Thadius (DayZ)

Naming one? How about three? In all three instances you use insults, you are implying that any "smart" person or "real" gamer would have the same opinion you have. All the while not presenting any solid arguments and trying to pass of your statements as "facts". Actually, most of your rebuttal is exactly the same as mine. Opinion and speculation. At least I had the courtesy to present it as such, and as an added bonus, I did not belittle and insult people in the process.

I am unsure actually. Atleast it "feels" better :)

I am not sure who you are speaking to here or if you are even trying to contend any of my points with valid arguments. You are rambling all over the place, creating strawmen and calling people who disagree "self entitled", "whiney selfish snobs". and "idiot crowds". This is not conducive to a good argument. Bottom line is that they have over one million sales. And the game is not even "out" yet. Putting myself in the shoes of accountants that may, or may not, love the smell of money, I would be hesitant to pour more money into a product that has basically saturated its target audience market. I am not making this about right or wrong or about ethics, you are. All I am highlighting is a possible reason why the development of things such as Zombie AI pathfinding is slow.

What on Gods glorious oblong Earth are you basing this on? Could you link me to the article where this is mentioned? Because to be absolutely blunt, I would be about as suddenly surprised as a man dropping a soap in a Maximum Security Prison for Rear End Molesters if the entire DayZ staff (including the guys doing the hunting stuff) is even that big. To me, this entire development screams "small production team", with an unwillingness by the powers that be to spend any of their already earned profits to expand said team to something that can really pump out the changes. People think this Early Access thing is some sort of Kickstarter, where more sales will equal more investment into the game. My theory is it does not. That actually the opposite is true. The more DayZ SA sells, the more saturated the market becomes, the less willing the men holding the purse strings will be to invest money they already got in the bank, for what could be all risk and no reward. So goes my theory I have mentioned here before atleast. I am not insinuating the DayZ SA team is bad, or being dishonest. Just understaffed. And unable/unwilling to expand said staff.

Interesting. They did some test shooting in one of the latest vids (I think) and it did not seem to do much extra absorbing of anything. But that was with a pistol. So maybe it does not matter what caliber the first bullet is, it will stop it cold without bleedthrough, but become ruined? That would make it good vs single slow firing large caliber weapons (mosin), but not much for rapid firing guns mayhaps? Just speculating.

According to the armor test vids I have seen, the more stuff you have in the pockets of a particular piece of clothing/backpack actually lowers its protection. If you fill a 6 slot item with 6 small items you actually lower armor by up to 15-20%. That surprised me as it seemed a bit backwards. So now I travel as light as I possibly can in the chest area and it does seem to buy me and extra M4 bullet or two. Ive taken a Mosin to the chest and not even started to bleed. Given, at the time had a empty pristine jacket, chest holster and an almost empty backpack. They all got ruined but I survived with nary a scratch. Large items still only counts as 1 item, so filling your backpack with protector boxes is the best for maximum armor protection from your backpack (FYI the hunting backpack and childrens case were the two highest armored ones). According to the same test vids I mention above, all chest attachment clothing except anti stab vest give the same amount of protection. So it does not matter if you are using a Press vest, chest holster or assault vest. All that matters is quality. The Stab vest is the only chest attachment that is worse then any of the others. Protecting up to 25% less. According to the vid, it does not even protect against knife stabbing better, worse then a chest holster does actually. Go figure. Another fun thing shown in the vids was that it does not matter at all what kind of clothing you are wearing, be it civilian or military. It all gives the exact same armor values, except for the large Down Jacket that also suffers from less protection then anything else for that slot. So a stab vest and down jacket is the absolute worst combo for protection.

The M4 is (potentially) quite the accurate rifle, despite its reputation for the opposite. With pristine MP buttstock, MP handle, bipod and Acog, I can reliably hit target 600-700m away while prone (with deployed bipod). Max dial range for the Acog is 700m. Its a very versatile weapon used correctly (with the right parts).

We sent in our new spawn buddy as a distraction after he gave us the few meager possessions he had for safe keeping until he returned. He climbed the stairs as fast as he could. Almost got into the bunk bed room before they lit him up like a Christmas tree on Times Square. Then the rest of us stepped up in the same moment they were shooting him. Give people a target to shoot and they will get tunnel vision. We managed to pop both of them. Teach them to take pot shots at us from the windows. Our friend then met up with us at another location and we showered him with 'liberated' gear.

I like any VOIP that will let me, and others, use push-to-talk. Really the one reason I do not use Skype anymore. I am so tired of listen to people cough, sneeze, swear, gurgle, and scream at their spouses/children/parents. Or listening to people talking on the phone about sometimes quite frankly, disgusting things I and other have no interest in learning. And God help you if they have a wireless headset and then decide to go to the bathroom. And have the headphone part around their neck instead of their ears, so our desperate pleas for him to stop go unheard. Maybe Skype managed to patch in some sort of push-to-talk setting by now. Or maybe they have always had it and me and my buddies are about as sharp as a bag of doorknobs.

As I was rolling through the heart of a deep dark forest with a broken leg, I found myself thinking; "I wish I had a wooden stick". Then I realized where I was and could only chuckle. But seriously, tis a bit silly how rare they are. A simple solution (that does not require advanced things like resource harvesting making or interactive trees) would be to have them spawn in or around deer stands since they are almost always in forested areas anyway.

There is a difference in believing the development team is just sitting in the office, crushing beer cans against their foreheads while eating fistfull of Ho Hos all day, and them being hard working but understaffed. Im a proponent of the latter.

Ah yes, my diabolical master plan of presenting my theories and opinions as as theories and opinions by constantly using both words in almost every sentence is me being devilishly clever and presenting them as facts. Is "Gooby pls" still a thing among you youngsters? The memes change so fast nowadays. Edit: Although, I will be beholden to that my original thread post was not very eloquent and did suffer from some bad turn of phrases.

Until such a time that production visibly speeds up I can only make theories and assumptions based on my personal experience in the matter. I do hope you are right as I enjoy the game, even in this state. My assumptions are based mostly on my own experience in production Alpha stage games and the times I have participated in another company's alpha game production as a tester. Granted, it has been a couple of years since I was last involved, but it is not to much of a stretch to assume some things are still the same. I would also like to reference to my experience in "handling" people who have managing financial matters as their livelihood. Believe you me when I say they do not see the world the same as the production team itself in many cases. In some way I think DayZ may be a victim of it's own success. It has managed to saturate its target market very well. Over a million sales I believe. It is in my opinion hard for a company to justify (to the powers that be) to dip into profits they already have in the bank, to expand a team on the off chance that they may, or may not, have enough release sales for the increased costs to be worth it.

Oh dear. That is my old thread. While I do appreciate the support Mr. 9216544, you are making me look a bit like I created a secondary account to draw attention to my old thread. And the previous sentence now seems as a diversionary distancing maneuver. And now this sentence seems... Sigh... Well, I guess the only winning move here is not to play, to quote an old movie. But since we are here, and the damage is done, I might as well discuss some of things brought up here. I tried in a civil way address the issue the mod brought up in his lock post via a PM to try to discuss the matter. While the section the mod highlights is regretfully not specific enough to paint it as solely my opinion and theories (something I thought at the time came across as a given), I created the thread as an open forum for the matter to be discussed and/or to be convinced by good arguments why I was wrong. I elaborated these arguments out in the PM and invited him to discuss the matter between us privately in a civil manner, since he did not wish to discuss it in a open forum. He did not reply. My message boils down to this (In my MOST personal opinion and theory, I can not stress this enough it seems): Alpha is slow because of a small team, not because of its inherent alpha status. And the team is small because of an unwillingness to spend alpha sales money. And this because they have calculated that a bigger/better team will not bring about the increased sales to cover the increased costs. The end. Rereading my thread, I seem to have used some bad turn of phrases. However, there is a worlds difference from disparaging the (theoretical) financial reasoning for keeping the team small and the team itself. The latter which I am not doing.

Err... It seems we are saying the same thing, although you seem to expand on one of my points much better. What do I need to edit that is giving the wrong impression?

Exactly this. And I think this may be one of the inherent faults and dangers with early access games. People seem to labour under the impression that the more sales and the more popular an early access game becomes, the more more money will be spent on the game, like a kickstarter. I was one when I bought this game; "Wow, with all these sales, they will be able to really rock the development rate!" This is just not so it seems. Always thought it was a bit odd that in this forum and on this game "alpha" is equated to "slow development" as a given. The most games in alpha I have seen are the opposite. Change is usually rapid in a medium to large production alpha game. People keep saying things like "alpha is alpha" when others complain about slow progress, when they really should be saying "small team is more profits". But what do I know. Maybe they do have a large team and have a huge mountain of piled up content in storage, just waiting on their programmers to catch up. This is a common bottleneck and the solution is usually to hire more programmers. Although I doubt the above situation. The information about the AKM they released gave the distinct impression it went from creation to implementation in a continuous order. I am not disparaging the team that is working on DayZ SA mind you. There is a huge difference in complaining about the financial profit reasoning keeping the team small and complaining about the work of the team itself. Which I am not. Except perhaps for their patchy community communication skills.

But they are slow. And the only sensible reason I can figure, is that they are understaffed. Consider that they have over a million sales on an alpha game. This makes the slow pace of the game quite the mystery. They money is there the pace is not. Their unwillingness to expand their staff (so they can more efficiently work with the "old and hard" engine) is a bit befuddling. My highly personal, and totally speculative, theory is that they have concluded that investing alpha sales money into faster/better/bigger development just is not profitable and have opted to stay with a small team for bigger profits. I could be horrible wrong though!

This. I tried creating a thread earlier today for people theorizing on why progress is going so slow, and I postulated it might be because of a small staff due to an unwillingness to spend money to expand said staff. My thread got locked by a mod faster then Marlon Brando eating a Mars bar, for about as solid reasons as gaseous vapor on the Moon. Also, yes. The Developers are... quite lax in giving updates and interacting with the public. I have been around quite a few alphas (and actual alpha game productions) to know this is not being handled well at all.

In a blunt nutshell, I have seen small mod teams (working on their spare time) produce faster content. This is alpha, they should be shotgunning us with new stuff constantly to see what sticks on the wall and what doesn't. Weekly fixing bugs, causing new ones, new features that may or may not work. Constant stream of equipment that may or may not be unbalanced. They do, sort of, but at such a slow pace that is very much at odds at the commercial success of the game. And the only reason I can figure, is because their "dedicated teams" are vastly smaller then they have implied. They have sold over a million alpha copies of the game, one wonders where the money has gone. It sure has not gone into a bigger staff. I know how long it takes to make a medium polygon count 3D object, texture it, set values to it and put it in the game (worked with it myself). Using that knowledge, at the speed they are going, I would judge their total employee size at around one modeller, two programmers, and one designer to organize and do a little of everything. Maybe even an animator. You can not blame everything on: "taking it slow to minimize bugs and player discomfort". Unless they have an enormous backlog of content just sitting in storage waiting for their programmers to catch up, the current speed is still to slow even if you are "being careful". However, going by comments made by them regarding the AKM it does not seem to be any real bottleneck from creation to implementation. Then you have to think on perhaps why this is. Why are they understaffed? After some thought, the only reason I can think of is that the game is on life support to squeeze as many sales they can, before terminating the thing and taking the profits and calling it quits. Somewhere, someone has made a profitability calculation and realized they already saturated the market, and investing all that money from alpha sales would be a waste. This since they would not sell enough games of the full version product for the expenses to be worth the amount of sales. In short, those that stand to profit from DayZ SA sales have no motivation to increase costs (staff). They already have our money. The real danger of popular early access games I guess. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Maybe I am the only one who thinks things are going to slow. Maybe I am just a paranoid cynic.

I would suggest ignoring this thread altogether. Medics, bodyguards and sympathizers alike. All you are doing is making medics a target by every bored, morally bankrupt person in DayZ. Guys who have KoS'ed so much that even that is starting to lose its luster. So they look for alternative venues of... "entertainment". Especially when you say you will show up with a large, experienced and well equipped bodyguard force. Also, by posting here you are all making it "a big deal" to manage to kill a medic group. Its becoming a badge of honor among the douchebag cabbage humper community. Attacks and ambushes will only increase as you feed the protein deficient malcontents in this thread. Although, to be honest, after 8 pages, it might be to late and medic hunting is already becoming "a thing".

Never found an edible Tomato or Kiwi. Found a pristine potato once in all the hours Ive played.

I remember the old Ultima Online MMO. God that game was hardcore when it was released (got patched into retardation eventually). For you who dont know it, basically the most open fantasy MMO I ever played, where you could kill anyone or rob anyone, with (semi)perma death and full looting of player corpses. Its that last part I mention above where they had a... interesting mechanic for. If you killed a player, you could "use" any edged weapon on his corpse, severing, legs, arms and head into separate pieces. Then on these pieces you could apply the edged weapon again to further separate into bone and flesh. If used on the head, you would get ears, brain and skull for example. The torso would produce various organs and ribcage. Now, in Ultime Online, these things if put inside your property (like a castle), did not despawn and the game had a stacking mechanic. So some people built thrones of player skulls and other bizarre creations involving organs. Interestingly, the ears were the only part that retained the name of the player who uuuh... previously owned it. So some Player Killer guilds had these huge stacks of ears filling rooms, like... a murder archive. Good game. We should have something like that. Atleast the ear mechanic. An ear necklace of newspawn killers. That would be swell.

I have to admit, the few times I do get the drop on someone and they turn out to be russian, I will shoot 'em. This is based not on nationalism, but just pure statistics and probability. In almost every scenario I have met a russian, they act like total jackholes. All slimy toadiness and subservience when you are pointing the gun at them. Capering and hollering jackals when they get the drop on you. Totally undignified in victory, extolling long stories in broken english how you are the biggest noob ever and how awesome they are. Might as well end it before they get a chance to stab me in the back. Same goes for the french. Oh and young british kids. Well, kids playing DayZ in general. Oh, and... You know what? Basically anyone who doesnt sound like a semi-educated adult that can speak english moderately well. Those guys are usually good in my book. The rest can eat a digital bullet.

I happened upon an event yesterday I felt I for some reason or other had to share. Me and three other friends happened upon a band of five bandits casually murdering every living soul they could find in Berezino, including our party. Of course we took great offence to this and proceeded to try to murder them right back. Long story short, we killed four of them to the loss of myself and one other. Their fifth man is gone without a trace. Upon my friends investigating their corpses, they noticed how VERY well stocked and equipped they were. All of them in matching TTsko uniforms, helmets, assaultvests, LRS scopes, ACOGS, the works. And everything color-matched, pristine (what survived) even the vests. We chalked it up to a lot of server hopping looting and a penchant for roleplaying soldiers perhaps. Anyway, now for the bit where the topic title comes in. After faffing about as a newspawn for a time. I finally take a roundabout path in the forests outside Berezino to get to my friends without dying, when I suddenly spy four newspawns just standing in the dense foliage in a semi-circle. My spidey-senses tingling, I crouch behind a bush a hundred meters away and observe them. After a bit a very well kitted Gentleman runs up to them. A Gentleman that just happens to fit the missing fifth member of the murdering bandits to a tee. Another long story short, I proceed watching them using a duplication exploit (which I will not detail here to avoid prolifiration) to kit all 4 of the newspawns up with pristine military gear and weapons once again. After which they promptly set off to Berezino looking like five identical clones. (During this time I had tried to frantically relay my position to my friends, but I barely knew where I was.) After warning my friends they were comming again, we dumped that server like a hot potato (after I went to the site of their duping to see if I could scrounge anything off their discards of course). This whole series of events took about 30-60 minutes from the last shot was fired in Berezino. Now comes my question: How does the community look on things like this? Is it more of a "Well, it is so easy to do and the devs never fix it so meh, who cares" or more of a "We know people do it, and those guys are dicks" Or is it something wholly different? Also, since I went to their middenpile with the intent of scrounging their very illgotten goods, have I also broken som unsaid code of conduct? My personal opinion on the matter is that it seemed to ruin some of the joy of the game. The sense of accomplishment of halting a KOS rampage on newspawns by a large well equipped party went away faster then usual when we realized it had not even taken them an hour to restock fully. This post brought to you by 'Work Boredom'. The biggest cause of silly forumposts since 1999.

Is this a quote or saying from somewhere? I am not sure what it means. Or am I just being about as sharp as a bag of doorknobs?