Urgent issue: Server-Hopping on SA. Let´s say NO! And make it a thing of the past.

[t-monk 6]

Yeah, I know. You played Dayz from its pre-historic times (Jan-Jul 2012), when the public hive was the rule, server-hopping was there, but you didn´t really mind, or pretended you didn´t, because you liked the game, and, after all, it was a mod and the modder had no control about all things. So, if you were pro-realism, and fairness, you considered it to be a minor annoyance, and occasionally hopped to avoid a night, even though you suspected that some people might be exploiting the system. But you liked the game, so whatever. Nowadays, people who play on private hives say they are there for the hacking avoidance, but i suspect if you ask them about that old annoyance they will say they either don´t miss it, or don´t even know what it is. But let´s be completely honest about it. Server-hopping sucks. And stinks. Like crap. So, in order to make the SA as much of a good game as it is expected, and can be, I think it may be now the time to frontally and strongly address this question, in the hopes that it can reach some very busy minds in eastern Europe, before it´s too late. You may think this is trivial, but, as I am in the mood of burying something tonight, I will list some reasons, or factors that should be enough to call attention to this problem and definitely send server-hopping to the grave.

1- Realism. If you consider the vigour, and rigour, with which Rocket argued against the presence of street lights in the game, going even into technical depths (and I think he is right, although in-game I many times thought the opposite), with all that argumentation being made for the sake of realism, you would by logic suppose that this factor alone would be alone to make server-hopping, in his mind, as dead as Steve Jobs by now. But, as we don´t know about the intimacy of his thoughts, you never know. Right now, the tendency might be the opposite, and that, besides the mentioned contradiction, is very worrying. So, if it seems like pressure, I do it respectfully. But please no server-hopping on SA. It is enough having to deal with one extraordinary thing in the alternate reality of the game, i.e., the presence of zombies. So, the occurrence of a second extraordinary thing in the same game world, i.e., the ability to travel between alternate dimensions and possible worlds, would be too much, besides utterly and ridiculously unrealistic.

2- Farming. On this factor, the first thing I remember is of when I first noticed, for real, how retarded Warz is. It was when I saw on twitch that farming is common practice there. So, just to state it, you go to NWAF (suppose it was Dayz), and hop multiple times on empty servers, facing no danger at all (they are empty, and for a PvPer, having only the E part of danger is almost like zero danger), waiting for good guns... you get the idea. As much of retarded the practice is, I know people feel compelled to do this in Warz because everybody does the same. And that´s one of the main weak points of Warz (among the other 3 billion). Those gold-digging amateurs copied a feature that was, in reality, a by-product of mod implementation and not a creation out of game-design ingenuity. And that was, in fact, a monolithically retarded decision from the Warz makers. (Was that even a decision?)

3- Avoiding nights. This factor, to me is very important and should have a topic of its own. But, to keep things short, think about it. Nobody sleeps 12 hours a day. And if you were in a zombie apocalypse, and you did, you would became zombie lunch very soon. So, you would compulsorily have to, like in real life, have a day life as well as a night life. And I am not talking about the kind the involves alcohol, loud music, and boobs. So, there should be a mechanism that made players actually play the nights as well as the days (not necessarily as much). Even if they played at all times at the same time on the same server, for the same length of real-world time. And server-hopping is a mechanism that has the opposite effect.

4-Ghosting. As the name suggests, this is as supernatural as the aforementioned dimension-travelling, but doesn't scare even a 5-year old. It´s teleport, and not of the hacker type. It´s legal. There is problem in a city? Ghost trough it. Found a sniper? Ghost to behind his back then divide his brain with a hatchet. Just like the nights, you can avoid anything by hopping around. So, like I said, it sucks. It would be a big crater on the design of an in other aspects very good game.

So, as you must have noticed this text is not a one-liner, and some people may be avoiding it because to spend so much time on a text they prefer to read the Game of Thrones series twice. But if you are still here, you can add something to this thread, and who knows if it gets visible it could even influence some of those busy minds in Czech Republic. The problem is urgent and worrying, and could be solved by now, or not. As I said, you never know.

So, thoughts, comments, additions, disagreements?

Regards,

Caesar (Werz, Monk)

[-Gews- 7443]

Ho hum, yes, it is a problem especially if there are going to be tons of public hives. On the other hand you sacrifice some of the meta-gaming and trading aspects if you restrict characters to one server, although I haven't really missed changing servers when playing on private hives.

[joe_mcentire 2074]

one very strong conter-argument:

hackers, abusive ppl, etc. which leaves you frustrated and without fun at all. and you want to forbid someone to change the server?

[marko4231 57]

IF it can be done and is not ilegal....than do it.

[b00m666 38]

Night is not something you should put down peoples throats if they do not like it. Games are made to make people have fun. Forcing such a thing that probably lasts 1-3 hours is not fun and you are going to lose players if you are going to do this.

I do not see server hopping as a big problem either, i like to switch servers because i want to be at a server with 40+ players, if my char bound server had only 5 at my timezone at that point i get pretty frustrated and i will lose interest eventually in this gmae.

[radrussian1 (DayZ) 23]

i hate to say this but since they are def not doing all private hive servers the only thing we can hope for is a lock timer or something. or spawn people that have switched server in the designated spawn zone. otherwise i dont see a fix for this. private hives will prolly open up in the future tho. so we got that.

[slivniku@gmail.com 93]

Of all the four points you made IMO only ghosting is relevant - and that can be solved without private hives.

Eg:

no spawning in buildings (if you disconnect in a building you will spawn 200 meters away in any direction)

if you connect multiple times in given time frame you again spawn in a circle in the radius of 200 meters.

I'm sure there are even better options...

as others have already mentioned, it sucks to be on an empty server; it sucks even more if your server is offline or full when you try to connect...

edit: I suck at writing

Edited February 28, 2013 by Xul

[Udak 104]

Yeah, I know. You played Dayz from its pre-historic times (Jan-Jul 2012), when the public hive was the rule, server-hopping was there, but you didn´t really mind, or pretended you didn´t, because you liked the game, and, after all, it was a mod and the modder had no control about all things. So, if you were pro-realism, and fairness, you considered it to be a minor annoyance, and occasionally hopped to avoid a night, even though you suspected that some people might be exploiting the system. But you liked the game, so whatever. Nowadays, people who play on private hives say they are there for the hacking avoidance, but i suspect if you ask them about that old annoyance they will say they either don´t miss it, or don´t even know what it is. But let´s be completely honest about it. Server-hopping sucks. And stinks. Like crap. So, in order to make the SA as much of a good game as it is expected, and can be, I think it may be now the time to frontally and strongly address this question, in the hopes that it can reach some very busy minds in eastern Europe, before it´s too late. You may think this is trivial, but, as I am in the mood of burying something tonight, I will list some reasons, or factors that should be enough to call attention to this problem and definitely send server-hopping to the grave.

1- Realism. If you consider the vigour, and rigour, with which Rocket argued against the presence of street lights in the game, going even into technical depths (and I think he is right, although in-game I many times thought the opposite), with all that argumentation being made for the sake of realism, you would by logic suppose that this factor alone would be alone to make server-hopping, in his mind, as dead as Steve Jobs by now. But, as we don´t know about the intimacy of his thoughts, you never know. Right now, the tendency might be the opposite, and that, besides the mentioned contradiction, is very worrying. So, if it seems like pressure, I do it respectfully. But please no server-hopping on SA. It is enough having to deal with one extraordinary thing in the alternate reality of the game, i.e., the presence of zombies. So, the occurrence of a second extraordinary thing in the same game world, i.e., the ability to travel between alternate dimensions and possible worlds, would be too much, besides utterly and ridiculously unrealistic.

2- Farming. On this factor, the first thing I remember is of when I first noticed, for real, how retarded Warz is. It was when I saw on twitch that farming is common practice there. So, just to state it, you go to NWAF (suppose it was Dayz), and hop multiple times on empty servers, facing no danger at all (they are empty, and for a PvPer, having only the E part of danger is almost like zero danger), waiting for good guns... you get the idea. As much of retarded the practice is, I know people feel compelled to do this in Warz because everybody does the same. And that´s one of the main weak points of Warz (among the other 3 billion). Those gold-digging amateurs copied a feature that was, in reality, a by-product of mod implementation and not a creation out of game-design ingenuity. And that was, in fact, a monolithically retarded decision from the Warz makers. (Was that even a decision?)

3- Avoiding nights. This factor, to me is very important and should have a topic of its own. But, to keep things short, think about it. Nobody sleeps 12 hours a day. And if you were in a zombie apocalypse, and you did, you would became zombie lunch very soon. So, you would compulsorily have to, like in real life, have a day life as well as a night life. And I am not talking about the kind the involves alcohol, loud music, and boobs. So, there should be a mechanism that made players actually play the nights as well as the days (not necessarily as much). Even if they played at all times at the same time on the same server, for the same length of real-world time. And server-hopping is a mechanism that has the opposite effect.

4-Ghosting. As the name suggests, this is as supernatural as the aforementioned dimension-travelling, but doesn't scare even a 5-year old. It´s teleport, and not of the hacker type. It´s legal. There is problem in a city? Ghost trough it. Found a sniper? Ghost to behind his back then divide his brain with a hatchet. Just like the nights, you can avoid anything by hopping around. So, like I said, it sucks. It would be a big crater on the design of an in other aspects very good game.

So, as you must have noticed this text is not a one-liner, and some people may be avoiding it because to spend so much time on a text they prefer to read the Game of Thrones series twice. But if you are still here, you can add something to this thread, and who knows if it gets visible it could even influence some of those busy minds in Czech Republic. The problem is urgent and worrying, and could be solved by now, or not. As I said, you never know.

So, thoughts, comments, additions, disagreements?

Regards,

Caesar (Werz, Monk)

I give you credit for wasting your time on this, especially when you're not willing to look up the news on the SA. All items/zombies spawn at server restart (or at least, that's what they are going towards). That is, unless you're cycling every server right as it restarts, you're unlikely to find anything of value in the military spawns. And the reason people avoid nights is because they treat night much like every video game since the dawn of time does--just simply drops the ambient light down real low and calls it a day. I've noted before that, even though when you take off the NVGs there is an EXTREMELY short adaptation time to regular night-darkness (~30secs), there is never an actual adaptation to how dark it is without NVGs. That is, nighttime is just as dark 10 seconds in, as it is 30 minutes in--and that's wrong. I'm not sure on the status of this for the SA (nor do I want to derail this comment into a treatise about nighttime games), but I want you to know why large portions of the gamers out there don't play night-time.

These are all good points (except farming, which, again, is moot in SA and Nighttime, which again isn't relevant) for why server-hopping is morally wrong and cheap. The entire thing reeks of straw-man, though--who is actually defending server hopping? More importantly, what could be done, server-side, to prevent server hopping? That's where the sausage is made, that's where you should be directing your (currently misguided) energies.

[Xianyu 820]

Okay. So.

Stop server hoppers! Stop ghosting! Stop farming!

Uhm...

...

... mind giving some ideas as to HOW one would go about that?

[evoxtom 142]

Night is not something you should put down peoples throats if they do not like it. Games are made to make people have fun. Forcing such a thing that probably lasts 1-3 hours is not fun and you are going to lose players if you are going to do this.

I do not see server hopping as a big problem either, i like to switch servers because i want to be at a server with 40+ players, if my char bound server had only 5 at my timezone at that point i get pretty frustrated and i will lose interest eventually in this gmae.

A game still should force players to play within its parameters. Night is apart of those parameters. What I would typically say to a post like this is, "tough shit."

However, the new weather and lighting effects should really make nights enjoyable for everyone. NVGs are in the game and should have that purpose and rarity that makes them so special.

I don't like rain in real life if I were surviving without a permanent shelter.., but I have to adapt and deal with it- which provides a challenge... And players playing this game find fun in a challenge. So, "tough shit." I'm sure the night will be drastically different anyways.

[trichome (DayZ) 198]

This is a non issue. The SA is going to support private hives so there will be no server hopping,ghosting unless you want to join the quagmire that is public hives.

Good luck with that!

[slivniku@gmail.com 93]

This is a non issue. The SA is going to support private hives so there will be no server hopping,ghosting unless you want to join the quagmire that is public hives.

Can you provide a link to that? I never saw it confirmed before.

[thesodesa 99]

This is a non issue. The SA is going to support private hives so there will be no server hopping,ghosting unless you want to join the quagmire that is public hives.

Good luck with that!

Matt Lightfoot said in a recent interview that at least in the beginning they are going to limit everyone to the public hives.

[t-monk 6]

I notice that there are different views on this, and as each one may have its own play-style, I don´t blame those that accept server-hopping. By for me and, I´m sure for many people, it is a big game-breaker. I know the private hives will probably exist, but whe don´t know exactly when they will be possible. It might take some time. And, I really think that if the game proved to be really better without it (and among other things specially for not having it), all players would be happy.

Ho hum, yes, it is a problem especially if there are going to be tons of public hives. On the other hand you sacrifice some of the meta-gaming and trading aspects if you restrict characters to one server, although I haven't really missed changing servers when playing on private hives.

Some meta-gaming and trading would be not enough reason to allow server-hopping. And, like you, almost no one who plays on the private hives does miss it (which is a vast majority of players right now).

one very strong conter-argument:

hackers, abusive ppl, etc. which leaves you frustrated and without fun at all. and you want to forbid someone to change the server?

Random player abusiveness you may find anywhere and would be dealt with by the community itself. And maybe server admins. How abusive can really a player be (excluding being a hacker?) There will be no "voice on side chat". Hackers will be hopefully be very hard to find, and they can be on any server. So if “no server-hopping” makes the game better (and I think it does), the hacker problem and abusiveness might not be enough reason to not having it.

IF it can be done and is not ilegal....than do it.

That’s where the trouble begins.

Night is not something you should put down peoples throats if they do not like it. Games are made to make people have fun. Forcing such a thing that probably lasts 1-3 hours is not fun and you are going to lose players if you are going to do this.

I do not see server hopping as a big problem either, i like to switch servers because i want to be at a server with 40+ players, if my char bound server had only 5 at my timezone at that point i get pretty frustrated and i will lose interest eventually in this gmae.

A game still should force players to play within its parameters. Night is apart of those parameters. What I would typically say to a post like this is, "tough shit."

However, the new weather and lighting effects should really make nights enjoyable for everyone. NVGs are in the game and should have that purpose and rarity that makes them so special.

I don't like rain in real life if I were surviving without a permanent shelter.., but I have to adapt and deal with it- which provides a challenge... And players playing this game find fun in a challenge. So, "tough shit." I'm sure the night will be drastically different anyways.

Evoxton, you have my full agreement on this. What I said in the original post was written having in mind that now the nights will be fully playable. I´m sure it won´t be pitch-black anymore, you will be able to run and see ahead with the flashlight, or shoot a pistol and use the flashlight at the same time. (Or at least I think it is very probable). Nights won´t be a turn-off anymore. And accepting challenges is a part of the general personality of the Dayz player. It would be more of a trade-off. You exchange the possibility of farming or ghosting for your own benefit, for the added challenge of having to play trough some night time. I think it´s a very nice trade-off.

About the population problem, there could be solutions for that. For example, adapting the number of servers to the number of players, so there wouldn’t be much room for empty servers to exist. And maybe give stats so you could find a good server for your play times, like gametracker (or use gtracker itself).

i hate to say this but since they are def not doing all private hive servers the only thing we can hope for is a lock timer or something. or spawn people that have switched server in the designated spawn zone. otherwise i dont see a fix for this. private hives will prolly open up in the future tho. so we got that.

This could a good solution, if the hopping is inevitable. But maybe not the time locker (vide Warz).

Of all the four points you made IMO only ghosting is relevant - and that can be solved without private hives.

Eg:

no spawning in buildings (if you disconnect in a building you will spawn 200 meters away in any direction)

if you connect multiple times in given time frame you again spawn in a circle in the radius of 200 meters.

I'm sure there are even better options...

as others have already mentioned, it sucks to be on an empty server; it sucks even more if your server is offline or full when you try to connect...

edit: I suck at writing

I replied above about the server pop problem. Yes it could be a problem but could also be reasonably (or at least partially) solved. Now, if you run at 18 km/h it you can cover 200m in I think around 40 seconds. Doesn’t prevent farming or ghosting unless the distance is much bigger.

I give you credit for wasting your time on this, especially when you're not willing to look up the news on the SA. All items/zombies spawn at server restart (or at least, that's what they are going towards). That is, unless you're cycling every server right as it restarts, you're unlikely to find anything of value in the military spawns. And the reason people avoid nights is because they treat night much like every video game since the dawn of time does--just simply drops the ambient light down real low and calls it a day. I've noted before that, even though when you take off the NVGs there is an EXTREMELY short adaptation time to regular night-darkness (~30secs), there is never an actual adaptation to how dark it is without NVGs. That is, nighttime is just as dark 10 seconds in, as it is 30 minutes in--and that's wrong. I'm not sure on the status of this for the SA (nor do I want to derail this comment into a treatise about nighttime games), but I want you to know why large portions of the gamers out there don't play night-time.

These are all good points (except farming, which, again, is moot in SA and Nighttime, which again isn't relevant) for why server-hopping is morally wrong and cheap. The entire thing reeks of straw-man, though--who is actually defending server hopping? More importantly, what could be done, server-side, to prevent server hopping? That's where the sausage is made, that's where you should be directing your (currently misguided) energies.

Okay. So.

Stop server hoppers! Stop ghosting! Stop farming!

Uhm...

...

... mind giving some ideas as to HOW one would go about that?

My friend Udak, in the first place, If I am tackling this issue Is because I think it is a big problem, and server-hopping is a pretty bad thing that makes the game much worse. Those who think facing problems is a waste of time are usually the ones that don´t solve them, or think it is impossible to do so. Those who think the opposite are the ones who do solve them. What I am doing is trying to make people of this lovely community help me think and give suggestions as to how to solve it. I´m sure many people think the same way. I´m doing it because I like the game and if there is a problem, why not face it? I heard quite a handful of players complaining about server-hopping in Warz, and that their devs maybe looking into a solution right now. So isn’t it a problem? Besides, server-hopping was a by-product and not really intentional. People on private hives either don´t miss it or thank for not having it anymore. And they outnumber the public server players by a very huge margin. And we want the perfect Dayz that current technology can offer. So why not scrapping server-hopping “officially”? Is this really a straw-man? Do you think players who play on a high pop server, because they like the challenge and social aspects of it, and get killed by a lame, stupid farmer who picked his gun in a zero-player server think it is a straw-man? You say these are good points, and that server-hopping is morally wrong and cheap, and then next you say it is a straw-man? Sorry, I can´t understand it. And it is not required that people actually and actively defend server-hopping for it to be an important issue. I wouldn’t like to have to wait for 8 months to be able to play the SA (this would be 2014) without the annoyance of server-hopping, or at all, because of a problem that could have been at least partially solved.

About nights, yes, I know why nights suck. I´ve played Dayz. You can´t see shit, it´s pitch-black, and it´s unplayable and unrealistic.

Now about the loot spawns, you said I am misinformed. No offense, but I am not, I read all info and watched all videos about the SA. And though you might have done it too, you got it wrong. Loot will not spawn only on server-start. This would make Dayz a crap game, worse than Warz. Loot will respawn, or “regenerate” according to some set rules or time frame, so farming will in fact be possible.

Xianyu, some ideas have already begun to spawn in this thread an may continue to do so.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Caesar369

[liquidmind 320]

Can you provide a link to that? I never saw it confirmed before.

Rocket said it in an interview. I think with shannon, but I am not quite sure. He said in the beginning, they have to make regular changes, so they have to have direct access to the serverfiles and to be able to change them at any time. If they give them out to private hives, they have to roll out a new public release for every change.

So just for the matters of being able to develop faster, for the first months there will be no server-files. As soon as the server-technology is stable and they continue to work on content, they allow servers. He said the more server the better. He wants competition so the best server-hosts offer the best gaming experience possible.

Edited February 28, 2013 by liquidmind

[slivniku@gmail.com 93]

Rocket said it in an interview. I think with shannon, but I am not quite sure. He said in the beginning, they have to make regular changes, so they have to have direct access to the serverfiles and to be able to change them at any time. If they give them out to private hives, they have to roll out a new public release for every change.

So just for the matters of being able to develop faster, for the first months there will be no server-files. As soon as the server-technology is stable and they continue to work on content, they allow servers. He said the more server the better. He wants competition so the best server-hosts offer the best gaming experience possible.

That is just it, private hives will not be in the game initially, and from what you wrote, it means they will not be in game until version 1.0 hits steam - a year from alpha release probably.

Not what OP had in mind I think...

I replied above about the server pop problem. Yes it could be a problem but could also be reasonably (or at least partially) solved. Now, if you run at 18 km/h it you can cover 200m in I think around 40 seconds. Doesn’t prevent farming or ghosting unless the distance is much bigger.

Well, I guess it depends on a play style, but the only really annoying ghosting I experienced was when I covered the only entrance to a building and somebody spawned behind me. When sniping from the woods, one should move all the time, if somebody ghosts 200+/- meters behind you it is no different than if somebody came from 500 meters. as per farming, the same solution as ghosting really, as you have to enter the buildings it will not be nearly as safe as logging going from building to building; and if you log in/out frequently, you will not be allowed to log in for "some" time, IMO it would work basically like ddos protection...

I have no prob with private hives, but your topic title kind of reminds me of "say NO to cans", and will not have that ;)

edit:still can't type

Edited February 28, 2013 by Xul

[t-monk 6]

It´s Caesar here, I changed my name.

That is just it, private hives will not be in the game initially, and from what you wrote, it means they will not be in game until version 1.0 hits steam - a year from alpha release probably.

Not what OP had in mind I think...

Well, I guess it depends on a play style, but the only really annoying ghosting I experienced was when I covered the only entrance to a building and somebody spawned behind me. When sniping from the woods, one should move all the time, if somebody ghosts 200+/- meters behind you it is no different than if somebody came from 500 meters. as per farming, the same solution as ghosting really, as you have to enter the buildings it will not be nearly as safe as logging going from building to building; and if you log in/out frequently, you will not be allowed to log in for "some" time, IMO it would work basically like ddos protection...

I have no prob with private hives, but your topic title kind of reminds me of "say NO to cans", and will not have that ;)

edit:still can't type

One year from release? See, Folks? Imagine that! That´s the source of my concerns. And I don´t think Xui´s prediction is exagerated. It might take some time before they are confident enough to put it on Steam. It´s their reputation. It´s their money-making on the line, not ours. We are just players, who will play it no matter what.

This "say NO to cans" things must be fun, will check it. Now about the 200m radius, to kill a sniper it could be much easier then a stealthy non-ghostly approach. you can run in a straight line to him if you ghost. The 3rd best sniper, the SVD cammo, can cover 900m. And if its random, theres a chance you would get some meters for free. Depending on the situation, like avoiding a problematic temporary hot-spot (remember servers will have more then 100 plrs, maybe 200) ghosting can always be useful. I just think 200m may be to short. And as regarding looting, logging outside or inside a building makes no difference. If you loot a whole area and want to farm it, 200m is nothing. So maybe putting reconnecting players in the spawn areas would be better, unless it´s on the same server. The time lock could be a partial solution. But this would piss off many people. So my proposal: multiple characters, with a time lock for each char after one or more reconnections. This would disencourage farming alot, and prevent ghosting.

Edited February 28, 2013 by Thelonius Monk

[_Anubis_ (DayZ) 139]

OP,

I agree with your remarks in principle but I believe you are mixing two categories together:

1. The 'spirit' or 'purity' of dayz aspects, for example the day&night argument

2. The technical consequences of the game architecture and the associated exploits, for example server-hopping or combat logging

Let's tackle the first group: you want to play day and night and enforce a mechanism to have day and night. I say no because I believe everyone has the right to play dayz (or the SA) in any way he/she likes. If I want to play day only (or night only) that has to be possible. If YOU want to play on a 24 hours base (and have the time!) then by all means do that, but don't ask everybody else to conform to your personal interpretation of the game: "it is your story" after all. Please, leave the freedom to each one of us to play as we like and as we can (RL constraints).

For the second group, you are right, but up to a point. There is sometimes a very thin line between exploiting the game architecture (wrong) and taking advantage of the situation (right or not-so-wrong). Let's make an example:

Player X (public hive) spawns un-armed at server 1 and finds it full of people. He de-spawns and go to server 2 that is empty. So he runs like hell to NWAF, gets fully geared, de-spawns and come back to server 1 where he can kill at leisure with his super-duper sniper rifle. Exploiting? Yes.

Player Y (private hive) spawns un-armed at his usual server, by sheer luck finds it empty and does the same (going to NWAF), ending up fully geared. Exploiting? No. Maybe unfair to others? A little bit, even if it is not his fault if nobody was there. Maybe he was just lucky because while he run to NWAF others spawned elsewhere.

The end result is the same however.

Even if you had a system to take out those exploits (unlikely), would you be able to eliminate the other, let's say, "unfair" behavior? And where to draw the line? Hacking? Yes of course and you can fight it. Combat logging? Also, something could be done. Server hopping? Nope (unless you take out the public hive concept): people will switch servers for good AND bad reasons. How to tell the difference? Farming? Hmm, is that a real exploit or just adapting to the environment? We could debate here, the definition of farming is blurred.

So, yes to take out hacking, exploits (e.g. the system to apply blood bags to yourself), combat-logging but thread carefully on the difference between adapting to the situation (collecting items according to timing and acting according to the amount of players on the server) and taking unfair advantages: you are really in muddy waters there.

_Anubis_

[Positronica 30]

A game still should force players to play within its parameters. Night is apart of those parameters. What I would typically say to a post like this is, "tough shit."

The problem is that you can't "force" players to play a game at all, since they always will have the option of just shutting the game off. On top of that, blocking server hopping really wouldn't do much to prevent players from avoiding night time. Anyone who didn't want to play at night would just make a character on a server where night time occurs outside of their normal gaming hours. Now I'm sure someone will say, "well just lock all servers to the same schedule", but that doesn't work either because gamers all over the world have different local peak gaming times. It wouldn't be fair to say gamers in Europe if everyone there who logs on after school or work ALWAYS has to play at night because every server has it's day/night cycle locked to a US time zone.

The best solution to servers being abandoned during their night cycle is to first off make the night experience more fun, and secondly, to get rid of the pointless 24-hour cycle. The number of players who actually sit through an entire day/night cycle during a DayZ gaming session has to be absolutely miniscule, if not completely non-existent. Therefore, we need to be asking why it's even in the game. For arguments sake, let's assume that the average gamer plays DayZ for 4 hours per daily gaming session. When it comes to the day/night experience, those players can be broken down into four groups...

A. Players who experience only day.

B. Players who experience only night.

C. Players who experience some day, followed by a transition and some night.

D. Players who experience some night, followed by a transition and some day.

As you can see, no players actually experience the actual 24-hour day/night cycle. No one ever "survives" a whole night, or adventures all day from dawn to dusk. And if no one ever actually experiences something, why is it in the game? On top of that, all of the players in groups A and B are never even experiencing a big part of the game. I mean, what if BI announced that they were going to be developing two different games, one called DayZ: Night, and one called DayZ: Day? We'd all be saying that's a stupid idea and that the two games should just be combined. However, by sticking to the 24-hour day/night cycle, BI has essentially set up the equivalent of that situation. The gameplay, loot requirements, and strategy involved during a session of DayZ gaming are varied depending on if it's night time or day time, and it would be good for the long-term health, replayability, and freshness of the game if the average gamer got to experience both situations during an average gaming session.

If we assume that the average gaming session is 4 hours long, then the day/night cycle should be changed to 4 hours. (Say 2 hours of daylight, 30 minutes of transition to night, 1 hour of night, and then a 30 minute transition back to daylight.) This would be more immersive, since a player would experience one "day" in DayZ during one day of gaming, and it would effortless add a lot of content to the game, since it would suddenly take the huge number of players from groups A and B from above and suddenly give then each a big new gaming experience to play every session. On top of that, even if night is a little harder, and a little less fun for some players, having it only last an hour is probably short enough to prevent massive server hopping to avoid it, while at the same time being long enough for players to experience a decent amount of adventure and self-story telling during one night sequence.

[t-monk 6]

In reply to Anubis and Positronica (see posts right above).

First, about the night issue. I quote myself:

Evoxton, you have my full agreement on this. What I said in the original post was written having in mind that now the nights will be fully playable. I´m sure it won´t be pitch-black anymore, you will be able to run and see ahead with the flashlight, or shoot a pistol and use the flashlight at the same time. (Or at least I think it is very probable). Nights won´t be a turn-off anymore. And accepting challenges is a part of the general personality of the Dayz player. It would be more of a trade-off. You exchange the possibility of farming or ghosting for your own benefit, for the added challenge of having to play trough some night time. I think it´s a very nice trade-off.

I´ve never said or implied that I intend to play this or any game on a 24-hour-a-session basis. This would be insane and not even self-challenging twitch streamers do that. (Although it could be a fun challenge if they tried). And I don´t want to conform anyone to my own gaming agenda either. So let me explain myself. I know I sounded a bit radical on the “there should be nights for everyone” idea, and I apologize for that. I am not radical on this and I agree that players should have the option to skip the nights even if no server hopping is possible. But yesterday what I had in mind were 3 things. First, many players who like a given private server do have to play through nights if it falls within their play time. Second thought has to do with regular MMOs (mostly RPG). There, they have nights (which are made to be playable but challenging, I suppose) and players accept this as part of the challenge, part of the “rules of the game”. For them, playing nights is natural. So I was thinking of Dayz, once the nights are well-designed and fun to play, as a game in which nights would became an incorporated challenge which you have to live with, and after some heart-racing nightly events people would understand why it was put there. But as I said, I know there are will be players who don´t like nights period. So I agree they should have to option to avoid it. But that alone doesn´t justify the implementation of server-hopping. Does player X want to play on a day-only server? Very right, start another character on another server then, just like happens on private hives today.

Now the third thing I had in mind (and this is the time I really would like to be able to talk to Rocket to convince him of this) complements the great post that Positronics made. I think exactly like him and I think lots of people do. The post completely states this situation and I don´t have almost nothing to add. I never really understood why they implemented the 24-hour cycle. That’s absurd. And this is a pro-realism guy saying this. And to complement the absurd, some server admins use to put their server time matching local country time. That´s complete non-sense. Seems like some people don´t resist doing nonsensic things just because it´s so close and they can. Didn´t they ever dream with the fact that the vast majority of people play at night (real world), and more or less at the same time each day?

Well, after this rant, let me say what the idea is. I also had in mind a shorter cycle, and with day-predominance, but with “odd” times (not only on the mathematical sense of the word). So, let´s suppose the cycle has 5 hours. One hour is the dreaded night. One hour is 2 half-hour transitions. And 3 hours are the beloved day (I see trees so green…what a wonderful world!). Ok, so what will happen? You play everyday at 8:00pm, for 3 hours. So First day you have 3 day hours. The Dayz cycle needs 25 hours to spin 5 times. As a result, on the second day it will be hour 5 of the cycle at your 8:00pm. The next day, hour 4 of the cycle, and so forth. This would reproduce the occurrence of nights in a person´s life, with the forgivable unbalance towards day, even for players on a same server playing at the same time. This idea could also be handed over to private hive admins. I would like to play in a server like this. And to complement that, SA Dayz admins, could play with that. Add day-only, 2/3, 3/2, or night only servers. And this could be done even if (or specially if) server hopping was not possible. And everybody gets happy. And then they are eaten by zombies. But, oh, well that´s life.

On the point that Anubis made, I think you may see it mainly as an ethics issue. But, though as interesting as ethics may be, I didn´t mean to raise the issue on if the behavior of, in your terms, player Y is as unethical as that of player X. So at this moment I don´t think I need to draw that line. The X behavior is much encouraged and widely done in a server-hopping scenario, and I think it spoils the game experience and enjoyment. The Y behavior would be (and is, in private hives) completely natural, not nearly as much widely done, and doesn’t hinder the game experience. I don´t need to know if either is exploiting or not, or which is adapting and which is unethical exploit. But basically, if the game allows it with no hacks, it´s ethical, but doesn´t mean it shouldn´t be scrapped by the devs to make the average experience of the game better and make more players happy. Although pending definitions about farming, for example, being condemnable exploit or just natural adaptation.

[applejaxc 2500]

Private servers should be able to enable/disable PvP, individual weapons/vehicles, certain equipment types, and in general have better control over their own server-it's private for a reason!

Imagine if you could take all of Chernarus, disable vehicles, block in Cherno/Elektro/ the 2 nearby towns, and put 10 people on the map with no gear. It'd be a fight to the finish, avoiding zombies and players while you scavenge loot. That would be a nice break/shooting practice from normal DayZ.

I also want to see singleplayer DayZ, but with some sort of obvious marker to show that it isn't online so you can't lie and say, "Oh, I killed 57 players!" on youtube like a dirty liar.

I also want to see controls over the amount of player interaction, namely, disabling/enabling radios/radio frequencies so two teammates can communicate cross-map, but ONLY if they had the walkie-talkies necessary.

Servers could control the distance of the walkie-talkies, too, and make ones built into helicopters more powerful or around transceivers improve the signal strength (imagine trying to talk to your friend when he can't respond).

You could disable AMRs or enable rocket-launchers. You could give zombies x4 health and x10 running speed, or x.5 health and x.5 running speed (to make them more movie like). You could enable a giant-ass horde to spawn on the edge of the map and slowly walk to the other side.

:)

[enforcer1975 1111]

Restriction might be ok imo, i don't have a problem with that, If someone wants to change they can do it when their server goes down by applying a server switch form after which you are must play on that server for x days until you are allowed to switch again in order to limit server hopping or switch servers without their gear instantly as a second option. Having "outsiders" intrude the game where you have a "local population" meaning the player base is quite disturbing and unfair for the regular players imo.

[Sakka 28]

I have to say I like the idea of maybe not having the full 24 hour cycle but I think 4 hour cycle is way too short. The only thing I can think of that could maybe work would be 12 hour cycles. 7 hours of day and 5 hours of night? Or 5 and 5 with two 1 hour transitions.

I am not sure though. I personally enjoy both the day and night so the 24 hour works fine with me. Plus i understand if you are the kind of player who wants to play in just one or the other. It is up to them.

One last thing I play on a private hive where the have the full moon rate increased and night time rain decreased. It makes the night gaming very enjoyable and you don't even have to mess with your gamma/brightness or feel so threatened if you don't have nvgs.

[sol 9]

It would cost enormous amounts of memory to store a character for each and every server you played on, something that is not feasible at the moment - as rocket confirmed, you may only have one character when the standalone is released, due to the volume of variables stored about your character. I do agree that it would be nicer to have each server private, for reasons 2 and 4 especially, but it is not feasible at this time. I especially dislike the fact that you can farm equipment on low population servers and bring it to high population servers for the sole purpose of pvp.

[Wili 156]

Hi, I hope both types of servers will be officially supported, the ones where u can take your items from one server to another, and another official servers like the private ones we have now, where u can't take your character/items to another server.

If we are limited one type only where you can do serverhopping, I hope a drastic measure is in place for avoiding server hoping annoyances, like new random player location every time the player changes server; or something like that.

I would really like playing on a official server like the "private hives" we have now, I think it should be officially supported too.

Edited March 12, 2013 by Wili