BeefBacon

Gameplay should always trump realism, but the gameplay should strive to be as realistic as possible. For all the talk of DayZ being this hard-as-nails survival anti-game, it is still a game, and games should be fun. Also, yes, RO-style death/KO would be nice. You should fall to the ground and bleed out over the course of a few seconds -all while it fades to black. If you get shot or hit in the head, the blackout should be instant.

Ah that's true. Okay, provided that all the food that grows across the map isn't totally healthy and just ready to eat, I could see that working. The odd exception (apples, certain berries) is fine, I'd just be concerned about these sorts of food sources being absolutely everywhere. But, as you say, many of them could have major drawbacks. I think I'd just prefer the kaleidoscope colours and general dizziness, making it very difficult to defend yourself for several minutes. It should only kill you if your character is already a bit beaten up. A healthy player should be able to survive the poison. Of course if you've been hit by a couple of arrows, odds are pretty good that you'll be a bit worse for wear at that point anyway.

I don't know. Reading through his comments he's clearly ignorant, but I don't take much issue with what he's saying. He bought the game, decided he didn't like it and found he couldn't refund it. I think he's well within his rights to suggest improvements to a game that is now stuck in his Steam library. I would say to him, though, that it's important to understand the topic before you start complaining. You don't buy into an early access game that says, in all caps, "THIS GAME IS INCOMPLETE, DO NOT BUY IT IF THAT IS GOING TO BE A PROBLEM," and then say you have a problem because the game is incomplete. I guess that's for the other thread, though. Anyway, nightshade. I could get behind that. Poison-tipped arrows is a neat idea, though without knowing anything about the subject I don't know if that's in any way realistic. Assuming it is realistic, however, I'd like to see it. It shouldn't be totally lethal, but it should make whatever you hit pretty unwell after a few minutes. Poisoning melee weapons would be good too but, again, only if it's something that you could actually do with nightshade. As for the other fruits and veg - this comes up a lot and I'm of two minds. On one hand, yes, if you're starving you should be able to eat pretty much whatever. On the other hand, that would result in an overabundance of food, which wouldn't make for a very challenging survival game.

Check it out:

Night is enjoyable for PvE. However, knowing that people use the gamma exploit means that I feel like I also have to use the gamma exploit, which sort of defeats the purpose of night time. It's also only enjoyable for a short period of time. It eventually gets to the point where you just want it to be day. It really drags on. Short nights and long days - even if that isn't realistic - would be ideal. Think of the short nights as simulating sleep, or something. As had already been pointed out, most people would't do anything at night in a survival situation anyway, and since there's no sleep it does make sense to compromise by simply making nights shorter. Even better, let servers dictate the length of days and nights independently. By fixing the gamma exploit and reducing the length of nighttime, I think players would be much more willing to play at night. Night is an important part of survival games, after all. Playing Misery and seeing the sun set, and then being plunged into near pitch-black is super scary and atmospheric - but it works in Misery because you can skip the night by sleeping. You don't have to sit through two hours of being blind. Ultimately it's an issue of what is fun to play. Currently, for most people, night time isn't enjoyable even from an anti-game perspective.

I'd prefer it if players spawned with ruined clothing, making it important to find new clothing as soon as possible. They could even spawn damp, meaning they'd have to dry off too.

Yes, that fucking footstep noise. I'm not sure what exactly it is or what it's supposed to be, but it sounds like a couple of footsteps and it always wigs me out. I hope they remove it.

I'd be surprised if they didn't add more heads. I'm sure they will eventually.

A permadeath mod would be neat. Maybe if your character dies you can't log back on to that server for a week or something. Interesting ideas here. I hope to see more mod ideas as we approach beta.

Could somebody post a link to this livestream? Did they say anything else, or was it just the devs playing around?

The early success of DayZ led the devs to increase the scope of the game. They had originally planned to release it in 2015 (I think) but when they decided to rebuild the game from the ground up, a 2015 release obviously wasn't feasible. Frankly, I'm happy that they made this decision. In an alternate reality, there's a DayZ that was released in 2015 because the devs decided against a redesign. That version of DayZ is inferior to the version we are going to get. I'm sure the devs wish that they had endeavoured to create the game they are making now way back when they first started development, but I don't think there's much that they could, or should, have done differently. Also remember that DayZ was among the first high-profile Early Access games. The devs are effectively pathfinders for what not to do in Early Access. Considering that, I think they've handled Early Access quite well. Time between updates is a funny one. When DayZ first entered EA we got regular small updates. When they went with the redesign, we still got frequent updates, but we also got the occasional big update. But what did people do? They complained because the small updates were mostly just adding clothing and other items. The reality (I believe) is that they were releasing these smaller updates in order to stop people from complaining about the lack of updates. All it did was cause people to complain about the updates themselves. You can't win. Ultimately they settled with just releasing the big tech updates, which is fine by me. I expect that when all the major tech is implemented, we'll see more frequent updates that have a major effect on gameplay. For now we just have to be patient. The devs did hire a bigger team. Having more people doesn't necessarily mean development proceeds at a faster rate, however. You also have to consider the long-term sustainability of having so many new employees. That's my take on it anyway. Could be that they just prefer having a smaller team than a larger team, which is understandable. The devs might regret the road map, however. That's been the source of a lot of grief. It's good that they're no longer declaring release dates because when they miss them it's hugely disappointing. I think they know this, so they've learned not to promise things that they're not certain they can deliver. Again, the devs were in new territory when it comes to game development. Can't blame them too much.

But he's right. In fact that's exactly what I do. I don't want to play DayZ right now because it isn't finished, and there's not that much of an enjoyable game at the moment after a couple of hundred hours playing (since 2013). I gave 0.62 a whirl, looked at the trees, listened to the new audio, explored a bit and all that good stuff, but there's no new actual content to keep me interested. I'm not going to play DayZ, so I'm probably going to play Fallout 4, or CSGO, or Empire at War, or maybe pick up The Witcher again, or something. I don't like it so I'm going to play something else. I'll probably play the shit out of 0.63 though. Early Access is not for everyone. Hell, it's barely for me, but I accept that DayZ is still in development.

This. Exactly that. I'm almost certain I've suggested it in the past - but that is exactly what I would like to see. It has the added benefit of players in the distance not being followed by a strange patch of grass, because the grass itself is invisible and only, effectively, serves as an alpha channel. I'm not sure if players sinking into the ground is supposed to simulate grass, or if it's a terrain LOD thing, where terrain loses definition at a distance and raises above where the "actual" terrain is. If it's the former then I'm certain a better solution can be found. If it's the latter then that's fine, I suppose. Perhaps certain items should also have this grass layer, since they'll stick out like a sore thumb at a distance.

Agreed. Animal sounds should be occasional or, even better, actually coming from real animals that you can see and hunt. The transitions are far too sudden, but that might be for the purposes of testing, to make sure that sounds are actually transitioning properly. I'm sure they'll tweak it. I hope they make it so that geometry can block sound. I don't see it happening, but it'd be really cool. Welcome to the forums. I think I have to say that now because I have way too many posts here.

Huh. I just thought. In 0.62 trees have small variations in colours, making forest look a lot prettier and more varied. I wonder if this structure is grey because they intend to do the same thing with buildings. Having said that, there's absolutely no colour at all to it, so maybe it's just to make the vines pop a little more for the sake of the showcase, but it'd be cool if all the houses varied in colour.

Experimental servers also have a stress test function. We are the ones who are testing the performance.

I can see precisely nothing. Look forward to seeing it in the daytime, though.

Yeah pretty much. In the first instance I was picking apples, and one of the apples attached itself to the long stick on my back. However, it also cloned itself, so there were two apples on the stick - one of which was fake and couldn't be interated with. Upon eating the 'real' apple the real apple would become a fake apple, so there'd be two fake apples on my stick. Dropping the stick caused the clones, or ghosts, or whatever you want to call them, to disappear. In the second instance I had an invisible item - a drill kit, I think - in my inventory that prevented me from storing anything in those slots. Attempting to replace the invisible item with any item in my inventory would cause that item to also become invisible. Replacing it with any item outside of my inventory (sticks on the ground, for example) would cause those sticks to drop. I had an improved knife in my hands that became invisible in my inventory. I could still use it, but I couldn't drop it. Throwing it and picking it back up caused it to behave normally again. I found the drill kit on the floor, and put it into my inventory. This fixed the issue (which is what leads me to believe the drill kit was the problem, it seemed to exist in two states - on the floor and in my inventory.) Similar issues have cropped up before in previous builds. I expect it'll be resolved for good in 0.63.

Servers seem very unstable. Was able to play for a good 30 minutes before I got disconnected, but now I'm losing connection within 2 - 5 minutes. Looks great so far, though. Huge visual and sound improvement. Have noticed some inventory issues, though, so I'll go to the bug tracker, I suppose.

I've only played at night so far. The ambient audio is excellent, but it seems to be too loud in the woods - it downs out every other noise. It also has the effect of sort of drilling into my skull as a result. Not sure how day sounds yet. Server went down and I just rejoined, but it's night time again. Could we maybe get a clock in the debug menu?

Loaded into the menu. First thing I notice is the sound. That fucking bird sound is gone. It's finally gone. It's dead. We're free. That fucking bird will no longer haunt me. Best patch.

Where the hell is 0.63? We've been waiting for literally 11 minutes. Lazy scam devs! Seriously though, I might give 0.62 a whirl tonight if I can get on. The creator whitelist idea is neat - perfect for pure testing as well. Keen to see the new changes.

I can see why people are annoyed On one hand, I'm happy that the devs have given us a more or less definite "0.62 will be ready next week." That's really good, especially since a lot of people (myself included) have been expecting 0.62 to drop any day now - possibly this week. So being told that it won't be this week, but that the odds are super high that it'll be next week is really good. However, telling us "we were going to release today but we discovered a bug that many of you might not even consider to be especially severe so we'll probably release some time next week instead" is sort of frustrating. Telling us it won't be this week is great, and the honesty of why it's not going to be this week is greatly appreciated, but I think a lot of people really got their hopes up and now are disappointed as a result - especially because, as I alluded to before, the door states issue doesn't seem like a big problem. Now obviously it must be fairly major to delay the release of an experimental patch, but it doesn't seem major. Ultimately I'm disappointed, sure, but waiting a few days isn't all that bad. I'm one of those degenerates who only plays for a few hours after each major patch, and then forgets about DayZ for a few weeks or months, depending. As such I'm not exactly itching to play DayZ every day. Maybe, hopefully, I'll play some DayZ next week, patch permitting. As a sort of tangent, people have made the point that experimental is supposed to be buggy, and it's supposed to be experimental. I agree. I'm wondering if that when DayZ hits beta and the gameplay is getting worked on the experimental branch might actually see some experimental stuff - playing around with game balance, maybe some weird mechanics just to see how they work out and how people react and so on. I'd be down for some experimentation. I'm ready to get freaky.

It's got to be said, I'd be perfectly happy to play with buggy doors on experimental, especially if that's the worst issue. Part of experimental (hell, the entire Early Access process) is dealing with bugs. I can't see people minding all that much - certainly this sort of bug isn't something we've not had to deal with before. Still, I suppose it means we'll get to look forward to a release next week. Possibly.

That's a good idea. With survival becoming more difficult in future, players will want to carry around more food and water, rather than simply relying on water pumps and apple trees. However, having layered sounds would actually incentivise carrying less, not more, in order to remain stealthy.