Back-story: Sliders

[ActionManZlt 160]

DayZ is a "sharded" MMO - each server has a low player count, and is independent from others.

This causes "unnatural" things, like:

* you and a friend being in the same town but not actually being able to see each other ("oops, I joined the wrong server").

* server-bound items -- tents, fences, vehicles.

* server hoppers.

* DC'ers.

The last 2 are arguably exploits, but I'm not suggesting a fix for them here -- there's plenty of other threads with ideas on how to mitigate exploits!

Instead, I've been trying to explain how all these "unnatural" things could make sense within the RP environment of the game, and the most obvious thing that comes to mind is Sliders. If you've not seen it, the gist is: a guy builds a black box that can open worm-holes to other dimensions / parallel universes, but it's got a timer on it so it can't be re-used too quickly. Unfortunately, they can't control which parallel universe they end up in, and a sci-fi TV show ensues as they go on an adventure through different crazy versions of "earth".

The abort button, and the server selection screen are our magic black box.

It doesn't matter why (maybe you were working away at the LHC when a mini-black-hole got flung out of the particle accelerator right into your desk, spontaneously expanding to swallow your office from the world, before spontaneously evaporating without trace. yes i know that's not possible ;P) -- but one day you wake up on Chernarus beach, and find you've got a high-tech wrist-watch on. When you use the wrist-watch, you fall through a portal to another version of Chernarus. Bam, unnatural behaviours explained. Each "shard"/server it a parallel world.

This could be tied into some of the suggested exploit fixes -- e.g. one solution for DC'ers is to keep their body in the game for 1 minute after they've disconnected, so they can't simply abort in a firefight unfairly. During this time, they could be playing an "activate the portal" animation (playing with their watch), and when it completes, a worm-hole appears and swallows them up.

[adamtheheretic 106]

You actually want this to be implemented?

[ActionManZlt 160]

You actually want this to be implemented?

It already is implemented -- objects exist in different parallel universes, and we can travel between them at will!

All I'm offering is an explanation for why we're capable of disappearing out of the game world and reappearing at will. It doesn't affect game-play at all, only the back-story.