Search the Community

I like this idea quite a lot, but it is difficult to envision how it could be implemented in DayZ. Thinking out loud, I suppose that this could be a thing, if it is used in conjunction with the re-log timer that has already been proposed by the devs. To clarify my thought: I want to log off, so I need to find a safe place to do so. I initiate the log out sequence, which includes climbing into a sleeping bag and going to sleep. For the next ten minutes (I just pulled a number out of the air for the purpose of discussion), I will be asleep and vulnerable on that server. After the timer counts down the ten minutes, I am then free to log back into the original server or any other available server on that hive. There would be no countdown penalty going from the public hive, to a private hive, or vice versa, however my character remains vulnerable for the full countdown period. I think that this mechanic could significantly add to immersion. IRL, a lot of thought and planing would go into selecting a location to camp for the night, because it is at this time when you would be the most vulnerable. I suspect that the level or paranoia would also necessarily increase (in case you didn't have enough already :D ). Additionally, while server hopping would still be a thing (let's face it, a ten minute timer is not going to dissuade any one from this practice), I suspect that this would tend to reduce combat logging and ghosting because this behavior would expose the practitioner to significant risk. The downside is the ten minute timer. The question is, do the benefits outweigh the penalty?

I actually really like that idea. I know it probably wouldn't be accepted by the majority but it is a good idea to stop the ghosting and such like. Besides, logging off in a town is a terrible idea, best to go find a tree or something to hide in! But I definitely think the idea of spawning you outside of the military zones is a good one, yes its not perfect and yes it may only be 1km to run but its that 1km the server hopper will have to run and potentially be seen. And as the hoppers wont exactly be proficient in dealing with players seeing as they are clearly doing the easy option, hopefully they will get murdered and lose their precious gear!

I'm still up in the air as to whether or not this would be best at night or during the day. My last party was at night, and it was great, but social gatherings don't have to be at night automatically. I'll see what can be done about that, if anything. Still working out the details. I wouldn't worry about ghosting. If it's going to happen, it will happen (people logging off there beforehand), and locking the EU server won't entirely prevent it. I'll help you look for fertilizer before the party!

I wasn't sure if logging out in a stuck truck would kill me, but now I know a few more workarounds. My driving is sketchy enough without trees stopping the truck dead in the middle of the road, or magical ramps in the middle of fields tossing the truck around. If anyone played State of Decay on XBOX 360, that is a good example of how not to do vehicle physics in the finished game. The two fastest cars, the rally hatchback and carballo, could easily outrun the renderer. I lost count of how many top tier vehicles that I PERMANENTLY destroyed by hitting a fire hydrant that didn't render until my car already exploded. I usaully have multiple trucks on my "home server," so I'm more likely to just wait it out and go use a different truck. The tree-eaten truck was safely on the ground when I came back to check on it yesterday. I'm just never sure when it is safe to get out, if my view of the truck matches what the truck is actually doing. I've seen people flip trucks and get out while I was still seeing the truck taking 100 foot bounces, because he said it looked fine; then died to an epileptic truck. I hate to lower myself to ghosting a truck, but maybe it's the only way sometimes.

I found a "position penalty" unreliable as well. In case of people hopping between (near) empty servers for loot it does basically nothing at all (3m are not much) and ghosters/combat loggers might still get the advantage from disappearing and reappearing some time later even though they have less control about where they reappear. The currently discussed pentalties for server hopping are: a time penalty that may increase for frequent switchersa switch limit within a certain time framea position penalty where you respawn away from your destinationhaving to start a new character (aka "private hives only")"ingame penalty" (lose energy/water/health/etc.)For ghosting/combat logging: prevent character disappearance under certain conditions:other players close (minus certain types like players who are logging out as well)gun fired within a certain distancecharacter took damage within a certain time framereposition players who log in:randomly if they rejoin the server within a certain time frame (OP)outside of barricaded areasoutside a certain radius around other players (again minus certain types)outside of certain fixed areasprevent logging back into a server after switching to another for quite some timeIf I missed something please add.

So, you want me to argue against the idea that I think rape is the fault of women who are victimized? OK then, fine: no, I don't think that rape is the fault of women who are victimized, because it's being done against their will, and they have done nothing to directly antagonize the aggressor into doing so. If they had, then they would be aware of and accept the risk of it happening, and would therefore be effectively consenting to it. Happy now? And don't you DARE say that had nothing to do with what you're talking about, because it is in DIRECT response to your original post towards me: Also, don't try to tell me I'm missing the point, because I'm not; the principle is NOT the same, because one instance is a GROUP of people who (in a VIDEO GAME, mind you) decided to corner another group of people inside of a building, forcing the people inside to find a way out of the situation, which they apparently did by "ghosting". I said his group was at fault for getting "ghosted" because they didn't consider it a possibility (which is hard to believe considering he said it happens a lot) and therefore take precautions against it, such as keeping watch on their surroundings. The other instance is of some shitbag who decides to overpower someone and take advantage of them sexually in reality, possibly leaving behind emotional as well as physical wounds, not to mention a possible unwanted pregnancy that could have the very real possibility of being terminated early. I, for the love of God, cannot fathom how you could POSSIBLY consider those two situations to be ANYTHING alike. In my honest opinion, you would have to be very mentally unbalanced for that to occur. Now, for the sake of all that is still good in this world, can an admin or mod PLEASE send this thread to rest.

a) you can do it once, but you will have ensurance, that you will actually be able to get to your one buddy in one jump, so whats the deal? more importantly is that you dont have an advantage through ghosting. b) the spawns are now distributed over the whole map, so no danger from being camped.

That really is not a viable tip. There is literally nothing the player can do to not get ghosted. There is no indication sound when logging in, no log in warning when in close vicinity to a player, nothing at all. Ghosting is just a by product of a broken hive system where every server shares characters. This novel idea just leads to problems everything from server hopping to item dupping is partly a result of this bad game mechanic.

it's their own server, but there are rules... they break thoses rules, and benefit from it at the depends of the other players. as explained before : thoses servers are used to farm loot without being looted with random player, then the owners joins a public server with their AKM/drum mag/PSO and spray players that aquired their gear the right way, taking risks and time for it. those servers owner have to be forced to respect the rules. maybe one character per server is the solution.... that would not have been needed if people wouldn't have abused the system. hopping/ghosting/combat log/server loot farmers... so many bad habits to destroy :(

im not an expert on ghosting but if you were in a firefight and you notice that the guy isn't around for a minute or so, wouldn't it be safe to assume he's logged out and is about to show up someplace else? and then just move your position and wait for him to appear? example. you take a shot from a rooftop. you miss. he runs behind a shed. you wait.....and wait.... and then move to the other side of the roof so that you can keep an eye on your rooftop position/ladder/door or whatever, knowing that he will probably pop up on the roof with you after 1) exiting 2) switching servers 3) running to the new position 4) exiting 5)spawning back on the original server. seems like that would take at least a few minutes to accomplish?

With server hopping and (to a lesser degree) ghosting running wild I really think there should be changes to the server switching mechanics to get rid of the massive negative impact on game dynamics (less ingame travel, balance by rarity not working, people being overly geared, areas feeling empty, picked clean military bases etc.). This concept is my proposal to combat the situation: On a hive you have three basic states for each character: Limbo: The character is logged out and not assigned to a specific server.Off-server: The character is logged out but still assigned to a server.On-server: The character is logged in and thus assigned to the server he/she is on.Also there are three timers that affect the character states: The Limbo Timer (~30 days) counts down while a character is in Limbo and is rapidly counts up (to a maximum of 30 days) when the character is On-server. Upon reaching zero a ranom limited item* is removed from the characters inventory and the Limbo Timer is set to 10 days.The Off-server Timer (~3 hours) is started right after logging out (moving from On-server to Off-server) and reset upon logging back into a server. if it reaches zero the character is moved into Limbo.The Travel Timer (~30 minutes) starts when logging off a server and prevents logging into another server until it reaches zero. Upon logging into a server it is reset to the former starting value and increased by 10 minutes if the server switch happened during Off-server time**. Upon reaching Limbo the starting value is reset to 30 minutes (so it's naturally limited to a maximum time equal to the Off-server phase).Additionally you have to wait for at least 10 minutes before logging back into the same server (On-server > Off-server > On-server) unless your character is still on the map in which case you can log in immediately and take over the body left behind. There might also be an option to skip the Travel Timer by killing your old character and starting from scratch (new spawn). Now the actual values might be different and maybe there is also need for some additional events (like not applying the Travel Timer if the server restarted/crashed, only applying a portion if the player was kicked etc.) but in general those changes might reduce unhealthy server hopping, ghosting and offline hoarding (keeping rare items by storing them on a character in Limbo) while still allowing travel between servers and thus allowing progress on the same character and a greater loot economy. *Items that are limited by number on the hive which means having them in your inventory prevents them to spawn elsewhere. **There might also be an ingame cost in the form of reduced energy/water equal to the amonut you would have consumed while being active ingame instead of waiting for the switch.

I've been hosting trading posts since August. Ghosting is a reality of the game. Yes, the solution is to deal with it. Set up patrols and keep your people frosty. At least carpet bombing hackers aren't showing up to every single public event anymore. Organizing events in Day Z isn't easy. Figure out the logistics with your own people if you want to be the guy doing it. That said, if you want to talk to someone with experience hosting and defending events, feel free to hit me up some time.

All I can see that people like to cry and point out all the bad things but when a possible fix takes away even a tiny bit of comfort for them they raise arms against it. Can you elaborate? I wrote this after a few thoughts about the issue and reading another topic where people complained about ghosting and server hopping. So it's pretty far from a fully fledged out design and is expected to have some major issue I just not thought about. I don't really get those arguments. All those "reasons" you mention are present in private hives as well - even more pronounced as instead of having a hard time switching you could not switch at all (which also reduces the loot economy size). What if your private server crashes? What if your private server is full? That's why I mentioned specific "events" that could help people not being stuck in queue. Some examples (ideas that might or might not work): on server restart/crash the players are moved to Limbo (both On-server and Off-server players)you can choose to "suicide" on server switch and thus avoid the waiting time (but you will respawn at a random spawn point)similarily if you switch servers while your character is dead there should be no waiting timeupon being kicked from a server your switch time is much shorteryou can "reserve" a slot on a full server, if a slot opens you receive a message and have X minutes to switch without penaltyThe whole point is to make the public hive a little more like the private hives getting rid of the major disadvantages caused by rapid switching while still retaining most advantages resulting from having a connection between servers. I intentionally decided to make the initial Travel Timer noticeable (~30 minutes) instead of peanuts (like 5 minutes) to make even switching once something you would like to avoid if not absolutely necessary. If you are switching for non-ingame reasons this might be annoying. However, the vast majority of server switches are most likely for ingame reasons (looting, ghosting, combat logging) and we cannot refuse to fix the main game issues because it would also hurt a small minority to a far lesser degree. And as mentioned above there could also be some functions to help those players (who should be the majority of server switchers when the system works).

Thats why server hopping needs to be nerfed hard. You should not get those advantages for free. If the cost for hopping is high enough it's actually more effective and fun to search for loot by moving around on a single server than switching between multiple servers. If the cost for ghosting is high enough you still get that positional advantage but it takes you quite some time to do so - many people would probably prefer trying their luck on the popular server instead of moving there on an empty one, waiting a significant time (or paying another significant cost) and being ready thereafter. In the end you can do the same on private servers: logging in when its (close to) empty, moving into position, logging out (maybe playing on another character in the meantime) and logging back in when the server is populated. If frequent hopping becomes unviable in gameplay terms you will have much less people switching servers and the chance someone is hopping to a place gets pretty close to the chance of someone simply logging in there. In this case the main differences between public and private servers would be the greater loot economy vs. having multiple characters.

Single server single character, ghosting solved as are like a dozen other problems.

the only way to stop ghosting is to stop allowing characters to transfer from server to server, so it will never be completely eliminated.

But if someone ghosts out and comes back in behind you... Isn't that the same thing as if someone just came up behind your group to begin with? I know literally it isn't but if your group watches their 6 properly no one should be able to get the drop on you ghosting or not. I know if I came up on a group of guys huddled around a house not watching their backs they would pay for it. If anything people trying to ghost have paid off for me as we've caught a handful of guys trying to ghost or combat log that felt the wraith of the log out timer... Yet don't think our group has lost one person to a ghost. Seems like a non issue to me.

Make the timers longer - stops ghosting - how the fuck don't you all know this by now?

As a matter of principle, would you be willing to sit and watch the door with a shotgun for fifteen minutes, knowing at least part of what was outside? I do, and it is really stressful at times. Probably the only reason to camp scared is thatI know anyone who could trap me in a building, is also capable of approaching and crawling around the building, covertly locating me in about ten minutes. The only honorable option is to hole up and be ready for a fight. Handgrenades, x-ray vision shots, or sheer numbers would be the only guaranteed legitimate death in this scenario. This strategy does not cover ghosting, and I assume that many people who ghost do so because of the possibility that you have people on TS who can also just ghost into their building and kill them while they cover the entrance. If someone sees you chase them into a building, he might think that your unseen buddy has just logged and is running into position in their building. TBH, I really couldn't blame a single player for logging, as there is still the unfair and gamebreaking threat of interdimensional assassin squads.

What about playing with friends? Private servers are absolutely horrible for this as you cannot access your character at all when they are full and you cannot simply pick a server that has enough space for your party (conversely the server could also be empty and boring or simply down). Then having muliple characters all over different servers really diminished the experience (in my opinion) as you have less noticable progress and setbacks and grow less attached to your character (and thus more likely to go yolo). Also in theory the public hive allows for much greater variety of items and rarity simply because of the greater economy. Now server hopping is probably the single most impactful issue in terms of game dynamics right now - ghosting is more of a consequence of this combined with combat logging. But the problem is not being able to switch to other servers, even if it was for looting purposes. The true problem is that its over the top effective while also easy, fast and very low risk. It's basically a massive balance issue that completely overshadows most other elements (like travel distance, time and rarity). You do not need to remove server switching completely - it's enough (and preferable) to nerf it in a way that it's significantly less effective in advancing your character than playing the game the normal way.

Ghosting refers to the process of logging out of one server and into a second server then moving to a different location and logging out of that and back into the original server. What this does is allow you to pass across a space without physically crossing it on the one server. An example would be running into a group of players that have an area locked down. Say they are in a Jail with the front door covered by multiple people. A "Ghosting" player would log out of the server they are on and log into an empty server. He would then enter the jail on the empty server and move to a position behind the players watching the door. From there he would log out of the second server and into the original server and would now be behind those people watching the door and could ambush them from what should be a secured back room if the hive system wasn't in place. There is no way to actually get behind them without changing servers. It gets it's name because mythically ghost are on a different plane than our reality and able to pass through objects. Someone hopping servers is in a different reality and able to bypass people and closed doors... like a ghost.

Well one anti-ghosting mechanic they had (whether intentional or not) was the reload noise that was played when someone logged in nearby. I can't for the life of me think of a good reason why they removed that.

Wheres the "Dean with it" gif? Wall glitch is being looked at soon according to dev tracker. I'm sure logging/ghosting will also be sorted. You really need to remind yourself how early these builds are and how drastically things will change in the coming months. I play on public servers but avoid PvP when I can. I've only had 1 instance where I inadvertently cornered someone and they logged out rather than interact, so I executed them.

Just deal with it! Jokes aside... What kind of ghosting are you are guys talking about? LIke using Skype and such to comminicate while in game you don't have a radio to report to your friends? Or some kind of scripting?

Private Servers eliminate two things I really hate in DayZ.... 1. Ghosting. 2. Server hopping for loot. So I don't play on Public Servers. Simple solution to both problems.