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I was being sarcastic... precisely because fresh spawns start with nothing, and its impossible to sneak into any town or village without being spotted a crapton meters away just because you are crouched and stopped watching. I mean the oddities of this game mechanics just stack and stack one after another, and everyone can argue how much they want, the way the zombie mechanics are made are just simple 80's 90's games style difficulty. Just make them plenty, faster and stronger until they are hard enough that the only way to beat is by knowing the little metagaming tricks aka exploits to some extent. Without wanting to be harsh on the mod developers the zombie mechanics are just bad.(they of course do this for free and are limited by their knowledge and by the engine the mod runs on) Zombie mechanics fail completely to deliver an immersible gameplay and make it just annoying, yes its tense and makes the adrenaline pump sometimes but that is only because you know that if you lose the character then you will have to run and run and run a lot to get to the point you were before. Im so tired of getting "odd" spotted by random zombie far away and do the same always to avoid them, run to some building, run to some bushes, start over again. This game atm only have one style of playing, run run run and anyone can come here and tell they sneak into whatever place they claim to, you are either lying or you hug the ground all the time for hours, and just because you sneaked one time it doesn't prove anything, If anyone wants to prove me wrong, then by any means, start with a fresh spawn and then try to sneak into any city, go to the hospital, the supermarket, some others, record the video and then place it on youtube. I have tons of FPS experience, used to be a great counter strike player and I was a master in America's Army online FPS, so no, it's not lack of skill.

This. Nice topic, thanks for helping those who dislike how zombies work score another point in their favor.

Yes because fresh spawns start with box of matches, hunting knife, hatchet and lots of raw meat in their backpack, lets make a beach campfire, sing, cook some meat then hit cherno... Its so easy to talk when you hit the town with full gear... My guess is that you've been really really lucky, my zeds don't stop chasing me unless I get them stuck inside a building, gets repetitive and annoying pretty fast. Yes because killing someone and then run to don't get swarmed is very hard... Yes because any half competent hacker will have difficulties using the 1000 possible hacks to deal with zombie swarming...

No... real life has 180º field of vision... which is much better than peripheral dots. Sir you have my beans. This people come here saying zombies are meant to be this hard because most of them have their tents filled with weapons and ammo they get on empty servers by running through the airfield. Hardly impressive, try playing with a fresh spawn then judge what we say about the zombies, until then, stfu. Of course there's the hardcore gamers, but well we can't all be badass pro gamers can we? So if the game is easy to you it doesn't mean its easy for everyone else. I loled when I read this. Because one of the most common loots is silenced efficient weapons...I don't know what to do with all the silenced mp5's I find... Same here. ------------ Shooting zombies is an impossible tactic, shouldn't be, people should have the option to just shoot the hell out of a town if they wanted to, spawn more zombies yes, but after some initial waves it would cease spawning for a few minutes. Now would this be efficient? that would be for the players to judge. Sneak through zombies is almost impossible during the day, and even at night isn't easy. Remember that this kind of play also makes players easy prey for players, its really impossible to do this now unless you have all the time in the world and don't mind wasting hours to get a few loot out of a town. So this leaves us with the only viable option, run loot run loot. So much for sandbox.

Well the problem is that a lot of people who wanted to roleplay just get killed over and over again so now they just shoot before being shot down. I for one tried to be friendly but that doesn't work, was killed by people because I hesitated and/or tried to communicate. Now I just kill immediately if I have too, you show up near me with a gun, you'll get lead. But I do not shoot on sight or stalk people to kill, much less kill unarmed people. Only when there's a real threat to my character. The people who kill on sight, its their option, its their thing, fair enough if that's what they want to do, I just don't understand why spending hours in a game trying to kill maybe a hand of people when they can just play much better online FPS games where they can kill hundreds in the same time, but its not up to me to judge what they want to do with their time.

First to the group of people who are not able to respect others opinions and will reply to this post in a little kid manner, if you don't agree then just don't agree and justify it if you want, attacking me, my skill as a player and other comments like that is a waste of time for you and me. So yes I'm disappointed with DayZ, Don't get me wrong, this game/mod has a lot of great things but has a lot of faults, some from the arma2 engine heritage, others from imho very poor game balance, others for other reasons I guess. The map is very bad, Chernarus size is great for this type of game but its a repetitive landscape with completely random buildings on it, like if the map designers just thrown in assorted buildings into it, really boring. Most buildings can't be entered, this is a big fault especially in small villages, the player runs for 10 minutes to find 12 buildings of which 2 can be entered and have crap in them, unless they have the almighty barn that might have a lee enfield... its completely pointless to go into inland villages, complete waste of time. Hatchet accuracy... omg... why does it miss 75% of the shots... its just incredible how can it miss at point blank range shots directly to the chest, its amusing to see the hatchet going through the zombie chest and still missing... note that I don't really mind the reloading, engine heritage I guess. Claw Zombies, I guess they have claws since they make really nasty injuries that make you bleed to death... Super Power Zombies, they climb ladders, they open doors and if for some reason they can't, they will just make an x-men style move and go through walls and doors, or hit you through them. Binocular Zombies, seriously, I'm crouched and stopped, looking at the movement of zombies and all of a sudden a zombie 30-40 meters away spots me... is the game supposed to be played either running or hugging the ground? Too many items are required to cook meat, hatchet to cut wood, this is a no no, no one cuts trees to make small fires, they just scavenge for dry wood and make a fire, also most people could make a fire using two sticks, so my suggestion add this possibility, make the actions required taking a lot longer. Other problems like jumping fences were seriously annoying but is now fixed=) So basically I find all this small things very annoying as a total, I keep dying because I never find guns, only hatchets, and hatchets are crap, so zombies hit me and I start bleeding to death, have to run fast to stop bleeding but they chase me everywhere, I'm using a bandage when one of them travels through a wall and starts hitting me, run again... I finally escape and I need blood, I'm playing solo so I need to cook meat, box of matches is like precious metals, found 4-5 in like 20-30 games, so I have to search dozens of buildings where super zombies will eventually hit me or a player will kill me from who knows where. As a final note, I was at a point where I would buy warz or arma2oa for dayZ, but because I wanted a realistic hard simulator, I didn't have any doubt it had to be dayz, so again don't bother writing childish attack comments. My question is, how do you people avoid this? What am I doing wrong?

Now let's take into account this is a survival game, the point is to survive, you lose hours and hours of play if you die, all that work getting a nice thing going and then this happens: Bugs: - Breaking my legs when opening doors (Game breaking) - Breaking my legs when changing clothing (Game breaking) - Getting stuck on building entrance (Possible hit from zombie/player) - Many meny! graphical glitches (Don't really care too much) - Zombies can travel through walls and closed doors (Game breaking) - Zombies can hit players through walls and closed doors (Possible hit from zombie) - Death animations take too long to play (Leads to lots of wasted ammo and possible hit from zombie) Zombies are not hard, they are only annoying and persistent: - They have your coordinates and a gps with them, modern zombies I guess... - They hit from 3-4 meters away from you, maybe more, not even sure if this is another bug or intended - They can only be cut lose when "exploiting", definitely not skill and if you want to call strategy to using faulty odd game mechanics then call it whatever you want. (Could go on about the zombies super powers, my problem with this is not that they are super strong, is that in conjunction with bugs, they become annoying, just annoying, not hard) Other: - Character animations take way too long, things like taking out a gun when time is of the essence, its just ridiculous, the dude just really takes his time - Very odd gear system, have to get secondary weapon inside backpack, have to drop main weapon to use a hatchet... just annoying - Annoying method of opening doors and climbing ladders which leads eventually to zombie hits -------- So far I played around 30 lives in this game, give or take. 10% of them I was killed by other players, fair enough. 20% of them I died by zombies due to my own mistakes. 70% of them I died due to consistent bugs crippling me along the way which eventually leads to a situation where I will die. This is my standard life in this game: Spawn. Run. Loot. Run. Get hit through a wall. Bandage myself. Run. Loot. Run. Zombie passes through a wall and hits me. Run. Use exploit to lose zombies. Bandage myself. Run. Desperately try to find all the items needed to cook meat. Run. Eventually some bug or mistake I make and I'm dead because all those annoying bugs and faulty mechanics severely crippled me into a situation I have to risk more. As a final note, this mod surely is fun sometimes, but arma 2 engine is really really bad for this concept, I have great reservations towards the standalone since its arma engine 2.5. Not sure what that means but sure as hell won't buy it unless I see some drastic improvement in comparison to the mod gameplay By any means I want to criticize the great work modders and devs have done, the concept is amazing, a lot of things are really great, and not only that I WILL KEEP PLAYING this game because I really like a lot in it. If the devs/modders find a workaround at least to the leg breaking bugs and the passing/hitting through walls the gameplay would improve massively.

So what some people are saying is that if its impossible to play solo then coop with others, this makes perfect sense, so if they make the game so annoying and hard that you need at least 10 friends to play the whole time together its just great, you only have to get 10 people online with you all the time. Now seriously what about stopping to give really really stupid solutions, if people want to play solo and most people want to play solo, then why shouldn't they!? Its just that its impossible to sneak into anywhere anymore, unless you crawl all the time, but afaik this is a game, as in, NOT YOUR REAL LIFE, so I speak for myself and I think for most people with a life, we don't want to spend 1 hour crawling around to get two cans of food and a bandage, no thank you.

Well and after so many people with good respectful replies there's always the idiot who thinks he is the sarcasm master. I never said this game doesn't rock, just said it has flaws. You have no idea of who I am, or what is my taste and my skills in gaming or whatever. I don't like COD and I don't like WOW or fantasy themed games, so no, its not my style. I hate easy games, that's why I only play online games. And with that attitude the only children around here is you, I don't give you more than 16 years old, at least maturity wise. It sounds just like you are an absolute moron. In general.

Good to know a lot of people notice that its no longer difficult but only annoying like it is, its just impossible to sneak into anywhere unless you are down on the ground. My suggestion for zombies AI is for them to be able to spot players moving slowly crouched only under 10-15 meters. Another suggestion I would give is to have an animation for zombies when they notice something, so zombies first detect something, and perform animation, for example chimpanzeds would raise their head and look around, and a second later if player is still visible or heard by him it would spot and aggro the player, this method would give players some feedback of what is happening around them and a very small window of time to stop what they are doing. OF COURSE that his would only apply if its not something very loud like a gunshot nearby, or a player that just walks in front of them, in this situations they would aggro immediately. Zombies when lose sight on players should continue running towards the last place they seen it, if then they don't see or hear the player they would just continue alerted and would choose a random location to run, this random location is defined by a 180 degree radius being that the center of it is defined by the direction the zombie last seen the player and the place he was where he last saw him, this would make zombies hard to lose since they would continue running around, but wouldn't feel like they have gps on players which is to say the least, completely ridiculous. This would give a much better immersion to the chase since the player would struggle to dodge and hide while the crazy zombies are running around searching for him. After a short time they would resume their mindless wandering. The zombie communication is also a very silly thing, it just makes it even more impossible to deal with them.

Yeah I have spent more time trying to enter servers and failing than playing the game today, not sure why, but re installing DayZ and praying it works...

Well it might be an unrealistic movement but in terms of speed to jump over a fence its realistic since the usual vault is simply horrible. What matters is the functionality and it seems correct, the character first slows down a little, then performs the action and takes a big acceleration hit to getting back to running, so it seems about right and balanced. I would prefer a regular jump, just like in the 400 meters barriers competitions, less stylish but more realistic in terms of animation I guess.

Well what can I say, I'm not the kind of person who place a weight on the W key and waits for it to reach more or less where I want it to be. I like to roleplay, go through a town and sneak to see what is in there, go check that odd tower in the way, that dearstand 200 meters off way, also I don't go check map outside game to see if I'm going in the right direction, I like to use my navigation skills ingame. All in all, to get from south to north I need way over an hour. Mindless running, no thank you. Last time I went north, I went through some small villages, nothing in them, not even a can of food, best thing I found was a lee enfield and some sodas, then I found a town, with a little mall in it, nothing in there, got attacked by a sniper and ran away sucessfully, was fun, but then I was kinda lost running north and I saw a small watchtower, climbed it and my character for some reason fell when reaching the top (and it was game fault, not mine, that I'm sure), so because the watchtower was small I broke my legs in the middle of nowhere, painkillers didn't work, morphine Ive seen it once in my whole 25+ hours of gameplay so yeah... just f***ing great. Now I just broke my legs while changing from my civilian clothing to a gillie suit, must have been a really tricky piece of clothing to change to in order to break bones... morphine? none in sight, oh and a zombie decided to get inside the building and saw me immediately proned, had to shoot it with the only weapon I have enfield, already heard the horde screaming in joy, "look look, that gunshot sound came exactly from this coordinates, let me check xray vision, yes there's a dude crawling in that position trying to hide lol! Let's get him boys!" So yeah I was killed by clothing this time...

So what you are saying is that I'm supposed to rush always to the same places to get stuff, where is the fun in that? Spawn, rush here, then rush there, then rush wherever, always the same routine, not fun, not fun at all. Half of the fun in this game is the exploration of locations, running on a hill and all of a sudden there's a small village, go there check it out, find stuff. But no, there's never anything there because... Im supposed to raid cherno or electro to get gear over and over again, maybe it the airfield, over and over again... Hardly impressive and boring as hell. Keep in mind that to raid other towns a new player has to run for hours, only to find out they are just worse than electro or cherno, so what's the point in losing an hour to get north or inland if there's no reward to it.

Well the map topography can be based on real life satellite data, but doubt the villages and cities are, still that is a macro topography of the map, hardly the map details I'm talking about, check any real place countryside for yourself and tell me if this map reflects anything in real life, its just a topographic map with pointy sticks coming out of it and odd towns, that much there's no argue against, I'm just saying it could use some improvement, if not on the micro topography, then add more things coming out of it, stones, houses, whatever. And do not mistake my intentions here, I'm just pointing out something that could use some improvement. Well maybe Im being just unlucky, but morphine is like diamonds and matches is like gold, really hard to find, bandages are much more common but sometimes are not spread enough, I can go through 10-20 buildings without finding any. But is the point of the game to know the map spawn points and rush there? Or is it to explore and survive via multiple paths? Because if the game is about knowing the map to get the stuff I think its bad. Hey I'm not a kid! =) But I agree with what you said, just because people learned the exploits to go around the game flaws doesn't make the flaws non existent. The Hatchet is a great example, people keep saying its a killing machine but I miss 75% of the hacks with it, hacks that Im sure Im in range and Im sure I aimed properly. Well this things are really annoying, specially the change hatchet to gun thing, it really needs to be worked on. But this problems are for the most, not life threatening so they are random annoyances we have to deal with.

Well I love that they swarm, I just don't like the idea that they have a gps tracking device on me and can follow me to the gates of hell if I go there, despite never seeing me, now that is not "realistic" or difficult, its just a ridiculous annoyance. Why not making them aggro towards a location!? They hear a gunshot on a direction and the game knows where it came from, if the zombie can see the player then he aggros the player, if not then he aggros a random location near the gunshot/noise/whatever, so he runs there, if there he sees a player he then aggros the player, if not, then he starts wandering around, and if the player is nearby all of a sudden he have a swarm of zombies right in his way. Zombies knowing that a gunshot came exactly from that room in that building is just silly, unrealistic, and annoying, I want them to be hard, but I want to have solutions other than running away or using exploits to lose them, for once I would like to use skill like you would in real life when a ferocious animal chases you.

Well I for one don't agree with many of your points, made a post recently about exactly the game being more annoying than difficult and on that I agree completely with you. But this new difficulties sounds great, this is exactly what Im looking for in this game, hard survival by adding multiple realistic aspects. The only thing I complain about is the super zombie powers, while I accept that engine limitations require them to be able to hit me 3-4 meters away, I can't accept they can hit me through walls and walk through doors, its just completely ridiculous bug that is destroying my fun. About them being very hard to lose, yes I agree this is annoying, they shouldn't be this hard to lose, they shouldn't have super memory and gps tracking device on players, it adds to the difficulty but it really takes away half of the fun of being able to run away and hide from them, since they know exactly where you are no matter what, it makes the game about metagaming/exploiting instead of skill and strategy, which is big big minus for this mod.

That's exactly what I try to do with the hatchet, but zombies can hit me from very far, its odd, but I understand why it has to be like that. Vault is horrible ;) But now they added the ground dive, amazing work, problem solved and with style. Never died or got hurt by a door but Ive been attacked endless times by zombies through walls and zombies who travel through doors and walls and hit me from behind. Well the problem with morphine is that its rare, so far only seen it in the hospitals, never seen anywhere else, so for a new spawn its risky to go into the hottest place in the cities, plus new players don't know the map well enough while pvp campers do. That's why Im frustrated, Im doing that, Im planning, Im trying alternatives and they are not working, mainly due to the randomness I don't like, which I understand if others like it that way.

Well randomness keeps things interesting but not like this. I can't get immersive because my characters keep dying to bugs/game deficiencies, so the next character just means nothing until I can get at least to the "level" I was with the previous. (I sometimes die due to my poor decisions, not saying otherwise) Getting killed because a zombie hits you through a wall and you don't have any bandages because they are so random at spawning is bad. (If its supposed to be hard to find them then the game can't have such bugs, or the zombies shouldn't make you bleed, a counter is required) Getting killed because you climb some ladder and at the top the character instead of getting into the platform somehow jumps out of the ladder and dies isn't good but at least its rare. Spending five minutes infiltrating carefully a village without being spotted just to be spotted by some random zombie 40 meters away destroys any strategy (You can't hide from them in most situations, they are way too smart, this keeps "zombie escape" quite dull and repetitive) Hitting 5 times the hatchet into a zombie chest and missing all hacks is not about skill or strategy, its just annoying and for a new spawn can mean death. Not being able to survive because your dumb character can't make a fire without matches is frustrating. If the goal is to make a realistic survival simulator then it should have realistic options for each goal, each option with pros and cons. For every problem/bug/situation the players should have counters, counters that with great skill work 80% of the time, but without great skill or not enough concentration only work 30% of the times. If I want to sneak into a village, I should be able to, but not easily, I want it to fail sometimes, I just don't want it to fail 90% of the times regardless of how well I did it. I think this game is a great work and will continue to play it (if the servers allow me, they decided to go unresponsive tonight=( ), I just feel like its hard because of randomness and bugs instead of true difficulty

Well I am frustrated and I honestly hope the new game engine kicks my nuts and blow my mind. Dumbed down shooters sell at an average of 1+ per year, while great games last for several years, that's the problem, FPS games are money printing machines for established companies/names. Well I'm not finding this to be hard, I'm finding it to be random and annoying, in a game of skill you want randomness to play a low role, otherwise you lose 5min sneaking into a place carefully for nothing for example. I don't know how you get your hatchet accurate, I have a hard time hit anything, and I'm talking about being absolutely still and aim at the very center of the enemy zombie, honestly not seeing how to improve accuracy. Well its annoying to keep changing it in gear to a proper weapon, because you need a proper weapon when another players shows up. Yeah usually I lost them in hills or bushes. I carry lots of bandages if Im lucky to find them which is sometimes a pain in the arse, problem is when you get that first zombie hit that 90% of the times make you bleed and there it goes your only bandage, then everything that makes you bleed will make you die because of the randomness of bandages spawning, sometimes I check 20+ buildings until I find a much needed bandage. Played a few rounds in servers with +-40 players but usually in servers with +-20. I like the pvp so I want my games to have some human population, but I guess I will try the suggestion of playing on low populated servers to get better at pve.

Well I like to see my character running around, performing actions, cornering slowly with his weapon ready, that's half the fun since this is a cinematic mod mostly. The human eye can detect movement quite easily with the "corners" of the eyes which in a FPS just doesn't happen, plus a human can move his eyeballs, plus moving his neck in the rate of milliseconds something which is impossible to do in an FPS game. Third person is the closest we have to simulate field of vision. I really don't get why games still don't give third person view that renders only from the FPS field of vision but with a maximum field of vision of 180º of course and the vertical field of vision respectively, static objects are rendered but non-static are not, so no peeking without the danger of being discovered. Its possible but the game industry in the last decade only evolved in graphics quality because that's what sells, you don't want to give players games that are awesome, you want to give players games that are shinny but that will make you want to buy another. Anyway... third person is a must to me, without it wouldn't even consider buying dayz/arma2oa and definately won't buy the standalone.

I bought the game two days ago, other than the cd-key problem with arma2oa that was solved with the regedit I didn't have any trouble until today. I had this exact problem today, stuck on waiting for host, then I remembered the last two days I didn't have steam online and today it was online, so I went into offline mode and dayz commander worked well right away, it can be a coincidence but its working well now. With steam online all servers were either unresponsive or with 10000 ping.

Hello everyone, I've been dating Day Z and War Z on YouTube a lot, and I like both but I feel like Day Z captures the more realistic approach I want in this kind of game so I have a few question which hopefully the community can help me with so I can make a decision. So first I've read DayZ would get a standalone version, then I read it was cancelled and then I read it was delayed, so which is it? If it was just delayed does it mean that if I buy ArmaIIco to play DayZ I would have to buy later on the standalone version? Anyone knows an approximate date of release in the event of getting out as a standalone version? If it continues as a mod for ArmaIIco will I have to buy the mod later on when it gets out of alpha? If it goes MMO any chance of the standalone becoming a monthly fee type of mmo? So my main issue is not about having to buy the game, its a good game and the devs/modders deserve the coins, but my issue is about making the mistake and having to buy it two times. I mean Arma II seems like a great game but I'm really not into pure combatsim FPS, DayZ is a FPS game but we can all agree its much more than that. I ask also for possible release dates because if its only in a few months I might buy ArmaIIco anyway and then buy DayZ standalone also, 20 euros for a few months of DayZ fun sounds like a great deal.

Thanks a lot that was really helpful, if the alpha is on the months frame then I will buy armaIIco and enjoy until then the mod version. Thanks again and see you all ingame.