0.64 Freerider

Dear DayZ-enthusiasts (which I'm sure everyone on this forum is), today we have recieved some official information on what is roughly planned for DayZ Development in the year of 2020. I will quote sections and comment on them but in case you want to read the whole thing for yourself (which I recommend you do) give it a read here https://forums.dayz.com/topic/247543-dayz-in-2020/ Before getting into it though, I want to clarify that the information is quite shocking to me personally and has almost entirely confirmed my worst expectations. But now, let's get into the details: #1 Starting off... Already we start off with a BROKEN PROMISE. What promise? Well, in the status report of November 6th 2018 [https://forums.dayz.com/topic/240625-status-report-6-november-2018] former Lead Producer Eugen Harton promised the following on behalf of Bohemia Interactive: Now we have learned that the dev team was reduced mid year, in June, to a "much smaller development team". #2 ...continuing... "Post-release support". I'm sure, that every true DayZ fan who has been with this game for years and years is sick and tired of this phrasing. But in fact you don't even have to be a die hard fan of the game concept for that. Because it should be clear to anyone that what they did is ridiculous: They release an unfinished, featurewise barebones and in many ways non-functional game. Then they call it 1.0 as in "finished", scaring off any returning players in the process. And then they call the continuation of development "support". It is ridiculous and it makes me want to puke. #3...going on... Interesting, that a game that is now only getting so called "Post-release support" needs stability, bug fixing and gameplay improvements, isn't it?! "Some new small-scale content." is what we are being told is planned for 2020. I'm not going to list to you the many features and the vast amount of content missing from the game. Alot of people have done that on these forums. But what I will point you to, is the "The OFFICIAL list of PROMISED FEATURES as of 2018" which I have made a post about, give it a read here if you like, but I have quoted the important section below: https://forums.dayz.com/topic/245310-the-official-list-of-promised-features-as-of-2018a-reminder/ Here are the features that were officially planned for the game: As we can see, some of these feature goals have been met in 2019, but the scary thing is that there is no mention of developing any of those in 2020. We now know, that the development team for DayZ has been significantly reduced in size #4 ...last but not least. You've read correctly, that is the COMPLETE quote of the "New content" section in this post. They "intend" to add more firearms. They "intend" to bring back broken body parts and they will bring over vehicle wrecks to Chernarus. That's it. Take your time and digest this. This is all we get for planned new content in 2020. All I have left is the hope, that someone will come out and just tell me reading this "DayZ in 2020" was a bad dream and that they plan to fulfill their goals and bring back all of the features on the list, if not more in 2020. But think of it. If this is what they set as a goal for 2020, then what is 2021 going to look like...? In short, here's what it looks like to me. After the release of Livonia, DayZ is not going to make them anymore big time money. They reduce the DayZ staff, so it survives barely on life support. They release a plan for 2020 with some "goals" that nobody can track as to when it's achieved. They pull the plug end of 2020.

Ok, after some testing I can say, that the night is super dark now. The night light is at this point almost non-existent [est. range about ~1m]. You cannot see the other end of a room without a light source, which is crucial to hiding at night. Great job by the devs in this regard, virtually rolling back the change and adjusting the lighting config to be even harder, instead of fully catering to a more casual and unknowing group of players. There is still the option to have a "bright night" as you can see, which I have not personally looked at, but I'm sure will please those who want enjoy a nighttime setting without the "hardcoreness" that comes with it naturally.

Appears we have just recieved some news on this front with two of the most recent exp patch notes standing out:

Been a while, eh everybody? I for one am kind of curious if there have been any personnel changes, or should I rather say, cutdowns...

Yep, it's always naturally been linked to this amongst other factors. Could be the infected count as well. Given that Livonia is a smaller map, perhaps 60 players is too much, as naturally more players end up in each others bubbles, thus presumingly tasking the server at a higher rate. But that's just my theory. There are also some inventory bugs due to the newly introduced placeholder inventory feature, which reserves slots for drawn items for where they used to be. I like this feature but it lead to guns getting bugged, with preventing the detachment of magazines, rendering the firearms useless. This occurred several times to me already, which is why I won't touch the game until these game breaking issues are resolved.

Love it, but server performance dies on full servers. Rubberbanding, teleporting and long delays.

Yep I agree it's a cool addition. In your case it might have been a bug though, as devs have confirmed to it not always behaving correctly yet.

Thanks for the communication. I would however appreciate CARS being part of this adressing pressing issues. It's ONE of the currently TWO available endgame goals next to base-building and it's broken, because the cars you worked so hard for can just randomly despawn and get destroyed. I KNOW that you are aware of it and that it is being worked on as of THIS ticket [https://feedback.bistudio.com/T139497], but I was really hoping for some updated information in this post. Maybe we can get it now? Please!

I'm not sure if anything has changed, I certainly haven't seen anything in the patch notes but we have some very nice moonlight in the game currently. It's not quite as strong as the one that you can see in the video I linked too in the OP, but it's very nice. What do you guys say. Has it always been there and I was just blind? Or did they change something?

Agreed. They put an "etc." in there, sooooo I guess we can read into that our most wanted features. But there's not much point. They stayed very strict with their "we don't say what we're working on" which allowed them to pull off some great surprises. Better expect nothing and be positively surprised than expect something and be negatively surprised.

Okay boys and girls, today's the day. With this amazing new patch 1.05 that I have extensively tested on the experimental branch, I can now even check off two of the boxes on the list of promised features. What a great day! What a great patch!

They still have alot of fixing to do but it's looking very good and if everything goes well, I will be able to check off two of those boxes, come the stable release 🙂

I know what you're hinting it. I sure hope I can! 🙂

I am very familiar with the statements of that critical point in time. And I'm absolutely with you when it comes to scepticism. They haven't said otherwise since speaking of those 86 that I would know of, so we don't know. Now the second post says: "Some of the old Bohemia devs, who were involved with DayZ" so that could mean, they left the core dev team before your quoted statement or after, again we don't know. It would be great to get an update and an official statement by the devs regarding this, as it is always reassuring. I don't know if you have seen this, but I found Toms recent post to be at least somewhat reassuring as it contained some more juicy and clear statements. I'm going to ask ImpulZ where the best place is, to direct questions at the dev-team.

Yeah, I don't know if these people are being paid, given the "weekend project". If they are in fact not paid, then it would be hard to argue the money, that is not being paid, could have been put into actual DayZ. If they are however being paid by Bohemia, then I agree with you, as long as there are open positions in the dev team, they could actually make use of and properly allocate new people to. But I doubt they would have called it a weekend project if they were indeed paid.

It really shouldn't be me doing this, but just so you guys are assured I'm going to link these tweets to clear things up: And a statement from one of the discord Admins:

Hi guys, the SCUM-Team has implemented archery in their game and I'm surprised at how detailed it is. Bows have been confirmed to be made available in DayZ on numerous occasions, the most official one, being the list below. Check out the video guys, would you like it to be implemented in such detailed fashion in DayZ as well?

As mentioned by @Tom_48_97 the DLC is mostly terrain based, meaning it is most likely going to be a map. The terrain builders in the dev-team don't have anything to do with the feature development or other pieces of content and as such are doing what they do. Build terrain. Thus, in my eyes, there is absolutely nothing wrong with releasing a new map as DLC. On the contrary I find it fantastic and am looking forward to the refreshing experience. It's quite the positive surprise. The feature development and map creating aren't excluding each other. They go side by side.

THIS is the exact kind of COMMUNICATION WE NEED!!! Thank you very much Tom. I appreciate the underpromise-overdeliver approach very much. The only problem with the status report is that it touched on alot of subjects and hinted things leading to alot of speculation so that's the only thing I feel that needs to be cut back on. Facts only, like you said. Thanks again for the once again detailed explanation. This is very reassuring, important and a great service to a loyal and passionate community! Keep on!

Unfortunately that's how I see it as well. But on the bright side, they confirmed that there will be more features and if not in 2019 than that is also confirmation that development will carry on in 2020.

Can you estimate what the limit is? Has BI decided when DayZ Development is going to stop? BI has to decide how much money to put in the game right? Money must ultimately be the limiting factor obviously, because if there was infinite money then there would be no reason not to bring things to full detail, if anything else would be favouring said expanded detail/complexity. So, is there a termination date? Or is it secret?

Trust that I mean it with my heart, when I say: I want you to be correct!

Hello everyone, it seems to be the day we have NOT been waiting for. If you haven't yet read the status report, that is subject of this post, you can do so over here: https://dayz.com/article/status-report/status-report-july-2019 I will go through the entire post below, adding comments, in this orange color to the relevant section but for those with little time, here are the Highlights: OK, let's go! FROM: https://dayz.com/article/status-report/status-report-july-2019 Curious about what's going to be our focus for the DayZ development in 2019? Have a read in our new DayZ Status Report, where we speak about console updates and the future of the game. Dear Survivors! DayZ is now out on all the major platforms – PC, Xbox, and PS4. You've probably seen team changes on social networks and are wondering: what's next? Of course, that's only natural, and today we would like to talk about the current issues, the expectations set by both the DayZ Mod and 0.62, and the future of the game. "expectations set by both the DayZ Mod and 0.62"... Already this starts off odd. What I would like to know about, are the expectations set by the official list of Post 1.0 Features, which was released in the STATUS REPORT OCTOBER 23 EXCERPT FROM OFFICIAL STATUS REPORT "Status Report - 23 October 2018" [https://forums.dayz.com/topic/240439-status-report-23-october-2018/] Features and improvements planned for BETA/1.0, or originally in 0.62, but moved post 1.0 Helicopters 🔲 we've arrived at the decision that base building implementation will provide enough of an end goal for players, so helicopters can be added later on Climbing over obstacles 🔲 this feature required additional programming and animation support that we've decided to invest more effectively into other parts of the game Throwing items ✅ throwing requires a lot of additional specialist work on physics and network synchronization, and we'd rather invest that into vehicles and other features this includes throwable weapons like grenades or smoke grenades Bows 🔲 the implementation of bows means an introduction of a completely new weapon type on 0.63 and was always a risky goal, in the end unfortunately not achievable in 2018; we've invested the programming time into gun play, melee combat, vehicles and other core features that were more important Character and infected ragdoll 🔲 unfortunately, there are many network synchronization cases that we need to resolve and implementing ragdolls in combination with death animations will require more time and resources Two-way doors 🔲 while a huge quality of life improvement, changing the doors to two way opening will require additional rework of some of the assets, and is not achievable in 2018 Fishing and fish traps, decaying bodies, carrying characters, contaminated areas, item coloring etc. 🔲 🔲 🔲 🔲 these are considered flavor features and for now, work on core gameplay features was prioritized instead Consoles The console updates will always happen after the PC updates – within 3 to 4 weeks of each other. The main reason for this lies with the specifics related to the console submission and review process. It takes 3-7 days for a submitted game to go through review. If it is decided that the build is good to publish, it takes 3 more days to roll the update out to the public. However, if there are any issues flagged as a must-fix by Sony or Microsoft (even ones that could be fixed in an hour), the whole process has to start again. Because this review process can take so long, we use the readily available PC platform to try new versions early – to check if there are any significant issues we missed (as you know, it happens). This PC testing lets us deliver the console update in a more reliable state and minimizes the chance of re-sending builds for review. A quick 1.04 update: we will carry out a complete server and character wipe, and will introduce private servers. Also, this update will address some of the current most troublesome issues in the game – duping, server hopping, and frame rates. Past, Present, and Future Parity with 0.62 and the DayZ Mod – full parity isn't possible because of the engine specifics. While features from 5 years ago are exciting, we want to remind you: most of the features didn't really work properly back then, and this is why it wasn't a final game. "full parity isn't possible" - so that means partial parity is possible? Which features are we talking about. Still the ones from the list you released END OF 2018?! - "Features didn't work properly and that's why it wasn't a final game" - Exactly and the purpose of the new engine was to MAKE. THINGS. POSSIBLE You might question the necessity of a new engine, but for those who took a long break from the game, it's plain to see just how much of a difference it has made. DayZ runs a lot smoother on the new engine. Although it might be hard to notice the change when you play daily, taking a step back should help to highlight many of the improvements that have been made during development. That is true. And these improvements are strengthening the game every day. We see it through the steadily increasing player count (even on PC) since March 2019 (public data is here). We see it in Twitch statistics – with more channels streaming the game and more people watching (link to Twitch stats). It might be a far cry away from the numbers of 2013, but for an almost 6-year-old game, it's pretty good! The player-count has risen. True. BUT it's NOT a 6-year-old-game. The game isn't a millisecond old, because it's NOT FINISHED. I won't start taking the 1.0 debate here, we all know that's bs. Of course, we will continue to work on DayZ to make everyone's experience better. I would like more specific statements. Let's take a more detailed look at the game and its future: Advanced health system – We improved it in 1.04 and will continue the balancing. However, at this time we will not commit to implementing complex medical/injury gameplay – while this is desired by many hardcore players, we are still struggling to fully explain the complexity of the existing system to the majority of players. Moving forward, we are working on a nice balance between authenticity and accessibility. Ok. New content (guns, cars, etc.) – As you know, we have already added some of these. More will follow, but keep in mind that it will depend on how quickly we can achieve this year's goals. This is where it gets more interesting. "...how quickly we can achieve this year's goals". Those are? Hopefully what's on the list of OCTOBER 23 2018 Modding support – We will improve the user experience for both modders and players. For example, we will soon bring animation tool support. Cool. Stable base building – A large part of this is the matter of balancing, and it's one of our key objectives for the year. Good. Our focus for DayZ for the rest of 2019 will be: bug fixing, stabilizing, balancing, and modding support. What?! I mean that's good, but that seems a little bit short of a list and lacking of points like "implementation of missing features"...Or did you mean, when you said earler "full parity isn't possible", that DayZ is now FEATURE COMPLETE and there won't be any more features coming?! We also plan to release an official DLC this year (keep your eyes open, and follow us on social media for updates). DLC? What's first, the HUNTER PACK: introducing fishing, hunting (advanced) and new crafting items - 24,99$? Additionally, we are currently experimenting with Survivor GameZ (a mod and popular tournament from the past), and will possibly bring this to DayZ as an additional game mode. I like the idea. About people It's normal – especially in this industry – to move on after working on a particular project for several years. And after major releases are done is the most likely time to do so. With DayZ, it's no different, and after releasing 1.0 on PC and console, some people are moving onto other projects internally, or leaving the company. It should go without saying that no matter what, these people will always be in the hearts of the DayZ team. While these are by no means the only team changes, we wanted to at least address the public faces of the game who are leaving: Peter, Lead Designer, who led the design direction of DayZ through many tough years. Eugen, Project Lead, will always be loved for his honesty and open ears to both players and developers. Martin, Brand Manager, is in our hearts for his effort to finally bring DayZ successfully to players on Xbox and PlayStation. Baty, Community Manager, loved for all the personal care for our community and interactions with our player base. Everyone who worked on DayZ not only has a great line in their portfolio, but the tremendous support of both us and the community behind them, and we wish them all the success in the world. Press F to pay respects. Oh, now Eugen is gone as well. I personally couldn't care less for Martin or Baty, but that's just my opinion. But Eugen is a BIG ISSUE. He was the last one of the public faces I trusted had the true vision and the will to pull through and make DayZ...this is BAD NEWS! Dear Dev-Team, please make an official statement regarding the list "Features and improvements planned for BETA/1.0, or originally in 0.62, but moved post 1.0" and give us an update how much, if anything, you cut away from that. Ah and one more question: What about 2020?

😄

That would be enough for me personally as well. Nonetheless it's impressive what the SCUM-devs did.