bad_mojo (DayZ)

A work around is to put the item into your hands or the ground and the tooltip will be shifted onto the screen again.

Pilgram, you are taking some of our complaints and suggestions to the furthest extreme. Just because players complain about the eating & drinking mechanics does not automatically mean they want to do away with the survival activities and turn DayZ into a generic shooter on a big map. I personally welcome the harsh survival aspects of the game, it is why I play DayZ. I care less about DayZ being realistic and more about creating a sandbox for enjoyable gameplay. My complaints about the food system stems from my recent expierences ingame. After spawning I feel like I am chasing RNG spawns for the majority of early game, then suddenly I get to the healthy status and I am on easy street, its simply too 'gamey' of a setup for my taste. I see it around me ingame too, other people on the coastline are simply sprinting from good building to good building, checking spawn locations for food so that they can eventually run around(or not run) on their own and not be constantly forced into situations because some countdown timer is ticking. It is good that players have to do some amount of build up after spawning because there needs to be some penalty for death, even in early game. But my issue is that we are forced to find too much food. In fact I think the amount of food needed to stop starving is so much that finding food and the food itself loses the value it should have to a player. Its like finding a '+5 hp' health pack in another game, it helps, but the player doesnt get excited, the health returned means almost nothing, its grindy, its meaningless, it a rinse and repeat activity forgotten seconds later.... that is how early game food feels to me in DayZ. Why cant finding that can of sardines feel like winning the lottery? The way loot spawns in DayZ really amplifys this issue. You never run up to a spawn point and find 10 times as much food has spawned, it just flat out NEVER happens due to the programming. The only time a player could even "win the lottery" when it comes to early game food is by killing a player, robbing a player, or finding a stash left by a player. This is bad because the mechanics push PVP on players, and dulls down one of the most essential activities in the game, looting. I cant really blame players who would rather run around killing players, instead of spending a couple hours looting the required cans of food. Its not the players fault, people will always follow the path of least resistence, the fault lies with the system that punishes solo looting in favor of pvp banditry. I guess my point is that a new spawn should have to complete the task of feeding themselves, but that task shouldnt consist of simply rolling dice a dozen or more times hoping for that lucky 7 to come up multiple times. RNG looting is not survival, its just a game of chance.

I don't want to get more out of food just because it will make the game more realistic, I want them to make the game feel more rewarding and satisfying when it comes to finding and eating food. I dislike how currently when you are a fresh spawn and you find your first meal, it's never really thrilling and enjoyable because you still have to rinse and repeat that same process multiple times in order to even stay alive. It makes early game feel like you're fighting the clock to fill up a progress bar, and once you're established and healthy it just becomes tedious, rather than the enjoyable RPG element it could be. Standing under an apple tree for an hour is not fun gameplay, but being forced to run from town to town looting cans of food for 3 hours feels like more of a grind. Give us less food spawns but make it more rewarding to consume.

I wouldn't mind spending so much time finding food if it actually satisfied hunger in a realistic manner. I don't want to eat a bunch of canned food, a chicken, and some fruit and still get hungry jogging to the next town. If I ate as much as a DayZ character I would be morbidly obese.

I couldn't agree more Solopopo. But, sadly it seems like the majority of regular players have grown to love this meta game of searching the same places over and over for luxury loot. I guess at the end of the day it is a video game, so people feel like there has to be a never ending grind involved. Could you imagine watching a television show like The Walking Dead where they spend multiple episodes just looking for a firearm or backpack? Do you think they would be quick to take on new group members? No, they would simply kill them and take their stuff, much like the way DayZ now plays out. I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours playing the DayZ mod but I have put less than 300 hours into the standalone. It's sad to see a game with such great potential being driven into the ground by the "maybe this isn't the game for you" mentality. You'd think we were asking for hit markers and no friendly fire or something, when really we just want more toys in the sandbox. In my opinion, DayZ standalone has become a game that is no longer about the actions and interactions of the survivors, it's turned into a game where looting isn't just a nice bonus, it's the entire motivation for playing. Look, I don't want to see everything become so plentiful that surviving is no longer a factor. But, a great example is military bases. Why can't there be basic weapons stockpiled in a place like that? Is the existence of 50-100 basic weapons sitting in a military base going to ruin the entire game? Why is it favorable to have a manageable amount of loot? Why do we want a game where picking up everything in a military base and dumping it in the bushes is so easy to do? Why do we want a scenario where you can take the risk of going into a military base and come away empty handed? At the end of the day, you're only 1 person, you can only fire 1 gun at a time, you can only wear one outfit at a time, so why the hell are these single serving items so damn hard to find? Beans and bullets? Sure, they can be rare, but currently they're not, the game is the complete opposite, we can run around for an hour and find all sorts of food, drinks and ammo, so I don't understand this idea that scarcity is making it harder to survive. Hunting and fishing is like a side quest that nobody ever has to do because a freaking apple tree beside a well will keep you alive forever. Or your quest to find a gun will have you looking at so many cans of food and drink you end up leaving most of them behind before ever finding a decent gun. -There are plenty of survival supplies to go around, it's the single serving luxury gear(guns, tools, clothing) that's rare and hoarded. -Horticulture, foraging, fishing, hunting, trapping are nice additions, but they become pointless wastes of time when we run across so many canned food/drinks and wells. -That makes no sense to me. If I have such little stuff that I am counting every bullet, why would I ever hunt an animal or kill a zombie? Every bullet is going to put into the head of an unsuspecting survivor, in the hopes that it could bring me more loot.

There's nothing I hate more about DayZ standalone then the lack of uptime. Constantly seeing the red message on my screen and being pulled from the virtual world, having to wait while the sandbox gets raked clean. Even worse, people have this tendency to move to another server. If I just sit there and wait until I can rejoin the same server, I'll often find myself in a near empty server for a long time. So, I'm almost forced to jump to another server, but then that server restarts soon after, pushing me on to another, and then another. I know, I know, persistence is coming and loot needs to be respawned with server restarts. But, the lackluster up time of the servers still hurts the players experience in huge ways. Players shouldn't have to make the extra effort to keep playing the game, they shouldn't be pulled out of every moment. It's hard to lose yourself in the experience and forget you're just playing a video game when those big red letters keep reminding you. I also fear that when they do get item persistence going, it'll be looked at as a fix for this. People will think that restarts suddenly won't matter, everything stays where it was, problem solved. Except the disconnection between players are the worst results of these frequent restarts. The goal for DayZ should be an uptime of weeks or months, not the minutes or couple hours it is now.

Why is constructive criticism of the game met with this type of response? You would think I was asking for polished content or something. I am critiquing a technical part of the game that I feel could use some improvement. I'm sharing the impact that it has had on my experience while testing the alpha. How am I not understanding what an alpha is? The developers never said you should silence yourselves until DayZ hits 1.0, they actually said we shouldn't buy the game if we're not interested in supporting DayZs development. Here I am, supporting their development by testing the game and reporting my findings. Is it just a knee jerk reaction at this point for you guys to scream alpha at anything that isn't in complete support of DayZ? I brought up the point about them fixing FPS in .60 because I bet you any money six months ago you guys would have screamed alpha at anyone who dared to suggest that be fixed before beta. I brought up the point to show how utterly wrong you alpha screamers can be. I understand what an alpha is? Do you?!? (hint: it's not a dismissal)

Perhaps I have a tendency to pick bad servers, but even playing 0.59 I was seeing the red text all the time. My issue with server restarts have nothing to do with crashing or the exp branch.

Who says I only play exp servers? I'll admit that playing .60 reminded me many times why I hate those red letters. But I posted this thread in sept 2014, and I haven't seen any improvement since then no matter what branch I play on. I have other concerns when it comes to DayZ, but this uptime issue is responsible for driving me away from it, other things I can overlook, but it's hard to overlook being pulled from the game abruptly.

Sigh, I knew I shouldn't have engaged with the Alpha screamers. Ya'll are a toxic part of this community, do you not realize that? People give their opinions on a work in progress and you guys jump right into defender mode and scream ALPHA at the top of your lungs. It's actually part of the reason I stopped coming to these forums, there is rarely a discussion, it always just devolves into defenders screaming alpha at people. Funkmaster, clearly you missed the point I was making, or more likely you chose to ignore it. Like DJ SGTHornet pointed out, the FPS issues have been fixed in .60..... but, it's alpha. Does it blow your mind that they fixed a performance issue to make the game more playable? I mean, according to your definition of alpha, that's not allowed, they have to wait for beta to do that.....because Funkmaster Rick said so. So, my point is that your idea of what can happen in an alpha is nonsense, so please stop policing what people can complain about, it really just makes you look like some kind of irrational fanboy defending his favorite game. Instead of dismissing me outright, how about you enlighten me as to why you believe server uptime isn't a priority for DayZ? And I don't mean like, fixing this and that is more important than fixing uptime, I mean, why is uptime something that should be put on the back burner? Why does server uptime not matter to you guys? I welcome a difference of opinion, I just can't stand having the discussion dismissed outright by screaming ALPHA.

Some day you're going to realize that alpha isn't an excuse to ignore huge glaring performance issues. Stuff like server uptime, or you know, FPS issues, like the one they've been working on fixing for the past... year? But, yeah.... it's alpha, so I should be overjoyed with being disconnected every half hour, just like I was overjoyed with getting 15fps.... because it's alpha right?

This is still the number 1 reason I don't play more DayZ. I'm sick of playing this game a half hour at a time. I feel like if the servers can't run for more than an hour without needing a restart, then that's a major problem that really needs to be addressed.

That town in the distance is lit up by a flare.

You dream of another game, that is not DayZ and I hope it never gets that boring and predictable.

I know the map by memory, but I mostly just walk around aimlessly. I have the most fun when I get turned around and lose my bearings momentarily.

When it's done.

Just because you don't notice your game experience being changed doesn't mean it isn't happening constantly. I've been part of a large group before, I know exactly how much they use this feature to shape their actions. It might seem like a good thing that people like the OP become friendly if they read a name they recognize, but I look at it the other way around, if the list lacks any names they recognize, they become hostile solely based on information the computer gave them.(It's like knowing the enemy team only has 1 player left alive because of the scoreboard, it's a safe bet, the computer is never wrong or misleading.) I don't believe it's good for people playing DayZ to be influenced by factors outside the virtual world, if we can't put our mouse over a player and see his name in that virtual world, why can we look at a list of player names? It reminds me of the 3d marker being in the mod, while they removed the map marker. Sure, you can't pull up your map and see exactly where you are, but if you put a marker, you can see how far it is, then narrow down your location using that method. With the names, you can't aim on someone and see if they're your friend, but you can pull up a list of names and confirm your friend isn't online, then blast away in the comfort that the computer told you it's nobody special.

I think it would benefit the game to remove the names list. Tell us how many people are playing, but not who is playing. The names list has a direct impact on peoples actions in-game, I don't think that's a good thing for a game like DayZ. There's something about the idea of never knowing who is in the server with you that I like. They also need to get rid of ALL of the server messages, idgaf who is losing connection.

I try to reserve the killing of uninfected humans for those moments where it becomes a purely emotional reaction. I don't want to desensitize myself to violence in DayZ or I will lose that adrenaline rush I get seeing some men running towards me with guns their drawn. Like I would do in real life, I run from most hostile encounters in DayZ. I haven't had to kill another player in the standalone yet, and I only killed maybe half a dozen in the mod. It would usually happen when I was protecting people I had met, or when I would get backed into a corner by someone who doesn't want to talk about it. It's such a hostile world out there, I just can't pass up the enjoyment of running around in it. The rest of the playerbase being so trigger happy is actually a great backdrop for my own survival focused game.

They made a design decision about the increased hunger/thirst, but I'm not arguing that DayZ is reality, I'm just saying they based some of their hunger mechanics on reality. In DayZ like in real life, you can't wait until you're almost dead of starvation to eat some food, by that point it's too late, maybe if you also had some medical attention and more food you would pull out of it.

Educate yourself on the systems in this game, it will help your survivability. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9YSGX22B6Z3k9-hJzJcz4w/videos

Adapt and overcome.

Seems pretty straight forward to me. If you're starving to death in real life and you eat a couple cans of food, you're not going to instantly be perfect again. You were too far gone for those two cans to do any good. In real life the time it takes to starve to death is going to be much longer than in the game, but the same principals would still apply. In DayZ you eat to put food into your stomach, then the food turns into energy. When you are starving, you lack energy, if you leave it too long and then eat, the energy gained won't be enough to save you from starvation. Check out this video, it's a really great source of info on the way hunger works in DayZ, I'm not sure if everything in the game mechanics are still the same, but the video is still very insightful. Hope that helps. Edit: Linked wrong vid first time.

I'm going to try a new challenge in DayZ, I can only eat food that I hunt, catch or forage for, and I can only drink water from wells & bodies of water. I'm currently healthy and fully geared, so it will be easy this time, but my next life I hope to starve to death a few times before I can get healthy and enough gear to be self reliant. I might go even further and say the axe is the only weapon I can loot, so hunting will have to be done with an improvised bow & arrows that I have to craft. I'm just worried that the bow/arrow might not be powerful enough to take down a deer. Also, I might make cows offlimits(mad cow disease?!?) because they are so plentiful in some places it would remove the challenge. Anyone else want to take up the challenge, or have you done something similar?

The point of hunting only rabbits is to add a bit of a challenge to hunting, because they're so hard to find. If rabbit starvation was a thing in this game, we could simply eat some vitamins and pick a couple apples to get the other nutrients we need.