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Yup ghosting at its finest, Btw when you fix your broken leg you need to relog for your char to walk again its a known bug,

It's all planned, anti-combat logging, anti-server hopping, anti-ghosting, discussing if it should or shouldn't be in is pointless, people like to be a hero and suggest how they think it should be done, even if most have no idea on what is involved in game development and game design specifically, just the way things are. I do agree though, a 10 second timer is way too short, hence my previous post on how I would handle it(or at least what I would try out first): http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/157862-server-hop-ghosting-solution/page-2#entry1585019 Yep, another "hero suggestion", though I actually have a bit of background in game development, not to say my way is great, but its the way I would handle it, banning as a replacement for a game mechanic is not how things should be handled.

What it should be is similar to the mod where there is a logout timer and a combat timer, there should also be a timer between switching servers(like 5-10 mins), like in breaking point. This would eliminate ghosting as it would take 10 minutes to switch to another server to move into better position then 10 minutes to switch back. Server hopping for loot would be more inconvenient as it would take longer to do. Combat logging or otherwise improper exiting of the server should leave your character in game for 30 secs or whatever the combat/logout timer is. if this has already been proposed it is because it is a good idea, there will never be "safe" zones in dayz

all thats needed is a logout timer. One that starts when you hit ESC of a simple 20 seconds. You can still dc immediately (if you know you are in a 'safe' area and it wouldn't matter) or wait for the timer to completely run down (if you're not in an entirely 'safe' area but want the ability to still react if needed before the timer runs out). Either way an avatar of your char remains for the entire timer duration. Ad to that a combat timer, engage (or be engaged) and 30 seconds are added to the amount of time your avatar remains. The avatar IS you, you're just not controlling him, to be killed and looted as seen fit. Why this do you ask? well, it keeps people from combat logging to save their ass, yet allows you to (relatively) safely logout quickly if needed. You'll can never actually log out as bullets are flying around you. A log out sound (like the log in sound) might be something, although, really only connect/dc messages can really mitigate 'ghosting'.

So, there are a couple of threads going on about teleporting and spawning weapons and aimbots... the common jump way to soon to convenient conclusions. However, in my 40 hours I have clocked in SA, I haven't experienced anything close to hacks (but a lot of combat logging and ghosting but that is for another day). Same with the 8 or so guys I survive with in any number at one time. Does anyone have any concrete proof that "hacking is rampant in SA"? Because, to me, it looks like the people who are posting these are just sad to have lost their characters. First it was god, then it was aliens, now its hackers.

Well... that is the main issue with a game that has linked servers. This isn't what I would call "Server Hopping" though its what I call "Ghosting" and on my DayZ Mod server it was a bannable offense. Ghosting is cheating. Unfortunately with how loot is dispersed right now server hopping is going to be a way of life until its changed. I literally cannot find anything on a server sometimes and it practically forces me to switch to a server that's been restarted recently. That's just reality of loot spawn @ server startup. That being said though... maybe only allowing people to log out in a forest or area away from a city / town would be beneficial at the moment.

I absolutely LOVE this idea. PLEASE devs at least consider this.The inconvenience it might cause severely aids in ghosting, server hopping and combat logging. So a team cant lock down a city (at least on the outskirts), big deal, it aids in everything else.

You should select a home server on starting a character. This server you will automatically connect to, to switch servers you need to change homeservers which should be a 10 minute or so process. This prevents server hopping, ghosting, and creates a reason to stay tied to servers. The only issue would be if your home server is full :/ I'm sure there could be a good solution for that. But I think that should be added in eventually to solve a lot of issues.

They are all pretty easily solved. Rocket has talked about some of these before too so I have no doubts we will see something similar implemented at some point in the alpha. Combat logging - Players bodies remain in-game for 30 seconds or so after they log out. Ghosting is also easy with a global hive. If you log out of a server you should not be able to rejoin that server again for say 30 minutes IF you have logged into another server since. Simple tracking of the last, say 5, server IP's, each as a 32bit hash, then current hash and compare. After 30 mins of play on the current server then history list is flushed to conserve space and reset the calculation. Server Hopping for loot is a variant of the above except it stops you logging into ANY other server for 15 mins if you have joined 3 servers in the last 30 mins or alternatively a timeout timer is doubled every time you switch servers - maybe the first switch has no wait, the second 2 minutes, third 8 minutes etc.

Theres no problem for if you have to log quickly....theres hundreds of enterable houses with beds that you could just run to....wait the few seconds while you fall asleep then log out. I really like this idea, adds immersion and completly stops combat logging. Also helps against server hoppers if it takes say 15 secs to go asleep....then should take 15 to wake up and get outa the bed. So if you did it in the baracks then as you wake theres 15 seconds for the player thats there to react. Maybe even make em yawn when they wake as an audiable que to the player that someone logged on really close and will be combat ready within the next 15 seconds. This idea would acctually make me want to play public servers more, iv always gone for private hives because of ghosting server hopping. This is the first time youl see me say id like to play on pub servers and its this idea that makes me want to! have some beans!

Ridiculous? Currently there are hundreds if not thousands of spawn points along the shore of Chernarus for new players to spawn in on and people roaming the shores and killing un-geared characters is already a problem. No one looking to PK needs to wait days right now, what do you think will happen when we bump players into a very well defined radius outside of the cover of a town/buildings? Think for a few seconds please. Who is most likely to unlog in a town, particularly the main ones along the shore? Mostly new players because they don't know what they are doing so why screw them even more by adding this completely illogical and unrealistic feature? Why should players who take cover in relatively unimportant buildings get bumped out of the town? Honestly, there is no real reason except to satisfy your feature. Are there better and less intrusive ways to fix server hopping and ghosting? Yes, and a lot of them have been posted already.

This is probably the easiest solution, and the one they will go with eventually. The one problem which persists is players logging in while crouched in a dark corner of a high-value area (or similar). Even if 8 minutes have passed, there's still a potential problem with people randomly appearing after you've searched an area. It does vastly improve the situation and all but solves ghosting, but I would love to see a system which basically prevents people altogether from logging in inside high value zones. Essentially a new log-in should place you in a tactically neutral position, and far from loot if possible. You would never be able to log in standing on top of a nice juicy weapon or a pile of ammunition.

Obviously there's no way to completely prevent people from logging in to other servers in order to find more loot. How would you? The only way to completely end the practice would be to disallow people from switching servers at all, which I think you will agree is an impossibly restrictive solution. What this does it makes server hopping far, far less convenient. Server hopping is effective because it's fast. You check a room, find it empty, change servers and find loot. With my solution, every time you attempt this you've got to run for several minutes before checking for loot again. Most wise server hoppers will realize this is no more efficient than simply staying on one server and moving on to another location. The benefit of re-checking the same location over and over again goes away if you have to run for 10 minutes every time you switch servers. Why would you check the same place when you could just move on and check somewhere else? It would become senseless. So, yes, this would not "completely prevent" server hopping. Nothing will make it 100% impossible. What we have to do is make it so inconvenient and inefficient that people simply choose to stop doing it, and I think that's what this solution does. The issue with ghosting is that it allows you to safely get closer to your enemy. You can position yourself behind a sniper on his roost, or infiltrate a building you know has enemies in it and then spawn in behind them getting a "free" kill. Ghosting in order to get further away from your enemy and at a random position gives you no tactical advantage whatsoever. How would it? "Hey, there's a guy over there! Let me randomly teleport up to 1km away and then... return to where I am now, apparently? He probably won't even be there by the time I get back, but I'll totally show him!" Really, it's just weird. Why would people do this? What advantage do you gain?

I already proposed something similar. This in conjunction with a changing server cool down sorts the problem out. http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/157295-ghosting-hopping-solution/#entry1575787'>http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/157295-ghosting-hopping-solution/#entry1575787

Totally agree with the topic. I know its alpha and we need to test the game instead of having fun and all. But the thing is WE CAN NOT TEST THE GAME because we get killed on every encounter because of the server hopping and ghosting. Devs should prioritise this RIGHT NOW

Oh look this thread with exactly the same suggestions for the 50th time today. Have you even tried to search? There is a system to prevent combat logging and ghosting but its not implemented yet. It will likely be the same system that used in the mod. A system to prevent loot hopping would be retarded since loot doesn't respawn yet and when it does there will be enough for it to not be worth the wait time.

I was surprised to see the power plant untouched from Arma II. I am really hoping they eventually implement power stations. (perhaps a mod). Here are my thoughts. Need two people to carry and a truck to haul the generator parts which only spawn at power stations. Perhaps need two people to craft it inside the power plant. Allow to fix and destroy the power lines and light up the towns. Hopefully when the game is fully implemented more people will play at night. I also think that in one natural day, there should be two Dayz days. Escaping the night is cheating, like combat logging, hopping, ghosting etc.

Problem with this? This won't solve the server hopping issue, or ghosting issue, server hoppers will just log off, then back out and run to the loot spawns again, it'll just take a bit longer, it'll in no way prevent it. As for ghosting, ghosting is to move from where you were seen and being a target, to being somewhere else, you wouldn't even need to log on another server with this, you just log off then back on, then run to where you know they were, the best they can do is "expect it", just as you "expect" ghosting right now. Doesn't solve either issue.

Problems: What if you log off with friends? Trying to join a server with a lot of people, can't join simply because you happen to be in range of someone else? OR whats worse, you get the message, so you join another server, run in some direction for a bit, then log back into the other server, you KNOW there is another player nearby, that player doesn't know you're coming, even if you still have to actually locate where he is. Not a suitable suggestion, many flaws, I applaud the effort however. There is 3 main problems with logging right now: Combat Logging Ghosting Server Hopping Combat logging is fairly straight forward, if you're considered in combat(proximity to players is not "in combat"), the simplest and potentially the best way is to have a hard limit of say, 1 minute, as soon as you are no longer considered "in combat", the timer will count down, obviously resetting if that changes, during that time, your character is forced to be locked to that server, even if you log off normally or alt+f4 or get disconnected, your character will remain where they were when it happened, and you cannot join any other server during that time(you can rejoin the one you were on however). If your character dies, you become unlocked and can then rejoin any server, but obviously as a fresh spawn, this will resolve the combat logging and prevent item duping(from being able to log in to another server and having someone kill and loot you on the old server). Ghosting is also fairly easy, even though the solution to combat logging above can somewhat limit this, to entirely eliminate ghosting, we can just add a 15min or whatever timer once you leave a server, if you join another server during that time, you will be locked out from rejoining that server for the duration, so not only do you risk getting killed by the combat logging mechanic, and have to wait a minute before joining any other server anyway, you also have a 15 minute time to prevent you ghosting, and if the other player is still around after that 15 minutes, then they probably deserve to be killed. Server hopping a more complicated task, but I think the idea of having a multiplying timer each time you join a new server is a good idea, 1 hop - no timer, 2 hops - 60 seconds, 3 hops - 120 seconds, 4 hops - 240 seconds. The time you start with and the time you multiply by(60 and by 2 in this example) can be tweaked.

I really have no idea what you're even trying to say. This definitely doesn't help with ghosting at all. "Quickly move in to jump the targets" from like 1km away? How? What? I mean, what? How is that better than spawning RIGHT NEXT TO someone like it works now? Seriously? What?

I'm well aware of ghosting. And I hate to break it to you, but I do other things besides sit on the forums waiting to answer your questions the second you ask for them, so thank you for being extremely arrogant. This easily aids in ghosting because the player can quickly relog, and be instantly teleported to a safe position, where they can move in to jump the targets. This makes it faster, because the player only has to relog, they don't have to log out, find a different server, reposition, relog, etc.

I'm sure many forum users here haven't played much of the game that shall not be named. However, they already implemented a system such as this. If a player logs onto a server, they are now set to that server. If they leave the server and come back to the exact same server, they are logged in to the place that they logged out at. However, if they join a new server, it will spawn them outside the city or area that they were at when they logged out and then "locks" them to that server. Its not too bad of an idea, but it doesn't really fix the server hopping. People just leave and spawn outside the new town, not too far away and can just run back inside. In theory, even if it was implemented, i'm sure there'd be a few instances where someone would be teleported to the "safe area" and gets killed. However, it does pretty much "fix" ghosting. I just don't think its worth it because if you have to switch servers to get with a friend who just got on, it would be pretty obnoxious to get teleported out of your camping spot and into harms way just because you wanted to play with another friend.

Yeah, not trying to fix combat logging as my understanding is rocket already has a solution ready to go for that. This is primarily to fix server "hopping" to farm high-value loot areas like military bases, and the dual problems of ghosting and surprise log-ins. I think there's a major problem with the tactical aspect of the game with a server system like this, because regardless of how thorough and careful my team is at "checking and clearing" buildings, we can always get ambushed by someone freshly logging in. It's really frustrating for a team that plays with absolute precision to die because after we've checked a building and confirmed it empty, some guy comes storming out of the door with a blazin' M4 because he just logged in and got the drop on us. Maybe this solution is too harsh, but I do think it would go a long way toward preserving team play and tactics, without TOO many negative side effects (I will admit it will likely be quite disorienting for new players to logout in one place and then find themselves in another when they return, but I think it's an okay trade off given the severity of the issues with server swapping). Perhaps to minimize disorientation, new players who logout in a "bump zone" shortly after spawning on the coast simply get returned to their original spawn points?

How's that? Edit: Since you're not answering, I'll go ahead and say you either don't know what ghosting is, or you don't understand the proposed system. Ghosting is when you logout of one server, then use another to safely move to an advantageous position, only to return to the original server and get the drop on an enemy from a better spot. My proposed system would completely prevent this. As soon as you logged out, you would be "bumped" out to a random safe location. If you tried to move back in to an advantageous spot and re-log, you would get bumped again. Ghosting would be impossible w/ this system.

This would aid in ghosting...