AnarchyBrownies

I think modding for a game like this is overrated. I can see its value in some ways and I understand the desire to mod, but some of the most classic games in history haven't been modded. I think sometimes people THINK they want mods and then what happens is what you pointed out, Brian: the community fractures. People get mods to make the game what they think they want and I think a lot of times it gets boring fast. People find it grueling so they find mods that make the game easier, play it for a month, and then stop. Why? Because if you find it annoying having to trek around finding a gun for hours (for ex.), don't worry there's a mod that starts you with one. After being gifted that you start wondering why you have to run around everywhere to find some action. Don't worry, there's a mod with vehicles everywhere. Then after a little while of this you just ask yourself why you don't hop on COD or CS:GO, or hell even ARMA and just do the thing you want to do anyways. The same thing you fear happening if you DON'T allow modding happens anyways. People feel no real pull towards a game and its community, and they leave. Mainly I think when the masses grab on to the mods, they're looking to get rid of the things they don't like, undervaluing that experiences surrounding the things they don't like. This is such a cornerstone of the DayZ experience. A community for a game is built around both what people like and don't like. Both the desirable and undesirable things to do in the game. It's a shared experience. Modding, to me, represents the focus on the individual and I think the community loses something quite quickly when the game becomes saturated with customizations. I understand mods for games where you have scenarios but not for games like DayZ. I can understand it again for single player games (Skyrim). But I really feel like for a multiplayer game with this type of character, it would be best to control the game as much as possible. That being said, I've accepted the fact that DayZ will be moddable. You guys have always been very clear that's the direction you're going so there's no choice but to accept that and I can choose to enjoy the game in whatever state I want. Hopefully what people come up with is original and interesting, rather than DayZ on super easy mode. The good mods that DayZ had most added things that were probably going to come to DayZ anyways. The rest were just mods based on instant gratification. People are drawn to that, but I think in the long run they appreciate not having it much more, as the original hype surrounding DayZ as an anti-game demonstrates.

Yeah, it's literally just the frames that do it. Most of the time I can run around just fine out in the wilderness. But basically I had to avoid any decently sized city so it felt kind of limited after a while. I don't mind the wait, I just want it to be good.

This this this! I stopped playing DayZ because it started making me motion sick no matter what perspective I played in, but 1PP is just awful.

I feel like the issue of complaints about communication and deadlines has slowly degraded to a horrible community environment. I'd like to chalk it up to morons who don't consider the difficulties, challenges, and basic realities of development, but really it's coming from the developer side too. The thing about the morons is you can forget about them. You can just ignore them because those are the people who refuse to look at the situation with any sort of reasonable perspective. The real problem--for you guys--is that the criticism ISN'T just coming from morons, it's coming from people who may have legitimate complaints. I can't remember the last time I saw someone from the developer side just level with people about delays and progress and admit things have taken longer than they should have. I think it's safe to say that's the case. Just using .60 as an example: I personally DO NOT care when it comes out because I think it will be worth the wait no matter how long it takes. BUT when you say you're aiming for the end of February and it's nowhere close, it's not crazy for the community to be unhappy with how long after that date the release is. Those time frames being "goals" isn't actually the greatest excuse. Basically that means you could say "We're trying to get the build out in the next 30 seconds" and then just say "Well, that was a goal but we had some unexpected blockers." The time frame has to mean something, even if it's not solid (which any reasonable person knows it isn't). Otherwise you could literally say anything, in which case what's even the point of talking about time frames because it becomes meaningless. I think from the developer side of things you guys have to stop altering the language in your favour and admit that the pace is slower than ideal at times. Goals are not deadlines, but let's not act like goals have no meaning. It doesn't develop a good culture of early access development when delays are never a problem and accountability isn't even on the table. Sometimes there's blame to throw around, and people who have put money into the game sometimes deserve explanations in order to understand how things are going to improve in the future. RELATED to this, I can't believe how generally unfriendly things have become from the developer side as well. The first time I noticed this was actually on the forums when Boneboys was doing a lot of post blocking. Then one day it happened to me, apparently because I was critical and said something that missed the mark on how game development works. I'm completely open to learning and being corrected, but the natural route became censoring undesirable comments. I even put a positive spin on my post at the time if I recall correctly. I honestly couldn't believe it because it just felt so "icky" compared to the mod community that the game started with. Then I actually got blocked by the DayZ Development account on Twitter for saying, "Did you guys seriously just link to a website under maintenance?" It was back during the security breach when there was a status report that was posted. Their tweet basically said "Here's the link, everything should be up and working." The site definitely wasn't up and working and I think it took a few more days after that. My tweet, while not friendly, was really a reference to the general disorganized feeling I get from the developer side. Maybe worthy of ignoring, but of being blocked for all time from the Development account? That's extreme. Sometimes it FEELS as though the left hand doesn't talk to the right hand at the company. The road map for the previous year wasn't even close, every build seemed to have significant delays last year, then there was a security breach on top of that, then the DayZ Dev account doesn't even seem to know when the website is up. That was where my more snotty tweet came from. The next thing I noticed is there is no longer the ability to rate videos or post comments to development videos on YouTube. The whole culture of this community is gross right now, and I think that the people working on DayZ have become far too criticism-averse. After delays and a lot of waiting for this game to get to where it needs to, I'm still confident about its progress. I have faith it will get there and I tell fellow friends and gamers that all the time. And I truly don't care about delays or long waits, however you want to put it. The delays only get annoying when it gets thrown back in the community's face that any anticipation or impatience is their fault for expecting anything. But I think my relationship to the community, which had the developers embedded right into it, will never be the same. It's become far too sensitive about how it is perceived. Any standards for accountability have been removed, and missteps, even ones that seem mild, can result in censorship. It's too weird of an environment for me personally but I doubt I'm the only one that feels this way. My advice (which I realize doesn't matter at all because you guys can do whatever you want) is to open up all channels of communication fully, bear the responsibility of having more patience than the average moron (even from tweets like mine), give yourself permission to just ignore critical people who lack far too much knowledge, and give more of a sense of the emotional tone of the development team. Is it truly that you guys don't care about missing goals and just accept it's a part of development (which it is), or is it that you guys are sometimes fairly disappointed you missed the mark by a certain amount of time, even considering the inevitable blockers that come up? I would find it very surprising if every delay and setback we've seen in the last year+ was no big deal but that seems to be the general tone that is publicly pushed: "Oh well. Stay patient." No hard feelings, just some real talk. As always, if I'm way off base anywhere, I'm open to being called on it.

True :(. Devs, perhaps consider not implementing the new renderer? For the health of certain Dayz players.

Well you have to consider the fact that people on the ground may also want that helicopter and destroying it won't do them any good. They could instead prefer to try and steal it if the opportunity arises. If they see a helicopter flying around the area maybe they'll just wait and see if it lands and take action from there. Also, because of the amount of parts it just means it's difficult for one person to get one functioning. In a group, however, it may be much easier and perhaps not even overly difficult if you have a group that's experienced at doing it.

Good status report, thanks guys! Lots to be excited about :)

We need these important questions answered.

I think a major issue too is people don't really think too much about what they want so they gravitate to what's comfortable. So people were so excited about a really hard game but then a few of their friends started playing DayZ COD/BF and all of a sudden that's where the social aspect was. Back to what's been pushed for the last decade or so. DayZ is a game with parameters and people create their experience within those parameters. Modding is breaking those parameters and fracturing the community. A game should be developed with a clear vision in mind and anyone who likes that can play it, others can make their own games. But when you give others an MMO to mod in minute ways that have a significant impact you really start breaking up the community. It's a bad decision in my opinion. Mods are people's way of saying this is how I think the game should be, but a culture and community from a game is created both by the things we love and loathe about it. The internet has created this idea that everyone should get exactly what they want all the time (which a mod may allow you to do), when really people just don't see the value in things not being 100% the way you want them. If people really don't like the way DayZ is, they should go create their own game. The developers are nice to even consider the opinions of modders, who I doubt represent any significant % of the overall player-base. Creativity is a great thing, but when someone creates they are under no obligation to let others break their game down in a million ways so that it no longer resembles the original vision.

I always found it weird that people were completely drawn in by the cut throat and frustrating nature of the game... only to gravitate towards huge amounts of weapons and vehicles to make the deathmatch easier. That game already exists a million times over.

I personally hope the modding the development team promotes and allows is very limited. The DayZ community became completely fractured as more and more mods were released. Modding on a large scale seems like a weird thing for an MMO. It feels like a residual ARMA mentality because that game sort of thrived off of modding. If I've understood people correctly (I've never really been into ARMA), the online game thrived on people creating missions/scenarios. DayZ doesn't work like that but for some reason people want to treat it the same way. Other than that gripe, this status report was awesome. Things are looking good in development :)

Will it be the new renderer that improves FPS? I think I'm most looking forward to that and MORE zombies. Those two things would just put the game on the exact track I always hoped it would take.

This only makes sense if we live in a utopia where there is significant variety in how the game is played. There isn't, even if a few people choose to play in different ways. Leaderboards only change how people play in that maybe they value their lives more so you have more people trying to stay alive and not putting themselves in hostile situations constantly. It doesn't stop you from choosing to be anything. It is a very light suggestion to the community to enjoy different aspects of what the game offers. It's a sandbox game, but very much a survival game. The game is completely about survival in a zombie apocalypse. The only thing the sandbox element does is allow you to opt out of the general theme that has been provided. Nothing about leaderboards or statistics stops you from opting out of that. It is a possible way to make the world more immersive by pushing people in the direction of survival without doing anything to force them into a certain style. Passive skills are the same thing. You could choose to keep dying but there are rewards for staying alive. There is no "losing" or some lack of "completion" for dying, but the rewards staying alive suggest that longevity matters.

I think you guys are losing the larger picture of the thread. I don't see anything wrong with something keeping track of how long you've been alive and letting you know on log in, or having that stat accessible at any time. I also don't see anything wrong with leaderboards for this stat alone. If it's a survival game, make one stat regarding how long you've been alive. That alone could curb some of the death match we typically see. I used to be on the board with "you choose how you play," argument but really all the vast majority of players want to do is shoot everything they see. If they die in a gunfight they're not too concerned about it because they can get everything they need to kill again quite quickly upon respawn. A Time Alive counter is a little mechanic that doesn't infringe much on the sandbox and immersive elements, but suggests a little more diversity with how you approach the DayZ world. Doubt they'd ever introduce anything telling you where players are. And @BleedoutBill I don't think he was knocking lone wolf as a general form of gameplay. I think he was saying lone wolves can't engage people, even in a friendly way, because they are at too much of a disadvantage against groups that are going to be hostile 99% of the time. There's a difference between being a lone wolf and being a hermit.

I agree with this whole topic. I don't mind the idea of leaderboards at all, and I definitely think it should tell you how much in-game time you have when you log in. Like Karmaterror pointed out, don't show the time you've spent off the game as well. I think this element could change the game completely. The harder the game gets and the higher that number, the more rewarding it is each time you stay alive longer and each time the game gets harder. The trick to leaderboards would be how much to show. Showing the average survival times of EVERY player could create a race to the bottom as much as it could create a race to the top. Do a top 5000 or something and it would at least give people benchmarks, even if they felt they couldn't reach the more ridiculous times. I'm not sure why the conversation on this died out. It came up a few times when the SA came out and then it basically disappeared... I don't know, maybe I've just been spending too little time here.

Oh the memories.

What are world containers?

It was always fun when you found one and you knew everyone could see them from super far away and you weren't sure if you were walking into a death trap.

This solution seems utopian. Zombies behave better AND performance is increased!? More, better zombies. That's extremely exciting. In one patch we may suddenly have ourselves a zombie game.

I can't believe this discussion never made it off the topic of pigs. I keep coming back hoping for more.

This also sounds important, but I'm not too knowledgeable on the details of programming and optimization and all that. What are the consequences of this? Essentially, what does it MEAN for the players? EDIT: Will it be a consequence of "disconnecting the renderer directly from the simulation" and potentially changing or completely replacing it? Also, this sounds like the sort of thing that proves why it will be better than any mod. Is this considered a fundamental change to the engine? It sounds like it.

Not from the devs? Who wrote this? http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/post/83623167155/experimental-branch-saw-many-changes-in-0-44

People are in here talking about domesticated pigs when this optimization section is quite possibly the biggest news we've gotten since the release. This. Would. Be. Huge.

...Weird time to write that given we were just told a changelog is coming and there will be an update tomorrow.

Your inability to spell or punctuate properly makes it difficult for me to take you seriously. That and the fact that you're making the common mistake of mixing up different areas of development to push the idea that things like guns are being worked on instead of those core features/problems, which hasn't been true since the first moron started saying it months and months ago.