Let's talk about car despawn ...

[William Sternritter 441]

These are experiences from private server which we setup to basically see and do stuff we normally can't. Besides it being a private server, it's as vanilla as they come. 

What the fuck developers? 

Case 1, damaged car. Now ok, damaged car despawns, although I'm not sure why. Especially when it still has loot  and car parts on it! I don't care that the chassis is red, all the car parts (battery, doors, wheels) plus player loot in the trunk are there yet the car despawns. Really? Just why?! At least put some sensible timer on it, like five days or something. How much imagination does it require to come up with a use case when someone would use the damaged car as a storage or car parts re-supply? That it may take several hours until the player can remove all that can be removed from the damaged car. 

Case 2, car parked. Undamaged. Oh yes. So we wet out scavenging for resources to the lumbermill near Myshkino, got hit by heavy rain and so I parked the car near containers. You know, the slightly raised platform with a roof over it. Makes quite sense in the rain and generally speaking a it's a good spot to park the car. We looted for a bit and then logged off in a garage. This morning I went to have a quick look and the CAR IS GONE! Just because it was not on flat ground or what the fuck? And again all the loot and car parts, totally undamaged and you fuck us over like this?! 

I though car were bad because of desync issues but I haven't had enough coffee yet to express what bullshit this is. In contrast, when I killed two pigs an gutted them, their remains were in the game for the next TWO DAYS! Dear DayZ devs, just play the game for a while. You know rent a server and run around like a real player would. No console cheating, no custom spawn. Try to experience the game as a player does. Otherwise you will never fix this in a million years and I can submit all the bug reports I want. Parking a car somewhere is the most common situation car allows. Be proactive for a change, play your game and discover this shit for yourselves. 

[William Sternritter 441]

And moral of the story? Desync, performance issues, lag … yes, ok, whatever … but we went out looking for supplies. Of course because we took the car, we went out light. Minimum gear, supplies to patch up should things go wrong were in the trunk. Luckily, we did not go that far, but we just as well could have traveled half way across the map. We cannot rely on the game even with the most basic stuff. Base building and cars are not broken because someone can chop through the fence or because you can easily crash the car.

Base building is broken, because you cannot safely store your stuff. It already happened that my jacket despawned while I was running around to chop wood. Instead of stashing the entire vest in your tent, each time you want to store it, you have to take everything out and store it that way. Because you can't just put it there. You never know if it won't despawn the second you turn away. Still I don't trust the tent, barrels and whatnot else. It's a chore to run around "oh did I touch the generator lately?" because it will despawn for no reason. 

You never know if the car will be there once you logout. You cannot trust that having inventory in the car will keep it from despawning. The car was there for days at its spawn point until we took it and I can no longer trust that the car will be where I leave it. Just because I moved it from its original spawn point. 

Settling down and traveling light is not an option. You always need to be ready for anything and have all the gear you can carry at you, because the game fucks you over in a second. Oh and the player inventory still glitches out. Since we got the private server, it practically 100% of the time, that we get inventory glitches when reloading a magazine and so on. Two players on the ENTIRE SERVER and we get that constantly. I cannot call this a bug or glitch anymore. This is a fundamentally broken game. 

Edited May 11, 2020 by William Sternritter

[Tarkules 153]

I share your frustration, as an owner of a private server I receive complaints on a daily basis about "disappearing cars".

It is a proven fact that if you leave a car on any inclined ground, slope, hill - the car will move, bounce and even flip (depends on the inclination degree of the ground) after a server restart.

Sometimes this happens with freshly spawned cars with 1 or 2 wheels, if the car is not standing in a balanced way. With each restart, the car will "bounce" sideways a little bit until it will get damaged and destroyed.

The only place you can park your car safely is on flat grounds and roads (concrete).

 

For ruined cars - I have 3 suggestions for you (if you have a private server):

1. You can change the cleanup time, although it's a general setting and will apply to ALL ruined items, so use it carefully:

\db\globals.xml

<var name="CleanupLifetimeRuined" type="0" value="330"/>

 

2. You can raise the "lifetime" value for car parts (Radiator, Car battery, wheels, etc..) to few hours. So if your car is ruined, you can at least drop the parts on the ground somewhere and come back later to pick them up.

For example - a Car Radiator is set to despawn after 4 hours, wheels are set to 3 hours by default, you can extend this value.

\db\types.xml

 

3. Use Sea Chests in your trunk.

You can fill them up and put them in the trunk. If the cars gets destroyed you can take it out and even stash it (for 45 days) with all it's contents.

 

For bases:

* Generators, spotlights and cable reels will despawn after 7 days, you can extend their lifetime. "Interacting" with them will reset the timer, but switching them ON and OFF does not count as an interaction (which is ridiculous). If you change the values, they will take effect only the next time you place/deploy the objects.

* Barrels will despawn after 45 days, unless you interact with it's inventory, which will reset the timer.

* In general - fences and watchtowers are meaningless since they don't prevent zombies and animals from entering (bug), can't shelter you from rain and you can't even place anything under or inside the towers. They are just useless and a waste of time.

 

4 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

Be proactive for a change, play your game and discover this shit for yourselves. 

I have no doubt that the developers barely play the game, and if they do, probably not enough.

[William Sternritter 441]

15 minutes ago, Tarkules said:

The only place you can park your car safely is on flat grounds and roads (concrete).

 

3. Use Sea Chests in your trunk.

You can fill them up and put them in the trunk. If the cars gets destroyed you can take it out and even stash it (for 45 days) with all it's contents.

 

Thank you very much for your insight. 

Ironically, the car was on flat concrete surface, however; it was not "on the ground" so to speak, because this area is kind of a ramp. You can drive onto it from both sides, it's solid concrete, flat surface, but the car despawned regardless. It just occurred to me it might be stuck in the ground, though I would expect at least the roof to show above the surface in that case. 

What you say about sea chests is very interesting, so they can be put into trunks or tents and so on even when full of loot? Because then this is the only item to my knowledge which can do that. Otherwise clothing or even barrels as soon as they have at least one item in them cannot be placed inside anything. It's especially frustrating with clothing, as I would like to be able to store it even with loot in order to quickly change from one set of clothes to another.  

[amadieus 313]

I agree completely! It is sad when you think about the excuse the devs gave back during the 1.0 release. Saying how the core gameplay loop is there and therefore the game is finished. Now we are like 1.5 years later and those ''Core gameplay loop'' features still do not work. Base building is worthless and cars are unreliable and still kill you from time to time..... Sure the game does get better with each patch, I cannot deny that. However, this poor excuse from back then still makes my head turn in disbelief.

[Tarkules 153]

5 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

What you say about sea chests is very interesting, so they can be put into trunks or tents and so on even when full of loot? Because then this is the only item to my knowledge which can do that.

Yes, and you can also use wooden crates, btw.

 

5 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

Ironically, the car was on flat concrete surface, however; it was not "on the ground" so to speak, because this area is kind of a ramp. You can drive onto it from both sides, it's solid concrete, flat surface, but the car despawned regardless.

Barns and warehouses (with 2 blue doors) also have an elevated flat ground, and yet, cars tend to bounce if parked inside after restarts. I visited an abandoned base after 2 weeks and found inside 3 partially ruined cars, with ruined wheels, one of them was laying over the side of a tent. I followed their positions after each restart until they got destroyed. 

[JoeyB123 6]

14 hours ago, Tarkules said:

For bases:

* Generators, spotlights and cable reels will despawn after 7 days, you can extend their lifetime. "Interacting" with them will reset the timer, but switching them ON and OFF does not count as an interaction (which is ridiculous). If you change the values, they will take effect only the next time you place/deploy the objects.

* Barrels will despawn after 45 days, unless you interact with it's inventory, which will reset the timer.

* In general - fences and watchtowers are meaningless since they don't prevent zombies and animals from entering (bug), can't shelter you from rain and you can't even place anything under or inside the towers. They are just useless and a waste of time.

 

I have no doubt that the developers barely play the game, and if they do, probably not enough.

Just happened upon this post, firstly thanks for the heads up on persistence time for generators etc, didn't know that.

But I would say from my experience on the xbox at least, bases do achieve those two things. Me and a few people have built a base in a rural area, not built onto a building just a small circular shape with fencing and watch tower in the middle. The watch tower does seem to keep us waterproof when it rains, there's a slight rain animation going through but we don't get wet. Then also a wolf pack ended up at the base and was aggroing, trying to charge through the walls and the same gaps you get between some fences, but it did keep them all out.