Explorer-in-Chief

I've played Frostfall. I love the imagination that's been put into it, and I would play it again. It really changes the Skyrim experience. In addition to all the survival features it adds, it has a scale you can adjust in the user menu that allows you to tone down the default settings. That way you don't freeze as fast, etc. Hunger/thirst/sickness were not implemented in Frostfall last time I played it. You had to get a separate mod if you wanted to stack those on: Realistic Needs & Diseases. One of the most beautiful things about both was that you could uncheck a box to take away the lethality factor. For instance, if you wanted, you'd suffer progressive status effects from being sick or frozen, but you'd never outright die. It's fun to toy with both mods and find the balance that works for you. If I stop and think about it, the reason I uninstalled them was not the stress they added to the game. The player-driven balancing options solved that. Ultimately, it was the resource pull on my machine. There are too darn many clever mod authors putting out good stuff for Skyrim. You have to pick and choose among them to avoid stability issues related to mod-mod interactions. Okay then, there's that quick spiel. Moving on to the highlight game, DayZ. Now I've only logged 9 hours so far on DayZ, but here's what I'm having trouble with. My DayZ characters metabolize food faster than even me, and I eat a lot. I'm inhaling something every couple hours in real life. I understand that the DayZ character is out there busting his/her butt, jogging around, pumped full of adrenaline, fearful of zombies, getting geared up, sweating, etc. But being on the brink of death from starvation every 15-30 minutes or less is a little bit aggravating. Especially since all of said adrenaline would effectively kick the parasympathetic nervous system into hibernation mode, but we won't get into that. The hunger ends up dominating my gameplay experience, preventing me from exploring the island and focusing on interacting with others as much as I'd truly love to in a fun-filled game. I've run across several people now who have asked me if I have spare food, and I have to tell them that I don't have any and that I'm starving as well. In truth, besides the small bit after I first spawn, I'm never not starving or thirsty. I hope they continue to tone that down some more with the patches. Realistic needs is a great concept, if balanced. It really drives me up the figurative wall when I FINALLY get my hands on a compass for the first time, but I'm moments away from collapsing of starvation. I'm new to DayZ Standalone and I never played the mod, so I don't know anything about the layout of Chernarus. A damaged, dirty compass is my first opportunity to start to get my bearings. You know, the whole 'where is this in relation to this' mindset where you start to piece things together. That moment when I found the compass, I almost didn't care about the compass. The reason why is that I was busy tearing through the town like a madman trying to find a banana or a potato or SOMETHING ANYTHING PLEASE that would prevent me from-- You are unconscious. ... nevermind. That post somewhere that suggested adding vision impairment -- I'm with Norwind on that one. My own vision is already impaired. I view the game through unique eyes. Cleaning that spot off my lens and putting my glasses on my face so that I can see the DayZ world better is something I already do anyway. It's not something I do to add an element of fun to my life, and I don't need the game to add in that chore for my character, too. In effect, that would probably only strain my real eyes even more, requiring a prescription adjustment sooner. Another person talked about learning survival skills. Indeed! Please, learn them! It's so much fun being out in the fresh air and the real-life outdoors while simultaneously discovering that you can last great lengths of time on quite little. I'm a big fan of the planning aspect that goes into backpacking trips. Food, supplies, etc. There's something satisfying about figuring out how to get by with the bare minimum. By the way, being able to tear your shirt into rags for various uses in DayZ is genius. Did you know that, when desperate enough, a soldier will cut the sleeves off his undershirt and use them to wipe his butt? Then after the sleeves, he'll work his way up from the bottom of the shirt. The underwear are probably already long gone by this time. That's how you really go commando. Bottom line, humans are resilient. If you're going to revolutionize the gaming industry by making a breakthrough survival game, balance it carefully. Weather changes are a neat concept, and weather effects related to survivalism could maybe possibly potentially hypothetically work if implemented very gradually and carefully and with significant forethought. When more of the kinks are worked out, this game is going to have people glued to it for literally hours and days! Probably already does, but I bet that's nothing compared to the stampede of players that's to come. So a system with weather effects and hunger and thirst effects would do just fine if it closely matched how things happen in reality. My stomach should not be grumbling before I search my sixth house. It should only be grumbling perhaps when the sun is in a noticeably different position in the sky from the last time I ate. Take the one nerd living in mom's basement for example (you know the guy I'm talking about; everybody yells at him on Youtube and in forums like this one). He will probably head up to the kitchen and grab a mug of 4-hour-old coffee when he wakes up at 10am. He'll eat the second-to-last cinnamon roll while standing and leaning against the counter, waiting for the coffee to warm back up a bit. Then he'll disappear back into the deep dank dark until, say, midafternoon. At which point, the intense sunlight screaming through the kitchen blinds above the sink will once again blast his face as he microwaves his macaroni and cheese cup. Meanwhile, his DayZ character (assuming he has miraculously survived a single run all morning) has eaten 17 cans of spaghetti, 3 tins of sardines, a rotten banana, 9 rotten kiwi, two oranges, 2 cans of beans, various vitamins... I mean COME ON! A group of four could last a week or more on that! But HEY, wait. At least, AT LEAST, Mr. Nerd's character didn't develop a respiratory infection from exploring the moist coastal region for so many hours. He's got that going for him. One way or another, I love the imagination of the DayZ development team. They've got a good thing going here, and I hope they continue to listen to feedback and suggestions related to game content verrrry carefully as time wears on. *wave