bfisher

The landscape looks very pretty. But world also feels pretty empty. There are more zombies, but they really don't feel like a threat. At least not the way they could be in the Mod if you accidentally agroed a whole town of them. And the fact that you can never outrun them is pretty annoying. I'm experiencing lots of rubber-banding again as of the 2/13 patch. That wasn't there before. I saw wolves for the first time by Tisy military base. Their howling was a bit unsettling. I still don't like the "I feel [blah blah]" alerts. I feel like the mod gave you more visual cues and the food/thirst/health icons were better. Overall, my impression is still of a very pretty, but largely unfinished game with a dwindling player base and not a lot of interaction with the environment.

I don't know why people downplay the PvP aspect of this game. PvP has been a major part of DayZ since the early days of the Mod. And the concept has deep roots in both zombie specific and more general post-apocalyptic fiction. Maybe it was less of an issue in the Mod where you needed most of your bullets to kill zombies (which attracted more zombies and wasted more bullets). There are a couple of things that make PvP fun in DayZ: * The constant tension that unseen someone(s) might be watching you and might attack you at any second. * Finding evidence that unseen someone(s) might be watching you and might attack you at any second (bodies, distant gunshots, discarded broken loot) * Stalking an unsuspecting player, trying to decide if he's worth approaching and striking up a conversation with, killing outright or avoiding altogether * Striking up a conversation with another player, and deciding that it's time to kill them because they are acting suspicious, weird, annoying, or you just feel like it. * That satisfaction of killing some jerk who just tried to kill you and failed. * Making a new friend and the two of you kill someone else together!

I have a 2 year old and another on the way in January. I am looking forward to DayZ going into Beta around the time they are old enough to play.

"Hard" to break in is irrelevant. Unless the base is actively guarded, it's only a matter of time before someone breaks in. They can either wait until you go to sleep and hammer at it all night, or just "teleport" inside using another server. I'd rather have the ability to bury supplies in a hole. Better to rely on the base not being seen than it being impenetrable. The other thing. HESCO barriers, Bremer walls, concertina wire barricades, berms, bastions, watch towers, bunkers, shacks all these structures are fairly labor intensive IRL, often requiring the assistance of heavy construction vehicles. I have a bit of trouble suspending disbelief that a couple of players with some hand tools should be able to erect massive fortifications. Base building should be limited to what a couple of guys could reasonably build by hand. Also what's the point of a base? That would make more sense if DayZ was more like Project Zomboid or The Sims with zombies. In those games, you're on an accelerated day/night cycle where you need to constantly attend to food, water, and sleep. People don't sleep in DayZ, they log off. You don't need a base in DayZ because the world outside really isn't that dangerous.

It's funny because it's true on so many levels. While not perfect the original was pretty darn good. When they announced another version, people were excited about seeing something that built on what they already knew and enjoyed and would enhance it. When it was released, it attracted a lot of attention at first, but it felt like it was missing something. Sure there were some new locations and updated action sequences, but it just didn't grab us the way the original did. The zombies were lame. The characters didn't work properly. It felt empty. A lot of people stuck with it for a year or so, but eventually didn't see it going anywhere. It's supposed to be better than it was now, but by now a lot of people simply aren't following it anymore.

This. One of the biggest complaints about the Mod was that it ended up as a sniper duel between ghillie suits carrying AS-50 anti-material rifles. As for dynamic fog changing with the day, I'd like to see an accelerated day/night cycle so there is actually a point to road flares and glow sticks. As of now, everyone just plays on 24 day servers.

I was watching some of these videos showing bases with a dozen tents all full of every imaginable kind of loot (see below). I have to ask. These are hackers using some sort of duping or other exploit, right? Because I can play for hours and I can barely find a single matched set of weapon, ammo and magazines. I can't even remember the last time I found A tent, let alone a dozen of them. Otherwise, I imagine these must be clans of over a dozen guys farming NWAF and helicopter crashes on different servers like it's a full time job?

I agree. The only reason it might seem like there is "too much loot" is because there isn't a lot to shoot at. And no loot at all would be boring. Sure, some element of luck should be involved in staying alive, but loot shouldn't be so scarce that your survival is essentially random. Think about it. If 99% of the population turned to zombies, the inventory in all the sporting goods stores, markets, gun shops, hardware stores and hospitals are not going to just disappear. The cars aren't going to all fall apart. On a related note, my only beef with the whole giant basecamp is that it eliminates the whole concept of "permanent death". It just becomes a minor inconvenience as you just run back to your base camp after respawning.

I was hoping it would be awesome like The Walking Dead. Instead it's inconsistent and annoying like Fear The Walking Dead.

OK, I feel better about it then. :) I imagine if you have six guys, you can take NWAF easily enough and keep stocking up on all the loot. Unfortunately I don't have time to play that much. I rarely encounter clans or big camps. Mostly just the random oddball trying to punch me for no reason.

I Am Legend / The Omega Man - Really captures the wandering around by yourself as possibly the last person on Earth. Wish it would capture more of the "base building" and barricading yourself in from the zombies at night (I guess we can pretend all the zombies come out on the nighttime servers no one plays on). The Crazies - Makes sense to treat every other player as if they were infected with a disease that turns them into a homicidal psychopath. And of course, all the other zombie films and TV shows. But only the parts where the character is wandering around trying to survive by themselves or in a small group after society has collapsed. Rick walking around by himself in Season 1. Not the later seasons with Woodbury or Alexandria. There isn't enough zombies or base building to feel like Walking Dead or even a Romero film where people are trapped in a farmhouse, mall, or missile silo.

Works been slow and wife and baby at the inlaws so I've actually had a few days to invest some serious time in DayZ after a fairly long-ish absence. So I thought I'd give my personal review. Firstly, I recognize it's still a WIP. So I'm not going to nitpick all the bugs and missing functionality. Let's just say, it's pretty obvious the thirst/hunger/temperature/damage/wetness/loot balancing systems are all very much "in progress". But they don't seem to prevent you from playing. Right now, it's just a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem to do anything. Cherno is very much the PvP hotspot I remember. I ended up killing a guy who was up to no good. The new graphics are really cool though. And when I saw a couple of player shapes silhouetted in the fog, I fired off a few rounds at them and then got the hell out of there. They took some pot shots back, but I managed to escape. NWAF, also the same old PVP hotspot / military arms depot. Got into a firefight and managed to kill one guy and escape from the others with nothing more than a "chipped leg". Saw a lot of zombie activity around Zernegorst (however you spell it). In fact, I actually got kind of surprised how many came after me. If I wasn't so well armed and the damage actually mattered, it might have been a problem. Cherno is really huge now, when combined with those apartment complexes on it's outskirts. I spent an hour in the hills to the north just watching players run around. They would run into town in groups of 1 or 2. A few minutes later I would hear gunshots. I felt it best not to check them out. My assessment is DayZ is starting to feel like DayZ again. Obviously they need to balance the loot spawning, zombies and a bunch of other game mechanics. There's a lot of things you can do to survive, but it still doesn't really feel like you HAVE to do any of them. That is to say, I never ever felt that actually dying of anything other than a player's gun was a real possibility. I'm also worried that the map might be too big now. What I mean is, I rarely ever saw another player on a full 60 person server. You can probably hide twice that number in Cherno alone. While the Mod had fewer open buildings and locations, they actually served as bottlenecks where players would tend to end up.

Yeah. It's funny how you can go hours sometimes and never see another person. And yet good luck leaving your stuff anywhere for very long.

I'm a bit skeptical. They haven't figured out the food/water/temp survival mechanics, loot or zombies but now they want to add packs of wolves?

So...still unfinished?

I hadn't realized I actually responded to this thread over six months ago. I guess that given the past six months all we've seen is a prettier graphics engine (which I guess is a big deal) and some new content, I'm not really surprised by the lukewarm reviews.

A couple of thoughts: - I don't know that I ever thought the game would have an "alpha" or formal release. I kind of thought they would get it to a stable, playable state and just continue adding content over time. Basically the way Minecraft was released. - DayZ is a game a lot of people are not going to "get". It is, in fact, a big "walking simulator" with long stretches of nothing to do (but explore and survive) interspersed with brief moments of terror, followed by rage or smug satisfaction. - I can't decide if I want more zombies or no zombies at this point. Right now, they are just a mild buggy nuisance. DayZ ether needs more zombies and they are an integral part of the survival aspect of the game, or just do away with them and make the game about surviving the elements and other players. -I don't know much about game design, but I feel like this game has been out for 3 years and they are still screwing around with the basic gameplay mechanics. Adding new guns and clothing is great, but things like disease, starvation/thirst, temperature, health, damage all feels very unfinished and watered down. Like you have a very pretty environment filled with a lot of loot assets, but no real gameplay. -Updates are too infrequent. I'd rather have smaller updates each week than massive disappointing updates a random number of months apart.

I assume they probably wanted those landmines turned on :)

It's a game. They can program the ceiling to be whatever height they want. There is no reason on earth to have the aircraft fly higher than 1000 or so feet. You wouldn't be able to see anything on the ground smaller than a building and you would look like a dot to anyone who was on the ground.

Or perhaps a giant "visible" barrier in the shape of a mountain? The ceiling on the helicopters and aircraft doesn't need to be that high.

I agree with "no" for an island. But how about making an impassible mountain range?

I didn't think there was any specific lore or history beyond Chernarus being some sort of post-Soviet Balkan state with some vague sense of NATO and/or Russia possibly involved in some sort of low-intensity peacekeeping missing (possibly ultimately related to the zombie outbreak somehow).

Do you just eat once or do you keep eating until "stuffed"? One of the problems is you can stuff your face with half a dozen cans of beans and fruit and basically use your stomach as additional storage. Once I get stuffed, I usually die of boredom before I need food again.

I guess the "what's stopping them" is they just haven't built/fixed it all yet. This is what they need to do (forgive me if I repeated anyone's ideas): Make it so you need to eat/drink more frequently Lower the food capacity so players can't use their stomach as additional storage (you can't eat half a dozen cans of beans IRL) Lower the amount of "easy" food - the entire map is covered with cans, apple orchards and berries. Fix the mechanics for hunting, fishing, cooking and human cannibalism. Add more "bad" food that will cause you to get sick - eating uncooked meat, spoiled or partially spoiled cans, rotten fruit and veggies (whatever happened to that?), bacteria, parasites or poison in open water supplies broken well pumps that need fixing (or fixed well pumps that need breaking) more food in markets to turn them into PvP hotspots. In general, the game needs more things to "do" to survive to make it anything more than a "walking around abandoned town" simulator / oversized Call of Duty map.

I've just recently tried 60 but haven't really had the time to dig into it in much detail. It looks very pretty. The new fog and weather effects are nice. Other than that, it's basically the same unfinished game it's always been. Running around an empty, mostly zombieless map. Picking up various articles of clothing and loot with different degrees of non-functionality. Eventually finding a matching set of gun, ammo and magazines so you can go kill someone.