carbine781 (DayZ)

PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS MY PERSONAL OPINION. IF YOU DON'T AGREE WITH IT, PLEASE DON'T BE RUDE ABOUT IT. And Yes, I know the post is long, but i think this could significantly help the game (that being said, i did write it :P) First things first, I'm fine with banditry, in fact, I like playing as a bandit. What i don't like are people who just shoot on sight for no real reason. "Why not?" they think. "Whats the big deal?" When DayZ standalone first came out, it was a game about survival. People would try to team up with people to help them survive in the harsh world. Although bandits were around back then, they would kill to take your supplies, another form of survival. Unfortunately, lately, people just shoot on sight for the hell of shooting. Here are some reasons: Zombie's are easy to avoidEasy to survive with very little suppliesBoredomTheres No Risk In Firing GunShotsBasically, people realized that you don't need to befriend people to survive because you don't need their help. Bandits no longer think twice on wether it's better to rob or shoot you because they no longer have a fear of gunshots attracting zombies; zombies are easy to get away from. Long story short, people realized that it was very easy to survive without much effort. One of my posts I made was a guide on how to get up north. It had a long list of supplies you would need to survive. Many people commented saying "I just find a hatchet, a can of beans, 1-2 cokes, and i easily get to stary sober(a town in the north incase you didn't know)". That right there tells me, there is something wrong with the game! Anyway, here were some ideas on how to fix this: 1. Make Zombies Dangerous! Make it a big deal to fire gunshots again. Make robbing people an alternative instead of just shooting them. A few changes i think that should happen is making zombies swarm more, and do more damage when aggravated. Make them have a 30% change of bleeding you, and then another 30% of getting an infection if they make you bleed. Maybe you can make them harder to attract(without gunfire) to balance it out. Also, even though I admit I use this, get rid of the glitches that allow you to hide in a tree and they lose sight of you (i'm not talking about dodging trees, but finding a nearby pine tree, and just hiding in it's leaves. The zombies will run to you, and then when they are just a foot away, turn around). Also let them run in buildings. If zombies are after you, they will begin to swarm. Then, you need to fire gunshots. This is where teamwork is needed. If you find somebody, you'll need and want there help. 2. Make it harder to go long distances They need to do some adjustments on stamina. I'm not talking about pulling a WarZ where you can only sprint for 10 seconds before resting. Make it so a person can jog for a long time, but slowly slows down. After maybe 10-15 minutes or so of constant jogging, the player needs to rest for a minute or so. If you are in a dangerous situation however (zombies chasing you), your character will know and you will bypass this, allowing you to keep running until you are in a safe location (or at least your character thinks so). That being said, don't make it too easy, where you can outrun zombies easily. If you aren't able to lose them through a giant forest, your gun must come to use. Make it so you also lose stamina when you are running up hills. When you are jogging for a long time, especially up steep hills, you become thirsty. Make sure that you need to drink more often. I'm fine with the way hunger is set up to be honest. So, what does this do? Zombies are now more dangerous, and it's harder to travel by yourself. You now need the help of other people in order to survive the zombies if they begin attacking you. Since it is hard to travel, you also need a friend to help you out, especially if you are in a dire situation. Bandits may resort to robbing instead of killing now, and this should definitely help the shoot on sight problem because firing your weapon is a bigger risk now. Hope you enjoyed. Any comments or concerns, please comment it below. -Carbine781

Lets just hope that the hordes don't drop the game by 20 FPS...lol :facepalm: The one problem I have with giving my items away is simply that like you did, it seems that the player interaction was more 'forced' then natural. It was very nice of you to do this, and if you enjoy doing this, I don't have a problem with it. However, the developers need to make player interaction 'needed' for survival. There could be 2 ways to do it: be friendly and team up, or rob somebody and take their gear (firing weapons not recommended if there are massive hordes :D ) Anyway, thank you for the post. +1 Beans

I do have a couple of solutions that many people agreed with. Check it out here :) : http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/182013-ideas-and-real-life-factors-that-could-make-dayz-more-realistic-which-could-prevent-shooting-on-sight-in-the-long-run/

You raise a good point. I guess bullet size, where you hit a zombie with said bullet, etc, should all have different factors on how hard it is to kill a zombie.

Food atm is hard to find in my opinion. Personally, you should spawn with a little bit of food and water instead of just a flash light (reason: I don't know the backstory of your character, but lets say he was came to Chernarus for a camping trip and what not... he would've brought some food, water, and other supplies with him, right?) So it should either be (in my opinion): Spawn With some food and water, and keep these resources rare throughout the mapSpawn without food and water, but make it easier to find.

I do not agree with you here. First of all, I'm pretty sure whoever owns the server gets a log of deaths, etc, and could notice any suspicious activity. Also, allowing the entire server to know when somebody has gone on a 'kill streak' or when somebody has died is unfair to the player at times.

I made a post a couple weeks ago about hordes, sound and how they could affect DayZ. I agree with what seems to be the majority vote atm: Extreme amount of zombies in once high-population areas and high loot areas. Heavy fighting in those areas

That is something that military guns could provide; 1 shot zombie kills. Therefore, it would be a little 'easier' to kill zombie hordes... but still not the safest idea in the world. Also, based on what weapon you are using, I think it would be cool if zombies got knocked back by them. Ex: You hit them with an axe, they may flinch. If you shoot them, they may stumble and lose their balance, and a second later, they will get back up, etc.

I agree with you 100%. I also think people will have to resort to following a survivor out of a city or into a building and then instead of killing on sight, they will have to rob them for loot.

A little update to my opinions: I am also a bigger fan of the fast and weak type of zombies (such as the ones seen in the mod and in 28 days later) then the slow and tanky zombies. Personally, running away from them adds more of a thrill as you can't really stop and think or they will catch up to you. Also, as for my sound idea, I just think it would be cool if I was walking with a friend throughout a field somewhere up north. It would be night time, and we would think we were alone until we heard an echo of a gunshot far away. I think adding stuff like this (basically my sound idea) would be really fun, but as @swingbr pointed out, it could be intensive on the engine. However, and excuse me if I'm wrong, but if this was all run on the servers and not individual clients, it wouldn't be so computer intensive. Like when a sound is made, a lets say 1 KM and 3 KM radius is formed, and people/ zombies within those certain radius' will be affected differently (ex: A player will receive a sound file of a far away gun shot). I also believe that zombies should get knocked back/flinch/stumble from the force of a bullet, axe swing, etc. Sorry for the additional text wall. These are just my thoughts.

I have yet to find a chainsaw. If you go to a military area and search every bit of it (under the beds in barracks, every corner of a hanger, etc), you'll find weapons and ammo and what not. I also haven't found a bullet proof vest. Many of the items i've seen on this list i have either forgotten about or had no idea about them in the first place. You just have to keep searching. Thats one of the fun parts about DayZ.

Hi guys. Do any of you guys have any tips for optimizing DayZ and getting more FPS on it? I did try going to my DayZ.cfg in my documents folder, and changing both "GPU_MaxFramesAhead=1000;" and "GPU_DetectedFramesAhead=3;" to 1. I'm pretty sure that helped quite a bit (which is weird because that trick didn't seem to help me in Arma 2 OA). Thats being said, if anybody else has more FPS tips, please let me know :) Thank you.

Hi guys. If any dev sees this, I have a quick question: Can we expect more optimization to be done, and if so, how much of a performance increase are you guys expecting when all the optimization is done? Hopefully, the game will get optimized a lot more. I was able to run Arma 2 OA on single player and on some multiplayer servers (Domination, Takistan Life Revolution, DayZ sometimes) with 'high/very high' settings. At the moment in DayZ, I'm running on 100% resolution, but everything else is on low/very low/disabled. I have also edited some of the file settings a bit. When roaming the coast, i get around ~30 FPS. In Elektro and the 2 cities north of Cherno, it drops below 15 sometimes, and averages around 19. Oddly enough, in the heart of Cherno (In the town square with the plane wreck), My FPS is around ~28 instead of 15. It seems that Cherno is better optimized then before. Keep up the good work. The map looks really great... I just want the ability to run it! :P Specs: Nvidia Geforce GT 650m, 1024 MB Intel HD Graphics 4000 (I run a bootcamped Mac, yes i know, please don't give me crap for it) 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 Processor 8GB Ram

That sucks. However, i think the devs will work more on optimization, as people with high end graphics cards are struggling.

A guy by the name of commander pixel made this vid: Hope it helps. I recommend subscribing too.

At 100% resolution, ambient occlusion and post processing disabled, textures and texture filtering on normal, and everything else on low/normal/verylow, i get around ~30 fps in forests and small towns. It used to be higher, but i think my computer has been acting a little weird. Last time i was at cherno, it was about 28 and the cities north of cherno and elektro are about 15.

This review is pretty long. If you want a quick summary, Scroll down and just read the Pros/Cons section. You can also read my rating if you like. I've been a fan of the DayZ mod since the Summer of 2012, when I began playing. The reason I really wanted to get it was because I watched a video of 3 of my friends running away from 20 zombies while they were heading to Stary Sobor. From there on, i went through all the trouble of trying to put a windows partition onto my mac (yes i have a mac. Please don't give me crap for it, and I know i am going to regret saying that I have a mac because you probably stopped reading and are making a comment now...) and I eventually got the game. Finally, the DayZ Standalone has come out, and I bought it the day it came out. I am going to tell you my personal thoughts of it and wether it is worth buying or not. Note: This review is based on my personal experience with the game. Also, the review is based on the stage the alpha was in when i wrote this (less then 48 hours after release). I know the game is a pre-alpha and that the game has many bugs in it (Rocket even warned us), i'm just reviewing the game in it's current state to let you know if it is worth getting now, etc. Concept: Incase you didn't already know, DayZ is a game about survival. Set in a 230 sq km world (thats actually quite big), you must explore the world, find resources, and survive the harsh zombie apocalypse. You must go into dangerous towns, and find supplies. If you meet somebody along the way, you can team up with them or betray them (or both). Basically, this game is your own story that you can create. It's all unscripted. You make all of the decisions (that is unless you were kidnapped ingame. Then, you are probably screwed). Performance/Optimization: Performance wise, I was actually disappointed. It didn't seem that much different from the actual mod. I was a bit disappointed when i was getting 15 fps in some cities (specifically, Chernogorsk and the 2 cities north of Chernogorsk). My laptop specs aren't very good (Nvidia Geforce GT 650M Graphics card and an intel Hd 4000 Graphics Card, Intel Core i7-3615QM CPU, 2.30 GHz processor), but they were able to run Arma 2 Operation arrowhead in single player (and on domination/Takistan Life Revolution servers) on High/Very High settings with a solid 30 frame rate. On DayZ servers, I would have to lower my settings down a lot, and still, my framerate would often drop below 30. I really hope that the game is optimized a lot more. Thankfully, it is just a pre-alpha, so we have time. I just hope that the DayZ team are working on optimizing the game. GamePlay: Animations feel a lot smoother. It is a lot easier to control your player. Not only is it easy to move around, but you can now jump while running, change weapons while running, and more. The team also added new animations for eating, bandaging, etc. The map of DayZ is gorgeous. Not only does it look great on good visual settings, the specs of the map are impressive. It is 230 sq km big, and 95% of the buildings are enterable. A big problem with the DayZ mod was that everybody would attack you on sight. I have not encountered this in DayZ standalone. Infact, before i wrote this review, i teamed up with 3 people I met in a town north of Cherno. Note: That doens't mean there aren't bandits (this one guy, who i was met and was playing with for about 20 minutes, hit me in the face with a shovel when I told him i was about to die of blood loss). Additionally, since DayZ standalone just came out, I am not sure if this friendliness aspect will stay much longer. Once people get comfortable with the game, and if it becomes too easy to survive by yourself, people will grow less friendly. This is what happened in the mod; it was confusing at first, but then, people realized how easy it was to surive. The new inventory system is very easy to use. It has been transformed into an easy drag and drop system. However, it can be a bit confusing at first. Basic things, such as turning on your flashlight, took some people some time to learn. Also, there were a couple of glitches I encountered where i accidentally somehow made one of my items vanish. Also, switching items was hard to do, and seemed confusing. Gameplay wise, the 4 biggest problems I had (besides some fps issues) were: Almost no loot found, zombies act weird, the melee system is very bad, I was constantly in need for water and food (and this problem is even bigger when I couldn't find any loot). Zombies no longer zig zag as much, but thats about it. They can hit and move through walls, and they aren't very threatening. Then they get to you, they stop, and then 1 second later, claw at you. Then they stop, maybe look around for a couple seconds, and claw at you once more. There also seems to be a lack of zombies in cities. As for the melee system, it does not work at all. It was very hard to hit even a stationary zombie. I would also find myself hitting objects (or other people accidentally) right next to me when I swung. In some cases, I could've sworn i hit somebody behind me. If the melee system acted more like that of Left 4 Dead 2, it would become an extremely affective way of survival. As for lack of loot, thats pretty self explanitory. Remember that group of me and 3 other guys i was talking about? we were looting every single house in a town, and we couldn't find any food or water. Besides these for main problems in the game currently, I found that it was also hard to pick up some loot, and it was hard to get in range of something to complete an action (ex: if i go near a ladder, i will have to position myself a few times until i see the icon that says I can go up the ladder). Also, an old glitch where you can warp through a wall in the firestation tower by jumping onto the ladder on the other side is still there. Pros: Amazing open world Friendly people (as of now) New items such as clothes Zombies don't zigzag anymore New animations New Inventory system Many fun moments with random survivors you meet in the game. Many more features to come ( I didn't mention this, but they are adding more animals to hunt, vehicles, more items and weapons, basebuilding, etc. Lots to look forward to) Cons: Big FPS drops in big cities Although they no longer zigzag, zombies are almost not a threat and they are glitchy. Lack of zombies. Melee weapons are buggy and don't work well. Lack of loot. Inventory system is a bit buggy. Fast starvation and dehydration. Firestation ladder glitch. To quickly sum it up: The game has a lot of potential. The map is great, and it is a great experience when you meet people and you go on an adventure with them. The game has many new items to find. Optimization isn't very good in big cities, and while there is a lack of zombies, glitchy zombies, barely any loot, some bugs, and a bad melee system, those can be fixed with some work. My biggest concern is optimization. I really hope they find some bugs that when fixed, will give fps boosts. With many good features to come, the game has some serious potential. I am looking forward to seeing how it evolves. Ratings (as of the game's current state): For a new unexperienced player: 3.5/10 - I do not recommend that you buy now. Get something else for Christmas. For somebody who enjoyed playing the mod, but didn't play often: 5.5/10 - It depends on how much you want to play the game. It may be worth getting now to save the money. For a fan who has played the mod for a long time and loves DayZ: 7/10 - If you have been waiting for what seems like forever for this game to come out, then I would get it. Just remember that it is an alpha and that it won't be the great zombie survival game just yet. Please give me some beans if you enjoyed the review :)

Don't forget that DayZ is hardcore. Thats the best part of the game. There is risk/reward. If the game is too easy, people will begin shooting on sight (yes there is some now, but it will get a lot worse if it's super easy to survive).

I use 64 bit windows 7.

bump

In the end of the day, there will be always be new players in every game. I don't exactly think veterans are harmful to the game, but I will admit, learning the ropes during the current stage of the alpha is a lot harder then learning the game 1 1/2 years ago, when I began playing. Rocket also stated that the alpha was only for hardcore fans.

lol :P

Haha nice video. Beans given.

I agree. Rocket even had a warning stating this on the steam page.

I know. I wrote at the top to skip to the Pros and Cons part which basically summed everything up if you didn't want to read the entire thing.