shane_

Dear DayZ Developers, This graphic is giving you bad advice. It is advising you to make DayZ a PUBG clone. PUBG is way ahead of you and has all the excitement. Your efforts to clone it will be in vain. I advise that you focus on what makes DayZ a great game and double down on it. The realism, the survival, the Post-Apocalyptic World setting, and the Zombies. IMHO, you have the realism, survival, and PAW down well enough to make DayZ the best game in those categories. Keep up the good work. Stay on track and keep improving them. The biggest area for improvement are the Zombies. How did these Zombies wipe out the Chernarus military?? Presently, the Zs are a joke. You run up to them, kill them easily, then run on your way. No threat at all. Some suggestions: Make Zs dangerous. In Mele with unarmed survivor, a Z should win 60-70% of the time. Maybe they have a chance to pin you to the ground? In Mele with armed survivor, a Z should win 20-40% of the time (as long as it is not a 1-shot kill weapon). Maybe they have a chance to grab your weapon and disarm you? Maybe you can ace them with a Fire Axe as long as you don't miss that first attempt to head-shot them, but if you miss they have a good chance to grab the axe and disarm you? Multiple Zs should make survivor odds drop like a rock. Game play would shift to sneaking around Zs until well equipped and with other survivor support. Firing a non-suppressed gun in town would be suicidal. Make Zs that surprise you. Maybe they spawn in buildings ready to lunge at the first player that opens a door? Maybe they lie on the ground looking like re-killed Zs, but jump at you when you try to loot them? Make a Zombie Swarm that is a problem for even well equipped survivors, a kind of late-game objective low detail Zs that travel in large packs and roam randomly across the map. Make survivors look at them and realize that they do not have enough bullets. Maybe you do not have to render all the Zs at the same time. If you can only render 100 at a time, due to server lag issues, then only show 100, but the swarm has a count of 2,000. If one is re-killed, you reduce the count and if count > 0 you spawn a new one to replace it right there. Maybe they can form a Z moat around a house with a survivor inside? If you have no help/distract, they just wait there for you to either come outside or die of thirst. Destroying the swarm would become an objective on long persistence servers. Maybe if the server is reset and the Swarm was destroyed, you auto increase the count by 100? Maybe have a PvE server setting that resets the server once the Swarm is destroyed? "Congratulations, Chernarus secured!!" And you have a leader board for Most Zs killed, Largest Swarm Destroyed, etc. A few other thoughts: I do not believe we care about how detailed the zombies look. I prefer more Zs over fewer and am willing to give on high resolution details to get it. Try not to get too crazy about Zombie path finding. Zs need to be able to move through a simple building, but they should not be able to complete a maze. I'm sure there is an obtainable median point here. Item spawn rates should be how a server determines its difficulty. Players will naturally gravitate to servers with spawn rates that suit them. Servers will appear with spawn rates that fit player demand. Newbs will hop onto Easy servers with High spawn rates. Experienced players looking for a challenge will look for lower rate servers. One less thing for you to try and balance. Leader boards for Time Survived, Zs Killed, Players Killed, etc. for each difficulty level will encourage some diversity in server difficulty. Sincerely, Shane_

What lies? I watched it and everything they said was true. It has been quite a while from the first Alpha. Beta is nowhere on the horizon. That last Dev post (July-ish 2017) said something about going back to the drawing board again for Gamecon. :( The only possible issue with that video is that DayZ and PUBG are not competing for the same game genre, so they probably should not compare them to each other. DayZ is a survival simulator for a Zombie Post Apocalyptic World (ZPAW) where PUBG is a Battle-royal game. Two completely different game-play styles. Battle-royal games start fast and build speed until the climax. ZPAW Survival Simulators are slower paced, but with the threat that at any moment you could be thrown into a battle...like pilots on a Combat Air Patrol. If DayZ wants to survive, it should focus on what it is...a ZPAW game. It has most of the PAW stuff down like eating, drinking, temperature, and disease. Double down on the Zombies. The Zs need to be a threat like the other players. Right now, most streamers just wade into the Zs and overcome them as easily as jumping a fence. This is where I believe the negativity comes from these days. I hear them say "hold on, I have a few Zombies" with the same attitude as they say "hold on, I have to tie my shoes". That needs to change. Add more Zs. Have some just waiting behind a door inside. Have a swarm of them. Maybe Zs have a chance to pin you to the ground, grab your weapon, or make you drop your weapon? Make them a real threat. Make the streamers shout "oh $&%*, a zombie is on me!".

The Zombie Swarm I would like to have a single roaming zombie swarm on the map. Large enough to make fighting futile. If all 60 players had plenty of ammo and worked together, they MAY be able to take it down. They have simple models and graphics, compared to normal zombies to save on processing power. You are not really looking at one, so much as all of them. It could even be that all are not rendered. Lets say the swarm has a count of 2,000, but you can only render say 100 at a time... when one is re-killed, the count is reduced and if any remain a new one spawns in near the center...like it stands up and starts moving with the swarm. If a swarm enters a town or area where normal zombies spawn, the normals are deactivated until the swarm moves on. The swarm movement would be like a school of fish. They stick together, change direction together, clump up at a boundary then change direction. If they hear a player sound or gunfire, they move towards it maybe run. If they see a player, they run at it (chasing). If they reach a player, they attack. Maybe the swarm zombies all try to attack a single player, maybe they can attack multiple players, as there could be sub-groups. Like if 100 zombies had 5 groups of 20 and the sub-groups could focus on a different player. So then if a sub-group member is killed, it deducts from the whole count and if any are left it spawns a new member at its sub-group. The swarm should move as fast as players when they are chasing, so if it is chasing you long enough you will tire and they catch you. If you can make them lose sight and they cannot hear you for a time then they may stop chasing and resume normal movement. It could make vehicles more important. If you run into a building while being chased...as in they see you in the building, the swarm should know it and surround the building and go into Moat mode. Not sure how the door mechanics work, but if they manage to breach they pour inside. If the door(s), windows(s), is secure, they stay outside waiting for some period of time...potentially long enough to have you die of thirst...after which they leave Moat and go to normal movement. But if you stay silent and out of sight for a while and another player gets the swarms attention...are Chase-able...or if the other Chase-ables are making more noise than you are, the swarm leaves Moat and will Chase the other player. It introduces possible distraction techniques.