bfisher

What else is there to do besides PvP? I just came from NWAF with a scoped Sa58V, three full water bottles, half a cow and all the regular survival equipment. I don't need anything else to survive at this point. I could live in the wilderness indefinitely. But that's pretty boring. I'm making my way south but it's just endless farms, fields and medium-sized towns. There's nothing I particularly need in any of towns and they don't have anything particularly interesting that makes them worth exploring for their own sake. I'm outside Pustoscha and I see this player crouch-walking up the road a few hundred yards away. I have nothing better to do so I took a pot shot at him. It missed and I think he combat logged off. I sniped a few zombies to get some practice then I logged off as well. I'm not really sure what my point is. Maybe it's that if the PvZ and PvE aspects were a bit more difficult, I would have tried harder to kill or team up with this player out of desperation to survive. Instead of just taking half-assed pot shots because I was bored. I mean when was the last time your character died of thirst or hunger?

*Sigh* Everyone has their own version of what DayZ "should" be. Some people want to go around PvPing everyone they see. Others want a big Boy Scout camping simulator with zombies. I think there should be abandoned vehicles everywhere, but purists disagree with me. Zombies are going to be polished up in the standalone. The whole problem in the mod is that they are based off of ArmA II soldiers. In the SA they will be controlled globally by the server instead of just spawning as player early warning systems in towns. Their pathfinding is going to be fixed. They will run indoors. I assume all the other bugs will be worked out as well. With more buildings and more loot spawns, I assume the SA will be more than just a race to NWAF for carbines and STANAG mags. But it's a zombie apocalypse. Expect people to shoot at you.

I guess I'm having trouble envisioning what sort of gameplay people have in mind with bases. Do people want an impenetrable locker where they can stockpile their guns and beef steaks? Because I think that sort of defeats the purpose. Do people want to create a fortified house where they can hide like Dr Robert Neville? Maybe spend their evenings fortifying or crafting weapons? I never really base build anyway. I don't see the advantage of being tied to a fixed spot. I'd rather just carry what I can and scrounge around when I need more.

Safely hide gear? I don't think YOU should be safely hidden when you log off. When you log off, your character should just curl up in a sleeping bag and hope no one robs or kills you while you are offline.

I want more polish and more content. More zombies with better AI (how hard is zombie AI...zombie has to do two things - wander aimlessly and run straight at anything it sees and hears and kill it). More buildings to enter. More variety of stuff couldn't hurt. More and better interaction with the environment. Maybe put more stuff in the vast stretches of wilderness between points of interest.

I don't know about "leveling up". There would definitely be a lot of incentive to kill noobspawns just to get better at killing noobspawns. Maybe stuff like endurance, weight and speed should be tweeked so you can't sprint flat out for 45 miles in a ghilie suit, full ALICE pack and 30 lb AS50 in your arms?

While we're wishing for stuff, I think it would be cool if Rocket did more stuff with fire in the standalone. Sort of like what they did with dynamic fire in Far Cry 2. Like you can light the trees, grass and buildings (and zombies) on fire and it will spread depending on wind and conditions. Leaving a campfire unattended or throwing a road flare into the grass has some percent chance of starting a fire. Or when vehicles crash and explode. Maybe even have flamethrowers or molotov coctails (combine bottle + fuel). Anyhow, at least something better than the crappy orange Aurora Boriellis effect ArmA II uses now.

Here's the way I see it. Rocket made this awesome game out of a mod of ArmA II. It's buggy and imperfect, but it demonstrated the possibilities, and just as importantly, the market potential of a massive open-world sandbox game with no rules or story other what comes out of your interaction with the enviroment and other players. The Standalone is meant to be a more polished, more stable version with more content. That means a lot of new development. And as far as I can tell, Rocket is a relatively inexperienced program manager. My concern isn't that it's late. I'm concerned it might linger in a never ending development limbo like Duke Nukem Forever. Or it does get released and they changed the gameplay in some fundamental way in an attempt to please all fans that makes it suck for everyone.

They come out with a new Battlefield or Call of Duty like every year. And killing zombies never goes out of style. I'm sure DayZ 2.0 AKA the Stand Alone will have as much of an audience in 3-18 months.

I mean it could fail. I hope it doesn't, but it happens. Let's be honest. The Dayz mod is a lot of fun and it's a really cool idea, but if it were released as-is as a production quality game, it would be terrible. Crappy zombie AI / pathfinding, buggy, hacker ridden, easily exploitable, glitchy, poorly balanced, vast stretches of empty wilderness and boarded up homes, not many ways to interact with the environment, no purpose, not much to do, stiff animations, clunky interface, poor physics, bad vehicle handling, and a pretty crappy community (not so much you guys :D I'm talking about the hackers, combat logging pussies, and retarded 13 year olds screeching over side chat). And even the community that isn't crappy is pretty fractured. More guns. Less guns. Sniper rifles. No sniper rifles. More vehicles. Less vehicles. Melee weapons. No melee weapons. Military supplies. Less military stuff. Base building and zombie killing and PvP vs PvE. For the SA to be successfull, Rocket needs to address A LOT of these issues without creating a watered down game that doesn't please anyone. So lets home he gets inspired by his Everest trip and doesn't...I don't know...die up there. Cap'n - The DayZ map is nowhere the size of ANY state. At 225 km^2 Chernarus is about exactly the size of Martha's Vinyard, MA.

I killed a player outside of Stary Sobor once by blasting him in the back of the head with a shotgun. I felt really bad until I saw he had a CZ550 and appeared to be taking up a sniper position. I probably saved a lot of lives that day.

Honestly, unless you go to a high vehicle private server, they are just more trouble than they are worth. Vehicles are so rare that if you actually do find one, you probably just want to hide it in some dark corner of Cherno lest you bottom out on a washing machine or get ambushed by some bandits (because they see/hear you coming a mile away). I mean think about how much walking around you need to do to actually find a vehicle and then get all the parts to repair it. You could just walk to wherever you want to go in the first place.

So I was walking through the woods south of Zernogorsk this morning, on my way to the store to pick up some breakfast. My blood was pretty low. Around 5000 from a gunfight I had with a sniper in Kamarova the day before. I'm walking around, minding my own business when all of a sudden, I just silently keel over dead. Probably instakilled by a hacker I think, although it's a private hive and there are only about 7 people on. Still, it's DayZ. I manage to run back and find my body. Everything is there EXCEPT the silenced M4 HOLO I had in my Survival ACU pack. The M14 AIM is still there. All the food and gear and ammo. Even the STANAG mags for the M4. Anyhow, the whole thing seemed weird.

A little Johnny Cash of course: or Someone was asking about the 28 Days Later theme: A Pefect Circle - Outsider [Apocalypse Remix]:

Had some free time so I decided to create a sort of travel risk advisory map for new players (or anyone really). It's not scientific or anything. Mostly it's just based on common knowledge gleaned from experience, forum talk, so on and so forth. The idea is help relatively new and inexperienced players make informed decisions during their travel through Cherno: RED - Extreme Risk - Avoid all travel. Almost certain to encounter well armed and hostile survivors, bandits and snipers. But of course you will ignore this advisory because of the sweet sweeeet loot spawns. Includes Cherno, Electro, Stary Sobor, NWAF, Balota, Green Mountain (because it's freaky as hell). ORANGE - High Risk - Avoid unnecessary travel. High chance of encountering other players who may be well armed and hostile. Areas are well traveled by players or include high loot spawns, points of interest, large areas with little to no cover or close proximity to Extreme Risk areas. Includes Berenzino, Zelenogorsk, NEAF and the large swaths of farmland around NWAF. YELLOW - Elevated Risk - Travel with caution. Mostly direct travel routes between other areas of interest and smaller towns. Possibility of encountering other players in the area. BLUE - Normal Risk - Take normal precautions when travelling. Mostly wooded areas in unpopulated areas, but as this is DayZ, you should always have your guard up. Remember that other players and zombies can be encountered anywhere. There are no "safe" areas and I take no responsibility if you are killed.

Joke answer: Green Mountain freaks me out. Nothing good happens there! More serious answer: Green Mountain falls within a sort of Iron Triangle of Zelenogorsk, Cherno and NWAF/Stary. Zelenogorsk isn't as hot as Cherno and NWAF, but because of the market and it's location, it does get a lot of traffic to and from the coast up through NWAF and Stary. So I gave most of the roads and fields between those locations at least an "Elevated" level of risk. Since Green Mountain is a point of interest within a Elevated zone, has a military spawn, not to mention that giant tower, I recommend at least a "High" level of caution. Plus with all the crazy stories, I say better safe than sorry and just bumped it up to "High" risk. :D

I have said it before and I will say it again. In this world, you are Dr Robert Neville, Snake Plissken, Mad Max, Eli, The Postman, the Man from The Road. A lone wandering trying to survive in a world of A-holes. Unless you are playing with some pals, you have to assume that everyone you meet is a crazed desperate psycho looking to kill you for a can of beans or simply for shits and giggles. Yes, the OP has some valid points. But they have already been done to death. We all know the zombies are hardly a threat and there isn't much to actually "do" besides be a care bare and live off steaks in the deep woods or be a bandit psycho and hunt bambis. It's not Minecraft. The mechanics of the game are such that there is no advantage to building and securing a base of operations, other than that you happen to have too much shit to carry in a backpack. There's not much need to cooperate with strangers once you are geared up because finding food and liquid is a trivial matter once you know how.

I did say "any anyone else". I figured new players would need it more than people who have been here awhile. It wasn't meant as a slight.

I found a fresh crash this morning just south of NWAF. Swapped out my AKM for an M14 AIM and a silenced M4 HOLO for when I need to use my indoor voice. Plus some morphine. I was pretty psyched I wouldn't have to risk a dangerous raid to NWAF, Cherno or Electro for more weapons and medical supplies. Now to find some people to kill.

You may be too soft and sensitive to survive in the world of DayZ

They should put BUIS (Back Up Iron Sight) mounts in the standalone so people like you don't need to carry two M14s around.

Seriously, I rarely KOS unless it's a bandit. If I kill you, you probably deserved it.

It's not passworded, but recently I've been playing on a Cherno private hive that goes by the name "laughingman" (I guess he's a big Ghost in the Shell fan). You do start with a map, compass, hunting knife and matches, so it might not be for the DayZ purist. But that stuff is easy enough to find anyway. The plus side is it seems to be relatively hacker-free and I haven't found too many idiots on the servers. People will either be proper bandits or will respect "friendly" challenges. Occasionally someone might get nervous and shoot you if you don't respond fast enough, but for the most part I haven't met too many retards.

I used to. You get over it quickly.

Hackers. Lag. Crappy game engine. It happens. I hit a guy square with a Ural truck, then backed over him three times and he survived and killed me. He claims he wasn't hacking and the server was so glitchy I can't be sure. OTOH, I've been in gunfights where I've taken a lot of AK rounds without going down.