Poll re Telepathic/Psychic exploit. Please read the example before answering question!

[Chiron 23]

I agree with this being an exploit. I mean, I'm not worried too much about it because there's very little you can do. It does remove a bit of realism from a pretty full on game (i.e. dead players telling their team mates what happened) but getting rid of that would probably be difficult/impossible and have ramifications. I mean a lot of shooters like CoD or CS:S don't allow dead team mates to speak to alive ones, but you can't really implement this type of thing into DayZ (as people can just use TeamSpeak, Skype, etc.)

So yes, it's an exploit and can ruin experiences, but it's not going anywhere and it's not getting 'fixed'. That's just the nature of PVP gaming and the online experience.

[malzie 2]

I think you would lose a lot of players if you restrict to in game comms only. Sure we can talk through teamspeak, but isn't that part of any multiplayer pvp strategy? The better question is how are locked clan servers fair? You have a clan that can gear up on a private server and then go into pubs and wreck people with end game loot. That should be dealt with before restricting out of game communications.

[Gustav Mahler 40]

With your example, silenced weapons are not silent. They would definitely hear it.

[daze23 549]

I think you would lose a lot of players if you restrict to in game comms only. Sure we can talk through teamspeak, but isn't that part of any multiplayer pvp strategy? The better question is how are locked clan servers fair? You have a clan that can gear up on a private server and then go into pubs and wreck people with end game loot. That should be dealt with before restricting out of game communications.

private servers are against the rules, and that has nothing to do with this topic

[JerFeelgood 34]

Re meta-gaming: In this example, there is no way possible to describe the groups actions as meta-gaming, how can ghosting to deliberately circumvent a players stealth be described as such. he's not given away any information on any level to be infiltrated and exposed to any third party. I would argue in favour of strategic meta-gaming, but using third party comms for telepathic/necromantic communication is a tactical exploit.

I would argue that it could be policed fairly easily... Write it into a code of conduct/eula that the use of non proscribed communications methods is condidered cheating and a kickable bannable offense. Make it voluntary. It will be very obvious to an admin in observer mode if a group is using 3rd party comms and could react accordingly.

Fun: Rocket has said this is an apocalypse simulator. It's not supposed to be fun. Restriction to in game comms would make the gaming environment much more tense as groups out of earshot would have to communicate with non verbal line of sight methods, or use of their wrist watches to coordinate assaults etc, and would make group security methods an absolute must as it would make your group a hell of a lot easier to penetrate... i.e. a lot nore paranoia... perfect for the apocalypse... I'm not arguing against basic radio communication but it has to detectable in game to circumvent the tactical advantage described above i.e. your player has to make a sound to voice into a radio and the receivers have to generate an audio footprint on receiving the signal, no matter how quiet, the earpiece could be included as a piece of kit. The radio channel could be eavesdropped.

Friends: The idea of friends is surely completely contradicted with permadeath. Your PC is dead. What cares he for friends. Your new Pc has no friends and encouraging a system that allows him to simply run back to where he *died* pick up his mates and kit and stroll on flies directly in the face of the concept of permadeath.

Ninja lore (carrying real world knowledge into the gaming world): Could be explained through a pc who wakes up on the beach had much more experience from his pre apocalypse life, was a local who knew the area well etc etc...

My solution: Have a look at FsInn software for the provision of radio communication in flight sims. very simple and easy to use, is PTT, has programmable channels and range factors built in and is built coded to support masses of flight simmers online on a server at the same time. If a similar radio comm program/concept could be coded into the engine to run parallel to ingame VON for in game speech....

And surely the freshness of the mod is that it flies in the face of other styles of gameplay. who's to say that 3rd party comms are good for the gaming experience that this type of mod is aiming for. Rocket has already advocated in favour of keeping comms in game and controllable... I personally would like to explore the issue of group trust in a world of difficult and sketchy communications, but can't because of these 3rd party programs

Edited July 27, 2012 by JerFeelgood

[Jaznap 18]

well, squad can communicate "silently" for the pray, yes. I suppose there is nothing to be done over this, but the prey can also quit anytime and vanish just like that so in this case that the hunters would communicate over direct voice on the game would only cause the prey to logoff.

[Deuzerre 64]

What annoys me is that in game chat has been removed for the sake of "Realism" but that those VOIP, being unpoliceable, are accepted even though they completely screw the idea of realism.

Seriously, I've played with friends and it's blatant cheating! A friend was low on blood (1.5K) around the three valleys. I had a bloodbag. I ran from up north to him, he reconnected just before I arrived and we coordinated so he could heal. That's completely OP/abusive.

[JerFeelgood 34]

d/c'ing and server hopping for tactical/survival advantage is a different discussion, and AFAIK is widely regarded as an exploit already. Compounding the d/c exploit with the comms exploit is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the intention of the game and cheating imho.

[thomas.scriven@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk 4]

The implications of this are quite severe though. If you're gonna ban third party comms then surely you'd also have to ban people chatting face to face about where their characters are going to meet up or what town they're going to raid, or what stuff they have that they can swap, etc etc. Are server admins gonna bug people's houses?

Ninja lore (carrying real world knowledge into the gaming world): Could be explained through a pc who wakes up on the beach had much more experience from his pre apocalypse life, was a local who knew the area well etc etc...

Yeah, fine. Knowing the map and the roads and knowing which cities are which in Russian is a massive advantage...as is knowing the best spawn points and so on. So you've used a bit of artistic license in explaining that away, but why not just do that in the scenario in the original post? Why not just imagine that the other two guys realised that the third person wasn't following them and so went back to the last location s/he was? Why not imagine that they co-ordinate using whistling sounds and hand signals, or that they met in the pub one night and said "hey, if the dead ever walk the earth, we should meet at that hill north of Stary Sobor"?

The uber-realism interpretation of the game doesn't cut it for me. If this were a true anti-game you'd spawn on the beach on your very first playthrough, run towards Cherno not having a clue what you're doing, get killed...and then never be allowed to play again because you're dead. The game (as it stands) is wholly unrealistic in almost every aspect. If the next update includes a function where we have to have a shit every six hours, then maybe we can talk about it being realistic.

[JerFeelgood 34]

The implications of this are quite severe though. If you're gonna ban third party comms then surely you'd also have to ban people chatting face to face about where their characters are going to meet up or what town they're going to raid, or what stuff they have that they can swap, etc etc. Are server admins gonna bug people's houses?

That is strategic metagaming, not tactical situational awareness imo and devs have already said that's okay.

Yeah, fine. Knowing the map and the roads and knowing which cities are which in Russian is a massive advantage...as is knowing the best spawn points and so on. So you've used a bit of artistic license in explaining that away, but why not just do that in the scenario in the original post?

...again strategic information....

Why not just imagine that the other two guys realised that the third person wasn't following them and so went back to the last location s/he was? Why not imagine that they co-ordinate using whistling sounds and hand signals, or that they met in the pub one night and said "hey, if the dead ever walk the earth, we should meet at that hill north of Stary Sobor"?

Surely hand sinals which are an ingame visual signal, and whistles in game could be coded into the game quite easily, and players could use them for that purpose for tactical situational control. My problem here is that players are using non detectable cues for tactical advantage.

The uber-realism interpretation of the game doesn't cut it for me. If this were a true anti-game you'd spawn on the beach on your very first playthrough, run towards Cherno not having a clue what you're doing, get killed...and then never be allowed to play again because you're dead. The game (as it stands) is wholly unrealistic in almost every aspect. If the next update includes a function where we have to have a shit every six hours, then maybe we can talk about it being realistic.

I thought the purpose of this experiment at the moment was to simulate how we would deal with an apocalypse scenario. It's not a game, It's a simulator. It's not supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be scary, tense and paranoid. We're supposed to be exploring the emotions associated with the apocalypse environment, not playing for shits and giggles. That to me means wholly casting off every tool not handed to you by the devs who have created the environment, and wholly/willingly submerging yourself in the simulator environment. Yes there is pleasure to be derived from the experience, as with every simulated experience, but that pleasure should be derived from a wholehearted plunge into the environment proscribed.

Otherwise as you say, it's just a game.

[Talon2000uk 30]

Yeah it's an exploit, but there is no way to stop ghosting via team speak. What are you gona do. Have the stand alone monitor if the user is using external voice coms and then not let the game run if the player is. Can you imagine the support calls this would cause.

"Waaaaa Day Z broke my ventrillo, Waaaa this is spyware, Waaaaa I'm gona sue!"

Unfortunately ghosting is a part of multilayer gaming and its not going to go away. At the end of the day you can only make the game so realistic. Its not real life and no amount of coding is ever going to make it truly real.

If you want to feel what its like to engage in squad combat without being in the army and putting you life on the line try paint bail or simunition. Its as close as your going to get without risking eating a bullet. :D

Edited July 27, 2012 by Talon2000uk

[daze23 549]

I think we all agree you can't prevent it. but I still think having other options ingame, like a radio or cell phone, could lessen it's use. ideally the ingame option would be somehow superior, but I'm not sure exactly how to do that

[Elmokki 6]

Oh yes, it's as much an exploit as is using out of game maps. There's just no realistic way to prevent it.

I mean, even if the game added some very very very unagreaable and draconian system that forbids my computer to use a voip software I can bypass it. What will I do? I'll plug in my microphone and speakers to a laptop and use it for voip and have the game sounds come from my headphones.

Anyway, it'd be retarded if you couldn't use proper voip. The range of direct chat is so short that it makes so many things so damn hard. We need a yell channel that can be heard to at least 100m. I still wouldn't use it for team communicating, but it'd be neat for shouting at other survivors.

This thread and poll are both pointless. People will always use external voip if it gives a clear enough edge and game developers can not avoid that.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Elmokki

[zimms 1]

I for one would love direct chat only once radios are implemented (much like ACRE). For all of you who haven't experienced it, it's just amazing how much it adds to the immersion.

I don't know if there is a way to prevent players from using TS or ventrilo, but I would really appreciate it.

Could we check if there is e.g. a teamspeak.exe running? Or would this be too easy to bypass, are there legal difficulties?

[JerFeelgood 34]

again I say it. make non-use of 3rd party comms voluntary in a code of conduct/eula. No spyware. If I am a server admin and someone complains to me about players ghosting/ using alt comms s/w, I can go into observer mode and observe their group. Coordinated behaviour with zero evidence of how that communication is being achieved in game would be retardedly easy to observe and thence punishable as cheating. Admin records evidence with FRAPS. Make that punishment appealable.

In my experience sim enthusiasts are more than willing to go the extra mile for realism and don't deliberately attempt to circumvent the sim environment.

obviously, fixing the in game VON, adding a whisper/speak/shout and radio facility would be paramount to it's success.

Edited July 27, 2012 by JerFeelgood

[UndeadAssassin 23]

NO even if you try theres no way of stopping them from using 3rd party comms

[JerFeelgood 34]

NO even if you try theres no way of stopping them from using 3rd party comms

I'm not saying try and stop them. Just force them to acknowledge they are cheating. And punishable as cheaters. D/C'ing for survival and server hopping to teleport are exploits. Should we just roll over and say cheaters gonna cheat and there's nothing we can do about it?

[Jetlaw 1]

I sit in the same room as people who play DayZ. You smartasses haven't come to a conclusion for that one now, have you.

Before you go running off screaming OH MY GOD SAME IP ADDRESSES, do note this gaming house has multiple ISPs.

If your God damn VoIP hatred circle-jerk due to metagaming and exploiting is going to continue, at least let us poor sods who are sat in the same God damned room have a break. I'd hate to game in complete silence. While having to have blanking plates over everyone's screens because we can sure as hell see those too.

Bannable for playing in the same house as anyone else who's on the same server as you. BAN THIS. B=========D ~~ ~~ (I trapped it in the window :<)

Edited July 27, 2012 by Jetlaw

[Elmokki 6]

...but who watches the watchmen? The exact reason why banning people for various reasons is forbidden by DayZ dev team is that people will abuse such privileges. It goes the other way too. Your solution expects server admins to spend their time watching people. Some admins wouldn't do that since hey, it's probably boring as hell in the long run. Many more just prefer to use the VOIP themselves too, so why bother watching if people us it? Your solution simply does not work,.

Besides, what would prevent people from communicating a bit with the ingame voice chat and more important stuff with third party voip? Oh, and what about LAN parties? Would you still be forced to use ingame voip when the person you're talking to sits a meter to the left from you? Seriously, this is just simply not possible to enforce realibly. Automatic software shutdown mechanisms will fail because people will either disguise their voip software or run them on other computers (also this solution is so very draconian that many will hate it just in principle) and this kind of tell people to stop and punish mechanic will just fail to the required policing.

When you set rules or laws in general, you should always consider the enforceability and the public opinion. It's completely pointless to make something forbidden when it's both something people - probably majority, but at least a very major share - in general want to do and nearly impossible to effectively enforce the punishments for it.

[gobacktogo 29]

wtf how can it be an exploit? read up that words definition. omg.

is it use of 3rd party programms? ofc. can it be prohibited? no.

so does ur thread make sense? does it provide anything to discuss about? no. no. no no no no no.

[Kin0 21]

If you disable 3rd party comms, people will just use comms outside of the computer.

Case in point: My buddy and I were taking over cell phones, cause we didn't have headsets right away.

[danredda 10]

No, no, and no. What are they gonna say? "I'm dead"?? There is no killcam in this mod. for all they know, the dead player could have been killed from 1000m away by an AS50 sniper. TS etc. is only a form of metagaming that allows for tactical communication and cooperation. DayZ is already too much Shoot on sight, and removing these programs would just make it worse (for those that i kill anyways :P)

[thefonztm@gmail.com 86]

Meh, it seems fine and you'll never stop this anyway. Think of it like extremely complicated and signals that are easy to see from 10000m.

[daze23 549]

I don't know what this logic is that says that if something is not easily preventable, it's not an exploit/cheating

[JerFeelgood 34]

I'm not saying VoIP isn't a useful tool. Just that it's completely counter-productive to a simulation experience. One would have to make the argument that the game itself does not provide communication tools. but that's just not true. there IS in game VON, you could choose to use visual cues. My point here is that by choosing 3rd party comm pack age of any kind (phone, VoIP etc) which confers a telepathic communication ability as it is communication that is completely undetectable within the game, you are giving yourself a tactical advange not awarded to you directly by the simulated environment in which you're operating. Again this is about choice. You are choosing the mode of communication. If you choose to use 3rd party comms knowing full well that comms are provided for in game, then you have chosen to use an exploit. Just don't expect me to be happy about you ruining a perfectly good simulated environment.

There is nothing physically in the game at the moment that stops me from server hopping to gain positional advantage. It's an exploit. I don't condone that either.