Ravenblade86

Eurogamer have another exclusive look behind the scenes from their recent trip to Bohemia Interactive, this time it's a sneak peak at the work being done on a new town to be located in the area around Krasnostav.

Ah, so I was right :) I've not been in that part of the map yet so I'll have to go and check it out before they add the new town in. It was interesting to have a poke around Guba before they added Svetlojarsk. I'd say it's down to the amount of time it takes to build the new towns, plus it would be pretty pointless to add a new town far off in the north without adding the towns between it and current towns.

No worries. Ian Higton totally didn't make me post it for him because he is to lazy to create his own account for the forums,,,lol It's an interesting little video. Just looking at the DayZDB map and thee road layouts in the north, I'm going to take a punt and say that I think it's actually going to be located north of the NEAF. Here

Let me just start by saying I'm fully aware that the game is still very early in alpha, and that from the first week when I picked it up I've been very impressed by how stable and solid the game is given the fact it's still in an early alpha form. Saying that though, having spent some more time with the latest patch this evening I can't help feeling that the dev team got their priorities badly wrong with some of the changes that they made in the latest patch. It does have a lot of nice changes in when you look at the new items they added and the fact they added a new town and have seemingly made a good step forward with server performance etc. So what do I think they got wrong? 1) Drastically reducing the amount of loot spawn before implementing a loot respawn system. From what I have seen so far, if you join a full server after it has been up for 2-3 hours (especially if your a new spawn) your chances of even finding a can of food are going to be slim if someone else has been in the area before you. Oh, and if you find a can of food? Good luck trying to get into it, I think I saw two items that would open canned food this evening and that was in unlooted towns. Personally it is the survival aspects of the game that appeal to me so making loot harder to come by is all well and good, but without any sort of loot respawn or alternative methods of getting the basics like food (be that hunting or gathering resources) you are only taking a step back with the game imo. 2) Increased number of zombies? and new types of zombies added while they are still capable of running through walls. Personally I have no real interest in seeing hordes of zombies running about, but they have definitely been in very short supply before the latest patch. It's still not hordes of zombies, but I have seen more than normal running about (have I just been unlucky? or have they actually been increased?) and they still seem very capable of running through walls and generally just being as glitchy as they have been since Standalone released. The new soldier zombies also have extra armour according to Chris Torchia tweet (one of the dev team). When you add all that in along with the reduced amount of loot making it a lot harder to even find a melee weapon, perhaps releasing an improved/less glitchy version of the zombies should be a priority over adding more/tougher zombies. 3) Canvas pants. Really? What's the point? Four inventory slots which is the same as jeans, and they look nasty. Do we really need extra things like this? I know different parts of the dev team work on different things, and some parts of game development take a lot longer than others but surely this sort of addition is something that could come later? 4) Patch notes that don't include all the changes. Adding in little stealth items might be a nice little suprise for the players, but at the end of the day this is an alpha test and the dev team are looking for feedback on the game to help improve it. Without giving the players a complete and comprehensive run down of all the changes we can't give proper feedback if something is working properly While the game is in alpha, this isn't your typical alpha test that would only been available to people working on it and it isn't an invite only closed test. Over a million people have paid money to get early access to the game and be part of the development process (even if only a very small percentage provide any feedback on it) those people have to be taken into consideration when it comes to the game updates, in the same manner that would happen if it was a game update for a fully finished game. Maybe these sort of things are just teething problems that game devs are just going to have to work though, the idea of an Early Access game is still a fairly new concept in the games industry.

1) I wasn't strictly talking about coastal towns, I was running about well in land this evening and in unlooted towns but the amount of loot was in short supply. My point was that if anyone had come along after me, they would have found next to nothing. That is a going to be an issue if your a new spawn on a busy server until they implement the loot respawning system, so why reduce the amount of loot before you do that? The loot system should be fully functioning before your tinker and balance the amount of loot spawning imo, they have plenty of time to make those adjustments. 2) Yeah sure a fireaxe still one hits zombies, but if you can't even find a baseball bat because of the reduced loot spawn then more zombies become an issues. Plus, a fireaxe doesn't stop them running through a wall or attacking you from under a floor. Right now the zombies are a buggy mess, fixing that should be priority. 3) That might be so, but I highly doubt that they don't have a massive range of different item types that are in the pipe lines that might need more testing than canvas pants. 4) So, if you want to give feedback on why that saline bag didn't restore the amount of blood it should have? Oh, that's right you don't have a clue what exactly changed the saline bag values to so you can't...never mind the stuff they added and never mentioned. Oh, and I'm not saying they drop their road plan of what features they want to add because players want giant pink elephants in the game. My point is that even though this is an alpha test, the fact they have all these people playing it who have handed over money should make them pay more attention is what order and how they implement those features they have planned. A normal alpha test, they could knock up a new feature and throw it into the latest build and if it breaks the game? Oh well, remove it and re work it. With this situation though? More care should be taken in my opinion to make the process smoother. That's just my opinion though. Edit: Yes I have seen Dean talking about how something being a "top priority" feature doesn't mean it will be in the next patch. Well aware that some features take longer than others to make, and that maybe some things have been in the works a lot longer. That doesn't change my opinion that they should take more care with what order they implement those features on the stable branch though. If the zombies are still running through walls but you can add more zombies because of improved server performance, why not hold off on adding the extra zombies until you fix them glitching through walls?

I have a fully geared character because of the rollback, but I was running around looking for the parts to make an improvised backpack this evening, the only thing I could find was the burlap sack (and even those take far longer than normal). Since the little tin sheds/garages do appear to spawn any loot anymore, the chances of finding rope of sticks look pretty slim. The idea of an improvised backpack that you can make better is really good though.

The problem with the latest patch though is food and drink isn't everywhere, neither are basic melee weapons and items that can open canned food. Until they have a loot respawn system in, what is going to happen when you join a busy server after it has already been up for 2-3 hours? What are you going to find? Maybe a rotten banana someone left behind or maybe one can of food you can't open. I'm all for an increase in the survival aspect of the game and less people running about fully geared up like they are a member of some special forces unit, but they need to implement other features first before they strip things back to being a barren post apocalyptic world.

The first server I managed to log into had me a new spawn (I had left a fully geared character at the NW airfield yesterday) which was fine, I just figured they had done a character wipe. Tried another server because the first one was in the night cycle, spawned in and I was back with a character who had died last Friday. The different server hives would explain why your getting a new character, but getting a character that died a week ago is definitely a bit odd. Can't really complain though, the game seems to be running better after the new patch so getting a rolled back character isn't really a big deal considering we are in alpha.

All the servers I was able to get onto where on night time mode as well, which would be annoying if they try to keep it that way with a 24 hour cycle. If they had a shorter day/night cycle I think I would be happy enough with them killing all the 24 hour day light servers. At least though they seem to have made it much easier to see in the dark now so that you can easily enough navigate in the dark even without using a torch nevermind messing around with the gamma or anything like that, though if you don't have a flash light finding loot will be very hard.

I just had to sign up and make my first post to say how good this upcoming patch looks! :) I definitely wasn't expecting to see a new settlement and resource gathering (berry picking being the first step in that) for a while yet. Hopefully the shotguns won't be spawning in the same locations as the other firearms? A weapon like that should be found in more rural buildings in my opinion. It's a nice touch that you will be able to use a hacksaw to convert a shotgun into a sawn-off shotgun and extra methods of opening cans are always welcome :) I believe I've seen it mentioned that the sawn-off shotgun is a secondary weapon, so that you can carry it inside a backpack for example? Reduced number of magnums and M4s sounds good to me, Magnums especially have been very easy to come across though I've found. Reducing the number of backpacks spawns could be a bit annoying, I know they can be very easy to find in some locations but other times (especially if it's a busy server) they can be problem. When the improvised backpacks are added though that should give another option though. Really looking forward to seeing this patch go live. It's one step closer to the idea of proper wilderness survival which is an idea I find very interesting