Arma 2: Combined Ops (ARMA 2 Base game now free!) (Zombie Mod!)

[Kageru]

This game certainly dominates in the field of in-game hacks..

[Amarr HM]

I don't mind the log-offs to avoid zombie aggro, the zombies cheat. I do admit one thing you shouldn't be allowed to log-off while bleeding and if you do, you should continue to bleed.

I haven't seen many actual hacks but there's definitely a lot of meta, which for me counteracts the alpha.

[Mrbloodworth]

This game certainly dominates in the field of in-game hacks.. .

That would be because of the client side model it uses. They can use it, because 90% of the ArmA community player missions against AI. DayZ has attracted a different sort of user, on the whole.
All Zombies are handled client side as well, hence the log out working like that.

I personally have not seen anyone hacking.

More has been added to the pending update:

* [FIXED] Inspection of dead bodies does not work (fix only applies with ArmA2 Beta 94033 and above)
* [NEW] Exponent driven probability introduced into visibility calculation
* [FIXED] Hatchet/Crowbar requires reloading ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34903 )
* [FIXED] Unlimited Wire fence/Sandbag/Tank Trap Bug ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34283 )
* [FIXED] Duplication Exploit on object pickup ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34031 )
* [FIXED] Not full magazines disappear when you reconnect ( https://dev-heaven.net/issues/33998 )

Explanation of the probability change:

Big win with the new infected targeting methods!

Now I am tweaking values. They will now have the CHANCE to detect you from much further away visually, but this rises and falls based exponentially on how close you are versus how visible you are. So if you are visible at 120m, and at 110m, you have a very low (but still possible) chance that you will be spotted. The longer you stay there the greater the chance of being spotted.

Upcomming Zed concept changes:

Fancy slowing down the animations of the zeds a bit? They're so fast that it appears jittery it seems. Also making them run directly at you in a straight line instead of zig-zagging would be cool.

That will be happening, possibly along with infected running inside buildings. Again, this all needs huge amounts of testing and I am reluctant to fuck up everything given the current build is pretty stable.

1.7.2 has some really fundamental changes in the way it is constructed, mainly geared towards performance and security. As such, this really needs to be tested very thoroughly even before it is released out to everyone here. I'm digesting as much as I can from the thread about what people want to see in it, but 1.7.2 will probably mainly focus on the rebuilding of the architecture of the "how" for infected.

I've also revised the infected spawning methods, it feels much smoother to me as well now.

[Kageru]

Are most of the Arma-II mods player versus AI? I'd assumed they were squad vs squad in the form of military recreations. I heard mention of a "Chernorus Apocalypse" which is a multiplayer only set of zombie missions that sounded cool, but apparently pretty hard (and I don't have a squad of friends interested in Arma-II co-op).

The "cheating report" forum is very active. This hack is just sort of silly, the more serious one is people triggering invulnerability, invisibility, teleport, gear generation, artillery strikes (watched a youtube video of that one) and a nuke which kills all players and objects active on the map. Though at least the last reduces some of the duped goods stocked away in off-map tent cities.

[Mrbloodworth]

A lot of that is not technically hacks, a number of those things are due to the dynamic missions system. Think, GM interface. Now, getting to that interface? Its ether unlocked, or stupidly pass-worded. Most of the stuff the ArmA 2 community plays are missions, missions require no mods, the editor is right in every client. There are a good number of PvP only mods, but its more of an exception. There are more Role play servers ( City life, Takastan life ) then Pure PvP servers, that are popular. To tell the truth, the community is so diverse, labeling them all as "PvP Hardcore" is silly. They are hardcore, hardcore about military games and realistic depictions, it is not the same breed as the typical "Please shock my balls on death" hardcore. DayZ is a special breed, in that it has attracted a huge number of users, in a short time, and has a mix of PvE and PvP as part of its point.

EDIT: I'm not saying hacking doesn't happen, it clearly does. Like the one that lifts all users in the air, and drops them.

[Kageru]

I assumed they were PvP-hardcore based on the accuracy of the simulation and it's military focus. Most of what I know of Arma-II is from doing the tutorials. I can't even imagine what an Arma-II based roleplay server looks like, but since I own the game now I appreciate the reference. Like everything these communities are pretty opaque from the outside.

There's lots of inventory hacking too. Users suddenly finding their inventory is full of weapons not actually available in the game. And apparently some way you can clone your corpse and thus basically revive from death, dupe all your equipment. The main lesson is, I think, as soon as you add persistence of some attribute hacks have value and must be considered. In a straight PvP game you'd just ban the player and restart the round with no loss. Here people are losing or skipping a lot of effort, so it means more.

[Mrbloodworth]

Persistence, and the open flood gates of more mainstream users definitely fuck up the mix.

Role play mods look like this: http://www.cityliferpg.com/

And yes, it has a PvP element, mostly in the vein of Cops and Robbers.

[Kageru]

Yeah, PvP motivates hacks too. Cheating versus zombies would just be regarded as sort of sad.

Watching a stream of some Russian guy playing with hacks enabled. Some 40 tends worth of assorted gear and some hack that means player nameplates and extrended information are visisble map wide. From his camp in the mountains he can see where everyone is. Somewhat takes the challenge out of the game. Naturally he's in Ghillie suit and high powered sniper

From time to time he calls up a menu (probably the GM interface I assume) and he has some sort of auditory warning going too. Also some feedback hidden. Hm, zombie tracking and aim-assist too.

[Mrbloodworth]

Watched that video, no that's not the editor UI. But it does look likes its using a true hack, to issues commands to the server as authoritative, but it is based off the inherent features of the editor, and ArmA ability to spawn...well anything.

[Kageru]

Salyaris hacks... but like Day-Z there's a lot of running or driving through not much. I just want to see him get into a fight, but it's taking a while.

[Mrbloodworth]

That's a really common hack suite. I can't think of a FPS that does not have some variation of it.

In other news:

* [NEW] Set Bear Traps that break player and infected legs, kills animals, when activated

  

[Amarr HM]

I highly condone bear traps (til I get caught in one of course).

[Muffled]

If you found razor wire to be obnoxious just wait until the damage requires morphine instead of bandages to recover from!  And is invisible in long grass.  Oh boy.

I'm probably burned out for good on this mod, too many times starting from zero and not enough fun moments or connections with other players.

[Malakili]

If you found razor wire to be obnoxious just wait until the damage requires morphine instead of bandages to recover from!  And is invisible in long grass.  Oh boy.

I'm probably burned out for good on this mod, too many times starting from zero and not enough fun moments or connections with other players.

It seems like a mod you really MUST play with someone else preferably over voice chat.  Going off and adventuring with a friend during the zombie apocalypse is pretty amazing.  Logging in alone isn't half as fun in my experience so far.

[CmdrSlack]

I need to find a good headset that works with both the PC and the Xbox.

I know that they exist, but the thought of going into Best Buy or somewhere like that . . . meh.

[Mrbloodworth]

I mainly play with friends myself, I highly recommend it.

[Surlyboi]

I really need to hook up with you guys at some point.

[CmdrSlack]

It seems like the biggest obstacle is finding a server we can all play on without soul-crushing lag. When I get chances to play, I have to literally look up the time in the country where the server is located to find a daylight server. I generally get hit with a lag spike every few minutes.

If we could all get together on a weekend to play, it would make life simpler in that regard.

[Kageru]

It could be fun with a group, though the idea of getting a group together from all over the map and finding a server with empty slots that's running out of timezone so you can see (about 4 Aussie servers) quickly goes into the too much work category I think.

[Kageru]

rk47 you're assuming that Rocket wants players to enjoy themselves. I see no evidence to support this theory.

I see evidence to the contrary. People pointing out that adding leg-breaking bear traps at the moment was possibly not a great idea. Response. "Where's your sense of adventure!".

Of course at this point the vocal parts of the community would cheer him on. There's a sub-community, which seems to overlap with the PvP community, who adore the idea of game that scares off the weak and proves how manly they are for being at the top of the pile.

[apocrypha]

I was being facetious, I should've put a smiley on the end of that (I thought I had actually).

I think however that his idea of what fun is will only appeal to a small minority in the long term. And that very sub-community that you talk about will eventually find themselves alone, but if that's who he wants to aim the mod at then fair enough, it's his mod after all :)

Personally I have very little interest in playing this. However, reading stories from it, and watching vids of other people doing cool/scary shit is highly entertaining. It means I get to see the awesome stuff without having to endure the nut-punching myself! 

[Malakili]

I see evidence to the contrary. People pointing out that adding leg-breaking bear traps at the moment was possibly not a great idea. Response. "Where's your sense of adventure!".

Of course at this point the vocal parts of the community would cheer him on. There's a sub-community, which seems to overlap with the PvP community, who adore the idea of game that scares off the weak and proves how manly they are for being at the top of the pile.

There is something to be said for PvP in general in the game.  It seems to me there is plenty of precedent for other survivors being just as big a threat as zombies in the zombie survival/apocalypse genre.  The bigger problem from a game is that there isn't any way for new characters to get settled when starting from 0 which can make starting over just plain not fun depending on how other people treat you.  Also, given that if you ARE part of a group that has lots of stuff stored to replenish new characters, it means that suddenly death is a lot less scary for those people as well.  The result is that the PvP side of the game isn't particularly interesting as it is currently designed.  But I don't have a problem with it in principle - to my mind it is a survival game more so than a shooter, so...not surviving.... is going to be a big part of the game too.

[Kageru]

The problem is not that there is PvP in this game, it is appropriate. The problem is it has no controls so it becomes rampant, efficient and meaningless because it supplants the zombie game. If they removed some of the extreme military weapons so PvP had counters and some human aspect rather than being a headshot from extreme range (mostly sniper rifles and night vision gear, though ghillie suits may also be an issue) that would help. If they had some sort of mechanic that discouraged constant PK (say, a humanity or reputation system) or gathered social/casual/co-op players into groups where they might be able to counter (say a safe zone / common launching point, a political system or even the bandit skin) PvP might become a productive part of the game. Even some non-PvP content would help entertain all these extremely well armed survivors.

But having full loot, no consequences, one-sided, statistic resetting PK will just attract the people who focus only on that and they will over-run anyone trying to play it as primarily a game about zombies.

That said I could also imagine that the whole exercise is pretty much a "soft-entry" teaser for Arma-II / Arma-III to get people in and keep those who adapt  to a realistic shooter. After all the Arma-II mechanics are the core of the game. The additions are persistence, scavenging (ie. memorizing spawn points, which also happen to drive you to PvP) and unusually aggressive wild-life (which inflicts conditions driving you to PvP). Though this is also a function of it being really early in it's development cycle.

I'm pretty much done with the game for now. No more mechanics to explore, I've crossed the map from end-to-end, I'm well enough geared that the only threat is camping PK's and I'm not too interested in the very slow moving PvP this game has to offer. Plus way too many bugs, hacks and exploits. I'll mess with some of the other mods maybe and watch the patch notes to see how it matures.

(edit)

A PSA from the forums:

Your better off not trying to climb anything (other than fences) in the Arma engine ( well DayZ anyway), if your player model clips it or glitches you will die instantly.

Same for rocks or boulders, never try to walk up or over them, it works 80% of the time, but occasionally you will just die.

Another one is opening and closing doors. Be very careful when doing this as you can get crushed and instant death. Try to not let the door touch you while its moving.

The last danger I can think of is trying to squeeze between to objects, like a wall and a DayZ added trash pile or rubble etc. If you can't get by very easily, just ignore it. trying to squeeze through will probably kill you.

Oh! one last one, damaged buildings, these are death traps. You can survive...but is it really worth the risk?

[Mrbloodworth]

PC Gamer live stream with the devlopers ( Dayz and BI ).

http://www.twitch.tv/pcgamer

[Kageru]

Before that one of the developers was "riding shotgun" on another guy streaming Day-Z who has attracted the attention of a hacker, to the extent of being stalked by him. For example last night he was dropping destroyers around him, set the sky on fire and had a flying radio towers. Plus the dev would revive them when the team got sniped from long range. They camped out as soon as he had to leave to focus on the PC-gamer streaming.

It would have been funny if the PC Gamer stream got hacked or PK'd, but I'm sure they lock that server down (forum confirms they played on a locked server with BI employee's and staff).

[Sky]

It would have been funny if the PC Gamer stream got hacked or PK'd, but I'm sure they lock that server down (forum confirms they played on a locked server with BI employee's and staff).

I think most of us casuals are waiting for something like this. I was on the giving end of clans vs pubs back in BF1942, it killed my interest in most shooters since (if you're not on the clan end, not fun). And really, it wasn't much fun to beat up on pubbies, either, though some guys got into it. We'd mostly just see how many snipers we could knife kill for screenshots to post to the appropriate thread in our forum.

[Malakili]

It would have been funny if the PC Gamer stream got hacked or PK'd, but I'm sure they lock that server down (forum confirms they played on a locked server with BI employee's and staff).

I think most of us casuals are waiting for something like this. I was on the giving end of clans vs pubs back in BF1942, it killed my interest in most shooters since (if you're not on the clan end, not fun). And really, it wasn't much fun to beat up on pubbies, either, though some guys got into it. We'd mostly just see how many snipers we could knife kill for screenshots to post to the appropriate thread in our forum.

I'm torn on this.  On the one hand, it would give us an easy way to all play in and contribute to the same version of the game world.  On the other hand, I do legitimately feel like a good portion of my interest in the game comes from not knowing how other people will react to seeing me (although, increasingly it is simply kill, which makes it less interesting).   I feel like that unknown element is important for a survival game, but I don't know a good way of keeping it without also just making it advantageous to always shoot first and ask questions later.  Newbies have nothing to offer veterans, so they aren't worth keeping alive, and it is always easier to take someone's gear after killing them than to work out some kind of sharing agreement.  If they could figure out a way to encourage people to work together (or even form de facto factions) in the game world, then I think it would be improved. 

I still find the game/mod entertaining in its current iteration, but I think it could be greatly improved.  I've also been playing Project Zomboid in its various alpha releases and from a game standpoint I prefer its mechanics to DayZ.  If/when PZ implements multiplayer I think it would eclipse DayZ for me as the must play zombie game.  Single player only is holding it back at the moment.

[Sky]

I've caught some shit for this in Blood Bowl (and ultimately quit the league because I'm a minority of one on it): Getting pk'd by some random jackass who plays Arma2 all day is not fun. Getting pkd at 600m by Shirleybob and his goddamned sniper rifle = friendly rivalry.

[Azazel]

Personally I have very little interest in playing this. However, reading stories from it, and watching vids of other people doing cool/scary shit is highly entertaining. It means I get to see the awesome stuff without having to endure the nut-punching myself! 

Well said and sums up my attitude pretty well myself. I'd like to want to play it, but I just don't have the time or inclination for that level of nut-punching.

[Kageru]

At the moment most of the forum is trying to work out if the developer has burnt out already. There's an image of him posting something along those lines on hacking forum (eg an "I'm done, you killed it") and he hasn't posted on the forums since. After an average 15+ posts a day.

Though I'd expect he's just taking a weekend and accepting he can only invest so much energy in the project if he doesn't want to burn out. The scope of what he's attempting done as a mod, on a engine that hinders as much as it helps, is really pretty nuts.

[Mrbloodworth]

RE: Offical Word ?
Busy, still alive though, or at least he does a good job at pretending.

Hes fine, likely just working on the patch or ArmA 3. There was a LOT of background stuff in this pending patch, including some hefty rewrites and a large chunk of stuff dependent on the ArmA 2 beta patch stuff. They are also going to this event: http://www.rezzed.com

[Mrbloodworth]

He speaks:

RE: Where hell did Rocket go?
Im here! I just moved everything to Prague. 1.7.2 has been ongoing, in between the drama that occurs when you're trying to move in a country which you don't speak the language.

[Mrbloodworth]

Some back-end DB stuff:

Database cleanup [2012-07-03]
2012-07-03
* Various improvement and changes at backend in preparation of 1.7.2.
* Cleanup of objects:
- Removed legacy wire fences, tank traps and sandbags that are older than time itself (before we started tracking their age).
In the future we'll start cleaning up unused wire fence, tank traps and sandbags that arent "maintained" in a certain period of time.

- Removed empty tents that are older than 7 days.
In the future tents will start decaying more quickly (depends on factors such as if the placing character is still alive, if someone has used the tent in X amount of days - this is still subject to change).

- Destroyed vehicles respawned using the simple method (will appear on next server restart). More advanced method will be used later (dynamic locations, inventory, vehicle types etc).

[CmdrSlack]

S
- Removed legacy wire fences, tank traps and sandbags that are older than time itself (before we started tracking their age).
In the future we'll start cleaning up unused wire fence, tank traps and sandbags that arent "maintained" in a certain period of time.

This would be awesome, in particular if it means that I won't find as many useful item spawns randomly cockblocked by some asshat's razor wire.

[Mrbloodworth]

I'm not sure that's to address that, not directly anyway. But I do think we will see a change in how deployables are handled and removed.