server, so no third person to see me at his heels) so I do a right turn and head off into some trees, making sure to be a little unpredictable in my movements. Shots hit to my left, above and right, but each shot he takes puts me further in the distance, and I'm clear, enough bush between us to make the shot one in a million and I just keep on running for a long time deeper into the woods, always heading for covered terrain. It's at this point I come across a little town, I crouch down and let myself take a breath. Fun, exciting, and honestly I'm not even thinking about a hacker at this point, just that I was somewhere between unlucky and amazingly lucky. Then suddenly, another player spawns two feet in front of me, different skin, not a bandit scarf. DMR equipped. I think for a split second, is this just a big coincidence? I can't afford to take the chance, so I start swinging, killing him, no murder appears on my scorecard for my first human kill. I open up his pack and grab the DMR when the same player spawns again, fully equipped with the same gear, the body I was rifling through disappears. I run a few feet into cover, get down and abort out of there.

Rocket and his team need better reporting tools. From reading through the 1.7.2.5 forum posting, it's incredible he gets anything achieved, there's so much more noise to signal that I'm amazed he can make development choices in response (of course, I'm not talking about *your* posts, you are always precise and to the point!). My suggestion is to work on integrating some better reporting and user feedback tools into the game itself. For example if Rocket needs to find out if a graphical bug is still present in the game, why can't a little alert box pop up in the corner of the screen so players can directly report via a poll? Or why can't we have a bug submission wizard/form built in to the game that report the coordinates, build numbers, server details and anything else they need to make an accurate diagnosis of the problem. Ideally the bug report system would be broken down into type of bug, and then prepopulated by existing known bugs, so if you had a Graphical glitch, you might only have to click "Report Bug" > "Graphical Errors" > "Green Mountain" and optionally leave a comment. Or a "Report Hacker" options that alerts the admin/hive server to a particular type of event. These forums are busy, but compared to the number of players involved in the game, it's a drop in the ocean. If some better tools existed for interacting with those players, in controlled ways, I would hope it could lead to better information, and give the development team a more realistic view of the priority of certain fixes.

That actually makes sense to me. If I had to choose between sniping someone from half a kilometer away, or dealing a death blow up close with a shotgun, I'm pretty sure I'd feel a lot more torn up by the latter option.

I guess it depends on your definition of broken. I would argue that someone ghosting between quiet servers to find blood to supply their clan is giving them an unfair advantage over more honest players, I think 'in the field' blood transfusions would lead to a similar advantage and I hope the goal of DayZ as it moves deeper into development is to make the playing field as even as possible. The self administered blood transfusion in a hospital bed/army tent seems like a nice solution for lone wolves. For now, I'd rather have meat in my backpack for the same reasons as Ampoliros.

Sounds like a lot of moving parts, and developer time for something that wouldn't be used very much at all, plus it would be abused, a clan might have a blood mule that essentially acts as a medic, tranfuses, dies, respawns and then heads back to transfuse some more, or newbies would be held up at gunpoint for several units of their blood. If you're going to have to find a transfusion kit and reusable needles anyway, why not just get the blood bag? If you really want to add a dose of magic realism, you can assume the blood bags in medical locations are a universal artificial blood that's stable at room temp. I'd happily vote for a blood level that slowly regenerates while you move slowly (so people just don't go hide idle in the shadows for half a day to rejuvenate) but continual transfusions seem a bit far fetched in a survival situation.