skydotnet

Played DayZ, was amazed first, then saw the state of the game and the time it was in alpha, was disappointed. Played ARK when it came out. Was amazed. Played it ~2000h in 4 months... never got boring. Played DayZ again when 0.60 came out, was amazed, great graphics, hope returned, no update the last weeks, seems to be abandoned for the next 6 months again. Skipped all my hopes. Will play DayZ from time to time just4fun, but for me its over, it will be finished in ~5 to ~10 years. DayZ is the Duke Nukem of the survival scene. Devs should roll out updates twice a week, like other dev studios do it too, would increase the re-play value of the game and keep people playing the game on a regular basis. Tiny dev studio is no excuse with that insane amount of money collected plus the backup of bohemias sales from the arma series. Hire more people, give the devs more rights to decide what to do, push updates twice a week and with that revive the community activity. I once had at least 20 people in my friendlist playing dayz whenever i take a look at my friendlist. Today its never more than 3. When i ask my friends to play dayz with me the answer is: no dayz sucks, too many glitchers/hackers/swimmers/cheaters/dupers/lags. Its general consensus that alpha is for adding content and beta is for fixing bugs. We dont get any new (valuable) content and we dont get bugfixes. All we get is updates that make people quit the game. 0.60 was a exception, but it was definately a kick in the balls to wait 6 months for that update. Valuable content is complex game mechanics that increse the re-play value of the game, not a new jacket, 2 new weapons and the ability to dye armbands... If i would be bohemia, i would either skip dayz, say sorry to the players and make the game code open source, or skip the whole shitty, not working, bad netcode engine and redo the game with an engine well established in the gaming world (Unreal/Unity) and focus on content creation, because as we all have seen in the last 3 years: bohemia is not the best studio at creating game engines. Also, if the team is too small and the greedy company doesnt want to hire more people to do what has to be done, then focussing on game content while only having to do slight tweaks on the technical engine side is best. I know nothing i recommended here will ever happen, nor will dayz be finished in the next 5 years.

Im playing this game for 1 Year now, with little breaks included, i also do a kind of indirect advertising in form of streaming the game. I like it and i want it to succeed and to be a finished 1.0 Version later to play the shit out of it. But... im frustrated, and wondering... Wondering about the development process itself, and how the deployment is managed. Lets put aside the content updates and focus on the most frustrating things a player in the dayz world can face: Glitchers, Dupers and Hacker. You can say: "Dude its early access, face it and fk off", i only partly agree to that, theres is something like the law of action and reaction that applies to everything in this world, even dayz. What i can see in the last months is an insane increase of friends in my steam list who simply doesnt want to play dayz anymore because of the latest game breaking bugs. Thats a Reaction. An unneccessary reaction that bohemia could prevent. Dont get me wrong, its not the bugs themselves, its the time they are not being fixed now, we are all aware that there can happen horrible stuff in early access, but what is the excuse for letting that in the game forever (it feels like that) instead of at least picking that little portion of the development process and fix that? Isnt there any chance to change the deployment process so you can deploy fixes of absolutely frustrating and "Ragequit" bugs that really really really hurt the community and the amount of players? What has to happen that Bohemia pushs out a so called "hotfix" for something? Again: im not talking about performance, content or little bugs ppl can live with, im talking about stuff that makes people HATE the game and quit it forever. A game should be enjoyable in the majority of time, no matter if its early access or not, remember: people play games to forget about reallife, to have fun and to take a dive into another world. Thats why (in other communities) devs/studios who fix highly negative impacting bugs fast are like HEROES for the gaming community. And yes, there is a difference between a "game concept" and "early access", and dayz is not the first, its the second, never forget about that. It should be: A enjoyable game in the majority of time with little amounts of times where players say "ah, time for a break until they fixed this 'n that crazy bug", i think 99% of the playerbase is aware that stuff can go wrong in early access. This is also not about sales quantity or money or the overall development speed, its about the current actual gaming community. This game lives from its player count, the lower the player count, the lower the fun (the toxic players/trolls/hackers are most times the last who leave the sinking boat...). I'm just really sad, frustrated and disappointed and i feel forsaken. Not raging, just sad :( Also sad about the already wasted potential of this game. I hoipe no one will flame me for that post, its just imho.