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Persistence... exactly how bad is it?

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Though I am a bit rough in my assessments of the game, devs and the blindly optimistic I'm out there putting some time in trying to get my head around what is impacted so that I can help others (and myself) where possible. I'm doing my research but a lot of the findings are from pre 1.0 and suffice to say there is very little relevance. 

We maintain a low pop pub server and have a few little caches of equipment in a combination of barrels, sea chests and tents... Most are reasonably well hidden. Well- they WERE reasonably well hidden. Over the last couple nights I've noticed these items disappearing- specifically barrels and the sea chest. It's not unreasonable to suggest someone stumbled into each stash and just took it for themselves... which was the presumption until last night when I stumbled into the very first (and only) military tent I'd found since we started the server a couple weeks ago. 

It was conspicuously placed on the east side of the Balota base- in the immediate vicinity of the military spawn sites and out in the open. Still empty- but absolutely ripe for taking. Walk for 2 minutes in almost any direction and it would be hidden in a better place. I left it there at the time thinking vehicles would be a little easier to assemble and wanted to make it easy to find for other members of our group.

A vehicle tent we'd found in the beginning and moved a few days back also seems to have withstood the test of time- which makes sense since we see very few people in our server. It's a little better hidden but still a valuable target.

Meanwhile the barrels and chest were stashed inconspicuously off any beaten path (not meaning actual paths- I mean right out of any normal line between popular locations) and have all disappeared. 

So the more I play the more I'm thinking that barrels are getting wiped with regularity while tents may be less vulnerable.

Bodies and the gear associated to them seem to last about 15 minutes or so... is that accurate? 

I know it's not worth investing time in bases but was hoping that simple barrels, tents etc. would be okay. 

What has your experience been with barrels / tents / sea chests? Are those also proving to be no-go items? 

  

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It's persistence all together that is not working. Base building only accelerates the process since you create new items. I ran long tests on my test server (around 100 hours) and had 10 watchtowers, 15 tents, barrels, as I was building the base (half-way before crash) and adding more and more items in tents and barrels. With the planks and metal sheets dup bug I generated even more items that all had to be persistant. Slowly but surely the server became more and more unstable, having brutal fps drops and lags until the final crash wiped all persistant items on the map, all of them, not just those around me.

--> Also know that tents and barrels probably need to be "reactivated" periodically like we had to 3 years ago. It was something like: 8 days before an untouched barrel even with items inside would be wiped and you had to pay a visit to all your tents and barrels and move an item out of it then put it back to reactivate the timer. I think people are sometimes mistaken and consider features as bugs. The fact that barrels and tents "despawn" after a specific amount of time is not a bug and it's by design. As always, I suggest you run tests on your server; tell your people to not touch a barrel or a tent, just leave one of them alone with one item inside to see how long it will take for it to vanish.

You can check this page https://dayz.gamepedia.com/Loot that lists the storage items and the time it takes before they despawn if untouched. I don't know if it's still the case though.

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The long and short of it is that persistence is broken.  Which means the core loop of the game is broken. BI suggested to backup frequently, yet they fail to do it on official servers.  They're recommendation is basically BS.  They acknowledge there is a problem.  But have tried to put the responsibility on the server owners back to band-aid their issue.  My suggestions to any player is to not waste your time building a base or even grabbing a tent.  It doesn't take a server crash to lose your stuff.  A regular restart following their exact guidelines will also cause tents and bases to disappear.

How bad is it?  Bad enough, that if you expect your stuff to be their in an hour, you are likely wrong.   We've seen barrels and tents disappear after one hour of placing them with no server resets.   It's bad.  

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Yes I remember those days too- quite a challenge trying to keep ahead of everything with ColdAtrophy and Emu... They were collectors extraordinaire! 

This is what the "latest" (current) existing wiki says as per your link. 

Item / Time

Traps / 1 Hour

Tents/Barrels  /  7 Days

Backpacks  /  4 Hours

Crafted Bags  /  1 Hour

Other Crafted Items /  5 Minutes

All Other Items  /  30 Minutes

I wonder if there is new data within game files that we could use to give people more realistic expectations? 

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30 minutes ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

 BI suggested to backup frequently,

And some of the GSPs won't even allow you to do that... Gameservers didn't even know about the new rule until when I told them yesterday and ostensibly said it had no bearing on more frequent saves. 

I agree with everything you're saying- it's frustrating. 

And they (Devs) release this mess a couple weeks before going away on holidays. 

Everyone deserves a vacation but if the plan is to release prematurely to catch a money train over Christmas then take fucking holidays in October or February.

This whole situation is unreal.  

Edited by eno
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8 minutes ago, eno said:

Yes I remember those days too- quite a challenge trying to keep ahead of everything with ColdAtrophy and Emu... They were collectors extraordinaire! 

This is what the "latest" (current) existing wiki says as per your link. 

Item / Time

Traps / 1 Hour

Tents/Barrels  /  7 Days

Backpacks  /  4 Hours

Crafted Bags  /  1 Hour

Other Crafted Items /  5 Minutes

All Other Items  /  30 Minutes

I wonder if there is new data within game files that we could use to give people more realistic expectations? 

That is heavily outdated.

Tents/Barrels: 45 days
Traps: 2 hours
Bags/(Improvised) Courier Bag: 6 hours
Fur (Courier) Bag: 2 hours (not sure why this one is only 2 hours while the other ones are 6)

Those are the most important ones since all the other items vary a lot. If you want to know the lifetime of a specific item just let me know, I'll check it out for you.

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1 minute ago, IMT said:

That is heavily outdated.

Tents/Barrels: 45 days
Traps: 2 hours
Bags/(Improvised) Courier Bag: 6 hours
Fur (Courier) Bag: 2 hours (not sure why this one is only 2 hours while the other ones are 6)

Those are the most important ones since all the other items vary a lot. If you want to know the lifetime of a specific item just let me know, I'll check it out for you.

Yeah I kind of figured... 

I guess it doesn't really matter- figured maybe they pared it back for 1.0 until they could get ahead of the network / server performance or something. Really I'm just shielding my sanity from the reality of this whole situation. 

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25 minutes ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

BI suggested to backup frequently, yet they fail to do it on official servers.

How many staff would it take to make regular manual back ups of all the official servers around the world 24/7   ??  How many backups? 
BI suggest a band-aid fix for private owners who want to try it, & have the time. 

<<  Persistence IS BROKEN, try a manual fix ( if you want to ) >>

And YES.. PERSISTANCE = bad bad.. eno got that right
Evil Exists

Edited by pilgrim*
~
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Just now, eno said:

Yeah I kind of figured... 

I guess it doesn't really matter- figured maybe they pared it back for 1.0 until they could get ahead of the network / server performance or something. Really I'm just shielding my sanity from the reality of this whole situation. 

I pulled those numbers from the types.xml from my server files. Since I didn't change anything in there, it should reflect the default values which you see on vanilla servers as well. I think the original server files you download on Steam are the same as the vanilla server files Bohemia uses.

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3 minutes ago, IMT said:

I pulled those numbers from the types.xml from my server files. Since I didn't change anything in there, it should reflect the default values which you see on vanilla servers as well. I think the original server files you download on Steam are the same as the vanilla server files Bohemia uses.

Undoubtedly correct...

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6 minutes ago, pilgrim* said:

How many staff would it take to make regular manual back ups of all the official servers around the world 24/7   ??  How many backups? 
BI suggest a band-aid fix for private owners who want to try it, & have the time.  <<  Persistence IS BROKEN, try a manual fix ( if you want to ) >>

That wasn't really what the intent was- at least from what I understood. GSPs were to provide that functionality to admins on a control panel. Others were able to integrate it into their existing backup script for those who asked for it...

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It's... weird.  We save persistence on the regular and the wierd stuff involves barricades and such staying up for a long, long time. Like, weeks. We can't figure out what will stay and what will not because it's 100% random when stuff vanishes so we can't tell if it's players or server.

 

I still say your best bet is to admin save daily and keep doing it until they pit something reliable into effect. 

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11 minutes ago, eno said:

That wasn't really what the intent was- at least from what I understood. GSPs were to provide that functionality to admins on a control panel. Others were able to integrate it into their existing backup script for those who asked for it...

Yes I understand. The standard DayZ instance-level Persistence, that we have all been playing for a long time, is ATM <recently> broken in the server instance code, private or community, private shard/public shard = same same.. This is happening inside the server instance. Its the kind of event at a release 1.0 that could be described as <<seriously and deeply unfortunate>> if you wanted to be polite.

Apart from BI devs working to sort it out .. their ONLY other option is to commit Seppuku on Youtube.
But that's illegal now  - wow - how times change!

 

p.s. Has anyone noticed if this is happening on all GSP server platform versions, or just some of them? Is there anywhere this doesn NOT happen, as far as anyone can tell?

Edited by pilgrim*
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10 minutes ago, pilgrim* said:

Apart from BI devs working to sort it out .. their ONLY other option is to commit Seppuku on Youtube.
But that's illegal now  - wow - how times change!

Speaking of which... does that F11 rag glitch still work? 

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Backing up persistence is complete bullshit unless your GSP allows you to do it every two or three minutes or you are hosting yourself.  Why do I call it bullshit?  Simple, things that get wiped are RANDOM, it doesn't happen over the entire server, so while you may restore one person's base, you screw someone else the time they spent... it is not a panacea or even a band-aid really.  This occurs on EVERY DAYZ server in some manner; however, it is hidden on some that use CFTools because they have automated scripts to hide it, but someone still loses progress even on those servers whether it is one minute, three or an hour... someone gets screwed.  Server owners should alert the player base that if they lose their base to go complain to BI.  This issue was known to BI long before they arbitrarily released the game.

Some people should stop apologizing for the devs and start demanding the core game play loop to be fixed immediately.

Edited by THEGordonFreeman
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55 minutes ago, tandwan said:

II still say your best bet is to admin save daily and keep doing it until they pit something reliable into effect. 

So when you restore someone loses a whole day of progress..... this is not a working solution.  As many times as the DB gets corrupted?  This is all an admin will be doing, restoring persistence and definitely not enjoying the game.

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2 minutes ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

Some people should stop apologizing for the devs and start demanding the core game play loop to be fixed immediately.

No argument here. 

 

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18 minutes ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

Some people should stop apologizing for the devs and start demanding the core game play loop to be fixed immediately

Should we call in X-men, S.H.I.E.L.D, the Silver Surfer, or are you more a Tony Stark fan ? - who's got the BEST tech to fix it IMMEDIATELY ?

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3 minutes ago, pilgrim* said:

Should we call in X-men, S.H.I.E.L.D, the Silver Surfer, or are you more a Tony Stark fan ? - who's got the BEST tech to fix it IMMEDIATELY ?

I think Deadpool has the appropriate amount of sarcasm in his arsenal. 

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I seem to lose tents, barrels, sea chests and drybags about every week or so, on average.  I don't really store anything in them anymore.  I do however use them just to see how often i would be losing them.  ADAs however, have been great.  My current base includes 4 cars as storage and one or two random barrels for hoarding wolf steaks.

Hasn't persistence always been a problem tho?  Since, like, 2013?  Is this even a problem that's unique to BI games.  Is it really solvable?  I've basically given up on long term storage, much less try to ever build bases again.

5 hours ago, eno said:

Speaking of which... does that F11 rag glitch still work?

No one knows, I'd bet.  Standard new spawn loadout includes a knife, which you can F11 with

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8 minutes ago, Parazight said:

Hasn't persistence always been a problem tho?  Since, like, 2013?  Is this even a problem that's unique to BI games.  Is it really solvable?  I've basically given up on long term storage, much less try to ever build bases again.

No one knows, I'd bet.  Standard new spawn loadout includes a knife, which you can F11 with

Seems to me there was a good run between about .53 and .58 or so where things were okay- and then they put a pretty short lifetime limit on everything... You had to rush around and interact with everything at certain intervals talked about earlier...

 

And yes, forgot we actually get more gear now to start out. Not sure why- but there we go.

Edited by eno

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2 hours ago, Parazight said:

I seem to lose tents, barrels, sea chests and drybags about every week or so, on average.  I don't really store anything in them anymore.  I do however use them just to see how often i would be losing them.  ADAs however, have been great.  My current base includes 4 cars as storage and one or two random barrels for hoarding wolf steaks.

Hasn't persistence always been a problem tho?  Since, like, 2013?  Is this even a problem that's unique to BI games.  Is it really solvable?  I've basically given up on long term storage, much less try to ever build bases again.

No one knows, I'd bet.  Standard new spawn loadout includes a knife, which you can F11 with

I just saw a streamer tonight use the f11 rag thing to kill himself to get a better spawn.

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I think that the additional loot we spawn with was for the free weekend and holiday week. At least I expect it to be gone in January, but who knows.

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1 hour ago, amadieus said:

I think that the additional loot we spawn with was for the free weekend and holiday week. At least I expect it to be gone in January, but who knows.

That’s a sensible explanation actually... thanks for the insight. 

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