dukstuf

I've played DayZ since the very beginning- back when it represented a novel and fiery cult hit. I don't post often, but I still play, and it's still one of my favorite mp games- ever, really. It's bizarre how much the game is pretty much the same as it always was, after all the years of work on it. It is somewhat less wanky than the old days- more reliable, I would say. I love the whole "getting away from it all" style of play- living in the forest in as secret and isolated place as I can find. Traveling to a city becomes a dangerous chancey thing to do, generally based on some extreme need. Here are the things I see the game needing the most. 1. Actual occasional zombie hordes which are rare, but dangerous if you aren't watching for them. They would need to have a half dozen to ten or so members that simply wandered together in some random direction. If you were quiet and in cover, they would pass you by. Having zeds only in predictable locations is the thing that most makes them mostly harmless. It wouldn't need to happen often, in order to make the world more dangerous and unrpredictible. Maybe make the chance for a horde coming your way larger if there is a gun battle involving more than one weapon to attract them. Or, a likelier chance if there is wildlife present. 7 Days to Die, an interesting game in itself, uses hordes to good effect. 2. The return of broken limbs, disease, and especially weather that matters. This really does force a player who works to survive longer term to think and plan ahead. 3. Somewhat better zombie battle behavior. This was super ultra awful in early days in the original game, and it's better today- but it needs to be better still. It might be the one thing that most holds the game back from a finished state. 4. Crafting foods, more expendable items like clothes, maybe some ability to craft tent-camo placeable bushes....that would be very cool. 5. Fishing. Of course! 6. Basic security for bases. At the moment, there is in reality zero hope of keeping anyone out of your base, which of course, makes them pointless, except for base building practice. Shouldn't it take something of a percentage amount of time to bust into a person's base as it does to build it in the first place? It only takes the time to log out of the server and log in and out again to undue all that work of traveling to cities for lumber, tools, finding nails and all that. Walls need to be much stronger, gates need to actually work, hacksaw blades either break or be uber-rare, and so on. One way to stop the cheating would be a simple teleport of 100 meters radius in a chance direction when you switch servers with a character. The base building feature is a nice start- it is possible to build a great base- even a single person doing it works fine, but, security for this feature needs attending to, and soon. I love DayZ. It is neither dead nor crippled. It's a game that will continue to have players for years. It hosts two styles of play, in my opinion. Those seeking fast paced combat with realistic weapons who enjoy gaining the best equipment and lording over others as the top tiger, and those who prefer a more camping, longer term survival experience basically keeping unseen. The world is big enough for both to be happy. It's a classic game, destined to be remembered, and there is really still nothing quite like it. My thoughts.

I've been playing DayZ off and on since the old days and original mod. I suspect the game would carry on successfully on it's quirky reputation for a long, long time, if the Devs would simply make the thing complete enough for a more fulfilling long term play. The Basebuilding, for example, really defies any logic the way it stands. It would have been better for them to wait until it was viable, rather than stick in a half assed, impossible to defend asset that take loads of effort to undertake, and mere seconds to ghost into and rob blind. The whole system really has no point at present- zombies don't wander around, so, there isn't any real reason for walls to keep 'em at bay. Players can effortlessly ghost into your camp- walls take a small fraction of the time to knock over as they do to gather resources and build. You can't lock barrels or tents inside em. Having a base merely advertises "Here is free Loot!". What's the point? You gotta be nuts to build- yet, secure camps for players are the real secret to long time success for this game. The "argument" that the game isn't finished, five years down the pike, including this key feature that keeps players interested and playing- which is what a safe base does- lacks any foundation. It simply is something that currently drives people away. It isn't that difficult to figure out ways to make a base more secure. Have anyone server jumping teleport some ways off, instead of in the same spot in the next server. Construct a container unique to a camp- tied to a watchtower, that locks and is impossible to break into, providing the builder one small advantage of a little bit of actual safe storage as a reward for his endless efforts at building. Finally, basebuilding desperately needs a few trappings to make it homey. A table, (perhaps a maptable that can hold a map you can pin), chairs, bookshelf, long term firepit, bunks, etc. These aren't extras. All of the above will add persistence of existence to the game- give players reasons to come back beyond the fight. It's the difference, from a design perspective, between a game that comes and quickly fades away, to a game with endless legs. Basebuilding is the secret to long term survival for the survivors, as well as the developers, of DayZ. Home is where you hang your hat.

When getting to the main menu, the visible mouse cursor freezes in place, and an "invisible cursor" is present. If you manage to click on something, the cursor visibly appears and freezes in that spot, leaving you once again with an invisible cursor and guesswork. This continues into game, when you open your pack, of have need for a moving cursor, it is invisible. This has only happened since the new patch. Anyone else experiencing this?

Having extreme mouse issues here with the new version as well. The visible mouse cursor freezes at log in, and there is an "invisible cursor" that you have to guess at to point at anything. It's very, very bad and makes the game unplayable.

I think my idea is a very logical, simple solution for a problem that makes the game seem ridiculous. And the solution for broken limbs is to not have them, because that would be a certain death sentence anyways. So, change breaks t sprains, and the game is much more realistic feeling.

The notion that a broken limb can be fixed by taking morphine is, of course ridiculous, but the idea of morphine aiding a person trying to ignore a less serious injury is a great one. Change the "broken bone" text to "sprained ankle", and it all works in a much more realistic fashion with no need for changing any real programing.

Making the morphine issue for broken bones highly realistic is a simple fix. You just have to use a bit of imagination, and realize that the problem isn't the way the morphine is implemented in game, it's the silly idea of calling what has happened to you a "broken bone". That simply needs changing to more accurately describe the injury. Change the text you receive to "sprained ankle", and the whole morphine idea becomes logical and works great!!

This 15 second delay between the time you drop something and the time it appears happens pretty reliably to me. It always eventually shows up though. The "falls down to the story below" I see only occasionally now, but that does happen too. Yesterday I has a whole backpack of stuff and my boots disappear when I logged out and then back in later than same day. Don't know what happened there!

Ha ha! The scariest thing happened to me yesterday in game....well....maybe it was the scariest for the other guy. I'm extremely sneaky, and always wait a while and look before approaching a dangerous area. Was in a far away town, away from the busy and overrun areas, and approaching an office building with a good third floor weapons spawn. Watched for a while holding my Mosin ready, no one. Proceeded in, stopped, listen a long while before heading up to the third floor. No one. Went into the small room where weapons and ammo generally are....stuff was in there, no one had made it this far out before me. I walk up to a shelving unit- there's a magnum ammo there. Before I can reach for it, a guy, who apparently was server jumping around in this room, pops between me and shelf...he's like two feet directly in front of me- so close I slide backwards away from him. About crapped my pants. He's got the auto-rifle, but it's slung. My long rifle is pointed at his stomach, nearly touching him. I keep enough of my sense about me to not shoot wildly, but back up, keeping the rifle in his stomach, in case he draws. He starts punching me, charging forward. I blast him, down he goes. If he had simply raised a hand or yelled friendly, I would have let him go- but nooooo, he has to start hitting me. Of course, he has no ammo for the weapon, which makes me feel bad, but, at that range, and with that sort of extreme surprise of him spawning on top of me, there wasn't much time for deliberation. Still, it was an absolutely terrifying moment the way he popped in between me and the shelf of ammo, and one I won't soon forget.

I have to say I really enjoy the "realistic" approach Rocket and Co. have been pursuing. I'm really looking forward to camping gear and stuff to do in the woods, as well as seeing a lot more purpose for items that are currently in game but not yet totally functional. I have a couple of basic ideas of things I think are possible to implement, that might add a great deal of practical sense in game- stuff that will add a sense of strategy in towns and buildings to the game. Ideas- 1. Make some buildings have some manner of "storage"- persistant chests/wardrobes/containers that act like non-moving backpacks where you can store a couple of guns, some ammo, extra supplies. This will give players a reason to guard a building, giving some strategic value to certain buildings with good line of site and a container or two. These could be fairly rare to find, and the containers quite unpredictable so that you have to search for them. It ought to be reasonably simple to put into the game, and would add an immeasurable sense of realism and interactivity into the game with buildings. People could sort of claim a home to defend. 2. Down the road, when zombies actually are stopped by walls, make doors lockable to zombies, but destructible, modeling Zed's lack of brainpower to turn doorknobs. It would be great having a ton of them beating down doors making a racket, and having a horde pour in when the door gives out. Zombie movie lore is all about holding up in buildings and trying to keep the Zed's at bay, with their sheer numbers knocking down barriers. This would be cool. 3. Repair kits. I know it's been discussed and probably will be addressed, but repair kits of all sorts- not just for cars and people, would be great. I'd love to see all those factories with specific purposes and themed repair sets- gun repair kits, sewing kits for clothes, woodworking stuff, cooking stuff, etc. 4. Real camo for tents. One of the very most fun things I enjoyed about the original DayZ was in hiding my tent cleverly, using natural cover. I'd very much like to see this expanded with a couple of camo netting options that could be scrounged, maybe the ability to better use the cover of trees and bushes when establishing your camp, and different sized tents. Maybe even some trench/pit digging, further down the road when the game is more fully fleshed out. I see trip wires are planned- won't that be fun!! Thanks for reading, comments welcome.

I think that generally Rocket and crew are taking the best path- making this as realistic as is possible. This means no bandit skins, and no warnings. As the game becomes more complete, with more to do outside cities, better ways of surviving with tents, fires, hunting and so on, that players will naturally drift out and there will be less bumping into murderers all the time. As zombies become more numerous and more dangerous, people will tend to group up and there will be less direct pvp in cities too. I say keep it the way it's heading, danger all all.

It makes a lot of sense to make hunting/cooking with fires high on the to do list to open the wilderness up to players. That would be a great choice for a high priority, as it was one of my fav things about the original.

DayZ Standalone has a lot of complex and realistic systems that take time to learn. Don't get too frustrated, there is a learning curve. Part of the beauty of game- what keeps people coming back, is the sense of accomplishment when you get to the point where you do regularly survive in style. Here are some survival points that I think are important and basic, but are easy to miss unless you are told. 1. Rifles and Semi-auto pistols don't just need cartridges- they also need a clip. Load the clip with bullets, load the clip in the gun. Drag accessories onto your weapon to use them. You can't add a scope if there is a carrying handle- take that off first. 2. Med kits and Ammo boxes hold more "slots" than they take up in the inventory, making them useful, but you can't put "other types" of things into them except healing supplies and ammo, respectively. 3. Use your quickslots on the bottom of the screen 1-10 for your weapons, canopener, bandages, water, compass, map. You hit the number of the item you want in your hands, hit it again to put it away. On my keyboard it takes a firm press....you have to hold it, rather than tap it. 4. You have to shoulder/unshoulder items like weapons and compass with the space bar. 5. Right clicking aims weapons. If you fire guns in third person, you will be a bit off target- go first person for shooting at any distance. 6. Keep hydrated and fed. This is your real key to staying out of trouble. If you are hungry ad thirsty, Zeds can knock you out more easily, and getting sick is easier. 7. Don't drink from potentially polluted water sources. I don't know if the water purification tablets are actually functional yet or not, but water can make you sick from ponds. 8. Don't eat spoiled food. It will make you ill, and everything worse. 9. If you are sick or dying of thirst, DONT RUN everywhere. You will last a long time if you walk, but you will wear down and die quicker if you run everywhere. 10. Don't trust everyone like a fool, but don't automatically shoot everyone either. There is a narrow tightrope to walk, and you have to learn to spot people first, and give a shout or raise a hand at distance where there is more of a chance at not killing one another out of fear. Most bandits are fairly obvious- the majority of people just want to survive, and will behave neutrally if given advanced notice. (Well, maybe not the majority, but a lot will). 11. Look for "better" items that hold more stuff. Not all pants and shirts are created equally. There are cool ballistic vests that hold a ton, and that pistol holster gives you more slots in your main inventory. 12. Wear a helmet and Zeds won't known you out so easily. 13. The medical system is complex. Stuff like vitamins will help keep you from getting sick. Blood bags will kill you if the bood type in them does not match your own, but saline can be used safely to replenish you if you start going gray. Those bottles of disinfectant and alcohol are valuable, use them on your bandages to keep from getting an infection- and always remember to keep hydrated at all times to avoid getting sick. 14. Foods with water in them, like sardines, gives you a bit of hydration, whilst uncooked rice is liable to make you thirsty....the foods are fairly logically worked out this way, with spaghetti and beans giving you more substenance, but no hydration. 15. Remember, tremendous amounts of stuff are not in game yet, and we are basically happy little testers. Give the designers time to implement all the cool crafting/ camping stuff, weapons and ammo, and up the Zed numbers and AI. Eventually we will have cars that you can fix, be able to build bases, and generally have tons more to do. For now, we should be reporting bugs, experimenting with the system, and exploring the world.

The blood tester seems to function correctly in game- a lot of people seem to not know it exists yet.

The best way to win a fight is not to engage in one. Most of the time, people run around in the open like chickens with their heads cut off. A survivor is someone who knows how to scout out what's ahead and get In and out without anyone the wiser. If you are attacked and must fight, then you do everything you can to kill them. There's no point in being a pansy ass about that, after all, this isn't tennis. So, if you prefer to not kill, be stealthy and smart.