_Anubis_ (DayZ)

I followed dayz (the mod) for a long time and I still play and enjoy it despite all its problems - I like it a lot. I did not purchase the SA because at this time it is mostly an eye candy version of dayz (the mod) with little more substance, similar bugs and limitations. Clearly, this is a rude awakening for the fan-boy population and I have a lot of sympathy for them, but there is really nothing new in what is happening now. All we need is just to remember: 1. dayz (the mod) comes out: "this is dayz mod, it will be wonderful. It is very buggy now, but it is the engine's fault." "dayz is, at this time, in alpha state, but it will evolve, we will add tons of things!" ... time passes ... "We can't achieve the vision of the game with this design" "Let's forget dayz. It is a thing of the past. there will be the dayz SA, it will be better, everything will be possible there!" 2. Then the SA comes, in the first (aborted) incarnation: "dayz SA is coming. It will be wonderful." "It will be alpha in the beginning" "it will be buggy in the beginning, but it will evolve, we will add tons of things!" ... time passes, release date approaches ... "We can't achieve the vision of the game with this approach." "Let's forget the dayz SA and its release date. We need to restart once again, it will be a dedicated engine. Everything will be possible there!" 3. Then the current SA comes. "dayz SA is coming. it will be wonderful" "it will be alpha and buggy in the beginning, but it will evolve, we will add tons of things (so buy it please)!" ... time passes ... "We can't achieve the vision of the game with this setup." "Let's forget dayz SA. We need to restart once again, it will be a super special thing, a new MMO never dreamed before. Everything will be possible there!" Do you see any pattern? _Anubis_

Run like hell, zig-zag and alter your path when you are shielded by a building (approach left, hide, go out from the opposite side, rinse and repeat). There isn't much value in being slow and careful because sooner or later a nearby Z (or a fresh one just spawned behind you) will give away your position no matter how careful you have been. I looted Elektro more than one time and the fire-station near the hill is a magnet - but if the snipers are crap (most of them are, because really professional guys are located North to look for well-equipped preys and not poor fresh spawns) they won't hit you. _Anubis_

Well that's only your opinion after all and since there are tons of servers filled with custom loadouts and extra vehicles, weapons and buildings the survival aspects of dayz appears negligible nowadays. Not saying this is good, quite the opposite because I like dayz for its immersive nature, but sadly the majority of the players are casual ones. _Anubis_

You are mixing reality with a game and apply mental patterns for a persistent 24/7 reality to a part-time online game. In a "real" apocalypse people willing to survive long term would gather in pseudo clan/groups/tribes, stockpile food and share tools and support- most of all they would build or find a safe place to sleep, a stash etc Some of those clan would be aggressive, some merely defensive and so on. Lone Wolves would have an hard time surviving unless very skilled and lucky. In dayz the casual player wants to have 2 hours of fun chasing other players and avoiding Z so the first goal is either to find an automatic weapon or a sniper rifle or both. As a Lone Wolf in dayz I can take some risks for 2-3 hours and then retreat in some corner and live there forever. But not everybody roleplays in dayz. _Anubis_

I think the big problem Rocket&co are having is the amount of hype they unfortunately created. The german have a very nice word for that ("selber schuld")... SA has been presented as a super-duper evolution of dayz, full of magical features not available in the mod and for this reason a"brand new game has been designed" (doh!) so there is a lot of hype and saliva drooling, but after endless videos people see the usual stuff over and over (the Z jumping, the guy with the motorcycle helmet, the loot in the car etc). All of this is nice and fine but at the same time the mods are growing too (thanks to a very active developers community) and here and there appears bases to be created, stashes, more enterable buildings, dogs, different UIs, hatchet slot, more weapons etc Features, lots of them. Then started the back-pedal mode: Uh, SA won't have full scope at the beginning, it will be alpha/beta/gamma, it will have bugs, it will take time to be good,it will be cheap at the beginning,... Why cheap? I want it to be good and I am ready to pay a full price IF it will be good. I am personally far more concerned about 'the big plan/vision' behind SA rather than its (first?) release date. What they will release is important, more important compared to when. _Anubis_

Well, there is no real "need" of any release date. Once the SA is on the market some potential buyers will look at the price, the quality, the alternatives and simply decide to buy or not. Others will buy no matter what - it is a free country. However, from a more ... concrete point of view as I work in the software industry for a living, the crap "it is ready when it is ready" does not cut the mustard anywhere in the business. Nobody with a sane mind would give an overall estimate for a complex project such as a modern computer game by saying "OK it will take 18 months give or take 2 and it will costs 2.4 mUSD", but a competent team would work for extended periods to break down the tasks in more manageable chunks, then add contingencies and "plan b" options then add buffers, extended periods of testing and so on. This is usually easier for a 2nd generation project (SA is the re-writing/re-engineering of something that exists already, albeit in a more primitive form) and the SA team has the advantage to use the dayz mod as a playground/mock-up/proof-of-concept environment to put forward ideas, test features and so on... They are in a luckier position compared to others. But regardless of the fact they may use a straight waterfall approach to work on the development (I hope not, nobody is using that since 10 years or so because totally unrealistic) or a more agile (e.g. SCRUM based, peer-programming, XP, ...) way of working they have received a budget to work on the project and are expected to deliver at a certain point. Whether this date is known to us or not, that's another issue. But rest assured such a limit (be it a certain amount of time, money or both) exists. If I had a software engineer in one of my teams telling me "Uh, this task I received, well, I think it is ready when it is ready" I would simply tell him "Ok son, understood - you'll also get your next salary slip when your task is ready " and this usually works: estimating the amount of effort required to do something is a measure of your professionalism as a software engineer. Your peers will judge you on that as well. _Anubis_

Quick Feedback (a couple of hours of gameplay) compared to 1.7.7.1: 1. Zombies move less erratically -not many crazy changes of direction- however this seems to make them easier to avoid when they are converging on you. After they have been alerted, they keep sprinting in some random direction for a few seconds and then they alter their path 2. No more sudden "whacks" insta-hit from nearby Zombies as in the past. Is this maybe related to 1.? 3. In potentially risky situation Zombies seem easier to fool (e.g. in a barn: usual trick to climb half the stair, let them begin to climb and then jump sideways), Again, related to 1. ? 3. Haven't spent enough time inside buildings to get hit through walls, so I can't comment on that 4. Noticeably more food available pretty much everywhere, in 20 minutes I had more cans and drinks I could carry (note: I was in the country-side of a 30/50 server, no big towns touched so far) 5. Kudos to the hatchet swap system, finally a big pain in the ass of dayZ is gone 6. [off-topic] are players friendlier with 1.8? I saw one guy in a field running with an hatchet and I observed him for a good 5 seconds before he noted me (I had a rifle but I wasn't aiming): then he saw me and froze: I said "Friendly" on Direct Chat and they guy went away without trying to attack... A miracle of the first order! All in all the Zombies appears to me a bit easier (not saying it is either good or bad) to avoid at close range. Long-range detection I can't judge, not having spent enough time. Better than before :) New Infection system I have yet to experiment... _Anubis_

OP, The skill-system is a very good idea to make survivors with a lot of experience a lot more valuable to themselves and to others. It is a good move toward role-playing and giving therefore more depth to the game, depth which the game needs desperately to make it different from the tons of online FPS on the market... Such skill-system would (IMHO) decrease PvP: dedicated players would need more time to reach their goals and pure-KoS oriented people would have serious issues at the beginning due to the steep learning curve: e.g. you may have an penalty on shooting full auto which goes down depending on the amount of time spent using the weapon so Joe "Lord-of-KoS" Doe finding a shining AKM would have an hard time fighting against an experienced player who took ages honing his skills on a lowly Lee-Enfield. However, there are a few problems: 1. Any skill system which unlocks actions/perks etc is immersion breaking. The example of "A survivor level 4 can shoot fireballs" is good one (in the ironic sense). The skill-system means do the same things more efficiently, not to do more things. 2. The game would be even more difficult for beginners, to the point to be unbearable. As you said, there are tons of examples: - a bandage would either need more time to be applied OR take more time to stop the blood flow once applied OR not reduce the blood loss to 0% OR ... - gutting an animal would give you less meat OR the knife would be dulled faster OR ... - a weapon would jam more frequently (*) OR recoil would be stronger OR reload time would be longer OR ... - a melee weapon would require more hits to kill OR require more time to hit OR ... Just imagine how hard it would be for a new player. 3. Such a skill system should be based purely on experience (trying the same thing over and over again) but not on findings (e.g. blueprint to make something, or manual to maintain a weapon etc) because that would mean it would be luck based 4. it should be seamlessly: no message such as "***Congratulations: You now unlocked shooting full auto without recoil penalties!***" - just be subtle enough to make the players feel the improvements by seeing the effects. _Anubis_ (*) A very nice feature of Far Cry 2: weapons deteriorated etc and jammed more and more frequently as time went by...

If you go into the starvation road with very limited food then the logic consequence would be to begin to kill other humans (players) because you could cook and eat their flesh - another reason to KoS (but possibly a more 'authentic' one in an harsh apocalypse world). There have been recorded episodes in history in which it happened. _Anubis_

Not needed - in dayz all blood bags are 0- hence no problems :D _Anubis_

My argument is that you can't count. Where did you study basic math, in a dayz barn? There are tons of 3dp on variations, that's why everbody is happy: vanilla, with or without starting gear, scripts on or off, regular or veteran. Plenty of choices for all tastes. Personally I go on vanilla/no start gear/cross-hair off/no markers on map (make sniping far too easy) and self-blood-bag script if possible (I play lone wolf wandering North often). You can play anywhere, but if you hate all the servers and all the players just create your own as you like, because whining and raging about everybody else being wrong because their opinion is different than yours will lead you nowhere. _Anubis_

If you look at the reality with dayz commander 90% of the servers are today 3dp on and all the players are there. I do not know which "community" you keep talking about, but for sure it is not the existing dayz player base - even Rocket acknowledged that without 3dp on servers, SA will not take off. But by all means, keep polling about 3dp off, while the world will keep playing 3dp on... :D Cheers, _Anubis_

Fraggle, if you do not want it removed then the solution above (3dp off/3dp on with "limitations"/ 3dp on as today) is perfect. _Anubis_ p.s. being a guy who worked to develop sw for the last ... 25 years approx. and leading today on a VR system project I can tell you that to introduce "limitations" to the 3dp view may end up in something really klunky. I do not question the idea behind that (I also made suggestions about how to do it) but I am not so confident about the result, hence the third option (3dp as today)

@Fraggle: I have read your long message above. I understand you do not understand (it is NOT a criticism) what is good in 3dp on. Let me try to explain why _I_ (YMMV of course) like 3dp on: I like it for the additional awareness I have and, guess what, I like it because I KNOW every rooftop, window, rock, bush, tree can, exactly as you said, pop-up suddenly a bad guy who starts shooting. I like it because it forces me to move always, to think, never relax and to keep my head (the real one, I have trackir) rotating endlessly left and right, up and down. While moving I often have the zoom view (narrow) on and while I run in one direction I scan around me, a sector a time, endlessly, like a radar. Call me masochist, but it gives me additional fear the fact I can be spied. _Anubis_

I am lost about the reason why the fighting goes on.... What's wrong in the solution proposed by the mods a few pages above? Here it is again, with a bit of irony: 1. 3dp off servers for: hardcore/real men/purists/elitists/talibans/hipsters/... 2. 3dp on with "changes" servers for: wannabes hardcore or half pussies 3 3dp on as todays servers for: pussies, carebears, "hello kitty" players/... To be clear: I will belong either to 2 (depending on the "changes") or 3 - I am not man enough to be hardcore :D Cheers, _Anubis_