scriptfactory

My most memorable play sessions happened when the tension of death was high. After dying too many times my character's "life" means little to me. I don't really feel the desire to hang on to a character anymore. Is that a problem? I would much more prefer new game mechanics. Like adding way more infected that are all blind and only react to sounds (...try camping now). Or player-controlled infected (DayZ factions). Create opportunities for emergent experiences.

I work for a video game publisher. We are currently encountering this exact same problem with a niche game we have. The main problem is there are expectations of profit that cannot be met in a niche market. The game development studio refuses to implement game design changes that the community is yearning for. Please note; I am not saying that any wish the players have must be catered to. I am saying that all concerns MUST be addressed. The attempt should be to include as many players as possible. There is a direct correlation between higher CCUs, player satisfaction and profit margins.

Does this mean the "beta roadmap" features won't be implemented before the beta release? Will the game stay in Early Access until the promised scope is complete?

How would this make the game more flexible? The three buttons for crouching and standing are so you can switch from prone to crouch and back without ever standing up. I would love a crouch system like Escape from Tarkov, though. You can set your height with a key + mouse scroll-wheel.

I just watched a movie called "The Girl With All The Gifts". Had a vision of DayZ SA but... you know... good. Check it out if you have a chance.

And then someone would slaughter all of your pets and eat them in front of you because DayZ players are diackas.

Basebuilding in most "survival" games has been ruined in this way. One possible solution would be absolute protection with only a few points of vulnerability that place the attackers at a disadvantage (e.g. spawn horde of zombies, loud noises heard within bubble, long duration for lockpicking, etc.) Realism in this context will only result in the situations we have all seen; a field day for cheater-griefers...

Don't vitamin deficiencies show up after months? No one lives long enough in DayZ to simulate this. xD

If I understand you correctly you are asking if it has a system like Blueprint or Unity Playmaker. From what I know about RV/Enfusion there is no visual scripting component that lets you create in-game behaviors via a point-and-click interface. I believe you are required to write scripts that utilize an API presented from the game engine itself. It would be an interesting project to create some kind of visual scripting tool. I don't think it would be that difficult either. But code is code. If you can't write an SQF script it would be pretty difficult to use the visual scripting tool. I could be completely wrong, though. Take everything I wrote with a few grains of salt.

I agree to a certain extent, @themightylc. I truly welcome a brutal experience. It should, however, be possible to take care of everyone in the vanilla game and not just the hardcore players. They could make zombie spawns and damage configurable per hive, for example. In my opinion the goal should be to keep as many people interested in the vanilla game as possible. Enough people have been pushed away from the game.

This is horrible advice for a company trying to take care of all of its customers. Horrible.

I can't believe people are still using the word entitled as if it hasn't lost all meaning by this point. This community is straight toxic.

I feel as if you should get off your high horse. These people paid money for a product that has been in development for four years. Let them fucking complain, dude. Go away or report their posts if you don't want to read them. You aren't a forum moderator and your opinion isn't better or more valid theirs just because you are supporting the dev team.

I've brought up this topic several times on this forum. Early Access games borrowed the term alpha from the standard SDLC. According to the standard definition of the term you should usually have a functional vertical slice of an application ready before entering alpha. Alphas don't last 4 years. In my eyes DayZ is pre-alpha. I am a pedant and a programmer. Sorry for the aggressiveness in my post.

This is similar to my original skills idea. Every player account is assigned a fixed "job". Mechanic. Medic. Whatever. Skill increases with playtime. Read books to gradually improve skills not related to your job. Done. No extra UI is needed besides a job title. It's so simple it just might work.

I totally agree with you to a certain extent. People who purchase games have no idea how they are developed. This leads them to criticize a development process that may be standard in the industry. The same principle applies to all software development. When I put a piece of generic software on the market my customers don't care if I am having problems improving the foundation of my app. They care that I provide them what I promised in a timely manner. If I am charging people money their complaints about the development process are valid. If you don't want complaints then don't accept money. None of us thought it would take over 4 years for DayZ to get to this state in its development. There were three (?) stable releases in 2016. The yearly roadmap goals were, yet again, missed by a mile. The complaints are, in my shitty opinion, valid. And it is BIS' job to placate the masses.

As soon as the developers charge for it.

The fault for the bad reviews are NOT on the players but the development studio. The players voice their opinion and the developers/producers must counter it since they are the ones profiting from the product. The ultimate responsibility for making sure reviews are positive lies with the developer and (to a lesser extent) the producer, NOT the consumer. That is all I was saying.

Why is it not true? If the devs want better reviews then they should communicate with the community better, release more updates, etc. People are quick to blame AAA studios for poor development practices but not indie studios, somehow.

After mulling it over I have come to the conclusion that this new skills system is pretty bad. My opinion doesn't matter, of course, but I would much prefer that characters are born with a "job" and its skills improve over time. You could read a book to improve skills not related to your job but these would be lost on death. Your job would be persistence (once a mechanic, always a mechanic) but all skills would reset on death. Done. Easy.

Why not? I run on a daily basis and I am a better runner now than when I started... Tarkov has a pretty sick skills system. I thought DayZ SA would have something similar.

All of these players purchased the game and are voicing their opinion. Opinions are subjective. The fault lies not with the players but the development studio. The longer this game stays in early access (it isn't in alpha...) the worse the reviews will get.

This idea seems pretty complex. After playing Escape From Tarkov I think DayZ should just copy their inventory system. It's close to perfect.

Background I have been playing The Division's Survival DLC for the past week. It is the most fun I have had in that game since it was released. Check out this TotalBiscuit video if you want a quick introduction. The things about this mode that I find engaging could also be applied to DayZ. You aren't killed for being thirsty and hungry after running around for a few minutes. The focus is on survival. Shooting and helping other players is a by-product of the need to survive. Skills have to be learned. You don't just spawn with the skills of a surgeon, mechanic, soldier, etc. Suggestion The thing I like the most about this mode is the constant fear of death provided by an "infection" status. You spawn infected. You run around trying to find medication that staves off your imminent death. The disease progresses as long as your "medicine" isn't active and eventually you will die. For DayZ we already have the idea of infection but you are somehow immune. Instead of being immune I though it would be cool if we were all infected and had to fight off a slowly advancing disease. The following simple changes could be made to enable this in DayZ: Everyone starts infected. Your first goal is to find medication to stabilize your physical condition. As the disease progresses you can get other ailments (e.g. cold, fever, diarrhea, etc.) which also have to be cured using in-game medical items. Lack of food no longer kills you. It just adds severe movement/vision penalties. You can still die from dehydration. Medication comes in various strengths that halt infection advancement for a certain time period (5-10 minutes per dose). Players can learn to craft medication after building a base but it requires farming. Players can find a cure in some dangerous area but it is only a few doses and only spawns rarely (once per day or something). I think this change would have the following effects on gameplay: Bandits would rob players for medication before shooting them. They might even make them slaves to help with farming (like Negan in Walking Dead.) Medication could form the basis for an in-game economy on certain servers. Sickness is the perfect currency dump. Players could eventually become resistant to the infection and only require one dose per hour or something. This and the cure would increase player-to-character attachment.

I left stories and signed them with my Steam account name. Maybe people did read them but they never wrote me back.