kev070892@comcast.net

The graphics are beyond disgusting. I play on a GTX 580M w/ 16g of ram. Play Crisis 2 on Extreme settings or Skyrim on Ultra w/ HD 2k Textures and you will understand what good graphics are. The blocky aspects of Arma 2 may appeal to some but it's not even a step up from Half Life: 2's graphical engine. Your gun doesn't even move in your hand. And yes, the water comment is very true. Being hydrated should be a huge concern.

This isn't just another Call of Duty remake. It's DayZ. It's a multiplayer survival wargame. It's completely different from any product on the market. There's not one game out on the market that is this similar to DayZ. It would make a disgusting amount of money. There is a game called Counter Strike: Source. It made a boat load of money and had a massive user base. It was not multi platform. Neither would DayZ be multi platform. DLC's gallore of course. People would shell out big money just to have different costumes or guns -- that usual garbage that sickens me. It makes the companies money though, and that means more support for the game. At least the difficulty curve of DayZ would separate the men from the boys. It would keep the game interesting.

@Xeros "And how do you expect it to work? Get hungry, eat food. Get thirsty, drink a beverage. Get cold, get a heat pack or start a fire. Bleeding? Bandage the wound. Of course there may be room for needing a splint or "homemade cast" for lack of a better term for broken limbs rather than just jabbing yourself with morphine, but how complex can a survival system be?" Have you ever gotten shot before? I haven't, but on reddit I remember a post where the man said even a shot in the shoulder imobilized him completely. A shot from a high caliber sniper rifle? Even if it hit your wrist, your entire arm would be ripped from its socket. So, the game engine should track where you got shot, then you would need SOMEONE ELSE to stop the bleeding. Again, let me reference the movie Shooter. If you haven't seen it, it's a shame. He has to go to a convient store after being shot and get the following items: marinade needle, some salt, some sugar, couple bottles of water. THAT'S JUST TO STOP THE BLEEDING TEMPORARILY. Oh but in Arma 2, you can just bandage yourself! How simple of a system can it get? At least it's not like Call of Duty where you huff and puff your wounds away. "Unless you've played the single player mod of the mod and it happens there, you can't really say it's not latency. Latency client-side, latency server-side, the fact that it's an alpha, all come into play. As for ballistics, I doubt they've changed from ARMA 2, and that's not exactly something to sneeze at. Sure, there's plenty of tweaking to do but that's what Alpha and Beta are for." I saw that video. THAT, Is how sniping should be. End of story. If you shoot from that distance, that's what you need to do. If you can't do the math, you're going to have to get MUCH closer. "Your mind is blown by the fact that a game from 2009 doesn't run as well as a game from 2004? Is your mind also blown by the fact that Doom 3 didn't run as smoothly as Quake III? That Crysis didn't run as well as Far Cry? Next thing you'll tell me is DirectX 10 should have run faster than DirectX 9. Real Virtuality 3 isn't exactly the best optimised engine out there, but it should come as nothing more than a "no fucking shit" that the game doesn't run as quickly as something from five years prior." You know what game I want to bring up. This one: The game's called Far Cry 2 and it was released in 2008. It's graphics make Arma 2 look like it's from Atari. When you run through the grass, it brushes up against you as the sun radiates the most beautiful and real glow you have ever seen in a virtual world. When you drive, you turn the fucking wheel and you can't just see an overview of the car. You are in the front seat. Sometimes you don't see a ditch ahead, sometimes it will disable your car. Tough shit, you took that risk. It was unforgiving; if you spent too long out in the wild you would need medicine to clear your malaria from acting up. Bullets were outrageously hard to nail to their target from far range. On the highest difficulty, you died in two hits and barely regenerated life. The game was so underrated that I almost lost hope for the gaming world. The game has since been forgetten, had little to no online capability, but gave me hope for the future of shooters. "2. Futile. Frostbite 2.0 is decent eye candy, but the ballistics are pure arcade and there's no modding support because that would make it harder to sell official map sets or that bullshit excuse the PR department made up." Uhhh... there is modding support if you have EA handle the game. They have the ability to change and add to the game's core features. It wouldn't be a mod anymore. It would be a different game on the same engine. By the way, eye candy is always a good thing. "3. DayZ on the Source engine.... nope. Sorry, but an engine from 2004, despite being updated, is probably not the best choice for something this far removed from everything Source has been used for. Has Source even been used to render one gigantic map as a single loaded entity?" Source was a bad example. I didn't stress it too much in my post. "4. Gamebryo is a crap engine for what it's used for already. How again would that be better suited for something like this?" Was a joke. "5. Bullshit. That's literally impossible. Even minimum settings (which I have to use because I've nothing but a three year old laptop at the moment) look better than that." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgCMpRGMeXM

"Furthermore, I'm not saying publishers wouldn't pick it up. I'm saying they would greatly interfere with the original vision and put considerable restrictions on development and the vision. Planned DLC? You bet. Multiplatform? Guaranteed. And once you're down that route you'll get downscaling in order to run on consoles. Deadlines, very little time (and resources) for 'experimental' features that will get scrapped down the line." They are a corporation that is trying to make money. You need to understand that is ALL they care about. Companies are well aware that no one is going to buy crappy wii games that rely on gimmicks to sell (like almost every wii game ever made) or terrible shooter makes like the call of duty franchise or halo reach etc. Gamers are getting smarter and realize that they don't need to keep buying the same game over and over just because the number on the box went from two to three. If you showed them reasonable evidence of how making the game more dynamic would increase sales, I would bet my life on it that the game would be preserved. DLC's and multiplatform support are unavoidable. It makes the companies tons and tons of money. "It sure as the sun will rise tomorrow that they fucking can't! Consoles may be shit, but it's where the money is. And that's what matters to investors." "Yeah, there's starcraft/blizzard and what other franchise? Pretty much nothing. Or, atleast nothing that publishers bother to market (see wargame: european escalation). There's Relic (CoH, WH40K) however and thankfully, Company of Heroes 2 is on the horizon." I can tell you right now that what you just said is not true. Consoles are not making money. In fact, did you know that companies lose money on every console they sell? Oh yes, they lose hundreds on every single xbox, ps3, or wii sold. HUNDREDS EACH. It all relies on games, and guess what, people are not buying as many games as they used to. Games like Dota 2, League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, or StarCraft 2 is where every last dollar is in the gaming market right now. Dota 2 is still in beta and already they have had two tournaments where the prize was ONE MILLON DOLLARS. You think I'm lying? Go look it up, one millon dollars and the game hasn't even come out yet. "If you ask me, the biggest reason rocket chose Arma 2 is probably because: 1, it's the engine he was the most familiar with. 2, it's about 60% of the way there. 3, no licensing issues. Rocket used to be just 1 guy who did this in his spare time." I agree, but the product has grown and now it can no longer work correct under such a massive user base. It needs to expand, it needs to improve. @Maderas I can prove that you are wrong. Mind you, these ideas were literally conceived within a minute of thinking. A real game developer would spend months pondering such a drastic idea like this. 1:1 Timescale with REAL TIME HOURS. Obviously, you would play on a server that matches your time zone so it is light out when you are actively playing. When darkness falls, you can play on another server that is on the exact OPPOSITE TIME SCALE. Hence, your character will be preserved on the old server until you choose to come back on when it is daytime. You can choose to maneuver in the dark, but it will be painstakingly slow. You will need light and will need to exercise extreme caution. Going into a building without scouting intensely is suicide. You will need to find heavier clothing to survive the cold outside if you choose to maneuver etc. You will need to get kerosene for a lamp, find some way to travel efficiently and safely, and only travel with others. Traveling with a light source would leave you exposed. In real life, if you wanted to travel at night in such conditions, you know what you would do? You would actually attach yourself together around the waist with a harness so none walk off alone. Obviously a mechanic like that would be too hard, but just for one moment, put yourself in the eyes of a survivor.

"If you don't like bullet counters then turn them off or find a server that turns them off." It should be turned off by default. This is an immersion game. Real life has no bullet counter. "As for the ArmA engine itself I think it is well done. Not to mention there are many mods that make it even more realistic. I use one where if you push yourself too far with too much weight you eventually collapse and can hardly move." It should be turned on by default. Ditto as above. "It's highly extensible and most people can throw together decent scenarios with it in a short period of time. Also the fact it is completely open appeals to me. Almost every other game out there gives you alleys to run through which IMO is a piss poor way to make any game. Most are too simple to handle an open world like ArmA." Agreed, making the game harder is almost 99% of the time better. Open space leads for more opportunities for mistakes. "Not to mention ArmA3 looks like it is going to be a huge step beyond ArmA2 in terms of gameplay. It will be interesting to see how it changes between the two." Creators should of waited till the new product came out and not wasted their time on a 3 year old product. "Oh, and on realism, I think ArmA got transitioning to and from ladders correctly. It takes a while, and seems even longer when being chewed on by zombies." Agreed, ladders in real life take quite awhile to climb.

"Ideally the final game will release as a standalone and leave behind it's mod roots, but that still has yet to be decided." Yes. But let's take steps to get there now rather than later.

@Sayl yes,yes,yes,yes,yes,YES! This is exactly what I am talking about. Of course there are going to be moments when the system is rewarding, but how rewarding is it when you realize what you are doing is no more than a point and click. Wind resistance, wind direction, gravity, etc. They are all absent. But you're right -- people have figured out the game, and now the true colors show. There will always be people to abuse the system, so you must create a system that cannot be abused. Do you know what a system that cannot be abused is? It's not your point and click system, that is for sure. @Zeke It's the engine of Arma 2, not very much the mod (though the mod does have its' fair share of problems. Read my post, I said the mod can only do so much to fix Arma's mistakes.

@integ3r “And they'd laugh in his face, place restrictions on creative direction, add deadlines, forced multiplatform development, etc. Why the hell do you think BF3 turned into such a clusterfuck? Why do you think the market is oversaturated with call of duty style modern military shooters? The developer has almost no control.” Again with the assumptions. Do you not understand how well DayZ is doing? Last I heard it was 250,000 active players? That was from a video, so it could be off. You have no idea whether the corporation will like/dislike the idea. Console games have been losing money since the days of Gamecube. Computers have gotten to the point where they can easily surpass consoles. How can console games compete when there are computers which bridge three GTX 580s together? Second, Real Time Strategy is not even REMOTELY CLOSE to dead. The StarCraft franchise has more money circulating than all the Call of Duty games combined and then doubled. There are tournaments every day for thousands of dollars, not to mention tournaments every month for tens of thousands. Third, “Arma 2 may be a clunky unoptimized mess” That one sentence is the embodiment of everything I am saying. It was a bad idea to choose Arma 2. The game barely broke even in terms of revenue when it was released. What about Farcry 2’s engine? What about Crysis’ engine? Right there we are getting into real specifics. If I was well-learned in the area of game engines I would be shutting this conversation down; but I’m not. This is all for Rocket to think over. Assess your options, try again, think differently. That is how great games are made.

It's not my product and I have no say on what should happen to it. You cannot assume Valve or EA would make a COD-like game. From what I have heard, Battlefield 3 (made by EA) provides a much different feel than COD. I have heard many reviews say it actually does feel like you are in a modern day battle. Let me bring up a very, very, very simple example that eveyone can understand. I've been to the shooting range quite a lot. I also airsoft and paintball quite often. I even do archery from time to time. Now tell me, when I shoot a bullet, where on my real life user interface do I find out how much ammo I have left in my chamber? "The speed issue was addressed in original OFP, IIRC. The point is that this is a game and you have to balance realism/playability. If it would be too hardcore then it will be unplayable. Imagine yourself spending 2 hours to cross that mountain in Chernorus like it would take IRL. Will it be realistic? Yes. Enjoyable? No. The maps in game are huge so developers decided to give at least sprinting speeds to the players so they could cope with the distances without getting too bored." Then thank you for proving my point. The game creators not only threatened balance at the sake of their users' short attention spans but also broke the realism factor that Arma 2 had tried so hard to achieve. Listen, making the game easier or more convenient is almost always a negative effect. Guess what, your gun in DayZ never jams. It never breaks, you can carry it into water and it will continue to work as new. You never have to clean the barrel. You never have to repair it. It can NEVER be broken in half. If you hop into water, it will not appear to be wet once you out. I could literally go on and on.

@dayzsurvivors You think the gun simulation is bad? Try movement. People are moving like rocket ships while holding tons of equipment and weaponry on them. Seriously, get off your computer chair and try running while holding a rifle. I guarantee you can't do it for long. You see.. it's not even realism at this point. It's just common sense. You shouldn't be able to move quickly while crouched. You shouldn't be able to go from Prone to jumping in less than two seconds flat.

Not so true, I am actually agreeing with most everything you're saying. You just have this attitude like "It's good enough" or "there's nothing we can really do to achieve that goal". That mindset will get you nowhere. Here's what will get you somewhere. Go to Valve or Electronic Art's headquarters with the DayZ product in its' current state. Pitch to them the product and show its' current success and ask if they will buy the product rights from you (you're not the owner, I know). That alone is more effort than what is currently being discussed. Stop saying "you can't" and start saying "we will". x-post from /New Players "You think the gun simulation is bad? Try movement. People are moving like rocket ships while holding tons of equipment and weaponry on them. Seriously, get off your computer chair and try running while holding a rifle. I guarantee you can't do it for long. You see.. it's not even realism at this point. It's just common sense. You shouldn't be able to move quickly while crouched. You shouldn't be able to go from Prone to jumping in less than two seconds flat."

Resident evil is not a simulation game, nor did I ever say it was. The games I listed are the most current popular Zombies games. They are suffer from the same problem. If you believe survival is not a priority in Resident Evil, then by all means please let the Zombies attack you. Realism should be a factor in all games.

Zombo, you're tunnel visioning here. You see, the creator(s) of DayZ had three options when creating this experience. A. Present the idea to a corporation in a detailed presentation, ultimately explaining WHY the product will sell. That is their primary concern. B. Create the product yourself. Have individuals invest in your product and build it from the ground up. This is by far the hardest approach. C. Create your product via a pre-made game engine, but understand its' limitations will be unimaginably large-scale. Guess which option they decided to go with? Further more, the symbols on the side were implemented as a retard-fail safe. What happens when you start getting hungry in real life? Well, for starters you begin to get TIERD. Wait... does your body have icons on it when it gets hungry? Mine doesn't. The only warning I get is my stomach growls. Gee... that seems rather easy to implement. How about when I feel sick? Well... in real life in worse case scenarios, sometimes my vision blurs a bit, sometimes I have a hard time walking straight or moving. Gee... that would be easy to implement too. You need to think about concepts like these with a more open mind.

There is so much to talk about with this mod's recent fame. I am not sure whether to glorify it for its ingenuity and brilliant concepts or scratch my head at the shear oversight players have put into the game. Watch any DayZ introduction video and within the first minute the instructor will explain that DayZ is an immersion survival mod. They will explain that not only is the learning curve steep, but the game's mechanics are hard pressed to learn as well. Good, difficulty is almost the most important factor in video game’s success these days. It almost directly translates to a fun experience for skilled users who want a challenge. Well, WarCraft: Orcs and Humans was challenging and rewards skillful players, but it didn’t quite give off the vibe that a game like StarCraft does today. The same goes for Arma 2. I've been watching live streams of DayZ for the past three days straight analyzing every detail (you can't put the focus in analyzing DayZ while actually playing it). It boils down to the Arma 2 engine; the DayZ mod can only do so much. http://i.imgur.com/r8YC5.jpg It only took a single Google search to confirm my suspicion. It's no secret that Arma 2 has been coined as the most realistic war-game on the market. And for $20, it's quite a rewarding experience. Games like Call of Duty or Diablo 3 for $59.99 generally feel as if they are deluding the experience for the user; cheapening the fun at the expense of the buyer. DayZ, while giving players a fun environment, exploits the facts that the user is distracted by the goal of survival to worry enough about the immersion of the game: HEALTH, STAMINA, FOOD, AND GENERAL NEEDS: DayZ gave a solid effort for the needs other simulations shaved off on. Games like Left for Dead, Resident Evil, Dead Space, and Dead Island overlook the fact that the Zombies are not your first concern. DayZ’s Survival is imperative -- your character can break limbs, be infected, get hungry etc. First off, you're in a post-soviet area; you really think a T-shirt and a vest will keep you warm? Look at the wiki and it reads (http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Chernarus) "Chernarus is a fictional post-Soviet country, accurately recreated from geographical data of real landscape". Temperatures would be FREEZING at night. You would NEED shelter, fire, food, water just to survive a single day. Look at the recent film (and book of course) The Hunger Games. While most competitors were killed by other competitors, dying from the environment was the primary concern. This is no different in DayZ. Players should need to find firewood and be FORCED to camp out during night time. Night should also be literally impossible to navigate in. In real life in an apocalyptic world, you would need to wait till dawn to navigate. As I said before, DayZ makes a good attempt, but does not nearly bring the satisfaction of an immersive survival game. The icons on the right side of your screen and the way to bring them to normal levels involve an IQ less than ten. Bandaging wounds and eating food is a simplistic and dumbed down system. The games' focus on combat leaves the experience of survival as wasted potential. COMBAT, MOVEMENT, AND WEAPONS The Arma 2 engine does a very good job at providing realistic scenarios but doesn't deliver when it comes to logical realism. Snipers shoot across fields bolt action at much higher rates than normal (have you ever tried pulling back the bolt of a high caliber sniper rifle?). Not only that, but they do it without spotters (good luck with calculating wind and trajectory of your bullet all while tracking a moving target by yourself). Let's take a quote from the popular movie Shooter when discussing a shot from a mile distance (done in Arma 2 with ease): "You know what it takes to make a shot at that range? Everything comes into play that far. Humidity elevation, temperature, winds, spin-drift. There's a 6-10 second flight time so you have to shoot it where the targets going to be. Even the coriolis effect, the spin of the earth comes into play". Arma 2's combat engine is a standardized joke compared to reality. Take a look at this well done introduction and instructional video of DayZ: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3op-Q1o5RI". Notice at 3:30 you see the speaker attempting to eliminate a moving target. While the aspect of patience is there (there is an INCREDIBLE amount of patience involved with real life snipers, you sometimes have to wait 10 minutes just for the shot to open up), the realism is comparable to someone bunny hopping in CS: Source getting a headshot no-scope from T-spawn to the double doors of Dust2. Watch in the video as his target moves as lightning speeds WHILE CROUCHED. Now -- I want you to crouch on the floor (yes get off your chair). Then, I want you to try and move from one end of the room to the other. If you've ever tried Airsoft or Paintball (real life wartime simulation), you will know what I am talking about. That speed of crouching is nigh-impossible. Not to mention, the sound of the shot would echo within a two mile radius AT LEAST. If the target in this video were to rise and sprint, aware of the snipers presence, he would have a less chance of getting shot than a quarter being thrown into a small cup from a 25 yard distance. The knockback of rifles, especially sniper rifles, would actually shake you (and can cause serious injury to less experienced users – which your character in DayZ IS) unless you have a pod attached to the ground. The stillness of the crosshairs is inhuman, and the accuracy of the bullet equates nothing to its real life counterpart. Running, crouching, and prone positions are far too fast. Next, I want you to take a metal pole that weighs around 40 pounds and put it on your back via a sling. Then, get a gun holster on your waist and put a 16 pound weight in it. Try and switch between the pole on your back and the weight in your holster as fast as you can. In fact, I want you to just try and run with both of them on your body. It's not going to happen at any reasonable speed. Changing weapons alone should take six seconds at LEAST. Reloading ammunition should take up to thirty seconds depending on what gun you are using. What players call realism these days is a terrible misconception. And while I hope it is not true, I believe players have ascended beyond realism even being a factor in their games. It’s an unfortunate and cruel world where a video game that prides itself on realism and survival can't even make basic and accurate judgments for MOVEMENT. Let alone the physics behind shooting a real life weapon. THE ZOMBIES Every video game has their own take on how a zombie should behave or perform. Some games believe them to be mindless, wandering on their own accord. The debate has gone on for decades discussing if they are able to have sensory thoughts of smell or vision. The fictional concept has grown beyond this with the age of modern video games. Zombies now behave like heat seeking missiles in a body. Their AI programmed to eliminate the player -- and if unable, to increase speed, damage, and difficulty until that goal is achieved. Watch TotalBiscuit's ( ) video on DayZ and you will begin to understand. From the very beginning at 2:50, the Zombie AI appears to be very poor (those who have experience in-game can vouch as well). Notice how the Zombie comes behind TotalBiscuit and does damage to him. Arma 2's engine of a grey shading to indicate pain is by far the strangest adaptation there is to the concept of health. I thought I had seen it all with Diablo 3's "Low Health" screen (http://hautegamer.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/d3.png). Remember, a Zombie by regular standards was once a person. Now, have you ever been tackled by another person, either in sport or play? That kind of Zombie attack WOULD TAKE YOU DOWN TO THE GROUND WITH EASE. Force = MA (mass times acceleration). An average speed of a sprinting human (zombies are easily sprinting) is around 15 (6.7 meters per second) miles per hour. An average male weight would be around 80 (175lb) kilograms (in this day and age). That's 536 Newtons of force hitting you on impact. No one would be able to stand against that, let alone prevent a concussion. The Zombie should tackle you and begin eating you while your friend must get him off you. Not to mention, take a look at the Zombie movement and how the guns are shot. Pay no attention to the cardboard hand holding the gun perfectly still as the Zombie approaches (very realistic) but notice how shots that should be on point don't actually hit their mark. Watch the video at 3:02 at the shot he takes at the Zombie with his pistol. Notice the Zombie teleport? You would think this is just latency -- it's not. Go to any video, any live stream, or play the game yourself and you will see just how crazy the AI and projectile system works. The game is still in Alpha, but the decision to run it on the engine of Arma 2 was very poor. What blows my mind away is Arma 2 came out in 2009 but runs WORSE than Counter Strike: Source. How is this possible? Are we digressing in terms of logical shooters? I know the Call of Duty franchise fell after Call of Duty 3, but I thought at least Battlefield 3 was a step in the right direction. Imagine DayZ with a Battlefield 3 engine? Imagine DayZ with a Counter Strike engine. Hell, I bet the Skyrim engine could somehow run it better. At least in that game it stresses the importance of Stamina. Mind you, throughout this entire discussion, I haven’t even mentioned graphics. I’ve seen games on Dreamcast that match Arma 2 by graphical standards. I am here and speak only to invoke the thoughts of others. I only seek the improvement of the gaming industry. Do not act like I am questioning your deity but more of that I am questioning your loyalty to a game that you may think too highly of.

There is so much to talk about with this mod's recent fame. I am not sure whether to glorify it for its ingenuity and brilliant concepts or scratch my head at the shear oversight players have put into the game. Watch any DayZ introduction video and within the first minute the instructor will explain that DayZ is an immersion survival mod. They will explain that not only is the learning curve steep, but the game's mechanics are hard pressed to learn as well. Good, difficulty is almost the most important factor in video game’s success these days. It almost directly translates to a fun experience for skilled users who want a challenge. Well, WarCraft: Orcs and Humans was challenging and rewards skillful players, but it didn’t quite give off the vibe that a game like StarCraft does today. The same goes for Arma 2. I've been watching live streams of DayZ for the past three days straight analyzing every detail (you can't put the focus in analyzing DayZ while actually playing it). It boils down to the Arma 2 engine; the DayZ mod can only do so much. http://i.imgur.com/r8YC5.jpg It only took a single Google search to confirm my suspicion. It's no secret that Arma 2 has been coined as the most realistic war-game on the market. And for $20, it's quite a rewarding experience. Games like Call of Duty or Diablo 3 for $59.99 generally feel as if they are deluding the experience for the user; cheapening the fun at the expense of the buyer. DayZ, while giving players a fun environment, exploits the facts that the user is distracted by the goal of survival to worry enough about the immersion of the game: HEALTH, STAMINA, FOOD, AND GENERAL NEEDS: DayZ gave a solid effort for the needs other simulations shaved off on. Games like Left for Dead, Resident Evil, Dead Space, and Dead Island overlook the fact that the Zombies are not your first concern. DayZ’s Survival is imperative -- your character can break limbs, be infected, get hungry etc. First off, you're in a post-soviet area; you really think a T-shirt and a vest will keep you warm? Look at the wiki and it reads (http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Chernarus) "Chernarus is a fictional post-Soviet country, accurately recreated from geographical data of real landscape". Temperatures would be FREEZING at night. You would NEED shelter, fire, food, water just to survive a single day. Look at the recent film (and book of course) The Hunger Games. While most competitors were killed by other competitors, dying from the environment was the primary concern. This is no different in DayZ. Players should need to find firewood and be FORCED to camp out during night time. Night should also be literally impossible to navigate in. In real life in an apocalyptic world, you would need to wait till dawn to navigate. As I said before, DayZ makes a good attempt, but does not nearly bring the satisfaction of an immersive survival game. The icons on the right side of your screen and the way to bring them to normal levels involve an IQ less than ten. Bandaging wounds and eating food is a simplistic and dumbed down system. The games' focus on combat leaves the experience of survival as wasted potential. COMBAT, MOVEMENT, AND WEAPONS The Arma 2 engine does a very good job at providing realistic scenarios but doesn't deliver when it comes to logical realism. Snipers shoot across fields bolt action at much higher rates than normal (have you ever tried pulling back the bolt of a high caliber sniper rifle?). Not only that, but they do it without spotters (good luck with calculating wind and trajectory of your bullet all while tracking a moving target by yourself). Let's take a quote from the popular movie Shooter when discussing a shot from a mile distance (done in Arma 2 with ease): "You know what it takes to make a shot at that range? Everything comes into play that far. Humidity elevation, temperature, winds, spin-drift. There's a 6-10 second flight time so you have to shoot it where the targets going to be. Even the coriolis effect, the spin of the earth comes into play". Arma 2's combat engine is a standardized joke compared to reality. Take a look at this well done introduction and instructional video of DayZ: "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3op-Q1o5RI". Notice at 3:30 you see the speaker attempting to eliminate a moving target. While the aspect of patience is there (there is an INCREDIBLE amount of patience involved with real life snipers, you sometimes have to wait 10 minutes just for the shot to open up), the realism is comparable to someone bunny hopping in CS: Source getting a headshot no-scope from T-spawn to the double doors of Dust2. Watch in the video as his target moves as lightning speeds WHILE CROUCHED. Now -- I want you to crouch on the floor (yes get off your chair). Then, I want you to try and move from one end of the room to the other. If you've ever tried Airsoft or Paintball (real life wartime simulation), you will know what I am talking about. That speed of crouching is nigh-impossible. Not to mention, the sound of the shot would echo within a two mile radius AT LEAST. If the target in this video were to rise and sprint, aware of the snipers presence, he would have a less chance of getting shot than a quarter being thrown into a small cup from a 25 yard distance. The knockback of rifles, especially sniper rifles, would actually shake you (and can cause serious injury to less experienced users – which your character in DayZ IS) unless you have a pod attached to the ground. The stillness of the crosshairs is inhuman, and the accuracy of the bullet equates nothing to its real life counterpart. Running, crouching, and prone positions are far too fast. Next, I want you to take a metal pole that weighs around 40 pounds and put it on your back via a sling. Then, get a gun holster on your waist and put a 16 pound weight in it. Try and switch between the pole on your back and the weight in your holster as fast as you can. In fact, I want you to just try and run with both of them on your body. It's not going to happen at any reasonable speed. Changing weapons alone should take six seconds at LEAST. Reloading ammunition should take up to thirty seconds depending on what gun you are using. What players call realism these days is a terrible misconception. And while I hope it is not true, I believe players have ascended beyond realism even being a factor in their games. It’s an unfortunate and cruel world where a video game that prides itself on realism and survival can't even make basic and accurate judgments for MOVEMENT. Let alone the physics behind shooting a real life weapon. THE ZOMBIES Every video game has their own take on how a zombie should behave or perform. Some games believe them to be mindless, wandering on their own accord. The debate has gone on for decades discussing if they are able to have sensory thoughts of smell or vision. The fictional concept has grown beyond this with the age of modern video games. Zombies now behave like heat seeking missiles in a body. Their AI programmed to eliminate the player -- and if unable, to increase speed, damage, and difficulty until that goal is achieved. Watch TotalBiscuit's ( ) video on DayZ and you will begin to understand. From the very beginning at 2:50, the Zombie AI appears to be very poor (those who have experience in-game can vouch as well). Notice how the Zombie comes behind TotalBiscuit and does damage to him. Arma 2's engine of a grey shading to indicate pain is by far the strangest adaptation there is to the concept of health. I thought I had seen it all with Diablo 3's "Low Health" screen ( http://hautegamer.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/d3.png ). Remember, a Zombie by regular standards was once a person. Now, have you ever been tackled by another person, either in sport or play? That kind of Zombie attack WOULD TAKE YOU DOWN TO THE GROUND WITH EASE. Force = MA (mass times acceleration). An average speed of a sprinting human (zombies are easily sprinting) is around 15 (6.7 meters per second) miles per hour. An average male weight would be around 80 (175lb) kilograms (in this day and age). That's 536 Newtons of force hitting you on impact. No one would be able to stand against that, let alone prevent a concussion. The Zombie should tackle you and begin eating you while your friend must get him off you. Not to mention, take a look at the Zombie movement and how the guns are shot. Pay no attention to the cardboard hand holding the gun perfectly still as the Zombie approaches (very realistic) but notice how shots that should be on point don't actually hit their mark. Watch the video at 3:02 at the shot he takes at the Zombie with his pistol. Notice the Zombie teleport? You would think this is just latency -- it's not. Go to any video, any live stream, or play the game yourself and you will see just how crazy the AI and projectile system works. The game is still in Alpha, but the decision to run it on the engine of Arma 2 was very poor. What blows my mind away is Arma 2 came out in 2009 but runs WORSE than Counter Strike: Source. How is this possible? Are we digressing in terms of logical shooters? I know the Call of Duty franchise fell after Call of Duty 3, but I thought at least Battlefield 3 was a step in the right direction. Imagine DayZ with a Battlefield 3 engine? Imagine DayZ with a Counter Strike engine. Hell, I bet the Skyrim engine could somehow run it better. At least in that game it stresses the importance of Stamina. Mind you, throughout this entire discussion, I haven’t even mentioned graphics. I’ve seen games on Dreamcast that match Arma 2 by graphical standards. I am here and speak only to invoke the thoughts of others. I only seek the improvement of the gaming industry. Do not act like I am questioning your deity but more of that I am questioning your loyalty to a game that you may think too highly of.