bfisher

To be honest, if they implement hundreds of zombies, I have no problem with whatever manner of weapon they introduce as well.

It should. The freakin Mod worked for that many. Back in the Mod days, just sneaking into Balota airfield to snag an AK was fraught with danger as you might alert one of the dozens of zombies hanging around the base. It used to be hilarious to watch some poor noob trap himself in the ATC tower. Really, zombies turn the game into a Walking Dead simulator. Sure, they are terrifying at first when you are new and disoriented and have no weapons. But ultimately they become a minor nuisance to your clan of ten guys decked out in SWAT gear and silenced automatic weapons.

This. I think too many players have forgot or never knew the horror of firing a Lee Enfield in Cherno, only to be swarmed by 30 zombies. it will really change the dynamic once you have to figure out how to enter a major city full of zombies.

I think you mean "figuratively".

1) The loot spawning isn't exactly "balanced" at the moment. 2) Loot is both everywhere and nowhere. There are few places now where you can just walk in and gear up in one stop like in the Mod. Now it's a lot of going through buildings and maybe find a gun here, maybe some matches there. Which is sort of the point IMHO.

I played for a few hours today. Spawned in Kamyshovo on a full server and quickly found a bat, clip of 7.62mm and sunglasses, but not much else. Came across another new spawn with a pick ax and a cowboy hat. After a brief tense exchange, we decided to team up and made our way west. I eventually found a shotgun but no shells and he picked up a Mosin. He seemed ok so far and was going on about how his last partner killed him after a few hours for no reason, but I wasn't ready to trust him enough to give him the ammo for his weapon. From his lack of basic geography knowledge and his seeming surprise that people just kill you for no reason, I quickly ascertain he is new to DayZ. Or maybe that's what he wants me to think. Electro was curiously free of snipers and bandits. All of a sudden, my partner started taking hits to the face from an unseen opponent. Then it looked like he passed out and an exact duplicate walked up to the body. He thought I had hit him with the bat until he received a message "sorry..I just wanted your Mosin", leading us to believe he was hacked. The hacker was nice enough to leave my partner an SKS though so as a token of trust that I didn't attack him, I gave him the ammo (which actually wouldn't have fit the Mosin anyway). A second later, a Kid wearing a welders helmet and a puffy coat rounds the corner. Still on edge from the hackattack, we hold him at gunpoint until we ascertain he is harmless. We invite him to join, but shortly thereafter Kid tells us he is glitched and asks us to kill him. Partner is about to shoot him in the head, but we're short on ammo so I convince him that the melees weapons would be more appropriate. Sadly we go about the unfortunate task of beating Kid to death. We make our way through Electro without further incident, killing a few zombies and picking up just enough food and drink to not die of starvation. We get to know each other a little better as we head towards Cherno. We discuss how the zombies are still sort of wonky (as we kill a few along the way). I'm literally dying of thirst so we stop at a pond to take on water. I accidently wade into the pond and while I'm wringing my clothes out, I spot player contact coming directly at his. Partner heads off to intercept while I'm stuck in "wring clothes" animations for a minute or so. I catch up with my Partner inside a nearby house, standing over the dead player. "I'm sorry you had to see that" he says. "Yeah..it's a real affront to my delicate sensibilities." I reply. "Lets get the fuck out of here in case he has friends who actually have ammo in their guns". Cherno's a bust ammo-wise, but at least we aren't going to die of hunger or thirst. And the weather is balmy enough that the dampness isn't a factor. Coming around a corner, all of a sudden, I see another player point his gun at me and yells "don't move!!" Turns out it's just my Partner in a different hat, but more alarming is the third player right behind me with an ax who I didn't even see! My Partner holds him at gunpoint with the SKS and I pull out the shotgun and make him get on his knees. Our sneaky friend turns out to be an annoying little Dipshit. Dipshit starts whining and acting erratic and my partner is unusually silent. I switch to baseball bat and bonk the Dipshit on the back of the head. "Boring conversation anyway". He goes down and my partners like "shit..I glitched out for a second. Did you kill him?" I replied "he might be sleeping..no matter...lets take his shit...dibs on that hatchet". We finish cleaning him out and all of a sudden the Dipshit wakes up again. He starts freaking out, screaming at us "thanks a lot jerks! You left me with nothing!" and looks like he wants to charge us. "Get out of here Dipshit" I warn him, and my Partner fires off a couple of warning rounds with the SKS. Anyhow, we spend the next 15 minutes or so searching western Cherno for loot, laughing about that Dipshit we almost killed, and killing the occasional zombie. My partner applauds the one-hit mid-air ax to the head takedown I perform on a leaping zombie, using the ax I just appropriated. And a few minutes later the server resets. Bottom line, yes there are still as many bugs and weird glitches and hackers as ever. But you can still get a really fun DayZ post-apocalyptic experience.

Ergo "placeholder" :D Really I'm referring to anything like antibiotics, water treatment pills, walky talkies and so on that at the moment doesn't seem to have any real function. I would assume they would be adding diseases to the water and those items would then become useful. Just like the mod where you had to boil water or treat it or risk getting sick (after which point you would then need antibiotics to get better). I'm also assuming the health stuff will be improved as well. I've been running around with a busted arm and "my leg hurts" all day, but with no real actual affect on my character. Again, I would assume that a broken arm would eventually make certain items useless if they require 2 hands (like an ax or rifle). Also that certain injuries or diseases would become progressive (as in get worse) if you don't treat with antibiotics or whatever.

Christmas isn't that far away, so I'm not expecting any giant breakthroughs by then. I play a bit after every major update just to see where things are. While still a bit buggy, the game feels a lot more "solid" these days. I like some of the new features like apple picking and temperature, I feel like I can have myself a nice little autumn Saturday with the family! (If not for the zombies and bandits)/ Being able to lock doors is way cool. The zombies still suck. They may have better models than the Mod, but the gameplay is still terrible. They are few and far between. They will stand there like statutes rather than roam about like in the Mod, until they "agro", at which point they will track you to the ends of the Earth. The good news is that other melee weapons like brass knuckles, bats and fists will take a zombie out after a few hits, so you don't feel completely defenseless without a fire ax. Still a lot of "placeholder" loot like antibiotics and other stuff that doesn't do anything. Lot more variety of clothing and guns and other gear, but loot distribution still a bit wonky.

Nice one Gallagher...

Agree about the points of interest. It doesn't even have to be a 300 foot radio tower or beached cargo ship. Little things like unique statues and billboards in towns or maybe an unusual tree or rock formation or whatever can be enough to offset the feeling of looking at the same stock buildings over and over. Plus adding some furniture to the building interiors would help too. Maybe have it more procedural so the same building might have a half doesn't different combinations of interiors in various colors, just to give them some more variety? Also, why do the rail cars look like leftovers from a WWII concentration camp? There is a beached container ship and modern looking seaports. Why aren't the rail cars using the same standard intermodal containers?

Everyone starts out as a lone starving guy. What you do after that is up to you. A couple of points: A) The map is already full of abandoned buildings...why would a character need to create more? B ) Assuming we want players to be able to build structures, realistically they should, at best, consist of slapping plywood, corrugated tin and 2x4s together to build some shanties and crappy lean-to shelters. Not 12,000 sq ft 8 bedroom mansions. Basically whatever a couple of guys could realistically build with just some hand tools. C) Do we really want the hills of Electro and Cherno to end up looking like a Brazilian favela?

"alpha" has little to nothing to do with it. It's supposed to be a giant, sparsely populated map. That's not going to change. Think back to films like I Am Legend / Omega Man, Book of Eli, Mad Max 2, The Road. The opening scenes of 28 Days Later or when Rick Grimes wakes up in the hospital in Season 1, Episode 1 of The Walking Dead. That's you in this game. You're supposed to wake up on the shore of this weird post-Soviet state with no idea how you got there. And the only thing you should find is wilderness and abandoned towns. Oh yeah, there's also supposed to be thousands of crazed zombies trying to eat your brains. If you're lucky maybe you meet a couple of survivors and are forced to work together to survive an onslaught of zombies or not starve to death. And maybe you kill each other when it becomes more convenient to do so. Except with no real zombie threat and the risk of starvation or dehydration so low, it's basically just walking around an abandoned countryside until you encounter another player and try to kill each other.

I don't know. I think the towns are fine. Of course every single building isn't going to be unique. But with nearly every building enterable and a lot more variety of building, cities and towns feel a lot "richer" than they did in the Mod. But in many ways they don't. The map still feels very empty to me since there are no zombies. I think it makes more sense to give the player the ability to block off streets and barricade buildings, rather than construct new ones Minecraft style. Your supposed to be a lone, or small group of desperate starving survivors. Not a bunch of housing contractors.

Oh, I don't care about the whole Team Speak debate. Just pretend you and your friends happened to wash ashore with working coms and flashlights or whatever. I do like the idea of a "global side chat" (or whatever it was called), but tied to the walkies or otherwise embedded in the game. I've also suggested the idea of fixed radios at places like ATC towers, Green Mountain, police and fire stations, pretty much any place where you would expect a radio. Maybe even the ability to leave a repeating message (because that can't be abused :D ) until someone else comes along to turn it off or change it. Echoing what other people described, I liked being able to listen to the inane chatter while tucked away off in some safe corner of the map.

It's an abstraction of reality. Absolute reality wouldn't be fun or practical. For example: A 24 hour day/night cycle is realistic, but it's not particularly useful because people tend not to play for days straight in real time. They log onto a server during the day (or night if that's what they want), play for a few hours, then log off. A shorter day night cycle (like every other game ever) would actually have more of an impact by forcing you to find light sources, shelter for the night, time your movements so you don't get caught in the woods after dark and so on. IRL, it takes weeks to starve to death and typically a few days to die of dehydration. The Mod forced you to eat on the same meal cycle as my 8 week old infant and I have no idea what the Standalone does with food and drink. You cannot heal a broken leg by putting a splint on it or jacking up with morphine IRL. But I don't want to play a "sit in a shed for 8 weeks recovering from a busted leg" simulator. I can probably fit a lot more clothes in a backpack and sling a couple more rifles to my shoulder IRL than I can in the game. So on and so forth. You need a balance between cartoonish Grand Theft Auto "invisible backpack with an AK-47, Barett 50 cal rifle, rocket launcher and minigun and so much realistic detail that the game is tedious to play.

I'm pretty sure he was joking. As in he can hear a Blackhawk helicopter full of BI Internal Security personal coming to put a burlap bag over his head and make him disappear for violating his Non-Disclosure Agreement. That said, I'd be pretty excited if helicopters were back in the game. Maybe not Blackhawks or Little Birds, as this is Chernarus and those are NATO helicopters. But Hinds, MI-17s, maybe a Aérospatiale Gazelle. Hueys are fine as they are exported all over the world for the past 40 years. No attack gunships though. Maybe some police or news helicopters. Anyhow, I digress.

You are playing this game correctly. :D

I'm pissed! I was running around all hypothermic when I found a propane tank for my gas stove! I was in the process of screwing it in when I died!

I don't know about "broken" but the mechanic of weather, body temp, wet clothes and loot obviously needs to be tweaked and balanced. I know "balanced" is a dirty word around here. But you can't have people spawn in a downpour with no warm clothing / heat producing loot for 20 miles or require characters to wear nothing short of the puffy down jacket to survive and expect people to enjoy playing. That said, I do like the weather/cold dynamic. Forcing people to find shelter when it rains is going to cut out a lot of spawn camping and just makes for a more interesting game in general. I just wish it didn't rain every 2 minutes as if Chernarus was in a tropical rain forest!!

I like it. It probably needs some fine tuning, but the general concept is sound. It's pretty easy not to die from hypothermia in real life too. Just don't go out into freezing rain with nothing but a T-shirt.

Actually I'm ok with that. It's looks like the mod now with just a couple of hangers and an ATC tower. I never really liked the Balota arms fair they created for the Standalone. Hopefully it will be like the Mod where Balota is maybe good for an AK and some low end military gear.

Spawned in Berezino. Been running round looting up but where my last character looked like a Delta Force operative, this character now looks like a golfer with an ax and a child's backpack. Got soaked in the rain and I think I'm dying of hypothermia.

Ideally it would be a completely destructible and persistent world, but I don't think that's technically feasible. The world would feel more "lived in" if you constantly came across evidence of the other players living in it. Back in the mod days, the fact that player and zombie bodies stuck around after they died created at least somewhat of a dynamic environment. Plus they were an added source of loot (and tension, as you didn't know who or what might have killed them).

I like the direction the game is going in. But to be honest, I stopped playing regularly (although I do log in every now and then just to check on things). I also stopped following the updates as regularly for the simple reason that when it does go live (or beta, or at least further along in alpha), I want there to still be some mystery and exploration. Tough to do that if you are following every thread about every new weapon, town or pair of pants as they are added to the game. I haven't found the SA as immersive as the Mod. I don't feel a sense of urgency around anything like hunger or thirst or even getting injured, let alone temperature or "feeling wet". There's the obvious lack of content like vehicles and zombies. Every server seems like it's 24/7 daylight so I don't get a sense of the environment changing. Plus I don't like that all the spawn zones are on the East coast. To me, Cherno and Electro as the twin cities of death, Kamenka and Kamarova being the crap spawns and Berezino requiring a long road trip up the coast were an integral part of the Mod. But I'm still hopeful that it might be worth going back to in a few months.

There is the chance you might just instantly die from touching a rock! IME , I wouldn't say that forests of the Northeast USA where I grew up are particularly dangerous, inhospitable or difficult to traverse. And I assume the forests in the former Soviet states are similar. This isn't a Brazilian rainforest. What makes a forest dangerous is that it's not near civilization. If you don't know what you're doing, you have a pretty good chance of getting lost, running out of food or other critical supplies and starving/freezing/dying of heat stroke before you find your way out or get rescued. I like that the forests in DayZ (mostly) don't feel like you are constantly in someone's back yard. The problem with DayZ is that you can log off. IRL, you wouldn't want to sleep unprotected in a woods full of zombies (not to mention bears, wolves, squirrels and snakes). Not to mention the rain, snow, sleet and sun. If zombies roamed the map instead of loitering around the towns and the elements played more of a factor, it would create more of a decision of going into town to find shelter and supplies and risking bandits and rival clans vs hide your shit deep in the woods, but possibly die from mother nature.