Shadow Man

Haven't played in months. I got sick of my crappy pc. I was fine in low pop servers and in fact it made player encounters even more intense because they were much rarer. But as soon as there were 10 or more players my poor pc just got slower and slower and as we all know, its not fun dying cos you get 10 fps. So now I'm saving up, and waiting for SA.

I guess the problem is trying to create a true survival situation inside a [game] environment where meta is king. It may take a while, but hopefully Dayz will be what Rocket wanted.

Is the mod as we know it really what Rocket intended? It may have become very popular but it was never complete. I'm not talking about zed behaviour or bugs, I mean content. Rocket wanted a survival sim, but we've all been playing an open world deathmatch where there's nothing much else to do. The standalone will be VERY different, and all the people who are hoping for the SA to be a polished version of the mod may well not like what they get. People will still be able to pvp, but you are actually going to have to survive this time, and that will require you to do other stuff rather than focusing on finding guns. This is of course dependent on whether Rockets original "vision" is still intact after all the hype and pressure for it to succeed.

I've thought about this a lot and my general opinion is that it doesn't suit Dayz. On the other hand there is a problem with death not being that much of a loss and some sort of character progression would help with this. The trouble is that it would have to be subtle enough so as not to ruin the game. Things like skill trees are the total opposite of what Dayz is all about. The only thing I hope is that (eventually) the amount of items available in game will be so vast that that in itself will act as character progression. Also there needs to be a lot more to do than just go looking for pvp. If you look at Minecraft, the time you spend collecting all that crap, to be able to craft a new tool that enables you to collect a previously unavailable resource. Falling off a ledge into lava and losing your shiny new diamond sword is heart breaking. In Dayz you are your gear, and there's no getting away from that. Without giving players buffs and shit there's no way to make the actual player valuable. Unless of course you have to pay real money for each life ;)

I was just day dreaming about how Dayz would be quite good as a free to play game. The difference being that you purchase characters rather than content. Lets say £5 to buy one character and you can only have one at a time. It would add the much needed value to your own life and make people a lot more cautious. You could give people a few free lives when they first start to let them work out the game, or maybe not. I dont know what exploits there may be but one obvious problem is you would get massive rage from casual gamers each time they get killed. Also the game would have to run perfect with no glitch kills etc which makes it unlikely. Any thoughts?

This is why I asked how much realism you wanted. I actually agree that high grade military weapons should be very rare, but the other side to playing a civilian is that no one would know how to use many weapons. You said its not hard to fire an average weapon. That may be true, if you handed me a loaded m249 saw then as long as the safety is off (I'm assuming it has one) then all you have to do is point and pull the trigger and try not to fall over. BUT could anyone without training reload the thing? I highly doubt it. This why I ask about realism.

Ok thats fair enough but how much realism are you after? It cant be much. Can someone thats been in the military tell us how slow an average civvy would reload a weapon without any training? I'm betting its pretty awful.

Hows this for a time consuming reload... (reload is soon after 4.30)

Cant wait to run to Cherno...

At least you're actually looting the bodies now.

Actually you touched on an interesting point there. You could have a couple of ultimate hardcore servers which you had to pay for respwans, at least then there's still normal Dayz servers. I bet you would get players in them although numbers would eventually decline because of having regular Dayz as well. Otherwise I agree with most of what you said :D

Yes its not quite free to play is it, thats true. There's no doubt it would be punishing. KOS and trolling/griefing is probably the thing that would matter most. Narkoman14 you may die 100 times a year but thats probably due to there being no great loss. People are very careless with there lives in Dayz so if you had spent money (It doesn't have to be £5, I just plucked that out of the air) then you would take more care of yourself. I don't really think its a viable option either, but if it were done then it would enhance the experience of Dayz. Unless of course you actually want the open world deathmatch that exists now.

What was the result? To be honest that game was flawed regardless so its hard to use it as an example. Whatever they did with WarZ shouldn't be used as proof that an idea is bad.

There is no spoon. Just sayin

I suppose reality must cover both?

But can you define reality?

I thought the same thing the first time I played Minecraft...

Head straight for cherno or elektro and hit the clubs. It can get a bid rough but nothing a few painkillers wont sort out.

Dont say that word here :ph34r:

Ok I'll accept that. But my point was that the presence of hacking is not a justification for side/global. Maybe you can never eliminate hacking. But designing a game around the inevitability of hacking seems odd to me. Your suggestion of an admin channel seems most promising.

I disagree. What really should be done is make the game cheat proof first. Then make it so that spawns are not possible to be predicted. Then the awful abortion that is side chat/global chat can be got rid of. Oh and scrap everything else which gives any player any info that they should not have access to without actually experiencing it. No player name lists, no death messages, nothing.

Its a valid question to ask about end game. But what it does is highlight that many people have expectations of a game. Dayz is like Space Invaders. You are there, trying not to die, until you die. This is where the term "Anti-game" comes from. Its deliberately not giving you all the normal game expectations in order to create a specific experience. If asked "So what is the point of Dayz? Whats it all for?" the answer is this: Dayz tries to authentically simulate an apocalypse. In a real world apocalypse what would be the point there? Just to not die. I think one day there should be some sort of official difference between "game" and "simulation". If I make a game where your objective is to stare at a circle on a screen you would say thats boring. Yes, thats because you are playing a boredom simulator. Dayz is an experience. If want to be part of it you play it and accept it. If you "need" end game, then maybe you need to open your mind a little.

Not the way to do what exactly? What difference does it make to the actual game? All it does is feed YOUR need for information. If a good game is what your most interested in then all you have to do is wait. Play some other games until its released or something because knowing every single thing the devs are doing won't actually make any difference to the game.

I now wonder if it would have been better that we knew nothing of the SA being developed. We'd all be merrily enjoying the same DayZ(mod) we all know, with all its glitches and problems and then BAM! "Rocket has announced the release of DayZ Standalone!" All this hype over the SA can only end up working against it. Remember the hype over modern warfare 2? (Doesn't deserve capitalisation btw) The whole community is going nuts waiting, some of us managing to wait better than others but we're all anxious, and in the meantime endlessly discussing what we do/don't want and arguing about kos and zombies blah blah... I just wonder how it can live up to expectations. I'm deliberately trying to expect the worst so as not to be disappointed. What the hell is the topic anyway??