Parazight

Best advice Eva: learn how to fight. Practice dying as much as possible. Fist fight people till you're good at it.

Too much. Seems unnecessary to survive. Extraneous.

I can't survive without a noose, afterall.

It IS a KOS deathmatch right now. Have faith that once completed, Dayz will have server communities that don't kill on sight as frequently. Persistence, more server control and barricading will help form these groups.

At this point in the game's development there is no community. There's no community because there's no persistence. There's no persistence because it's Alpha. Have faith! A lot will change, not just mechanics but the social aspect as well.

Today I'd like to talk about the future of the game. Not the future of mechanics or updates, not the future of upcoming items, patches, or otherwise 'minor' details. Today, we're going to talk about the endgame. How will the game retain interest with the consumer? What is the longterm fate of DayZ? How will the game evolve once it's out of beta and onto the store shelves? Important questions that deserve attention and the answers will drive the success or failure of its lifetime on the market. Let's start off by analyzing the words right from the horse's mouth as this statement is often taken literally and quoted as the entire focus of the game. Some people seem to take this as the drive behind the development of the game. Attitudes and arguments have been formed around this statement and people interpret its meaning in a number of different ways. Now, personally, I think it's a clever tag line that will help sell the product. Players have argued that this game is all about player versus player combat while others point out that this game is a zombie survival game first with player interaction being an integral part of it. Dean Hall and BI may use this tag line to attract players but it's not something to base your gaming experience off of. It's cute, but ultimately the player base will decide what this game means and choose to make it what they want it to be. Open world hybrid MMO. What does this mean? It's a sandbox. A gaming sandbox is a large realm where sections are not instanced and players are not separated except by their own whims. It's a first person shooter. Hence the 'hybrid' part. There is no doubt at all that the game is filled with weapons, first person simulation, and all the major mechanics of any FPS. But it's also a MMO! The life cycle of whatever you're doing never ends. There is no 'finishing the game'. The environment involves multiple people in the same place doing stuff. I think because the game defines itself by taking parts from multiple number of genres that the lines are blurred as to what it is exactly. This grey area of definition propagates heated discussion of how to act, what to do, and what to expect. Some people will tell others that if they want to shoot people then they should go play any number of Call of Duty style games. I mean, it's an MMO, not CoD. So, it's different enough from that type of game that players may try to make the gameplay atmosphere into something more typically MMO-ish and not a KOS wasteland. Others point out the striking similarities to first person shooters and insist it is another Battlefield, with a twist. Well, I've played all the major MMO's out there and all the first person shooters as well. Call of Duty, Battlefield, WoW, Swtor, Ultima Online, and EQ, for example. I've seen it all. The common thread to all of them is player versus player action. I've been on the bleeding edge of hardcore mmo progression guilds. I've been in FPS squads. I have more hours logged into these games than probably the lifespan of many of the people who visit these forums. Based on my experience, logic tells me that DayZ will be a pvp fps first. I predict (finally, a point to all this, right?) that the endgame to DayZ will be PVP, not surviving the zombies. It's a supercharged first person shooter. One of the best gaming incarnations possibly ever. Why will DayZ's endgame be pvp you ask? The answer is relatively simple. It's because like every single game out there, player versus environment is absolutely no challenge at all. Every MMO and FPS out there doesn't really provide any serious challenge to single player content. I'll say it again. SINGLE PLAYER CONTENT. I'm not talking about mmo raids either. That is not single player content. That requires the coordiniation of several people online to mechanics that are constantly updated. (new boss fights are put out because they get stale (and because of gearing stats, of course)). Single player content across any game format/genre in the history of gaming gets stale because the challenge becomes easy. Sure, DayZ will provide so much fun and challenge to new players. Surviving the zombies, figuring out how to not die versus the environment is fun. ...for a while. It provides a great product! Anyone who buys for the PVE will have a blast and it's a totally legitimate reason. But after a while, any gamer will figure out the game and surviving the elements will be easy. If you think that you'll be able to play this game for a year or more just surviving the elements then you're fooling yourself. Eventually not dying to zombies, rotten fruit, falling off ladders, etc. will become easy. You'll experience the hard lessons and learn not to die from dumb stuff. When that happens, what will you do? You will require a new challenge. The endgame that has never been apexed in the history of FPS and MMO gaming is player versus player combat. You will seek out PVP after you learn how to not die from zombies or you will move on to a different game. There is nothing more challenging than competing against another human being. When the fabricated AI challenges are solved there will always be PVP. Unfortunately for the PVE part of DayZ, it is totally mitigated by the absolute necessity to balance player versus player interaction. There is no game mechanic out there that will force you to switch targets off another player and onto a zombie. So, I guess this post is a warning to everyone who expects the game to focus off of KOS/PVP and onto more single player surviving elements. Personally, I don't see how it's possible that the game will enjoy a long life without the main drive being player interaction. Read:pvp. Please don't post what the developers want this game to be. Because it doesn't matter. The consumer will define the game, not the makers. TLDR: dayz pve will get stale. It's inevitable that the game will be a pvp wasteland.

While I appreciate a thought out post, I think what you're suggesting is too complex. I don't think this system is necessary.

Try using the search function. I started a topic just like this in General. There's a 5 page discussion on it. My opening post describes the endgame, as I see it, in detail. http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/206032-the-dayz-endgame/ I could easily argue that your 3 sentence topic, that includes dungeons (FFS), is much more un constructive. btw, separate, instance areas, with raid boss style content will never happen.

The endgame is player versus player interactions. And making Youtube videos.

Do you by chance have a mullet?

My memorable first day was looting a magnum and a child's backpack. That guy should've used his splitting axe instead of trying to shoot me.

Nothing is random in the world of 1s and 0s. Even computer based random number generators.

Gimme some flooded towns. Imagine Solnichniy or northern Berezino with houses half deep in water.

Have faith! I would like to believe that the devs are open to suggestions but the vision they have, for better or for worse, will be their own.

There's a few things the changelog didn't make note of. There's a current bug where, if you yell in direct communication, while in berezino, loot will spawn more frequently in the apartments in the area. Give it a try! I found several ruined wool coats this way.

I'm foaming at the mouth at the prospect of a more difficult environment. I have my doubts because once people learn how to deal, it'll be a cakewalk. Regardless, exciting times. I wonder what the server list will be like a month from now. Will it still be a list of many high and low pop servers or will there be more servers that're half full. I have a guess but will patiently wait and see. Ultimately, I'll still be able to respawn and pick fights as a new spawn, so that's good.

I lol'd!

You can't regulate communication like that. Moral or not, there will always be a workaround. What happens when I'm in the same room as my brother and friend a la LAN party? How would you handle that? Suddenly people sitting next to each other have an extreme advantage.

I play for the paranoia buzz. The blood pumps when I attack SKS dude with a baseball bat. I play for both friendly interaction and pvp. The artwork is pretty cool, too. In his defense, this IS a forum. Forums are for communication, regardless of how ludicrous the topic is.

Casinos, Strip clubs, go-cart tracks, public pools, fast food joints, bars, carnivals, bowling alleys, stadiums, malls, dams, convention centers, art galleries, and fair grounds. Bring 'em all on!! The more the better!

Bickering? Where? It looks like a civilized discussion to me. I might disagree with Mercules entirely, but that doesn't mean we're bickering like children. Debating isn't always fighting.

In my experience, hit boxes are smaller and axes hit to the right of where you are aiming. Try aiming for the left side of the zombie/player, you may have better results. good luck.

Yes. That's what this thread started as, and still is. After seeing multiple threads and posts where people are clinging to the hope that this will be a good pve-survival game, I took it upon myself to be the good guy and inform them before their dreams are crushed. If you're expecting anything other than the constant fear of being Killed On Sight then you might want to reconsider. For whatever reason, I feel the need to defend my position after 4 pages. Maybe that's my fault. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here sometimes but feel obligated to properly respond in the thread that I started.

Okay, so PVP is not boring to you because you have time invested in acquiring gear, this is what I'm understanding. Perhaps you're on to something there. This is totally valid. In my humble opinion, this time where acquiring gear requires any significant amount of time is relegated to the pre-endgame experience. So, once the game becomes familiar to the average player and they learn that they can gear up in no time whatsoever, it becomes a non factor. For example, in the last 200 hours of play I've set upon myself to only collect firearm related loot off of other players, often leaving upgrades behind as gearing isn't really that important. Because gearing is so easy. Seriously, gearing shouldn't take more than half an hour to get what you need. I can't recall the last time I've really needed anything more than an SKS and a box of ammo. Gear is one thing but tactics are leaps and bounds more important. Perhaps you haven't reached this point in Dayz yet. But, I'm sure you will. Your previous forum statements regarding MMO PVP confirm this. You have stated in the past that MMO PVP (like wow, the biggest) require a gear grind and that there's no real skill, just gear. Unfortunately, that's not true. You can easily acquire a full set of tier 2 (Grievous) pvp gear in less than a week and be totally competitive. Prideful quality does take a few weeks, but it's not that hard. As someone who has actually had a decent rating in those games, geared up several toons, and logged -many- hours, I can tell you that what you've said indicates that you are clueless of the truth or just lying about it. ^^totally not true. Visit the forums of the people who take these things seriously. Hundreds of thousands of players that provide in top tier tournaments will disagree.

Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe that's why I'm all for PVP. In the end, when they have to balance gameplay, they will never make the zombies more threatening than other players. How could they without making them way overpowered? To the point where it's completely unrealistic (even for a made up thing like a zombie). THAT is pve that would get me excited, but what are the chances of that in the final build? Quite slim.