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Ghosting is basically where someone stalks you :P

About the whole server-hop/alt-f4 login/lougout-logging deal: The question here realy is what behaviour do you want to prevent and which not. I can think of numerous situations where numerous logins and logouts on different servers would be needed that do not immediatly affect/harm other players. Like for instance having a vehicle packed full of loot on one server but your tent camp is on another. On the other hand as far as I can see consesus amongst players is that death dodging and ghosting (which realy just is an expansion of death dodging) should be prevented. From that perspective trying to solve the issues by some logging mechanism that relies on metrics and heuristics to seperate desired from undesired login/logout behaviour will be a never-ending task as it is almost impossible to eliminate false positives and false-negatives down to a number that could be seen as acceptzable. I might be wrong, but I fear after that patch goes live we'll witness a big outrage in these forum by people that got warnings and "timeouts" for packing up loot from their vehicle into their tent, or trying to find a server that has daylight ingame and much more aswell as people that still got killed by a ghoster. I suggest what many other suggested before me: To prevent people from dodging death and go ghosting, simply put on a server-side and client-side timeout. If someone hit's ESC->Abort he sees a timeout counting down from 30 seconds. If he moves or get's shot during that period that timeout is cancelled. If the timeout hits zero the player get's to the Highscore screen and can hit disconnect. If a player hit's alt+f4 his character stays on the server and can be killed still, since on server side the timout will still count down. This is how many MMOs do it for quite some time and I guess they do it that way and not by some logging mechanism for a reason.

Alpha, Beta and newly released games often have connection issues. Last week I was shot at, pulled back, sprinted down the tree line and killed my attacker. It was commented in direct that I was 'ghosting'. Having one person with me was the only way I was to figure out what happened. I de-synched while he was watching me, appearing to dc. He (reasonably) assumed that I logged, ghosted and then killed him. He was wrong, but we all assume that someone combat logs when this happens, because a lot of the time they do. I did nothing wrong, I was unaware that I was even having synch issues until I was half way down the tree line. Had my friend not seen me pop in and out on his screen, we never would've figured out what he was talking about. So as a server admin, you see a player vanish, reappear in a more advantageous spot and he/she kills you. You would ban, correct? Narrow minded assumptions are far different to 'blatantly obvious' @ John: I agree on the development responses. While you might support the admin, combat logging WILL be fixed, why bother with being a cowboy and banning someone when you have no proof, risk blacklisting and lets face it, gain nothing. You have little to no shot at running into the same combat logger twice in a row, let alone get another crack at them. All banning gung-ho does is stir the pot and, at worst, encourage people resort to hacks and nuke your server to get back at you.

we were camping the Heli crash near where he was, he was snipered while runing across a field he died in one shot, how is that ghosting? we were about too loot his body when he flew there in his heli so we killed him again.... you admit we got kicked, and it was for no reason other than we killed him for his gear and also a chopper. Admin abuse will not be tolerated and by coming in here defending him just proves that you know what you did was wrong. I hope the admin suffers with a ban for abusing his powers on genuine players who never combat log cheat or have never once ghosted, why would we do that it defeats the point of the game, and claiming we did it to try and justify obvious abuse is sad and pathetic. You should also be banned for lying to defend a terrible admin. Why is your master not here defending himself and sending a peon to clean up his mess? One more thing before i go, how can you ghost when you havnt logged off the server for 3 hours? Id love to see the server logs so i could throw that in your face.

What you talking about ghosting him??? I was the guy that killed him, here is the story: We are checking out a heli crash north west of Kabanino, i hear the helicopter nearby and see it flying close dropping of a person. I get the range of 600 and zero the AS50 on it and wait for him to stop running to get a clear shot. While im camping his corpse for my friend to loot it he comes back again with the helicopter and i kill him, it was like a 3-5 minute intervall which is pretty wierd. When my friend looted his body and we got into the helicopter he was first kicked of the server then me. There was no ghosting involved in this.

while I am indeed glad I watched the video and it was nice hearing about rocket talking about the perspective and goals of dayz. I really like his views on not being biased and he's just an all around great guy for keeping an open mind to all people and player types. Call me a naysayer, but. This interview was honestly nothing but a broken record. Everything he described is exactly what we have heard him say 100's times before. We already knew all of this information through other video interviews and forum posts. Why wasn't security of the game brought up when mentioning authenticity? How does being mass summoned to a spot and being put in front of a firing squad increasing the realisam of the mod? Is having the entire server blown up by a server nuke part of the realistic goals of the game? What are the goals to help prevent the hacking thats been running rampant? What about design ideas behind putting an end to things like dissconnecting during gunfights and stopping ghosting? How about the discussion of arma 3 and if dayz being porting over is going to help improve upon things like duplication of items all over the place and the summoning of hacked items? Where are these questions? What about serverwide support to help prevent hacking? ideas for that? Instead of sounding like a broken record. How about asking him for things we as the players of Dayz really want addressed and fixed so we can actually enjoy the "authenticity" and realistic goals of the game. Duping and Hacking and Tent overflow and breaking your legs on doorsteps is the concerns people want to know about. Not The same rehashed things that we have all already heard him talk about. <edit> also what about zombie pathing and plans for aggro and ideas for changes to hitting through walls and .... just nevermind guess all that stuff isn't what people want to know about. <edit 2> what about talking about actually having official servers for the game and not having to play "find the updated server" for 3 hours before actually getting into a game? what about that? or what about updat<es breaking the game every time one is released and ruining everything inside all the tents that the people of dayz have worked so hard for? any news on any of that either? well guess not. <edit 3> what about admins abusing their privledges and locking there servers for all the good loot? or kicking out players simply because they aren't part of their team? nah just tell me again how he feel's guilty for shooingr that player. thats more important.

Points for creativity, but I think this would just open the door to more trolling. And as we all know, we have far too much of that already. Player Ghosting, alt-f4'ing, putting up tank traps and wire obstacles in front of high value loot buildings, etc. etc. Something like polluting a water would give the Trollozoids a friggin hard-on like you wouldn't believe.

Nice story. I hate ghosters. Just like combat-loggers, they just are even more a pain. You got to get out when they do that. They do it to come back and get you without you knowing. Best just to run as far away and get off when someone is ghosting.Thanks for the warning.

yes ghosting snipers, pro move bro.

You were kicked for Ghosting him actually. Too bad you were in a chopper with your friend at this time but the kick was totally justified.

ghosting is such a pussy tactic, i die alot for not using it, yet i at least play the game like its meant to be played

Good, because I've used alt+f4 only to get away from hackers (two times when they've spawned me in some kind of meat grinder of theirs), but had to deal with people ghosting and logging out in mid combat to re appear. Doesn't fix people at+f4ing in combat but it's a start. Thanks.

People who fail at ghosting are hilarious. Walk on top of their body and just laugh through direct chat while murdering them. :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD8RRg0gSj0&feature=plcp Friend fell off the roof and other friend used his body as bait to kill a guy who was ghosting in that area.

Reading comprehension is your friend, well not yours. Combat logging/ghosting are the reasons

i was recently playing at 3;45 pm gmt timezone on mon july 23 2012 was playing on atlanta 106 server n this KGBSNIPER guy appears outta nowhere n starts shooting at me i ran n he began ghosting/ teleporting hacking disapearing n appearing on both sides of me till he got a good shot n killed i enjoy playing this server but that was totally cheap n couldnt do nothing about it so i lost all my good stuff n my tents that were placed on this server cuz someone wanted to cheat thats grimy i hope to hear back from u in the future. my email is Robert08281985@gmail.com

Rocket, once you've finished your analysis and decided to implement some of the disconnect warnings/punishments, would it be fair to ask that you provide players with a detailed guide on what constitutes a punishable offence. I would hate to be blacklisted for something I previously though was fair gameplay. For example.. 1. I might have to disconnect to tend to one of my kids, and I don't always have the option of running to a forest and hiding underneath a tree. How would I deal with reconnecting in that case? 2. I also might try several different servers until I get a decent FPS and/or day/night. (Actually - enforcing proper server descriptions would go a long way). Having a 5-10 second grace period before begining any timer might help. I think the two biggest isues are DC'ing under fire and Ghosting...I think we all are eager for the changes, but we just want to understand the dynamics so we don't incur any issues/bad reps/bans.

What is ghosting exactly?

Yeah, ive only seen some ghosting on UK ones.

i am talking about alt+f4 in case i face obvious hacks. read carefully. another example: server hopping - you clear an area building and suppose its secure, then a hopper spawns behind you. if i am not sure i can take him down, i will dc instantly. same with ghosting. i am not playing with douche bags, i will instead go and try to find a server with fine folks.

Ghosting you? LMAO.. The only "ghosting" i do is arrive 2 clicks out of Berezino using waypoints on my home server I dont need to ghost, i can out aim and out play you. You broadcast ur location, its not hard to pick a location that's a snipers wet dream & pick you off one by one. If you cant handle proper bandits dont broadcast ur location, just be happy it's only been a two man team and not a full squad. You need to scrub those tears away. The fact you've got obvious scripters behind this fort is worthwhile to murder you all.

for those who dont get it: characters location becomes bound to the server that you are playing. and thus making ghosting impossible. example: you play on server A and logged out at NWAF you connected to server B and you spawned on the shore, with all your gear. you logged back to server A and you spawned at NWAF. so even if you dced in a fight, you cant take advantage of it via ghosting. this will also reduce amount of loot farming: who would want to run back to the NWAF on the other server again, and again?.. DRAWBACKS of this system if your home server dies, and you with your friend`s were just about to raid af, you have to run again, from the shore. but imho its minor price that we have to pay to prevent ghosting. probable bug with implementation.(yep this crap can happen) there should be some mechanism to tell all servers that your characters visited, that character has died.so server would remove data about its location. otherwise we would get following situation: you have a camp at server A located near NWAF(bad idea, but still). you connected to server B, and wen to cherno to kill noobs and SUDDENLY you got sniped. you connected to sever A and spawned at your camp, restocked, and went back to B trying to get your revenge.

Mainly to stop ghosting and running away from firefights, like a 1 minute logout timer would be long enough to stop people just logging out from bandits which would make the game more realistic, but i just want login timers to stop ghosters logging in and out behind you and killing your whole group which has happened to me a couple of times, not a big change but would in my opinion make the whole thing better

logout timer doesnt prevent ghosting at all. its just makes it little bit harder to do. changing time zone and meeting with friend will be just a little bit longer.

more drawbacks: -server is full, you can't play -can't change time zone -your friend plays on another server there are easier solutions to prevent ghosting and dcing that have been discussed 100 times - logout timer.