bfisher

I thought that was kind of the point? Like you have this vast, mountainous forest to hide (and possibly starve to death) in. If you want to run around crazy CoD style, then you can always visit the coast.

I agree. Really it's the nearly complete lack of zombies in the Standalone that has made stealth a lost art. In the Mod, you had to use stealth otherwise you would agro every zombie in town. Sure, later on we figured out how to use various exploits to escape them. But you still didn't want to draw all that attention. Also, the proliferation of high powered rifles in the Mod made running through town like a lunatic a suicide mission. Nowadays, kids just sprint like mad all around the map. The thing is, if you walk slowly and stick to cover, 90% of the time those idiots won't even see you.

That sucks. So instead of being "actual night" where in the absence of any light source everything is pitch black, it's "TV night" where it looks like day, but with a dark tint?

You can do what I do. Find a secluded spot deep in the woods or in the attic of a factory and hide there drinking rainwater, too terrified to move until you run out of food and starve.

I saw a zombie chasing a deer a few clicks north of Berezino. I did kill them both and tooks some meat off the deer. It seemed like there might be a bug since the deer kept producing 50% steaks.

I know how many times I've observed someone and didn't kill them and it freak me the hell out knowing someone might be doing the same to me...right now!! If the OP think the spirit of DayZ is dying because of all the KoS, to that I say "Hi! Welcome to DayZ!" That's been around since Day1 of DayZ. I do think the spirit of DayZ is dying a bit though. No vehicles. Hardly any zombies. Spawning at Berezino instead of Kamenka through Electro. The weird and obtuse food and water health system replacing the food / drink / blood icons that flashed when they got too low. The lack of ghillie-suited snipers shooting at you from a mile away with ridiculously over-powered anti-material rifles (hey...that was part of the spirit too). Don't get me wrong. I know a lot of stuff is in the works. IMHO it just doesn't quite have the feel of the old Mod.

I think it's supposed to be the wind knocking a piece of metal against something or a creaking chain link fence or whatever. Appropriate in the middle of town. Not so much in the middle of nowhere.

Dude! That's uncalled for! The dev team has been working hard and the new update looks like it will add a shit ton of awesomeness to the game. And if it doesn't, we'll DESTROY those stupid jerks for getting our hopes up!!! :D

I think too many people are used to "tv or videogame night". Basically where you can see as well at night as you can in the daytime, just everything has a blue tint to it. I remember being at summer camp or rural areas or even the city where I live when it was blacked out by Hurricane Sandy. With no moon, night is fucking BLACK. Especially in a blacked out city where all you see are black silhouettes of buildings. I light the black night of DayZ. I mean if you could see at night, why would they have flightlights and road flares and chemlights?

The ends justifies the beans! :beans: :thumbsup: :D

I'm kind of sorry I bought the Standalone ALPHA. Not for the usual "WHAAA bugs!!! bandits!! zombies suck!! the bullet drop on the Mosin is off by 2 mm!" crap that most of the people complain about. Here's the reason why: So when I started playing the Mod, it was mostly complete (well...complete-ish). That is to say, I had a vague idea that there were various tools and weapons and other loot that were needed to survive. But I didn't study the wiki on every piece of equipment. So part of the fun was wandering around, picking up pieces of loot and not really being sure what, if anything, a lot of it did. Even mundane stuff like road flares were sort of cool or finding some new weapon I didn't know was available. Problem with the ALPHA is that it's hard not to follow the dev blogs to see what's coming next. So it sort of takes all the fun and surprise away when you are reading about the new AKM or how propane cooking stoves will be implemented a month ahead of time. Kind of takes away from the "OMG! They have track suits!" factor. Maybe I'll just take a break for a few months and then see what's been developed when I come back.

Christmas morning is obvious too. That doesn't stop kids from sneaking a peak at their gifts.

How about hiding bodies again? One of the nice things about the Mod was that you could someone's body so they couldn't get their stuff. It might also help if they spread out the spawn points from Kamenka to Berezino.

I've actually kind of stopped playing. I may start again in a few months when they add some more stuff.

It will divide the player base into two groups - people who buy DLC and people like me who will kill those people and take their shit for free! As long as it doesn't turn into "pay to start with vehicle, silenced DMR with thermal sight, 50 steaks and a ghillie suit" nonsense that started happening in the Mod.

I like the idea of being able to identify players with a tag once you are close enough to see their face (and they aren't wearing a mask). And you should only be able to name a new character. That way you get a clean slate when you die so you can opt to play a different style. But a lot of the other suggestions are from the DayZ Fantasy Club. DayZ isn't Minecraft or Warcraft or EvE Online. I just don't think it will ever be reasonable to assume the game will ever develop much beyond 40 players running around Cherno eating beans, getting chased by zombies and getting into firefights with other players. They'll keep making tweaks to the survival mechanics and adding more weapons and gear. But there's not going to be a "rebuilding of society" with markets, organized towns and an economy and whatnot. At best you'll just have a few bandit bases where they stow their weapons and vehicles between raids. Maybe the ability to barricade a structure. That's about it IMHO.

Thought I'd toss in a link to Tumblr update from 2 days ago, since it echoes much of what the OP said. http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/ To be honest, I've stopped playing for awhile so I don't get bored before they implement a bunch more stuff. But the new update looks promising. Then again, they always "look" promising.

People don't want "realism". A 24 hour day/night cycle, dying of thirst in 3 days and hunger in a month is realistic. It's also stupid and not playable. As someone upthread pointed out, what people want is something "authentic" and relatively intuitive. You get hungry and need food. You get thirsty, you need water. You get sick or injured, you need appropriate health care. You get cold, you need a fire or warm clothes or catch the flu or even die from hypothermia. You get hot you need to take off that pack and puffy coat so you don't get heat stroke. Spend too much time in the sun, you get sunburned. Eat rotten fruit or dirty stream water, you might get really sick if you don't cook/boil it first. And your probably will have to eat rotten food since the refrigerators stopped working a long time ago. That's what the Mod had (more or less). Sure there was still KoS. But it was SO much more rewarding to KoS someone because I desperately needed antibiotics and it turns out he had them! Really, I don't play that much right now because there isn't anything to really do except murder people and that's boring. Hopefully in a few months, they'll have implemented a lot more environmental stuff so there will be more survival shit to keep yourself occupied...between murdering people.

LOL. I think this game might not be for you then. I mean what you describe is LITERALLY the point of the game.

Personally I'm not against anything that one might reasonably find in a post-Soviet state, so long as there is some element of balance. So to have a tank, much like IRL, it would use a shit ton of fuel, which should be rare. It would require spare parts, many of which might not be available. Especially if you throw a track driving over the wrong terrain, which is easy to do. Also, tank parts are heavy. So maybe you need to also find a wrecker or tow truck or something with a wench or a crane on it, and get THAT working, so you swap out that engine or fix that track. And at the end of the day, all that work might be ruined by someone placing a sticky bomb on the track or dropping a hand grenade down the barrel. The only problem I have with tanks, armored fighting vehicles and "technicals" is that if you have them, you probably have weapons for them. You also need weapons to counter those vehicles. So that means a lot more .50cal machineguns, rocket launchers, IEDs, satchel charges, grenades, RPGs, Claymores, anti-material rifles and so on circulating through the map,

The whole reason for everyone's bitching is because they want to run around, collecting cool hats and eating off the land or whatever. Then they get pissed when 4 guys drive up or fly in loaded up with automatic weapons and kill them for no reason. I recall one of my scariest moments in the Mod was the first time I saw a helicopter. I was on the coast and it was a long ways off. And it was very jarring, but in a cool way. Like you're the last dude on earth surrounded by zombies and you see this relic of civilization, but you aren't sure if you should pop a flare to signal it or run and hide. Anyhow, I don't get these people who think Cherno should have nothing but Cold War and WWII era firearms and equipment and that everything should be "low tech" and rare. I don't want CoD, but I also don't want to wander an empty map for hours, hoping to find the last screwdriver on earth to fight off zombies. I mean there are three major airbases. Is it out of the realm of possibility that they might have a couple of aircraft? In the Mod, helicopters (and most vehicles) really did take a lot of work to get up and running (unless you just found one in working condition). You needed to gather a ton of parts, which meant you needed to set up a base to collect them. Ideally you needed a couple of guys to help and provide security.

I just remember from the Mod how hilariously dangerous they were. It was easy to go cruising off a cliff and really mess your shit up.

So are helicopters. But a GE Evolution Series locomotive with it's computer controlled 4,000 hp engine has about as much in common with an old steam locomotive as a AH-64D Apache helicopter does with one of those old M.A.S.H. bubble copters. Even if locomotive is simpler. It's fuckin' BIG! I don't see what all the anti-helicopter hate is about. Helicopters were an integral part of the Mod. It's a big map and a couple of Hueys, Little Birds and HINDS are not going to turn the game into Apocalypse Now. I mean not like any of this shit matters. DayZ is still working on new colors of track pants while H1Z1 is developing dynamic weather and rain that only falls where clouds actually are.

There is no "purpose" other than to keep your character alive as long as possible. Unfortunately since it's still in "under construction" mode, there's no a lot that will kill your character, other than other players, accidently falling off a room, server glitches, ladders, rocks, trees, no reason at all. Presumably, once things are more developed and balanced, just finding the basics of food and water and not dying of infection or hypothermia or whatever will occupy most of your time...plus bandits and zombies,

I suppose my answer is "I don't know". Or my other answer is "it's only "$30, so why not?" Now I know it's still in Alpha, so the issue isn't so much whether it's unfinished. The question is really how confident are people that development is going to continue to the point where it will be at least as functional as the Mod was. Or that some other game like H1Z1 won't just totally blow it away. Personally, I think there is a lot of potential. But I have to say that I have my concerns and doubts as to whether that will ever happen.