S3V3N

The strange thing is - I've been playing stable since it came out and on the same server. I am observing that fewer loot spawns all the time now. The Northern Airfield was empty when I visited today. All Officers Barracks were empty, except for clothing. All tents were empty. Possibly someone was there, but man have they cleaned up ;) I play on a server with usually 15 -20 people and it gets full on the weekends. By the traffic alone, more stuff should spawn. Oh hey - did you maybe play on an empty server? Because, you know, no traffic means fewer loot in an area will respawn. All I can say is that it worked great at first and seems to slow down the spawning of anything at the moment. Maybe that is intentional, but yeah there is fewer loot now than when I started. Even though I see it respawn. A lot of loot spawns seem to not work properly right now. Like these small shops with the broken window blinds - I always found something worthwhile there when I played on experimental. Now they are mostly empty and if you're lucky you find a pair of seeds. I'm not sure if this is intentional or not. You never know with Dayz :) BUT - this is all a work in progress and I think if you made a camp early, you still get plenty of loot. Also a heli crash can get you pretty well equipped and they spawn much faster now and switch locations a lot. I enjoy the game in its current state. It's playable and fun, but it still has its share of problems. I think you should play it though. Change your approach for now. Start building camps, taking it slow until you feel ready for combat in the danger zones. Dayz will probably never be a game again where you just run to a military area and return with three rifles and a bunch of magazines. Now you have to work more for it, but the rifles have a bit more value than before...or should I say: the bullets have. I like my M4. I even gave it a name: BrokenPieceofShit. I can't find a cleaning kit, so it jams and my ammo is damaged, so it jams (or sprays). But still - this is fun and the MP5 kills people, too.

In the mods there was a remington with flashlight attached. I liked it for the light alone. The black variant with a flashlight would probably be something a lot of people might pick up. I'm not using shotguns much in Dayz, but apart from 9mm, 380 and 22cal it seems to be the most frequent ammo to find. So I started carrying a sawn off in my backpack. I would pick up a shotgun as my main, if they were more practical to use. I don't have a lot of confidence in the shotguns, but I haven't tried them in the last patches and heard they got some improvements. So it may be worth checking out. A new shotgun adds variety and makes it even more interesting to pick one up.

Wow that is interesting. Would be a welcome pick-up for anyone spawning in Balota, I guess :P I have an M4 in damaged state with pristine attachments. I've passed by a few weapons cleaning kits in the past days, not thinking about picking one up. But this is actually the first time I see a gun damaged properly and in need of repairs. M4s aren't particulary hard to find, but you got to be lucky with the ammo.

Yes, but only just today. Curiously enough it was in one of those wooden gate houses that are often at the entrance gates of walled compunds. I check those and all the deerstands I can find. But I guess the Winchester would also spawn in other civilian locations, it just seems to be more rare now.

Ah well - that particular bug has been remedied, although not completely. At least now it just feels like you're driving drunk on an ice lake when you get too close to another vehicle. But you can get past. My guess what's going wrong with the vehicles is some interference/confusion from the other dynamic spawning objects like choppers. Somehow the car spawns seem to cycle on similar hours like the choppers. If you can't find one now, chances are in two hours it spawns in the village next to you. What's cool is that cow herds are now actually sizeable. I saw one of at least 10 cows yesterday and we counted another eight cows in another herd later. The first one was just crossing a river we were hiking up at. When they started running it captured us all so much that we basically forgot to shoot any ^^ but then came the other herd.

From my own observations on stable, barrels and tents are persistant, but as the server still crash, the loot isn't always saved right. If you find yourself going through your tents and placing weapons or items on the floor, the restart will wipe them. After every crash there is a small rollback, which can be noticeable if you were in your tent inventory. So for the most part, camps are working. Cars however are not. They seem to respawn and cycle their spawn locations pretty often. I've had my car survive one server restart, but lost them over night, every time. This is probably just a bug, as persistence on cars was working like Just Cause described. It's cool though, you can find cars that are almost completely assembled. Much easier to find a ride now.

You follow the road north through Novy (going to Gorka), pass by the car scrapyard and take the next left. Then you follow that road straight to Altar and the new radio tower. Once you've been there you can find it easily without following the road. On a clear day you should be able to see the huge radio antennas at it, too. I know I saw them from north-west of Altar fro pretty far away. If you're coming from south they are partially hidden by the mountain.

Well, technically it is called "ice axe": http://dayz.gamepedia.com/Ice_axe

I always wished the climbing hook was actually useful. I like it in theory, but it has too many disadvantages compared to an axe. If you could use it to climb certain rockfaces and poles/nordic trees it would become a useful companion. The little bird seems to have a winch, so I guess rappeling will become a thing anyway. I don't want to see the hook used to climb up buildings, but I think a cool craftable would be rope + climbing hook, so you could rappel down a building if you get yourself trapped; sacrificing the hook + rope for a clean escape. What we should also not forget - bears can climb. And wolves probably won't run away, even if you shoot one of them. Or they will be back and watching - which would actually make for a cool mechanic.

"Can you please don't speak so fast." :) "By love!" Man, bet she was confused for the next hour. Nice shots there. Loved the Magnum "click".

I really think you should try increasing your settings, instead of lowering them! I have a really old 570ti and an i7 from 5-6 years ago. I plan on updating this year. Anyhow, I tried lowering my settings today and the game ran much worse. I then put it back to default and even raised some settings and performance is better. And the game looks and feels better than ever before. If you have under 8GB of RAM you should also fix that. For everything Dayz has to offer now the game is pretty optimized. I'm sure with a few cheapo fixes you can get a PC to handle it.

The game decided to spawn me as a "lady" for the first time. My presets must have been removed. Anyway, I thought it looked pretty cool how the shadow creeps over the eyes. Warpaint or...Zorro-style ;) A couple of hours later she has a new name and plenty of gear.

At this point I remember color theory at school. I hope I am remembering it right. Basically color consists out of two elements: saturation and value. Saturation is basically the intensity and value the darkness. In other words value is gamma. So if you want to have color, you will also need gamma. Crank gamma up high enough and all colors become white. Which means we have a 0-100 range in gamma setting now. If one were to limit that range to 0-30, we would already have a much darker night and our colors would be less bleached. Night would still look like night, but honestly this just reduces the problem and doesn't get rid of it. Everyone would still crank gamma to the max. Night would just look less bright than with the current options. The thing is: night is really awesome now, and I'm pissed off that I have to turn up gamma in danger zones. Elsewhere I usually leave it untouched. And it looks awesome going in a car at night (little too yellow/orange tinted headlights though). On the topic - we need a flashlight button. Maybe we can assign one, but the thing that pisses me off at night is that I have to manually go to my weapon attachments and turn off the flashlight. I just realized I haven't even tried glowsticks in 0.60. Probably looks awesome. I wonder if we'll ever see someone using them ^^

Sure, the MP5 is pretty decent, but it doesn't have the best stopping power or range. When you pick up an UMP and have a scope, you should try shooting some distant zombies and comparing that to the MP5. I found the UMP far superior on mid-range and somewhat better than the MP5 and Skorpion in cqb. For the MP5 speak a couple of arguments: - comparably easy to find with attachments - ammo is in civilian houses (also in pants and such) - even with a stock it takes up few enough slots to carry a ranged weapon too - big magazines - pistol silencers fit There are probably a few more good reasons to pick one up, as they are a blast to fire (literally). You don't have to worry about ammo as much. The reason why the MP5 doesn't aggro infected when silenced is because silenced pistols aren't aggroing them either. And technically you are firing 9mm rounds, just very many. Even an unsilenced pistol has a much smaller radius where infected are aggroed when compared to other guns. Now the Skorpion I haven't tried silenced, but in the past silenced rifles still aggro'd the infected. And technically you are attaching a rifle (not pistol) silencer to the gun. So possibly the Skorpion is louder to infected with a silencer than without ^^

It's a valid question after all. This update was supposed to hit Dayz in February and the long wait and classy content made it really agonizing to wait. I would appreciate a letter/roadmap from the devs with a rough estimate how things are going to proceed from here on. The beta was supposed to start in Q2 2016; if you look back at old dev plans, they actually estimated the beta for 2015 (in 2014). I'm sure this is difficult for the devs, too. But I think what we can agree on is that nobody blames them or thinks they failed, but that it would be decent to just level with us. ("Plans were to release Beta in Q2 2016 - here are the reasons why we have to postpone it and why S3V3N was right... ^^") something along those lines. Maybe praise me more. Throw money! No, seriously. Without being a Nay-Sayer, early in 2015 I predicted exactly this outcome. except we didn't get notified by the devs yet. I also predicted the chaos that would ensue if they only released 0.60 on the few experimental servers there were. And that was my conclusion from observation and judgement of things past. Everyone could have forseen it - it's not difficult to predict things with Dayz. Even when I wrote my stuff I was hoping for the opposite outcome. We don't deserve to be informed about every little thing. We are not developing the game and cannot make estimates about when it's done. But we can (with common sense) forsee when something is going to go wrong. And then we watch the devs steer right into it, as predicted. If they were a little more direct about their plans and schedules, telling us only what is immediately in the works AND about why it could be problematic, we would surely understand the reasoning behind certain decisions better. I really always think they are trying to inform us best they can, but most of the time I find myself lacking the actual interesting news, namely: when and why or why not yet? If we can make such accurate estimates about their development, I'm sure they can give us some more inside info to stop having to guess things for months. Feels like the Riddler is on the team sometimes ^^ But hey, don't take this too seriously. What it really boils down to is: don't inform us about things that don't concern us, but if they do, inform us immediately and comprehensively. Thanks.

They are also waterproof, or am I mistaken? So in the future you may get wet and not wear decent gear, but at least your rice and milkpowder won't get soaked. With items having a "lifespan" in the future, this may be an interesting mechanic. Though I don't really see how getting a can of bacon wet shortens its longevity. Napoleon promoted the development of canned food as a means to feed his armies. It would be a bit stupid if now cans spoil in the rain. But I guess we'll find out. There are a few uses for the protective cases, but honestly the best one is keeping your ammo safe. Even if everything else is shot, the ammo is still pristine. As far as I know all containers serve this purpose though (waterproof bag, medkit, cooking pot), so it doesn't really matter which ones you take. The only bad thing about cookpots is that you still can't put them into barrels, while you can put them into tents. Apart from that all containers were created equal by the devs ;)

The original plan was to release the beta in Q2 this year. Which is now. They said they will still work on features during the beta, but usually beta means feature complete. So I think they will add flying vehicles before going into beta. So, I take it will be "Beta in Fall", which puts them only ~6 months behind their goals, which isn't too bad. As for changes, the most important ones will be the character controller (patch 0.62 or later), basebuilding (0.63 or later) aircraft (guess 0.65 or later). Until these three problems haven't been solved the game isn't complete enough for a beta-phase. It does look like they finally got a grip on their engine now, as changes/patches so far have been fairly sucessful. Keep in mind that the game will cost more after Beta. I think it's a safe bet to say Dayz will be awesome and the devs are out there to prove it. Even though some may not be my favorite devs, there are a great deal of people in this team I hold in high esteem for what they do. Especially Eugen and Peter, as well as all of the 3D/Dressing Department. I think these people deserve applause and they are a reason to buy the game; I have faith in them. So if you're thinking about telling your friends about Dayz or simply about when to buy the game, I'd say, but it now or wait and watch how 0.61 release is handled. I expect future releases to come faster and with fewer complications from now on. If that is the case it is well worth buying Dayz now, even if you have to wait 6 more months for a beta. The game is enjoyable, just the development is often not. But they pull it off and that deserves respect, too.

I simply love how the game turns in a matter of seconds. We were in Cherno, looking for netting and found only rubber boots, boonie hats and fishing rods (yay...at first). We went through the entire harbor and the south to mid of town. It was fantastic. Somehow a wall broke my friend's leg. We retreated into a workshop house (with stairs up) and I accidentially threw my gun. He tried picking it up and got kicked as I rejoined - gun in my hands. I then went upstairs and took this idyllic picture: All quiet and beautiful. After I step to the window, some guy is yelling Hodor at me. I see movement in one of the houses across the street. A Freshspawn with a jerry can. I know how dangerous they can get, but I give each a chance. The problem is I have to get him away from my friend who's reconnecting downstairs. I know he's inside and I meet him on the stairs. I tell him to stay one flight of stairs below and ask what he wants. A gun is of course the answer. I laugh it off. He asks for food and drink, which I lay down and move up one flight. As he thanks me and wants to be my new best friend the server crashes. Great. I reconnect to find myself getting punched in the face. But the helmet softens it and I have my m4 raised. I don't usually do this, but 2 bullets to the head. Couldn't take the risk. I know you shouldn't, but I cling to my gear now, because I went to lots of different places to gather it all up. I still wish I knew how to get more ammo. Using silenced pistols we shoot our way through Cherno and look for the 2 offroad wheels we need. We find them and retreat. No netting, but my friend got back, the bugs were no bugs and the server showed mercy. Most of the day I was just driving around. It feels like I should have met other drivers, but then again I tried to avoid all traffic and took the back roads. I even went up a walking trail at night, which was real-life scary. If there were predators I'll shit my pants. I didn't even have a spare tire. How the fuck do you even get the spare tire out of the 4x4 in this version? Questions. The good part was I got cold to the point of shaking and got rid of it really easily and without medicine. The rain does affect you after a while. I made a few fires. Can't wait to try out the new fishing rod and see if it's any different to use. But for that the car needs to drive me to camp. And I'm not sure it will. Ever again.

The dreaded "car-stuck-near-other-car" bug has forced me to go off and explore a lot more than usual. To my defense: I crashed the cars a lot less than in 0.59, but there simply is no going slow. Engines screaming, people shooting (I even got into an ambush where a rifle was put on the road as bait). All is well. This is a lot more the Dayz I was hoping to play than any prior version. It feels a lot more like things I do have a purpose. I don't go collecting ammo to stack it in a tent somewhere any more. Today I was lucky and found both US-crashes after a server restart. And even though I found those choppers and they were untouched, I got out with 2 M4, one silencer NATO and 20 rounds in a 60 mag. Not a whole lot. I cursed myself later for firing 2 rounds at a zombie in Cherno. That never happened. I was actually saving the ammo for something important. Like that twat I fed and gave drink to, only to find him punching me after a server restart. Two rounds to the head solved the problem. 2 very precious rounds...# I've also never switched vehicles so much. There was no reason to ever repair a V3S when you had to find a quarter as many wheels as for any ordinary car. Today I found a V3S that needed a glowplug and was good to go. I switched it for a 4x4, which luckily I saw early enough, so it didn't bug the V3S. I parked that away in front of the holiday camp, so it doesn't block any other cars going on the main road there. I've had a bus too, but got bugged by yet another 4x4. Either there are more of them spawning in total, or they started spawning north more. I found the new fishing rod (telescopic) today and punched my friend with it (stabbed rather). It's fab, didn't catch any fish though. No hooks. At first I was pleased, but then I found that all the netting I found before was replaced by gazillions of fishing rods at the boat spawns. I didn't find a single netting. I have a camp with two tents and four barrels and they are damn near full (2 more people play now and then and use them). But there is nothing really good in there. I have good gear, but not a ton to fall back on. If I lose the M4 and Glock, I'm going shotgunning again, or take the Skorpion. I am pissed that I somehow lost an Amphibia mag today. First I found in a long time and in a city a pistol to snipe zombies is great to have. I wasted two good shots today, because I didn't have my pistol ready. On the topic: the hotkeys are really lagging sometimes. I wish that would stop being an issue. But yeah, such a great day. Not a single death. I admit, I didn't do military today, but even in the other places I had only 1 friendly encounter with a Finnish guy and that bambi I had to shoot for punching me after restart. The dirtbike helmet may have well saved my ass there! Roll on. Find a car - go everywhere :P

Love the new helmet. If you wonder why you don't find any. I'm taking them all ^^ shitty whether incoming. Hard to make good screenshots in rain. you barely see anything. But this was shortly before some rain.

Is this a "Why did the chicken cross the road?" joke? ^^ Answer #1: "Because it saw the cars doing it." Here are some of my 0.60 impressions. God, did I got shot at :) But I survived and the last time I logged off, I was sick (cholera) and overheating. I kiled one guy too (had to) and exchanged shots with several others. And I witnessed how a group of 5 zombies split up to chase the two groups of us. I believe I've never had this much fun in Dayz, because as long as it lasted it was amazing. It was blazing guns and somehow getting out alive. One could say it's too easy to find a pistol with ammo now, but I think it played out perfectly. At least you are almost at no point completely helpless and the choice to interact with others becomes more meaningful at the coast. It was a fair deal of fighting, but nobody wants to die right at their spawn. I've met a friendly guy complete with M4 and geared up to the max, who didn't shoot me. He even wanted to come along as my protection, while I fixed up a car; unfortunately the server crashed. I had 70% hostile interaction, but those other ones went really nicely. I still don't know if it is because there are still more friendly people on Exp, or if the version change made players change a bit too; just kidding, of course we didn't change ^^ Dangit, did I really just post all these? Can't say I'm sorry. The game is SOOO beautiful, even on my half-crappy rig. These screens just make me want to play more than ever. Patience! We'll get there eventually :)

Lovely :) You deserve megabeans for all the effort and time you put into making your own documentation of our favorite game! "like this!" just doesn't feel the same, but I'll like it anyway. Hope to meet you again ingame. I'll make sure to turn on some lights in Olsha. I plan to make this my habit: build a friendly camp at Olsha. But I am digressing. Thanks again for the screenshots and memories.

This was actually my reply to a thread that has now been closed, but hopefully you find something true in there for you. I'm not a fanboy or yay-sayer. I'm a supporter of the game, and find myself facing frustration about the development at every wait for a patch. I might tell myself to get a life. Yet, for those of us, who also take gaming way too seriously, here is a breakdown of how I'm being split-minded but hopeful for Dayz's future: Probably the only thing I can add to it is to think of a studio like Bohemia as a family and a studio like ~ Ubisoft as something like a factory. There are people who like working in a factory. There are 3D modelers (in the car industry) that just do lights or doors all day. And they know every nook and cranny about their CAD-work. For the outsider and creative artist this is totally boring, yet it is specialised work as part of a bigger workflow. In game development we often see similar facilitators to the workflow. Bohemia doesn't have that workflow much. It seems even most models they buy from freelancers. There is no concept artist at the start, then a modeler, then a skinner and texture artist; in Bohemia's philosophy one artist does it all. It's pretty oldschool, if you want so. But it isn't efficient on huge projects; this also explains why some of the older rifle models look like someone went over every edge with a piece of sandpaper, while in the newer models damage is balanced and in the right places. To have consistency in an artist-orientated work-flow is difficult; what if the artist gets ill, or doesn't do freelance any more? Then you get someone else and his models/textures look different...Imagine what would happen, if Dayz's main coder went away; he's probably the only one who knows the engine front to back, even though there are probably several coders. The good thing is this is not a problem with Dayz, because let's face it: all the models and art are generic and can be created from Photo-Reference. It's not an "artistic" game at all, which is why a factory-approach would really speed things up for Dayz. However, they are family and want to work like that. They let everyone be an artist, even though they are probably cursing about work and pay half the time. Despite all the rage, Dayz's community allows for artistry and is patient. Pull that stunt with, e.g. GTA and try saying: "yeah maybe next year we'll release" and you'll have a s h i t s t o r m. (I think something like that happened and there was an outrage over a few weeks delay). --- Dayz will never be as successfull as GTA or Just Cause. It could have been though, but the way it is produced that's simply not an option. That's a disadvantage for Bohemia, and a slight disadvantage for us. Because we have to wait longer, but we get a game that came together through a concerted effort of artists, instead of a collaboration of executives. The artist is more valuable here than in a normal game development. The individual counts, the community counts. Would you even know who modeled a weapon for GTA? Would you care? It's a different thing altogether. The more I think about it the more I believe we should thank the devs for not throwing the game to the wolves, early on. They could have milked the hype. We could easily be playing a mod ripoff with 3 DLC packs and pay-to-win perks by now. Someone didn't let that happen! (probably have to thank Mark Spanel for believing in Rocket's vision). The problem I have - is that often it doesn't feel like they are giving it all. I don't expect them to bleed out over this, but sometimes I wonder, if tasks couldn't be done a wee bit faster. It sucks knowing all those features and waiting, waiting for them. I appreciate the devs are visiting the forums more, but I also think they should not get too emotionally invested over the comments. Of course we feel let down or plain bad when the patch of all patches turns out to be just another delay. That shit is called reality. You can spoon it out of the way 24/7 and that still won't make the game happen any faster; rather the opposite. It would be awesome if at some point they announce something and the next week it happens. I don't want to learn about features anymore when they are months away from becoming a part of the game.

I wouldn't say disappointment, but a case study of a game that should not go into early access. Early access games should be brought onto existing engine platforms with as little as possible to go wrong during production. Dayz is on a platform that is even still developed with each iteration of the game. It's bound to have more problems. Technically, this engine is better than a lot of games that are "released". Take Life is Feudal, for example - awesome game on paper, but without the funding and tech updates of Dayz. Playing LiF made me understand and appreciate ones more all the upgrades the Dayz devs bring to their software. It's totally necessary for a game like Dayz though, while LiF still plays okay with crappy controls and data streaming hickups. Dayz=good game, feel sorry for the devs, but at the same time think they are doing gods work ;) It's disappointing to wait, but the only thing I dislike is being told with some mild emphasis ("probably end of February") when by the end of April still nothing happens. If anything Hicks and his lose mouth ruined the game updates in the past month for me. Keep that guy quiet and things will be fine. Stick to what is done and stop showing us stuff that's nowhere near to make it into the game prototype, and I'll be happy.

So, since we get increasingly complex solutions presented as for how the devs want to share updated information and news with us, I thought I'd simplify things. The idea is: everbody gets one question (per post). If you like the question of one of the persons above you, you quote him/her; questions should be in bold type. Then you add your own question at the end. This way, each page visually fills up with questions asked and it will be easy for the devs to scroll through and just to gauge, which are our most pressing concerns. This is a simple way of visually and briefly posting questions without the need to invent a new format to present the news. If the devs want to use this thread to directly reply or just for research is entirely up to them. I just thought it was a good idea. Side note: I think we appreciate the efforts the team makes to give us better information. The thing is - with fewer delays there would be less need to inform us at all. Instead of inventing new ways to inform us, I would wish that old information was updated more often by the devs. Which brings me to my question: In Summer 2015 we were told that Modding Tools are going to be released early in 2016. I haven't seen progress on that or seen information on the editors that will be available. Could you describe the current state of modding tools and how far away we are from an initial release?