Private Evans

For us very few that started with the mod back in the days, for sure DayZ has never become the DayZ close to Dean Halls original vision and never the game we were hoping for and dreaming/discussing about. But to be honest...the playerbase and community also has changed. Most of the current players started with version 1.0 or later, a lot of them on consoles. So for them this is a good and fun game with about 3 years full of updates and patches and new content. At the end, I am sure, they will even get working vehicles.... For BI the route they went also seems to be a huge success. DayZ is selling well and player count is higher than ever. They also learned a lot for the future tech and projects... so yeah I am not playing DayZ anymore and I am not happy with the game as it is now...but I am happy for BI and the devs and their success in the long run ! There is no other game out there like DayZ, that still let me think and talk again and again about my adventures and stories after so many years....even I have to admit, they are nearly all from the mod xD Sometimes you have to let go...but I really wish Engan would have released episode 8 :))

The point is ..that this game has been developed over so many years not only by different teams and dev leads but also without any real vision and without people/devs/writers responsible for the background lore. I remember Brian Hicks as well as Peter Nespeny saying that they do not want to add strict lore but instead want the game to be as much sandbox as possible. Now after all this years it is simply too late...I personally still find this decision horrible since a good background lore is what ties everything together but yeah 😕 The question is..how should or could you rollplay a scenario with 50 different ideas of lore backgroundon a server ????

I wrote this somewhere else before...If we go for a 28 days/weeks later scenario than the outbreak would be possible regional and still existing governments and military would try to stop the virus from spreading further. Since the infected are still human it would be not a bad idea to clear the big cities etc with gas...should be clear that nobody would give a fuck about a few survivors.... We also can find recently crashed helicopters...so yeah ..there must be someone out there. As Riddick said...this only makes sense if the infected also die in contaminates areas 🙂 Edit. Such mechanics could even help twith the horrible map borders...if you try to cross the borders ..you are gunned down...or shot down by AA missiles etc.etc..

When the team did the very first mocap sessions for infected animations they watched 28 Days Later for references. This was shown in a dev diary :). It was very clear that Dean was exactly wanted the infected to be the 28 days Later style.... Sadly the infected got no more love over all the following years and now it seems to me really nearly impossible to improve them with all the different manifested playstyles and preferences and lore interpretations.

Hahaha yes same here, I of course know myself, that posting and discussing these things is absolutely pointless. I still would love to see a 0.62 version modded and improved by the community xD

Yeah I am not saying anything different...but still people having a blast playing for example the new and current creator dlc....it shows all the Arma 3 shortcomings but on the other hand offers the most immersive and best combat experience I have ever seen in a computer game....people loving it and having a blast playing it in Coop or MP even with having maybe a max of 45 FPS...

You are not getting the difference...0.62 came out in 2017, two years later BI released 1.0 and now meanwhile 4 years later in 2021. they are still are fixing and ballancing and adding cut out content....All I am saying is that if the Devteam would have worked these 4 years on improving 0.62 instead of doing an half arsed engine swap, we would have a far better game by now...maybe a bit outdated in some regards and still a bit clunky but for sure not that boring, casual and unballanced game that DayZ is right now...

0.62 ran for sure better than 18 frames in most places except for some of the anyway oversized cities. Not to forget that we are speaking about a version that was not polished and final, I am pretty sure that they could have been improved it over time like they did with Arma 3. Arma 3 Altis was nearly unplayable on day one for a lot of people including me ( I remember that I had to downgrade view distance and quality to even get it loaded) and now it runs on my system with far above 100 frames. But even today after a lot of polishing, maps like Tanoa or Livonia with a lot going on,like npcs and explosions and gunfights and vehicles, do not provide more than 30 -45 frames for most players even on high end PC's...The Contact SP Campaign did not even touch 60 frames, but bringing framerates going down to 15-10 at some heavy scripted parts, but was epic as fuck and great fun...and should I tell you what..Arma 3 in gerneral is nevertheless absolutely successful. People give a fuck since OPF because Arma with all its shortcomings is offering something absolutely unique...so you are clearly talking nonsense there! People also loved the mod with all its wonkieness because it was ...special. If a game has soul, if it is immersive, if the gameplay is good and if it is unique and special...people will always give a fuck about fps and wonkieness....Play a heavy modded fallout or Skyrim same thing...and there are endless more examples. Honestly..and I mean this by no way personal or offensive...its also people like you that helped making this game here such an disappointment..at least for all of us that were here from the very beginning. Graphics, gunplay, vehicles, medical gameplay, nutrition, hypothermia, stamina...there is nearly one thing that really works well...but praise the lord we've at least can play it with 60 fps .....

Well Parazight, if you prefer having 60 FPS but at the same time having a cartoonish look including horrible lighting, horrible draw distance, horrible clouds and weather and an even more horrible night time , it is a question of personal preferences and taste...I really hoped to get best of both worlds with Enfusion but if I had to choose my choice would be different. Looking on the Arma 3 community....it seems that a good game is not all about FPS ...not speaking about fast paced shooters of course...

Of course 0.62 was unpolished in many regards but just imagine how much time has gone by since then...enough time to polish and improve things while still having all the awesomenes of all the cut out features. Not to forget...all the stuff they had planned or already working ingame from helicopters to boats and bikes...stuff that worked in Arma 2 and perfectly works in Arma 3...client side of course but who gives a fuck about that. The one and only thing that really has improved is the new animation system but honestly...I would trade that any time for a DayZ finished by the old dev team ( Brian Hicks) based on 0.62....

0.62 was a hundred times better regarding gameplay and mechanics, it looked better and was a lot more immersive because of all these sweet little so called flavour things...night time looked awesome, weather looked awesome...medical gameplay was awesome....and there were so many things to come. If they had spent the two years for finishing the game on the existing tech we would have get the games of our dreams...fuck some more FPS ....fuck some better animations and fuck consoles.....we nearly were there...

This would be quiet simple...they would have just to extend the time of "dying from starvation or dehydration" .You would suffer all the things like colour loss, low stamina and passing out but would have at least a longer time to maybe survive. This has been suggested over and over again like so many other things...but since the devs do not show up here anymore for years, there is no real disussion about what the community and the playerbase really do want.

Such a fix would have been normally made by a complete noob trying to fix his first mod....for a proper devteam this is an absolutely shame !

A map like Altis would not make any sense without proper vehicle gameplay...with its dry and barren setting its highways and many airspots it would be absolutely perfect for some kind of Mad Max experience. Fighting for water and gasoline, roaming the wide and dry open lands, having zeds packed in cities and mililtary bases...random earth quakes as a result of the Arma 3 events...yeah 🙂

One thing that has been suggested back in the day was to use pre established places for larger bases, to make sure they work and look good and immersive being also more realistic and believable. In combination with barricading at least for a couple of buildings that would have been the better solution....but as with so many other things they give a fuck ......

I do not like how we are more and more forced to play in specific ways the devs wanted us to play...you have to leave the coast, you have to go north for military weapons, you have to spend hours to get a vehicle working, you have to consume insane amounts of food ...you have to wear best insulation....you have to choose between first person shitty fake light nights or full moon etc etc etc All the fun stuff with other players simply does not happen any more...I really loved the slow paced parts of the mod and the EA where you could just walk, talking with your friends and enjoy the scenery...the chance to find a M4 or a working vehicle even as a fresh spawn...there was so much more diversity of playstyles...just watch the older YT videos...if you were looking for some action...just visit one of the hotspots ..if you had a death wish...visit Elekto... This is also why I still miss vehicles like helicopters, boats, bikes etc....not because they are absolutely necessary for surviving but the possibility of different playstyles, rollplaying and diverse encounters is endless....I personally do not want to fly an helicopter...but looting an airport when suddenly hearing a heli approach is immersive as fuck....or having a biker gang....finding a mountain bike...being able to visit the islands by boat...I miss the Cherno snipers and the burning oil barrels and flares at night all over the place...because nobody could see shit but stayed on the servers at night.... I miss dudes in underwear and rubber boots playing saxophone solos on a fire extinguisher.....I also miss my copy of Moby Dick in my backpack.....

The reason is, devs in charge stopped even thinking about gameplay loops back in 2016. Since then all went into the implementation of the new engine, the release of console versions and after that bringing back most of the missing content. Since Adam took over we thankfully saw big improvments to the existing and basic mechanics which I have to admit brought me back in the first place. But nevertheless we had 5 years of completely stillstand when it comes to gameplay..except basebuilding, which I completely dislike and ignore when I play the game. I personally had prefered to see barricading instead but well.... The last patch clearly showed that with a few design changes the gameplay could feel completely different and new...so same could be done with night time gameplay....

Now imagine....you could get infected by the zeds during melee ( like in 28 days later) resulting not in turning into one of them but just getting a very bad infection...a cure for such an infection could be then placed in crash sites and air drops instead of more pew pew guns ...making such a vaccine working for 48 hours only could stop hoarders... again every mechanic for such an idea is already there... we bitterly need more diverse gameplay loops to keep the game fresh , vehicles and basebuilding alone do not work for endgame mechanics...everything else is grinding and exploiting, going north and killing players on sight which is what most of new players do these days.

Bad game design again...why not thinking of ways to make night time gameplay more interesting and also rewarding. In the mod the infected could not see shit at night and also did not react to torchlights, so you could sneak through complete hordes, which was absolutely scary and fun. Also there were these oil barrels placed in cities which players could ignite during night time which also was immersive af. Another cool thing would be implementing a handful of working streetlamps for the smaller towns , which could be activated by players but should of course be very unstable, flickering and working just for a small random time... To spice things up there could be special events like heli crashes and air drops but not in the middle of nowhere but inside the major cities.... Last not least ...forget about idiots exploiting gamma and brightness, we already had beautiful nights working !!!! These are just random thoughts but everything I described above except the special events, we had working in the mod or during EA of the SA.

Exactly this is why I am relatively happy with the hunger/food/nutrition system as ist is now. It is mabye not perfect but the ballance between having to eat constantly but finding a lot of food items is fine now, especially taking time acceleration into account. All we need now is a proper ballance between hunger and thirst mechanics..something like DefectiveWater suggested. I agree though that it feels more of a grind mechanic and I also agree that after a while, once one has geared up completely, survival is getting too easy. But this is another story right now the absolute basic things still need tweaking..

That's right but if we are talking gameplay/survival mechanics then it should be clear that staying hydrated by constantly eating fruits and vegetables completely counters the thirst/hydration gameplay loop.This includes not only the need of water but also the need of finding purification tabs, canteens or plastic bottles.....so if we keep the hydration amount of food for the sake of realism but also want a proper ballance between hunger and thirst mechanics, we have to make sure the hydration level goes down a bit faster than now. I am playing now for about 9 hours with my current char and all I had on liquids was 2 or 3 cans of Kvass and Spite, seeing my thirst level never leaving the white icon.

Honestly I really like the patch, this is going in the right direction 🙂 The heavy melee weapons should get a tweak though as many suggested. But what I really would love to see is unarmed melee making no damage at all to zeds but give you only some space to escape by pushing them back or down to the ground. The stealth and aggro mechanics ( zed sences) are a lot better now ! To see infected loosing interest and wandering off was amazing when tested !! The icing on the cake would be a small chance of getting a really bad infection if getting to close to the infected. Oh and some more infected are always welcome xD. As far as it goes for nutrition and hydration, I also like the changes made in the last two patches, it is still a bit hillarious to have to eat constantly but well I personally can live with the way it is right now. The hydration though, still makes no sense...there is still no need to drink water at all as long as you are eating constantly....please lower the amount of hydration from eating fruits and stuff, this will looking for fresg water more important again! I really hope this patch stands for the direction you are going now but I fear the majority of casual and PVP gameplay orientated players will not like it... cheers PS: fighting zeds using melee should be mainly a last way out or a stealth option , or maybe to kill a single stray otherwise it should ring the dinner bell as it should do pew pew

What I find even worse is the hillarious starter gear and clothing. What was wrong about jeans and shirt?? Beside the fact that nobody would ever wear such clothes in automn (or at all) it is simply NO fun to look at your toon. Why not giving us at least the choice between a few basic civilian clothes ??? For fucks sake I am not even talking about rollplay choices which today is in as good as every survival game on the damned market. Same goes for the starter gear...but yeah they will not change such things anyway....

https://28dayslater.fandom.com/wiki/The_Infected this is how it was imagined by Dean Hall...sadly the zeds never got that much depth. I would have loved to see for example different day and night pattern.

And again this is just a whole bunch of hot air... Bringing in more weapons, especially firearms does not hurt but is not a thing that is really needed. Contaminated zones is also nothing new...it is of course an awesome feature but yeah it has been announced and shown to us 4 or 5 years ago. Infected AI and Infected spawn systems has been a pain in the behind since the very start, so thank you for improving it after all these years...Bugfixes...if bugfixing and ballancing are part of a roadmap then we know that there is not really that much on the horizon to be excited for. NO WORD about progress being made on the Enfusion Engine...Nothing about the one and only thing that really matters right now...server performance /physics...No word on new vehicles....No word about the shitty lighting .... New content will be new guns and gear like Hazmat Suits/Gear and Decontamination Showers etc. I guess...stuff that has already been made for Arma3 Contact expansion like Livonia.....not a bad thing but well...