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to stealth in ARMA is simple - learn to tap the key for long enough to move half a foot without making sound this is a deliberate engine mechanic - stealth is slow, takes some skill and concentration but is very rewarding I have done this to guys in ATCs a number of times: run round at the front door so he camps the stairs then slowly stealth to the ladder and climb (only safe if you have a second covering the doors) it's so successful I've been accused of ghosting; my victim swore he would DC on every Bandit from that day on

Loving the game, just wanted to get a couple ideas out there. Obviously most of these ideas would take a lot of work to implement but I thought it would be interesting to put them out there and see what other people had to say. #1 On the topic of Zed AI. Seems like they are putting a lot of work into implementing better zed AI which is great. The better the zed AI the more interesting the game will end up. IMO ideally there would be 4 "modes" of zed AI 1: Normal "roaming"- already implemented the zed roam around zones and moving around them is risky. 2: Aggro - also already implemented, the zed know where you are and are actively pursuing you. 3: Investigate - if the zed notices something somewhat unusual they move at their "roaming" speed towards it to investigate. So for example if a zed hears you moving on the other side of a wall or in a building they will move towards where you are making noise to see what the noise was. Zeds wouldn't go aggro ever on you just from hearing a noise. Cans, flares, and other distractions should be a little more effective. The devs seem to be in the process of implementing this kind of activity. 4: Aggressive investigation - If a zed hears a highly unusual noise such as a gunshot or an explosion they go into "aggressive investigate mode" and move at their "aggro" speed towards where the noise came from. Zeds never go aggro on you just from gunshots if they can't see you but if they are running full speed to where you just fired a shot they are usually going to find you quickly unless you make a hasty exit. They would also use the mode to follow you around corners or if you exit LOS. #2 Stamina The main problem with implementing stamina currently is that it would make moving long distances around the map tedious. IMO the best way to fix this issue is changing the way panic works. If you aggro a zed you instantly panic and when you lose a zed you stay in panic mode for a short amount of time. If you are not panicked running does not waste stamina. If you are panicking running or crouch running uses stamina. Once the stamina meter runs out you can no longer run. The stamina meter recovers if you are not running but while panicked the stamina meter recovers more slowly (so if you aggro a bunch of zombies and make it on the other side of a barrier or stop running to deal with some of them you might have some time to regain stamina to allow you to escape). Stamina does not recover at all if you are bleeding. With stamina you should run slightly faster than the zed so that if you aggro them you have enough stamina to get a head start and put a little distance between you and the runners, allowing you to slip into hiding or into a building to deal with them. Once you run out of stamina though they would quickly be all over you. Running long distances until you find a barn with 20 zed behind you or running up and down hills becomes a thing of the past. Running through towns and around corners to lose zed becomes risky because you risk aggroing more and you know you can't run forever. In combination with the changes to zed AI I listed it would make zed encounters more interesting. You have a zed chasing you into a town and see an open door. Do you risk running around the corner and trying to lose him in the town and maybe run into more zed? Do you run into the house and shoot him? If you shoot him do you try to run out of the house and quickly hide before the rest of the zed can find you with low stamina or do you waste precious ammo killing them all? It would probably requiring a lot of tweaking to balance the amount of stamina, regen rates, zed speeds vs. your speeds and all the elements needed to make this work admittedly. #3 Soda- Have soda refill less thirst (maybe 1/2 of max) and have it regen a small amount of blood (50-100). They do give you a soda after you give blood for a reason and no one ever comes out of the desert saying "I'm dying, give me a Pepsi." #4 Broken bones- Make a new item "makeshift splint" that takes care of broken bone status. Make morphine cure the "pain shakes". Get rid of painkillers. Make 1x splint a starting item if you are going to make broken bones more common (you can make a splint out of practically anything in real life anyways). If you still feel the need to be evil take away the new morphine (read painkillers) from starting supplies when you give splint. It's still possible to play the game with pain for a little while until you can hunt down meds, but a broken leg with no cure means a reset 99% of the time for me. It's way to tedious to crawl around such a large map, not that it's too hard just that it's wayyyy too boring. On a related note... #5 Pain Maybe make pain only shake the screen in aiming mode with gun up if possible (Amra 2 and all). I'm getting seasick. Pain should make it much harder to aim a gun which is realistic and understandable, I've never seen someone in so much pain they were violently shaking their head but still able to move (for the sake of the game this much pain should = passing out). On a related note disable digital crosshairs across all servers. #6 Flags There should be a new item "flag." It is put down similar to a tent or fireplace and once put down only the owner can pick it up but any player can remove it. If a player would login on a server within a certain distance of a placed flag they instead are logged in at a point outside of that area. This allows clans and groups of players to set up small controlled areas like temporary forts, trading posts, or safe zones to regroup without worrying about players ghosting servers into a hiding spot then logging in and PKing to grief them or other stupid issues that ONLY exist due to exploits. It might be a pain to recalculate spawn points for players who are relocated due to flags and I understand this, but no harm in making a suggestion. Flags should be limited to one per player per server and flags should delete once the owner is logged out for > 5-10 mins to prevent idiots dropping flags all over the place and creating messes (if you place a new flag with one already down in server it deletes old flag). I am currently in school for software design and hope to get into the industry one day. Barring that at very least I will continue programming games as a side project in the future (I've done some demos and proof of concept stuff just for fun outside of school), so I'd be interested to hear people's opinions on my suggestions even if nothing else ever comes of them...

Nice work Publik. Very pretty formatting. I eagerly await the completion of the "Employee" section. One note on the "Hostile Actions" section, though: "Entry or exit from an unauthorized area (we'll assume that you're up to no good)." Also, we probably want to make our willingness to store violators' goods conditional on the provocation which caused us to open fire--Ghosting in with a can of beans is different from ghosting in with a grenade in hand. I think he's working on the "Employee" section to tell you just that. :)

I can't exactly find the thread but someone suggested that there would be server specific characters. This would fix DCing from pvp, server hoping for loot, and ghosting.

People need to start manning up and stop ghosting. So annoying. Though we were able to get some of those who been ghosting. Still recruiting and taking people in. Hope to see you all out there.

What if we start making DCing = a percentage of Food/and or water is removed from your Food/Water value. You DC then you see a penalty where you log back in-- now you lost half or portion of the water/food value on the character. Now the player who does large amount of server hopping or DCing will see themselves start to starve. EX. (numbers are just for example use) Water/Food Value = 100 (You just eat and had a drink) Player is in danger (player/or Zed) and decides to DC out of the situation. Normally when you are offline for a day or more you come back with low Food and water/ lets say that value is 20- The icons are starting to blink or are red. With the player who DC'ed they go from 100 value to a (- 40 or -60) to their value. This means when a player DC'ed they are going to need to find food/water very soon = using up more supplies. If a player DC or server hops to often they will suddenly see their water/food icons blinking and scrambling for water/food. This should help with DCing/server hoping/ and Ghosting. This is not a cure but it limits or should in theory curb this type of behavior.

Let me explain a situation where ghosters really fuc*ed some stuff up. I run the CQF and we like to play on our servers. Last night, I managed to get most of my guys on the server for a major convoy op. We had 4 vehicles (all with gear [med supplies, guns, ammo, even a mountain dew]) and we were making our way out to do some extraction of team members and survivors from hostile zones. Long story short, we made it to the NW airfield where a squad was under heavy fire. We rallied by the lone two northern hangars and put the vehicles inside and formed a perimeter. Our squad was at the ATC tower and heavily engaged, so we moved to meet that front. Next thing I know is that my guys are reporting that they are being shot, so I order a retreat into the hangars until we could regroup and go on the offensive. We put the vehicles in front to provide cover temporarily. I was in a the hangar with 15 other people and the next thing I know, the fire on us stops as the shooter disconnects. So we begin to regroup. After about 5 min of aiding each other and rearming, we were good. the next thing I know, the shooter reconnects in the middle of my group and ends up killing 6 of my guys before we can get a bead on him. I ordered a rapid pull out of the airfield so that we didn't lose any more guys or vehicles. Then as they go out, the two guys my lone squad was fighting spawn in and riddle the convoy with bullets. In the end only 3 people and 1 vehicle from my original group made it back. Now in a non-ghosting situation, I would have admitted a fuckup on my part somewhere. But I think that this issue was a huge problem. It ended up setting us back and forcing us to stop any friendly extractions of random friendly survivors for the near future (until we rearm and such). I spoke with ander (who came on due to complaints of me banning a ghoster a little earlier) and he stated that it wasn't an exploit to ghost at this time, wait, what?!?!. So I unbanned the ghoster from my server. When I said that compares to death dodging but I feel it is 10x worse, we got on the subject of how to deal with exploits. Apparently, I am not to ban exploiters (could be wrong)but should kick them and not on the first offense. As a server owner of a bunch of servers, I feel it is concerning that exploiters, especially ghosters (the bastards taking advantage of the glorious hive system) are able to just continue their cheating without reprimand. They need to be banned as it is just as bad as hacking. When we figure out the situation on dealing with specific types of situations, there needs to be a post made in the forums and stickied about what server admins can do to deal with specific types of douchebags.

Server tied player locations. Each server holding player location data not the master server. This would fix server hopping, ghosting, loot farming via server hopping and alot of the griefing in the game.

Some opinions I have. I am not sure if this has been addressed or not, but since zombies aggro much easier, it would be nice to know that killing all of them in an area will keep the area clear for some amount of time. Maybe 20 mins. If I am going to aggro zombies (and players), then I want to be able to know that I can kill all the fuckers and be able to walk around free and clear for a bit. As it is now, they respawn too quick, imo. I love how the map and compass has changed. Kinda makes the GPS obsolete, but I am ok with that. Was the issue regarding DCing during a fire fight get resolved? I heard that at some point, everyones character stays in a location for 10 seconds or so before he disappears after logging out. I love this idea. No more failsafe and it makes server hopping more tedious. Ghosting becomes more risky too. Players can't log off to avoid death from either other players or from zombie aggro.

Bolded the last bit for emphasis :) On the topic of leadership, I don't really want to lead per-se, and I'm not going to go and declare one. If someone steps up and ends up in a leadership role, I'll pass the ownership of the Steam group (for now I'll just give Kurk and Vul join ownership if possible). I'm also thinking we use officer roles in the group for members, owners for defined leaders (when they arise), and general members for affiliates. For a start grab one of those Urals and drive it to a certain place once a day for a few hours and defend there? Would be good until vehicles get better about sticking around. I agree that it's best to leave leadership fluid for now. As to the initial base: I know you scoffed at using the Balota medical camp as a base, but it's actually a fairly nice setup. On the Pro side, it has triple-gates, no Zeds spawning inside or even being able to get inside, a relatively clear initial area to use as our initial "market" with room to expand as we grow, and four watchtowers. There are clear, flat plains on three sides with a lightly wooded area on a hill to the North, which we could staff with a handful of stealthy sniper-killers if it becomes necessary. Con wise, I know it's near the coast and uncomfortably close to Cherno, but I few well armed guards with nasty attitudes could deter bandits, while newly-spawned Makarov wielders aren't exactly credible threats. Suicidal ghosting with the aforementioned Makarov might be an easy tactic for griefers, though. A big point in our favor for this initial base is that it won't really be that ripe of a target. If we don't initially place any emphasis on long-term storage, then the only thing of value for raiders to try to steal would be the items in the inventories of guards and clients, which guards and clients would all be heavily armed and working together in the face of such a raid, instead of being individually pick-off-able as they normally are. There remains the problem of clients and guards being targeted as they commute, but that's a problem for any set base. Probably the worst thing about a base near the coast is that victorious raiders could camp their fallen comrades' bodies until they jog up from a respawn relatively near by.

NVGs spawn in the south too.. one of my clanmates found some at balota.. they're rare.. deal with it.. ive never found anyone with them.. Server hopping needs to be fixed I agree, as well as ghosting.

My stories end in a few ways: DC, I die, and FML. The most recent is an FML. I put multiple Mak rounds into a guys head, only to have him sync back through the wall and spray me to death. I respawn on the beach in Cherno, and there's a guy popping heads with an AS50. Before that, I was a sniper covering a small group in Berenzino. Our goal was the hospital, and there were people PvPing on the roof. I line up and hit the sniper dead on, but he and his 2 buddies DC before I can kill them. My team raids the hospital while I keep tabs. They log back in and I pop 2 out of 3 of them, they DC AGAIN (I had never used a DMR before, so no I didn't get headshots). On our way out we apparently found their bandit camp, and we looted it after filling their car with stuff and driving off. They came to the tents and followed the car. I lined up and nailed one, dead. The other came up and shot at me but was exhausted, I shot him down but not dead. The third DCed. The other 2 followed shortly, but at least I killed them. About a half hour later, they come back onto our server loaded with M4A3 CCO SD for 2 and a DMR for the third. They shot their way from Elektro to Berenzino before setting up and killing everything that moves. We setup and rush in on them, bringing them down. From what we figured, they were ghosting onto another server to bandage up and move each try, then the last time they used one of their tents on they server to load up and come after us. On that time, my team was so busy screaming "OMG WHO SHOT?!" to notice I was trying to clear the comms, I died. Needless to say, it's been pretty bad. For a number of reasons, I'm not meaning for this to sound as a complaint, but obviously the question was asked and answered.

Why not just have 2 city merchants who act as escrow? (A drops gear in one merchant's pack' date=' B drops gear in the other merchant's pack, merchants take gear to the other player. Or merchants take gear out of player's pack). The last thing you want is confusion, and people arguing over not getting the right gear, and accusing other players of stealing. I think you're just better off holding a place like Rog (server ghosting or not). Trolls are going to make swiss cheese of your boat, no question. Rog will give you the structural defense you need to control an area. Maybe it'd be easier to police if you force visitors to keep their guns IN their packs. Anyone who has a gun out in the area of Rog will be KOS. Anyone who logs in attempting to ghost (having their guns out) will be killed before they even load in. Anyone who attempts to take a weapon out will be KOS. I just think it'll be really hard for you to tell who is ghosting in to visit and who is ghosting in to attack otherwise. Good luck to you though, my guys would probably be down to merc for you if you need it.

THREAD MOVED HERETHREAD MOVED HERE The Goods: We'll do 3 things: -Facilitate trade between players -Sell/gather items (food, weapons, ammo, utilities) -Rent bodyguards Trading: http://i.imgur.com/Um3Yi.gif' alt='Um3Yi.gif'> Thank you oRidicule ♥ Selling goods: We gather weapons, ammo, food, water, utilities, etc. We put them in a distant location, like way up the coast in a hidden place, or we keep them on Skalisty in an off-limits area. If anyone spawns in the off-limits area, they are killed. Teams are dropped on the mainland by air or sea and go out to collect stuff. We then trade the items for whatever it is we need, mostly vehicle parts and fortifications (tents, wire, sandbags, tank traps). Renting bodyguards/mercenaries: If you like to kill, we can have you rented out for a percentage of the loot our employer finds. Be it security for an airfield run, guarding a vehicle, attacking another camp, whatever. The post will supply weapons/ammo for the merc teams, and we'll continue an operation until we succeed. If you die, we rearm you and send you back out. The Spot: I'm thinking Skalisty Island (SE corner). It's got a lot of cover from the mainland, and the SE side can't be seen from the coast. It has no hard fortifications to depend on, so the most damage a hacker can do is kill us all. It can't be reached without resources (read: boat or helicopter), so ghosting or server hopping is much harder to do. It requires boats and things to work, but I'm hopeful we can spend the time waiting on that update to gather the tents/fortifications/vehicles we need as well as being best friends and weeding out the people that would instead stab us in the back. Access to the Island: We can set up a mainland post to check players before letting them on the island. Once they're checked out, a boat is sent from Skalisty to pick them up and ferry them to the island. Once on the island, guards accompany the group to make sure no one becomes a threat. If we don't have enough guards to staff the place we don't run ferries. Snipers will be posted on the coast of the island and keep an eye on the boat when we send it out. Or... A mobile base could work too. Drop our stuff in the relative safety of the wilds, and drive into town with a few Urals to set up shop for a few hours. Rules for Clients: Primary out but down. If we can holster our sidearms in the future then that works too. If you raise your weapon you'll be warned. If you don't drop your weapon you'll be shot and your gear will be thrown in a tent and sold. If we are attacked: Clients are to get on the ground and not do anything. Anyone that is found afterwards that is dead but not confirmed as hostile will have their gear stored in a tent. You'll be allowed back on the island to take your gear or have it taken to you. The Server: We need a server. Rules are up for grabs, I really don't care what, as long as it's a 1.7+/beta server. Casual settings would be easy for us, but would also bring the casual griefers and so on. Hardcore is harder, but brings us players that really want to trade. All up to debate. So far, DE26 or Chicago 10. Communications: We've got offers for TS3 servers. Check the Steam group description. Communications with clients will be done through Direct. Leadership: If we ever have a leader they'll show up later down the line. I'm asking for like-minded individuals who want to work democratically. I don't want to impose duties like "gotta bring in X items/day or you're out!" or "gotta guard the island all day". Do what you want, we'll work out what the post turns into later. So yeah, if you're interested go ahead and join the Steam group. It's currently public (ha), and we'll work out how we want to go about it from there. If you don't use Steam for Arma2 (and I don't see why not, since you can link non-steam games anyways), we can work something else out.

Required: * Server this happened on : US 44 Hosted by trinity games * Time that it happened including your timezone : It happened between 1:30am-2:30am pst. * What happened during the incident: Me and my friend blazebeard were hanging out at the northwest airfield at the south barracks.. there was four other people on the server with us and we were just chatting. I see two people start to connect with clan tags on so we hunker down for a minute to see if they spawn on top of us. Nothing seems to happen for a minute or two so we go back to our business when blazebeard and I get shot. Blaze died but i was able to bandage morphine and painkiller up. I call for backup from the two other members we were with. I throw a frag grenade and thats when i see the first disconnect from [Rage]goren im trapped in the corner by the barrack so i just bunk down hugging the wall since another guy had joined mid fight named [Rage]Jhortn (could have the name spelled wrong gonna have server admin look at log tomorrow) Around 2 minutes go by and i see sure enough [Rage]goren connecting again (lightbulb goes off in my head... i have waited to long and allowed this guy to re position on another server and is now back while his friend kept me in check in corner.) Sure enough about 30secs later a grenade from a m16 launcher lands right on me and kills me. So right here im like ok no biggy i have 2 friends approaching from behind they will kill them while looting our bodies. 49th constantine and 49th cadroits come up behind them sure enough the [rage] guys are looting the bodies. 49th fires shots and both of them disconnect. Another 2 mins go by and here they come again [rage]goren and (jhortn) second name could be spelled wrong.. however i had warned that this might happen so i had 49th move further back away. One of them in guillie suit logs infront of constatine by a few feet constantine shoots him in the back and once again they both quickly disconnect. They tried this tactic about 2-3 more times before we were able to kill one of them. Maybe we have bad aim but we stayed in the fight the whole time while they kept dc and re positioning to try and kill all of us. Violators: [rage]goren / ( his teammate with [rage] tag ill have correct spelling tomorrow) All the people on the server tho it was few saw what happened and said they would comment on this post however i didn't take video or screenshot so dont know how much can be done. Hope the logs will tell the story. I know the admin of server so gonna ask if he can post it or how it works. - thanks and sorry if I wasn't supposed to post this here...

What he was getting at is there are limited social tools, IE: signs,megaphones,radios, etc... as well as there is no way to set up safe zones that can stop ghosting. a lot of the issues with setting up safe zones have been covered in this thread link.

It also depends how it pans out in regards to servers. If we have to rent our own servers with limited amount of players on each server then a one off purchase fee would be used. Im willing to pay as much as any other AAA charges. £40 in UK If it goes the one server route like CCP's Tranquility server ( which would solve alot of current problems ie Ghosting, Server hopping for loot etc .. ) run by BIS then it requires a different kind of fee. The purchase and continuous update of the super hardware for the one server and also the running cost's and GB/TB/pm Data useage ISP fees would be better maintained by a monthly fee subscription to ensure it keeps on running. £10pm UK is the going rate and yes i would quite happily pay that. The actual game is free you just need to pay £10 for your first 30DayZ <---- see what i did there :angel:

It's getting bad now. Last night, my friends and I ran into not 1, but 3 groups of players, fully loaded with every single tool you can get. Even the toolbox, which doesn't even spawn in the game anymore. The only way to have it is to hack it in. The only reason we did not die to any of these guys is because my friend had night vision goggles that we stole off a dead body in Cherno and we were smart enough to throw flares and blind the punks. We dropped a guy named "sniper_friendly" TWICE, within a 5 minute span, north of Stary Sobor who had every tool, M4A1 SD CCO, tons of ammo. It's just a little ridiculous right now. I am excited about the changes to DCing during a fire fight and I hope they can address the ghosting issue as well.

This may have been suggested already and if so I apologize but I was thinking about this and a fairly simple (in principle but not necessarily in practice) idea came to me. Ghosting is, to my understanding, the act of approaching a person or place on one server then logging into a different server to infiltrate said place or get or behind said person and then returning to the original server. My suggestion would be to put a timer on returning to a server should you leave it and join another one. This wouldn't necessarily prevent infiltrating a base say, but it would limit the ability of someone you were fighting from spawning in behind you. If you couldn't log back into a server you left for say, an hour, that would give the other person plenty of time to move on. To clarify: - If you begin on server 'A' - And you move to server 'B' - You won't be able to return to server 'A' for X length of time (an hour say) And to be clear, there would be NO timer if you lost connection or disconnected from server 'A' and immediately returned to server 'A' without joining another server in between.

Also happened to me. lost a day 5 char, M4A1 CCO SD, M9SD, DMR, 24 slot pack, Range Finder, NVG, GPS. Not to mention the basic gear. the items listed are rare that i gained form killing one ghosting bandit, trading, clan donation, scavenging and raiding the NW airfield barracks. Hours of game time lost due to a "hacker" and not my own stupid fault. Well maybe it was my fault for even logging in. Fuck this, waste of my time when they do nothing to stop them. Will not be playing Dayz. Nice job greifers you just killed a game.

I thoroughly enjoy playing DayZ. I am also fortunate enough to have numerous RL/e-friends to game with in groups. However, I know MANY people do not. They struggle playing solo, trying to find a "friendly in Cherno?" to meet up with...often resulting in their very demise. So, I've had this idea and the knowledge to do what I am about to explain, but I simply do not have the time to dedicate to the project at this time. I figured I would pass the general idea out here for someone who has the skills and can possibly see the vision. THE CONCEPT: Create an interactive website where people can register their player accounts (secure, yet identifiable - more on this below). The general database will store not only individual player names, but also have a "groups" function. Players "A through Z" register on the site. Player "A" forms a new group called "The Cherno Survivors". Player "B" sees that player "A" is online, and strikes up a chat on the website. They chat for a few minutes, and player "B" decides he wants to join "The Cherno Survivors" group. Player "C" is online and also decides to join the group. They exchange comms info/etc, and all three meet up to find a server together. Player "D" doesn't want to join a group just yet, but he would like to meet up with some fellow survivors. He posts a real-time "temporary party" request. Player "E" logs on to the website, he also does not want to join a specific group just yet. He sees the active party request, and accepts to join. Players "D" and "E" chat/exchange comms info through the party chat system, and they both go on their merry way to find a server together. Ten minutes go by, and player "F" logs on to the website. He wants to join a temporary party with some fellow survivors. He contemplates putting his own "temporary party" request up, but instead accepts the open temporary party posted by player "D". Player "D" gets a subtle audible ping through the website. After finding a safe place to tab out, player "D" allows player "F" into the party, gives him comms info, and player "F" now joins their party. Player "D" decides that 3 is enough, so he removes his active party request. GENERAL: For those familiar with competitive gaming and the likes, this is in ways a sort of "scrim/war/ladder" style system. Players can log on to the site, find a party for the night or join a group and play with the same group night after night. The groups can have info pages detailing the location/hours in which they typically play/etc. SECURITY: The player database system would have a secure identifiable feature to each player, as well as a ranking system. Most likely the players IN GAME GUID would be securely stored in the database to prevent ghosting/smurfing. If you are involved in a party/group, and one of the players goes rouge and shoots all of you, you come back to the website and report the player. Each report will count as 1 strike. This way, when you attempt to join a party or prior to accepting a party request, you can see that player "T" has 0 strikes...or player "R" has 3 strikes. In this sense, you can simply choose not to party with that person. I honestly see this taking off and being a very successful addition to DayZ. If someone feels like taking off with the idea, you are free to do so. I have many other ideas to go along with this system, but wanted to put the general concept out there for others to see. I can be reached through PM here, or add me on steam "Austex" if you want to chat about it. (Steam profile pic is Papa Smurf!)

And Ander, who are you to post this under "Cheat Reporting". You are simply assuming things because you're upset. Maybe someone ghosted. Ghosting SHOULD be considered cheating. You get an unfair advantage. I say if you ghosted and killed someone, you should be kicked. That's UNFAIR, and SHOULD be against the rules.

If you remove the negative spectrum of the direct communication meter, would that be satisfactory? The primary objective here is to eliminate the advantage of third party communication without expressly forbidding it - if people communicate, they must pay the price of being more noticeable, otherwise people will actually be punished for embracing the more realistic model of of direct speak in lieu of a chat program. Most other limitation meters have a negative effect that governs behavior, the most obvious being temperature. It was added to the game to force survivors to sacrifice stealth or suffer the consequences and generally make night prowls harder. In fact, now that I think about, every characteristic addon should confer penalties instead of bonuses, making the game easier for freshly spawned survivors and harder for veterans. Screw the bonus, make it so people have to adapt to the unhealthy state of perpetual isolation from the rich community we take for granted, and only get reminded of what they once had with brief encounters with humanity. Scavenging will be made harder, but it should be made harder for people who have become experts at it: if you don't die to zombies in the first 3 days of life, you will not die to zombies, unless something happens to nerf your character. Changing the zombies will not be fair to new players unless they have a starting advantage that eases them into gameplay as they get the critical survival loot. Isolation seems to be the most believable way to make this happen. It's not perfect for the reasons you stated, but I can't really think of any other way to encourage direct chat than to make it a need. I don't believe that teamspeak ghosting will ever take off because of the security feaures inherent in third party chat programs and the fact that the majority of recruitment for these things is outside of the game entirely - this sort of metagaming is stuff that only succeeds in games like Eve Online, which has a high stakes economy system. If it does take off, though, then the chat problem is solved and nothing needs to be done about it. I just think that it won't.

1 min server side timer on disco would solve it. If you abort you can hang for 60 sec and see if anyone rolls up on you, if you disco than your toon hangs out for a minute. I dont think server hopping is that bad, ghosting is what makes this game always dangerous, and the person logging in is always at a disadvantage. 1 min timer would make it less effective though for sure.

We have an ongoing saga stemming from the Northeast tent raids which I posted about in the Legit or Cheap tactics thread. We set up a camp back in the same server like I said we would, and have been having ongoing raids against this clan with my small group of friends. Tonight was a bright moonlit night on the server, and there were just two of us. It starts out with my friend near Stary Sabor pillaging a deer stand when two survivors passed by. He hid in the bushes, and a third survivor decked out in a gillie suite wielding a m107 were ghosting the first two men. So my friend follows the last man until he gets his chance to pop an enfield round into his back. He loads up this guys equipment and heads north. We meet up in Berenzino where we rush out to our little hidden tent camp. We dump the M107, gear up with bare minimum and our medical load-outs for a Berenzino raid. We are both geared with only pistols and Enfields. He has a revolver, I have a Glock 17. We scour Berenzino, which is seemingly a bust. We are getting very little loot, and I can't even find an Alice pack. So we decide after we raid the military tents we are going to a more populated server as there were only about ten players on. As we approach from the West near some houses, I spot a crawler that looks like a survivor. I alert my friend, just as he spots three men on the opposite side of the tents way in the treeline about 400 meters out. We both lay down with our Enfields and zoom in. We are on the hillside way out of range of Zombies. They have not spotted us. As they crouch and wait, I take aim, I fire... The silence is broken as my .303 round bursts through the survivors chest cavity. Things are about to get hairy. My mate fires off a shot, then I respond with one. After about five shots, three men down. We wait a few minutes and scan the horizon for movement. We see nothing, so we race on top of the hillside over to our score. As we approach my mate notices a man crawling in the trees. Before I can even see what he's going on about, he puts one right through the mans head. That's four down. We rush over to the corpses in anticipation, never expecting what we find. The first body, Camo DMR, NVGs, Range Finder, GPS.... Holy cow, these guys are decked out. We move to the next, M4A1 CCO SD, M4A3 CCO Camo, another pair of NVGs, M9 SD, Range Finders and GPS. We grab all of this equipment and ammo.... and I finally got my Alice pack. We have to get the heck out of here NOW! This is the best score we have come across so far. And here two packless men with pistols and Enfields come out victorious. We rush to our tent camp and unload the goods, what an exciting night. After this we meet up with my other two friends, one of them I killed with an M203 HE grenage on accident... Just goes to show you, you can have all the fancy gear you want, tactics and patience will win every time. Oh, did I mention that Enfields own the Northeast?