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1. I think not selecting any options is already possible for you, and your abstinence will be recorded by the total of how many members casted votes. If someone could confirm this for me, that would be wonderful. That said, if aircraft are going to be in regardless of any polls or argument against them, then you should voice an opinion about them for your own benefit. If your exact vision of DayZ won't become a reality (probably none of our "visions" will) that doesn't mean you cannot try and positively influence what will it will become. If you are very against aircraft based on the idea that they are overpowered then you should be submitting an opinions like "aircraft should be super rare" or "aircraft should be nearly impossible to maintain and operate", or even "there should only be one heli per server", like some have done. I am actually quite good at statistics. If I gave you an actual "No" option then you wouldn't bother giving the opinion this thread is specifically designed to elicit, which is if aircraft, then what kind and how, rather than simply: Aircraft? Really had I allowed an option that doesn't answer the question the thread poses I would be screwing up my data gathering approach. 2. If somebody can spot enemies on the ground from an ultralight (unconcealed enemies) and provide a real tactical advantage then they are putting themselves at risk, because they too can be spotted, and shot down. You talk about the actual difficulty of getting off the ground as if it is a godly feat. An actual city-state would be able to basically do many of the things that modern civilization does simply because we now know how, and our technology and information is well preserved. All we need is one library. The main issue to actually doing maintenance on an aircraft, or building one, is simply know-how, not material scarcity. A small group of individuals with the right knowledge could get it done. Since servers actually have communities much larger than 200 and since it is much easier than you think to achieve basic flight, there would be plenty of competition. I think that access to flight alters the game as well, dramatically, and for the better. Without altering or removing any ground mechanics it opens up an entire new frontier and end game that is interesting, challenging, and enjoyable. Terra firma lovers will need to adapt to threats possibly coming from the sky, but so what? Seems more challenging and exhilarating to me. Being attacked from the air is terrifying and awesome. 3. I find it really curious that you can run from end to end in 30 minutes... Is this when you are fully stocked with water and maxed out on calories? Do you have to stop to forage? Are you including all the hassle and inbetween? When stamina hits the map is going to grow, relativistically speaking. Traveling will take more time and zombies will pose much more of a threat. A pox on your 30 minute fairy tale! It's not necessary for large groups to form that we have aircraft, it is just highly conducive to them. Getting everyone together at the same time can prove quite a task. People die and need rides, there are only so many ground vehicles available, they break down, so people tend to not bother and go their separate ways. Groups who are masters of aircraft gain the convenience of being able to get everyone together in an amount of time that is reasonable. 4. V3S's are going to be much more rare than they are now, and driving along the coast in a v3s with all that gear for god knows what reasons must have meant you guys were done surviving and just doing stuff for shits and giggles. Is there really that much of a difference between driving around for fun and flying around for fun (or with purpose?). In my vision of DayZ, only fools or bandits would drive a gear laden V3S down the coast If it only takes me 5 minutes or less to fly from map end to map end, that's fine with me. I like how I don't need to spend a fully realistic amount of time running from town to town, there is only so much time I want to spend traveling when I am determined to get from point A to point B. 5. It may well be that you disagree but if I was a betting man, I would bet against the devs changing their mind on aircraft. I understand you have some valid arguments but I implore you to make some DayZ lemonade!

19 out of the 27 people who actually bothered to vote selected, not 70% of the forum. Right now, you don't have the statistical density required to have a margin of error, much less make claims about what a proportion of the forum thinks is a good idea. Once again, lrn2statistics. 1) If your base is hidden, why is it fortified? Waste of time, energy and materials. 2) If your base is fortified, it most definitely isn't hidden. 3) Not every group is going to have a fortified (-snort-), hidden (also -snort-) base filled with weapons, ammo, and a fleet of ground vehicles. In fact, I am willing to bet that 99% of the group is going to lack those things. A base, yes. Not oodles and oodles of supplies. 4) "It's not too difficult to fly a plane, nor to fix it if you have the materials". HAHAHA, oh man, you have no idea how complicated modern machinery is, right, nor the level of international/intercontinental logistics required to support said machinery. Where are you getting your fuel, your oil, your hydraulic fluid, your replacement avionics, your replacement wires, rubber, etc etc etc? 4) "When do you want to move on to bigger and better things". Sure I do, whatever-your-name-is, but I want to bring back civilization first: trade agreements, trade routes, various industries, not commit highly elaborate suicide by attempting to fix up some plane in a po'dunk workshop and learning to fly it in my very-limited spare time. 5) Constructing a fortified base around an airstrip is not "the only way to compete with the organized bandits". In fact, said organized bandits would probably sit 2 kilometers off, bombing the shit out of your airstrip with improvised mortars (have fun taking off when your airstrip is full of holes!), and laying siege to your compound ( hint: when you are starving to death, and so sick you can barely stand, tell me how you will go fly that plane out of the bombed-out compound?) No, the way to compete with the organized bandits is to organize harder. They bring in squads, you bring in platoons. They surround your compound, you summon your allies from another compound to take them in the flank. They bring in truckloads of ammo, you work on building up industries and trade routes so you can make all the ammo you need. Not "attempt to fix up a derelict aircraft and hope you can learn how to fly it". How back would your clan feel if you fixed up a plane, filled it with supplies, and tried to take off for an allied compound, only to misjudge the take-off, clip the tarmac with a wing, and scatter burning fuel across half your base? Or, how would said allied compound feel if you led an enemy clan directly to their base? Airplanes are not that difficult to track, especially if they are small craft (AKA stay relatively close to the ground), and require special places to land, be services, and take off. -sees an airplane flying low, to the west. Hmm (pulls out map and radio)- -well boys, we got a plane loaded with cargo, 2 trucks to the NWAF, 1 truck travel west along the Northern Highway, and 1 truck head down to Zeleno. Keep in radio contact the whole time, and we will figure out where this bastard is going-

It's been talked about and in the road-map forever. If the devs were going to change their mind on aircraft we would have heard so by now. Regarding what percentage of players want aircraft and which percentage do not, it's actually quite close to 30%-70% divide. For example, the most popular option is the constructable ultralight option, and 19/27 people have selected this as an option (equivalent to almost 70% exactly). I'm pretty sure that you can select zero options and still submit a vote, this is what I reckon has happened. All that statistic business aside, I think you are somewhat biased in your vision of what aircraft would be like. Here is my counter dialogue: "So Ralph, we've been living in this zombie apocalypse for about a year. We have a hidden and fortified base stocked with weapons, ammo, food, traps everywhere, and several ground vehicles stashed out back. We have weapons and supply cashes around the map and we are starting to get bored of carjacking and sniping people as a pastime. What do?" "Well Fred, there are three airports nearby, what if we could get some sort of plane up and running? It's not that difficult to fly a plane right?" "Sure it's not too difficult if you know a little bit about planes, but the real problem is going to be getting the thing flight ready." "Well that's fine with me Ralph, I have a full set of tools and there are a few machine shops we can power with generators if necessary. I've been doing mechanical work on all our ground vehicles, I think that it's possible I could do work on a plane if I could get the right materials" "Is it really worthwhile Fred? Won't it be a huge hassle?" "How much of a hassle is it to walk and drive around on the ground through hoards of zombies and marauding bandits just to get from place to place, or to transport some supplies we have located? We've been toiling on the dangerous ground for long enough. I want to feel freedom again, even if it will only last as long as one tank of fuel." "I don't know Fred, I just don't see the use..." "You don't see the use of being able to evacuate a survivor in need who is calling on the radio for help? You don't see the use of being able to transport supplies much more safely than driving them along the bandit and zombie infested ground? You don;t see the benefit of being able to collect members of our clan when they return to Chernarus from their travels?" "No Fred, I just see it as a massive expense and a massive risk for us to take" "Jesus H Zombie Christ Ralph! We've been living here for a year and the most amount of convenience we have been able to achieve is a lightly armored pickup truck. When are we going to evolve? I want to explore new lands. I want a safe method of escape. I want to start a family and expand our commune. Think about the long term. Do you really want to sit in your snipers nest and defend this place forever? When do we move on to bigger and better things?" "I don't care what highfalutin wish wash you think you can accomplish, my rifle and my bicycle are it for me". "Well that's all well and grand, but I should remind you that the east coast bandit company has been systematically razing all fortifications to the ground. They operate like a military unit and have the best of everything. The only possible way to escape them is in the air." "They cannot kill what they cannot find, and an aircraft is probably only going to draw their attention and if we give them the idea then they might decide to get aircraft of their own and then where can we hide?" "Where can we hide anyway? It's only a matter of time before people stumble across us. You shot three people on the eastern hill this morning. And you know very well this place is invisible from the air. Why else would we have concealed everything in buildings and under thick trees?" "Fine then Fred, if you want to open up this giant can of birds then so be it, but you are not to bring your aircraft within 1km of this place for any reason." "That's fine Ralph, me and the other clanmates who want more for our children have decided to construct a fortified base out in the open. We are done hiding, and what we have we are willing to protect. It's the only way to compete against the organized bandits." "You think you can defeat the unending tide of evil scoundrels that will kill you, take your precious aircraft, and then devour your freshly butchered corpse?" "No Ralph, maybe not. But we have to try... Because this isn't living, it's just waiting to die." ... Several months pass and Ralph see's the efficacy of aircraft in a zombie apocalypse ... "Fred!, your aircraft has given me an idea... ORBITAL STRIKES!!!! MUAHAHAHAHA!!! OUR ENEMIES WILL BURN FROM ABOVE LIKE ANTS FROM GOD'S OWN MAGNIFYING GLASS!!!!!!" *Fred clicks the radio on "Uhh guys? Where did we put the straight jacket? Ralph has just lost it again..." "ANTS!!!!! MUAHAHAHHAHAHHAA !!! ANTS!!!!!!"

Altho I disagree, +1 for a well-thought counter argument :) 1.) Aircraft have already been confirmed. The topic of the poll is based on the idea that they WILL be in regardless, in which case what would be preferable/fit better. - 2.) I don't think it has to scale to real life. If that was the case we should also be able to maintain our state with drastically less frequent consumption of food/drink even under heavy exertion. Many concessions are made to make the game better/more interesting since most people don't actually play for 24 hours. the same could be said about the amount of humans to a vehicle seeing as one server does not represent the entire surviving population of a country the size of chernarus. Larger clans squads are evectively the 'regional powers/militias' within a server - 3.) I actually agree with you here. it's perfectaly viable to function without vehicles. even so- theres no doubt the effort and time required to find fix and maintain incentivizes group play which is a form of interaction which the game strives for. you are then rewarded with an immense advantage in travel time and the almighty eagle eye. - 4.) Imho dayZ was better for borrowing from Arma. there were shortfalls for sure. fuel was to easy to come by, parts for that matter to easy to tote around the map on foot, etc. but the idea of realism even where it mean imbalance i actually prefer. Situational awareness and planning should be the cornerstones of success in dayZ always. getting hit in the chest cavity with high caliber rifle rounds without modern medical facilities should be almost a 100% death sentence even if not always instant. failing to see the other guy first and make your move on your terms should result in death. - 5.) I agree with you again. I have even stopped playing in frustration for the time being, but continue to argue for what i feel will be a better game in the end. the Point of this topic and the poll however, was not our opinion on if they should be in to begin with, but if they are, how best to handle them and what types would be best.

As Grimey Rick said : "This thread again?" 1) This is a truly horrid poll. No "control group", as in, you can't vote for "no/no aircraft". The only thing we can do is vote for your choices, which deliberately skews the results. I, for one, am not going to vote, and I am sure others as well. Lrn2statistics 2) As it has been said, in this thread and in others: having aircraft changes the scope of the game dramatically. Even a small aircraft changes the game from "hardcore survival game" to "Arma II/III Lite", when you are capable of screaming overhead an enemy base at 300 meters over the ground and 200 kph. With an ultralight, you can scout out enemy bases, hover overhead a town and call out enemy movement, etc. With an aircraft capable of carrying people, you essentially just became paratroopers/air assault soldiers. Not Survivors. Really, the only groups capable of funding an aircraft of "effective" size (that is, a helicopter or a small plane), would be already bordering on city-state size, what with the need for surpluses of food, fuel (and oil and other fluids), manpower (not only the pilot, but the mechanics as well), science (need to know how weather patterns work, as well as avionics and mechanics), and time. Basically, the only people who would actually need a helicopter would be effectively regional powers. On a 50,100, even 200-person server? There wouldn't be anyone to compete. There goes the game. Nearly all of that is basically beyond the scope and theme of the game. 3) You say that you want aircraft to be able to play with your friends? That they are necessary for larger groups to form? HAHAHAHAHAHA Oh man. You do realize that the game, and the playerbase, doesn't really care about you playing with your friends? The Mod had a smaller map than the Standalone, and I can already run from corner to corner in 30 minutes. If you don't have 30 minutes to play the game with, not my problem. Find the time, make the time, don't ask for things to break the game with. 4) Aircraft (and ground vehicles, to much less of an extent) make travel trivial. As above, you can run across the map, corner to corner, in about 30 minutes. With V3S's, my clan did a "coastal patrol", as in, driving all the way from Kamenka to Svetlo. It took us 11 minutes, and we got hung up on some stuff along the way. We were able to transport 15 guys, with gear, armament, and food, the-in-game-equivalent-of-~23km, in 11 minutes. That isn't a survival game, that is Arma III. 5) Just because the devs stated there would be air vehicles doesn't mean I am not allowed to argue against them, or disagree with them in general. I disagree with the developers on a LOT of things. Namely, many aspects of survival, and this aircraft mechanic.

I understand that around 30% of you want a "no" option but what would be the point? Given that three are going to be aircraft regardless of any polls, we might as well get around to discussing the types we want to see available rather than arguing that they should not be available at all. To all the people who want no aircraft whatsoever, my advice is to argue for the most minimalistic implementation of aircraft you can think of, much like what boneboys has done. When it comes to bona fide aircraft like little birds or cessnas, I think that they should be rare and very difficult to repair/maintain. There should be no militarized aircraft (shooting a pkt/pkp out of a heli door should probably be the pinnacle) whatsoever. The reason why larger substantial aircraft should be very rare is because of their utility. The convenience of transporting 6-8 players from the coast is not something that should be commonly experienced, but the experience needs to be available. There should also be smaller ultralight aircraft with 1-2 person carrying capacity and severely limited (like in real life) maximum weight capacity. I think these should be incredibly difficult to get, but I also think that players should be able to construct ultralights themselves through adequate tool/part/resource requirements. One of the main arguments against aircraft in general has been that they will be used to spot player camps. All I can say to this is that the game graphics mechanics are going to change slightly, and who knows what the final build will be like or whether or not camp visibility will be a problem. I want a balance between availability and utility. I'm sort of against giant helicopters like an Mi-17 because they are too powerful. I want to have access to flight, but on my own the most I should be able to do is construct an ultralight for transportation. If there were so few aircraft that experiencing them was a statistical anomaly, then team play would be less dynamic. Compare your experiences on the vanilla mod to your experiences on a mod like overpoch. On the original mod with regular vehicle rarity flying with friends was a once in a blue moon affair that seldom happened. Friends were few and far between on the vanilla mod. When people had access to vehicles larger groups formed because they were actually capable of getting together!

I been on this server for a few days now, just got my level 1 house finished, I gotta say its so much fun. there is normally action happening somewhere, there's plenty of vehicles and the server seems to be quite fresh so I haven't been completely outgunned yet by high gear groups and there is still plenty of places to build and stash things. TLDR: great server, fresh server, great people to play with, come join us!!

Old days will never come back. Let me try to explain. We was in love for play Dayz Mod Because: 1) You spawn on shore->get your shotgun or Lee Enfield AND ammo(!!!!!!!) in some near barn -> you proceed to go on Stary sobor or Cherno or Electro and you always know ON THAT HILL IS A SNIPER NEST with a man who always BETTER GEARED. So you always been contested with other people. Its always was a CHALLENGE for YOU. 2) If you win that CONTEST against sniper, you run between towns throught forests and always can look at towns and detect people by ZOMBIES (because they spawn in towns only then player was near buildings) ---> Dayz start again - > you stop your movement, you hide in a bush, you look around and you SEEK your pray. 3) VEHICLES AND TENTS INCLUDED. NO BULLSHITTERY WITH: DAYZ IS A ULTIMATE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE BLABLABLABLABLABLABLA. GET YOUR DAMAGED BOOTS AND SHITTY WEAPON WITH NO AMMO AND FUCK OFF WE WANNA BUILD OUR GAME BLABLABLA Its not about ALPHA its all about how CURRENT developer leader vision about the game (terribly wrong is quess) and just read reviews on Steam all of them is HIGHLY negative. And not because of Alpha its so many alpha games on steam and no game has such a big negative reviews on a game then Dayz. All that essential things that create dayz so good experience got destroyed in new Dayz Standalone. So. Dont buy it. Old days will never come back.

A minigun or .50 cal might be a bit excessive (minigun because of all the ammo necessary and the firing speed, and the .50 because it'd need an ammo type we probably won't have for anything else), but I don't really see any problem with having some of the inevitable military-operated helicopters having per say a PKM, or M240, or M60 or some GPMG/LMG mounted on the side. I'm pretty sure we're going to have user operated versions of those kinds of guns at some point anyway, so what would really be the harm in letting players put them on a mount and firing them from the helicopter. Hell, I could even live with dedicated versions for vehicles, such as the PK-T, M240D, or M60D, so long as they generally did not spawn with the vehicle and you had to find all of the ammunition separately. It's not like these machine guns are overpowered in anyway, because shooting accurately from a moving helicopter is very hard (especially with ToH flight mechanics), shooting from a hovering position is vulnerable, and you still have to gather tons of .308 or 7.62x54mmR rounds to even allow it to be sustainable. They should be a feature for those who are dedicated, nothing super complex, but enough to make air warfare a part of end game fights. As far as planes go I feel like the map is just too small for anything but light planes to be useful or viable. I mean, the mod had the C-130 which wasn't very problematic, but that was still because it was a slower cargo plane. ArmA 2's jets can cross the map extremely quickly and are obviously excessive. Still, I think some small planes to allow for a full range of air mechanics to be utilized (per say for future maps) are ultimately necessary if they want to test everything they can. Ultralights are a must have for me, whether you have to find them or build them (maybe a combination), they seem great. They're very mobile and good for scouting and just moving around quickly, at the tradeoff of being extremely vulnerable to any attacks. They're also generally easier to fly than larger craft so if they were the bare minimum of aircraft we got you could at least explain them away as being "easy" to fly and thus realistic (and this would have a tradeoff in game anyway, because with real flight mechanics you actually would have an easier time with an ultralight than bigger vehicles, left for the experienced pilots among us.)

If anyone is interested here are the conclusions that can be drawn from the old threads: 70% of people want aircraft, 30% don't. Of the 70% that wants aircraft, Around 40% of them want to see "all kinds of aerial vehicles" (rather vague) and the other 60% wants to see something less than all kinds... We can conclude that 40% of people want Autogyros, 35% of people do not want autogyros, and 25 % are on the fence about them...

So as we all probably know aircraft are set to make their appearance by the end of the third quarter of this calendar year (this, the 2015th year of our lord, Rocket). I'm sure the devs are already on their secret high horses with their majestic plans, but I think it's important for us to have an on-going discussion about the types of aircraft we want there to be, the roles we want them to be able to fill, and also the mechanics of how we get our hands on them. Personally I want there to be a decent variety of helicopters and planes, but nothing too big or powerful. Any modern military helicopter is simply beyond what my vision of vanilla DayZ should be. I also want there to be a big emphasis on maintenance and tools. Also very important to me is that the flight characteristics be as realistic and difficult to master as is feasible The most desired for me in regards to aircraft isn't necessarily what they are, but how we can get them. I would be forever satiated if I had the ability to construct my own ultralight aircraft (flimsy, slow, one seater flying machines that can carry very little weight) because I would no longer have to worry about spawned in vehicle availability and could rely on my own hard-work to ensure access to flying machines in the long run. I think maintaining and repairing aircraft of any kind (let alone building one from a kit/fabricated parts) should be a major chore and require a host of tools (maybe all of them) and all kinds of other things which present a challenge. Owning and maintaining large ground vehicles and aircraft is something that only organized groups with established bases will be able to pull off. If we had makeshift vehicles with adequate difficulty associated with them, the small frys would be able to have an enriched end game. large groups probably would not care much for makeshift vehicles because their speed and transport capabilities are so limited they serve less function to large groups. If I had to pick just one vehicle that I want to see, it would be the AutoGyro!

Greetings Survivors, As the team continues iterating and testing on experimental while moving towards the upcoming stable update, We'll hear Lead Producer Brian Hicks discuss a bit of the methodology behind dynamic events and vehicle positions versus player spawn locations. As well, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny discusses ongoing testing work over on the experimental branch related to player data updates, and scheduling. As well, we've tossed in some links to the Development Board entry for Hermit Playstyle enhancements, and their accompanying discussion thread on the Developer forums. Check the end of the Status Report for some heart pounding Player Vs Vehicle action outside the Veresnik Military Base. Contents This Week Development Board SpotlightDev Update/HicksDev Update/PeterCommunity Video: The battle of the V3S's Development Board Spotlight Back to Contents Dev Update/Hicks I'm frequently asked about player spawns, vehicle spawns, and the mentality behind where and why they are placed. I thought I would take the opportunity this week to discuss exactly that. Player spawn points as of 0.57 For those aware of how DayZ Mod's gameplay flow operated - it was fairly simple. Players started along the coast - from Kamenka to as far as Berezino. Players progressed (for the most part) from the South - to the North. (For the most part, the North West) This gameplay required very little design side control to influence it. Natively the original Chernarus had very few buildings, and thus very few potential item spawn points (compared to say - Chernarus +). One of the initial goals of DayZ was to decentralize the flow of high value or required resources. Think medical centers, military installations, and so on. When approaching player spawns - early on my approach was to try and replicate the familiarity of player spawns in the earlier versions of DayZ Mod. (DayZ Mod circa Summer 2012 was used as a touch stone) We quickly learned that this approach did not work with the massively altered layout of Chernarus. Not to mention some of the changes to key coastal areas. The next experiment we ran with player spawns was to flip the map of Chernarus, and look at the player progression as East > West. From a design perspective this approach seemed the most logical in how we wanted to layout the world, and seemed on paper like it should find strong success. Never let it be said that nostalgia and familiarity has no merit. Players were very vocal in their longing for the familiar DayZ spawn points, Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk especially. Internally we were very reluctant to change this up as the early loot spawning system did not allow us any region control, and the design of Chernarus was heavily leaning towards letting us use any building model we wanted, where it made sense. (Think Military Police buildings in Chernogorsk, Balota Barracks, etc) However, as early prototyping on a more robust control over where region-wise certain items spawned, the idea of spawning in some of those core DayZ Mod areas was revisited. Obviously some small changes would need to occur to the layout of the world, as the system would take a good deal of time to develop - so Balota and the Northeast Airfield both got a redesign - and spawns from Kamyshovo to West Chernogorsk were reintroduced. Vehicle and Dynamic Event Spawns as of 0.57 As Dynamic Events, and Vehicles entered the equation their spawn placements were heavily influenced by where the existing player spawns lay, and how we wanted the flow of players across the map to operate. Obviously Dynamic Event types used to prototype the system were also used as a control point for "Very Rare" items - with the desired intent to ensure that in the final product, players could not farm one location across many servers to quickly gain an item the design team intended to be incredibly hard to find. (See: SVD) WIP Civilian Car Interior Vehicles themselves followed a similar principle, as the prototype vehicle was a heavy vehicle designed to carry large amounts of both gear and players - the spawn positions for this were placed at the highest concentration in West / Northwest. As smaller, more civilian vehicles begin to be implemented we'll see more spawn types for them a bit closer to where player spawns are located. I hope this brief look into the thought process behind these areas helps you to understand how they evolve a bit better. See you all in Chernarus! - Brian Hicks / Lead Producer Back to Contents Dev Update/Peter Hey survivors! Long time no hear and as usual there are plenty of interesting things going on in the design department of our DayZ development team. Let's talk about some of them at least. First off I would like to clarify what the cause was for the accelerated consumption of energy and water which raised many eyebrows during the last weekend. In our crusade to increase the server side performance, we implemented simple scheduler to ensure that backbone character's scripts ticks only for one character per frame. Previously there were situations in which more characters were handled during one frame which caused unnecessary drops in server performance. Apart from other things, these scripts also maintain the consumption rate of energy and water. With the very first iteration of scheduler implementation, our intention was to see the gain we can get in the live environment, as internally there was quite a difference in performance, even despite the known issue that ticks scheduling is not independent from server performance causing faster character updates in some cases compared to former tick rate to which all consumptions were balanced. So if you experienced higher consumption rates it was due to really good performance on the given server which translates into less desync issues and better responsiveness. Now the possibility of faster consumption is solved and you shouldn't worry about dying at unreasonable rates. Advanced scheduler is currently being worked on and at the end it will be completely independent from server performance. Many of you noticed ongoing changes to the camera FOV (field of view) recently. Along with caping the FOV slider in settings to the new limits, the most important thing is that now the FOV values in iron sights and scopes are independent from FOV value in settings, so there will be no way to abuse the scope zooms by changing the FOV value in settings. We will elaborate more on FOV and 3PP camera later. From the gameplay features perspective there are two new traps nearly ready to be tested. The tripwire trap has the possibility of having cans attached to it in order to turn it into a perimeter alarm, or grenades to stun or damage any intruders. Fishermen will be pleased to see a new fish trap made from the netting which allows players to catch fish bigger than sardines. There is also progress on cooking in the built-in fireplaces which I hope will breathe life into these sad and abandoned houses. Other long awaited features like vehicle parts or base building are shaping up nicely and I will talk about them next time. Get used to watch your steps... see you in Chernarus folks! - Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer Back to Contents Community Video: The battle of the V3S's So, I got the opportunity to watch the latest Youtube video by superftlol. In the last 1/3 of the video, superftlol and BarelyInfected run into another pair of players at the Veresnik military compound where, low on supplies (and trucks as it turns out), the gents try to make the best out of the situation. All things considered, it's quite impressive that none of the guys seem to get significantly phased by the encounter which lasts for some 8 minutes. If you have the time, go have a look at their Youtube accounts; they're chock-full of excellent DayZ content: superftlol BarelyInfected Also, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look. Always looking for good stuff to share in our status reports. Header image credit: SKiDROW - Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

If you want a survivor feel, play vanilla DayZ. If you want more of a shooter feel with more weapons and vehicles than you'll ever need / use, play epoch / overpoch ... whatever. I've played epoch for a while but it's just not the same after some time you have everything and the game just get's boring. (for me at least...)

i've never had any issues with my stuff like tents bases or vehicles getting deleted myself. just make sure you find a good server and also find a fair admin thats all i'm gonna say on that topic. glad to see more folks on the mod.

This is not true and I say this because: 1. overall tactics and various combat situations deviate less from real life in 1st person than they do in 3rd person (suppressive fire, vehicles, cover and concealment, etc) 2. as someone else mentioned, at worst, 1pp is like your char is wearing a peripheral vision-restricting face mask, whereas 3pp is like wearing the same mask, only with it and your eyes floating 2m behind your head

the only viable way other than modding that I can see bringing in a large amount of people, at least to get into the top 10 most played games on steam, would be a crazy big update like rust had. One with decent base building, more working vehicles and solid performance - I'll restrain myself from crying about the performance of the current build. Yes it's pre-alpha, but listen to what people want. On a side note, why are there still no bicycles? First thing I'd do if I got my hands on it would be to add in 50+ bicycles on the map, people will like that without doubt.

I understand what you mean and I'm not one of these guys who claims the dev's work is trash but let's get the community involved and see what they can come up with. If mods like DayZ origins came to SA, so many more people would be interested. SA servers simply cannot stand against the DayZ Mod servers despite it being so much newer. I understand this whole 'pre-alpha' situation but surely having people do content for free will just boost development. Simply look at the hacked servers that imported the arma 2 vehicles when SA first came out, people went crazy for them because they actually included a lot of content. After all, competition for the devs wouldn't be a bad thing.

In the pursuit of becoming the most hardcore anti-game it appears to me that the focus on gameplay and fun game mechanics was lost. Mod had all sorts of gameplay motivators; rare items, rare vehicles, bases, factions (hero vs. bandit). We currently have items (not rare items that offer an asymmetrical advantage) and vehicles (not rare vehicles...) Players love motivators. The dev team needs to focus more on motivators in its game design.

Lots of issues. Content is coming out at a trickle, and when it does it has issues (whats the point of trying to build a tent base if it will get wiped on Wednesday?) or Vehicles, Oh great a truck, well fuck theres three of us so we'll have to forget if unless we want to leave one person because the third can't sit in the middle. Then we have the servers that are loot farms and the lack of interest to deal with them (Hey don't tell it on the forums, instead send 8 random emails to every server host and hope one of them gets to it.). We also have the fact that when I try to get someone in my TS interested in the game, before I can link up with them, he dies from bleeding out or starving on a server picked clean. None of these issues are being addressed in a timely order and myself and the only other person in my group with a smidgen of interest wonder why the devs haven't addressed the issue with the central loot economy they want badly where what happens when certain items are taken out of circulation by players that log out and never log back in? Will these items be lost forever until a hive wipe? Will they not come back at all?

There are precisely two things that existed in the mod that were addictive which do not currently exist in SA. It's so simple... Vehicles and Bases. Vehicles. There were a variety of vehicles in the mod, and many servers had the numbers of them jacked way the hell up so people could actually experience them. There were vehicles to choose from and owning and storing one was possible as a group. When mods like epoch and overwatch came out then people had even more access to vehicles through in game currency traders or constructing our own, which made the game even more addictive without ruining it by flooding the server with vehicles. Bases Bases didn't actually exist in the original mod but once modding happened basebuilding mods quickly became the standard DayZ model; everyone played the mods. Vehicles are more important to the adictiveness of Dayz (access to and variety of) but eventually with modding base building came in and provided players with a legitimate end game other than stashing a vehicle or tent. in a forest. Right now the mod has tons of vehichles including aircraft, base building, extra maps, and more stuff. The SA by comparison is less than half a game as of yet because vehicles and basebuilding are still not really a part of the game. It's a miricle that the SA is more popular than the DayZ mod for these reasons (if it even is) and can only be attributed to player lyoalty to DayZ itself. Once real base building mechanics get added in, and real vehicles like cars, bikes, helis boats, planes, dayZ SA is going to be like a massively improved souped up version of the most popular DayZ mods. Go away until the game is at least half developped before you declare it this or that. It's just a baby, don't throw it out with the bath water. EDIT: for all of you about to whine about how long DayZ has been in development, it takes years to make a game like DayZ if you want to do it right and not just rip off an outdated engine like the mod was able to do.

Added a new mission called ISIS Scum to the Napf map. This will challenge even the best of you. Changed the way missions with patrolling vehicles get those vehicles. They now are dropped in via C130. This give you a chance to make those missions easier if you can take out the C130 before it reaches the mission to drop it's cargo.

Its pretty easy to implement the whole hitpoints on spawn thing, I've already done it and I don't know dick about SQL. In object_spawns there's a "hitpoints" field. If you want your vehicle to spawn in with 100% damage, set the numbers in "hitpoints" to "1". If you want your vehicles spawning in with all green components, set the hitpoints values to 0. If you want them spawning in with 50% damage, set them to 0.5. Took me about an hour of experimentation to figure this out, and about 10minutes to implement it. Been working fine for days now.

DayZ Controlcenter V7.6.0.0 is now out! Changelog:[NEW] Added support for DayZ 1.8.4.1 DayZ 1.8.5[NEW] Updated to latest BE filters[NEW] Customized Be filters[NEW] Added all custom CC functions to DayZ 1.8.4.1 DayZ 1.8.5[NEW] Added rMod 2.1 support to DayZ 1.8.4.1 DayZ 1.8.5[NEW] Added missing images to adminpanel[NEW] Temporarily disabled gcam because of issues with the new key-bind systemThe ideal place to post bugs/problems is under following: Server related issues Controlcenter related issues Known issues: *Displaying "Received invalid data" when launching software. (Ignore, waiting on access to the ftp server so I can update the version check.) *Deployables/vehicles are broken on some additional maps Download section here

My vision for DayZ 1.0 Hey guys, this is going to be a very long post, and I hope the devs / community take the time to read the entire thing. I type 110+WPM, so get your reading glasses ready lol. Firstly, I'd like to say that DayZ has been one of the greatest experiences I've ever been a part of in gaming. Half because of what the game is, and half because of what I have always dreamed the game could be. Over the last half a year or so, I've begun to wonder about what DayZ 1.0 will really be. Looking at the game in it's current state, there are a few things that I really hope they address before DayZ gets to 1.0. Here are the main things I wanted to talk about - Customization of the world for server owners - - Types of Zombies in the game and the role they play - - Types of base building - - Soft Skills - Sever Options My biggest inspiration outside of DayZ, especially in regards to customization has got to be Project Zomboid. The game does so many things well it is hard to list them all. The game has many mechanics that could translate directly into DayZ. Here are a list of features that Zomboid allows you to customize. - zombie count - zombie distribution - water and electricity shutoff - house alarms - frequency of locked buildings - food spoilage - refrigeration effectiveness - loot respawn - zombie respawn - the temperature - the rain - how long farming takes - how quickly erosion occurs - how many resources are available in nature - food, weapon, and overall loot rarity - length of days, - Zombie toughness - Zombie infection type All of these options are perfect for creating the zombie apocalypse scenario that you feel you would enjoy the most. However, I realize that individual players in DayZ won't have the ability to customize all of these options because players cannot host their own server on their local machine the way Zomboid allows you to. This means that the developers will be responsible for creating a number value to most of these. My suggestion for this one of two options. One is to simply have difficulty levels. Have settings like Easy Medium Hard, and tweak each of these categories difficulties accordingly. The server owner can then set the difficulty he want, and players can join the server that matches the difficulty they want. The other, and what I believe would be the better option, would be to allow server owners access to all of these options the same way Zomboid allows. This will allow people to create the hardcore survival element in their server, or have a more casual experience, much like 3rd person and 1st person servers are options now. I think allowing more customization from the server owners would be the best way to achieve the best experience for everyone. You would end up with all types of servers this way, and the most options possible for the players. Zombies & The Context they Provide There are many zombie survival games out there, and none of them truly accomplish what I one day hope DayZ will. I want to draw to a very popular TV show and inspiration for many of these zombie survival concepts ; The Walking Dead. Think about a place like Woodbury, a walled off town where people feel safe. Why did they build the wall around the town? In games like Rust, H1Z1, and in versions of DayZ mod like Epoch and Origins, building a base was meant to keep other players out. In the lore of The Walking Dead, it was mostly to remain safe from the zombies. Even when they went and made camps in the woods, they made tripwire alarms and had someone on duty watching the perimeter at all times to remain safe from the zombies. One breach in security and the entire town became an unsafe place, and chaos broke out. This would imply that the zombies are a constant threat. This is what I want out of DayZ. I want the zombie threat to be so real, that you cannot let your guard down from them. I want zombies to be the reason I fortify and area, not to just be a place where I hoard my loot and have base battles with other survivors. Zombies should be trying to find ways into your base, breaking windows and doors, and be applying constant pressure to the survivors. After all, that is what they are surviving from in the first place. To accomplish this, the number of zombies would have to be drastically increased from what we see in the game now (which i'll get to in the next section),the respawn would have to be fairly consistent, and the location of the zombies should be everywhere. I do believe it should be possible to clear an area of zombies, but I do not believe they should be gone for good. I also believe they need to respawn in the same numbers they were at originally. So to make this work, I believe zombies should respawn regardless of if you've left an area or not. To stop zombies from spawning right in front of your eyes however, they should respawn outside of your network bubble, but wander to the area you are occupying. A soft aggro to your location basically when they do respawn. This would require you to defend your area from zombies, or they would eventually break and find ways into your town, making it unsafe once again. Basically zombies should always be attempting to re-take areas they have been forced out of if they remain occupied. The Types of Zombies and why It's So Important The biggest flaw in DayZ hands down in my opinion has to be it's theory behind its Zombies. Mainly the # and type it plans on having. I have played pretty much every version of DayZ that has ever been conceived. I have 1500+ hours in standalone, probably about the same in the original DayZ mod, have played Arma 3 breaking point, Origins, Epoch, etc. The one thing that is the most disappointing in all of them is the lack of a zombie threat, and the type of zombie you encounter I have heard Hicks comment on people wanting a larger number of slower moving zombies with a response of "DayZ is not meant to be easy." I believe he is misunderstanding exactly what it is players truly want from the zombies, and how large an impact the type of zombie really has on game-play. This is not a plea to make the game easier. It is in fact a plea to stop making the games zombies so pointless, which would provide a true zombie challenge. People want slower zombies to be everywhere, because of the environment it would create versus the one it currently provides. Here is a screenshot of a town with zombies in Project Zomboid. These zombies are all slowly moving towards the survivor. Individually, a slow moving shambler zombie is not too big of a threat, but when there are this many, it becomes dangerous to try and take them all out, and literally impossible to do if you don't have the right weapon. You couldn't walk up to a group of 100 zombies and take them out with your fists. It would even be dangerous if you had something as good as an Axe. Even if you had a weapon, you'd need 100+ bullets to take out all of these zombies, and shooting that many times would just draw in more, and give away your position for that much longer. So is a single, slow moving zombie more difficult to kill? No. But when there are this many, is it not more difficult than fewer fast ones? Does it not require far more in resources or manpower to take care of? Not only that, but look at the context this situation brings to the survivor. What happens if it begins to rain and he is caught in this situation? Now he has a large number of zombies around him, but he also needs to find a safe place to stay dry. It is literally impossible to remove the zombie threat in this amount of time. So he goes into a building. Okay, well once inside the building, he has a limited amount of safe time because zombies are trying to get into his house. How does the survivor choose to deal with this? What if a car drives by, or a gunshot sounds while in this situation, and the zombies all begin to move and more of them arrive? How does he deal with it? Now lets compare this to DayZ. In a town like this in DayZ, we'll say Elektro, you would instead find maybe 5 zombies in this area, and maybe 20-30 spread across the rest of the town. What type of resources would it take to deal with these zombies? You would have to deal with maybe 5 zombies at a time, and you would be forced to deal with them because they are sprinting at you. Walk around with an axe and kill 5 zombies every few minutes, and now the entire town is totally empty. You could even go through the town without dealing with 50% of them if you wanted to sneaking by, and that would require even less resources. You could go around with your fists and deal with that. Now imagine you have a gun! That problem would be taken care of with a few pulls of a trigger, and finding enough ammo to do that wouldn't be hard at all. So yes, was killing each individual zombie more of a challenge? Sure. But what is the overall challenge in the end? You've cleared an entire area with an axe or a magazine or two of ammo. How hard was that really? And now let's say it starts to rain? Well killing 5-10 zombies would take basically no time at all, so kill em and walk inside. Drama done. Once that's done, what do you care, just run into a building and sit there for a few minutes until it stops. There are no zombies left to beat on your doors and break them down, and you are free to do whatever you want. Or lets say someone shoots a gun off in the distance. At most maybe 10-20 zombies come running through an area? You could easily avoid that and just not deal with it. The DayZ zombie is the easy version of zombies, not the other way around. The less zombies there are,the easier it is to deal with overall, no matter how fast or individually powerful they are. A large hoard of slow moving zombies would literally be impossible to deal with without the correct weapon and resources, whereas the type of zombies in DayZ are both killable and avoidable. They run right at you and don't leave you alone if you're spotted, and there are few enough that you can sneak and avoid them entirely. This type of zombie does not provide the constant pressure needed to provide context to the rest of the survival aspects of the game. It instead creates slight momentary difficulty, and then extended periods of total relief. Large numbers of slower moving zombies creates constant pressure, and provides context to all other interaction in the game. Base Building / Making Existing Buildings Useful The next thing I want to talk about is base building. Most games have a core element of base building, but the context makes absolutely no sense. People build entirely new structures out of materials they find, but for what purpose? The world is already full of buildings that have been made. In a survival situation, your energy and time would be extremely valuable. Using that energy to create a new building from scratch, when perfectly good buildings already exist all around you makes no sense whatsoever. Furthermore, the reasoning for building the base in these games is to hoard loot, and not actually to defend yourself from whatever it is you are trying to survive from. In this context it is the zombies since it is a zombie apocalypse. So my suggestion is to have barricading and reinforcement of existing structures being the main focus on "base building", which I realize the devs have already stated. DayZ has done a wonderful job of making Chernarus. The buildings are almost all enter-able, and the world is large enough with enough buildings that there are plenty of places for people to take over. Allow the fortification of doors and windows, and make it so that zombies naturally attack these structures. This would force you to defend your base from zombies, not just players. Zombies should naturally attack your structures and other existing structures. The doors and windows that exist in the world should be destructible, by both player and zombie. This way you may run across a building at some point that you wish to take over, but its windows and doors have been broken by zombies over time, and would require you to put in some effort in reconstructing this if you wanted to use it as your "base". Another concept I would love to see implemented in base building, and other areas as well, is group tasks. I don't believe all tasks should be doable alone. There is already 1 concept that utilizes this and that is blood bags and saline. This is a really cool mechanic that requires you to have help when trying to get something done. I think building of certain structures, like a wooden wall as an example, should only be doable with multiple users. Other tasks, such as carrying large and heavy objects, should require multiple users as well. For example, I heard a long time ago that the developers planned on having all of the furniture be physics based and move-able. Things like couches and large dressers should take a very long time to move solo, and be much quicker if you have someone helping you. This could also be used in temporary barricading of houses when you are on the move from zombies. I imagine running through a town and being over-run by zombies with a friend. We have run out of ammo and one of us is injured. The only safe place to go is inside of a building in front of us to buy us some time. We run inside, lock the door and quickly realize that the zombies will break in soon if we do not do something. We move a couch in front of the door and I cover the windows while my friend tends to his wounds. Those are the kinds of experiences I want out of DayZ. I relate back to Project Zomboid where the threat of zombies is done so well. You will be running outside in a neighborhood, with a group of zombies not far behind. You will be trying to break into a house by looking for an unlocked window so as to not make more noise, and it will start raining out of nowhere. You now realize that you HAVE to get inside soon, or you run the risk of catching a cold. It becomes a do or die situation naturally, and it is a huge adrenaline rush. Currently, the only time DayZ accomplishes this is in its PvP battles with other players. The intensity is palpable in those situations, but when it comes to survival elements, it leaves a lot to be desired. Most of this comes from the fact that the zombie threat is not real, and the houses are just not used properly in DayZ. Getting in shelter should be a temporary safe haven, one that makes you feel secure for a short period of time. Running from zombies, searching for a way into a building, finding it and locking the doors and windows behind you is a very cool feeling in Zomboid, and it simply doesn't exist in DayZ. Zombies even spawn inside of rooms, so they can catch you off guard when clearing a house as well. Soft Skills I know the devs plan on doing this, so I just wanted to have a few suggestions in here that I thought would be really cool. Soft skills, aka things that you get better at over time, provide a real reason and incentive to survive. Currently, the only thing that makes players want to stay alive is the gear they have. This can be a problem because in reality, your life would be the most valuable thing to you. For example, in game when you are being robbed, you are far more likely to try and shoot your way out of a situation because losing your gear is just as bad as dying from your point of view. Losing your gear is the equivalent of death. However, if your character had become quite good at growing food and repairing vehicles over the last month, you would not want to lose those skills you earned over all that time, and you would do whatever it took to keep you alive. This might mean you surrender, try to compromise, or come to an agreement instead of just dying in a blaze of glory. Some tasks might not even be possible until you've unlocked a certain skill level. This would greatly increase your characters value. Some skills I would put in game. - Repair Skill : Better at repairing over time. Vehicle Repair unlocked at higher level - Farming Skill : Better at farming over time. - Weapon Skill : Less weapon sway over time, slight decrease in reload times/loading ammo into magazines - Fitness skill : Characters stamina increases the more you run These could be expanded greatly obviously. I wouldn't even mind if you got better at opening cans of food with a certain utensil the more you did it. For example, using a kitchen knife to open a can of food. You could max out after 5 attempts and be at max skill. Some skills take far less time to master than others. Repairing stuff with duct tape being an easy skill to master, repairing a vehicle part taking much longer, etc. My ending thoughts I really hope the devs take the time to read this, and I would love to hear what the people in the community think about my thoughts. DayZ has always been a game I thought could be one of the most unique and amazing experiences in gaming history. The world they've created with Chernarus is amazing, and the concept that Rocket and the developers initially came up with was groundbreaking. The community obviously thinks this as well, as it went from being a mod made by only a few people to a full fledged game with tons of community support. Thanks again. Take it easy guys =)

I really do not understand your point. Creates bad gameplay? Look at the number of people playing 3PP vs 1PP. If the gameplay were bad, then they wouldn't have sold millions and with the .55 patch then NO ONE would play, not even 3PP. I contend that 1PP is a terrible implementation and that is why no one plays it, even before the latest patch on stable.... 3PP players outnumbered 1PP at least 10 to 1. According to the dev's, they are encouraging server hopping as they have indicated parts for vehicles might be spread across servers, and combat logging is just a cheap and stupid tactic. Both server hopping and combat logging will happen if the game is 1PP only, so your comparison is jsut rediculous.