Katana67

Has anyone looked at the most recent DayZ mod changelog? Attachments? Word?

New "No-Sex Box" reveal tomorrow! Taking bets on a DayZ console announcement! (Hopes the sarcasm is evident, but just in case, there's that...)

Only thing I can see preventing an alpha release in June is if they've not ironed out the server architecture by now. Barring any immense holdups, we have no reason to suspect that they won't live up to their projected review date of "June". Once all the basic stuff is ironed out, I see no further reason for there to be a hold on releasing the alpha. That being said, anyone who'd be upset about the release not being "100%", knowing full well it's been stated as an "alpha release" is just... Wha? Consider what's being changed, and what's -been- changed. - Most buildings are enterable. If you look at the screenshots, coupled with the number of building types in DayZ that aren't enterable currently, it's reasonable to surmise that 90% of buildings will be enterable on release. This is a MASSIVE change to gameplay. - Zombies spawning serverside. Genius. - New areas to explore. Self-explanatory. - New control scheme and inventory. I mean, what more do you want??? So what if vehicles and a lot of weapons aren't there for release? I guarantee there'll be an adequate number of things to do and weapons to shoot. Who the piss needs vehicles? Vehicles were removed for LONG periods of time during the development of the mod for various reasons, and people got along fine.

I agree completely with the player count. I was really sort of timid about supporting their initial attempts at trying to include a doubled player count in Chernarus. 50-60 is perfect, a steady 50-60. Any more than that and I feel you'll never be able to reliably be stealthy and/or start an encampment. The map is deceptively small once you've explored it all, unfortunately. The biggest thing that I think will change gameplay is the fact that they're taking the inclusion of interiors seriously. I practically squee-d when I heard that they intended on making those HUGE apartment buildings in the new area around Chernogorsk completely enterable. I may not ever go in them mind you, but making shelter significant has been a top interest of mine since the mod was released. That, and just having to scavenge and move through interiors will make gameplay all the more suspenseful and change things up dramatically from field-banditry. It'll change how people look at towns, coupled with zombies being serverside and not revealing player positions... I will actually have cause to enter a town and perhaps even clear, live, and defend it. It's these sweeping ambient additions that I think will change the gameplay the most, rather than forcing mechanics on people.

I don't want a devblog... at all...

I've encountered a new revelation in my "forest enhancement" discussion. There has been one area that I have never really explored in my year of playing DayZ, the area between Berezino and NEAF. The wooded area along the coast near Black Lake. I was pleasantly surprised at how detailed and varied this woodland environment was. There are rock formations (which is suggestive of a coast, but not necessarily the case with inland forests), trenches, ditches, groves, and underbrush. If only the rest of Chernarus was more like that area. Just makes traveling through the woods less like traveling through a collonade of trees with no underbrush to speak of. That, and the newly debuted "The Forest" survival alpha looks great. I don't expect any kind of forests approaching that displayed in the trailer in DayZ, but it certainly provides an immersive example to strive for.

That's the beauty of it! People are so ingrained in the thought of "balance" as an operative term for making a game better. The desire to make everything behave the same because that's what they're used to. "Oh, the X is OP... de-tune it to nothing and I'll be happy!" This train of thought has ruined otherwise decent games. All Rocket has to do is -not- do this. That, and the futility of survival is a very real problem. It can be solved in ways that make it more difficult and more rewarding, rather than just making it easier.

I agree as well. It's a more nihilistic view than I usually stand for, but I really hope that SA is much more difficult than the mod simply because it'll clear out the proverbial clown car leaving more thoughtful and devoted players. As opposed to the massive amounts brought in by the sheer excitement of having an open-world zombie survival game at their fingertips. There are those on the forums who constantly feel that the mod needs to cater to their survival. Because the end goal is survival. This is not a very wholesome way of looking at things, as DayZ really is about the processes of survival and the player's individual journey. If I was just guaranteed to survive, then it wouldn't be a very fun game. Likewise, I have expressed time and time again about when players are offered layered, rewarding, and time-consuming survival mechanics... nearly every problem of deathmatching will be solved. Simply because the individual player will be less capable of doing so. This will, I feel (as also expressed by statements from Rocket) vastly improve the situation with KoS-ing. While subsequently making the game more difficult. It's not so much about mitigating all threats, it's just about adjusting the threat levels of certain threats. For instance, as it stands now... (I've used this hierarchy before) we've got... 1. Players 2. The Game (Bugs, broken legs, etc.) 3. Zombies 4. The Environment It should be (in my opinion, balanced with ideas such as frequency, overall damage, and likelihood)... 1. Zombies 2. The Environment 3. Players 4. The Game Trust me carebears, you -want- this game to be harder.

Well you'll be happy to see that in the 1.7.7 changelog, there's an additional two cache sites being included. Doesn't speak to SA, but certainly is a matter of just including the items.

I think that DayZ mods have done a decent job of including camo nets, but they only reproduce the models in ARMA. Which are large, non-formfitting, and easy to be run-over. Not to mention construction mechanics like that are unreliable as it stands. I'd love to see it akin to a deployable item on individual vehicles. And, I think this is perhaps the laziest solution to the problems with having poorly depicted landscapes. But it solves the problems of concealment from the other way around, which is acceptable.

The foliage thing could be done in a few different ways, adding more is one. Beefing up the current trees is another. Making ATOC consistent across all players is another as well. However, my thoughts were more lingering around a "camo net" that could be tweaked to suit different environments to cover vehicles and/or tents. When they roll the vehicle customization out for the SA, I would hope they'd allow for players to essentially attach bushes to their (ground) vehicles to disrupt the outline in place of armor plating or somesuch. There are many solutions to this problem. I more meant ecosystem as just an archetypal landscape, rather than the scientific definition of living organisms living with flora, etc. Perhaps biosphere or some other analog would be a better thing. I think the scarcity of animal life is a great thing, though it would be nice to see more animals than just boars and rabbits in the woods. Chernarus may have been based on satellite imagery, but that does not mean that it is a wholesome picture of what is on the ground. In 2009, publicly available high-quality satellite imagery was just breaking onto the scene, so I am curious as to the level of detail in the original Chernarus imagery. Furthermore, for instance, when I look at imagery of my own rural area on Google Earth in 2013... The canopy of the forests masks many small creeks, gorges, cliffs, ditches, that I know to be part of the landscape. What is evident to me, is that yes... they did use satellite imagery. But it did not end up translating into a detailed forest environment. It's essentially a textured smooth heightmap with trees on it. And also, as an aside, I'm merely outlining a problem and not assessing the likelihood that it will be fixed.

Just another thing that I've noticed playing DayZ as of late and considering what we've heard about the SA... Something needs to be done with the "Wilderness". Now, I don't intend that to mean "Plop a jail down above Petrovka and a few other facilities and call it a day". The Wilderness must remain just that, wild. Which brings me to a blaring deficiency with the current Chernarus map. There are no detailed landscapes or biospheres. There are no rocky outcroppings, snaking gorges, cliffs, creeks, rivers, dense forests, etc. Now, I've never been to Eastern Europe, but I assume that the forests and landscapes are not as singular as what we have now. We've got fields, mountains, and forests. There is no variation in these, other than the color of the trees. Specifically, there is little to no underbrush in the forest. Which has huge implications for gameplay, meaning that it is nearly impossible to conceal oneself or items in the forests. This can be done, certainly, but the places in which it can be done successfully are fairly limited. With that being said, I am certainly in favor of maybe adding a derelict military bunker in the Wilderness or a few cottages buried in the trees. But the Wilderness should remain wild, but needs to be expanded upon and made more immersive. It is encouraging to hear that they're adding a "swamp" landscape, but it seems almost like an eco-themepark. It's just a small area on the coast with no different atmosphere than a non-swampy coast. There are no tall reeds, mists, or distinguishing features. It seems that they just sunk the coast a bit so that it is under waist-deep water and put a walkway going through it. This duality affects gameplay directly, by limiting the survival mechanics into two or three archetypes. You have the "Lay my camp in the forest and stockpile loot" and the "Stay on the move in cities and scavenge/kill folks" mindsets, with a few exceptions. There is no incentive to just live off the land. This is because of several things, one of which is that the landscape is boring and uninspired (as was prudent in ARMA II).

Wrong blog post

That... and people constantly pointing out a vocal trend of "complaining" doesn't really help... at all.

Well, first... and I'm pretty sure it still works like this... the "shared" map markers between everyone that has a map... need to removed pronto. I've used this, mainly to prove a point, to send legions of fools against over-confident clan bases that I've scouted... It needs to be removed. I would love to see map scribbles stay persistent and linked to each map, just another layer of complexity that would benefit immersion greatly. Me, I know the map by heart... so I wouldn't need to, but it certainly could be used for a little misdirection if you get killed.

Kamenka is the best spawn by far if you want to live and do well. Might not be suited to the average ADHD incompetent moron who can't spend five minutes alone without needing some sort of visual stimulus. Deer Stands still work fine, and it's a straight shot up to Zeleno, Pustoshka, and then Vybor... and once you're at Vybor, you can head to Stary or NWAF easily. By far the best spawn. You shouldn't need an AKM with five mags and a full load of food to travel north. Takes twenty minutes, a SMLE, and two cans of food/drink to do.

If they put handloading in... /jizz Pun totally intended... Should certainly be a kit one needs to piece together or an end-game thing, hard to imagine lugging around handloading equipment.

Question is... do we want the ship to be in already populated areas... or up north of Berezino? I'd prefer the latter. Southern coast already has so much going on.

Good call. I didn't really account for this consequence. Dunno how they'd rectify this other than removing the "Overall Loot" functionality.

You know, I was initially kind of pissed that they put out recycled PAX footage with some obnoxious streamer tagalong. I am normally a pretty vehement defender of the actions of the devs, but for some reason, inititally... I was rubbed the wrong way with this devblog. However, big however... When I re-heard Rocket detail about how the team will spend the two months while he's at Everest working almost exclusively on the server-side back end... I was more relieved than anything. With that in mind, it doesn't bother me so much that we're not getting a slew of content updates. Not like they're gonna' release a page full of serverside code (which I'm some folks would jizz over). Thanks Matt for the interesting screens of the tanker. Doubt I'll ever go there, because the coast is suicide... but I like how you all are attempting to explore new places to go in-game.

Cool video, horrible person putting them out... I agree.

I'm quite positive this has been brought up to some degree in Suggestion forums and the like... But does anyone think we're going to get more places/capabilities to hide our stuff in SA? I mean, obviously they're adding more places to Chernarus, but that doesn't necessarily translate into "more nooks and crannies" to hide things. If anything, I think it will be much harder than it is now to hide tents and the like given the scarcity of space. I have had pretty good success with the way in which I hide my tents (a combination of the usual northern woods inside trees and the unorthodox attempt to hide tents inside seldom-visited northern villages). However, this could be strengthened I feel in the SA. For one, tents need not be the only method of storage. I can't remember if I heard it from the Devs or from an independent source, but I recall a mention of storage containers. That's all fine, but it really boils down to how easily it can be seen/found. Given the problems with a persistent world and a shrinking (although large by comparison) map, it seems that it would be prudent to enhance the ability of players to hide stuff. I don't really agree with the ability to hoard tons of loot, but hiding a weapon and some food underneath a tree in a lockbox would be a great addition. That's just an example, another way of doing it would be to add containers to existing houses. So, in addition to having loot spawn on shelves and tables, it would be ideal for containers to be openable as well (refridgerators, closets, etc.) This does not seem to be the way they are going, but would be an elegant solution nonetheless.

Rocket has commented before on the "meta" game. Whether he was referring to that in a RP sense is something that I'm unsure of. However, if I had my way, TS/Ventrillo/Skype would all be blocked whilst DayZ was open. As well as having sidechat disabled entirely. Is there any way to do this reliably? I just ask because it has significant implications to the game and, in my mind, undermines a lot of what DayZ is trying to accomplish. Radios are a great addition that provide for in-game communication without needing to remove oneself from the game. The most important consequence for radios, to me, is that one has to find, repair, and/or modify said radio. This has tremendous implications and actually makes the player weigh differing consequences with the concept of communication. If it is moderately difficult to acquire, and TS/Ventrilo/Skype are blocked to some degree... it will cause several consequences to groups. - Groups will have to stay within earshot of one another -- This will add a layer of vulnerability to groups, who now operate with impunity because they're all communicating via third party programs -- Sending a group member off to scavenge, forage, etc. will be immensely intense as if one does not have comms with him/her, you'll just have to wait and see what happened if he/she comes back Depending on functionality, radios could also be used to alert other players and set off traps/explosive devices. Hopefully, the crafting system will keep this in mind. I know Rocket has said nearly as much regarding this, but I'll wait to see what they actually come up with.

Jeez! You make one counter argument in a mature and calm fashion in a public forum and get labeled as "moaning". EDIT - I'm not convinced you read what I was trying to say either, because I wasn't referring to a lack of information at all. If anything, in arguing against Youtubers doing DevBlogs I'd be arguing against more information being released.

True that. I said what I said in reference to someone suggesting that Youtubers should take over the duties of the DevBlog, and all subsequent connotations of that. Didn't mean to suggest that the average joe was getting shafted, just that I don't hold Youtubers in any high-regard (or low-regard)... that and I'm not prone to hero worship.