Post 6/2 Update :

Case of disappearing Basic Shacks - this one is going to stir up a LOT or anger. Someone in my group personally had this happen to him, and driving around the map today, it's happened to a LOT of people.

Essentially the shack is gone, but everything in it is out in the open on the ground. People can literally walk up and loot your storage containers and walk away.

Case of disappearing doors - been noticing a lot of shelters with doors missing post-update as well. Essentially a little more "covered" but still 100% accessible and lootable. I suspect there will be a huge stink over this.

Solution : No idea ... don't know what caused it. At first when my group-mate started his rant, I thought it had to do with new restrictions on building near major buildings in town, however driving around the map, shacks everywhere have vanished - their boxes and grilles being a tell-tale sign that something was once there... sort of like this picture from the Titanic wreck site.

 

Post 8/27 Update :

Okay.. these are HUGE problems - game-breaking even.

• Animals are not giving up the fat, meat, or anything - the spawns are there, though scarce, but after trying to harvest them, absolutely nothing - they just vanish after a few swipes. No fat = no torches, no fuel. No meat = stuck with Rabbit Starvation and scaving. -Update- Problem Isolated to Fire Axe Usage
• BBQ broke today on 8/30 out of the blue. It had been working just fine since the 27th, but today around 2-3PM CST - they just... stopped. Now we're having to use campfires as a stop-gap measure.
• Zombies will not give up scrap cloth - I assume this is tied to the animal harvest bug as well. -Update- Problem Isolated to Fire Axe Usage
• BioFuel Spawns are GONE - Been stalking the "usual place" (Bubba's where 3 spawn) for 3 days ... literally sitting on top of the car watching it for 15-20 minutes at a time - no spawns at all. I suspect any other Biofuel spawns are also broken.
• Weather-Condition Transitions seem a bit wonky - Fog for hours - then ... INSTANT CLARITY - very strange feeling. Specular fade would be helpful there for immersion.
• Vans are see-through -If you bump up against the read quarter-panels of vans, you can see right through it. I suspect the player avatar is actually clipping into the van.
• Every once in a while ... maybe 3 times in the last 3 days - my system would blue-screen just in the middle of a direction-change and run. This is on a Windows 10 install - not sure if this is on my end, or a new bug. I've yet to experience it in any other task, be it game, live-broadcast streaming, etc.

Solutions?

No idea - but I went on the last hiatus for about 3 months because I was starting to tire of the constant wipes - let's hope the fixes don't require yet another one.

 

Continuation of Post 8/27 Update...

"The Burning Gate" - Either someone bitter was super-jelly about my base design and chucked a molotov at my gate, or this is just a bug. At first I thought the prior, but yesterday I logged in to find not only my large front gate burning, but the rear door entrance was burning too. Here's the best part ... a third door entrance, inaccessible from the outside (think Air-Lock design) was also burning.

Now I generally play on a PvE server - mainly to tinker with base build design, and actually FIND bugs in the game without having to deal with the added annoyance of getting Call-of-Dutied by "Shoot first, never ask questions" instant-gratification FPS-type players. The burning gates to my base aren't losing HP or anything leading me to worry about my base destruction.

To be perfectly honest, I even like the extra "light" it throws at night - since I built my base near a street, it acts like a giant street light at the front gate, and the rear fire lights up my "Punji Forest" in between my living space, and my "Farm base."

But, I could see this as a potential problem for PvP server players - especially if it's just a bug, and not a thrown Molotov. It would annoy people to no end to find their gates burning and melting hp off with no way of stopping the fire (even demo hammering and rebuilding the gate). The fire seems to "Float" when you open and close the gate, and destroying the gate does nothing to put out the fire, it'll just burn the air til you build a new gate in its place.

Not even rain stops this kind of fire.

 

Agreed ... it's foggier than ever.

I would gladly trade a little resolution (maybe make it look grainier like the 1st gen starlight night vision used to have) for better clarity (no fogging effects).

Example of earlier examples of night-vision graininess :



I'd also LOVE to see "Thermal imaging goggles" - obviously zombies would be nearly undetectable (dark blues and purples as opposed to red/orange/yellow/white of living things).

 

Update 9/5 :

You are Crashed to "DEATHTOP" : This one is kinda big - and REALLY annoying - and has happened twice now and I've lost 2 of the 2000 carry bags for it.

Running around, turn, change direction - game locks up. If you're in full-screen, you can't even end task because the game is frozen in the foreground. After playing the guess the alt-tab, alt E, spacebar game for endless tasks the game will finally close ... well after you died.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/are-you-****ing-kidding-me-face-240x180.png
Joygasm.


The Uselessness of Ethanol : Currently Ethanol crafting is quite a tedious task for twice the amount of fill-up you get in a vehicle. This would be satisfactory if the container of Ethanol weighed the same as Biofuel. As it stands, 2 Biofuel = 80 weight for 1/2 a tank while 1 Ethanol weighs 100 for the same amount of fuel.

Solution : Make Ethanol production have the advantage of 1/2 tank fill-ups for the same amount of carry weight of Biofuel.

 

Special VISUAL Edition - 9/6

Never-Ending Gate Fires : This is just a continuation of my 8/27 post. Technically the fire on the front gate (on the left) has been burning for 10 days straight. The other two on the right were doorways I added 4 days later and started burning as well. The middle one is an inner wall. There's absolutely no way anyone could have molotoved it due to the double-layer double-high wall setup back there.

I've provided a lovely visual aid for you. Notice that even a full day and a half of rain refuses to put out the fire.



Solution : No idea - because I have no idea what causes this. At first I thought it was a jealous player throwing a molotov just out of spite for my base design - but the inner wall thing makes me believe this is just a bug of some sort.

 

Update 9/14

"Dead Spots" on the map : This is an expansion of the "Crash to DEATHtop" bug I reported earlier - essentially I'm starting to discover that the crashes are happening in relatively specific parts of the map. One in particular that comes to mind that I can recall (because it happened 3 times) is somewhere between A2/A3 near the far-west side of the map. Just walking over there, you'll find a spot that locks up your game. The kicker? That spot CRAWLS with zombies, so by the time you panic to "End Task" ... you're long dead already - just start /respawning to get close and look for your dead zombie walking around.

Frustrations Mount - Base Ownership Concerns : Couldn't log on yesterday - logged out the day before at the Governor's mansion. Logged in today - went back to base. Here's the laundry list of questionable failures/bugs :

• Two barbed wire fences "vanished" - I built a fence/yard and it's not even a high-traffic spot where those wires were set up.
• Punji's Refuse to be repaired - so they'll die, and I'll have to make new ones
• Still no Clue how a Jeep buried in an airlock designed base could "disappear"

...and the most worrying.

• I had to re-input my gate codes to enter my own base. I was gone less than 48 hours, and I had to re-input the codes. What's worse? I don't have the option change the lock code ... as if I was a stranger to my own base.

Faaantastic.

Well... to be honest, this was just about the last straw for me. Until the maintenance system is more refined for the bases - there's almost no reason to build them or even keep one with more than 1-story because you can almost never reach all your paneling on the 2nd floors.

Ownership issues will basically make it easy for anyone to screw you out of your own base. I suspect I had to re-input the codes because someone may have brute-forced my gates with repeated attempts til they got in, simply drove the Jeep out, and closed the door behind them. Every other door other than that gate has a different code so the "rooms" were fine otherwise.

After reading the post about future content after making 20 million in pre-alpha orders... I'm beginning to lean towards the camp of expecting some results - we're almost entitled to them at this point. I skipped almost the entire summer because the updates were really weak with content ... there doesn't seem much to look forward to even from here.

 

Update 9/16 :

Ground Tamper Wear? : This may or may not be a bug - it was the first time I've had a "Farm" for this long before getting wiped. Ground tampers seem to be vanishing - do they have a finite time of use before they vanish, or is this a bug? Seeing as how there is no health status bar on them, it seems like a bug to me - I mean, c'mon, it's only tilled dirt!

Tampered Foundation Wear? : Something along the same lines - however on my farm, there is 1 Health status bar - dead center of the tampered foundation slightly underground. The best part? It's obviously not repairable! What's going to happen when that bar hits 0? Does the whole farm with every structure on it explode?

Object Placement/Pickup : Big thanks for allowing us to "re-place" things like tampered foundations and structure stairs - but could you please, for all that is holy - just give us this ability for everything placable? Is that too much to ask? Example - last night I built a Makeshift Light for my shelter (because you can't put torches in there). Not knowing which way the light throws, I put it down with a 50/50 chance it'd be facing the direction I wanted. Nope... it's against the wall, with a tiny little yellow dot ON the wall. Can't pick it up, can't rotate it. Fantastic.

The Fixes?

Add my maintenance box idea - emphasis on this before any other "new" content. It should be relatively easy to code - especially given that I've spoon-fed the details on how to make it look and work in my other thread found here =>http://h1z1forum.com/showthread.php?t=17782

Also... just make anything place-able "RE-Place-able" for 30 seconds. You gave us a great fix for a few things, now make it work for ALL things.

 

I kinda expected the tilled ground to disappear... needed confirmation of that since this was the first long-term farm I built.

As for the tampered foundation ... yeah... it has a health bar apparently - WHY?! It's just a mounded foundation!

Honestly, base maintenance is venturing deep into ridiculous.

 

Small Update 10/9/15 : I had to put the game down again - I just can't really find the long-term replay factor with the current setup with the miniscule content updates.

Right now the pattern for PvE the last dozen+ updates are pretty obvious.

• Day 1 - Zero Hour people will login, horde all the cars, start building a base with several people to "lock them down" someplace relatively obscure.
• 8-12 hours after the above, normal working stiffs like me who still find time to game 4-8 hours a day and alpha/beta test for several developers, and blog update progess and occasionally run Youtube panels discussing gaming get on to find the entire map more or less picked clean already.
• Once in a blue moon, you'll find 1 vehicle untouched or re-spawned because of a poor driver or someone bad at hiding one. Now you have to hide it in your "super-secret" place until you can get a base put up to "lock it down"
• Now you're spending the next three days building your super-base, a few days behind others who've already built hyper-compounds.
• Now the remainder of the game until the next wipe is "who can out cock-block who" by punji sticks and barbed-wiring the roads and walling off POI's.

Basically your game is over by day 5. What makes it worse - the base maintenance system is utter garbage. If you look above, I've very well covered what my solution for base maintenance should be (i.e. the Maintenance box : found here). Until something like that is implemented, I see no point in making a base since you can't reach half the parts of the base with a hammer and it decays at ridiculous rates.

PvP is even worse - most of the time the bases are cobbled together just enough to give you a couple of high-ground spots to shoo off attackers but may get picked off by snipers anyway. The entire PvP system is crap and currently panders to your "instant gratification call of duty" types who always shoot first, and never really reaches out to make their groups larger by working together. Everyone more or less have their cliques and outsiders are generally 100% expendable. Cars are just an easy-kill luxury for either the driver, or the shooter depending on how good they are at picking off the car.

I can't do it any more. I think for as long as I've been playing this, testing this, and feeding ideas that should be here to further enrich the immersion of the game - more should have been done by now. The engine seems good, the visuals are satisfactory, and the mechanics are still lagging behind by leaps and bounds.

Here's to hoping it'll improve if and when I come back after yet another 4-6 month hiatus.

I know I'm not the first to feel like this, and I certainly wont be the last either.