Jaffster

Agreed. But only if once private it stays private. It would be unfair to the casual gamer if somebody joined a private server, looted the shit out of absolutely everything and then re-joined a public server. It would harm the essence of DayZ.

Thanks for the quick responses from the Forum Team. Do you have any links to said pages which say that the zombies are placeholders at the minute? I'd be interested to read. Also, you'll have to forgive me if this thread is not etiquette but I've never really participated (at least not actively) in an Alpha before. Have Bohemia bought the rights to DayZ from its original developers (the mod developers, that is)? Are the original developers still involved? I find it quite re-assuring to know that we'll hopefully be seeing some quick progress.

Punctuation.

First of all, hello to the DayZ community. I played the DayZ mod a little, I put it down about 9-12 months ago and thought I'd wait until the bugs were flattened out before making a return. I saw the potential, a proper PC game. Not a shit console port that is dumbed down for the masses with a glorious rainbow coloured HUD, world ending weapons and an achievement system that would make the PC gaming elite have some kind of emotional breakdown. I heard about the SA, bought it straight away and started playing. This is far better than the mod was 12 months ago. So - for that - well done Bohemia Interactive. I was, however, slightly frustrated that the zombies were actually more stupid/bugged than I remember them being 12 months ago. Be it seeing through walls, chasing you beyond line of sight, running through walls or being axed in the face several times and still refusing to die - I felt like turning into a green monster (You will not like me when I'm angry) and snapping my keyboard in half. I thought to myself "This is Alpha, I'm sure it'll be quite high on their priorities to fix this". How wrong I was. I snooped around the forum, read the 'official' posts regarding immediate development plans and nowhere does it mention fixing the bugged zombies. It just mentions optimizing the servers so that it can support MORE zombies. So, instead of running away from 2 zombies (ducking into a building with the plan to break line of sight, crouching in a corner with your weapon aimed on the doorway..... to then start being attacked through the wall by said zombies) I'll now be doing the exact same thing with 4 or 5 zombies. Fantastic. The most broken part of this game is the zombies. This should be the #1 priority. Not adding in hunting or cooking, not adding in a Magnum Revolver. What's the point in having all these great things if you can't escape from zombies to actually get out and find these items? I mean, you've obviously already done work on them. 12 months ago I couldn't sneak behind a zombie, they seemed to have 360 vision. I actually managed to sneak right up on a zombie with an axe a few days ago. I "missed" apparently (melee combat being #2 priority on my list of gripes, especially considering the first 30 minutes of life usually involves surviving with a baseball bat or wrench) and it took at least 3 or 4 swipes to actually register a hit. Please re-asses your 'development to-do list' and fix the basics before adding more functionality and 'things to do'. Afterall, this IS Alpha, this is where you're supposed to fix the basics to create a playable, relatively stable game for Beta. Also, before somebody points out that this is Alpha.. I know this is Alpha. I completely accept that this game needs work. I would just like Bohemia to focus on the basics rather than flirting with complex development ideas. TL;DR - Stop adding functionality & new items. Fix the basics.