Two birds, one stone?

[[email protected] 122]

First of all: Hello forums-wanderers, this will be my first post here.

I'm going to start off by giving some information about myself, my playstyle, my past experiences, and (probably yet another) possible solution to some of the problems this game is experiencing.

I got word of the game through a clan I was still part of, but hadn't played with in quite a while. So I joined their home server, which was using a private database. Before joining up with them, I decided to get hold of the controls, surviving, etc. During that day, I died quite a lot, both by players and by zombies alike. But there was a lot of communication and cooperation between the players. I even traveled along with a couple of them. Then I met up with my clan, they weren't as sociable as me towards unknown players (which I can understand, as they were geared up with ghillies and snipers, etc). From that point onward, I too had to shoot on sight since my clan members would, so people would shoot back, including at me. Not to mention I didn't want to come across as a leacher towards my clanmates. I'd play the game until they logged off, at which point I decided to start playing friendly again. Since we were on a private database server, the community was always the same, and word spread about our clan very quickly. People started asking in chat whether the clan I was in, is a threat. Since no one of my clan was online, I answered honestly: "We don't hunt people, but we shoot on sight. We're no douches, it's a safety measure. But please stay away from them." I rather quickly became a known person on the server, for being sociable and talkative. I hated having to kill one of them because of this, whenever I was playing with my clan. Then one day, we raided an admins camp, and the server has been offline ever since. We lost two more private servers that way, including all our progression (obviously).

So now we are playing on a normal hive-server. No side-chat, no communication amongst non organized people, server hopping, etc..

Needless to say, this server is about a 1000 times as hostile as any of the private servers I've ever been on. Don't get me wrong, I'm not whining about this, actually, I totally don't mind it. I've gotten better at the game, can outbeat people camping inside of a house, aware of my presence, without them being able to see me in the middle of the night, whilst they have NVG's, with seven zombies on me. The nature of the community on the non-private database servers, as well as the will to protect my now much better gear, led me to kill on sight. Actually, I'm SURE that most people on my home server would kill anyone they'd meet. This thought has made it "OK" (in my head) to camp places and wait for people to show up. (Northern places only, mind you. Usually Stary Sobor's military base.)

When we're south, I often try to convince my clan members not to shoot people who didn't shoot us, even though they could. Sometimes even people who don't own a weapon. They hide their bodies, even though we don't gain anything from that. Granted, I raid tents too, but I don't take what I can't use/destroy their tents/waste their supplies on the spot just to f them over. MY clanmates then usually say they'd probably do it to us too. But still, I kill a lot of people on a daily basis, even people from which I know I could've evaded, and which at the same time I know of they won't have any upgrades on them. I guess I just started not to care too much about that anymore, because I know they most likely won't be friendly anyways, despite only having an Enfield on them.

What I'd want to say is:

-If you disable side-channel, you have no right as an admin, to "promote" friendly play-styles/judge banditry. Whilst side-channel won't make a total world of a difference, a communicating community is still quite less likely to be hostile towards each other.

-Private servers don't have this problem as much because people usually play with the same folks, they get to know each other as a result.

-Because of the above, clans (or just people in general) will have to think about their actions, as the community there might turn hostile on them. We had to keep a much lower profile there.

-Server hopping sucks.

What I'd like to propose, is to do the following:

-Make an actual grouping system, not necessarily faction based or anything. Even if it's just so people using microphones in game (without VOIP programs) won't spam the server. This way the non organized can organize themselves a bit better, because right now server admins are making decent communication a clan-only thing. Simply in favour of "immersion", whilst you're basically just limiting the people who have access to it, without removing it, and gimping those who use direct communication because other people nearby will be able to hear them. I'm afraid this is something that should never be disabled in favour of immersion. Not to mention that lack of this also makes people more hostile towards each other. An integrated VOIP would also work I suppose.

-Make servers more private-database like, without making it into a private database. In other words, you have one character on server 1, and one on server 2. Server 1 goes down, or you simply decide you don't want to play there anymore, and you could then request a server character hop to server 3 via an automated service on the DayZ website, but which is limited to like 2 server hops/week.

You could also request a server hop to server 2, deleting your character on that server. This way, you don't have the downsides of playing on a private-database (losing everything when the admins ragequit or whatever (Yeah, De99's host, talking about you mainly [not the hive De99, there are multiple De99's])). And people will have to deal with the people that reside on the server a lot more, having to think about the consequences of killing everyone without a single thought.

You'd still be able to join a server without a character transfer, but you'd have to start anew (on that server).

Edited July 22, 2012 by Ratiasu

[sixbarns 217]

Suggestion 1 is familiar with most people here. I don't see why it shouldn't be added but there are some major issues they may want to address first. Definitely worth adding.

Suggestion 2 breaks a core feature of the game.

It may be time we serious discuss this but I'm hoping the DayZ team is smart enough to find a solution without gutting the game.

[[email protected] 122]

Cheers for the reply, seems like most people went TL;DR on this thread. =/