philbur

Sign me up! Where do I pay the extra 10 bucks for this?

If they manage to get this sorted I will immediately post to this forum my sincere apologies for anything and everything negative I have ever said to anyone .....anywhere..... (trust me....that's going to take a LOT of typing!) ;-P

The announcement today by Brian is hardly news to all of us who have followed development for the past few years. He has taken the time to clarify his current role, to explain his apparent disappearance from the SRs and Dev activities, and he has hinted at his intentions going forward. I, for one, am very appreciative that he posted that. So...the answer to your question might be A) The direction of the game will not stray too far from the CURRENT one...and B) It HAS to remain the Survival Sim that "we" all expect...and as far as "gun play" goes I seriously hope not! (it's already looking like the damn game is going to have a ridiculous amount of weapons and ammo...which kind of goes against the core survival theme in the first place). Adios, Hicks_206, All the best, and thanks for your efforts. See you on the Coast, my man.

Good Update! Thanks All. BUT! I see that my biggest gripe with the development of DayZ is still WIP...which worries me quite a bit, though. The ability to FULLY REMAP controls.... In this day and age it HAS to be easier than the team makes it sound...really... The actual key press should not even be a consideration...just the input command... ( for example: "Raise Weapon"=a key press, and "Raise Weapon and ADS"=another key press....either of which can be selectable as a HOLD action or a TOGGLE). Does this not seem odd to everyone, that DayZ (being built using new engine tech) still has the "potential" of having whacky and hard-coded keyboard commands?

Gotta Love Frankie... He originally got me interested in the Mod. His YouTube stuff is really well done and even though a lot of it is scripted, it's still a great way to get people interested in DayZ. Hope he comes back to YouTube with some SA episodes when it is closer to 1.0. (he could literally resurrect this title for a lot of the folks that gave up on it). Sada is a twit, though...so hopefully it's with Jackfrags instead! ;-P

@Baty Alquawen I would suggest you run through the main points of "interest" for your testing team so we can immediately jump in and get you guys some initial feedback that is of a more focused nature. The upcoming release of the EXP test build can quickly become a mess if we all just pile in and blast the tracker with random feedback. I suggested this many builds ago (many YEARS ago ;-p ) and I still think it would help you out if we knew EXACTLY what kind of gameplay would best benefit your analysis. For example...if you are experiencing CLE issues then ask us to gather as much loot as possible and store it, carry it, distribute it, or whatever...or if you are thinking that infected behavior is an issue then ask us to melee them or have us try to spawn as many of them in an area as we can, etc. There are a TON of things to do for all of us, but a live stream just before the new build release with SPECIFIC demonstrations of possible issues and SPECIFIC instructions on what data you would like from us would go a long way in ensuring you can begin the tweaking process efficiently. The last Stream, although interesting, was a bit random and I honestly would like to see a Stream that is more of an "instruction manual" as to the requirements from the dev team to us humble Survivors. Sort of like; "Hey guys...when we try to spawn infected in an area you just entered there seems to be an issue with it..so try ______ and try ______ so we can figure this out better..." Or maybe "hey guys...the UI seems laggy when items are moved from hot bar to ground so try it and let us know in the tracker with "Hot Bar Item Loss" in the tagline".... I still don't think we are "helping" as much as we can in particular areas that might make it easier for your team to nail down the final bugs and gameplay issues because our feedback is scattered and often confusing to organize. So...Live Stream a FULL walkthrough of your requirements, areas of "concern" and what you would MOST like us to provide feedback on, and I am positive it will make your job easier and our lives in Chernarus worthy of the occasional KOS. Looking forward to the broken mess that will ultimately signal the final push toward the finished jewel!

I am quite foolish, I'll agree with you on that one. But forum posts are definitely not on the same level as real spirited and free-flowing group conversations. No matter how it is written, you will never replicate your true personal perceptions on anything. If you were to bump in to my character in-game we would have an excellent conversation about all of this I am sure. I've seen what happens when fellow forum posters get in to arguments over opinions...and I am determined not to get caught up in that kind of thing. I try to post my opinions as just that...my personal take on things...and I am usually a bit extreme in some regards, I'll admit...but it helps to have diverse viewpoints that don't always align with consensus. You know my posts are sometimes overly critical assumptions, and thanks for keeping me honest, but the reason I chime in on these things is because I feel invested in the ultimate success of the game and I am primarily a hands-on, get it done, kind of guy. I am so old-school it's actually pretty funny...but I secretly wish that they had a professional ass-kicking motivational coach come in to their offices once in a while and after kicking over the water cooler and unplugging all their slow-cookers and lava lamps he would gather them all together and re-visit the past months' milestones and make "adjustments" to increase efficiency. Accountability and Optimization FTW! So...I'm a huge fan, and a loyal supporter of the whole project...and I am the guy that makes assumptions. The Scientific Method is based on assumptions and observations. Based on MY observations I have developed assumptions...and I must suffer the scrutiny of my peers. I look at the glass as half-empty..and I devise a plan on getting a refill. Those who look at it as half-full just ask me to get them one while I'm there, and never figure it out for themselves. They will be the first to sober up.

Ok...Good answers. But what I DO have, is a 10-year background in resource management in the tech industry...so I always look at the HR side of things first as a source of potential inefficiencies.. I just typed and re-typed about 500 words going in to detail qualifying my remarks...but that's not why we're here, right? I think the team are wasting time and effort on the wrong tasks...and you are offering excuses for them. Ever the ebb and flow of these forums, my friend...and hopefully we can rant about this stuff in-game soon, instead.

Looks like they will never get the weapons effects right, based on their current direction....So why even bother? Don't get me wrong...I am really liking the smoke effects and casing ejection stuff and am happy they are keeping true to their weapon jam/misfire modelling as well. (although they conveniently nerf the weapon recoil so as not to upset the PVP folks out there, it seems) Muzzle flashes, especially, are typically random and varied when using gas-driven semi or fully automatic weapons, and they should know this by now. Less is More! You could easily bury this game in another 5 years of design and feature implementation if every aspect of the experience was to be considered and implemented. Just drop the muzzle flash and you saved how many hours? This adds up... if they did the math on every hour of item of development that does not qualify for core gameplay then we would have our precious Beta by now. Name me a soldier who carries a weapon with a muzzle flash...and let me know what gravesite he is resting in....I'll be sure and pay my respects. Hell, even bolt-action rifles designed specifically for military or law enforcement applications typically employ amazingly effective flash suppression devices...for a good reason! And yes...I know pistol cartridges like the 9mm and 45ACP are pretty "dirty" (and 7.62/39) when fired from short-barreled pistols and SMGs...but I have been to so many gun ranges and have had so many real-life encounters with firearms (mostly just the NATO stuff, luckily) that I just cant agree with their data from those "trips to the ranges" if what we see here with muzzle flash is an indication. This is just my personal opinion, but ultimately, reading a blurb from a developer on items that can be classified as "nice to have but not critical to core gameplay or mechanics" just sparks my overall discontent in the way I perceive them utilizing their staff. I had assumed that by now they would be more task-centric and less scattered in their roadmap. The Status Reports simply amplify these misgivings by showing me fluff and post 1.0 features being worked on well before they are required. It is, indeed progress, though...so call me a critic if you want...but it is because I still see the potential immersive reality that DayZ can deliver to its players...and I hope they keep it going in that direction. As long as they know when to say enough!

Nice to squeeze this in...Thanks all. This goes a long way towards reminding me you are serious. Being delayed at an airport and "giving up" on our SR because of it was kind of surprising to me, so I'll say it again... Thank You for the update.!

Yes, we are only two people in the DayZ marketing team. Me and Martin. Devs are developing the game, we are talking with community. What is the problem? :) Please...PLEASE, don't ask us what the "problem" is, Baty... We each have our own answers to that question and MOST of them are not constructive nor are they flattering. Just keep us posted when stuff happens and we will endure.

"Survivors, since a full 100% of our two-member communications team got stuck at the Heathrow airport , we won’t be able to post a Status Report today. Apologies for breaking our schedule, we’ll get back on track next Tuesday" Found this on Twitter... Am I late to the party, or did they forget to post this on the Forums? Yep....I am late to the Party, it seems... Sorry about that.

Nah...All your speculation is off the mark, guys... They shut down 4 more servers so the money saved can go towards hiring another person to help design and model the banana holsters! It is curious that they need more servers, though..in all seriousness....as they did not mention if it was CLE or another system that required that many instances of servers... I thought they were just getting around to "stress testing" single instances with MAX population.... Oh well...another Wednesday without so much as a brief "Hi All, here is an OFFICIALLY updated .63 list...and here are a couple screenshots to drool/speculate over"....sigh. Dare to Dream, Philbur...Dare to Dream.

An interesting perspective from a long-time DayZ Mod YouTube content creator... JackFrags has been a great source for videos from the Mod days and a bit of the early SA builds. (no thanks in large part because he usually teams up with FrankieOnPC). Here he talks about mostly more recent games (with a healthy amount of DLC garbage), but his point about devs releasing a game "too early" to meet release dates is a good one. While you are on his site you should take in a few of the "old" videos to remind yourselves just how far we have come in the SA.... Cheers!

Just a bit more context... JackFrags is one of those Youtubers that gets invited to preview upcoming games...he has early access to Betas, and publishers send him game keys and swag to give away on his channel. Suffice to say... If guys like Jackfrags, Frankie, Septicfalcon, and numerous others decide to start streaming DayZ in it's new incarnation it will go a long way towards making this game a long-lasting and extensively populated MOG. It will also help to dispel a lot of the ill-feelings of a number of folks who have given up on it and I feel a lot of those individuals were pretty passionate about the Standalone back when Rocket announced it...and our experiences in Chenarus would be the better with them than without. The reason I posted this link was to share with all of you his feelings about how the decisions behind a game title's final state have a lot to do with ideas like monetizing DLCs and follow up expansions, as well as the trend towards half-polished "GAMEPLAY" because timelines demand the game get launched by a certain date regardless of its stability or missing features. This speaks volumes to me in relation to DayZ SA, as the primary reason for my continued faith that the game will indeed be as great as was originally promised (albeit slightly different). I sincerely hope that the dev team can justify their time over the last couple of years by giving us an experience that measures up to the highest of our expectations. While I fully expect a few features that I, personally, really wanted to make it into the final game will not be there...I can at least call upon opinions such as the ones in Jack's video as a reminder that regardless of what WE wanted, and WHEN we wanted it...the dev team or BI execs decided to stay the course and do it THEIR way and ultimately this will result in a better game for all of us, whether we currently think so or not. BTW... Youtubers will sometimes just throw up some gameplay footage when they want to VLOG about something, so the footage was not the reason I posted it...and besides...that was only Battlefield 1 gameplay...an obscure game from a fringe company called DICE...and is the latest installment in their marginally successful series of online shooters... ;-)

Precisely! And what a great game mechanic to figure out how to manage it. And in the Canadian Armed Forces it was a 10km "forced march" in full gear, 50-pound pack, 15 pound battle rifle with 4 full mags, and you had to do it as a TEAM in under a set time! And THIS was for Armored Crewmen...who had a nice little 50-ton battle tank to get around in...FFS! Infantry dudes are not quite right in the ole noggin... ;-)

Yes..But further to this I would suggest they just decrease the Stamina Bar, and have the bar also slowly shorten as you jog. It is an "easier" adjustment that more closely resembles real world physics. No one walks in Chenarus and the devs seem to accept it as normal to jog all the time...it's not natural and it almost seems like it encourages the player to take less notice of his surroundings. A gameplay mechanic that makes you become LESS-IMMERSED is kind of odd...for a game that is all about immersion. They seemed very pleased with the way it works in the initial release but I hope as you do that they bring the whole "Stamina" factor closer to reality. In order to "jog" with full pack, battle rifle, ammo, and dressed fully and across broken terrain a fit soldier could cover maybe a kilometer before you were huffing and puffing. That's about 50 pounds on average, not including your weapon...so maybe let's see video footage of Martin and Peter trying that out in the MOCAP studio? ;-P I would love a return to the "huge" map and this is easily the most effective way to do it.

Two excellent questions...as these two are basically the most critical challenges facing this title as it goes forward. I am afraid that this kind of thing will get shoved under the carpet until all the fluff gets implemented. (My guess is they wait until .63 hits EXP and the Jam-Packed servers grind to an FPS standstill.)

My first effort will be to see if adjusting the "Shadows" option in the menu will help with this. It's probably going to be fine with stuff like this because of the slight tweaking we can all do through the video settings....( I hope).

POW! :-)

Or....are they trying to give the night sky a bit of diffusion? It is nice to see a crystal clear night sky, but wouldn't it be more common to see a bit of "haze" across a large portion? I don't mean light pollution...just general diffusion.... As long as the primary stars that are the ones we use for navigation (and planets of course) are visible we should be able to get around.

I honestly would not worry about this. Being a bit of a fan of high-power ballistic cartridges and long range shooting it is my experience that barrel length is not as big a factor as you would think on ultimate velocity and to a lesser extent projectile energy. I know this is a good thing to pursue to add authenticity to the experience...but why bother now, when there are so many "major" tasks to tick off the list first? Add to that...the ballistic coefficiency (BC) of the bullet is going to be the biggest factor in determining the trajectories and retained energy upon impact at different distances, so it would mean you would be adding a bunch of different ammunition options into the loot economy and seeing as Chenarus has two basic states (pre-infection civilian life and post-infection military occupation) it seems there would only really be two types of bullet design for each caliber. (Hollow\Soft point hunting bullets and Fully jacketed military "ball" ammunition). Good to see a nice batch of updates from all of you, though...but I just hope you don't get sidetracked by details like this. Manage your limited cycles! We will be more than happy to complain about stuff like ballistics when the time comes! hehee. :-) BTW... Tested 22-250, 6.5 Creedmore, 7mm Mag, 300 Win Mag, 308 Win, and 375 H&H Mag. Many bullet designs, weights, powders, and loads...with various barrels from 18 to 26 inches. I lose about 30 F/Sec when I shorten the barrel by an inch....so based on 2500 F/Sec you can see that "velocity" is less worrisome. Accuracy does indeed suffer with shorter barrel length but remember that the rifling and type of barrel design play a big role in this.

Well... My argument is that the addition (if staffing is short) of a dedicated spokesperson would be offset by the increase in positivity and ultimately the increase in sales.

OK, Thanks for reminding me about that. I associated Brian with being the guy who drove the overall development of the game because I considered him to be well-spoken and a very good communicator (which originally gave me the confidence to buy in to the EA process) and I was not clear there had been an obvious shift. Apologies to Brian for the last few instances where I tried calling him out. Yes, I have recognized that Eugen has been the lead voice in the SRs but again...I was thinking there was another layer of oversight that remained free of actual "in the trenches" work.

Hall "bailed"...and HIcks "failed" (not really...but you would think so by reading the negativity) I cant help but chime in here, guys.... But in my opinion (obviously) the darn thing just wont get that extra push towards BETA until the development is better managed. I tried (and failed) to not read too much into the Status Reports because they just left me thinking that the studio was way too casual and amateurish an outfit to take on this huge project. I don't read the SR now...and I am getting better at regaining my patience. Simplify, and reconcile. I can't control the process...so I am removed from it emotionally... I play the game, as it is...and for the most part my enthusiasm remains. I swear they still need better structure and accountability but I ain't the one paying their salaries and my reputation as a Game Studio is not on the line...so whatever... Beta in the Spring, please...or else I'll just....well.....I'll go ahead and....ummm......geez...you know, I will have to keep on playing what's playable... Your ROI for anyone who has played it over a hundred hours or more is more than probably any other game you have owned so ultimately there is no "real" reason to slam the EA state of the game unless you truly feel a degree of personal hardship has been perpetrated against you and you "must" stick it out until the "end". So to all the Survivors who swing towards making excuses for the dev team, and all the Survivors who just play, and to all the Survivors who are sick and tired of the lack of progress or poor design I say Good for you and stick to your guns, as without discussion and debate we would all just be playing No Man's Sky in our faded DaiKatana T-Shirts. Bottom Line, No one on the team has taken ownership of the project, so no one needs to be responsible for it. This is a problem. OR...Bohemia is fine with this process so far and does not consider that there IS a problem. Either way...hearing from the devs themselves is not something I consider seriously, as their paycheck depends on their success. Where are the BI press releases? That would surely satisfy most of us...and the rest would just need to kindly go find another EA title to blindly cry about. Finally, as I have said ad-nauseam, if Brian is still the captain of the ship....where is he and why does he not personally comment anymore? If his plan was to bring on staff that could best convey his messaging and relieve his workload then I fear his choices are not effective and his decreased cycles have not been used beneficially. Sorry, all...but been around the block enough to know that ultimately there needs to be someone who can be serious and professional and clinically efficient when you ask serious and critical questions. If this is impossible because it's simply "just a game development" then so be it.... Let's just hear it from the business people, and not the fluff. I, as many of you loyal Survivors, am grateful for being an early access supporter because it revealed an immense amount of insight about how games were developed and how the processes evolved and this was a rewarding experience in itself...so, now that we have been given the chance to become personally invested, it is fair to say that our opinions are more precisely defined than maybe some other casual observers. This means that we all will have pretty "good" reasons for saying what we say in the forums and regardless of your point of view, they are all mis-informed to an extent. So lets hear it from the Director of Media Relations (or whatever department has ultimate ownership of DayZ SA) at Bohemia Interactive and finally get this this thing back on whatever track it is destined to take.