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I am volunteering and asking other server admins to volunteer for a community wide server blackout period on Saturday, July 21st from 9am to 9pm US EDT (GMT-4) During this time we will shutdown our servers and keep them shutdown until the end of the blackout. WHY? Because DayZ devs have failed to implement a fix to the disconnect/ghosting during pvp exploit. Every time we raise concerns about this issue, the forum mods just lock the thread when it gets popular. When we ask for better rules, they tell us to send in 400MB log files and promise they'll get looked at, when we know they don't. When we decide to admin our servers and ban people who do exploit, we get threats of blacklists that really don't happen, just like the bans don't happen. So here it is. I'm asking every server admin to shutdown their server for those 12 hours on July 21st for a show of unified support that since they don't want to give admins the right to resist exploiters, then the devs need to implement an immediate fix. I don't care if you think admins should or should not have the power to ban. I don't care if you think rules are fair or not. That is not what this is about. This is about showing the devs that WE are the reason this mod is successful and that WE are demanding a fix for and exploit that is destroying everyone's game. This game is paid for and promoted by the community, it is time the community receive some real dev support.

i don't think a blackout will fix this issue. PVP ghosting and any disconnect issue is an ARMA II engine & Battle eye issue.

Actually, I take that back... I WOULD absolutely like to see fixes for DC'ers and Server hopping for loot and ghosting. I personally have never been the vicitim of a server hopper, at least as far as I know, but the thought that it happens often annoys the crap out of me. These are two bugs that SHOULD absolutely be getting their primary attention.

I'd rather have the ability to click and teleport where i want. Walking is boring, energy and time consuming and you happen to get seen by zombies, living and dead ones. This way ghosting players don't even need to DC on another player in case they get attacked. You can even access the AF without anyone ever knowing you were there. Just spawn at the beach click get your stuff click get back and kill some noobs..

The hacking, script abuse, and cheating, alt f4ing and ghosting, can and should be fixed. Why must we bend over and accept these things? Battle Eye can be updated to recognize the changes in the game's code. A timer can be added to logging out which would prevent people from DCing to avoid players and lose zombie trains (this would also deter but not solve ghosting). Perhaps a relog timer could be added to servers to prevent ghosting? You cannot log out of server A, into server B, and then try to log back into server A within a time span of say 5 minutes. This is all very achievable.

Sure it would be nice to have something that could stop a vehicle with a couple of well placed shots, but 97.346% of the time these rifles are used for dealing out instant one-shot death in PVP, no I wouldn't even call it PVP, I'd call it SUV (Sniping Unsuspecting Victims). It doesn't take much skill to sit on a hill half a mile away with one of these monsters, zero in the range, and one-shot anybody that passes by. If it was up to me, I'd pull them from the game. Frankly I'd prefer to see the one-shot kills coming as the result of skilled stalking, marksmanship and well placed headshots. If a vehicle is driving away, then that's the way it goes. I'd only reintroduce them once the whole issue of duping has been resolved. There really shouldn't be more than 1 of these per server floating around, and they should spawn only at unique loot spots like crashed heli's. If we're going for realism, the idea of having anti-material/anti-equipment weapons proliferating (duping) across Chernarus is crazy. It seems like every other bandit had a ghillie suit and one of these anti-material cannons. Practically speaking however, until the DC'ing is resolved, having a weapon that puts down a player immediately does have it's advantages. You stop them in their tracks, no ghosting (disconnect-reposition-reconnect-kill). That being said, three fast, well placed shots from any of the other sniper rifles into the torso of a player should put them down no problem. Done quickly enough, they won't have time to DC... Most of the high end military weapons still call for fairly close quarter combat, one in which the civilian weapons still have a fighting chance of opposing. A player with a CZ550 is just a capable of sniping as one with a Dragonov or M14. A Winchester can still take out a Mk48. All the others really just manage to put more bullets near the target, and automatic fire, unless you're prone, is terribly inaccurate. The anti-material sniper weapons are a breed apart. Add a rangefinder and they make the game way too easy. Along the same vein, there are quite a few hybrid OPFOR weapons that would fit very well into the "Eastern Bloc" setting of DayZ. Weapons should be balanced and varied. The Anti-Material Sniper Rifles are neither. As far as the developers devoting time to removing them, they only need to change the spawn rates for these guns to zero and they won't appear. It might be possible to replace existing cannons with DMR's or something. The first solution is dead easy, the second shouldn't be a big deal...

I'll tell you what will happen to this high-value city, it will be high-risk like the high-value locations we have right now, every overlooking hill and rooftop will have a sniper waiting for you to do the hard-work for him before putting a bullet in your head. If your goal is to encourage cooperation you need a better incentive, what you're referring to is no different than the NW airfield or military tents at Stary Sobor, it's a good chance to get some high-value loot if you can get past the zombies, and a good chance of getting shot on the way out. Not to mention the PVP'ers who don't even care about the loot and just come to the city because they know they will find someone to shoot. Speaking of PVP, how does this eternaly unconscious thing work when everybody wants me dead? Are they supposed to drag me out of the hotzone just to finish me off? As for addressing the DC'ing, ghosting, server hopping and stuff, why not fix the problem altogether instead of creating an area on the map where people can't cheat. That would be like Rocket saying "I support DC'ing and ghosting, just not in this city."

Closed of area, that aren't connected to the hive, so no ghosting into it, nor dc'ing to loose zombie aggro, or skip pvp aggro? Fantastic Finally a part with zombies that might actually be difficult? I would LOVE to see that. We need something besides playerhunting to do ladies and gents, and for me this sounds like a solid idea, if it just got finished properly that is. This would also be a way for Rocket to maybe introduce new weapons into the game? Example: XM8 from OA, G36C with Underbarrel Shotgun, Desert Eagle, PSG-1 Sniper Rifle with the chance of comming with a Silencer, (silenced sniper rifle takes 3shots to kill, but have no muzzleflare, and are as silent as the M4 SD) You could also introduce new Vehicles, and we NEED Camo netting for them aswell(pretty darn hard to hide a vehicle sucessfully), Lets say a repairable HMMMV, where you could stand in the gunner's post using your own weapon and fireing it? Perhaps a military oldschool motorbike with seats for 2 and a wagon on the side for a third passenger, like this one?(+1 For a picture of a rarebike WITH Lassie in it) That's just some of the things you could implement with an area like that. Thanks for reading this semi-combined post. regards, -z

Same thing happened to me a couple of nights ago. Me and some friends were raiding the NW airfield at night. After about 10-15 minutes of raiding we get into a firefight with another team. I take one in the face and dropped to 3k health and started bleeding out. I attempted a bandage but got finished off. Got the "You are dead" screen and everything. I aborted after this to watch the lobby and see who was DC'ing and/or ghosting and to listed to the firefight through TS3. Eventually my bro's prevailed and I load back in to see where I was going to spawn at, I loaded right back in on top of my body and scared the shit ouf my friends that they almost shot me. My body was still there and I essentially cloned myself. Every item I had got doubled. I was actually staring at myself on the ground. I hate alt+f4'ers and will never be one. Guess karma came back to me that day.

Unfortunately, at least part of the dev team feels ghosting is something we as players need to protect against, not something they should fix themselves. In a recent suggestion post by Ander, he said "The use of these items is a risk vs reward. If you want to protect yourself against ghosting, then us it.".

You probably got banned for server hopping, combat logging or ghosting. Considering your mental capacity - I can guarantee it.

Ander, is there any chance we can get a response as to why the staff feels there needs to be a fair trade off to combat ghosting? If it is something that is merely a current coding problem I think a lot of people would be understanding. I think pretty much the entire community is waiting for a solution to the Alt+F4ing problem, and I'm pretty sure I speak for the majority when I say I was a bit surprised at needing to balance a mechanic that we thought was going to be removed from the game. Is there any specific reasoning for this?

Seriously, i've been to both alot and it seems to me that Berezino is actually MORE populated than Cherno now? For example, yesterday I was looting the hospital on a 15 player server, and whoop, what do I see? Another survivor right under me while i was on hospital rooftop. I shot him, went to the apartments, just to see another survivor camping with a double barrel who promptly fired at me like an idiot out of range. I killed him as well. This all happened under an hour in a 15 player server. Today, I go camp on the hill on DE312 with a CZ overlooking the hospital roof and grocery entrance. The server had around 30 players in total, but in less than an hour I have spotted more than 10 survivors trying to ravage the hospital/grocery! NOT EVEN KIDDING! First I saw a group of 3... I took one down whilst they were in the grocery store, before the other 2 left. Then a lone survivor tries to loot that body 15 minutes later, and i fire but miss. He heads north afterwards. Then a group of 4 come in within 10 minutes... 3 of them enter grocery while one goes on hospital rooftop to cover them. I take the one on the rooftop down and the rest head north. then 12 minutes later a group of 2 enter grocery store. I fire on them but i forgot it was at night so my muzzle flash probably gave my position and i got sniped myself. Cherno has always been hyped as a deathtrap, but from my experiences today Berezino is the same now...Such a shame it used to be so peaceful. It's like the new Cherno except everyone there is armed to the teeth. On a side note, the devs should really do something about sniper rifles. It's too easy to just sit on a hill overlooking hotspots and get free kills, and the only counter to it is another sniper rifle or ghosting.. And although they're rare to find regularly, for server hopping farmers it's not a rare commodity at all. It makes gunfights and PvP situations lame and boring. And no it doesn't take skill, at least not on regular servers where I can determine range with the scroll of a mousewheel, then zero my CZ550 farmer rifle accordingly to get kills.

I'm not here to argue, but I'll respond since I am the OP. I had intended for this to be informative, and for BIS decide if this was appropriate or not. I had made my decision. I want to play on a server where admins abhor this type of behavior, not allow and defend it. I see a lot of people trying to minimize what the known players are doing. Calling this an exploit only, or even a glitch. This is not a glitch, or an exploit. An exploit is a use of game mechanics in an unintended way to gain an advantage. It's disconnecting under fire so you don't die. It's ghosting. It's stealing items from others packs in debug forest. A hack is a manipulation of either the server side or client side files in order to gain an advantage. It doesn't matter if you are using a third party designed program to do it for you, or manipulating the files manually yourself. I'll state again; I am not reporting Faindizzle hacking. However, he knew about it. He allowed it. Everyone who reads this can decide for themselves whether they believe this is legitimate testing or not, and whether these players were killing anyone who came into Cherno, and stealing hidden vehicles because they could see across forests to just to help fix the game, I'm reporting this because: 1) NY7 is a server I played on, helped promote and donated to. It is a heavily promoted server, with known streamers playing on it. A lot of people are enticed to come check out this fun server. I'm warning people, as I feel the admins should have been, that apparently there is some testing of potential hacks going on in Cherno. 2) I'm letting BIS know of what I feel may be inappropriate behavior on a server they allowed to host DayZ. Hacks are really hurting DayZ. It's popularity and demand for the product went from just a small base of ArmA 2 players checking out Hall's mod, to having a larger player base than most live MMOs. I like the people I met on NY7. I liked some of the people currently hacking, and I certainly liked Faindizzle whom, until this, I thought could be a leader in this fledgling community. However, I don't stand for hacking, and I'll roll over on people in my own clan if I hear about it. So, sorry if hurt anyone's feelings with this thread, but, yeah... Fuck hackers.

Well, isn't this a shit storm. Point is, exploiters/dupers/"hackers" (they don't deserve the title but eh) are ruining gameplay for Day Z. Now you may say, "you admins not following da rules be ruining diz community moar". Well to you I say, I'd prefer to play alongside an asshole admin who abuses his privileges and in which case I can appeal the ban/report him to Day Z staff. Opposed to the hacker who has unlimited ammo, cannot be killed and teleports behind everyone and kills them just for the lols with his AS50(This just happened recently on the server I host). Public relations and community member banning/unbanning can all be dealt with logically and in a fixed location (forums). Where as cheaters who play the game CANNOT be reasoned with at all because they love to see the world burn and can easily conceal their identities by changing profile names. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to throw my hands up in the air and say, "I hope Battle Eye gets them next time". Now you may argue that, "hey mr. acebane, u r a fat noob n u obviously don't know how to check ur 1 GB + script log file." Well you're kind of right, considering this is my first time owning a server, I pretty much lack the know how of how to deal with hackers aside from BANNING THEM. Problem is with that, I can't ban anyone neither because it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to get 100% legit proof of someone doing it. I can make judgement calls based on instinct, but we all know that sometimes our instincts are wrong. So we're at a stand still - can't ban people (1. because IDK who it was and 2. it's against Day Z's rules apparently), can't stop cheaters. What do us server hosts who spend 40-100 bucks a month on a server do? Throw your hands up and pray they move to another server by the end of the night. What's the possible solution? Hell, if I know. All I can think of is a better cheat detection, a cheater detective that goes and checks server logs for known cheating scripts, or admins just start banning anyone they believe is involved in suspicious activity. All of which are rather half-arsed solutions. So just band together as a community, play Day Z, enjoy your time while there are no hackers/exploiters present and log off at the end of the night. PS. It would be amazing for Day Z staff to somehow stop duping/death dodging/ghosting. Let's hope they can do it!

The rule system is horrendous. When they add rules the day something goes wrong, and wait weeks to reply on issues such as ghosting. "I'll rent you this car, but you have to pick up any hitch hiker you see" "I picked up a hitch hiker who stabbed me in the gut, so I kicked him out of my car!" "You can't do that, I'm taking your car back."

3000+ Servers, banned from one "OH no black list em!" And anyone caught ghosting/Alt-F4ing are not following the rules the admins of the DayZ server have set, and agreed to by connecting to said server.

This thread is almost as good as the thread with the guy bitching about the game not saving the gear he got from ghosting and server hopping too quickly.

Yes, the admins are totally in the wrong for protecting their investments.. "This airport security is so power hungry, let's not let them pull anyone from their planes!" ..As half the airports population is carrying a bomb strapped to their chest. Blaming admins for "Cheating by banning cheaters" is the stupidest arguement I've ever heard. Basically Dayz forums go like this - "LOL NO RULES BITCH, I CAN DO WHATEVER I LIKE! DEAL WITH IT LOLOL" :lol: Banned for Ghosting/Alt-F4 "But..But..The rules!" :o

This is really an issue to be honest. On zombies it works fine to use nonscoped rifles and sidearms. But on players it's pointless. I was sitting on a corner, 15 meters away when another survivor was crouch-walking across the street. I lined up my M1911 with the iron sights, held it still as he walked into my sight and I squeezed off right in the torso. The player immediately "bungee corded" 5 meters back (sorta like he was ghosting) and I lost sight of him. Didn't get a kill message either. I know it was a dead-on shot, but given how he more or less warped away immediately when hit (and probably ALT+F4'd out) I was unable to tell if it was a true hit or not. I had many cases like this with assorted weapons, ranging from shotguns to rifles and makarovs to G17's. If you want to kill something you need to just spray like hell and hope the goddamn code has him synched up by your sights. Lately I've stopped going near residental areas where I know there are players due to the unreliable hit detection. Much safer to just scavenge deerstands and isolated buildings or factories, and just pop people from 500-600m out with a scoped rifle. Yeah it's alpha, but come on... is hit detection this wonky in Arma2 on multiplayer? No reason it should be in DayZ.

I wish they would lock characters to servers, that way you can have multiple characters and server hopping is gone. Also, the disconnecting logout timer would fix the problem where people disconnect to avoid death. It would also be interesting if they test out that when you logout your character pitches a tent or a sleeping bag and goes to sleep on the spot. You can be killed, robbed and eaten when you do this thus providing a more realistic survival mentality of having to find a location to disconnect safely. They could also add a feature taht allows you to enter one of the buildings that are not enterable and logout there as a safe house. I dont know but I think this would be interesting and would be a solution to the disconnecting to avoid death and even people just appearing out of nowhere (ghosting) because you would be able to spot a sleeping player and know that he can spawn there if he logs in. I think that since this is an alpha, something like that should be tried out.

Consequences of one's actions... Can you give me examples of one's actions that have consequences that are not easily escapable? Is the anger due to someone not getting "the kill"? You missed out on murdering someone... I just don't get the anger in that. Murder is not sportsmanship at all. It's the cheapest of the cheap. Don't get me wrong, I've shot my share of people, I've been shot by my share of people. I don't alt/f4. I have aborted after a firefight was over, I killed a player and I was badly hurt but alive. Had my friends come give me assistance. I did not avoid (imminent) death or the firefight but only when it was over did I abort. It's my perogative to abort when I like is it not? I don't mind folks dc's during combat when I'm shooting at them as much as I care they can then go to another server and ghost me from behind. If you shouldn't be able to avoid combat in the zombie apocalypse by dc'ing you certainly should not be able to bend time and space to go to another dimension only to return on this dimension in a different space. I say if anyone uses the proper way to disconnect, say using the abort menu, let them dc without issue. If they alt/f4, let them start in downtown cherno during the next log in (on the same server only) in the exact same condition they dc'd (bleeding out, unconscious, whatever). or... You could also force any alt/f4 dc'd client to reconnect within say x minutes (put arbitrary number here) or risk a full respawn starting over with nothing. Bottom line, these issues we squabble over are part of one big test bed. Working within the constraints of the current engine I doubt this will be solved. If this ever makes it to a stand alone product I'm sure something will be put in place and I'm sure it will be there by design from the beginning. To continually argue over things that likely cannot be changed or that are not within the scope of the purpose of this alpha is ridiculous. Is it a problem? Maybe? Not for me, it's the ghosting that pisses me off. Is it a priority for the devs to put some mechanic in place to stop it at this point? I doubt it. At this point they are testing for what works what doesn't in prep for making the real game, on an entirely different engine. Should they waste time to fabricate the mechanic on this engine when they are not going to use this engine for the final product? In my opinion, no. I'd rather them spend more time on the real game.

OP, thanks for the long detailed post. I love reading stuff like this because it shows that people care about the mod and want to improve it. However, I think that you, and most people, are over thinking/engineering this, including Ander's radio tower. From all the posts I have seen I have consolidated my own version of how to deal with ghosting and help minimize server hopping. Solutions to Ghosting: 1) Disconnect timer (30-60 seconds) 2) NO DISCONNECT IF YOU ARE IN SHOCK 3) If someone uses a weapon within 100-200m of you, +10-20 seconds on your disconnect timer. I have a different opinion on how to rid the game of server hopping entirely, which I won't go into here. I also LOVE the idea of radio towers, but only for the suppression of ZED spawning.

Thanks for the link, that was very interesting! I don't agree with the premise whatsoever, but at it made me really like the idea or portable radio towers suppressing zombie spawns. Solutions to Ghosting: 1) Disconnect timer (30-60 seconds) 2) NO DISCONNECT IF YOU ARE IN SHOCK 3) If someone uses a weapon within 100m of you, +10 seconds on your disconnect timer. I believe all of those should be implemented. It would make the game oh so fresh.

I think you're completely correct, and that this seems to be a solution to ghosting. I do not agree with the 30 second timer fixing most of the problems. You also should not be able to logout AT ALL if you have shock. I also think that 60 seconds is more in line with how time flows in DayZ - faster than you think, especially when you are engaging a patient player. I honestly would prefer that the logout timer would increase if bullets were being fired in your direction. Example: Start at 30 seconds. If a weapon is used near you add +10 seconds (100m would be good to avoid snipers keeping people from logging in buildings they have no hope of hitting). This would make escaping an engagement nearly impossible and it would add stress to the situation as you watch your logout timer going up instead of down leading players to abort the disconnect and deal with the situation!