ForcefulCJS

I just got spotted while prone in tall grass with 1 visibility bar and 0 noise from 20 meters away. They have super vision and it needs to be fixed.

What exactly did your Mak do against a DMR wielding bandit pre update? The nothing it did before? I agree on some levels as someone who voted yes on removing the guns I think that with how hard it is to currently sneak past zombies and the lack of gun spawns in the small towns it is very hard to get started' date=' and that's as someone who has previously "gotten started" a number of times. Cant imagine what its like for anyone who just bought the game. This is ALPHA though, and I'm sure rocket is currently working out the best way to balance these new changes. [/quote'] Agree on some points but you missed the point about bandits. It's not that our Makarovs were amazing bandit killers, but rather they let us bounce back from all the random death this game throws at us just a little faster. Now a random bandit death = enjoy spending the next 2 hours trying to get a weapon and get out of town alive.

I played for 4 hours yesterday, nearly 8 hours today. During the 4 hours yesterday I killed zombies, died a lot, made friends, got betrayed, ambushed by bandits, found new weapons, new gear, new supplies, and explored the map. During the 8 hours today I have killed 3 zombies, died 3-4 times an hour, have not met anyone who would stick with me or talk, found no weapons, barely learned the map since my face is in the dirt prone for 90% of the game now, and I'm being shot up by bandits more than ever. Before: Oh, another player with a weapon, I need to talk to him to let him know I'm friendly, then we can use 2 sets of weapons, eyes, and supplies to gain an advantage in this wasteland... but I still must be on my guard for betrayal! After: Oh look, dozens of other harmless idiots, they can't help me since they have no supplies or weapons, they are only a liability since they might steal the weapons I go scavenging for or draw zombies to my position. I need to get away from all of them quickly if I even want a chance to survive.

I wouldn't mind hopping on but I'm more in need of "actual help" more than gameplay advice. It's so ridiculously hard to get your hand on a weapon right now it's not even funny.

This tutorial is amazing, I'll just grab my silenced MP9 and crossbow and... Oh wait, this is 1.71. I'm luck if I make it 2 minutes out of spawn and finding even a basic weapon requires several hours of effort.

I know newbie tears are nothing new to this game. But this is my attempt at giving a full-bodied feedback to 1.71. I just started yesterday and had several fun experiences in 1.7 and was really getting hooked on this game. I'll spell out my greivances about the last 7 or so hours I've been trying to get into 1.71 since there seems to be little consensus about this patch. For those of you wanting a TL;DR version: "1.71 could have afforded to add a new aggressive/buggy aggro mechanic OR remove the ability for new players to defend themselves, NOT BOTH". Anyway, here's my take: - Breaking line of sight and "hiding" is not reliable for breaking aggro. My experience thus far has been that breaking LOS will temporarily "confuse" the zeds, only to have them re-engage/home in on your position. In one instance I broke the aggro of a zombie right behind me only to have 3 more that had been farther behind dash in a few seconds later to my "hidden" position and make short work of me. This is currently the ONLY way for new players to survive once they have aggro'd a zombie. There is also one another extremely unintuitive aspect of this mechanic. As a new player I would say that 75% of my aggro comes near the outskirts of a town/city. Either I approached too quickly and didn't notice a zed behind a bush/rock/wall and they noticed me or other assorted fun involved high-visibility on pavement or "stealth" zeds that I practically bump into going around corners or just random aggro that makes absolutely no sense (being spotted with 1-2 visibility from long-range). When this happens you have 2 completely unintuitive options: (1) Run away from town, back into the wilderness, where you have nothing to break line of sight on and you will be killed or (2) Run toward town to try and break line of sight on a structure/wall and manage to aggro 50 more zeds in the process and promptly be killed. This one of the many inherent problems that making a zombie game line-of-sight based entails (more on that soon). - Zombies can still see through (and often walk through) walls. Enough said right? Nothing like zombies that can see you from 50m out AND see you while you can't see them. So many times I'd be sitting behind a wall and get 1-3 zeds charging from the other side in several random instances. Hell I've been surrounded by walls on 4 sides and tried crouch-moving only to get multiple zeds (that I couldn't see) aggro me. Line of sight is a poor mechanic in a zombie game. Zombies/Infected have never been known for keen vision, but few works of fiction have portrayed them as being hard of hearing. The balance before seemed right, "going loud" had major implications when near infected areas and you were still forced to crouch-walk to avoid garnering unnecessary attention that would force you to "go loud" and garner further attention. Zombies shamble around aimlessly, often turning in random directions and being extremely unpredictable in their movement. Furthermore zombies often appear in groups ranging from 3-4 to 15+. How am I supposed to effectively exploit line of sight when in most case I will have multiple pairs of eyes on me at all times? There aren't always nice clean walls for me to exploit and even then, walls just tend to encircle the building I need to get to anyway, so while walls help me get close, they do nothing once I'm actually within the perimeter. Given the random positioning/movement and 100% chance of death on zombie aggro for new players, this ushers in an era of uber-caution when even 1-2 zeds are nearby. Over the past few hours I've found myself going prone as soon as I could see a zombie just to ensure I didn't randomly piss one of them off. Even if I could use LOS to block the view of 80% of them, there's still 2-3 that might see me and I couldn't afford any risk. Believe me, spending most of your travel time prone is NOT fun as a weaponless/helpless noob who isn't even trying to protect their gear (we have none) but is simply trying to stay alive long enough to find ANYTHING. Being forced to prone everywhere only amplifies the aggravation when you it takes forever to infiltrate for no reward or to be killed weaponless because of some buggy aggro mechanic. - The line of sight mechanic also makes nighttime broken. As a new player, I naturally hate nighttime. I have to avoid zombie and their vision cone but I have no idea where they are unless I point a bloody flashlight at their face. Not only is this extremely unintuitive, but its a slap in the face toward any notion that 1.71 is about maintaining realism. However, one advantage to 1.71 is that now nighttime, with its frustratingly pitch black environment and buggy flashlights is the BEST time to go looting. It's really tedious but nighttime is currently the ONLY time a new player can reliably get into a town and find gear. Currently the only time I've survived over 20 minutes since 1.71 was at night. I still wouldn't intentionally go back to night because it's so incredibly tedious without gear, but it's still the best way for a new player to get some starter equipment. This isn't so much an inherent problem as much of a reflection of how bad Daytime is now. - No starter supplies doesn't do anything to deter bandits. Did bandits really ever come back to the coast just to kill us for supplies? I've played all varieties of PvP games for 2 decades and it's never been about the inherent rewards, it's about the thrill of ending another player's life. That thrill is there, but with less risk than ever. I've taken more dirt naps courtesy of bandits since 1.71 but my "sample size" is limited. Either way, a newbie who stumbles upon a bandit near the coast will have absolutely 0 recourse against the type of player who already tends to detract from the gameplay experience. I've gotten a weapon twice in the last 7 hours. One of those ended with a single sniper shot from the treeline. While I expect this to be part of the game, it just helps reinforce the cycle of helplessness that is forced upon new players. - Perma crouch-walk. I get that full-on sprinting should be discouraged in MOST/NEARLY ALL circumstances in this game. But the fact is, new players often need to cover a lot of ground at the beginning of the game. I'm forced to double the time it takes to find structures because sprinting is now a death sentence for newbies. Zombies will aggro you from insane distances for having the audicity to move quickly in this game, further adding to the extremely tedious experience of a completely helpless new player. - The last time I logged in I looked to the left and saw a port area that I knew was completely infested and impossible to infiltrate, and to the right I saw a small group of buildings with nothing but paved roads around and between all the buildings. I had died in both places after making several attempts at delicate insertions without any reward. I just looked in both directions and said "meh, fuck it" and quit the game. - But! But! Removing starter weapons forces newbies to cooperate more! No, this sounds like blind speculation from someone who hasn't had to endure a weaponless 1.71 yet and wants to justify the widening gap between the well-geared vets and us newbies. There is ZERO incentive for cooperation now. Yes I don't have to worry about other newbs capping me on sight, but at least I had an INCENTIVE to try and be friendly before. 2x players = 2x as many guns, eyes, and supplies and thus a better chance of survival if the other guy was friendly. Now 2x players only means 2x the chance of a random zombie spotting one of you and getting both of you killed. Having more players doesn't nothing to improve the survivability of the group. The best tactic I've heard is convincing one player to play bait. But how is that realistic or fun for the bait? The bait will almost certainly end up dead with nothing to show for it and it makes no sense for "suicidal charges" to be your #1 shot at obtaining weapons for your group. This tactic would only work in pre-made teams as well since you have about 0% chance of convincing some random guy to go die so you can gear up. Lastly, grouping up will do nothing to change the underlying incentives and disincentives to murder and kill out of caution or greed. Once you and another survivor manage to arm up, there is still the same lingering uncertainty and incentives to cap the other guy. Maybe he found a better weapon than you. Maybe he found some rare supplies you want. Maybe you found the better weapon/gear and you don't want to risk losing it. Plus what's the point of encouraging early co-operation when 95% of those endeavors are going to end with both of you taking a weaponless dirt nap and respawning on opposite ends of the map? I get it, the game should be hard. I'm not giving up on the game either. I just don't understand what merited these changes. I would have been struggling enough with this patch even if I had a start makarov, and things would have been PERFECT with the old zombies and no makarov. Isn't the standard of effective testing to "control" most variables and test major changes one at a time as opposed to completely changing almost every aspect of the new player experience and hoping to get effective feedback on each individual elements? Well this is my attempt at giving some of that feedback, this patch has destroyed the new player experience and the makarov AND zombie changes each play a role. I know a hotfix is coming and I implore the Day Z devs to consider reverting one of these 2 big changes. Unless the "line of sight" issue being fixed is simply a significant nerf coming to Zombie LOS, I don't see how the coming fix is going to help any of the fundamental problems that afflict new players. I was streaming 1.71 earlier today, initially unsure of the changes, I'm convinced all I did was convince a couple hundred people to never touch this mod with a 10-foot pole. It wasn't fun, there isn't tension or fear when you only have a flashlight to lose, just "oh look I've been spotted", I'll just hit the respawn button and save myself some time. I tried to defend the game to my viewers at first but by the end I was just as tired and exhausted with the survival experience as they were. I feel like my attitude toward this game has taken a complete 180-degree turn since 1.71. I died plenty yesterday, the game was still HARD yesterday, but I had way more fun while I was alive than I did today crawling across 200 yards of dirt prone just to sift through some rusted cans before a zed spots me through a building wall and sends me back to square 1.