Standalone isn't a good game. It's a markedly different game from the mod, and it's obviously incomplete. I knew that going in, and I knew that when I bought into the alpha on day one. It's an alpha - incomplete features, absent necessities, and glaring bugs are to be expected. That said, I can't really enjoy playing Standalone; each day, I feel less and less like logging on. Each life, and everything encountered in it is fleeting. My experiences in standalone fall into one of two general categories; Feast or Famine. Feast - Maybe I get lucky, find an SKS, pristine PSO and a few boxes of ammo, find a can opener and more beans 'n bacon than I can eat. Just as I figure I'm all set, I do something stupid. Maybe I come off the second floor of a barn too fast and break my leg (Shoulda picked up those sticks!), maybe I get greedy and catch a bullet for my trouble. Famine - Everything's picked clean. From Kamenka to Svetlojarsk, from Berezino to Cherno, there's nothing nowhere. All the doors are wide open, all the loot's gone. I'd be lucky to find a beat up hoodie or a rotten banana, let alone anything of any use (Like a pipe wrench) Which brings me to my first (And admittedly least important) point. FIX THE LOOT SPAWNS! Feast or Famine. Nothing in between - None of the classic Mod paradigm of "Gun but no Ammo, Ammo but no Gun" or "I've got everything but matches!". Either you have everything you need and most of the things you want, or you have nothing at all. You know exactly what I mean, too. You've had it, or you're realizing it now that I've pointed it out. Or maybe you're one of the Smart Ones, like me, timing the server restarts for your preferred few (2/6/10 PST, Vancouver Dikdik). You've realized that "Feast Or Famine" is tied to server population and time since restart, more than anything else. In exclusion to everything else, really - The time the loot's been there, and the amount of people looting. Because loot doesn't respawn at any time but Server Restart. DayZ is all about the in-between - Having a mosin, but no ammo. Having 7.62, but no mosin. As it stands now, you log in 10m after a server restart and find a mosin, a scope, two boxes of ammo, and maybe a bayonet. All within five minutes of each other, in the same cluster of buildings. You log in three hours past server restart, and you won't find anything anywhere. If you implement loot respawns (On the 15m? 10m?) you're going to take a sizable chunk out of server hoppers, but more importantly you're going to almost completely alleviate the Feast Or Famine issue. That is, you're going to be repopulating areas that are rendered barren (Like Cherno) within an hour of restart. Which brings me to my second point - Gear Persistance. Or, rather, the lack thereof. You find three guns, but only have one friend. In the mod, you'd take the spare and stash it in your tent, or your car. Here? Nothing of the sort. If you find three long-range scopes, they're all gone when you inevitably die. All you accomplished by taking them was denying them to other people, which, while a valid tactic, is kind of a dick move. I actually dropped Standalone a month, maybe two? back. What lured me back in was a rumor that backpacks were consistent over server restarts. Not perfect, no, but it gives players the ability to leave stashes (see; STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl). Or maybe Heroes can leave care packages - Talloon packs full of rags and opened cans near common spawns. Maybe Bandits could leave a box of ammo and a scope in a nook on Sniper's Hill. Even something as minor as backpack persistency would allow you to save that second press vest for another time, or stockpile .357 and a cowboy hat. Tents. Stashes. Persistent Backpacks. Allowing your gear to be useful and accessible past your current life would be huge. Which brings me to my third (and most important) point - Life. Or rather, Un-life. Zombies. DayZ has always been committed to fast, Romero-style zombies, rather than slow, tireless Brooks-style zombies. I can respect that, and, while it's not my personally preferred style of zombie, it makes them a threat outside of large hordes. However, Zombies as they are now are not a threat. Let me emphasize that some more - Zombies are not a threat - They are a nuisance. They come in ones and twos, easily dispatched, but respawning almost instantly. bugs(!) ensure that you can't lose them, and they're fast enough so that you can't outrun them. The first two are the problem. Zombies coming in ones and twos means they're a threat in the early game, maybe if you aren't good at punching (aim for the head). Once you get your hands on anything like an axe, a hoe, a pitchfork even? Zombies are trivial - They'll land more hits if you stop while switching to melee than they will in the actual fight. More often than not, they bleed you - Again, like the mod. If you're caught without rags or bandages and you get into a fight, you're as good as dead. The problem arises with the new respawn times - Almost instant. You kill one and another takes its place. I've died because a zombie landed a bleed, and they kept coming in ones and twos until I bled out. Zombies are a nuisance, not a threat - When I pull aggro from a zombie I wasn't aware of, all the way across fifty meters of fence, building, and field? I'm annoyed. I don't think "Oh crap" - I think "Not this shit again" - To fix this, I'd make zombies spawn in pods of two to four, maybe five in downtown cities, but cut the respawn timer back to five, ten minutes. Increase damage, decrease bleed chance. Make bleeding attract nearby zombies. Zombies Part Deux - Bugs. You can't play Standalone for ten minutes without encountering some kind of zombie-related bug. Everyone knows them, but I'll throw 'em down anyway for convenience's sake. Detection ranges are way off - A zombie can spot you through 100m of dense terrain, bushes, field, maybe a fence or two. And from there, he'll beeline towards you. And I do mean beeline - Zombies ignore all man-made terrain. All - They cannot climb stairs, nor go up ramps. They walk straight through barriers, be they sandbag, picket fence, window, or brick wall. They also detect you through them - Visually. In FPS terms, I'd say it's noclip combined with X-Ray vision - Makes me think that man-made terrain and structures just plain don't register with them. Stealth is worse than useless - It slows you down, and any zombie that's facing you is going to see you, regardless of crouching, camo, or movement. On the flip side, zombies seem to have no hearing at all - I have sprinted across pavement to stand behind a zombie, then punched it in the back of the head. Only upon being punched in the back of the head did the zombie aggro me - Funny, considering that the same zombie would have aggro'd me before I was aware of it, if I'd approached from the front. If there's one thing I want anyone important to take away from this? It's the zombies. Fix The God Damned Zombies. Before you add new guns, before you add tents, before you put in new animations, before you give them patrols, before you put in loot respawning, before you put in tents and stashes, before you put in all those other Major Features the mod had, Fix The God Damned Zombies. Until then? I'm out. Standalone just isn't fun for me anymore, and I can't go back to Chernarus. Chernarus+ is just leagues better. The Mod and its mods feel so dated it's not even funny, while A3 Broken Point has its own set of problems and an almost completely different concept and feel. If Bohemia implements the three things above? Heck, that'd probably cover the vast majority of problems with Standalone. Until then, though? Shrug.
