Experimental Branch: 0.48 Discussion

[Super_Duty 466]

Bunch of crabby pants on the forums today...moon full or something?

[Super_Duty 466]

Was at Cherno this morning on one of those Southwest HC servers mentioned earlier.  The place was looted, but no where near stripped clean.  I spent an hour there and came across 7 melee weapons, 3 of them axes, a dozen cans of food, a canteen, screwdrivers, ammo - all varieties, 1 Sportier, a shotgun, probably a dozen pair of gray cargo pants (why just gray, I don't know), several hoody's, 4 backpacks, a med kit and other random clothing to make rags from.  There were several buildings that were even left untouched base on comparing to the others.  Zed's were around in some areas as well.  There was also cooking gear available if wanted, stoves, gas canisters, pots and pans.  Also chem lights, lanterns, flares, etc. were there to be had.  So yeah, in 1 hour of play I don't see why anyone wouldn't be able to assemble all the basics.

 

First thing fresh spawns should do is remove that t-shirt and make rags out of it before moving anywhere.  And yes, as Grape mentions, split them up when you can into two locations.  I rarely will keep them in a jacket or backpack anymore.

 

I just wanna say that I haven't found a thing about experimental that has made me think that it's too hard ... The only ones dying of starvation , and don't take this the wrong way , are the ones who "can't be bothered" to spend an hour searching inland while sustaining themselves on apples or berries .. And for zombies you just need to stay away from them (don't run away STAY away , I've crawled past many , it's the ones further from you that detect you easier for some reason ) and if you do get in a battle with them zeds , never run into a building (some Zeds at certain buildings can now be "locked out" by closing the doors but many Zeds still walk through certain walls ) and never run away from one zombie because you will only attract more , just kill that zed with your fists if you have no weapon and move on making sure to spin around the zed while punching zzz Always make sure to keep rags in two different areas so zombies don't ruin all your rags , and never shoot zombies in a town unless you're prepared to fight like 30 lol ..

Edited August 9, 2014 by Super_Duty

[drah 13]

I have been all over the map today.  Not much gear anywhere, inland or otherwise.  No shirts for bandages.  No weapons.  Apple trees are great to keep from starving.  Maybe my next spawn will get an axe or a packpack, but I won't hold my breath.  I seem to die after punching 4-5 zombies dead from lack of bandages.  I could avoid them but there might be something in that house!

[bauertschi 254]

I've got 350+ hours on the Standalone and I have not the slightest clue what you mean by "green morphine house".

 

It's actually "tilde" (the ~ key), but I'm splitting hairs with that comment. Also, that only applies to English keyboards as far as I know. 

 

LOL, isn't it obvious? Everyone of our group immediatelly understood it. What houses are green? Which one of the green houses spawns morphine?

...wait for it ... http://team-aftershocks.com/29-news/138-dayz-standalone-screenshots-show-interior-building-decor-loud-tablecloth

... the very first one here.

 

But let's keep this going! What is the WATERMELLON house?

... and here we go: http://picacid.com/arma2/imgs/Land_HouseV_1I1.jpg

 

YEAH-HI!!! Its green on the outside (top and bottom), red on the inside! That one really had to be explained to me.

 

Seriously though, naming houses is something that is a pain in the butt. Everyone has his own names, only the most obvious ones are unified, like "Hangar", "piano house",...but I thought green morphine house was obvious, obviously I was wrong :(.

 

Thank you for the explanation (First person I have seen to give a very good explanation of Alpha thank you) "Heeerse's Johnny". I can now understand better what is going on and it is good to get all the things the devs want within the game.  And yes I understand there are and will be bugs in the game as it is.  But you just have to look at the amount of people playing on the exp servers to see people are voting with there feet (Metaphorically speaking) with all the current bugs.  And you can see the big list of bugs on the "bugs report" list for 0.48.  The game is slowly becoming unplayable which then means no one is playing in large enough numbers to see if the new features that are implemented work well or not.

 

The way the game is now I find I can't play at the moment as a bambi because the spawn points have been looted to death and the first zed I come across kills me as he can hit me all the time yet I can only hit him 50% of the time.  Even with a melee weapon 1 zed can and has taken me down easily.  This should not be the case it should be the other way round. It is the bleed that they inflict that I find takes me out more often than not. And if I do survive then my health is so poor the next zed I come a cross sneezes on me and I'm out as I haven't recovered.  I have not been able to find any food (and yes I have done the apple picking and what a wast of time).  How is this helping the devs test the new systems? I have had a character survive for a day in exp, but I think that is more luck than any thing else. And yes I do run away from zeds, but it is a catch 22 because chances are I will  run into another zed before I have found any food or bandages. I don't want it easy as it is good that we have to go looking for things now, but fixing things like the zed hit detection would go a long way as this has been a problem for some time and it is now biting the devs in the ass so to speak.  Any way lets hope for a better future for the game as it was an excellent game at the start and would still be now if it had less bugs.  Because what is the point of us reporting things if they don't get fixed even on alpha.

 

0.48 is certainly problematic, no discussion. But loot respawning without using server restarts (loot still spawns in 0.47 at server restart, if I'm not mistaken) is new. I doubt it will be pushed to stable like this. Or maybe is will to test the response they will get :).

 

If you read the current dev-blog, you would know that melee was scripted, is now newly made "inside" the game and we got a placeholder to gap the time until that works. Not good, but something you can expect in alpha. And I am repeating myself: Try to avoid melee and close zeds into houses, some houses don't work admittedly, but several do. If you are in the open, zeds run after you for a while, then they stop, then they aggro again. Get behind a hill or something when they stop, and they won't chase you again. I think what makes the current placeholder melee seem even worse than it is is the fact that (for me subjectivelly) zeds move more responsivelly and are more plentiful. And yes, they hit through walls and ceilings, you gotta time it good, when you close them in somewhere. Rags are not plentiful, so you can bleed out... .

 

How it helps the devs? They have a basic loot spawning system that is more sophisticated than the one we have on stable. By pushing it to exp they can see how the loot situation develops when many ppl play on servers. Then they can adjust it accordingly. I still think that overall the number of loot items is shrinking, if so, it is probably a bug. It is probably harder to figure out the reason for it with the maybe 10 ppl that play the game all day long in the office. So all those highly populated exp servers help with typical data collection tasks.

 

Other bugs suck, too. But my guess is we will get even more open at the same time in the future, simply because more and more stuff is added. Currently in terms of client performance 0.48 seems like the best there ever was for me. Maybe I am imagining things ;). But I expect that performance will also suffer more and more during alpha while more and more things are added.

 

Not just zed hit detection is not ideal, it's melee in general. But they started working on that now, completely replacing it.

 

I don't know what the future will bring, we all can only hope. I disagree with it being better at the start, if I take the current melee placeholder out of the equation and accept that loot respawning is just a little baby at this point, I think the current exp is much better than anything we had before. Either way, I'm hoping for a good future with you :).

[bauertschi 254]

...

First thing fresh spawns should do is remove that t-shirt and make rags out of it before moving anywhere.  And yes, as Grape mentions, split them up when you can into two locations.  I rarely will keep them in a jacket or backpack anymore.

 

I don't keep anything in my jacket at the moment, it's the only thing that zeds ruin for me and they do it regularly. Splitted in pants and backpack, none of those got ruined up till now... .

[boneboys 7988]

Seriously though, naming houses is something that is a pain in the butt.

Not for the colour blind !

 

Please...

 

401) Duck Feeding:

The feeding of Ducks is strictly forbidden as it may result in undesired life extension.

[trev186 389]

I will agree that loot spawns are messed up at the moment.

Think of it this way. Players only go to certain spawn points for certain items. So if you go to NWAF enough times and loot all the mil gear eventually the only items that even respawn are non mil items. I am not talking about the junk which is left by other players and slowing down respawns.....I am talking about the items we all skip over....not many go to NWAF and grab the rotten bell peppers or books....

Eventually under the way things are on .48 is that all that is left in the certain high value spawn areas is the items no one wants. These items don't despawn unless another player pick them up....which they don't and therefore nothing good respawns there.

This will happen eventually unless someone comes in and loot cycles to exploit the system....which nothing should require an exploit such as that

What this will result in is barren servers waiting for a hard reset to the loot tables like the few the devs have one on exp this last couple of weeks. When they happen then it will be a mad rush for gear before people just say "what is the point"

This is also impacting player movement. I noticed that early after the devs hard reset the server the mil bases are heavily trafficked....but 2-3 days later I went hours before I saw anyone and when I did I met and killed two guys who had looted the entire NWAF and did not have a single gun with ammo to defend themselves after....

Even if you purposely loot every item at Vybor base or GM eventually nothing will spawn there to replace them cause the grids were expanded. So now items eventually spawn in neighboring cities so you can actually loot these places dry until someone goes to vybor and loots random stuff..

I feel if you know the current situation is like the above players will lean more towards the play style that we have already which is where you just find the bare minimum to get by and then go pvp Berezino.

My hopes for loot respawns is that players would explore more and server hop less...this exp is quite the opposite

Why explore the northwest if u cant get a decent weapon?

Now there is more advantage to hop than ever cause you used to be able to find decent gear even on popular servers but that is not the case on EXP. So if people want good gear they will have to find small unlooted servers.

I geared up quick the day they did the hard resets so I have two AKMs and some other nice goodies....but literally since last they did the restart I have not found a decent item aside from some ammo. Most of that ammo I found was killing players who were way less geared than me despite the fact they had done half the path of the warrior



Here are my suggestions:

Items players drop should despawn within 2-4 hours. This gives higher value to tents and will make it risky if u try to keep stashes without a tent.

Items that are spawned should despawn without needing a player to touch them...make it a longer timer like 4-8 hours. This way there is a chance that items can be replaced with better ones somewhere else in the grid making it worthwhile to keep looting

Edited August 9, 2014 by trev186

[Tatanko 5591]

Seriously though, naming houses is something that is a pain in the butt. Everyone has his own names, only the most obvious ones are unified, like "Hangar", "piano house",...but I thought green morphine house was obvious, obviously I was wrong :(.

I'm mostly just giving you a hard time! :P I just see it as silly to name a house after an item that (currently) spawns there sometimes because the loot spawns have been changed a million times. Perfect example: the one-story orange brick houses used to be "medical buildings" but now medical loot primarily spawns in the blue medical buildings.

 

As a rule, I try not to refer to buildings by name, but rather a short description instead. That's not always an effective means of communicating what I mean though, either :|

[pookie 12]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmDj38YBauA&list=UUZSFsksgWAM7_0tpW1Lj_gg

[Super_Duty 466]

I'm one of those poor, color blind bastards. Very few think about it.

 

Not for the colour blind !

 

Please...

 

401) Duck Feeding:
The feeding of Ducks is strictly forbidden as it may result in undesired life extension.

 

[Super_Duty 466]

Like everything else in life, there are things that people are not going to be good at.  I've come to the conclusion that being good at survival is also something that some people just aren't going to be good at.  If you find yourself dying over and over again, then quite possibly some of you may fall into this category.  So for the hell of it, I connected to the South-central HC server to compare that server to the other I had been on this morning, just to check loot availability.  This time I was on the coast, it's dark and this is a night time server. headed West, hit Kamarovo, then Kamenka, then headed North along the tree line to Pavlovo and finally North East to Zelen.  Found a Marakov within ten minutes, no clip however.  TSKO pants in a barn, tan military shirt in another, blue backpack and a green kiddie backpack, garden hoe (one of my favorites for Zed's) bag of rice, beans, 3 cans of peaches, .22, .357, .380, 9mm, 7.62x51mm and a pristine LRS.  I left the LRS, if you want it, then go here...it's on the second floor of the metal industrial building in the little room.  And yes, gamma was up a bit to take these shots.

 

 

[odin_lowe 3686]

I've got 350+ hours on the Standalone and I have not the slightest clue what you mean by "green morphine house".

 

It's actually "tilde" (the ~ key), but I'm splitting hairs with that comment. Also, that only applies to English keyboards as far as I know. 

I'm french Canadian and my english is not very good, sorry.

[bauertschi 254]

yeah! I died! Was pretty well geared, but I thought to be funny and fight zeds on a hill. Don't do that, only fight them on even ground! Broke my legs, could not hit any more as soon as I went down - is that intended or was that the LMB? Never had that bug before.

 

Loot...if anyone tells me that the total amount of loot is not shrinking, I simply won't believe it any more, even if a dev tells me so. And that includes stuff that no one wants.

Before I died I searched Pusta, some hunter-stands and some houses that stood around alone. There is loot: books, rotten stuff, baseball caps, firewood... all things a fresh survivor will not take. But even that stuff seems really more rare than at the beginning, I only found one rotten fruit.

The first thing I found was a Mosin though (hunters stand), also found Magnum ammo. But that is somehow irrelevant. I never found anything to make rags. So unless you manage to never get hit by a zed or you hide in the wilderness where there is absolutely nothing besides an apple tree or bush, I can only guess that you will sooner or later bleed out or fall to zeds.

 

Yes, there are those now, that will yell "Yeah! Finally survival!" But that is not really the case, all you need for survival is an apple tree and you can camp it forever. Especially as it gives you water, so even when you cannot drink water from ponds any more without purification or boiling it, we have an unlimited water source.

 

There is one problem with a survival aspect of this game that I think will always remain. Either you can collect berries/apples so fast, that you can survive of them OR picking berries/is a useless feature. I think it will be the first, because it is literarilly stupid to starve while picking apples, there would be no incentive to do it.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about too little loot here. I think it is not working as intended and that is fine, a completely new feature. I'm saying that food and water will likely not be something that actually kills players, unless they refuse to pick apples or every apple tree and every red berrie bush is camped by snipers. I simply think that the actual survival component with hunger and thirst will never be problem, unless you absolutely need something else that can only be looted in houses etc, too.

 

For those that will argue about the amount of loot, I will run to most obscure places in the west now with my bambi, I had 15 apples an I'm ready to go! Of course I will also not leave out towns. IF I find amounts of loot that will make me doubt my statement of the total amount of loot shrinking, I will edit this post.

Edited August 9, 2014 by bautschi

[serb 54]

I have been all over the map today.  Not much gear anywhere, inland or otherwise.  No shirts for bandages.  No weapons.  Apple trees are great to keep from starving.  Maybe my next spawn will get an axe or a packpack, but I won't hold my breath.  I seem to die after punching 4-5 zombies dead from lack of bandages.  I could avoid them but there might be something in that house!

 

Where are you searching? Berezino? Vicinity of Berezino? Because i am fully geared after visiting Zelenogorsk after any death...seems that i am not only one that finds loot easy, theres a lot of them that i meet full gear, also posts are full of them, so, 10 guys says they cant find shit, and other 10 are geared...dont know really. I find weapon, rifle in house that no one is even searching, like every time i see that bulding doors are closed no one was there, and i find sks there! Search more

[belphegor_goatzombie 100]

I hate when people defending crappy item spawn algorithm of incompetent programming engineer saying that it is more realistic, immersive and survival like.

Then why cannot i take bed sheets or window curtains and make rags? Why cannot i use glass from broken windows? Why cannot i use metal/wooden planks from buildings? Why cannot i break the chair and use to make improvised weapon/tools? Why...?

 

What is left to do/test in game if you cannot find anything? Of course you might be lucky and join server at "fresh" start and then do what other server hoppers do.

 

And yes i search most of inland/far away places and search all of the enterable buildings, not everyone is a moron as you rest might think.

[shinjuru 114]

Tell us what Experimental server you're on and I'll gladly play there.  Maybe we'll meet up and have a grand time!

Where are you searching? Berezino? Vicinity of Berezino? Because i am fully geared after visiting Zelenogorsk after any death...seems that i am not only one that finds loot easy, theres a lot of them that i meet full gear, also posts are full of them, so, 10 guys says they cant find shit, and other 10 are geared...dont know really. I find weapon, rifle in house that no one is even searching, like every time i see that bulding doors are closed no one was there, and i find sks there! Search more

[haknslash 763]

Has anyone else been experiencing high ping for local exp servers on this update? Normally all US servers are at least less than 100 ping for me but with this update most local servers are around 300-400 ping. Anyone else seeing the same?

Edited August 9, 2014 by haknslash

[RAM-bo4250 213]

I found out watching the video on this thread a few pages back. It happened to me and I thought is was a glitch.

 

You can now crouch run with a broken leg. Crouch run is a little slower than sprint. Really? Come on at least a walk would be more sensible.

[ebrim 998]

I hate when people defending crappy item spawn algorithm of incompetent programming engineer saying that it is more realistic, immersive and survival like...

I think I see your problem right there. The devs have said that loot spawn is a work in progress. It's not done yet to be crappy and I don't think anybody is claiming it should be done exactly as is. Rather, there are those of us who feel that less is more in regards to loot when you're making a survival game. To claim that you don't like one aspect of the game being realistic because other elements are not equally so is a pointless distraction.

For example: "Having cookie cutter houses in each town is unrealistic, therefore we should be able to super jump because it's fun."

Edited August 9, 2014 by Ebrim

[Sharplooter 98]

Did someone else realized that SWE servers are pretty much better balanced with loot than others like the  UK or DE servers?

 

I was on SWE 0-4 (HC) server, spawned in solnichny and found nice loot in the town and industrial area though it was already looted (opened doors). Thats what I found in ~30 minutes:

 

 

+ 2 cans of food and 2-3 softdrinks which I ate/drunk immediately.

 

On SWE 0-1 (regular) I found even an AKM + mags at the looted military base with 3 barracks + 1 prison in north-west, but the server seems down now.

 

I suppose the devs try again different adjustments on SWE Servers like before with 0.47 exp, back then the SWE servers were the only servers without freezes when 0.47 came out the first time. 

Edited August 9, 2014 by Sharplooter

[darricks 12]

They updated the exp today or yesterday? 

[Sharplooter 98]

They updated the exp today or yesterday? 

 

 

I guess not, at least no new patch number. I suppose the devs can adjust the loot spawn rate or locations (and probably many other things) without changing the version number.

 

The SWE Server has pretty nice loot even at blue caravans, black wood houses, all kinds of wood sheds (only the iron sheet sheds don't spawn loot iirc) compared to the "dry sucked" DE and UK servers.   

Edited August 9, 2014 by Sharplooter

[bauertschi 254]

Did someone else realized that SWE servers are pretty much better balanced with loot than others like the  UK or DE servers?

...

 

Did you check how many ppl play on each server? I would assume that generally servers with fewer players are STILL "better balanced" for lack of a better word. The idea is that for every taken item a new one spawns as far as I know. Now if loot that spawns mysteriously vanishes (as I think) for whatever reason, might simply be inacessable in some spawn points, the current system will stay "acceptable" for longer. But of course the swe servers might be differently configured or might have recently been completely reset.

 

They updated the exp today or yesterday? 

 

I think it was Wednesday.

 

Ok, there is loot in the west towns, but not as much as there was when the servers orignally spawned even in the east. Loot is getting less. And dupers (I guess) are active, in the Green Mountain prison and tower I found mountains of 1911s with pistol flashlights. Also found a Makarov and a mag there. As I wanted to try it before I am reset again, I shot a hopper zed, it took THREE shots, all hit (blood was visible).

 

The two rags you have are kind of problematic, I got hit when I was picking apples and when I went up a hunters stand and a zed appeared. Such a thing is currently actually an understandable reason for ghosting:

 

fleeing from them zeds,

because you got no rags.

 

Even rhymes :)

 

With no rags I did not check towns any more and went through the woods, checked every building and only found things that ppl usually never pick up. I kept checking towns on the outskirts though. The first town I found loot in was Pogorevka. Green Mountain had a lot, but most was obviously duped.

 

Zeleno had a lot loot, BUT as I said at the beginning, not as much as there was lying around on Wednesday after the patch. The amount of loot is shrinking.

 

I dropped my pristine jeans on the floor just before a server restart, the restart duped them, had them in my inventory and on the floor. The jeans on the floor went from pristine to damaged with the server restart, so dropped items degrade.

 

Oh, apples are great and all, but while you still try to get energized, berries are better, same amount of energy and take up less than a third or the volume in the stomach compared to an apple. You should be able to get directly to highly energized as a bambi before puking. They have very little water though.

 

And I'm scared: I had a BIG number of pbo checksum or something missmatches when I tried to join after the restart, here's to not getting banned :)

Edited August 9, 2014 by bautschi

[Sharplooter 98]

@bautschi

I played since the last patch update every day a few hours and the SWE servers looked always normal populated to me. When I was on SWE 0-4 today (photo loot run above) the server was 40/40, thus full. Maybe the SWE server was reseted, thats a possibility. But yesterday the SWE servers were also pretty balanced. I dunno, it was just a guess that the SWE servers better at the moment, because they were different at 0.47 exp too (no freezes at all).

Edited August 10, 2014 by Sharplooter

[Super_Duty 466]

Has anyone else been experiencing high ping for local exp servers on this update? Normally all US servers are at least less than 100 ping for me but with this update most local servers are around 300-400 ping. Anyone else seeing the same?

 

I've experienced the occasional spike on the US servers that you have described, pings will drop back to normal after a few...