BeefBacon

I prefer the brighter images. High contrast works fine for film, but it's not so great in videogames. I often tweak brightness and gamma settings in DayZ to try and get a flatter image I suspect that it's to expedite future development. rather than having to do a bunch of new calculations for similar weapons, they can simply change a few values like barrel length and it'll do the work for them. Plus DayZ was built on a military simulator, so it's nice to see the standalone sticking to its roots in this manner.

Vague recollection. I think it might have had something to do with object coordinates, or something? So increasing the map size would scatter everything about weirdly. In any case, I'm certain that the devs have said that they won't be increasing the size of Chernarus. Could be because they can't, could be because they won't.

I suspect that there will never be a proper map border, unfortunately, even though it's something that has been suggested over and over again for years. Aircraft also complicates the issue since they could simply fly over any barrier. Some have suggested that there could be off-map SAM sites that shoot down escaping aircraft, others have suggested a sort of soft wall that slows aircraft down to a stop or forces them to turn around. There are lots of ways to create a good map border but, again, I doubt the devs are willing to actually create one for a range of reasons - for example, I don't think they can increase the map size any further, so the only way they could create a map border that extends into the distance would be to make the actual playable area smaller. At least I think that's true.

Weapons: Weapon spawning is fine as it is. It's not difficult to find a gun. What I have long advocated for is more dispersed ammunition spawning. Currently you can loot every house in a village and not find a single round, but then the very last house you loot has a box of 20 rounds. Rather than having all of those rounds spawn in one location, I'd rather see them spread throughout the whole village making it a lot easier to find some ammo without actually increasing the amount of ammo that is spawning. Items: Item variety is good, and most items have or will have some utility. Spawning: I agree. Players should spawn soaking wet with ruined clothes. Their first priority should be to warm up and find new clothes. Stats: Survival should be much more difficult, but I agree that it shouldn't be tedious. There's definitely a balance to be found. Bicycle: Yup. Humanity: I'm not a fan of arbitrary stats like "humanity" in a game like DayZ because there's no way that the game can fully read a situation. If someone is behaving aggressively and you shoot them preemptively, the game shouldn't punish you for that. Instead it should incentivise teamwork and communication rather than punishing KoS. Hero and Bandit: Same deal. Too arbitrary and "gamey." Player behaviour ought to be determined by the players. I shouldn't be able to go "phew, that guy's safe. He's wearing a particular shirt and hat." Quests: No. Never that. No unlocking content. I'm not strictly opposed to soft quests (helicopter crash sites are a sort of quest) but "kill 50 zombies for a gun" is a bit much. Seeing a helicopter actually crash would be neat. That'd give players in the vicinity an objective to work towards. Perhaps treasure maps could be a worthwhile addition as well. Bonus Ideas: -Player count will be increased to 100, I believe. -Character customisation sounds good to me. -I seem to recall that there might be a GPS map being added. That, I expect, would have a marker of some sort. -Honestly, I don't mind campfires increasing healing speed. Healing is already incredibly slow, so even doubling the healing speed at a campfire wouldn't have too much of an effect. Sure.

I think all clothes should be varying degrees of waterproof. In just a t-shirt, yeah, you should get drenched pretty quickly, but if you're wearing a hoodie or a quilted jacket or something you should be able to manage at least a few minutes in the rain before having to dry off. I'd also say that there should be no 100% waterproof clothing, but rain coats and Gorka jackets should still keep you dry for a good long while.

That's a real shame. See you in a few months when 0.63 hits.

The only loot stash I ever found was a barrel in a random bush. Happened to be in my inventory while I was running through the woods and I saw it flash up in the proximity window. Was really well hidden, I never would have spotted it. Was stuffed with ammo and guns. Besides that, nada. I'd love to find a tent city but it never happens. I am bad.

No you didn't. If you'd meant Just Survive then you would have said the player counts were comparable, not that they blew DayZ out of the water. Even then, DayZ still consistently has more players than H1Z1, and pretty much always has done in spite of less regular updates.

H1Z1 is now a Battle Royale game. It's hardly comparable. Back when it was supposed to be a direct competitor to DayZ, it got crushed. Again, there is nothing like DayZ. There are games that have tried to be like DayZ for sure but still, after all this time, there is nothing like DayZ... including DayZ. Escape From Tarkov looks like a boiled down version of DayZ. It's taken the aspect of DayZ that people unambiguously like - the setting, the fights, the looting and the stashes, and have stripped out most of the survival aspects and the travel time. It's close, but it's still not DayZ. As such, I stand by what I said. DayZ doesn't have much in the way of competition. When DayZ finally goes into beta and development picks up speed, its popularity will soar because people haven't moved on to other games in the same genre, they've moved on to PUBG.

I wasn't even expecting 0.63 to come out this year, but this status report still disappointed me. Lots of media updates should help soften the blow a bit, though. Certainly a status report without any images or video doesn't help the sombre mood.

Does DayZ really face much competition, though? Escape from Tarkov probably scratches a lot of people's cheeki breeki survival game itch, and there's one or two other survival games that seem... competent, but there's not really much in the way of direct competition to DayZ. DayZ is DayZ. Nothing else really comes close, and that has been the case for years now. Hell, remember H1Z1? The game that was supposed to blow DayZ out of the water? Remember the one million survival games that have come out over the past 5 or so years? They don't come close. DayZ is always going to cater to a niche market. Modding will make it more accessible, but people are going to mod DayZ - not some other random survival game.

DayZ's alpha isn't really an alpha by that definition, though. I prefer to think that DayZ is currently in a sort of pre-alpha, and that it's about to move into what would traditionally be described as an alpha where the devs start adding actual gameplay elements. Really that's just semantics, though. You're not wrong. Judging the development, and development decisions is one thing, but DayZ simply cannot be judged as a finished game yet because it's nowhere near that state.

Welcome to life. The only consolation I can offer is that it'll be over before you know it, and then there's an eternity of blissful void. I can't wait.

As I understand it, animations, 3D models, textures and so on aren't the bottleneck. I mean, look at the DayZ trello. There's a ton of content there. They've got all the models and the animations more or less good to go, they're just waiting for the programming side of things. Putting together a whole new engine can't be easy. They can't move forward with X until Y is complete, but Y is dependent on Z. This is why 0.63 represents such a huge milestone. It'll be the bulk of the engine work finally complete. So much is reliant on the new player controller, but now it's almost done. Post 0.63 should yield more frequent updates, rather than, like, one or two a year. The updates will also be more substantive in regards to gameplay. Consider that basically everything in-game currently, from the movement, to the combat, to the disease system, are all effectively placeholders. With the engine bottleneck finally out of the way, the devs can start actually making a game. Something I'm sure they're looking forward to. I certainly am. 0.63 is also a huge deal for DayZ because of how it's been built up. If 0.63 has a shaky release, that might shake the confidence of the fanbase, and of prospective players. if it has a good release, it has the potential to put DayZ back on top and restore faith in the evil scammer devs. I expect that the devs are well aware of this, and probably want to incubate 0.63 for as long as possible before even so much as releasing it to experimental. Then again, they've expressed a desire to release 0.63 as soon as possible, so I probably have no damn idea what I'm talking about.

I agree. DayZ is the only game I've ever bought into early access for, and Skyrim was the only game I ever pre-ordered. I've played the shit out of Skyrim, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how DayZ develops, but having seen so many early access projects fail and so many pre-ordered games turn out to be shit, I'm extremely unlikely to buy into any other early access game or pre-order any other game ever again... well, except for maybe TES6. But yes, pre-ordering is not a good business model for consumers. Early access can be, in regards to the developers acting upon player feedback throughout development, but more often than not it isn't beneficial to the consumer. But I would also say that it's the consumer's responsibility to judge whether buying into an early access title presents an acceptable level of risk. While it's a tired argument, the disclaimer remains valid. While people have the right to complain, they should take into consideration their own decision to purchase an early access game before they do so. My own position remains that while I wish DayZ's development was faster, I have other shit that I can do while we wait. I'm confident that DayZ will, eventually, be completed but if for whatever reason BI decided to suddenly drop DayZ and cease development, I got my money's worth out of it. Hell, I've probably got more play time per £ in DayZ than I do in Skyrim and, as I said, I really liked Skyrim.

Yup, pretty much all the negative reviews talk about the development time - though some do talk about bugs and things, and I consider those to be more legitimate criticisms. Even PUBG is having a similar issue, where it's getting negative reviews because of the anti-cheat system (where players get banned for stream sniping) even though it's probably not even affected 1% of the playerbase. Very few negative reviews talk about the actual content of the game - those that do bring up server issues and poor performance. Again, these are valid criticisms. There very much seems to be a theme of meta reviews, where negative reviews will often focus on the behaviour of the developers rather than the actual content of the game. It'd actually probably be pretty interesting to see the nature of reviews aggregated into some sort of statistic, just to see what the focus of user reviews actually is. Maybe there's some academic study on it somewhere. Probably not.

I agree, for the most part. Early access that gives players access to the game pretty much from its inception to its release is not a good model. Early access that releases a pretty much feature-complete game that's just missing a bit of content is fine. PUBG is a good example of an EA game done right. DayZ is not. That's not to say that DayZ is bad - it's just had a very rocky development, especially insofar as public perception is concerned. Access to closed betas and things like that is pretty commonplace now, though, even among mainstream AAA titles. Sometimes that's a good thing; other times not so much.

Those gun reload sounds: Super looking forward to the new sound effects, though. Having different sounds for different types of clothing is going to sound really nice. Very immersion. Question, though, in regards to modding. Will single player mods be possible? Will there be support for save games and things like that? Not that I necessarily have any ideas for a single player mod, I'm just curious. Does "the basic premise of it still being an MMO" mean that there won't be single player support?

My guess would be any time within the next 5 months.

If I'm completely honest, I actually like the climate. I can't do hot. 30 degrees is too much. I'm glad we only get, like, a week or two of that a year. If that. I swear to God, if climate change results in scorching summers I'll... you know. I'll have something quite stern to say about that, I'll have you know.

Hah, well maybe I'll consider applying then. We'll see. If the position was UK-based then I'd apply in a heartbeat. Why don't you guys come here? It's especially dreary at all times of the year.

I'd totally be up for the game capture artist gig. I actually aleady design videogame trailers, and even capture in-game footage for said trailers (some devs are absolutely clueless as to what should go into a trailer or their promotional content.) Not sure I could commit to moving to Bratislava though :D

If there's one effect I'd love to see, it's actual sun shafts. Not the cheap effect they've got now, but legit sun shafts like we see in real life and in STALKER. It's an old-ass game, but STALKER still looks gorgeous, and the sun shafts look incredible. As for final graphical fidelity, yeah I expect a bit nicer than Arma 3 is the target.

I'll admit, I'm not prone to looking at the sun... but I don't think I've ever seen a lens flare in my eyes. The lens flare should be removed all together, and the sun effects tweaked. The cheap god ray effect looks nasty. I'd much prefer a less glaring effect - something cleaner and more subtle.