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I've always defined "ghosting" as logging out of a server... switching servers and moving... then logging onto the original server in a better position. This is a really pansy annoying thing to do. Logging into a server in a spot isn't what I call ghosting... switching servers on top of a good sniper spot isn't ghosting.

What if your internet drops? For most people internet drops of that nature are very seldom, and as it is right now if your internet drops while you are in handcuffs you die. (so harsh punishment is being implemented) Relogging would have a timeout that accumulates each relog. So, abuse would cause you to lose playing time. With the system I described your abuse of party spawning is impossible unless someone is extremely lucky, and gets NWAF and Cherno in two connections. But NWAF shouldn't even be an available spawn anyhow. I would also argue that spawning with a partner or two is also "on theme". So far your only argument against my proposed system is that an internet drop would be very inconvenient, and only so if you were unlucky enough to get 1 or 2 really crappy spawns on reconnect because you could spawn randomly map wide with a lowish time out for the first two or three relogs. It is also arguable that spawning map wide would be even more of "an important early step for new players" as it forces one to become knowledgeable of the entire map, and not just a few cities along the coast. I would also like to argue that spawning map wide is even more disorienting than spawning on a coast that is very easy to orient in with little experience. It also discourages a "cherno deathmatch' environment that is sooooo prevalent right now, and has been since the mod was released. Camp spawn is also "on theme" and hard to exploit because if you have your camp in a high traffic area it is going to be at a high risk of being compromised. Even so if you are able to spawn at a camp next to a decent loot area you still have to be lucky enough to get the drops and also loot them before someone else does. Also, if you can do it others can so I can't imagine how successful you would be raiding a loot area that 15 people have camped around in attempt to do the same thing. I have no idea what you are talking about with the ghosting comments.

Wow. Random spawn EVERY JOIN? No. please god no. What if my internet drops? I end up in X? Thats insane. Negating my 1 hour running north to somewhere I want to go, and ending up in a totally random place crazy train for real. Why wouldn't I just relog all the time to get close to where I want to be? Here's how you do it. Party spawn. 1 person goes to NWAF. 1 Person goes to cherno. I tele to NWAF, get gear. Tele to cherno. Rampage. Repeat. There are tons of ways to exploit any fast travel or location selected spawn on server join. Same with camp spawn. Rampage cherno, out of ammo? Sweet I'll just relog and be back at base. Rinse, repeat. What if I die? No worries. Party spawn with the group. Instantly geared. As much as it may inconvenience you, the very premise of this game is based on travelling long distances, often on foot. Orienting yourself and your party and figuring out how and where to meet is 100% "on theme" and an important early step for new players. Ghosting is and always has been an issue, but its far less exploitable and easier to prevent than allowing people to transport themselves by joining servers for any reason. If you are in a high risk area you should be constantly on guard anyways. I have nothing against multiple toons on seperate hives. But the game should not cater to your convenience, or make it easy for new players to group. These mechanics can and absolutely will be abused.

The "ghost" part is an ooooold inside joke from when I first started playing FPS games and when you died you would spectate other players. I called it "ghosting" and I died a lot so my buddies started calling me ghost. When CoD:MW released I just used gh0st, and it evolved over time. I finally settled on Digit4lghost because I liked the sound of it...

I can assure you that zombies clipping is currently one of the (if not the) biggest issue with the game at this moment. I am not trying to defend anything, I haven't stepped foot in DayZ since the closed pre-alpha testing - since the game officially launched I have spent all of my extra time sorting through bug reports so the developers know what issues are important and what issues need addressed. Since the zombies are, in your own words, a 'side feature/annoyance' you really shouldn't need military loot to handle them, a hatchet is more than enough - it will also allow you to practice your sneaking around :) As I have already said, combat-logging and ghosting is a problem but far from the most important issue for developers to address right now.

Server hopping is the #1 reason why private hives are better than the public hive. Each server having the players location saved, no ghosting, no server hopping, white listed players so no hacking.

It takes about 20 minutes to get best gear ingame. Hail server ghosting, Hail balota baracks. It's just stupid.

Like I said, my system stops all of those except the server base construction. Most people ( even server hoppers) won't want to wait 20 mins to leave a server. It also helps prevent ghosting, as most people keep moving, and if you don't in at least 20 minutes, you either are new to DayZ, or have some special tactic I fail to understand. The only way I see ghosting being an issue is if a groups barricades Cherno, and clan ghosts into the city. And again, I don't think ghosters will want to wait 20 mins (unless its two huge rival clans or something). Edit: server hopping could still be an issue if people find a route that gives them a lot of loot in 20 mins, but again, i feel most server hoppers wont be willing to do actual work.

Yeah, 30 seconds is nowhere near long enough. It needs to be 5/10/ or 15 minutes. It will not prevent server hopping, but will definitely discourage it. If you can only enter 4 servers in one hour because you have to wait 15 mintues, that would dramatically cut down on how much hopping occurs. Also, this time limit would prevent "ghosting", or in other words people logging out in a firefight, jumping into another server to change positions, then logging back into the original server to get an advantage in the firefight.

PRIVATE HIVES ROCK!! Everyone needs to stop confusing "private hive" with "modded server". There are awesome private hives out there running vanilla z. Also they DO help fight hackers trough things like whitelists. The main reasons I like private hive over pub... 1, No Ghosting....this was gamebreaking for me early on playing the mod. I hated the idea of people going into a 0 pop server and then joining a high pop in the perfect sniper spot with 10 mags and loads of food and drink. That's almost as bad as having starting gear....they never have to fight past the players on THAT server to get the gear. 2, Community....When that server is your "home" server you get to know who the regulars are. Who are bandit groups and who will play nice. A lot of concessions are made between groups about camps and stuff (but theres always 1 or2 full on bandit groups). Its more about long term survivability on private hives for me. 3. Consiquences....So on a pub hive you piss of the main group on that server....oh well lets just swap server and carry on with all our gear and no come back. On a private hive if you piss off the main group (and I know this from experience lol) they will hunt you down again and again, can become clan wars up north. 4, Anit Hack......Lots of private hives run a whitelist. this is great and allows a hacker never to return if removed from the list. Not to mention the other anti-hack scripts.

Yeah ghosting is super bad right now. I spent all night on the same server....I moved up the west side of Chernarus hitting all the military spawns all the way up to NWAF and every single building had been looted of everything that could be potentially useful...but there wasn't anyone to be seen for miles.

Hahah I know it's early alpha and I didn't expect finished game. I don't care about floating loot, zombies in the walls, server kicks or FPS. I'm talking about ghosting - main problem of the mod which they transfered to SA version. Just lol. And loosssing gear, still? Rly? Characters database is the first thing that should be done. Not f**king weapons attachments or removable t-shirts. Could be better :) I'll just wait.

And I found all best stuff in the game, custom brand-new m4, 160 rounds, scopes, silencers, high-tech military gear and tons of food. All in less than 2 hours. Switching from server to server all the time, camping market at Stary and barack at NWAF, but my character gets wiped every 2 hours so... I noticed like 30 players doing same shit that's why this game sucks for now and I'll for private hives with no ghosting option.

I have to admit that there are valid points on both sides of the fixed-character debate. My best experiences have been from my character being locked to a small private hive; two to three servers at most. Perhaps a combination of this, and countermeasures destined to prevent server-hopping (spawning at the coast every time) would be best? Although I can imagine that players would abuse this to get to the coast, if that's where they actually wanted to go. A timer seems like the most sensible solution, and perhaps zones that restrict logging out/spawning, such as within the borders of cities or inside of buildings. I made a suggestion once of "abort zones" being restricted to forests and fields, but it wasn't very well-received. That way, survivors who managed to lock down fortifications or even entire cities weren't subject to "ghosting" and people who made excursions into the very dangerous cities had to get out alive if they wanted to abort, as opposed to hiding in a building and waiting for the abort timer to count down. Same goes for any area with loot, really. You leave the area before aborting so that if you're farming, you have to at least make your way out, abort, log back in, and then make your way back into the loot area, which is riskier than just appearing next to it. I don't think it's that bad of a suggestion. Most people complained about casual gamers being "forced" to keep playing, but would you plan an excursion in a zombie-infested city if you didn't have the time to follow through? Let's face it, people who exploit the game would be more penalized than this anecdotal casual gamer who somehow only has twenty minutes to play every day that I keep hearing about. We shouldn't cater to people who can't play long enough to find a forest. They're everywhere. Even an hour is enough to get in and out of a city. Complaining that such measures "force" people to play is akin to claiming that having to complete a twenty-minute round in Battlefield 4 is "forcing" people to play the game. Battlefield 4 caters to casual gamers who are able to complete a twenty-minute round, and not people who can only play in intervals of five minutes. Just like DayZ caters to people who have at least an hour or two to spare, not people who can only play for twenty minutes.

Breaking Point mod on Arma 3 already does what they called "anti-ghosting" system. Players can't reconnect to another server without waiting 15min. I like it. It reduce this problem when players want to leave a possible PvP situation & it clearly struggle against the fact that some of us want to loot without danger on another empty server.

Most of these trade posts are on the public, or some multi-server private hive. Mostly public. When you are on a public hive server, your character and loot saves to the public hive and is transferred to any other public hive server you go to. It WILL NOT, however, carry over to private hives/individual servers. Example: Public hive servers X, Y, and Z are online. If I were to join public server X and find, say, a dead guy on the sniper building in Cherno and steal his, say, SVD Camo and nice backpack full of food and ammunition. I could now log off with his loot and switch to server Y or Z, where I could get down the building safely and away to a location, where, on server X, I have some tents which I can stash the good loot in and sell back to you guys! That's just one commonly used trading technique, which, when used to gain combat advantages, is called ghosting and is deeply frowned upon. But in not-trying-to-kill-anyone trading biz, it's all good.

They can't remove "ghosting" because all the official hive servers are connected to the 'hive". To prevent this you need to play on a private hive server, but most private hive servers are not 100% vanilla. If you want a 100% vanilla official hive server US3480 has active admin and a high population. Here is the ip 173.234.233.178:2352

One more question: I remember there was option called "ghosting" where you can switch from public server to another public server - is it still there? Please tell me they removed this...

Ok, so heres my case as to why private hives can solve a lot of dayz issues, and problems with public hive. Iv always had a problem with the idea that you can log out and swap server to avoind something that should have happened. For me it takes a real chunk of realism away from playing, i almost stopped playing because i thought it was such an immersion breaking feature....until i discovered private hives. I know that a bunch of my buddys who play pub hive, have an awesome camp, with any gun you could think of and all they need to survive. BUT.....its on a dead, empty server. All they do is log in there, decide on wepons loadout, and go join a populated server jus to KOS. If they get in trouble in a firefight, jus log to the safe server to heal up....its so immersion breaking. Now, with a private hive. Your camp is always at risk from the server regulars. If someone did combat log, what they really gonna do....not log in for next few hours till your gone...maybe. but at least they are being punished...carnt jus server hop change pos and flank. Also on private hives I find there is less KOS. Where I play atm there is 1 largeish bandit group and 3 small 2-3 player groups. Iv seen the smaller clans allay to try and take down the bandit clan as they guard NWA. I have bumped into the smaller clans and looted round with em a bit. There just seems to be a more dynamic and constant struggle between the groups. In conclusion private hives solve a lot of issues.....combat logging - because you can jus cover where they logged from distance while a friend loots. KOS (to a degree) because people will know who you are and will let others know. Ghosting....because it just carnt be done. I know a lot of people will disagree but for me private hive is the way forward! :)

First of all, the title is wrong. A hive is more than one servers sharing the same database. So private DayZ hives consist of multiple servers, not just one. Server hopping/ghosting/teleporting is still possible there. What OP is talking about are private servers. I'm playing currently both on public hive and on one-two private servers and each has it's own advantages. But I have to point out something. For people that want to survive for days/weeks/months, private servers involve a big risk. Waking up one day to find out it's gone. Could be the admin got bored with DayZ, he ran out of money, he got a life. So you could be playing for months, gearing up only to lose it all because the server is no more. This risk is not present in public hive, whatever happens, no matter how many servers go down, you'll still have your character and all the gear you carry. And another thing. Whenever an update is released, most private servers take their time to implement it. This can be translated to a few days, a few weeks, a month, etc. Some people may not care, but if one has a tight schedule like a job or university courses then even one lost evening/weekend counts.

Death match style game play exists because there are death match style players. I don't see that changing. But death match style players who play on BMRF servers would have to be idiots if they're plaything there because they can donate and get a pistol with a couple of clips when they could donate the same amount on many other communities and recieve AR's, ghillie suits, and coyote/czech packs. Like I said before, no one is forcing anyone to play private servers, or donate to one if they do. To each his own. But for myself, if it weren't for good private servers like BMRF and a couple others, I wouldn't even be playing DayZ. Sure, you still get an occasional script kiddie, but nowhere near as many as the public servers. And when they get caught, you can post in the thread that springs from the ban to get your character rolled back if you were killed by the script kiddie. That's a bit of a comfort for me. DayZ deaths give it it's edge and harcore nature, which is why I play it. I don't mind being killed by a legit player, but if there's a way to avoid losing hours, days, and even weeks worth of play to some script, that's a big plus. And with the separate databases for the servers, you don't have to worry about ghosting or server hopping for loot. There's also a progressive ban system, starting with a 24 hour ban, for those caught combat logging or glitching. So if a couple of convenience items given out for donations help keep these good communities, servers, and admins going, I'm all for it. It's definately worth it to me. I've tried playing on many private hives, and there are plenty of real pay-to-win and/or poorly administrated hives out there, but I don't play those past finding it out. I play the ones I consider the good ones. If you like the public hives, or have found a good private hive that can offer what you want, that's great. But the public hives had me hanging it up for two months til I tried my first good private hive, and I haven't looked back since. The only reason I commented on it at all was because you were mistaken about BMRF's donator perks and casting that community in an unfavorable light due to that mistake, and giving it an undeserved rep for being a pay-to-win hive.

This seems all a matter of your personal gameplay. No one forces you to donate, or accept the perks if you do. You can still play to survive. I do. And the donator perks doesn't have any real impact on my gameplay. It isn't pay-to-win. If the situation did arise that some new spawned donator runs straight up Dobry and kills a sniper, then that's actually a plus to me. I'd like to shake the hand of any survior that takes out a worthless spawn camping sniper who is too afraid to risk combat inland where other players might have a decent weapon. If that's the only way a bambi camper can use a sniper rifle, the rifle should be in someone else's hands. More importantly, those convenience items handed out to donators is a very small price to pay, as far as I'm concerned, for a good community of well admined servers, free of server hopping and ghosting, and where combat logging and glitching is punished. If BMRF wants to throw a bone to the donators who help them pay for their servers and their time administrating them, then I have no issue with that at all.

I will most likely play the SA alongside the mod. The degree to which I play the mod will depend on my experience with the SA and how common issues like script kiddies, server hopping, ghosting, and combat logging are. If these issues haven't been addressed thoroughly on the SA public hive, I will most likely stick with the mod primarily until there is SA support for private servers. The primary community I play with not has already taken polls on this and determined they will continue to support the DayZ mod with servers.

Again, if that's your expierience, I'm happy for you. But the public hive is STILL not as safe as some better administrated private hives. And when script kiddies DO get in, and even if you have active admins like the private hives to find and ban these script kiddies, you still don't roll back the legit player's survivors like the private servers I play on do. Legit players still lose everything. I don't mind losing everything to another legit player, it's part of the game, and it's that hardcore nature that brought me to DayZ. But I'll be damned if I'm going to lose hours, days, or even weeks worth of game play to a script and be happy about it. The rollbacks on the private servers solve this problem for me. After the script kiddie gets banned, you just let the admins know through the forum thread that springs from the ban, or on their teamspeak of live chat if you want your character rolled back. And I've not seen or heard anything yet about solving the server hopping and ghosting exploits that also plague the public hive. Exploiters are only marginally better than script kiddies in my book. Private hives solve these issues as well. As for glitching and combat logging, the private hives I play on have a progressive ban system that takes care of these exploiters as well. And I like being able to have multiple survivors, since I play sometimes when my friends aren't on, so I can leave one survivor logged near a friend and play another survivor, on one of the same communit's other servers which has it's own database, til my friend logs on. Also, the private hives I play on have great communities. Players become familiar with one another not only from playing the game together, but through activity on the forums. I could care less about modding in the SA. The only mods I've ever enjoyed for DayZ are mods like Redux and DayZ+ that introduce new and/or better features while keeping with the DayZ's hardcore nature, often making it even harder. And some of the features from these types of mods were later introduced to the official mod. But by and large, most the mods out there, since Lingor and Namalsk up until Epoch, Overwatch, and Aftermath, tend to dumb DayZ down with too much military loot and vehicle spawn in addition to adding easy mode items like super backpacks that can carry everything but the kitchen sink or loot tables with higher end weapons. So as far as I'm concerned, if mods are going to be designed primarily by and for the easy mode crowd, then I'd just as soon they lock the SA down and not allow modding. But modding is far from the only reason to support private hives.

I think what they're intending to do to stop people ghosting/sever hopping etc is to use algorythms of some sort to spot patterns. So if you're playing legitimately and occasionally lose your connection or change servers to join friends etc then everything will be cool. If they detect a pattern in your playstyle that shows a certain behaviour (eg: loot farming) then they'll start to punish you by giving you a delayed log-in that increases in time the more you abuse the system. That's what Dean said about it quite a while ago, sounds good in practice. Like everything else we'll see I guess. Ghosting was a bit of a gamebreaker for me when everyone played on public hives along with combat logging so if they can eventually deal with those two things I'll be a happy bunny. Edit - I think they've got a fairly simple fix for combat logging. When you log-out, your character stays on the server for 20 seconds (for example) so if you try to avoid getting killed by logging you'll still get killed, happy days!