ColdAtrophy

"For great experiences it's immersion that matters..." - Peter You.....I like you. It's very reassuring to hear that directly from the lead designer. @Hicks_206 (DayZ) Any word on the infected and the dynamic spawning system? Did that have to take a backseat due to the other major things happening?

I've been tempted to buy Arma 2 so I could try DayZ mod. I got the SA about a year ago and I'm curious about the mod. I would really just want to see what vanilla mod plays like. I yo-yo back and forth on it since the SA was created for some very good reasons that make the mod seem less desirable. @ OP - You make good points. A lot of what you describe falls squarely into "touch-up" territory, which will come a little later in development. I'm sure you will someday be able to have the same kind of feeling from the SA as you did in the mod.

I love it when people do these fun kinds of experiments.

That would, in my opinion, only be a worthwhile endeavor for the devs to invest time and resources into if they also planned to make corpses (both from healthy humans and from infected) contribute to the spread of disease. If it doesn't do anything for the player, then what's the point, right?

But if we are going to go with the "reality" standpoint, you have to acknowledge other aspects of human nature. 1) It's tough for people to kill each other. That might seem like bullshit, but every organized fighting force on the planet would agree. It takes a ton of training to get people to shoot other human shaped objects and even then healthy human beings will often hesitate. And that's for something as impersonal as using a gun. Seems like setting another human being on fire would be even more prone to "maybe we shouldn't do this" feelings. Which is a nice segue into my next point.... 2) What percentage of the population would be fucked up enough to do this kind of stuff AND actually have survived long enough to still be alive? Contrary to what zombie movies might tell you, it's actually WAY harder to survive as a demented psychopath. People grouping up is the reason why our bones aren't being gnawed on by lions right this very second. The second people realize that you are a threat to the group, individual reasoning goes out the fucking window and your ass is dead as fuck. So in summation, this topic, sadly, breaches the point where reality matters in any conceivable way. The only relevant point to be made is should this shit be in this game? I think not. But it's not up to any of us.

Meh. Semantics.

If .60 had actually been pushed to Experimental when Bohemia predicted, it would have been unprecedented. The only legitimate criticism I can think of for BI and development of this game is that they are absolutely awful at projecting completion of a part of the project and actually meeting that deadline. When they said end of February, most of us automatically added 4-8 weeks subconsciously I think.

Retrace your drive path on foot. The car will be somewhere along the route you drove. Yes, it's a pain in the ass.

Silly Grapefruit. I don't really do much PvP and even I know that. Eastern European accent = Kill on Speech 100% of the time. I don't care if your best friend swears they are good people. Kill them immediately.

WIP. That is all.

The only ones confirmed by Hicks directly are the new infected spawning system, the new renderer, and another iteration of the new UI. The rest are possible.

I wonder how long it was before Sacriel came around and "discovered" this bug that you posted that in Experimental.

Yes and no. I added onto your idea to include all of the mod too, but sure, if you want to take credit and it's that important to you, then go for it. I think it's pretty irrelevant.

Believe me, you are preaching to the choir. All I've ever needed was a moderate amount of other players who are unpredictable, solid survival mechanics that reflect authenticity to the scenario, and a butt ton of infected. We haven't actually fully achieved any of that yet. A lot of the survival stuff is not really active atm, most everyone just shoots immediately which is highly predictable, and the infected just aren't ready yet. We will get there.

You answered the following question "Is Dying Light a zombie apocalypse sim?" with the word "Yes". This is such a fundamental disagreement on the core of what differentiates one game from another that I don't know where to begin. No offense, but it is what it is. If Dying Light is a survival game, then so is Left 4 Dead. Fuck it, so is Super Mario. Hell, Super Mario at least has limited lives.

No. You missed my point entirely. Dying Light is actually a kickass game. I love it. But is Dying Light a zombie apocalypse sim? Is it even remotely close to sim-level gameplay? Dying Light is not what I would call a survival game either. It has none of the typical elements of survival-centric games. I didn't forget to mention anything. I just can't keep up with the flood of games attempting to ride DayZ's success to the bank. I don't do Early Access as a general rule and for very good reasons. It's "Preordering: Yes It Can Get Worse". I'm not holding any of those titles as lower standard substitutes (except for H1Z1, what a crock of shit that thing is), I'm saying they are not, cannot be, and do not aspire to be what DayZ is or has the potential to become. It's like you got annoyed at my mention of Dying Light, which was a misinterpretation anyway, and missed the rest of what I said. That's not cool.

Dude. No problem. Just fyi, I was perusing the disease system in the pbo's a little while back. There are like 10 diseases and illnesses that have never yet been activated. Bohemia still has cards up its' collective sleeve. It's not yet time to tear our clothes and weep. ;)

You're right. It's a legitimate fear. I can't offer any words of comfort. It very well could happen. All I can say is that, for me, 10 or 20 heavily armed players with a 30:1 infected to player ratio on a server will accomplish what I want from the game. I don't need 100 other players at all times to get the experience. I just need to have enough players on the server to make me constantly vigilant.

In the words of Bohemia Interactive itself, this is a survival horror MMO. Allow me to put forth an idea that came to me a little while back: no one has ever actually played DayZ. No one. Not a day one mod player, not Hicks, not Rocket, not you, not I. I would guess that most players would scoff at this notion, but humor me. Rocket started with the mod on Arma 2. Why? It makes sense in a way. What other platform was as open and had the foundations needed to provide the kind of experience that he wanted to achieve? Games like what BI does are not dime-a-dozen. Other than creating a game from scratch, something he had not the time, funding, nor inclination to do, the best method to achieve what he had always envisioned was to adapt Arma to DayZ. But what did he say about the final product? It fell short. Arma could not fulfill the mission. So they decided to make the SA product. They started with a foundation of Arma 2 era RV engine, TOH branch iirc. What was basically all you could do in Arma? Shoot stuff. That part of the experience was already honed enough to be released in a damn military simulation game. So while the code monkeys have been banging away behind the scenes, preparing the stage for a number of updates that will fundamentally change the underlying ability of the engine to satisfy the kind of DayZ experience that Rocket had always intended, we've all still been playing Arma essentially for the last two years. Sure, they add a piece here and there that tacks on some more stuff to check out and test, but we are only just now getting to the cusp of where the major engine changes are going to be merged into the public facing build. No one has ever seen a fully coalesced playable build of all the elements that were a part of Rocket's original vision for DayZ. Am I saying that I think that your opinion is invalid? Hell no. In fact, if I'm being 100% honest, it's my greatest fear for the future of DayZ. We have thousands upon thousands of shooters to play. We have never seen a zombie apocalypse simulation. Never. Not even close. What do we really have? Left 4 Dead? Dying Light? H1Z1 (lol)? It's all arcadey science fantasy at best, a PVP cop out at worst. So when I purchased the Bohemia Interactive game that they have described as a survival horror MMO set in an infected landscape, wherein players brave innumerable dangers and can lose it all in second, I didn't expect "Battlefield: Be Severely Inconvenienced When You Get Shot and Killed". There's a good chance still that you are right, that DayZ will never elevate to its' true potential. However, I, and I assume more than just a couple others, haven't heard the fat lady sing on this one yet. There is still substantial enough tech left to implement, development time left for tweaking, and generally positive cues that we aren't the ones that have it all wrong from the dev team (Hicks aside). If in 6 or 8 more months, the game is still just as pew pew oriented as it is right now, I will be the first to tell you that you were right Rick. I mean that. For now, I'm still willing to hold my breath.

My promise to everyone in this thread and everyone out there who reads these posts and also wishes for a more survival oriented game is this: If BI can't or won't make it happen, I WILL. It will not be difficult to create more survival oriented gameplay through tweaking numbers. When it comes right down to it, we are talking about number of guns (numbers), amount of food (numbers), temperature (numbers), likelihood of fighting disease (numbers), scarcity of game (numbers). Assuming they get the infected AI and spawning system under control, zombies too are another matter of numbers. Do not lose hope for the kind of game you guys all signed up for when you purchased the game. The fact is, BI is giving us all the tools we need to really satisfy every niche.

0.55 also had the best zombie experience to date, outside of some very kickass (albeit laggy) experimental builds. That patch was awesome.

I gave bacon to a bambi a few weeks ago. In a moment of my own sheer stupidity, he punched me in the head and then killed me with my own gun. I still don't KoS. Ever. Never have, never will. You gotta give me a good reason first. Also, wolves and zombies should make absolutely nowhere all that safe. So perhaps time survived will carry more weight in light of those kinds of changes. Either way, I find this entire discussion to be a bit premature tbh.

Zombies. Many of them. With active anger problems.

LMAO. That's hilarious. So pointless then. Fair enough.

Are you sure it doesn't attach? I'm like 99% sure that I did about a week ago. If you need arms for testing purposes, I have multiples of everything, all obtained 100% legitly. IDGAF about any gear and will give whatever you need.