Noctoras

You are right. But noone asks for other players to be taken out of the equation. But there is tons of games having ONLY other players as a challenge. Arma, Battlefield, CoD being amongst the most prominent. DayZ was supposed to stand out by being MORE than just another shooter, it was to be a survival and sandbox game. In my opinion - a survival game offers MORE to fight against than guns (difference to a shooter), e.g. environment, sickness and so on - interaction in a survival game should not only be focussed on shooting each other. Here we are back to other players being the most important thing. Yes, they are. But a survival game should offer incentives to team up as well, to interact in different ways. With the current ridiculous amount of weapons and no other challenged, the game forces you to kill each other for the sheer boredom and lack of challenge - a sandbox game should rather be along the lines "do whatever whereever you want". Current development is trying to make run everyone towards NW to shoot each other again. The concentration of most loot, all heli crashes, new tisy and more in the North West is basically directly opposing the sandbox concept and promoting the last man standing / king of the hill / team death match concept, however you prefer calling it.

True. But again from a survival POV, it's not like anyone said "first the guns, then we take care of the med system, skills and electricity and other survival elements". The list rather reads like - heli to shoot from - base tower to shoot from - night vision to KOS after dark ... and on it goes. - new base (of course located in the north west PvP corner) That is nothing against these elements, for average joe like me, it just sounds like the emphasis and concept is just to add more shooting stuff, little have I heard about survival since farming came in as a semi concept. That is the issue I have and what makes Mr B call me "negativist" - that I lack a survival perspective apart from a bigger number of zeds currently. If that's what it is, alright, it's not like I didnt get my money's worth. Nonetheless I consider it okay to utter my point, dream or suggestion. We'll see how the final product turns out to be. As you said in your later paragraph, we need crucial survival challenges. This should not be limited to a sniper bullet in your back ;)

I hear you and I personally also like the survival element. the question is, if it makes a difference, whether we have the PvP arena in Cherno or in the North West. Currently it seems more a change of location thank anything else. I would love for loot to be spread out more evenly (North East Air, Balota, some random barrack maybe South East?), so that the incentive will in fact be travelling the whole map.

These are valid points. I actually hope they will despite what they said give the skill system a meaning in the sense of different skills that you have a reason to group up. Same goes for wolf/zombie pop and their behaviour. These aspects have potential for bonding people. At present there is indeed little out there in terms of "survival challenge" (and medical, food and electricity systems could be used and elaborated/expanded for this in the future). The loot zone concept basically goes away from the each-to-his-own concept and wants to make people march to NWAF. There's users complaining that I am overly critical when it comes to that, but at present that's also the way I experience the game - nonetheless I still have hope that things will improve. That said, the map by no means should be smaller, sometimes I wish it was bigger. As for funkmasters remarks, I think that coastal KOS has only been replaced by NorthWest (Myshkino, Tisy, NWAF, helis) KOS, basically only leading to a longer time till battle. I wish the loot concept was less focused on cramming it all into the North West corner, but that's just me. And I will close with odin's wise words: Each to his own.

Well, yes, but there is other games out there without extensive modding. I'm pretty sure I am done with the game once the modding hype starts, but I will have had my money's worth nonetheless. I don't complain and I KNEW that modding was to come, so I have no right to complain here.

I second the other posters, modding might be the doom and gloom for DayZ, creating a fragmented "community". But modding has been advertised from Day One, so no chance it will be taken back now, understandably.

In this context, a question on the server browser: will it include a direct report/abuse button? The current way of reporting a server is not very user friendly and it also seems the number of join=kick servers is not going down. Why is that important for 0.61 in my opinion? With the current state of affairs, I am highly likely to encounter a join=kick/ban server, unless I pick a full server. I would have preferred to tackle the server abuse thing first in some way. With the current system, if I see a 6 player server, I can almost safely assure that this is not a server which is kicking upon joining. If it's 1 or 2, it amost definitely IS join/kick. If the server browser comes with "low/high pop", 75% of low pop will be kick servers. Especially since, trust me, there are A LOT more join=kick servers than those, who announce it. Thus I had hopes for an integrated report button in the server browser ... a high number of complaints then would indicate that something is most likely wrong ... A one off report could be discarded. But at least people would report and finally we might see a more orderly server handling. Regards

The major problem are the "streamers/youtubers". Just as you will not watch someone play civilization, noone will watch you surviving. As interesting as it might be for the player, it's a torture to watch. Thus, fast cut PvP action is what gets the youtube hits. People might go there and see "booooooooh, frag fest in Cherno is highly popular, that's what people want" - ignoring that it took 2 hours of jogging for the fight to happen and that surviving and other game content can be highly immersive and interesting as well. I guess it partially matches the "vocal players" concept, although I might rather say "vocal youtube players". Devs have also been holding sessions with youtubers, which I think is counterproductive to game development as such, especially as it focusses on already established content. Edit: No, as with vehicles, bases alone are more likely to be the basis for some more "pew pew". We would need game elements which - like in real life - honor teamwork. I mean, not everyone of us is a plumber, cook, doctor and electrician at the same time. This obviously not going into the skill tree is a wasted opportunity imho. The rudimentary med system as well, would be so much potential.

KOS has indeed become standard procedure. The fact that hardly any game aspect apart from PvP (please gimme more guns ...) has been developed to a reasonable extent leaves little incentive for anything apart from PVP. Add to that that weapons, food, everything is easy to come by. No need to rob food from anyone ... and last but not least ... to be quite frank, if hostage situations end up with me having little to nothing left and maybe broken legs, a newspawn is easier. I havent had any hostage situation for practically 2 years - if I had one, I would just probably let them kill me, there is nothing to gain by letting me take hostage. More game elements, rarer items, a med system, a specific skill system (not 10% faster, but "i can what you can't"), more necessity for teamwork. That's what the game needs. Unfortunately what is discussed is "why don't we have the Mauser gun in game" .... Regards

Groundhog Day

I'm not gonna go anywhere and am looking forward to your next chorus ... 29 years of game experience and still whining about different opinions on a game. Well then, I rest my case for now, not going to get into this kiddie flame stuff.

Seems we have different opinions on game development. That's legit, albeit I cannot see what makes it "take shape" and "come along nicely", if you basically only remotely care. But people see things differently. However, coming aloing for me means something different than (I just quote someone from reddit now): And by the way, vehicles will be removed with the new patch as well. Shaping nicely? Well ... matter of perception I'd say. And if they ever want to make it in some sort of timeline, a lot of planned content is just going to go down the drain. And for me, one of the worst parts in this SURVIVAL game is (I am lazy and go quote someone from reddit again) I agree with you on the money though. Timewise I definitely got my money's worth. This doesn't keep me from doubting the direction of and commitment to the game. This game also serves a good purpose: It could stall this unhealthy early access concept, which came about us like a natural disaster. Many of these games show that this model doesn't really offer incentives for companies to keep comitted with huge resources. Understandably. For me, it most likely was my last Early Access game. That said, there is a real good example of dev communication on Reddit for those who missed it (from Eugen) : http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/52lrz3/status_report_13_sept_2016/d7lgbqg Definitely worth reading and whilst I do remain sceptical, I appreciate answers like this.

No offence, but this in a similar wording is posted by the same few people over meanwhile more than 5 months from the last experimental. I'm far from this hype train by now, we're more than 9 months into 2016 and have seen ONE update so far. Yes, it's the enfusion engine and yes, some things take time. I just don't really feel confident for the whole project anymore. Zombies are no threat since ages, vehicles will be removed now, survival has not seen anything new since farming, we basically have a survival game without survival, medical system is underdevelopped at best, skill system will only be a slight speed bonus, apart from PvP there currently is nothing and PvP mostly means a sniper bullet in your back. Yes, this is the negative side of things, but since I've only seen the "yay, hooray" comments so far, I feel the need to shed some light on the dark side of things. :) Good night :P

The Torchia that has meanwhile left the team, lectured about the team. Alright, next please? They might have adjusted to some extent, nonetheless, the company does not just produce for fun - and that's what a SIGNIFICANT team expansion would mean. If they spend 5% of the additional revenue on two additional people, that's an econoomically well managable placebo on the other hand. I sometimes really wonder about the people who think that BI proiduces and hires for love and honor ... it's a company. It needs and wants profit in order to expand, fund further development and even prepare for a fail .. sooner or later there is a game bound to fail. But you may believe whatever you want.

Hiring more team members would just mean reducing their profit. Given the early sales, there hardly is lots of sales potential left. So every investment likely is a loss for the company. So I understand perfectly well, why they did not expand the team. It's not their fault, that everyone jumped on the early access band wagon. If I paid you for your life's work in advance no matter the future performance, you would not clock extra hours at work every day either, right? Sometimes life is very simple and straight forward. The only incentive BI might have is to use it as a blockbuster generating revenue for further games. For the blockbuster aspect, the reviews and the press comments got too negative, though. To me it is as understandable as frustrating that resources allocated to DayZ SA are limited. From a business point of view, investment in DayZ exceeding the existing commitment is dead capital.

Dustin, is that you? ;)

We will see, feel free to remind me of this thread in case I will be wrong in the end. I doubt that I will ever be called on this thread again, though. And Beef, numbers might "shoot up" for some weeks before the game goes into obvlivion again, this time for the final time...

True, sai, to some extent I can even relate to the devs. The game has been outperformed by other games and it probably will not draw back the big crowds, so a lot of work would be futile. That's early access for beginners. My first early access game and my last early access gane. I clocked some hundred hours, so yes, I got my money's worth and I also learnt a lesson.

hm, in a way it's a good reminder and a good warning NOT to buy into early access. ARK has made a turn for the worse as well from hearsay after a promising start (I don't play it), DayZ ... no need to elaborate. Hardly any early access game really matches the expectations. Whatfor, 90% of the revenue is already generated. I am looking forward to BF1 now, where I can have my PvP action without having to run and loot for an hour before - as for survival I still have no luring no-EA game, but time will tell... DayZ so far to me is neither. Survival is in name only and PvP, well, too clumsy, I can have that action in less than an hour of jogging. Sorry to be rude.

This is not correct, you have to calculate the time either from experimental to exp or from stable to stable. Counting from the first Exp build of 0.60, we are more than 5 months in now. The last update was 6 months, so we might look at about the same timeframe. I for one am looking forward to different games right now, DayZ feels like beating a dead horse at the moment, so ..

Just as every "good work devs" post in here. Opinion is opinion. And opinion as such won't get you further, so consider the whole forum apart from the bug report area a waste of people's time ... And true, devs don't owe us ... but we don't owe devs either, so again, opinions are fair game, positive as well as negative.

And since we are at it, the whole "survival" part is why I lately decided to write a - negative - review. It simply should not be advertised as any sort of survival game, because to me it is moving away from a survival game at an enormous pace. Sucks, if you bought it as a survival game. Pretty much everything which has been added over the last year has been pretty much designed to optimise the PvP aspect. The introduction of (never needed) farming is back how far? one and a half years by now`? Since then, apart from the needed player controller all I hear is: - gun sounds, weapon sway, damage box, loot economy (mostly related to which gun is where), vehicles and how to shoot from them, barricading and how to use it in PvP, obviously new weapons and ammo, gun jamming, reloading animations. I never hear about: - rework or expansion of the medical system, the rudimentary skill system they maybe want to introduce (if I only can chop wood quicker, better leave it out anyway), ways to actually make guns /ammo / food more rare. Now, I have clocked hundreds of hours in this game, yet after the first 10 hours I have NEVER, I repeat, NEVER died to a zombie, hunger, thirst or anything survival related. As long as a zombie means to run 200 meters and be safe, no matter what, is it a threat? Dying of hunger or thirst is an achievement and dying of hyperthermia is easily avoided if you don't feel the dire need of walking around like a fully armored yeti. Yes, I know, zombies are still in the works, other aspects of the game as well. But a review can only encompass past experience and realistic outlook. Currently, as you say, we have a jogging simulator with no real threat apart from the bullet in your back. Now, if I want a PvP-only game (can't call it FPS for obvious reasons), I choose a game where it does not take me 3 hours of walking to actually get this PvP. If you get it at all, sometimes after 3 hours of walking you get a "you are dead message" - whether that is a sniper, a sheed or a stair doesn't matter too much to me. If I want a survival experience, I would definitely look elsewhere. That doesn't mean I do not enjoy playing it every once in a while. But I would not recommend buying it. And personally I will refrain from early access in the future. Just my 2 cents.

What for? This is like developing the steam engine when you have electric and diesel engines. As long as everyone has a gun after some minutes, no point in melee.

Indeed it should - and it also should be possible to "clear" a town of zombies as opposed to a constant respawning system.

This "quick guns for everyone" approach I dislike with a passion. I do know that opinion is divided on this, though. Thus I leave it at that as a personal matter of preference. And 2 of these 3 "more loooot plz" people have just registered for this thread. Go figure ...