michaelbeta

Dear DayZ Community. When i explain DayZ to my friends, i speak of not the zombies, but of player freedom and most importantly the gargatuan and vast map. They are completely dumbfounded by how can such a huge, 5 times a skyrim map can work with so few players. I tell them two things. One, most of the times meeting a player is game changing, so it's quite balanced that way. Two, the map has a few key locations where players usually delve to gather supplies and gear. Most of the time DayZ players are in few key points of the map. Dean Hall and the rest of the developer team have done an excellent job enriching the map so far with many new towns. buildings and key locations. Most notable of those being the Rify Shipwreck. There is something great, something unique about that place. Not the loot, Rify can provide guns, but so can all major cities and airfieilds. It is the uniqueness of the place, the location and the many scenarios it can provide. What if snipers are above? What if someone is inside? How do i approach such a small location? It is just something the entirety of the map cannot provide in many places elsewhere. For example, when i first saw the ship i was completely awestruck. Holy cow, i can explore this? What will i find? Is it remote enough to be safe? It was just amazing. Not a lot of things like this in the game. When you look at this, and then think of the rest of the map, it feels quite empty. Not a lot of uniqueness around. In particular, the middle strip of the map feels underwhelming. Only reason i personally ever crossed it was to get to the other side. Wouldn't it be great if there were more landmarks and locations like the shipwreck distributed around the map, each one of them being different? So much space feeling quite empty. It can be enriched. Why not add 2 or 3 special locations somewhere in or near this strip to make it more appealing to players? Some ideas could be a major prison with special indoors, a crashed C-130, maybe even a damp or a huge paper or sewing factory. Cities could also be enriched by adding huge malls, gyms, radio stations. Castles could be enhanced by adding more indoors. However, overdoing with these locations could mean they lose their weakness, so their number should be kept to a minunum to keep the vastness of the map intact. A Disclaimer: I realize that the game is in alpha stage and many features maybe including these are incoming. This thread is more of an anticipation thread, to let Dean and his team know that we really want these in the final game and to motivate him be unique and creative with the DayZ world.

Actually you have a good point. Part of the improvement of the map should also include making places more barren and poor looking. But even these places could be improved aesthetically to look boring and rural.

I am necroing this thread because i want to see, is everyone else as excited as i am for the map changes happening every update now? These last few weeks we have seen huge imporvements to the North East portion of the map and, with the addition of Novodmitrovsk, a large new area with extremely interesting architecture and in my opinion the most impressive landmark of all, the Munincipal Town Hall. It is now apparant that the focus is shifting from the far NE towards the west. We also saw the areas near Krasnostav as well as Olsha massively improved and enhanced. Here is what i THINK the current DayZ roadmap for the map should look like: Yellow arrows represent altogether new content and cities to be added. Orange arrows represent areas that are planned to be reworked or improved. Keep in mind this is my sketch, not DayZ developers. I am sorry for having to say this so many times, but i have to since people can believe anything. Of course i have no idea if there are any plans in the expansion of the map even further, but i believe such thing is unlikely given the pressure the developers are in. As you can see i've left the Zelenogorsk side of the map for last, mainly because this would allow seperating the focus. Reworking the entire map is of course not an easy task at all, but, the way i see it, there should be incentive to visit every single location. Not only loot wise, but also area and landscape wise. Another difficult thing would be keeping Chernarus's identity intact. After working on so many things it is difficult to remember that we are talking about a single entity, a single map. As always, the work done by the devs so far for the map is amazing, and i cannot wait to see what is the next major update has in store for us. Keep it up! Once again though, A Disclaimer: I realise the game is in alpha state and some of the features mentioned here may be on their way. I have made it clear this thread is not an alpha whine thread as you can see. I am just making this in order for Rocket and his team to see that we love the changes that are happening and are really anticipating the new map changes, and maybe they can take a few ideas from us. The community can provide a lot of great ideas if they present them nicely.

Here is another idea. Power Plant. Where do these wire towers lead? Where does Chernarus get it's power from? The area would be large enough to hold decent loot while a perfect spot for bandits. The loot could include some low-tier military loot (nothing extremely special), good clothing, tools, backpacks and equipment as well as some food, water and a high probability for vehicles or parts.

Thanks for the positive feedback folks. Added some stuff.