Soupee

DayZ Commander is the way to go, glad you go it sorted out. Have fun "figuring it all out", that's truthfully the best part of the game. Those first few lives when you're completely clueless. You'll look back on them and wonder "what the hell was I thinking?"

How many cuffs would actually be circulating? Short of being a law enforcement officer, who sees handcuffs on a daily basis? Maybe real cuffs are super rare, otherwise it's duct tape, baling wire, rope, and zip ties with varying degrees of breakout resistance.

I hopped on for the first time in quite awhile last night. Had some fun for an hour and a half or so. Killed a couple bandits as I decided that I'd become a bandit hunter now since rat holed in the wilderness is only so entertaining. Anyway, the server I was on had about 40 people. This is vanilla I'm talking.

It all depends on the moon, if it's not a relatively full moon or if there's tons of cloud cover real life darkness is starkly different than walking outside in Anytown, USA. We go into the Canadian wilderness for fishing trips every few years and one of the most shocking things is how truly dark it gets when the rest of the world ceases to exist. But every night isn't that dark. In fact the moon can be so bright up there it's hard to sleep some nights.

lol @ 30% claiming they kill 0. That's a laugh.

Come on, we all know vinyl and embroidery machines are the first things survivors would restore to function if SHTF. That's cute, but if I kill one of them I want to be able to impersonate. It should cut both ways.

Since you've already bought it, install it and play it for a few days without coming here or looking on the internet for help (beyond the basic "what button do I press to do that" kind of thing). The first week or so with the mod was extremely fun. I'm not kidding when I tell you I probably didn't get a "military" type weapon for three weeks. I didn't know the map, I didn't know where I was going, I didn't know military weapons even existed in the game... I didn't know anything about it and it was AWESOME. Get yourself an axe, matches, a hunting knife, a can of beans for the road, a water bottle, and some basic medical supplies... then head into the wilderness for awhile. Raid the smaller towns and avoid the population centers. The game is really a unique experience if you avoid others. It makes those encounters and tense moments of confrontation all the better. If you want to play with a sniper rifle there's plenty of opportunity to do that in ArmA 2 proper and you don't have to worry if it's going to take you ten minutes or ten hours to find one because you'll just spawn with one. Truthfully, I'd still play the mod if I could go back to that "fresh spawn" feeling before the deathmatch got truly out of hand!

Yuck. As soon as you respawn you should be unable to access your previous corpse.

Bang it on a rock. Or go to a road and rub the rim until you break through the "crimp". Pretty easy really.

I find fan fiction very interesting. The fact that a game can inspire someone to write something is a pretty cool thing. That said (and DayZ seems to really be like this), there's way too much "true to the game" in these DayZ stories. "I found a can of beans and a flashlight." Branch out from the game proper and tell a unique story! By the way, I have read and peer reviewed papers by seniors in college who didn't write a tenth as well as you do!

There are about five or six strictly vanilla DayZ servers whenever I log on. There are TONS of these full loadout servers, etc. At least when I ventured off the "hide unofficial" path last there were. I guess I can't comment on their scarcity now since I don't look for them. But if you scan through the server list you can find a bunch of servers where you spawn quite well loaded and there's helicopters flying all over. I can't comment on how many players are playing on all of the different mods available, because I do not play them. I don't know how "vanilla" they are or if any of them spawn you fully loaded. But as far as vanilla DayZ, my experience says that the "full loadout" players far outnumber the "vanilla" players at any given moment in time. And to an extent this makes perfect sense, look at the popularity of games like CoD/Battlefield, etc. It would make sense that "DayZ" more along the lines of those games being a bit more popular than "hardcore" DayZ simply because of the base of appeal. I suppose a lot of that could be contributed to the fact that the mod is kind of run its course for the most part. So people are just kind of doing whatever. I will be interested to see how the eventual stand alone changes the way people are playing. I hope it helps filter out a bit of the noise that is in the current mod players.

You're right, but that fully depends on what kind of bastardized DayZ you're playing. There are servers out there that are very much like other FPS's. Personally I am strictly a vanilla DayZ player, but in the past I have dabbled in other private hives where you start with everything you could ever really want and there's 217,103 vehicles. I just play the way I want to play, everyone else can do whatever they want. It just seems to me there are better avenues to get your deathmatch fix if that's your thing. Not saying "you" as in you, SteveLord... just in general.

I'm a friendly, lone-wolf kind of guy. The KoSers are what keep the game interesting when I decide to enter cities, airfields, etc. I'll be honest, I dislike it. And I don't really "get it" because it is nothing more than CoD/Battlefield/CS/six hundred other FPS if all you are doing is spawning and shooting. I suppose the guys who "hunt" people are a bit different. I just try to avoid the deathmatch on the coast. :)

"Getting a valuable ally" is key there... what makes an ally valuable? Nothing really in the mod, not sure what all the systems will be in the SA, but I can't imagine it changing that fact too much. An ally is just another mouth to feed, another anti-biotic to eat, and another person to be spotted while you're moving about.

One seems to work just dandy for me. :)

But Rocket, if I want my car washed faster I just get as many people crammed around it with sponges as I can. Obviously this should translate directly to creating a massive, open-world survival game which I have no experience in creating. Signed, OP and about 75% of the forum These people are honestly pretty good entertainment.

If I don't have a hatchet: garages. If I don't have a hunting knife or matches: super markets.

I think the people who are more interested in surviving fail to understand the motivation for the folks running around the coast KoSing. Less bullets don't matter to them, I don't think. It's for the "thrill" of offing someone who has some sort of investment in their character. Less bullets *might* make for less fresh spawn killing, but somehow I doubt even that will happen. If there can be a game mechanic that stops a player from getting their own corpse back. And somehow stops them from being able to go back to their stashes of weapons/ammo/whatever else, maybe you'll get people to stop KoSing. But my gut feeling is that if you stop those things, many of those players would be gone anyway. Because the game isn't about survival to them (for the most part), it's about ending lives of invested survivors.

Considering I would be in pretty much complete control over what hours I was out and about during a zombie apocolypse, I don't see the issue here. On the topic of weather, I'd love to see rain, snow, and fog. Maybe other things as well... would a thunderstorm get all of the zeds riled up?

Increasing the value only to the person playing the given character. If you see someone running around you don't know if they're a high level mechanic or medic or whatever. Are you going to stop someone and ask them? And would they seriously tell the truth if they knew it was life/death? Nope... and no one is going to take the time or risk associated with asking anyone. KoS is here to stay, I don't see a non-crappy game mechanic changing that much. Sure maybe massive base building projects will require a lot of bodies, but let's be honest. 99% of those "teams" of people will be found on forums and outside of the game. It won't be some random you ran into who bandaged you when you were bleeding. Signed, A friendly, lone-wolf.

False on the "death sentence" part. Yep, found a camping tent in a dog house. And there's gear in the backs of the broken down trucks, the piles of garbage often times have loot as well. It's kind of hard to see though.

I play Vanilla DayZ and have been infected several times. A few times I had ABs, so no big deal. This last time I got infected and survived for HOURS of play (eventually ran into a medic with ABs). If you hunt down enough animals you can live for a long time if you want to... Of course I'm not a corpse runner, so "dying" actually has some consequence for me. Now, with the new patch the eating system is not like it used to be. And if all you have is canned food (200 blood gained), you will basically just pause the infection blood loss for a little bit. Rabbits are VERY helpful. You really have to kill some cows and whatever else you can find and stockpile cooked meat. I actually got infected in Stary too, and I searched helicopter crashes, deer stands, the tents, etc for AB for a very long time before deciding to make a go at Cherno. So I got all the way to the power plant in Elektro before finding someone with AB and turning back north. I honestly think the guys complaining about the infection (for the most part) are people more worried about their guns than their survival. It is not the death sentence everyone wants to make it out to be. Obviously the process of eating a bunch of entire animals is really unrealistic, but so is running back to your corpse to recover all your stuff. If you couldn't find enough animals to survive for more than 45 minutes up by Stary then you weren't trying. And if you don't have a hatchet, knife, and matches I question your real concern for survival.

I really don't know, I think vanilla DayZ it's gone. But I'm guessing the other DayZ Mod Mods and private hives might be different.

Wow, talk about crazy. I just logged off after having two positive encounters. The first I met up with a guy who graciously gave me antibiotics so I didn't have to wade though the Cherno mess in search of them. He also used my blood bag to get me back square. Wafflesan, you're a gentleman. Then another fellow, Trooper, met up with me in search of drink. I gave him a couple of cans, a boiled bottle of water, and he left me with some morphine in case I encounter another linebacker zed in my travels back north. Trooper, you are also a gentleman. Quote of the night came across direct chat from Mr. Trooper... "Thanks for not shooting me in the face." Indeed. Well met, both of you, you've restored my faith... at least until tomorrow night when I get shot in the face by the first ding dong I run across. I find these encounters so much more enjoyable than the frenzied panic when someone comes around a corner and full auto-AKs me in the chest. Of course, if that guy doesn't full-auto me every once in awhile, maybe the positive encounters would get pretty boring? I really like the tension when you approach someone knowing they could easily drop you in a heartbeat if they wanted.

Yeah, sneaking has become out of the question. The watch dog zombies not leaving loot coupled with the ones who are drawn to you like a magnet for no reason other than the fact that you're there. It's frustrating entering even a small "town" with one or two buildings and having 6-8 zombies form a loose circle around you. The mechanic causing every zombie within a certain number of yards to aggro on you when one zombie does is really un-fun. Same with the sudden spawning of zeds when you shoot a gun in the wilderness. I can handle glitchy zombies, but it's very un-fun when I clear out a helicopter or deer stand or infected camp or whatever. Start looking around and then suddenly 10-15 more zombies are running down the hill towards me even though I just came through there with no zeds in the area. Eh. I'm all for more zombies annd more risk, but there has to be better ways to do it other than the cheap "throw zombies at anyone firing a gun" mechanic. I still play vanilla DayZ exclusively, regardless of what the bugs may be. I do enjoy it and I know it's a mod with bugs and volunteer staff, so I don't really get upset that it is the way it is. It's only frustrating that when changes are made they seem to be such a huge swing. For instance, I'm afraid the next update with make it nearly impossible to get infected or make ABs so common that it's basically like finding a soda can. Zombies need to aggro, unaggro, die, and behave relatively similarly vs. the sprinting out of the woods from 500 meters away garbage that's going on now. The infection rate, AB rate, and other issues may work themselves out if that's fixed. It's the changing of multiple, interconnected mechanics that give us what 1.7.7.1 has become. Hotfix one thing at a time!