Rags!

You're

Normally most music is beneficial. That's the difference.

Firematches.

"sometimes you are just going to die". No good game should tell you that. You shouldn't have a survival game, especially one that strives for some level of realism, that throws a "sometimes you're just going to die" brick right in your face. Dying should happen because of a reason or because there was an obstacle that you couldn't overcome. If it's against a player, that's one way. If it's against the environment or the AI controlled characters then there should be some sort of logical reason for it to happen. There's a difference between difficult and intuitive survival and "lol no matches anywhere you ded now". You can't excuse bad design for "sometimes you are just going to die." You should never be spawned into Chernarus with the doom of dying from hypothermia because the game code didn't give you something you needed to live. "It's supposed to be a hard game". That doesn't excuse futility. If I gave you a maze that was only dead ends and that was impossible to solve, I could use this sentence to describe your complaints about it. It's just a hard maze. This one you can't beat. Because when you spawn in the rain and you can't warm up using any possible means, that's not difficulty. That's impossibility. You can't say a game is hard when there's no possible way for your character to survive because no level of skill will save you. "All the PvE elements at some point rely on finding certain items and are therefore luck based there's no getting around that." Only the first part of this sentence is correct. In a world that will eventually have 100 players in it, or more, all competing and interactive and sharing the same universe of items, you cannot decide who lives and dies because of sheer luck. Why can't I find two sticks and rub them together to make a fire? Why can't I use a lantern and gas to create heat? Why can't I slice open a cow and live inside his smooshy bits like a Tauntaun? There's only two options for surviving the rain when you spawn: Make a fire or get waterproof clothing. A survival games needs more options than that because both of these options rely solely on the luck of loot spawns. You should always have at least some sort of option to surviving. It would be better for them to make the survival aspect always possible if you are shrewd or clever enough, but have threat of other players constantly looming over you. Surviving the elements in a post-apocalyptic world should not be the primary focus of your survival. You need trees for basically doing anything in Minecraft, for instance...but you always know there are trees around. They're trees. The way that trees are spawned into the Minecraft world can be applied in different methods to the survival options in DayZ, though obviously they would be less obvious and easy. "I disagree that reading a book isn't playing the game, your character is still in the game world and is affected by it" I suppose you can really stretch what you define "playing" as, but for me, it's not huddling down in a little house reading about Jesus because I'm afraid of the rain.

I don't get the random electronic music. What's the purpose of that other than to make me mute the video from that point on?

You spawn in hungry. So you can't sit in a house and just read a book. Plus, if "don't play the game" is how you are supposed to survive in the game, I'll just not play it.

This really is a problem, though, in all seriousness. If you spawn into a server where it's raining then you can die because the things you need to keep yourself warm/dry simply aren't there. I've spawned before and not been able to find matches. You can't find something that hasn't spawned or that wasn't there in the first place, and it's a loot spawn issue that needs to be addressed. It's not "survival" when you have to find a certain object to survive and that object simply isn't within reach. When you die of hypothermia because there's no matches or waterproof clothing, that's not skill. That's not survival. That's just you getting fucked over by dumb luck because the objects that you can only get by picking up didn't spawn near you or somebody got them first.

I really dislike the Third Person View. Not because it isn't strictly a first person perspective of the world, but because the 3rd Person View in this game is far too advantageous and immersion breaking. I don't have anything against people who like it, and it's kind of sad that on this website I have to make sure some of you people don't take this as a personal attack against you. It's cool to be able to look at your character from some sort of third person perspective to see your gear, your weapon, and even in a more tactical sense...to see how you look in foliage, against a certain wall, or how your character will appear (to a degree) when viewed at another angle. In real life, we have a situational awareness about our bodies that a video can't truly simulate yet. A third person camera lets us compensate for that lack of awareness and feeling that we have. But I think that the raised and drawn back camera of the game currently is a bit too much because it lets us see too much. I AM NOT ARGUING THAT THE THIRD PERSON VIEW IS UNFAIR. IT IS NOT UNFAIR. IT IS PERFECTLY 100% FAIR. But, I do think that in a game like DayZ, which draws lots of mechanics from realism and which strives to be as gritty and authentic as possible at times...you shouldn't be able to have such a superhuman ability to see above walls and fences, around corners, over cars and obstacles, around trees...etc. Third Person View allows you to keep your hitbox and character safe and sound behind cover while you reap all the benefits of what would normally come from some level of exposure and risk. Laying on roofs and crouching behind cover in most games means that you can't see what your character can't really see, leaving you to rely on intuition and audio clues to make up for your lack of sight lines. The third person camera just gives to much of an advantage to people who aren't mobile. I understand the concept of "tactical situational self-immobilization", but the current camera, I think, takes that a bit too far and gives you too much to work with. A game like DayZ is all about Risk vs. Reward. The Risk of exposing yourself should reap you the Reward of having a view of your surroundings. My personal preferred remedy? An over the shoulder Third Person Camera, akin to games like Dead Space or Fallout or Resident Evil. These cameras allow you to look at yourself in the third person, but don't let you survey the land like a spy satellite. It would still allow people to look at themselves and check their camouflage and their positioning, after all. "But Rags, if you don't like it, then don't play on Softcore servers!" But I DO like the concept of a third person camera, I just think the implementation is...poor. I understand that the Third Person View is sort of a staple with the game, but when you consider no staple-toting office is complete without a staple remover...

Can I get a third option?

There should be a semicolon after the first "shot" and there should be a period after "again".

You know what was a quick hit? Can't Buy Me Love.

I thought you meant server hoppers, and I was about to say that they never left, which is why I never see anybody anywhere, which is why I play this game less and less and less as time goes on, it seems.

When persistence is working optimally, it will be one of this game's strongest, most amazing elements. No longer will server lists be full of 1,2, and 4 hour restarts where only the first person to reach a certain spot will benefit from it.

I don't think there should be a story. It should be a mystery. It shouldn't be explained or rationalized.

Exploring an old nuclear silo reminiscent of the Cold Wars days would be too cool for school.

You can boil water in a styrofoam cups and plastic water bottles, actually.

What are you playing this game on? Your toaster?

Just doing survive.

Server hopping is a huge problem, but changing the loot tables to combat it will affect everybody no matter what they do. If you treat everybody like a server hopper, everybody is going to see the changes in the way they play. This would only equip more and more people with deadlier and deadlier weapons, and character lives and high tier items would lose their value because gearing up will be so much easier. People who server hop don't want any delay at all between spawning in and having the best loot in the game. Because they are lazy, entitled cowards. They will still server hop because it's still the most efficient way to gear up. They won't give up using their "strategy". The promise and the hope of better loot should be used as a mechanic for encouraging player mobility. If items that are very deadly and valuable spawn in places where you yourself spawn then you are removing the need to move around the map. We should be encouraging mobility, moving around, not living and dying where the players all spawn because now there's a chance of military gear spawning in where I spawn.

I think you need to learn that this game isn't finished, and neither are the zombies in either behavior or numbers.

It also promotes complete nonsense if things don't spawn in certain areas. Items should spawn intuitively, and you shouldn't find Kalashnikovs inside old wooden sheds or magazines full of bullets in an outhouse.

Ugh, the tiny text...

Unpurified water, I think. Always boil.

After the break.

To what end? Why? "It's more realistic" isn't it's own reason. It would only help to nullify the danger of the cold in the game since you could just pile on anything you could find and there would be no importance of having winter clothing anymore. All characters would look the same, with the outer layer becoming nothing more than the aesthetic layer. Maybe two layers at most. I wouldn't mind that so much since the effects wouldn't be incredibly potent, only marginally helpful for thermal reasons.