souredsoup

@PenderG Well, what I was trying to point out when I said that Dayz Standalone was a bit of a failure was that is has been in early access alpha since Dec 2013. That is a really long time for an alpha and there have been lots of promises the dev team made in their roadmap they announced back in 2015 (I think it was) that have not been implemented even now. And there may still be some people playing it, but nowhere near what it used to be. I would be surprised if the current amount of players was even 25% of the original amount of players at one time shortly after it launched on Steam. And speaking of Steam, the game has low reviews; with only 49% of them being positive in the last 30 days and overall only 63% being positive since it came out, which is *not* a good sign IMHO. Also, if it is not turning into a failure and is still so popular, where are the big youtubers who used to cover it? Where are the Dayz videos from Frankie, JamJar, Mr. Moon, KD Wolf, MrBlackout, etc? I know at least one of them still streams Dayz on Twitch (TehJamJar), but all of their youtube channels are nearly dead or they only upload videos for other games; no Dayz uploads in the last 2-3 years from any of them. Granted this might have more to do with youtube's ad-pocalypse than alot of anything else (though I doubt it since that didn't really start being a problem until earlier this year), but seems like an indicator to me that Dayz isn't fairing well these days. Not to mention there are no news items to be found on gaming news sites regarding Dayz lately. Not even any real buzz regarding the game *finally* going into Beta in 2018. BETA!!!...not even actual release yet...just finally getting to beta...after 5 years. That is not what I call a game anyone cares about anymore. It toiled too long in dev hell and I even think the dev team lost their way and began turning Dayz into their own game engine experiment gone wrong after Dean Hall bailed ship 2 years ago. And where did he go off to? He left to start his own game studio and as a matter of fact their first game just launched on Steam early access this week. Lets just say it looks...umm...yeah. Well it looks a lot like Space Engineers if Space Engineers was made by a new game studio with only a handful of years worth of combined experience. But still, Dean Hall would rather work on that than continue with Dayz. That should be indication enough to even you that something is wrong, when even the guy who was the brain-child behind Dayz wants to leave it to rot and tries to move on while still in alpha. But in the end, you have your opinion and I have mine...If you are still playing Dayz Standalone then I salute you, good sir! While I do miss me some good old Arma2 Epoch, I'll take even a bare-bones vanilla Exile server over Dayz Standalone anyday. Oh, and good to hear that the Epoch guys got their head out of their butts and are allowing players to have access to their base mod code to play with as they wish. That wasn't the case years ago when I last tried setting up an Epoch server. There were a lot of things you simply could not customize about your server if you wanted to back then. That is why I moved on over to Exile. It is so much more friendly and plays well with others. Want your Exile server to be Star Wars themed? Go for it. Want prancing ponies and rainbows? You can have that too! Want to have tanks and jets? You got it! And as for the Exile mod files...you are correct. They are not available on Steam. But you can download them from here (in the downloads section) and all you need is PBOManager (or something else to open them) to open the .pbo container and there are all the files for exile. That and a little know-how and you too can make Exile your own. Add almost any mod available on Steam or ArmaHolic. Come back here to the forums and find scripts created by others that add all kinds of new features to Exile. The sky seems to be the limit, which is somewhere around 36km high in Arma3...

Like @Flosstradamus has said, Arma2 and Arma3 are not the mods. They are the base games in a series of games made by Bohemia Interactive (B.I.), with Arma2 being released in June 2009 and Arma3 released in Sept. 2013. These games are what you might call military simulators, but have become very popular for being very / easily modifiable (i.e. mods). In other words, they have mods added to them, not the other way around. This is where mods like the original Dayz mod for Arma2 (made by Dean "The Rocket" Hall back in Aug 2012) come from. This mod became so popular and greatly increased sales of Arma2 that B.I. contracted Dean Hall to work with one of their dev teams and they created the game, 'Dayz Standalone' which released on early access on Steam in Dec 2013. So far that has become a bit of a failure and has not even come close to meeting it's development goals and I doubt anyone plays it anymore. The original Dayz mod for Arma2 (and in some ways the standalone version also) basically gave birth to the "Survival" game genre. And not just the variety of mods for Arma2 and 3, but also games like Rust, Ark Survival Evolved, and many others. Exile is yet another iteration of a "survival" style mod in the spirit of Dayz. Though it was the second of the big mods for Arma3 to become very popular with Epoch coming before it, Exile has quickly become the first choice for server owners and players alike due to it's acceptance with additional modding by the community and for it's basic survival principles. *Unlike that Epoch thing which came out first for Arma3...the devs for that are just too controlling and don't want their creation being "tampered" with by us plebes. You can find Exile servers that have zombies on them and sorta feel like Dayz, but in my opinion nothing comes truly close to that original experience. These servers will be using a mod called Ryan Zombies and/or ExileZ to approximate that old Dayz feel. But if you really want to get a closer feel to it, I would suggest getting Arma2 and it's DLCs and finding servers that are still running the old Epoch mod, though these aren't as plentiful as they once were. I don't think there are any servers running the original Dayz, or at least not very many if at all. Arma3 Exile mod is currently "where it's at" or as the kids are saying these days, "it's lit" As for the radio type chatter you may have heard in some videos, they are most likely using a mod called Task Force Radio which is an in-game voice add-on that makes it sound like you are talking through a radio. It is most popular with the players who like mil-sim (military simulation) Arma3 servers. Which are *not* to be confused with being anywhere related to Exile in play style. Hope this helps.

I haven't noticed any weapons disappearing when I attempt to shoot. Is that when this is happening? When a player attempts to fire the weapon? Edit-- I *have* had my weapon disappear after being revived since the 1.78 update to Arma happened. But never had it just vanish from my hands when playing. And I *have* seen that same gun vanish on revive bug happen before the 1.78 update when playing KoH and being 'revived' by a teammate, which would mean it sounds like an Arma thing. Though I have not seen it happen in Exile until now.

... @MisterX.highdef Just FYI. This is *not* the forums for the "Good Ole Dayz" server that you have been playing on. These are the forums for the Exile mod itself. Just the mod. Not for any particular server or another. Just Exile mod. Period. I'm glad to hear you were finally able to login on that server again.

Not using the infiSTAR for Exile. Maybe with the Epoch version because it has goats and chickens, but there are no goat assets available in Exile and infiSTAR pulls from the available assets for a mod when spawning things.

@Valthos™ I'm pretty sure everything in this thread is still related to the original topic of the 1.64 Arma3 update. I know there was what might appear to be some discussion about the Territory Protection fees and such, but that was in answer to @Lamplighter who thought the base objects may have been deleted due to the 1.64 update.

@dropcmd lol...thanks. I don't know a lot about server scripting and configuration of the server files and such, but I do get lucky now and then and know the answer to *some* things.

@dropcmd This would only affect servers that require a mod to be downloaded in order to join. There are several other server types like Wasteland, King of the Hill, Invade and Annex, etc. that do not require a mod of any kind to be downloaded to play.

Yup. Happens every time there is an update to either Arma3 or Exile. Welcome to Arma3 modded gameplay.

@dropcmd You can't really tell for certain about that. I am basing my suggestion around the fact that Steam will not be able to update a game this is launched and with A3Launcher (if it is being used) will trigger the game to be launched according to Steam even if it isn't actually running yet. This notification to Steam would be enough to prevent Arma3 from updating, yet a player can login and out from the server and even close the actual game window for Arma3 without the status of the game changing in Steam.

@Redbeard_Actual Yes. I think I'm getting the feeling that you enjoy the Zues / Admin combo aspects. I think I may just have to pop on your server tonight when I get home and check it out. If you see a player on named ImOldGregg, that will be me. (or an impostor who just read this post and likes to be a troll...lol)

@pmcc86 if those other players have not allowed Arma3 to update, perhaps because they have not closed Arma3 and had to start it again in Steam in the last few hours, then yes, they would still be able to play on the server that also has not yet updated Arma3.

@ImThatGuyM8 yes. The 'must always keep my PC up to date so must always buy newer hardware but I'm not a millionaire' struggle is real! lol But to actually provide a real legit answer to your question, which I realize I haven't really done... Honestly this is a tough question because everyone has a different opinion of what is too easy or too hard and a lot of the time, in my experience, this is based on the player's skill level really. I have, at times, struggled myself with being alert and on-point with my shooting and have been absolutely wrecked by AI and felt that they were setup to be too OP, but later on I feel more in touch with my ability to play and I am the one doing all the wrecking on the AI in return. So at first what appeared to be too hard was actually ok the next time. Barring that, there can also be actual server setup related things that can make a server too tough or too easy. For ex. I played on a server for some time that had some nice scripts that made some things like repairing your vehicle tougher to do; i.e. no more duct tape repairing the whole vehicle, but you actually needed a wheel or scrap metal in addition to duct tape and you needed to have a tool box with you, etc. and I liked that feature. The server felt just grindy enough to make it feel hard and make players move about the map to get gear and base stuff, and the missions were just tough enough to take on without them being a cake-walk. But then the server owner started adding in too many roaming AI patrols and towns that were occupied by large groups of AI, but there wasn't a map marker to alert players to the danger and you get totally destroyed by 20-30 AI you didn't know were there. All in an attempt to appeal to the 2-3 players who thought the server was too easy and wanted more hardcore experience. It started getting to be too much of a hassle when all you wanted to go do was some looting in industrial zones or for food and were constantly under attack by AI while you moved about on the map. And the server also had zombies to boot! But instead of increasing the amounts and variety of zombies, the owner chose to add more and more AI instead. In the end he lost all but those 2-3 players and less than a month later his servers disappeared from the search results when I looked again. Basically, you just can't please everyone. That's why I say that in the end, you decide what you like for your server, especially if you want to play on it too, and forget about trying to appeal to the majority of players and have a super popular server. Do it your way. If others like what you do and match your style too, then they will join and play. If not, then think of the whole experience as a learning experiment in what running a server is like. That's my approach anyway. I have a server that I own, but I just tinker on it every now and then with adding in and configuring addons and scripts and just to do something other than play when I'm not feeling like it. But I don't really care if anyone joins it or not.

No problem @ImThatGuyM8. Like I said it was just a feeling / impression I was getting. Good to hear that wasn't your actual desire when it comes to creating a server. And @Redbeard_Actual, well said. So well said I can't believe it! I may just have to look up your Arma3 Exile server and pop on for a bit of a play. If for nothing else but to see what you might do sometime with Zues. One of the things that gets to me after playing on a server for a while is if the server missions start to get stale and easily predictable. Then there isn't any real threat if you know exactly how to tackle them every time because nothing changes about them. Zues in Exile sounds like if would be an awesome thing to experience.

I say set your server up the way that you and your friends would like and if other players join it and stay, then you are doing something a little bit right anyway. I have seen a few other posts created by you (in particular your thread shown below) and I get the impression that you are obsessing about making a server that will become extremely popular and always full with players. Possibly so you could make some money on the side from player donations? Not sure, just saying this is an impression I'm getting and I might be misreading your intentions here. But the one thing to keep in mind is that 95% of servers are low pop or empty most of the time and the other 5% are full with PvPers who are following popular YouTubers and wanting to play on the servers they use. For ex. FrankieOnPCin1080p who always plays on CCG servers. The one thing to focus on IMHO is that owning a server is something that can feel rewarding when you learn how to set it up and get it running with additional scripts and addons and you figured out how to tackle some odd troubleshooting issue on your own. It also doesn't hurt that owning your own server allows you to configure it to match your own particular play style / desires when other servers just don't match your expectations.