smoq2

I'm fully expecting to see a DayZ SA version of Arma 3 Epoch or Exile. I.e. Traders, currency system, tower building system, simple missions and tons of vehicles and weapons ported from other Arma games. Do I want to see that? I don't really know...

This one actually deserves defending, so here goes... :) The "surviving" aspect is non-existent at the moment, but with good reason - the team is testing functionality of certain systems, so they make related objects easily obtainable on purpose. E.g. They allow you easy access to food and see if e.g. vomiting applies desired effects/hunger and dehydration progresses at desired pace/etc. (Of course nutrition testing was concluded long time ago, I just used it as an example.) You'll see a shift towards survival aspects when they start data mining for social behavior, migration, frequency of occurrences, etc. and start fine tuning the numbers of what you find or are able to do in game. Digression: They already do that, but to a very small extent, like making heatmaps of where people die. When that comes is a totally different question though...

I'm with elander on this one... At this point (with the overall project delay), believing that we'll get a declared, feature complete beta, is unfortunately borderline delusional. All the "nope" features in the above post commenting the roadmap are kind of "grand" and I don't see them appearing out of nowhere between updates. Basic implementations, elaborated later, is what I'm expecting. Then again, the developers claim that many systems are already in place, just waiting to be switched on when blockers are removed, but I've seen little evidence (I could be ill-informed). Disclaimer: I have no emotions regarding the matter, just want people to get real.

I think he was talking about an internal release date, which I'm also almost certain exists - There is a budget allocated to each phase, so there has to be an internal estimate on how many man-hours or man-days it will take and real time deadline (or even several: "target", "safe" and "critical" if shit really goes south). For obvious reasons, it won't be made public, so there is no public/official release date, which makes you also right. Ergo, both of you are right, you're just talking about two different things. ;) To the OP - We don't know; BI won't tell...

The whole mission concept, with the ideas included herein, reminds me of what we have in Epoch/Overpoch/Exile right now, which is basically a very basic method of inciting players to gather up in one place, which leaves a bitter taste. Nobody cares what the mission actually is, as basically in every scenario it's (1) Kill AI, (dependent) Kill any players around (2) Loot crate. The thing is, in my experience with the aforementioned mods I noticed a pattern - If you really want to succeed in the mission, which I understand by gaining the reward, you have to join a server with 20 active players at max. Otherwise it's just a snipefest until the crate despawns and nobody actually wins. On occasion a clan or group of 10 people came around and actually did hold the ground (with losses and run-straight-to-the-body gimmicks) - didn't see that on popular servers that could hold a notable population till present day (others run dry now). All of the above is paradoxically the same reason why I'm certain we will have the very same missions when BIS throws out mod support - the system is easy to port between BIS games and people already got use to it. Now I know OP wants to have missions "on steroids", not the clunky and basic system I related to, but I fairly don't expect that to see the light. It's just too ambitious. But I do hope to be wrong...

While all of your ideas are good, they revolve around combat. My take on bases was from a survival perspective, since that's my preferred style of play. And from that perspective I see very little of value in having a base. That, and well... Quoting someone from this forum: "If the developers rely on mods to make their product attractive, they have already failed." Being a strong advocate of this thought I almost never include mods into my line of thinking when discussing future features.

I'm not sure how will I personally use the feature... In Arma mods where basebuilding is a feature I always build some form of a base, but in the end I always end up playing solo. The groups I played with disbanded sooner or later and maintaining bases and vehicles becomes simply tedious. Nowadays, I see that in the long term 1-2 stashes of some form of container and one smallest possible vehicle is enough for a lone wolf. Everything else simply draws unneeded and uncontrollable attention. Since I don't see any potential groups among my friends that will bank another 1k hours into DayZ as I will after release, I also don't see the need to build anything, apart from something small and lockable to park my smallest vehicle for the night. Ergo, basebuilding is a feature I consider to be profitable only for groups. Of course, I am against any artificial measures that would prevent a lone player from building a sizable fort, should he/she wish to. [EDIT] I forgot to mention one thing that puts me off - exploitable design flaws. Exile and Overpoch left a bitter taste due to the fact that hackers or glitchers can penetrate bases with relative ease. I don't know if that will be the case when DayZ hits 1.0, but it's safe to assume it will - hacks will always exist, exploits will also always exist. Another reason why "safety = concealment" and "safety =/= walls" in my book.

Sigh... There is not much to say in the matter, other than just the reception of the game is what it is. Call the reviewers haters, spoiled brats with too much cash or uneducated in terms of game/software development, they are the market and the market is very similar to a force of nature e.g. a flowing river. No matter what arguments you put forward, the river just keeps flowing. You can either adjust yourself to float and go along or drown. Metaphors aside... People are giving the game harsh reviews because it doesn't/didn't meet their expectations. Period. It may not be just, it may not be polite, it just is. DayZ is an ambitious project that has to survive on a very shifting and demanding market segment (gamers). One of the main distinguishable aspects of this segment is an almost addictive need for the "new" - deliverance has to be frequent and fast. Corner-case users will say that "Let them take their time. I want the game to be as good as it can be.", but the truth is, if they don't fit their best reception window period, it will hurt their predicted sales and development budget for subsequent phases. Repercussions are that the long-tail of feature implementation gets cut starting with the features planned after 1.0, and if the situation becomes dramatic, e.g. sales predictions after 1.0 become close to 0, not all the features planned even for 1.0 are implemented and the game gets instantly "released" with some promotional badge. IMO, I don't know what's the situation in BIS marketing department, I don't have the data relevant for their strategy. I just get an inkling that the faces there are not too happy with the statistics they produce. Also, I'm beginning to see that the recipe for success in the gaming industry is to impress more frequently with less than to promise more and hope for patience. Oh, and changing the scope after market exposure is not a good move as well.

Did it once... My two friends were talking to fresh spawn in Berezino. They were giving him food, etc. I was about 0.5km away and trying to meet up with them. They really wanted to help the guy... When I arrived I ran up to the the fresh spawn, shot him in the face with a buckshot and said "OMG Dude! You look fucked up! Are you ok?". My buddy just said stoically "Well... Shit..." -> laughter... I don't know if that's shit talking, but it was hilarious at the time... Never did it again because going full jerk is not my style. Had to just, well... See how it is just once. :)

Hard to say... The pattern noticed throughout last 2 years would be for an update to sit 15-30 days on experimental, then get pushed to stable, depending on the severity of blockers. However 0.60 is unprecedented in terms of scale so throwing any time frame would be complete guesswork. Also, there may be other factors than technicalities (e.g. marketing) in place to rush/postpone a stable push.

I managed to get in and play 2-3 hours altogether. When I first joined I was overwhelmed with joy! 45 FPS in Cherno! After all, the amount of work and passion they've put into it to make a new renderer and whatnot... But after the excitement settled (around 1 hour into the game) I started to analyze how much value was actually added to the product from the end-user perspective and I couldn't shake off a feeling, that it's very little. I mean, from my perspective it's just average 20 FPS more, otherwise its the same amount of content/value that 0.59 was giving. The problem with the patch is that we can only experience the tip of the iceberg and that's not enough for me to get into the game for more than just to have a quick peek on what has changed. Rational judgement: I do give credit to the team for pulling this off - Thumbs up! I can see you're trying to make the best product you possibly can! Emotional judgement: Initial excitement ended with "meh". Too little value delivered to the consumer in terms of UX. I'll give it another shot when stable rolls out, but I don't expect fireworks.

I don't see the problem with what it is now... I however do see it if they were to implement some unnatural solutions to circumvent the current outcome. Like temporary invincibility for example... The universe of DayZ is nothing like it would be in the real world under the same circumstances - immortality or "rebirth" is not a factor in real life after all, thus value of DayZ life is simply very very very low. It's a blend of VR with a coating of reality. If you stuffed 50 people with Deadpool like powers on one e.g. island you would have DayZ. To put it bluntly, don't expect DayZ to be like real life, it will never come close, and so is its society. Depends on your goal, but if you want to survive the longest, always keep in mind that this is a game and approach it a such. If you don't want to be killed on the coast after spawning then just head for the nearest village that is not on the exact coastline the very second you have control of your char.

I'm not sure whether we can even do a realistic guess work regarding the value of having a base at this time - it all boils down to how balanced it will be. I mean, taking 1 hour or 1 week to break into a base by hammering the door with a sledgehammer alone changes the value of any base basically from meaningless to "all win". Whether we will be able to see the damage done to that door once we log in and can repair it breaking the breaking-in process is another major factor, how long will it actually take to build something decent, etc. Ideally (IMO) I would image a system, where destroying (breaching) some creation would take roughly the same amount of time it took to build. If it took you a week to build something, it would have to take a week of someone else's time performing some action in order to destroy it.

As Grimey Rick said, 99% you were just sniped. It didn't have to be from a range - many guns glitch out (e.g. the mosin) and don't play the fire sound for other players. Many of my friends don't hear me shooting, although standing right next to me. Also, a bullet hitting your body makes the same (probably placeholder) sound as being hit with an axe. Since there was no gunshot sound to mix, you could hear the hitting sound loud and clear. Hate to say it, but "typical alpher".

I came to this conclusion through several years of experience in my professional line of work. Furthermore, I said "large" not "largest". A large portion of the "sales pie chart" can be stated for 5-15%, so the notion is subjective. Ultimately however, even 5% of your customers (when you count your sales globally) matter greatly and should not be treated as a leftover statistic and told in a cynical manner to sit quietly in the corner because they don't know how things work. If treated accordingly, this group can turn around any PR backlash you might be facing with design choices, obvious development hinders, etc. Basically anything that influences negatively your project in any other area. And don't live in denial, PR passively influences everything else you do, be it production speed, income, reception, etc. To relate to the second part of your statement, it's not true that very few games offer an alpha/early access as "QA" (quotation marks intended because of sarcasm and personal prejudice). Look at GoatZ... Their advertising phrase "buggy zombie survival games became a genre of their own", or something along those lines, clearly implicates that the trend has become somewhat widespread, and that the fact that DayZ is blatantly stated as the "role model" also hints of the existing infamy. So please don't spread false truths about BI being generous to let us have a "sneak peek" at their game during the development phase, if that was your aim. They did it to gain funding and if anything, should be radiantly thankful to everyone who gave them the benefit of doubt and bought the game or rented a server. I disagree, but it comes from my different perception of things you name as "whining" and "complaining". Of course I don't disagree with helping through the bug tracker or other tools the developers setup. I just don't support telling those who believe something is fundamentally wrong with the project to focus on the details. I really hope you understand my point - it's basically saying "don't discriminate" in gathering opinions.