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1. D/cing to avoid death - known and fixable via punishments - Already being worked on. 2. Server hopping/ghosting - ruins persistency - known and fixable - An interesting idea, but may come with the first idea. 3. Third party communication - makes you and your group telepathic - almost impossible to prevent - should use radios and direct comm to be realistic Direct Comm works just fine. It'll come up soon as a regular patch for Arma 2 when available. 4. Unlimmited ammo (recombining colt/m1911)+ relogging to get full mags This is a well known bug

Would it be worthwhile having a loot lock function to a server for a time period after looting on that server? Once you loot an item on any given server, you are locked into looting on that server only for a time period of a hour. This will help solve the server hopper issue as they will have to effectively only loot things on one server, and will not hurt individuals looking for a server based on conditions. If you log onto a server and do not pick anything up, you will not be server locked and will be uneffected. Server hoppers will still exist, but correct me if I am wrong, server hoppers really benefit from farming different servers and would be hurt if they were locked into a server with regard to loot for a long period of time. Pros: - Should hinder server hoppers abusing loot spawns sufficiently that they are subject to loot cycling instead of hopping which comes with a much greater risk. - Should not impact innocent individuals looking for servers to play on - Should have little impact to those with connection issues, understanding that they would need to connect to the same server they were disconnected from unless the server is full. However, if you know you have connection issues, you shouldn't be playing on full servers in the first place. Cons: - Will not prevent the first item/server loot, in the event someone is doing this for one item only, say NVGs. - Will not prevent people from ghosting (even though this is not the topic of the thread)

Seing all the topics repeating, i make this topic for all to see So imho these are top 4 exploits that ruin immersion and should be fixed asap: 1. D/cing to avoid death - known and fixable via punishments 2. Server hopping/ghosting - ruins persistency - known and fixable 3. Third party communication - makes you and your group telepathic - almost impossible to prevent - should use radios and direct comm to be realistic 4. Unlimmited ammo (recombining colt/m1911)+ relogging to get full mags Also for better immersion and realism top suggestions constantly repeated: 1. Self labeling as team member/friendly - to have changeble clothes (rocket did mentin this one to be limited by Arma) and having custom logos on your clothes. Also what you wear (black/blue/white) shirt doesnt show properly on your friends game (can be mistaken gor somone else - got shot by friend as i said i have black sleeves and he saw me in blue and fired) 2. Can not enter my/any tent to hide from the elements? Why? 3. Can not shoot from any vehicle? Why? Possibly Arma limitation 4. Give us foundable pen and paper to leave notes on walls/trees/tents - considering third party communication exploit should stop 5. Drink water with no waterbottle 6. Get attacked by wild (bear, wolf, stray dog pack) and wounded animals (wounded boar is dangerous) 7. Construction - i know, Arma engine, and also those structres should be labeled via pen/paper or flag, stating purpouse of structure ( private clan camp, survivor safe heaven, trading post...) Immagine all this...

Each server you play on has it's own unique version of your character. If you change servers you don't spawn in the same place with the same equipment. MMO's do it, probably for some of these reasons. I think it would stop server hopping for gear and ghosting. I have no idea, technically, if the devs have resources to implement this though.

This idea/quote (and the proposed mechanic) essentially condones ghosting as a valid and acceptable gameplay tactic.

What is "ghosting"?

I am not a designer, programmer so i am not sure if this can be implemented into the game, but here is my idea If player joins serverA then logs out of ServerA to log into server B that player cannot log back into serverA for 30 mins this would allow people to switch servers to meet with freinds but Ghosting would be gone. Ghosting is when a player logs off from ServerA then logs into server B to get a better spot or advantage from the player they are fighting with, like move behind the player, then log back into serverA and kill said player. 2nd Edit If you disconnect from Server A for whatever reason (player choice, server restart, crash etc..) you can still reconnect to server A just as long as you don't connect to another server

The use of these items is a risk vs reward. If you want to protect yourself against ghosting, then us it. If you dont want to reveal your position dont use it. It's basicly to protect when your position is already known and you want to hold ground. If player who activated it loses connection it gets disabled. If a friend of him loses connection he could deactivate it manually.

After dying, some people will purpousely respawn several times over to start in a desired location. This places a severe load on the servers, and should be discouraged. Edit: That's not what this thread is about though, this thread is about using the 'shock' mechanic to discourage combat logging, ghosting and the like.

People streaming their game want some sort of fame and/or pay for doing something they like doing. A comment earlier mentioned ghosting, which would be akin to screen-watching in a LAN situation, and was always an issue with competitive games that supported spectating. DayZ is not a competitive game, it's a survival sim. Spectating is not a supported function of the game. People need to go out of their way to stream their gameplay, and as a result they make a spectate function available when normally it would not be. I don't support stream sniping. I don't stream snipe. However, it is the caster's fault and not the sniper's fault. TBH, I doubt stream sniping is as big of a deal as streamers would have people believe. When you're playing on a populated server, you will be shot at, and just because you have a moderately successful stream it doesn't mean your killer was watching your stream to find your position.

Seems like a bad idea to me. Adding game mechanics to counter game exploits is not the right way to go about it. What about fresh spawns? They have no chance of beating ghosters unless they've been lucky enough to find the gear required to stop this type of exploiting. There is probably a much simpler way to stop ghosting. Say, if you completely disconnect from a server you can't rejoin the same server for another 20 mins. Stop the exploit from being possible, don't try to counter it with gimmicks. Portable radio towers would be better served as a game communication mechanic.

Hiya gentlemen,ladies and Rocket if he hopefully reads this :) First off first post here ive been playing day z for a week or so and i must say what an awesome game it is,of course buggy as shit but its a real privilege to help test the alpha. My main gripe in the game is the ghosting and log offski's that happen when hunting other players and i think the fix would be easy enough to implement. I play a lot of eve online and i this is where i borrowed this idea from. If you fire your weapon/Get shot at/Have agrro'd zeds you start an aggression timer that last ten minutes.If you log off whilst your aggression timer is active although you can exit the client your character is still on the server in the same spot until said timer is gone. Im not a coder at all so how hard this would be to code in i honestly dont know but i do feel something similar to this idea should be implemented. So what do you think guys?Its pretty early and i havent had my coffee yet so hopefully i have explained this idea well enough. Any thoughts? Pagerage.xo

"- Prevents "logins" inside a radius of the broadcast range of this radiotower. - Broadcast range of jamming signal affects the length power draw. * Players attempting to login within the broadcast radius will be told that there is currently an active radiotower broadcasting a jamming signal. * Players is given choice to spawn to spawn at edge of the jamming signal." -Quoted from OP Yeah, there are a lot of problems here that I can see already. 1. Moving spawns, which could be buggy. I wouldn't like to spawn on a server and be thrown 100 meters away into a tree or a wall or in a floor or unenterable building. 2. The warning gives away the position of players or their camps. I could easily triangulate their location based on the max size of the jammer and just logging in and out about 3 times. 3. What happens if someone blocks off entire cities with barbed wire and traps, then plants these down? The city would only need a small crew to protect it and replace barbed wire as it is removed. Entire towns taken over by clans, where they can set up these in order to make players spawn in open plains or at the bottom of hills, giving them prime targets for the killing. I like the idea behind the idea, such as working generators and radio towers, just don't like the spawn-jamming aspect of it. +1 for everything BUT spawn-jamming. I hate server hopping and ghosting as much as the next guy, even lost friends to these people, but this has too many problems that could come from this.

poor kiddies noobs! don't bother them! they risk all that precious gear with their mighty clan to steal your car, you can imagine how annoying respawn again with all those bad bad infected and without a mp5sd? that rocket must be crazy! seriously, this never happened to me..i imagine that the best reaction is the same when you see a baby cry for his toy..why they just don't keep playing wow? and the worst things are that you can see youtubers doing the same even in streaming, (what a shame) and i've read only a single topic with the confession of an altf4er..guys why you don't open a thread called altf4 stories? i mean, come on guys, it's a mod where it's supposed i'll permadie and loose my stuff! even if you are in a group can you imagine how it would be funnier if one of you survives and recovers your stuff? at least you would remember that time when you died together like true survivors..i don't know..ghosting ruins the fun...

Dayz has a serious problem right now, ghosting and it NEEDS to be fixed. My friend and i were shooting a person on top of the firehouse, we hit him a few times and then he logged out, joined a different server, came on top of the building we were on and killed us both, we had no chance, he was right behind us. That is anti-fun and very unfair, please fix it either by making a new character on every server or disabling combat for the person logging in for 20 seconds.

I'd say its against the spirit of the game but I'm a little old fashioned with the notions of integrity and fairplay. In the old days we called this "ghosting", that was spectating others and telling your friends where the enemy was and was greatly shamed and looked down upon. This is no different imo.

I can only see underground bases being implemented to be honest. As Rocket said building above ground would create hundreds of player camps per server which would ultimately slow things down. Another thing to consider is 'ghosting' where a player could merely go to where your camp is on another server and then change to the server where the camp/building is, thereby 'ghosting' in and wiping the occupants out possibly. This couldnt happen with an underground base because the camp/base only appears on the one server, unless the player makes an identical underground base on another server (possible i suppose) So in response to your thread, yes, i too like the idea of an underground base, something you can mould to be your own.

I certainly agree that something needs to be done about ghosting and abort-on-contact exploits but this solution doesn't strike me as simple nor elegant. Players will need 3+ significant items (radio tower, generator, one of more jerry cans) to combat an exploit that ideally wouldn't exist in the first place. These items will take time to gather and eat inventory space. This means you're actually punishing the victims ​of this behaviour, not the offenders. This will only solve the problem in very specific circumstances. Any players who are travelling from A to B can still be ghosted. Any players who decide against making their camp even more painfully obvious can have it ghosted. Any players who have not yet found and deployed the items can still be ghosted. Anyone with a weapon range greater than the tower range can still ghost to a new vantage point. A somewhat more subtle result of this scheme is that you're essentially condoning ghosting in any circumstances where an exploiter is able to do it. There will be many circumstances where deploying this anti-spawn measure will be impractical or impossible for a group. When this group is killed by a ghoster, the ghoster will simply claim "They should have had a tower up". This idea seems like a cumbersome attempt to fix game problems via the game world. I think these two things should be kept entirely separate. Yes, players vanishing and reappearing is unrealistic - but it's also obviously required. It's okay to use something unrealistic but required to fix problems with it. You don't need some plausible game world solution like this. It will always feel cumbersome if you do. I'm not entirely sure why you wish to use the game world to address this problem. Preventing ghosters will never be fun and using out-of-world systems to prevent the problem will be much more effective. Along these lines there are probably vastly more elegant solutions to the problem. So, to try and be constructive in my criticism, here is my proposal: Log players "last played server" to the hive when they disconnect. Have the server maintain a list of players who have disconnected within the last 15 minutes. When a player connects to a server, check if they're in the disconnected list. If a player exists in the disconnected list and that server not the last server they played on, do not allow the connection. This would allow players freedom to change servers but not for ghosting. If players are on server A but it's lagging or bugged, they can rejoin server B. They can freely rejoin A in 20 minutes when the problems have passed. If a players internet goes down and they are disconnected from server A, they can immediately rejoin as server A is still their last played server and thus they haven't been able to alter their position in any way. A final touch would be to broadcast join/part messages over direct comms. This means if you see a join message, you know someone has just spawned in within X metres. Yes, this advantages the players already in the server but that is a fair penalty for them not logging off somewhere safer. It would also help to name and shame players who abort on contact. It could be used by bandits watching a camp to learn when the camp is clear and safe to raid but this is unlikely and losing all your tents is a just punishment for failing to notice a bandit in direct comms range of your camp. tl;dr: No. This scheme adds nothing fun, punishes the wrong people and will only work occasionally.

Wouldn't it be simpler just add entropy to the position in the DB. On logout, add a random 100-300m in a random 360deg direction to current position. Check to make sure it is on ground level, not in a building, and not clipping any statics. No ghosting and you still log in in the same general area you left. For camps add exception where if you are within 10m of your tent at logout, your position snaps to standing in front of your tent upon login.

As long as they fix ghosting and player structures (fences) are actually working there will 100% be trading hubs set up by players and that's the way it should be. Right now it won't really happen, because you can just switch servers, run to where the trading hub is, log back to the server it's on and end up inside the fences so it's not possible to have a player policed safe area.

i like your idea. but i think your overenginnering the solution. if this is only to stop ghosting/server hopping. then the system just needs to check for other players in the area you are about to log in to and then tell the player logging in to either wait and try again in a minute or log in now x number of metres away from the player already in game. this could be troublesome for groups logging in, so maybe a friend list with permissions could be introduced. basically add a friends battleye code to an allowed list. as for things like camo hides. radio towers (for clan/friends coms) these are all good :) but i would also like to see items from civi street. baseball bats melee knives. civi skins police skins police armour (extra protection/move slower)

Perhaps but one thing would be for certain, it would be impossible for that player to come back and spawn behind you by ghosting.

GHosting will be sorted eventually, there is no way the entire concept of dayZ could work as a fully fledged game whilst ghosting was still an issue. (it is still in alpha)

The issue i see with either radio towers or fire's is that you will need a lot of equipment (and possibly) people to accomplish battling ghosters. While i do understand it can be a problem in fixed locations, like for example the Airfields and the Main cities. Which will give either side the option to realy set up a base somewhere and other the drive to take it down (aka. group play, f/e friendlies taking over Elektro by blocking out spawns for hoppers and bandits) ... but, i think just setting a perimiter isn't enough, if your spawnpoint happens to be blocked this way, then ones option should be to spawn at the beach or goto another server. And i don't think this is harsh, see, if you are not around to defend your spawnpoint (aka. you are sleeping/not logged in) than it's fairly reasonable to assume you either been captured or just slain in your sleep as this group came in to set up this radio tower. You may have been able to take one or two down with you but thats about it, and afterwards you would spawn at the beach with no stuff at all... so IF your spawn is compromised at this particular server, you get the option to spawn at the beach and keep your stuff, or you goto a server where this location isn't compromized... But the ghosting problem isn't just a problem there, it occurs everywhere and everywhen in the game, so there should be an easy to obtain item that gives a player the time to get away from a location someone else just alt+F4 outof, and my first thought was Flares, these only last 5min, so they only cause a fairly short period to block of an area for spawn, but at the same time, they give enough time to get out of that location and perhaps even to a good location to take off this person as (s)he tries to ghost back in. Flares are also so commen that everybody can have 'ghost' protection on them after the 1st or 2nd building they loot. A third thing that just dropped in my mind, it would be kinda cool if this radio tower could be modified to send out a signal that prevents Infected from spawning in a certain radius. Not prevent them from comming in if lured or drawn by loud noises. But clear spawning would be nice, that would give friendlies and bandits the option to set up relative safe zones. While a safe zone might brush against some people's hairs, on the other hand it's exactly what people will do (and have done through the ages), build something that keeps nasties out. Seeing buildings and barbedwire doesn't do much, as the infected just glitch through them, setting up a radiotower with an Infected Modification would atleast create a relative safe zone. What does need to happen though is that gas/petrol becomes limited in supply, meaning that this Infected repellant can only run so long, it will have people organize raiding parties to nearby gasstations in order to keep them running, etc... Perhaps a radiotower can only run in one mode, either repell spawning of people or repel spawning of Infected. In which case a choice has to be made, you can still somewhat secure your base with barbed wire, and other items to create a somewhat save area from people, or when you run two towers, you burn through fuel twice as fast. PS. Now that a generator is planned, it would also be nice if we can run lights off of it, this will help setting up safe zones at night, where you'll be able to see people comming in and can inquire them of their motives, or shoot them on sight...

I dislike this idea, it defeats immersion. Instead of playing in a zombie survival genre I'm now in a more Matrix-like atmosphere where I'm trying to fight people who can dial-in and dial-out of the server. (sadly, it is a bit like that now...) Players will be running "interdiction fields" like in the ship battles in Star Wars where they force other ships to be unable to jump to light speed. Run into a loot area, light a fireplace, loot, kill, and run out. Or better yet, kill the fire, and disconnect yourself. None of that feels authentic, or like an original intention, for a fireplace. The fix for ghosting needs to be passive and absolute, not active and dynamic... and definitely not controllable by other players in my opinion. If you want to create no-spawn-zones (say, for airfields, military areas) then have them ALWAYS be no-spawn-zones. That way no one can spawn in, everyone has to walk. If you spawn out in them by disconnecting, you come back in with the last place the database could save you with the 5 min unconsciousness and maybe some other penalty. I'm glad there are thoughts and discussions about this, I just disagree with this particular method, there's got to be better ways of managing "occupation."