Day Z - Zombies + ARMA2? Yes please.

[saki]

In my experience its not all that bad tbh. Previously Zed were only a minor hassle, now they are a little on the OP side. I have read that their super senses will be fixed very soon. After that they will be mostly fine I guess.

After all they should be the ones you are afraid of and not only other humans. Maybe this also helps to make people work together a little more, even if they do not know each other. As it was before there was very little incentive to team up with strangers.

[Lleman]

Apparently you can't really stealth any more is that right?

You can, Ewokz, you really can. You just have to play it as you would irl, with the exception that if you've gone prone and are crawling you're almost undetectable unless you happen to do that under the very nose (read 3m max) of a zombie.

Come on now, admit it, the former builds had you slowly habituated to silly blind-as-moles Zs and the adren had stopped flowing despite all the 'ohshitohshitohshit' moments we were in. Granted, as we both expressed it, the strength of a zombie hit is excessive, but let's not deny it, that mod's back on the refreshed-interest track and new challenges have to be taken. Plus it's not like things might become permanent, Rocket will certainly tone some things down while adding further features to improve the survivability.

As a side note, a secondary effect of that increased difficulty, at least for our small Dolts nucleus, is an increased ruthlessness and automatic distrust of any other survivor, and i don't think it's only us that feel thusly. To give but one example, last night's run had us land in Elektro at some point, getting both Julian and Pac to die at the hands of Zs (iirc) after checking the school. Penguin and I then proceeded to check surrounding buildings, meeting two survs in a 2 minutes interval. I killed mine without asking myself a question while Penguin, still bothered by some remnant of consciousness, asked me what he should do. To boot, kill the guy. Turns out both poor sods were just respawns who were unarmed. Why this then? We could still have let them pass unaware of our presence. Musing upon this we realised we already had our plate full with coping with toughened Zs * without having to be on the lookout for potentially harmful players. Getting rid of them simply made our journey easier and improved our survivability.


* anybody noticed the increased toughness of Zs since 1.7.1.4? Last night we all noted it took more small firearms shots to down Zs than before. We didn't have a revolver or M1911 though so we can't say how they fare.

[Ewokz]

Lleman apparently zombies can currently detect you up to 50 metres away when you are crouch walking, its a bug that's being fixed in a hot-fix sometime tonight/tomorrow. Something to do with changing the detection from the body to the head and not balancing it accordingly. Seen a few videos already of people crawling within 2 blocks of a zombie and it being alerted. The main issue with the increased noise and zombie sight is that stealth is a lot harder, and combined with LOS, its just easier to just draw a horde and then lose them.

The ohshit moments for me were still pretty tense tbh, us creeping through one of the towns at night was sketchy as hell I guess with groups it is reduced a lot, but on my own it is scary as hell and quite difficult to keep silent, can't imagine being able to investigate the NW airfield now without shooting, it was hard enough before.

one cool thing with the new survivor no weapon mechanic is that re-spawned people seem happier teaming up, I guess its not quite so scary teaming up with someone if neither of you have weapons to back stab the other.

[Akranadas]

one cool thing with the new survivor no weapon mechanic is that re-spawned people seem happier teaming up, I guess its not quite so scary teaming up with someone if neither of you have weapons to back stab the other.

Until one of the players you've teamed up with finds a weapon, then its on. Which happened to me

Or saving someone from a bunch of zombies with your gun only to have him chop you up with his axe

I got my revenge by ninja crawling and stealing someones bike. Much fun was had.

[Inq]

Do you play with anyone else Akr? I'm thinking about getting the game but a fellow RN player would be helpful.

[Akranadas]

Not really, just sort of soloing at the moment.

[Inq]

Downloading ARMA II right now. Hopefully will be able to get some people together.

Conveniently right when I've just started watching The Walking Dead.

[Ewokz]

Most of us hang out on the mumble's, in the 101 room if we're playing dayz.


EDIT: Is it ok to post the mumble details here?

[Lleman]

Ewokz: given this, i don't think that was a big deal.

Now, hatchets... Julian has been a wonderful demonstrator of the hatchet's (over)power. That CC weapon is just a silenced gun which deals away with your undead annoyance in no time. He basically led our not-so-stealthy way in various hamlets and just mowed down all that ran towards us. Forget the M9SD or the MP5SD, the hatchet is the tool you need!

[another penguin]

...Until you crest a hill and get shot in the face with an AK, lets not forget that Lleman. And lets also not forget that Julian became diseased because a zombie punched him while he hacked it to death.

I really think that Julian's aim in the game should be to survive one whole session with us. He's always the only one to die. :/

[Lleman]

Cocky Brit takes it in the face every time. Cowardly French dude survives all his sessions. Go explain that! XD

[another penguin]

xD Lleman. I think you just explained it yourself. But then how do you explain my continued survival, seeing as I'm British?

[Ewokz]

Only asking as the "looking for a group" section is only visible to users, unlike this section. Wasn't sure if it was ok to post the mumble details on a section of the forum that anyone who wanders onto the forums could see.


Is the melee weapon still alright with the heavy zombie damage atm? I figured it wouldn't be so great encase you got hit a few times while wadding into the horde. It being silenced is very tasty though.

[Akranadas]

You can generally exploit some of the bugs with the axe (zombies going slow up hills, clipping through doors) and use it to greatly in any situation


Also found this comic, not sure if its been posted:

[Lleman]

Penguin, i think it would be time you had a talk with your parents... XD

And Akra: the answer to that comic strip is: nyyt.

[Akranadas]

FUCK THIS GAME

This use to be fun but now its just an exercise in frustration. Zombies taking way to many shots to kill, they hit like a fucking truck and somehow are able to knock you out when your below 10000 blood, where you have to watch yourself be eaten and wait to wake up. During this time you break all your legs. Couple that with their ability to see through walls and I am just getting tired all collecting all this good gear only to die due to luck of AI rather than my own mistakes.

I'm now stuck in the middle of a fucking field, with broken bones, about 1000 blood and no food all because a zombie someone aggroed when I was creeping behind a wall. I don't want to start again, I don't want to have to spawn with no weapon and have to somehow get enough gear to just end up back where I am, all while at the mercy of the douchebags that populate the starting areas.

[bman3k]

I'm almost in the exact same situation of Akranadas with the exact same feeling right now, although I still have a can of a food and broke my bones from trying to crawl into a building while prone. I think the blurriness is too extreme, I can't even read my fucking compass at this point. I haven't been so frustrated with/bad at a game that I wanted to just stop playing in so long. Between spawning then going to a town to get shot (all within 5 minutes) and bugs like random breaking bones or falling through fucking walls the fun is really stopping for me.

On different note I finally made it to the air field before having the crap beaten out of me (leading to my current situation), I only picked up an M1014 though before I had to haul my (luckily ghillied) ass out of there.

I think it's stupid how much effort it takes to regain health relative to how quick you can die. Basically the only viable option at this point is to get blood packs, but those are only in the hospitals which are on the coast populated by aggro turds and they require an ally (good luck sifting through the aggro turds). I don't mind that I can die to like 1-2 bullets, but having to find like a thousand canned goods to regain blood is ridiculous, especially with their new low spawn rates. Also out of the thirty or so lives I've been through I've literally only found matches twice... really frustrating.

[Akranadas]

Sometimes, I wish there was a suicide option

[Ewokz]

Respawn?

I also think they need to adjust blood, maybe have it recover over time after a decent amount of time? Playing alone and suffering any damage is a death sentence at the moment (and kind of always has been but to a lesser extent) due to how hard it is to recover blood in mass, unless your lucky enough to find fire wood, matches and a knife before either you screw up, the game screws up, or you have a run of bad luck.

Worth bearing in mind it is an alpha, so if you are having trouble with it this time round just wait until the next update. Hopefully zombies will be sent back to somewhere above what they used to be but far from as OP as now.

[Akranadas]

That's the problem with this game though, it's trying so hard to be an anti-game that its only fun for the few people who manage to hoard a weapon before all the other spawners where they then proceed to kill everyone else around them. I'm tired of the 30 minute play sessions that involve nothing more than slow crouching or crawling through cities to find nothing but tin cans only to be gun downed as soon as you locate a building that does spawn good stuff.

Then this is compounded by the continuously re-spawning players looting everything from the starting towns until there is nothing left for who knows how long? This game has the potential to be great but I feel the creator is making intentionally hard for the sake of being hardcore

Anyone else feel that zombies kind of gravitate towards you when you are sneaking?

[Ewokz]

Apparently Rocket secretly added mechanics for zombies to drift towards you when you make a variety of sounds, from eating to moving. He revealed it in a PC gamer interview. Cans are useful as hell btw, always pick up some to more easily get past zed, they will be drawn to a thrown can much like they are drawn towards flares.

There is of course another way of looking at this game which makes me feel the new stuff is more justified. It forces you to play with others. Realistically surviving in a zombie apoc would be next to impossible alone, the whole point of Dayz's incredibly hard attitude towards players is to force cooperative play, which is one of the most rewarding elements of the game. Solo'ing the game is meant to hard as nails. Although its too hard at the moment.

On the note of teaming up I think I really need to get some gaming in with the dolts, I just signed on to see what was up first hand after the 1.7 update and I've found myself on the coast yet again. Luckily I still have all my gear, which is not to shabby. I don't mind giving someone (preferably Lleman as I've been looking after it for him since his death many weeks ago) the PDW as weapons seem to be rarer, my M4 should be fine for just me. I've also got all the kit I need to make our group meaty snacks which should come in handy. I'm currently just to the west of kamenka.

Given my gear though I really really really don't want to remain on the coast for long, last thing I want is to be killed by some Nyyti wannabe

[Imperial Honour]

God knows I could do with some Australian Dolts to group up with. Although I've been taking a break due to the new patch requiring the ARMA 2 Beta Patch, I'm going to wait for the beta patch to get the go ahead for retail rather then mess around with installing beta patches on top of my Steam ARMA 2 install. It is not like I don't got a glut of other games I should finish, and by then some of the existing bugs that have been popping up lately could have been ironed out.

[OutriderVS9]

Haven't picked this up in a few weeks. Would love to know if anyone wants to group up and make an epic-survivor-fortress.

[Lleman]

@Outrider: making fortresses is good and all but you need to play on the same server, which isn't always possible due to slots usage and which, if you don't pick a very remote place (e.g. outside of the map itself) will at some point or other see it pillaged by random runners. So far, the best 'fortress' i've seen is a minivan (which someone i won't mention managed to lose).

@Ewokz & any other (EU?) Dolts: run tonight, 22.00 GMT onwards; join the usual mumble channel; i'll also make that a DoltsZ announcement. Brace yourself for some extremely exciting server search. :P

Spoiler

Meetup at 22.00 GMT.

Dolts unite! Tonight we prowl the streets of various Chernarussian towns and hamlets and make our rules The Law. Trust no one else (and even so...).

Objective: find working or repairable means of transportation (yes, you can have your pushbike) and needed parts.

Usual Mumble:
server: hwcommunity.com
channel: Get A Room and/or 101

Good running, genelmens!

[Ewokz]

Sounds good Where are you guys at the moment anyway?

[Lleman]

Penguin & I: North-ish of Mogilevka, close to a potential chopper crash place;
Jules: in the respawn limboes;
The rest: unknown. [Dirty Dozen] Hoping to see PacPomarnacki and at least Ramrod, nyyti, kais and nick who haven't played with us in a while. The other lads are of course more than welcome. [/Dirty Dozen]

I guess we'll head back to the southern coastland to begin with (destination depending on the various respawns i guess) then depending on the moment either try our luck with the main lootable areas (read thrice-accursed towns) or aim inlands to known specific spawn places.

[Lleman]

Well, sod that! While heading south to catch up a bit to meet with Ewokz i just skirted the Starry milcamp. Upon hearing gunshots i probed a bit around and simply bowel-movement'ed my pants: there were two groups, or armies should i rather say, who had apparently arrived there with functional vehicles with evident harmful intent, and were shooting the crap out of each other with shotguns and auto rifles. No need to say i ran the hell out from the area and gave it the widest berth ever. Amusingly, some players which i heavily surmise were involved in that shootout got kicked from the server with strange error lines, all vehicle related. Hax warbands, most likely, don't last long in Cherna.

[Ewokz]

Well finally met up with Lleman after an hour of navigational mistakes (thought I was outside of Bor but turns out I couldn't have been as a trip south-east had me bumping into Green Mountain).
Called it a night as it was just us two tonight, it'll be smarter to mount a proper car hunt when we have a few more of us online.

The weird kick error lines were very odd, must have been something bad going on as people were being kicked out in groups of three or more. Most of the errors were car related, except for a few weapon ones which just screams hackers.

[Lleman]

That's it guys. Our very own DayZ dedicated RN IRC channel is now up and running. You'll be able to meet up using the following:
server: irc. hwcommunity.com (port: 6667)
channel: #dayz

Don't hesitate to join even if you don't play too often or are unhappy with the current version(s). The purpose of that chan is to make things much more spontaneous and 'live' than this thread, which also serves its purpose finely. The atmosphere will be relaxed but asshattery will evidently not be tolerated, as usual in our fine chans.
Waiting for you guys out there. o7

[Inq]

Banging my head against a brick wall trying to get a gun. No luck. Z's always gravitating towards me from 100m away whilst crouch sneaking. Lovely. :/

Really need to team up with some more experienced players so I don't die of starvation!

[Akranadas]

Yup. I'm done with this 'game'



Too frustrating. Just spend 2 hours in Cherno only to be one shotted by some axe guy who I was help with a blood transfusing. Fuck I hate people. You would think a bullet wound to the chest would knock him down, but noooooooo he just swings his fucking axe and takes me out. If I play this game, I am now going to kill every motherfucker I see. Even you guys.

ZERO INCENTIVE TO BE NICE.

[Lleman]

You finally made it to that point young apprentice. Well done. Now release your anger and kill your father you can play.

More seriously, the aim so far is try and survive as long as possible. No one said it would be nice nor that players would be either. Of course, it greatly helps being part of a group of regulars who will stick no matter the odds and trying to make it through alone is sometimes a real bitch.
Speaking of teaming up, we have Inq and faek, if i got that well, who are in (or around) your timezone and with whom you would fare much better were you guys to try and play a few rounds together (my bad if i mistook your locations guys...).

[Ewokz]

@Akranadas You have to team but only with people you know, playing alone is meant to be stupid and fraught with peril. Why on earth were you using a blood transfusion on a randomer?!? Should have lured him out with it then shot him in the back of the dome for that tasty axe. Any encounters with other unknowns are a ticking time-bombs of backstabbing, it might not happen right away but you can be sure that most likely they will try to murder you at some point. Stuff like that tends to be avoided with groups you make outside the game.

Seeing as I have this week off I'd be happy to team up with anyone, at most times of the day. No one should be playing alone if they don't have to, this thread, the steam group and IRC are all there to help us last as long as possible.
I'm currently at 5-6 ingame days of survival, but I'd never have got this far or as well equipped without the Dolts. Think the best I managed was 2 days alone, and the best weapon I had was a winchester, I then died because ran out of bandages nothing worse than watching your blood drain from 8k to 0.

[Akranadas]

You have to team but only with people you know, playing alone is meant to be stupid and fraught with peril. Why on earth were you using a blood transfusion on a randomer?!?

I was actually helping out other people (server had side chat) in Cherno with Blood Transfusions, Morphine, Food and Water. I had helped about 2 other players before this 3rd decided to kill me. The first two were simply thankful for the assistance and traded me items like an bigger bag or a toolbox. I was having a lot of fun simply being helpful and friendly to these players and they seemed to be very grateful after crawling all their way to me, or me going to them to help them out.

This seemed like another chance to 'do good' in a game that's all about being a complete bastard; but this guy seemed to have fun simply killing people for the sake of killing people. I didn't even have much stuff (I stored most of my gear in a ALICE pack in a shed and only set out with a blood pack, food, water and morphine) for this guy to kill me over.

Sucks that you don't get rewarded for being helpful but you get rewarded for being nasty.

[Lleman]

Akra, very honestly, if you wanted to carebear you picked the wrong game. It's not about being tough bastards, it's about actually surviving by any means and only counting on the ones you know you can trust, which in my view is a totally different perception of the game.
As to random players, well, a pub remains a pub, that is a stranger in that game's land, and as such should never be trusted however much enticing the offers to trade and rub your back. Staying clear of survivors, at the greatest distance possible, is the best you can hope in the best of days if you intend to survive a few rounds, as annoying as it may seem to you.

[Ewokz]

I'm pretty sure most people would have taken that blood and moved on thankfully. You always get some guys who are just in it for the fun of killing which is quite annoying as a more friendly community would be better to play with. I think 90% of engagements are generally just people just not knowing what the opposition is going to do and thus kills them in order to survive/stay safe. Of course this is driving the game into an area more or less like now, where people just shoot on sight and don't ever risk friendly interaction.

If you want to be helpful like that your going to need a bodyguard or 5.

[Akranadas]

The thing is, generally the server(s) I play on are full of helpful friendly people. I've had instances where I've been downed by a zombie and some random pub will trek out to where I am to patch me up, give me some blood, water and food; then be on his way. Or someone will be sitting in the highest point in Elektro, sniping zombies that are chasing you while yelling out directions when more are coming. It's that kind of kindness that I wanted to emulate on my play through, but it seems that being nice doesn't get rewarded.

It's not that I want to carebare, but its just my natural nature to suspect people to do some good. I won't survive long in the real apocalypse if it turns to this.

If you kill people you get stuff, if you don't you get nothing

Kind of makes me wish I could find a tank and go nuts on those bandit players.

[saki]

@Akra: If you really enjoy being helpful, then you need a bodyguard or two. Someone on the official DayZ forums is doing something very similar with a group and it seems to work out rather well: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=4581

Maybe you could also join up with them or ask some dolts to guard you? I think this could be a lot of fun

[Niftyeye]

For every 10 trigger happy dickheads, there seems to be 1 descent guy who will help you, share his hard-earned food with you, bandage you up, and share ammo and even give you a spare weapon.

Then you shoot him, ehehehehehehhehehe

On the serious note, I would love to team up with strangers and support them, but the amount of times Iv been shot and just shouted 'FUCK IT! LONE WOLFING FROM NOW ON' outnumbers the friendly encounters by a huge margin.

[Axyl]

For every 10 trigger happy dickheads, there seems to be 1 decent guy who will help you, share his hard-earned food with you, bandage you up, and share ammo and even give you a spare weapon.

I'm that guy.

[PacPomarnacki]

For the previous posters, yeah basically people are dicks sometimes. It used to be that you had a "Humanity meter" and that if you killed innocent people it would go down, and eventually you would be stuck with a Bandit skin which in turn warned people about your nature... you could gain Humanity by doing good, like giving people blood transfusions and healing them but the system wasn’t perfect, such as if you were an innocent (non-bandit skinned) and were attacked by another player, and in defending yourself killed them, then you would be stuck with a bandit skin which you would find very hard to get rid of, since most people wouldn’t want to receive medical help from a bandit

As such they took that particular system out. I'd say this game is pretty much a team game and whenever I die and respawn my absolute first aim (before even gathering equipment) is to meet up with my fellow survivors again as it makes thing a lot easier (such as blood transfusions).

As Lleman has said, hop into IRC/Mumble and we can all start trying to survive together!

On a side note, who's up for something like this?



It'd be a totally legit tactic against Zombies. I’m thinking everyone armed with Enfields firing in volleys, with a rank of Hatchetmen at the front to cut down any stragglers. It'll defiantly work!

[Lleman]

Maybe you could also join up with them or ask some dolts to guard you?

That's the surest way to meet the same fate as those misshapen dudes in the strip Akra posted earlier. No thanks. ;P

[Akranadas]

I did have a positive encounter last night though, which may have rekindled my faith in the DayZ community.

Was crawling into Zelenogorsk, after searching every single town for food and drink, both were red by this point so I was getting pretty desperate so my last hope was the supermarket there. I had no weapon, and almost no other equipment on me. As I crouch walked around a tall concrete wall, another player was standing on the other side; his gun pointed right at me. I stood still to try and not provoke him to attack; I honestly waited for the shot to come, we stood in this position for 30 seconds or so; obviously he was weighing up shooting me and attracting zombies or to not.

He broke the silence with a quick, "You friendly?" to which I replied "Yes", he then said "Need anything" and proceeded to give me a can of soda and a can of beans before going on his way. Its those moments I find more exciting then sneaking up to someone and killing them in cold blood.

[Ewokz]

The difference between excitement and rage are balanced on a knife edge though. I get excited when I find something useful on a dead guy

[Ewokz]

Plan for tomorrow night if all goes well and you guys are all right with it:

Red line = me and penguin
Orange = me, penguin, Jullian, Lleman or Lleman and Jullian, then all four of us do the route again.




Should pass 4 car spawns, a bike spawn, one hospital, 3 medium value industrial areas, 6 medium value farms/barns, 1 high value barn, 3 deer stands, 4 medium residential areas, 1 high residential area, 2 supermarkets and a shit ton of low level loot spots. Also the military camp of course. probably can cover all this in an hour too, I was thinking Lleman and Julian could do the orange route as me and penguin cover the red one, then we repeat the orange one?

We can head closer to the coast when we're done, though the areas there are mostly industrial so the loot wont be as good, perhaps just hit up the barn and 3 medium value apartments on the north-western side of town?

Any other Dolts feel free to join

EDIT: is this too large? The map that is.

[Akranadas]

Able to post your play times Ewoks in GMT?

[Ewokz]

We usually start at 10pm (GMT+1), though we've been known to start earlier. Personally I'm free for the week so I can play anytime from say 1pm to 1am. During ordinary weeks the earliest I'll start is 8pm, though I havent ran solo in a few weeks. I'm almost eager to die and explore Cherno again with nothing to lose, almost

[Akranadas]

Hrmm... 10pm GMT+1 is 7am for me. I could possibly play with you guys on Saturday ( your Friday night)

[Lleman]

Correction, we usually start at 22.00 GMT (not +1, furball :P).

[Ewokz]

You sure about that Lleman, GMT is currently 1 hour behind me.

See:

http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/tim...d/london/time/

Most European countries go forward an hour for daylight saving during the summer, but GMT still remains constant despite this.

From the site:

GMT is an absolute time reference & doesn't change with the seasons.

So yeah we play at 10pm GMT + 1 or 9pm GMT (which is makes more sense to post as ramrod pointed out)


@Akranadas sounds all right if your up for that, I also don't mind playing in the morning/afternoon when it should be 8-10 pm for you.