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First of all I'm not sure if you understood my post, I was arguing that 5min were high, asked why such a high penalty should be there and said ppl who are unlucky with their isp would suffer less, if the penalty got lowered. Quote from EvilMinion's answer: "The problem is a form of ghosting/combat logging here. Your character will stay ingame for 30 seconds after logging out to avoid a cheap escape when facing danger. Now if you could log back instantly within those 30 seconds you could just take over your character who is still on the map and play on. However, logging in after those 30 seconds would make your character disappear for a few seconds. Now those seconds could create bad ingame situations. Consider a player running into a house combat logging. His character manages to disappear right before the enemy enters the room. The player logs back in while the enemy leaves the room checking elsewhere - and our combat logger can take him by surprise by coming out of a "secured" room. Thats just one way to deal with it - other options are a log in sound and the OPs suggestion that come with their own issues. Or you could change the 30 seconds for both "character stays ingame" and "free rejoining" - but that would also increase risk for everyone logging out for good." I accept that argument, even though less than 5 min should be enough as far as I'm concerned. But I see myself in Stary, my friend lying in some bush with his Mosin, two dudes come into town, my friend tells me to log out, my friend tells me to log in as soon as they got past my location, I get the drop on them with my friend helping. Now while I would not do that, ppl in general cheat in every imaginable way. This tactic is probably great for squads. Imo login sounds would be a better solution, but those seem unpopular. Now if you take a bathroom break and are afk for 1m30 or whatever and the penalty would be 3 minutes for example, I think that would be ok. Of course I'm assuming you are not sprinting to the bathroom, doing a high pressure draining and sprint back without washing your hands. A cigarette break should take longer than 5 mins, unless you power smoke, ... . What exactly are other reasons to exit the server and jump back immediatelly? And I'm assuming the timer penalty starts directly after logging out, so no logging out, coming back after 3 minutes and then getting the complete penalty additionally. Either way, those are small points that can be ballanced, we don't have to do it for the devs and they are not bound to the duration we come up with here. I just really think that a few simple rules with penalty timers could help reduce loot hopping immensely and in reality not implact normal players much, if at all. The "traditional" ghosting is easy to fix, no coming back in 30 minutes to a server after going to another one. Again 30min is an example. But there should be no reason to do something like that. And yes, if server restarts happen in that time, and you want to go back to your main server, that is an exception that can easily be handled. Such exceptions can always be handled. There should be a system that get's refined by looking at the results after some time. Well, and then we cannot forget those that say server hopping is an integral part of the game and must not get punished, it's the way this game should be played.

Combat logging is always going to be a thing unless they can lock you out from logging while other players are shooting or taking damage (just thowing out examples). Though I would like to hear how knowing your character did not die in the 30 it takes to log out would promote Ghosting.

Ditto, thanks for everything Jimmy! Let's not end it! Please talk with Tommy Geryon of 434 about setting up another hive! We only need 4 servers right now to support the current community. But I have no doubt that if we could somehow run a new hive well that we could rebuild the community in a big way. The more I think about it there are many benefits to running a private, public hive. First, we can control exactly how many total servers are available so that some individuals can't effectively pay-to-win by purchasing a server connected to hive that serves as a private loot farm (used to drive me nuts how many people would script in high end gear in their own server just to log into 3480 to deathmatch). It could reduce ghosting as well. Ghosting is predicated on an abundance of empty servers. For instance, if you're fighting in 434 in Elektro, you'd never log on 3480 to ghost because it is so busy and dangerous there. You'd never make it back to 434! . . . some random thoughts.

Alot of people don't like this because it promotes ghosting/combat logging.

The design of the "camo/military prison" building is very unbalanced favoring campers 100% especially on 3rd person servers. (on 1st P you can still hear the footsteps since the sound is different when they step inside the building) One guy can defend it perfectly from 2-3 guys. Tested it myself with AKM 75 drum mag when 2 guys tried to kill me (they knew I was there since they were direct chatting me telling me to surrender lol) I just 3rd personed the crap out of them RIP and o7 for being in the north btw. U literally just need to 3rd person the main door and it's gg unless they have explosive grenades wich are rare ofc, flashbangs won't work against a good opponent since you can just turn around your head and if you don't turn your head you might aswell spray your 75 drum down the main entrance until the flashbang effect goes off. First floor fell!? No problem! 2nd floor is, once again almost completely unnacessible if the defender has 5 IQ. You could just be on the area behind the stairs, behind the door of the loot room etc etc. You can't go in sprinting because of some random thingy that forces you to stop sprinting when entering a building or having a slight variation on the terrain. bug? I know this isn't going to be changed since it's work that is done and yeah, it would be a pain in the ass to remake it and even though it's alpha it's not going to happen as we have seen with other Arma3 bad features that stayed since the alpha days, I have the bad feeling this is how bohemia rolls, hope not. Forget about attacking it if you are a lone wolf, that is for sure. IMHO there needs to be windows to the 1st floor corridor and places with more altitude near those camo buildings to clear the buildings through the windows. Maybe a 2nd entrance could be a good idea too. Also it is really easy to combat log inside those since the attacker will be so afraid of going in and so will just keep the patience battle up. Seriously I feel so SO safe when I'm inside, my only fear being somebody ghosting to the top floor and coming down to kill me. I hope I made myself clear.

How about if you log for over lets say 15 mins, you come back in the same place you left off because you are more then likely not server hopping or ghosting. Else you log back in at a completely random spot in the map "x" amount of meters away from logout spot. so guess what you wanna jump to loot airfield to airfield....... start running!! nuff said. after the time it takes you to loot, log, log, run, loot i bet by the 2nd or 3rd time you get tired of running.

Admittedly you could make a private hive and let everyone in, but there are plenty of discussions about that topic on the forum. There are advantages and disadvantages, but for me the public hive seems more interesting, BUT loot hoppers definitely need to be discouraged. And a big ass time penalty against ghosting is definitely needed.

The central loot system will mean that you switch server and search that server for something. Sooo no time penalty there, only switching too often would trigger that. I doubt Dean had in mind that ppl loot an area, log, loot the area again, log, loot the area again, .... when he talked about that. It's not like the helicopter part you are looking for is on the nwaf ATC, it is somewhere. You will spend enough time on the server. Spawning outside is not clear, could mean outside the area or outside the house. I would like always putting ppl outside buildings, at least you would not be shot in the back in buildings you already cleared. A login sound would solve that, too, but seems to be not liked very much. Hopping servers to farm interesting locations on different servers again and again is as bad for the game as duping. The hopper gets loot faster by using the exploit of getting to interesting buildings faster. Additionally those that run around on the map like idiots suffer with interesting locations being empty. The best example are all the east towns that are totally unlooted but have looted police stations. That's not helpful for balancing. I really got to take up the noble trade of hopper hunting. Everyone can hop servers, fine. Everyone can dupe, too. No reason to do it. I really don't see how that can be taken into account in the game and treated fairly for all players. And please no proposals like when you switch servers, you cannot take anything in a vicinity of 1km or something like that. Depending on where you are, 1km might be a lot (if you are starving in the middle of Novo) or nothing at all (if you are hopping nwaf or chopper crash locations). Of course changing servers from time to time to meet up with ppl or some other reason is not evil. I like that idea very much, but I would like to see it in combination with general time penalties as described above. There simply is no reason to hop every 20 minutes. Especially switching and then going back being penalized with a long wait is the only useful idea I have ever heard against ghosting. As it comes up again and again, yes, we will get private hives (or slices with only one server in them). But why do we have a public hive at all? It would have been way easier for BI to make chars restricted to the server you play on. I'm not going into advantages and disadvantages here, that's a whole new discussion for a new threat. For me it's like we are discussing how to get rid of some pests in the basement and ppl responding with "no problem, we will nuke the city, pests gone." If private hives are the thing you want and are happy with, fine, they are coming. But there is still a public hive and just we are discussing suggestions helping there. And private slices (or what they are called) including more than one server will have the problem, too.

I don't think so, I've often seen this floated as a solution to server-hopping as we know it today. It really isn't. For one, they've said that the "loot management system" will manage specific high-end loot. Not necessarily every single piece of loot in the game. So, for the rest of the respawning loot... server hopping will still be as viable as it is today as a method of gearing (unless the bar is set insanely low as to what loot should be regulated). So long as there are fixed advantageous loot spawns (i.e. barracks, jails, military tents, etc.) server hopping will be advantageous if left unmitigated in and of itself. That and there's more to server hopping than just easier access to loot. Being able to get loot from one server, and shuffle it off to a low-population and/or empty server on the same hive is insanely detrimental to the entire concept of the "loot management system" encouraging cross-server mobility for the sake of community building. To say nothing of the imbalance inherent in being able to hoard potentially high-end loot on an empty server, away from the significantly increased risk of high population servers. Finally, there's also more to server hopping than just loot. So no matter what you do to the loot system itself (i.e. make it respawning, make it fixed on the hive, etc.) unmitigated server hopping will always contribute to unfair "ghosting" to gain a tactical advantage on an opponent by swapping servers, moving to a better position, then swapping back. Server hopping, like duping, is one of the few issues in DayZ which requires a direct solution. Rather than an ambient and subtle one (i.e. player spawns).

Private hives prevent server switching - so they won't solve the problem at all. Its simply a completely different "battlefield". The suggested solutions would not affect private hives/single server shards in regards of server-hopping but they would still improve the experience in terms of combat logging/ghosting. Consider the discussion focussed on public hives/multi server shards - private hives have different issues like limited capacity, capped rarity etc. I am no fan of no-logout zones in general as it restricts the players choice of how to play the game too much. It would barely help against server hopping (people would just need to add "move in" and "move out" to their server hopping routine) but impose some major limitations on casual play. Bad luck would have horrible results, real life circumstances would have horrible results, getting kicked would have horrible results etc. Also its no soultion to combat logging outside of those zones leading to perceived inconsistent combat mechanics. Being spawned outside is probably a better way how to deal with it (and abuse isn't as bad - you have to log out in a freaking danger zone after all) but it would still disrupt group play and punish excessive server hopping even less. The timer system is still my favorite (updated list): first switch free, further switches cost increasing waiting timeno penalty for switching when kicked or in case of server restart (up to 10min before - where joining the server should be impossible)if you switched to another server you have to wait 30 minutes before you can rejoin the old one (independent of switch penalty)if you log out and rejoin within 30 seconds you can play on with your character as if nothing happened (no switch penalty increase)if you log out and want to rejoin after 30 second have passed you have to wait 5 minutes (independent of switch penalty)switch time penalty applies after leaving rather than joining the next server - in case of rejoin it gets ignored, not increased and the rules above applywhen about to leave people will be warned and shown:their expected switch timetheir expected time to rejoin (all three variants)when stuck in waiting time players can see the reasons for the time penalty (list with timestamps)waiting time should be shown before joining a serverafter waiting time a "Ready" button appears - after pressing it you will spawn instantlythere should be either a log in sound or a few seconds wait before you can fully control your character

Well, I thought about this before posting. If the server restarts or if you are kicked (for any reason) you log in at the same place you were logged out. But - problem - if you disconnect with Alt-F1 kind of thing, I thought you must be respawned because : In the no-logout zone disconnecting and being respawned outside the zone would give you a safe passage out of any trouble. If you're trapped in a house, you disconnect and respawn outside the perimeter, you''re safe. And worse, if you are in a firefight anywhere in the zone, you can disconnect and be logged back in at a random location outside the firefight area, big ghosting advantage to you. So I figured, if you go into this 'no-logout' zone, you know the risks.. you have to run for maybe 1 minute to get outside the zone to log out - and sure in that 1 min all kinds of bad things can happen, zombies, ladders, players - but that's true anywhere.. the only difference here is you can't hide and logout right where you are.. and if you disconnect you are respawned. You know the risk when you enter the area. So maybe there's a power cut or your mum switches off the pc or the internet provider shuts down suddenly.. It's bad anywhere in DayZ to be suddenly cut off from the game, probably zombies will eat you,or a player will shoot you, or when you log back in you'll fall off the roof, whatever.. So in this zone do your best to not leave the game, because it's a No Excuses zone, and you know the cost before you go in. Anyway, I don't see any other way to work it. I liked the idea of no-logout zones because it's an in-game solution that becomes part of the gameplay, and can make the game more interesting. And this is my best estimate of how it could work. Yes, if you are disconnect from your end - for any reason - when you're in the zone you're dead.. but .. it's a serious place to be, you take the risk. If you can't log out at all in that zone it's going to be an intense place anyway.

That sounds awfully risky to do to me. First you have to time your logout so you don't get shot. Then you have to guess when to best log in again, ... but if it is a thing, ok. A lot of ppl log out and come back rather soon because of real life things. Maybe 3 minutes is ok here, but that is just finetuning. I like the idea of no logout zones, but instead of suicide I would use a random spawns outside the area. What about isp disconnects, other problems, game crashing, ... random spawn outside the zone make it random enough to be dangerous so reasonable ppl would prefer to leave regularly instead of disconnecting in a no log zone, at the same time unlucky guys or ppl that had to immediatelly leave because of real life are not punished too much. Having to leave the keyboard should not be a death sentence, think of parents, ... . I don't know how long this thread will continue, but I really think that making a few rules like the discussed ones can help tremindously to fight hopping and ghosting while not creating problems for normal players. Also global loot things like for helicopters are not a problem with such things, so arguing that Dean himself said ppl might have to search other servers for helicopter parts is out of the discussion. No one can tell me that he had loot hoppers and ghosters in mind when he said changing servers will be neccessary.

Every single MOBA player and everyone who likes to enjoy the favors of matchmaking. People are willing to wait if it makes the game more enjoyable. Definitely - players should know what is going on without asking around or reading guides. It might be reasonable to warn people right before they do something that might cause a penalty and give a detailed explanation for every single waiting time. The problem is a form of ghosting/combat logging here. Your character will stay ingame for 30 seconds after logging out to avoid a cheap escape when facing danger. Now if you could log back instantly within those 30 seconds you could just take over your character who is still on the map and play on. However, logging in after those 30 seconds would make your character disappear for a few seconds. Now those seconds could create bad ingame situations. Consider a player running into a house combat logging. His character manages to disappear right before the enemy enters the room. The player logs back in while the enemy leaves the room checking elsewhere - and our combat logger can take him by surprise by coming out of a "secured" room. Thats just one way to deal with it - other options are a log in sound and the OPs suggestion that come with their own issues. Or you could change the 30 seconds for both "character stays ingame" and "free rejoining" - but that would also increase risk for everyone logging out for good. Thats the core point. People using the mechanic would have no or only were short switch times while people abusing the mechanic would have to wait much longer. In this case you could even argue that it is no abuse anymore but a legit strategy that trades ingame risk for waiting times (which the current server hopping is not).

The timer should also contain an explanation describing why ppl get the penalty. Not just "You switched back to a previous server after going to another one for a short time", but explaining that ghosting is prevented with the timer. Of course you tell more ppl about ghosting who might never have even heard about it, but if the timer is there, it does not matter. Having the timer rules in a blackbox and ppl just getting anoying timers without knowing why is probably a big part of the rage against timers.

There's 2 issues. Server hoppers are upsetting the "economy" of the game and are looking to grab as much gear as possible which means less to go around - the loot table has finite objects in it. If a group of people hop ewvery server and grab all the M4's say - you'll never find one again. That's exaggerated of course but is good as an example. Ghosting - you're fighting this guy, the battle is going in your favour because you've made better tactical decisions. Suddenly you get shot in the back by the player! How so?? He went and logged into another server, moved to a postion behind you, logged back into your server and killed you.

So private shards are Vanilla servers without the fuckery that comes from server hopping, combat logging and ghosting ? Sounds good thats how all servers should have been.

Will Private Shards use the Central Loot system, or will they have a separate loot table just for that particular server? From my point of view, my private shard server would not be part of (not connect in anyway that would allow it to be used for loot farming or ghosting to) the public hive. So I would think/want/ask that the loot tables on my private server only apply to my server; i.e. proposed rare items like the SVD would have the same chance of spawning within my private shard as they do across the entire (central loot managed) public shard. I don't want to change the chance of one spawning on my server, but I also do not one not to spawn in my private shard due to there already being to many on the Public shard. I've not been able to find an answer to this on the forums. Perhaps a Dev could provide some insight (you know, if free to do so)?

Just make it so there's an incremental time between hops and a half hour wait to return to the server/s you were on. So first change is no wait. 2nd server 5 minutes 3rd server 10 minutes, etc Want to return to a server you were on you need to wait 30 minutes (to stop ghosting)

"trev186, on 15 Aug 2014 - 11:29 AM, said: not always practical... sometimes admins restart servers and dont bring them back up for a long time or changing servers to play with a friend Or your server is now full etc etc etc no sense punishing those who are not abusing the central hive just to stop server hoppers The instances where non server hoppers would be punished is negligible and a perfectly fine. This is only going to hurt server hoppers in reality and it should server hopping and ghosting is garbage and it should not be a major factor in gameplay." Well what if I log off and switch to a server for a valid reason and I log back in to find the game randomly though me in the middle of NWAF....how is that fair? I dont want to have logged off safely to find the game put me in the middle of a danger zone.

The instances where non server hoppers would be punished is negligible and a perfectly fine. This is only going to hurt server hoppers in reality and it should server hopping and ghosting is garbage and it should not be a major factor in gameplay. I am sorry but what ?

This is why finding a good "legit" server is so important and so very difficult. You have to be choosy and you have to be observant. But once you find it things are good. The problem is the server owners/admins that play favorites make it seem like all admins play favorites (which isn't the case). But perception is huge. Can you define this "too seriously" bit? What do you mean? I play this game because it's fun. But I also play to be successful. So if I use tactics that allow me get the better of you, does that mean I'm playing too seriously? Sounds like some of those bad admins that make all admins look bad. So, vehicles with thermal that are allowed in game (correct me if i'm wrong) took you out and others out not allowed to do that to players around missions? Or is that you saying that's bad form? I'm confused, because if they can buy that chopper from a vendor, then they can use that chopper how they want (without hacking). So you blew up a big clans tank and are surprised that they retaliated against you? I'm confused. If your striker was for "shits and giggles" then why did you spend 12 briefcases of gold for one? Seems like a gross waste of money. I will never play on hive servers again. Hacking and ghosting is ridiculous. Private servers allow admins to control/kick hackers, and you have no ghosting issues. Like I said in the beginning...you have to find the servers with good admins who have actual integrity and morals. Those are the servers you put in favorites.

Hey guys, hope you can help. I have my UI resolution set to 1920x1080 the native resolution of my screen. However, when I change my rendering resolution to 1920x1080(100%) I get ghosting terrain. It goes away at the next lowest rendering reso (88%). Is it important to have this at 100%? Am I losing graphic quality. I'm not getting any blurriness at the 88%. Anybody have any ideas? Thanks in advance for any replies.

I'll tell you why. Reason #1. Continuance. You probably haven't played to become a high-humanity hero, otherwise you'd know what I mean. The satisfaction of saving a bambi from a pack of bandits, counter-sniping Elektro hill to keep the city safe, or rescuing a lone survivor calling out for help in the middle of Stary, used to be just priceless. For me DayZ is a lot about the humanity system, which only works if your long-term progress in the game is stored. That's what the hive did. Reason #2. Reliability. Your favorite server is currently offline? Not a problem, just connect to another one from the hive and continue playing. That's not possible with private servers, because, well, you'd have to start afresh, losing all your progress (see 1). I can't invest hours and hours of play into a server that is suddenly shut down, taking my humanity to its grave. Or one that is not up exactly when I have time to play. Reason #3. Diversification. From time to time I like to play first person only, or without side chat. Sometimes, I prefer to play with people with whom I can comfortably speak in my native language over voice chat, while other times I feel like hitting the international road on English servers. All that used to be easy to do with the hive: just change servers. Reason #4. New people. Randomly running into strangers is one of the best features in DayZ, IMHO. Not knowing what they'll do or how they'll react. Showing fresh players around, teaming up with random dudes who might back stab you the moment you look the other way. This used to work great on the public hive, and I'm afraid it won't on private servers where most of the players are regulars organized in groups/clans etc. Referring to your points: "No more ghosting, farming on empty servers, probably less hackers": Ghosting hasn't been a big problem lately, I believe. In fact, I don't think anyone has ever ghosted on me. If they did, they did a horrible job at it (or I just changed my position too quickly ;-) ). Farming wasn't a problem for me either. If anything, it just meant more loot after you took a farmer down. ;-) As regards hackers: This is even an argument in favor of the public hive over private servers, IMO. Found a hacker? Just switch servers. On private servers, you're bound to hoping that an admin is around when you're playing (e.g., at 3 am). "Easier to find friends": That's probably true, but finding friendship that lasts longer than a few hours is not what I'm looking for in DayZ. "Good admins/servers will stand and shitty ones fall": I strongly doubt that. If it worked like that, it would have happened a long time ago already. It's not like the private servers came online only recently. There are too many kids out there who like to cause a mess just for the sake of what seemed like fun at a certain age.

yup. My bet is it's like the M4 sound glitch where it would go brapbrapbrap but only fire one round and the other 2 anim/noises were just your gun ghosting the first shot. Haven't experienced yet, but +1 here.

i don't get it, what's the big deal of losing the hive? no more ghosting, farming on empty servers, probably less hackers and easier to find friends. good admins/servers will stand and shitty ones fall. what do we lose? the ability to transfer caracters between the 5 remaining servers? that would be positive for me... or do i miss something?