Mephisto (DayZ)

It might be realistic but you have to question whether having daylight servers full and night-time servers empty is a good utilisation of server resources. Maybe when they develop haptic feedback we'll be able to grope around in the dark, but until then its not much fun.

Zeds (currently) walk when inside buildings, so if you can find a building with multiple exits you should be able to get away from them. They should stop chasing if you can break line of sight with them.

Wouldn't it be (very roughly) something like: (Number of unique DayZ players * percentage that didn't already have ARMA) * (Average selling price of Arma2 * percentage of sale that Steam doesn't keep ) Feel free to plug in your own numbers. It's annoying when people try to claim that nobody has made any money off the mod, especially given that Rocket is clearly being employed by BIS. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing bad about making money, but lets not be naive about it. Tens of thousands of people have bought Arma2 just to play Dayz.

I'm really curious how many of the people who think this would be a good idea actually have children of their own? I know its a cliche but if you haven't had children you really do not fully comprehend just how repugnant an idea this would be. Maybe you might find it "creepy" and atmospheric, but many people would find it deeply disturbing. If any of you do have kids, I'm really interested to hear your views. Bear in mind, these are not zombies, they are "infected". So basically, you are saying that you want to shoot sick kids? I mean, really? And then some idiot streams / Youtubes doing so while making off-colour comments - you think that's just fine and dandy? And then mommy sees what her kids are watching and flips out and all hell breaks loose. Anders Breivik used Call of Duty for "training simulation" - his youngest victim was 14. Is it really a good idea to de-sensitize people to violence against children? From the point of view of realism - children and the elderly are usually the most likely to die from infectious diseases. Its entirely plausible that only healthy adults would survive to the stage of being "the infected". Trust me, you really don't want to go there.

The thing is, most people DON'T know what alpha means before they buy Arma2 to play DayZ. Why would they, unless they are involved in software development? The DayZ site doesn't exactly spell it out, either. The "What is DayZ page" certainly doesn't. Most of those cool videos people see don't mention it is alpha. The videos showing how to install DayZ don't either. So, many people go an buy Arma2 and download DayZ without ever realising that it is alpha and then get jerks telling them on the forums that they should have known and its their own fault for not fully understanding how games get developed. So maybe cut people some slack and understand that many people are not really understanding what they are signing up for. The devs don't care, the bigger the user base, the more leverage they have.

I accept DayZ for what it is, and have enjoyed being able to play it in alpha, butI don't have that much sympathy for the devs because I think some of the community-based issues they are having are self-inflicted. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who cames DayZ for the first time: 1. See some cool DayZ gameplay on Youtube. Think "Man, I gotta play me somma that!". Nobody in video mentions the word "Alpha". 2. Find some "how to install Dayz" instructions. eg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjWFv1CUa6Y. See no mention of the word Alpha. 3. Buy Arma on Steam for $30 bucks. 4. Download DayZ from the link in the install instructions. Eg http://cdn.armafiles.info/latest/ See no mention of Alpha. 5. Get DayZ running - find lots of bugs, get frustrated by the game play. This happens especially if the mod is going through a period of rapid hotfixes and is particularly buggy. At this point, the average person feels like they have paid $30 for a game called DayZ and are completely frustrated. 6. Find the forums, clog up the forum with complaint thread. 7. Get blasted with responses calling you an idiot because "It's Alpha - you are the tester!". Hell, even the "What is DayZ" page on the mod's site doesn't mention the word "Alpha". The only mention of alpha is the download button "Dayz (Alpha Test)". To the average punter who doesn't know what alpha testing is, that doesn't really explain what the expectations are. If you download it via a direct link, you don't even see that download button. People post responses like "you should have researched the mod and found out it was alpha, idiot!" I mean, seriously? Unless you are OCD, do you really spend hours researching a game before you buy it? Is that the standard the average consumer has to meet? It's called having your cake and eating it too - you don't want to turn off potential players by pointing out it's alpha before they play (because having a large player base "sends a message to the studios") - but then rely on it being alpha when someone complains about bugs. I think it is unintentional at this stage, but I'm not sure it's going to be a great strategy going forward.