Why are there still OFFICIAL servers if the problem is so bad?

[hogscraper 328]

Its getting old seeing new players come to these forums, talking about quitting the game because of their experiences on public hives. Either its admin abuse or hacking. We all know its a problem, yet the devs, or whoever is in charge of making these decisions, allow every new player to have the worst experiences by default. When people come to these forums to complain, they are mocked by forum users and even told to leave public hives by mods. Players come in thinking random craziness like admins should be held accountable in a game where the official forums have a section just for reporting abuse. They naively believe that people running the show actually care about things like the image of game due to pieces of garbage running servers in an abusive manner. They naively believe that hacking will be dealt with like it is in other games. Those of us that have spent more than a month on these forums know the truth. Maybe hacking can't be stopped because of problems in the engine. That isn't exactly something that can be the fault of people making a mod and I get that.

My question is, why are there even public hives at this point? I know the intention is that your character can carry over on any of those servers, but when the mods of the official forums tell people to do anything in their power not to play on these servers, what's the point in allowing them at all? When a new player hears of this game, gets Dayz Commander and starts looking for a place to start their adventure, are they going to look for unofficial servers or public hives that have "OFFICIAL" in their name? Then they experience the worst the game has to offer and come to the OFFICIAL forums for the game only to be told by the people moderating these forums to find another place to play. I manage a retail business whose location does forty million a year. If I was ever called to the service desk for a customer with a complaint, how stupid would I sound telling that customer that yes, we have problems here, maybe you should try our other location down the road? They would rightly tell me to screw off and find another company to do business with. And every one that walks away will try to convince their friends to do the same. You would think people that want their business to succeed would have some pride in their brand. Hoping that at some unknown point in the future the SA will somehow solve these problems doesn't help the thousands of potential customers that won't be back.

[Skat3rat 1633]

What are we suppose to tell people who come on to the forums and make a thread about quitting the game? Instead of them making a thread about it they can either just stop playing, or look for a different server. I chose to look for a new server. I didn't come on to the forums all pissy and raging when a hacker screwed me over and I lost a month worth of gear and five cars. I just searched for a private hive and found one.

It does suck that these new players come onto DayZ and immediately get hit by hackers. However it's no one's fault except the hackers themselves. The 12 year old COD kiddies who thought they were going to be amazing at this game and kill everyone. Then got killed a million times and downloaded hacks. They are the only ones to blame.

How the engine is for Arma 2 allows people to run scripts very easily. Therefor, without changing the engine, there isn't much that can be done on public servers to stop script kiddies. I would say that majority of the people on these forums who have been playing DayZ since it came out, or shortly after it did, have moved over to private hives. However IMO the public hives are still left for a few reasons.

1. There are still those who play on them.

2. They offer the purest vanilla DayZ experience you can get.

3. There are still admins who run them.

If it wasn't for those reasons above, than public hives would probably be gone. I think most DayZ players have moved over to private hives but there are still some who stick with public hives.

I really don't know what more to say and I've half lost my train of thought on where I was going with this post. However everything I've said is my own two cents.

[Imafighter 236]

2. They offer the purest vanilla DayZ experience you can get.

I have found one or two good private hive pure vanilla servers. -NOLA- and Random DayZ. Just type in "vanilla" on the search bar and you should get a good amount of servers.

The only thing these servers have that is different from the public hives is these have side chat. Everything else is the same.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Imafighter

[Dayzo 182]

Most of the hackers are operating on 100 public hives, and on the badly administered private hives.

Let's keep it that way... if the the public hive database was discontinued, and they lost their playground,

then we might see in increase of hacking on our favourite private servers. No thanks!

Edited April 19, 2013 by Anti

[[email protected] 58]

The public hive I play on is well administered and generally skiddie-free.

If there were a way of monitoring and reporting the quality of server admin, maybe the situation would improve?

[BwobBwub 660]

I play on Public hives and I haven't came across a hacker for a good while. A good bonus with public servers are no sidechat popstars.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

I personally always recommend people turn to a private hives because in my time playing DayZ that's by far where I've found the best servers, all I can do is be honest with my opinion, I'm not a salesman for BIS. Others have had a great time (and still do) on public hives and that's cool too, hence the choice. There's issues on both public and private hives and there will continue to be for as long as this is a mod of Arma 2 (which it always will be).

This is still a community project, the servers both public and private are run by the community (largely for free), the mod is developed by the community (for free) and the forums are maintained by the community (for free). The choices we have and will continue to have are guided by the community. If there is no demand for public servers then they will cease to exist, as will the private ones. Just because there is a standalone game in development backed by BIS be under no illusion that what you are playing here is a free mod supported by the community and developed by the community for free.

Anyhoo, in answer to your main question, there is still public hives because some admins choose to run them and others choose to play on them. I've worked in retail for years too and run small successful businesses, your analogy doesn't really hold up in my opinion.

A better analogy would be to go to a community center, use all of their services for free and then complain that the toilets are dirty. The solution to that problem would be to volunteer your services as a cleaner and invest in some rubber gloves.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Fraggle

[hogscraper 328]

A better analogy would be to go to a community center, use all of their services for free and then complain that the toilets are dirty. The solution to that problem would be to volunteer your services as a cleaner and invest in some rubber gloves.

Your analogy is mistaken on several fronts. People cannot play this mod for free. It is free to download, but someone learning of this mod still has to pay 20-30 dollars in order to play it. I've never heard of a free community center where everything inside was free, but where you had to pay a fee in order to enter the building. It doesn't matter where the fee comes from, if you have to pay in order to play, its a cost related to the game. If there were a gate around every library in the world, with a turnstile that you had to pay ten dollars, to a third party, to get through, would any one agree that going to the library was still free? Even if every person in the library screamed, 'but we aren't the ones charging admission, that's someone else!' Their words are technically true, but the vast majority of players didn't own Arma2 before they decided they wanted to play Dayz and they definitely look at how they are treated here with how they will be treated by the people running SA. Might not be true, but customer's perceptions are 100% true in their minds and wallets.

The second part of your analogy that makes no sense is how you ignore the fact that when a game has an online component, people expect the servers labeled "OFFICIAL" to be run, or at least watched over by "OFFICIAL" channels. That's generally what that word means;representative of and controlled or endorsed by. I completely understand that some things are outside of the devs' control, but its the perception here that matters. Public hives are supposed to be the ones with strict controls to make sure there's a level playing field across all of them. That's the draw of being able to move your character across them. Even if Arma2 were free, would your community center happily invite people inside only to direct them straight to their dirty bathrooms with no signs or indications that clean rooms and fun could be had on another floor? People at your community center aren't free to use any services but the dirty bathrooms because there aren't any signs directing them anywhere but the dirty bathrooms. If the patron had to return to the help desk, complain that the only room in the building was filthy and then be told about some hidden rooms upstairs, it doesn't help as the patron is already 90% of the way to the door at that point. It doesn't matter the intent, its what every other game that exists does to control the quality of the brand and its what people will remember when BIS asks them for money for the SA.

I see the above posters' points about people doing right on some public servers, but two dozen or so I tried last winter when I started playing were horrible examples. I came to this forum pissed off because I was lead to believe that they were legit servers. Ones set up to be representative of what the makers of this mod wanted me to experience. I came to what I thought was the official forums of the game I downloaded and mods basically said, 'see ya'. I was level headed enough to stick around and listen to a few people's advice so I learned to stay away from public servers. I don't know if there is a fix here, but every time I see a new forum posters crying about leaving the game because of their experiences on a public hive it bums me to know that's one fewer player I will find playing the SA. I see those posts all the time and it seems like the response is always the same. Why does this matter to me? Why would something so simple bother me? Because Dayz is a brand I want to see succeed and the evidence is ample enough to an outsider looking in, that the people that should want this even more than me don't actually care to deal with the situation. People can claim that there's a difference between this free run mod and SA, but considering its the same name, how can you expect people not deeply involved in the forums to ever know the difference?

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

I don't think there's an easy answer TBH.

When the mod first became popular we did have community support staff that answered tickets (regarding complaints on public servers) and enforced the rules of conduct for admins. Again this was all run by volunteers and is/was a pretty thankless task requiring a lot of time and patience so after a few months this team basically disbanded.

I really do see your point but the fact remains that this is a free mod, the same as any mod for any other game. Peoples perceptions of it don't change the facts. The fact that it has become very popular doesn't change that either. If I want to play any mods for any other games I understand that I first need to buy that game and it's for that game that I have paid and am entitled to support for, not the mod for it. If people choose to buy Arma to play DayZ because they've heard via word of mouth that it's good (it's never been advertised) then that is their choice and again doesn't change the fact that what they are playing is a free mod for the game they've purchased.

When you buy Arma you get a complete game (much more than that if you buy Combined Ops or the Anniversary addition) and support from BIS via the BIS forums and rightly so as you have paid good money for it. That is not the case with any of the community developed mods (there's hundreds of them for Arma).

I think it's fair enough to expect people not involved in the forums to understand the difference between paying for a game and enjoying the benefits that come with that (support ect.) to playing a mod. It's not a new concept.

Of course, when the SA is released and people have made a purchase to play it they will be entitled to support, that includes ensuring that the official hive admins obey the rules of conduct. Of course in an ideal world that would be the case with the mod too but to put it bluntly it's never going to happen.

I guess we'll never agree on this but at least we both have one thing in common and that is wanting to see DayZ succeed.

Edited April 19, 2013 by Fraggle

[domistyle 221]

I don't think there's an easy answer TBH.

When the mod first became popular we did have community support staff that answered tickets (regarding complaints on public servers) and enforced the rules of conduct for admins. Again this was all run by volunteers and is/was a pretty thankless task requiring a lot of time and patience so after a few months this team basically disbanded.

I just hope the SA will have a public Hive which is properly managed by an automatic system and not community staffs or it will probably end just like this.

This includes server registration and anti cheat.

No offense but it's just not possible to support every single server. ;)

Edited April 19, 2013 by DomiStyle

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Agreed :).