A Sad Story from A Sad Panda + Questions

[The Sad Panda 113]

Hello all, I'm a very sad panda and I would like to share with the community our (my group) adventures and misfortunes we've encountered in our journey through DayZ. Our average time logged as a group is around 80 hours for reference.

Before I begin, I would like to state that though some things greatly irritate me, my intent of this post is not to Bawwwwww about wanting nerfs / changes to the gameplay of the mod. By nature this is a harsh game where harsh things can happen, and we've more than accepted that. Alpha is Alpha and we understand that, which is why we keep playing through all the technical mishaps that we encounter in the story below. And yes, before anyone asks - we do regularly use the save function on tents and vehicles

I would also like to take this time and thank Rocket and anyone else on the DayZ development team for creating something so unique and innovative in an otherwise stagnant industry. Keep up the good work guys.

I'd also like to pose a few quick questions for anyone who may know.

1. Is there a way to rent a dedicated DayZ server? (Not host one on a local machine, my personal server can't handle any more load)

2. If question 1 is possible, how much would renting a 20-30 slot server cost per month?

I'll begin this tale shortly after we all began playing as a group, 4-5 friends connected to eachother through real life in one way or another. Fair warning, this will be TL:DR, so if you're not looking to read a story, I'd suggest you stop reading now - I won't be sparing many details.

Shortly after our adventures together begin, our group splits into two man teams in order to search the coastal city of Cherno for supplies, weapons, and ammunition. As we're finishing up in the city, I decide to wait near the coast of the city for my partner, who is still in the city finishing up his search in the city's coastal church. While waiting for my partner, I decide to pop a flare about 50m away from my position to help my partner find me in what is now the pitch black landscape of DayZ. Little did I know, however, that a single flare would be the start of a long and interesting journey through DayZ.

You see, this flare not only lit up the night landscape, but also revealed a PBX boat sitting just off the shore. This boat would open up many opportunities for our small band of brothers in the days to come. Anyway back to the present, my teammate, let's call him "Hairy", is the more....umm...Stealthily challenged member of the group, and over voice coms I hear a plea for help. It turns out that Hairy has attracted an excessive amount of zombies, and is now bleeding and running to the coast. Using my newly acquired PBX I made a daring close-coast pickup of my wounded comrade. We managed to pull farther up the coast, get Hairy patched up, and pick up our two other team-members which we'll call "Drangon" and "Sneaky".

With our new found mode of transportation we set off down the coast with a generous haul we obtained from Cherno. At this point we can access any coastal area we please. Personally, I'd been curious about the large island to the southeast of the map, and as the driver I made an...erm...executive decision (Yea, let's call it that) to take the group and explore the island. After arriving we did a quick check of the island, tried to investigate the small town on the island, but was met with a disproportionate amount of zombies in the village - we were quickly driven back into our boat and out of the bay. We didn't give up on the island however, and we were rewarded for it - on a large tree covered hill we discovered something beyond our wildest expectations... a functional helicopter.

Well, actually, functional is the wrong word for it. The chopper has a critical amount of fuel, 7+ broken windows, broken engine, and broken rotor, but beggers can't be choosers. We decide to set up camp on the island in an area not visible from the mainland. Over the course of a few days we built the camp up from two measly tents, to a settlement of six tents with a fully functional and fueled helicopter. Not too bad for playing for about two days, right? Let me tell you guys, we had a blast while we had that helicopter (about 2 hours of functional flying time, including the initial fueling trip). While we had it, we looted THREE downed helicopter sites, and got more military equipment that we had seen since we started playing. Unfortunately, and I'm not proud of this - during our last helicopter crash site, we lost a man due to....friendly fire. Naturally, anyone who sits in the gunner seat of the chopper is itching to put that M240 to work, am I right? Well on this site we had the chance - we had all made it back to the chopper except our forward guard, Sneaky. The Z's at the chopper site had just respawned and had Sneaky in their sight. Due to a miss-communication (That's my story and I'm sticking to it), instead of Sneaky breaking right and boarding the chopper there, he returns to my line of fire while the M240 was raining hell on the zombie train behind him, and quickly put Sneaky down.

After many sincere apologies, we set the chopper back down on our island, unloaded our treasure, and set off down the coast towards elektro to pick Sneaky's new spawn up. This time the pickup goes off without a hitch, we get him aboard and set a roundabout course home (Because even WE weren't newb enough to fly directly to and from our island). On the way back, we begin chatting to pass the time. Drangon, who actually plays the base ARMA game (us other three only play DayZ) brings up the fact that it's possible to do para-drops via the helicopter. Naturally this news excites everyone on the helicopter and we decide to try it once we get close to the island. Well, a small detail was left out that parachute can indeed become tangled in ARMA - a fact myself and Sneaky were not aware of. We both jump at the same time, and are both greeted with a pretty instant death message. We laugh about it a little and once again begin our trip down the coast to a convenient pickup point for our pilot to rescue us from. Our laughter and light banter is interrupted on the way back however, as a shot rings out on the island and Hairy's body drops like a sack of rocks. This of course is met with a swift "WTF" from Hairy, and a "Holy #$%^" There's someone in the tree-line!!" from Drangon. The channel gets silent, but is then quickly filled again with the sound of gunfire and Drangon stating that he is under fire and headed for cover. This is a very intense moment for our squad, not only had two of our members just died in a silly parachuting accident, but now our remaining team has lost a member to hostile fire, with only our pilot remaining on the island.

All goes quite for a short time, when finally the silence is broken once again by Drangon informing us that the hostile player has started the helicopter's engine and is preparing to take off. After putting a few rounds through the windshield of the chopper, the hostile pilot is able to clumsily lift the chopper off the ground and slowly gain altitude. Thinking quickly, Drangon sprints to our weapons cache tent and grabs our M107 Anti-Material Rifle, and puts two clips into the bottom hull of the chopper before it manages to wobble itself out of range. We still don't know what became of that helicopter after that night, perhaps the enemy pilot managed to land it in a field and repair the extensive damage the chopper must have taken - or maybe he just ditched it in the ocean and logged out. Regardless of what actually happened, I doubt we'll ever know. So after an extended silence we all express our feelings of sadness, regret, and depression over the loss of the chopper that we had taken so long to repair, but only got to use for a short time. But that's part of the game isn't it? The fact that you are never truely safe is one of the main reasons DayZ is almost one of a kind in the gaming world. You're either logged in with a vulnerable character, or logged out with your base unprotected.

What we THINK happened, was someone was server hopping looking for the helicopter spawn (up the hill where we found it), and heard us on our approach back to the island. Either that, or in the time it took us to lift off and pick up Sneaky and return to the island, he swam the distance from the mainland to the island (We had all of the boat spawns either brought back to the island, or drove them out to sea and ran them out of fuel. None of our boats were missing and no new ones were on the shore). No matter how he had happened upon our secluded island base, we knew that one thing was certain - as long as that helicopter spawn is there, our operations on the island were at risk, and we had to move on,

After studying the map for a while we agreed on a new spot to set up our camp, it was an area that was fairly out of the way of major map objectives, but at the same time allowed any ground vehicles decent access to the major road network. It's worth noting here that we had switched servers after the loss of our helicopter (due to our original server giving myself and Sneaky very bad FPS at certain times of the game-world's day). We had re-located to a server that was hosted by "Full Metal Slackers", US 1828 where we had during our trip inland, discovered a Ural truck spawn, which we had intended to fix up.

After some debate on where we should spend the day scavenging for supplies, (Hairy wanted to visit the international airfield, us other three wanted to head to the southern coast's industrial cities to look for car parts). We decide that splitting into two groups is too dangerous with the server's current population, so we compromise and decide to head to the NW Airfield. Drangon and myself were to search the western edge of the field for industrial supplies in the northern buildings, while Hairy and Sneaky search the eastern side for weapons and ammunition. We take a very round-about route to the northern end of the airfield, which we had decided would be the best way to enter and exit the airfield (While allowing us to check the ATV spawn on top of the mountain). After splitting up, both teams slowly advance down our respective sides of the runway. After searching both large industrial garages at the northern end and coming up empty, Drangon (our pilot, who is also our sniper) decides that he will provide sniper cover from a tower while I spot for him with my binocs . This turned out to be a good decision, because shortly afterwards our eastern team makes contact with a hostile player. Using an L85 we had found on a downed helicopter outside of the airfield earlier in the day, Sneaky identifies the hostile target and attempts to spot his location for our sniper in the tower. Unfortunately, Sneaky didn't have one of the group's two compasses, and the nature of the thermal sight makes referencing buildings a challenge.

Just before Sneaky is about to take a shot at the enemy player, we hear the sound of a motorcycle's engine roaring on the runway. Drangon is the first one to spot the vehicle - it's one man on the cycle wearing a gillie suit speeding towards the original hostile player. We made the split second decision to engage the enemy players who are now obviously working in a group, and therefore a threat to our own group. Drangon takes three shots with his M107, but the shots go high (later we discover because of a ping disconnect earlier, the zeroing of his rifle had reset to 300, instead of the 100 it had been set at for close ranged emergencies). The two hostile players quickly dip off the runway and leave their motorcycle in a clearing. We follow them with our optics as best we can, but they manage to slip into the tree-line. During the commotion, Hairy had managed to sprint across the runway (zombies were all following the motorcycle) and make it to the southwest barracks on our side of the runway. Sneaky, using his thermal vision keeps a low profile and scans for the enemy players on our (west) tree-line. A few minutes pass with not as much as a word in voice-com. Sneaky finally reports "One hostile entering your barracks Hairy". A second passes and then gunfire shatters the otherwise quiet calm of the airfield. The server reports two deaths - sadly, our teammate Hairy was the first to die, but shortly after another is reported and we couldn't believe who it was.

We had killed the Admin of the server (we recognized his name from seeing the *admin* mark next to his ping on login). A minute passed and still no action, the three remaining members of our group were still hunting the admin's partner when all of a sudden (I bet you can guess it) Everyone is booted from the server. Not just our group, everyone except one other person who we assume was the admin's partner. We all reconnect (or attempt to, the admin is still kicking people). Sneaky is the first to re-enter the game world, and he puts a few warning shots in the direction of the motorcycle. This must have touched a nerve, because at that point the entire server went offline. We decide that enough is enough, and we want nothing to do with this Admin letting his team-mate move around the airfield freely while we are stuck connecting. We decide to hop to another server, get to a safe distance, and then observe the airfield on US 1828 after we were reasonably safe.

When we returned, the motorcycle was gone from its hiding spot (go figure, right?) We assumed the admin's friend had made a clean getaway and that would be that. We make the trek back to our camp where we had set up a few tents near our Ural truck (which was a work in progress still, missing tires and an engine). We thought our view distance was bugged for a minute, but when we got right up on the camp there was no mistaking it - not only was the truck gone, but our tents with all our extra supplies were gone as well. We were devastated, The only thing we can think of is that the admin believed that the motorcycle was going to be stolen (by us) so he restarted the game session completely - wiping out all progress that had been made on the map.

At this point our spirits are feeling a bit trampled, every time we make any progress we seem to be firmly and swiftly smacked back down. While that's part of the inherent nature of perma-death style games, it's the fact that it's the fault of a childish server admin, not a perma-death mechanic that set us back so far that really made it sting. But because we all love the game we kept going forward.

This brings me to the final chapter (I know, FINALLY, right?) of our current story that spans the past two days. We were so angry with the administration of US 1828 that we left the server all together with only what we could carry on our backs. We relocated to ANOTHER server, US 1934 ran by a group called the 2nd Division. This server is fairly active with clan activity, but we decided that we would reserve our judgement of the group until we came across them at some point (and let me tell you, we did come across them.... but more on that at the end). Fortune had smiled brightly on us in this server, not only had we found the Ural again (and repaired it and moved it to our "secure" base) we had found the spawns for the old hatch-back, and the off-road pickup truck. This next part happened yesterday (saturday the 4th) and my recanting is only hear-say, because I was gone for most of the day. Anyway...

When I left my group, I had actually been ran over by our parked truck (Disconnected while parking it, logged back in and was greated by -2000 blood, a broken leg, and then shortly by a death screen.) But that was whatever, it had happened inside the "safety" of our base so all my belongings were recovered More on that in a bit. Anyway after I returned home I was eager to play some more DayZ and see what progress the guys had made in my absence. Logging into vent I was greated by sad sounding voices, and news that literally left me speechless.

While transporting the Ural and Pickup truck back to base, the server had shut down without any warning. Whatever, stuff happens, right? The vehicles were missing, they had checked our base (where we had last saved the Ural), the truck spawn (where they had picked up the truck), and all around where they had been when the server went down - no vehicles. Worse news yet, the tents where we had accumulated a large food and medical supply, as well as where all my gear from my glitched death was being stored.....were gone.That means that the Night Vision Goggles from my body, as well as both my FALs, Sneaky's L85, and Drangon's M107 were completel wiped off the face of the planet. The tents hadn't been looted, they had just disappeared like back on 1828. At this point we just log off for the day, it's just too much for us to take hit after hit from technical issues.

Today I log back in, at the industrial sector of Elektro where I had been gathering parts with my new spawn for the vehicles that we no longer had. We were still pretty bummed out but we had once again decided to soldier through and keep playing the game that we love.

At first it was almost too good to believe, maybe even a mirage. On the port of Elektro, completely unguarded, fully repaired and fueled, is the offroad pickup truck that we had lost the night before. Having nothing more than an empty AKM, a Makarov with one clip, and some medical supplies I make a break for the truck. Success! I was able to get out of elektro without any resistance whatsoever. I had Hairy navigate for me with his map and lead me back to our "base" (or to be more exact, where our base was before the server wiped it out). I set up the two tents I had found in Elektro's supermarket with a renewed sense of hope for our progress on this server. Now Drangon had been making his way all the way back to the coast, to check if our trusty PBX was still unharmed in it's spot on our original server. After hearing the good news he takes the PBX (which was untouched) to our original base on the island. Our plan was originally to bring some of the supplies remaining on our base (we can't move the tents anymore, the characters who set them up originally are long dead).Meanwhile, I'm once again back in the truck heading to the coast to pick up as many supplies as we can, Hairy is back at the base navigating for me.

But, by complete chance, I take a wrong turn and head further down the main road than I should have. I stumble across a broken bus, a working and fueled UAZ, and THREE ATVS. These vehicles are most likely hacked, seeing as how there are only 4 other people on the server online at the time, and none of them share the same tag. But we decide to take the UAZ for our own regardless. After picking Drangon up near the island, I take him back to the vehicle cache, and he gets in the UAZ and drives.

Things really couldn't be going better for us at that time, we've got two pristine vehicles, some supplies, and a base. We're well armed and all of our basic needs are met, this is the best we've probably ever been in the game. But like every other success we've had in the game it will be short lived. As we were on the final stretch back to our base, I'm a good deal ahead of Drangon (good thing too), all of a sudden I see a figure in the middle of the field, I made the mistake of slowing down and asking "Hairy is that you?" because it was pretty close to our base. It was definitely NOT Hairy. I'm answered not by his voice, but by the sound of rifle shots pinging off my hull. I speed away as fast as I can, but as soon as I thought i was safe...

"YOU HAVE BEEN KICKED"

Turns out that the hostile player who had spotted me was either the admin himself, or the other 2nd divison player on the server with him. regardless, I was slowed down long enough for my nameplate to pop up and give them my name in order to kick me. At this point I've got nothing to lose, I re-enter the game and make a break for the woods. I come under immediate gunfire from two players, one sounded like a medium-high powered rifle, the other may have been something as small as an Enfield. On my way to the treeline I take one shot in the back which brings me to a little under 5000 blood. I"m now bleeding with a concussion, so when i spot the truck rolled off in the distance all I can do is make a break for it. I'm eventually put down after they put a good 50+ combined shots down range at me.

The two hostiles take their ill-acquired vehicle and speed away. From the tree-line Drangon and Hairy are watching. The two enemies drive off towards the far tree-line, stop, get out, look directly at my two remaining squad members. and via direct-com.... they laugh at us. We were even able to confirm it was the admin from the name that appeared while he was speaking in direct chat. They knew exactly where my team was hiding the whole time. Other than the obvious disconnect on me to stop my escape from the truck, I would not be quick to accuse someone of cheating at a videogame. I'm not 12 and not a raging CoD style fan-boy. Sometimes people just have the upper-hand. But it's very very very suspicious to me that the admin of the server was able to direct chat across an open field to the location of my concealed team-mates. Drangon even has military camo, and is very hard to spot from a distance.

I've been a PC player for years, and it almost sickens me me to see this kind of admin abuse. To me, the server admins are the ones you can always count on to keep law and order in the server, defending it from hackers and making sure the playerbase (randoms, not just their own members) have a good experience on the server. After all, keeping a fair and orderly server results in a higher player count and usually a better overall game atmosphere. This is why before restarting our settlement for yet another time, I would like to know if it's possible to rent a server from a reputable company to run DayZ, The admin abuse on the servers we've played on is terrible, and If there were an option to protect myself as well as my personal friends, and whatever random person that decides to make our server their home... I would take it in a heartbeat.

Like I said above, we're not asking for gameplay changes, we're not asking for an official moderation of servers or anything of the sort. We're just looking for our options, and thought that we could share our DayZ adventure with the community. It's had it's ups and downs but overall it's a great game still.

That being said, I'd like the communities input on this: Should we keep trying to make a home for ourselves, or is that simply not possible from everyone's experiences? Are we better off taking what we can carry, grabbing military grade weapons and camping a major city? because sometimes it seems like that's our only option, since fate seems to continually crush our dreams of creating a livable area in the world of Dayz.

[[email protected] 36]

Wow, you guys are champs for sticking it out that long after so many setbacks.

I've yet to come across one vehicle, working or non-working other than the small fishing boat.

Honestly, after all that, I would say if you really want an honest admin, i'd go ahead and combine your groups money together and buy a server. I've looked around and I THINK most go for around $40 for 40 slots. Not sure.

But hey, if you do end up buying one, send me a PM.

Me and my friend will glady play under an honest server admin. Just too many exploiting players/admins out there.

[Guest]

Great story.

I haven't ever experienced any of this before, I haven't even seen an admin in a server where I've played. Guess it's better that way, you'll never know what the admins are gonna do.

How the heck did you find so many vehicles though?

I've played DayZ for over 100 hours now and I've only found 2 tractors, a small boat & a hacked ATV.

[The Sad Panda 113]

How the heck did you find so many vehicles though?

When we switch servers, we all pick different ones and check the surrounding vehicle spawns that are marked on http://dayzdb.com/map#3.041.111 . and search for, basically a reason to stay on that server. With the in-game map not allowing for squad specific markers (It shows your markers to every player in the game, not just your friends), we find that the in-game map isn't safe to use, so we use that one. Since we can't use in-game markers, that map allows us to be like "I'm north about 150m of the high-value barn west of X-town"

That's how we've found all of the broken down vehicles (except the bus near the hacked vehicle cache, and the helicopter on the island (which isn't even marked) were pure chance). The UAZ and ATV cache (which we still think was hacked) i just happened to see while passing along on a road

[Sinoby 39]

At our server rental provider servers are like $1 per slot. Which results in $40 per 40 slot.

If you feel like joining a low-pop server - I'll gladly meet you at DE 81 :)

Great read btw, thanks for sharing

[colby146 0]

Im one of the members of his group and I can completely agree... I love this game and its style and its expected to bug out and we understand that. The lack of proper admins is discouraging and making us almost want to stop playing because we cannot find a legit server. Renting a server seems to be the only way for us to be able to fully enjoy this game the proper way.