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I've been away from DayZ SA since just after Christmas as I got a little too addicted I kind of burnt myself out, so I took a break for a few months. Now I have come back to it, could some of you please give me the gist of the Big "Need to know" changes??? I saw straight away that it doesn't seen to have been optimised any, fps still seems to be an issue in cities, and I noticed a respawn delay was added, I guess to stop ghosting and loot farming. Anything else major??? Appreciate it, regards

It's a generalized assessment, it doesn't mean that the devs aren't allowed to fix smaller bugs when they get the chance to. Killing on sight isn't exploiting or an issue with the game, it's a "problem" (not really) with the mentality of players, so you can't really make a plan for dealing with something that's always going to be there. Server hopping & ghosting are exploits, but you're assuming that these side effects were anticipated right from the get go. Remember that the mod didn't have a lot of public hive servers around, so hopping to another server to get loot would put you right back at square one, most of the time. That, and loot was much more abundant and less in depth in the mod, so it wasn't really necessary. Ghosting is another issue altogether, but they've brought forth some ways of trying to solve it. It's not perfect, but they've done a good job of making sure that people who try to ghost or combat log can't do so with absolute simplicity but people who are legitimately logging in or out aren't punished. You've also got to understand that rocket isn't exactly the "over-confident" kind of developer that you tend to see. He's an awesome guy and he's got awesome ideas, but he doesn't try to put them forth in the same ways that other people do. When relating to features, you've also got to remember that they want to support modding in the long run, so they have to make decisions on what should be a base game feature and what could probably wait until someone else makes it themselves. Progress has been good in the 6 month span the standalone has been out.

You realize that DayZ doesn't even meet your criteria for having a proper development cycle, right? I, honestly, do not believe DayZ has a "solid design document" due to the way development has progressed and based on Rocket's comments during livestreams. He says things like, "Well... we are thinking about adding this" or "I don't know if we will add that. It might be better if the community takes care of it." There is also the small matter of things like KoS, server hopping, ghosting, etc. All of these topics would have been contained in a design doc. Also, they keep fixing both major and minor bugs in the current (alpha) stage. So, in my opinion, I think you are wrong with your assessment of a game development cycle as it applies to DayZ.

so if they remove all the textual notifications from the game does that mean we will be having to hit tab just to see if we are hungry? and this doesn't "break immersion"?? its a zombie apocalypse survival sim - the other players on the map are just more things to survive against, avoidance is the best method of surviving other players. have you not noticed just how PRETTY the game is? my god, the devs have done some very amazing work on the models and textures - its almost photo-realistic, yes I am an eyecandy whore. so I've seen more than my share of vids from the mod - I think you have the two games confused as standalone is NOT the mod. the fragfest that is dayz mod is well documented on youtube and that is one of the reasons I never bothered with it, buying a whole game I wont play just to play the mod was the other reason. I have followed the development of standalone for well over 2 years now waiting with great anticipation and the minute I had the cash after release I bought it, I have now logged over 950 hours in the game and there is no sign that I will ever tire of it. like you, I have never been killed by someone logging in behind me. maybe that's because, like you, I will find a safe place to log out and I will wait in that place for at least a minute before I actually log off usually much longer. I do however understand that at any point while I am playing someone just might log in behind me and shoot me in the head, that's why I check my six every 2 minutes, so far so good. I never said anything about forcing anyone to do anything however I am well aware of human nature and people will CHOOSE to take the easy route and that's finding your empty server to get to a safe place so you can log in to your full sever. pretty sure that's a form of ghosting is it not? as far as player interaction is concerned... this is a full on PVP capable game and as a result 90% of my personal player interaction involves me watching you through my scope and me deciding not to pull the trigger, the other 10% can be rather embarrassing I must admit as I am usually missing my CQC shots and having my head blown off. I don't want your stuff and I don't need your stuff but I am often happy to give you mine (all the more reason to go exploring for gear). you are merely an inconvenience on my journey of exploration and survival through a beautiful landscape full of wonder and horror. I don't think my points are petty at all, I just don't think we are playing the same game. edit: oh almost forgot to mention zombies, did you know there are zombies in the game?

Being aware of your surroundings only gets you so far. There is no justifiable reason why there shouldn't be a subtle noise made when logging on or off. As far as your "experience" in gaming, there's never been a game like DayZ in which you lose everything upon dying. Spawning in behind someone in World of Warcraft, Grand Theft Auto, or Counter-Strike deathmatch doesn't carry nearly as much weight since they'll respawn several seconds later close to the location they died and be able to exact revenge if they so desire. When this happens in DayZ, it strips the victim of hours and in some cases, days of their life. In the opinion of many, it's a less direct method of ghosting and needs to be addressed. Now, as I'VE stated half a dozen times in this very thread: 1) If you don't want to die upon logging on, make sure you log out in an area away from contested hotspots. Take thirty seconds and run to a random group of trees away from traveled paths. A subtle sound made when logging on will not affect you if you follow this strategy. If you're too lazy to insure your avatar's safety when logging off, you deserve to be killed when logging on, especially in a contested area. 2) A sound should also be made AFTER SOMEONE HAS FULLY LOGGED OUT AND IS UNABLE TO BE KILLED to prevent people waiting for someone to exit a building when no one is actually there. If they're close enough to the building to hear the yawn (or whatever sound is implemented) signifying that a player has logged out, they won't end up waiting an hour before deciding to move in to check it out. This isn't really much of a debate anymore. Seemingly, the only people arguing against aforementioned sounds are those using the lack thereof for malicious intent, or are too lazy to find somewhere safe to log off before server hopping. /thread

I'm for sounds on logging in and out. Can be a foghorn for all I care. So on one hand you hate the idea of login/logout sounds because it's unrealistic but on the other had people teleporting in behind you or ghosting is fine because it's unrealistic. Right. Cheers for clearing that up.

Phoenix Arizona - West coast Server! Information: To maintain a low ping on our server we set a ping cap, this reduces latency from players with high pings. Additionally, we use the BEC client to protect our server against hackers. BEC checks players against a global ban list and integrity checks the game client. As much as we would love to run into FRANKIEonPC, big fans here FRANKIE, his connection might not be accepted with our latency (ping cap). Warnings are schedule to happen 1hr, 30min, 15min, 10min and 5min before reboots. We will kick players if they are caught exploiting, cheating or ghosting. Furthermore, we will work to obtain evidence of the offense, PlayerID's and names to report to BEC to be added to the global ban. Our server has BEC name filtering, we hate to keep players out based on name criteria but most of those with names that do not comply with this list are probably not very mature players. Additionally, we normally have active admins. If an admin is caught abusing his power, such as reboots after kills or kicking players without justification, they will no longer be an admin on our server. We are working on building a player base of mature games, legitimate players to experience the world of DayZ the way it was meant to be played. BEC Summary of Main Features Support for Multiple In-game AdminsDefine Custom Names on CommandsSet Group Levels on AdminsSet Permission Level on CommandsOrganized Chat loggerOrganized BE Event loggerCheck Guid of players who connects against a central ban databaseReport Hacks to a central ban databaseNick Filter, Auto kick offensive nick's defined by youChat & channel restrictionChat & channel anti-spamMake players temp adminsAutokick lobby idlersCreate Schedules of various sorts. motd's. events etcCreate whitelist fileSlotLimit, can be used to reserve slotsPlugin Support (Ts3 Serverquery plugin included).

posted this before but I think it is interesting in the sense that the hackers tried everything to conceal the shit they pulled Yesterday/ This morning. Hackers are getting more stupid by the minute: I played with 3 friends yesterday. It was 1 am so the server was pretty much empty at that point, only 2 other guys left. One of my friends gets shot at nwaf towerjail entrance. we get the guy who did it, my friend shoots the 2nd guy who was with him as well. I shot him in the back from 100 meters with a mosin, he is still alive. suddenly he gets back up after being 10 seconds unconscious and shoots my 2nd friend who is in front of him. Anyway me and my 3rd friend are left on the airfield. so after some time the two enemys are coming back in hope to get their gear. We wait for our friends to do the same. My buddy is in the in jail, im outside. I shoot enemy Nr.1 again, I went up to him took his guns, checked his puls and emptied the guns he had (mosin and blaze). The second guy leaves the server and comes back in after some time, my buddy is guessing he is logging back in his back in the jail (hence infamous ghosting), which he does. me and my buddy see him up the stairs and we literally shot 50-60 bullets m4 and akm at him but he just won't die. then I hear a mosin shot from the right and i'm dead. headshot. this happened 20-30 seconds after I killed the 2nd guy and there where ONLY my friends and the 2 enemys on the server. when we first met them they where hording a ton of stuff in the jail which they I can only guess cheated as well. We all respawned and our friend who got killed first found an helicrashsite and was waiting for us near the jail but he got killed again by the same guys who just popped out behind him in the woods. So my friend who got killed last got to the jail again and grabbed my mosin. The 2nd enemy who was ghosting did it a second time after that and they killed each other. (I'm so proud of my friend who never used a mosin to get the m4 dude *tears of happiness@ Kora*) So how 1. Did the guy get back from being unconscious in 10 seconds after getting hit by a mosin from 100 meters? is that even possible to get back up so fast? 2. Did the combatlocker in the jail get an m4 right after he respawned? 2. Could the ONLY other enemy we had on the server get to the west airfield in 20-30 seconds after I killed him (no pulse warm to touch, shot him 2 times to be sure he was dead) to shot me when we attacked the combatlocker in the jail? This was literally impossible since we had only 2 hostiles on the server at that point. 3. could the guy detect my friend with the m4 from the crashsite, while he was hiding in the woods behind the jail. my friend watched the door while he was inside and he couldn't have left without cheating, he did NOT relog that time. 4. Sometimes they exactly knew where we were, sometimes they didn't. It was like the hacker only turned the cheats on when they lost the fight. So why not just play and learn how to the hard way instead of choosing the easy way out and turn on cheats when you lose control of a situation? Those 2 did there absolut best to make it look like they didn't cheat (aside from the obvious ghosting into the top floor jail) but it was so obvious it was really laughable. Just because you don't use an aimbot people can still see when you use other cheats retards. I think the reason why it played out this way and we didn't just got killed instantly was that only one of the two was cheating. The second guy "only" used the information he got from the actual hacker. It was satisfying though that we could kill them more often without artificial help from cheatsoftware or ghosting anyway. I'm just sad that my character had to go like this, I survived around 20 shootouts (3 weeks, around 100 hours), which is a considerable amount in this game I guess.

Yesterday/ This morning. Hackers are getting more stupid by the minute: I played with 3 friends yesterday. It was 1 am so the server was pretty much empty at that point, only 2 other guys left. One of my friends gets shot at nwaf towerjail entrance. we get the guy who did it, my friend shoots the 2nd guy who was with him as well. I shot him in the back from 100 meters with a mosin, he is still alive. suddenly he gets back up after being 10 seconds unconscious and shoots my 2nd friend who is in front of him. Anyway me and my 3rd friend are left on the airfield. so after some time the two enemys are coming back in hope to get their gear. We wait for our friends to do the same. My buddy is in the in jail, im outside. I shoot enemy Nr.1 again, I went up to him took his guns, checked his pulse and emptied the guns he had (mosin and blaze). The second guy leaves the server and comes back in after some time, my buddy is guessing he is logging back in his back in the jail (hence infamous ghosting), which he does. me and my buddy see him up the stairs and we literally shot 50-60 bullets m4 and akm at him but he just won't die. then I hear a mosin shot from the right and i'm dead. headshot. this happened 20-30 seconds after I killed the 2nd guy and there where ONLY my friends and the 2 enemys on the server. when we first met them they where hording a ton of stuff in the jail which they I can only guess cheated as well. We all respawned and our friend who got killed first found an helicrashsite and was waiting for us near the jail but he got killed again by the same guys who just popped out behind him in the woods. So my friend who got killed last got to the jail again and grabbed my mosin. The 2nd enemy who was ghosting did it a second time after that and they killed each other. (I'm so proud of my friend who never used a mosin to get the m4 dude *tears of happiness@ Kora*) So how 1. Did the guy get back from being unconscious in 10 seconds after getting hit by a mosin from 100 meters? is that even possible to get back up so fast? 2. Did the combatlocker in the jail get an m4 right after he respawned? 2. Could the ONLY other enemy we had on the server get to the west airfield in 20-30 seconds after I killed him (no pulse warm to touch, shot him 2 times to be sure he was dead) to shot me when we attacked the combatlocker in the jail? This was literally impossible since we had only 2 hostiles on the server at that point. 3. could the guy detect my friend with the m4 from the crashsite, while he was hiding in the woods behind the jail. my friend watched the door while he was inside and he couldn't have left without cheating, he did NOT relog that time. 4. Sometimes they exactly knew where we were, sometimes they didn't. It was like the hacker only turned the cheats on when they lost the fight. So why not just play and learn how to the hard way instead of choosing the easy way out and turn on cheats when you lose control of a situation? Those 2 did there absolut best to make it look like they didn't cheat (aside from the obvious ghosting into the top floor jail) but it was so obvious it was really laughable. Just because you don't use an aimbot people can still see when you use other cheats retards. I think the reason why it played out this way and we didn't just got killed instantly was that only one of the two was cheating. The second guy "only" used the information he got from the actual hacker. It was satisfying though that we could kill them more often without artificial help from cheatsoftware or ghosting anyway. I'm just sad that my character had to go like this, I survived around 20 shootouts (3 weeks, around 100 hours), which is a considerable amount in this game I guess.

1 - 999 Damage seems to be different every time, sometimes 1hko from full health full pristine gear, sometimes entire inventory gets ruined but you don't even bleed, sometimes they hit you 20 times and just barely make you bleed with no other damage done. It helps to consider them all 1 hit kill noclip ghosting wallhack zombies and call it lucky if you get hit once without dying. They're easy to deal with if you know they're there.. just sometimes hard to know they're there when they run up silently because your sound card is too swamped playing ambient glitch sounds to deal with playing the audio cue of a real threat. Mix that with seeing anything in the direction they're facing regardless of LoS and moving in a straight line while you have to dodge buildings and fences to get away.. Just gotta get good at looking over your shoulder and dodging their potentially 1hko attacks. It'd be nice if they debuffed the zombies, just temporarily while they are ridiculously broken, but nobodys listening :) Irrelevant anyway, because they should be fixed come next patch anyway, which is as soon as one could hope for them to be fixed.

Ghosting?

I actually love ghosting bandits, kneecap them after it and hear them beg for my mercy, but I just leave them bleeding, and to the zombies, plus it makes you feel like a superhero! it's like you're the nightcrawler huehuehuehue. I really hope they don't take away this exploit.

most of the recourse to stop it would also hurt DC's, people that need to run and have an extended bowel release without the extra discomfort of knowing their character is simulating such a position of weakness while logged in 'alone' etc... Ghosting is cheap but i don't see too much of a resolution to it in these suggestions, although setting you as a random spawn location for new servers may be interesting, it would still annoy me if i've got to a nice place the day before then spawn in berez. Same as loot hoppers. I've done it a few times myself, and though looked down on by the hardcore players, I'd point out that there is a danger involved, like when you go from server to server, see doors opened, even on freshly restarted servers and you know that each hop brings you closer to your competition. I eventually find 2-3 people this way and throw some lead in their direction. But i can appreciate people's disdain for these actions. Also, i've not ever heard the 'reload sound' on login from people that i've heard players talk of, but playing with my friends i frequently hear a moan (female is very short and sharp and harder to hear) as they pop into existence. I'm currently on a character that broke his legs falling down some stairs (and i've splinted it) but he occasionally mumbles but this has been noticed by me and friends on relatively healthy characters frequently. So if you're in some flash apartment and start hearing throes of passion from upstairs, there's a good chance the only fluids he's after are soon to be coursing down your neck.

That must be DayZ only definition for it. For as long as I remember (from CS betas till this day) ghosting has been abuse of spectate feature (either as spectator or after you're dead) in games to report locations of enemy to your team / friends.

^Whoa.... This sounds like a good solution except it's not really that simple. Maybe have this tied to a clock at about 15 minutes long. Ghosting is game breaking and should never be done. Here's to hoping there is a perfect solution in the future.

Why they don't set player locations to separate server specific tables in the hive i'll never know. For instance your coordinates on DayZ_servername_1 are X:236 Y:48 Z:7 And when you log out from servername_1 to another server say servername_2 it spawns you in a random spawn (much like a bambi spawn) and updates your position to the DayZ_servername_2 table. This assumes its a server youve never played on before. When you log back into the first server your position will be the same as where you initially logged out on that particular server and ghosting wont be an issue at all. The only conceivable downsides are players spawning randomly if the server changes its name but that's an end user admin issue, and to prevent the databases getting too unwieldy have the server just issue drop tables when there's been no activity for like a month. I assume at present when a server connects to the hive tables are created anyway right? things like loot tables and so on? Why not just split some tables in the schema and totally work around this issue?

Ghosting is the same as cheating, though it would technically be considered an exploit. Exploiters are worse than cheaters as there is no recourse for stopping them. So, knock it off if you're attempting to ghost. Suck it up, it's just a game. No need to potentially wreck other people's experience just because your's has been. Not all "hackers" you see, indeed are.

Ghosting is an exploit of the global hive system which saves your character and position across all servers. Basicly if soemone is in a superior psoition (say 2nd floor of a house covering the only way inot the building) you can log out, go to another server and move into that house on the 3rd floor. you then switch back to the first server and shoot your target from behind as he/she is assuming no on could have gotten past thier camping position.

Ghosting is when you leave one server and go to another to flank around or move around an enemy and then log back onto that original server to kill them.

i've had a "timeout" error for a few weeks now, (ghosting on/off, battleye on/off) basically makes it a dead server. players get about 15 seconds to run and then kicked, rinse...repeat...i was told to wait for 1.8.2 pm me and see if you can get in mine

The ghosting/server-hopping issue has already been identified as an area of development with regard to barricading. Rocket has said that they'd implement a zone in or around a barricaded structure in which a player (assumedly just the players who did not construct the barricades) cannot spawn/log in.

I've been giving this a LOT of thought. Full disclosure: the following will refer to Bukkit server administration quite a lot (its where the bulk of my experience lies with regards to buildable structures and persistence) Its been stated that they're looking into bolting onto existing structures to begin with, simple barricades initially. I see a multitude of problems with that that need to be considered and thought through, if its to persist on a server after restart. The only way i can see that working is for the hive to update that servers database table (and therefore persist in the world upon restart on that server alone) this is fine against zombies (when the collision and pathfinding get rectified) but not so much against players who can presumably ghost across servers to bypass any locks. A way around it would be cuboids like Bukkits "Precious Stones" mod, whereby you can set up a perimeter where players can and cannot build (default is iron blocks, but its configurable) by allowing players to place something like "fenceposts" they could easily make perimeters around structures that would follow its geometry (thusly working around basic cuboid and radius based placements a la Minecraft) and those players would be able to define "SPAWN ACCESS" whereby if you spawn on a server, it performs a simple check to see if you can spawn in the region, if not you get kicked from the server with a ghosting warning. Something to let you know you're trying to access a field you don't have permissions to access. By enabling access tied to some kind of UID (presumably tied to steam account or battleeye ID to avoid nick changing glitches) you could allow groups to spawn inside your "base" or "fort" or whatever you wind up calling your locked down region. This could be as complicated as users throwing commands (in mc it was /ps allow [all/username] by clicking a field marker) or as simple as just having players you wish to allow access to stand inside the field and the builder throwing an allow command and granting everyoe inside the existing field permissions. The feature with the latter is that you really need to trust a person because once you've invited them, they're in, no take backs unless you had some way of denying access to specific UID's. Id be all for it as it adds another dimension of risk/reward. The trouble with a perimeter based setup is its very open to grief on a public hive (on a private hive you'll have access to all the tables, and be able to identify who placed what, where, and when. Much like LogBlock on Bukkit) initially i don't see much of a problem, because you don't spawn INSIDE buildings as you begin a new char. However as things progress to user buildable structures, its only a matter of time before assholes build upon all the spawn points and cause mayhem on a public hive, that presumably Admins will have no real moderation over, because giving out access to the public hive tables opens up a whole other kettle of fish in terms of abuse. A work around would be to set up areas like Bukkits "WorldGuard" does, in that you can set up spawn regions where things wont be buildable, this is good in that it allows a developer to specify regions on a master map and then deploy it across all public servers rapidly, changes to the master as things develop would be able to be deployed across all instantly, if and when the need arises, (so end users are largely unaffected by and unaware of changes because they don't need to download any update) But yeah, the real trouble will be how to handle policies regarding grief and abuse, as on a public hive there, it'll be unlikely that any given server admin will have much in the way of tools to deal with it, it also opens things up to injection hacks where an astute user will be able to circumvent protection, but the barrier to entry is higher there than simply downloading a script. I can see the room for potential here, but also see the pitfalls if things are not implemented precisely and with a degree of finesse. Its bound to be interesting anyway :) Again apologies for anyone not buffed up on bukkit plugins, or database design/management, i tried to keep it as user friendly as possible though.

How many shits do i have to read about people advocating ghosting? So much kids low skill no worth of a survival game....a survival game based on teleporting. I don't need anymore to buy Portal 2....i do buy DAYZ. If BE continue to listen all the shits coming out from the fingers of cerain idiots then this game will die the same as Star Wars Galaxies when NGE came out, half community quit and gg. Probably won't happen the same, as this game once it is payed it's payed, that was a subscribing game instead. But this, just to say that if Devs continuing to listen all the shits, of any kind, that on survival game should not to exists, then this game will drop down like the shit that is swinging down from my ass while i'm sitting on the WC.

There is apparently a confusion of terms. Server hopping = loot farmers jumping server to server. Ghosting = using secondary servers to gain an advantageous tactical position on a primary server. The OP was a garbled mass of incorrect terms and broken English. It was a struggle to understand.

Not sure why you feel the need to besmirch the Arnold. What I've read is that Dean is envisioning a "barricade" to help prevent ghosting. What that means is that when you have a group defending a position nobody will be able to log in within a certain radius of you, instead they would be moved outside the set radius. Not sure how big that radius would be. But returning the login sound seems like an easier way to correct the issue for now. Not sure why they ever removed it.