xalienax

+1 I don't deny the very real impact the current implementation Of 3pp has on game play. i don't think anyone rational does. but the argumentative and divisive attitudes don't help. Instead, we should be discussing and putting constant pressure on the devs for practical solutions that result in a better single game, instead of bickering and dividing into 2 'camps'.

Altho I disagree, +1 for a well-thought counter argument :) 1.) Aircraft have already been confirmed. The topic of the poll is based on the idea that they WILL be in regardless, in which case what would be preferable/fit better. - 2.) I don't think it has to scale to real life. If that was the case we should also be able to maintain our state with drastically less frequent consumption of food/drink even under heavy exertion. Many concessions are made to make the game better/more interesting since most people don't actually play for 24 hours. the same could be said about the amount of humans to a vehicle seeing as one server does not represent the entire surviving population of a country the size of chernarus. Larger clans squads are evectively the 'regional powers/militias' within a server - 3.) I actually agree with you here. it's perfectaly viable to function without vehicles. even so- theres no doubt the effort and time required to find fix and maintain incentivizes group play which is a form of interaction which the game strives for. you are then rewarded with an immense advantage in travel time and the almighty eagle eye. - 4.) Imho dayZ was better for borrowing from Arma. there were shortfalls for sure. fuel was to easy to come by, parts for that matter to easy to tote around the map on foot, etc. but the idea of realism even where it mean imbalance i actually prefer. Situational awareness and planning should be the cornerstones of success in dayZ always. getting hit in the chest cavity with high caliber rifle rounds without modern medical facilities should be almost a 100% death sentence even if not always instant. failing to see the other guy first and make your move on your terms should result in death. - 5.) I agree with you again. I have even stopped playing in frustration for the time being, but continue to argue for what i feel will be a better game in the end. the Point of this topic and the poll however, was not our opinion on if they should be in to begin with, but if they are, how best to handle them and what types would be best.

there was a time when this issue mattered to me. Then I seen the attitudes on both sides of the argument. not an attitude of finding the best solution that lets everyone play the same game on the same terms but instead its all either '3pp players are cheaters' or '1pp players are elitist try-hards'. shame. it's the sort of behavior i have come to expect, but shame. the Right thing to do would to have been to take a well liked feature of the mod (the ability to see ones character/area) and WORK ON IT, so that it can't be easily exploited in combat. Instead the community is devided into to separate shards and the game isn't even done yet. When the game is done, if it has solid core play, reliable mechanics and persistence that works *reliably* i don't freaking care. at all. I'll play where my friends play rather its 1pp or 3pp regardless of if 'peeking' is ever fixed or not. the whining and elitism is worse then peeking. the dividing of the community still worse then that. But hey what ever. lets cop-out and re-hash the same argument over and over again instead of demanding a single branch for all players with a workable solution to the camera's exploitable nature.

then simply don't vote? the poll isn't 'Do you want aircraft' the poll is 'What would you prefer assuming were going to have one/some anyways'

If anything imho they should be ultralight-type aircraft- hopefully with a somewhat authentic flight model that requires some degree of multi-tasking and skill to use. Please guys don't kid yourselves. a TON of the material taught in flight-schools deals with precision navigation traffic patterns and procedures designed around safely operating an aircraft in airspace where you are not alone in the skies (especially near an airport!) There already exists a variety of build-at-home kits for 'ultra light' aircraft that the average joe can assemble and operate (albiet at their own risk.) will they be able to maintain a precision course in poor weather over hundreds of miles? of course not. infact even gusty winds can be very dangerous for them, but dont kid your self into thinking you some how need years or even months of formal education to operate something that is little more then an oversized lawnmower engine attached to a tube frame, 2 rotors, and a chair. Larger aircraft with complex engines and instrumentation like the MI-8, even the huey for that matter, would be completely impractical in a survival /apocalypse scenario. i can see a hand full of clever individuals managing to get an ultralight working and using it as a scouting vehicle.

i always wished there was a way to just disable VON for side channel specifically as a server setting. side/global text In-game is a nice feature that should stay imho. sad to see more servers going to clunky Out-Of-game systems :(

Epoch is really aimed at the clan/squad scene. everything from the economy, to the more heavily defended 'missions' to the higher end base materials. if your not playing with friedns/group and attacking/raiding other groups it gets boring easy mode after you have the basics in place. A Lone survivor can easily whack down a camo net and a tiny shack with a safe in a wooded hillside somewhere and be relatively left alone. @OP: Definitely start with vanilla. still has active servers and good gameplay- branch out from there if you so desire. dayZCommander hasn't worked right since the change over to steam after the gamespy shutdown. (I seem to recall someone saying the guy wasn't even supporting it anymore?) at any rate simply installing the mod and launching thru steam is adequate for vanilla. if you want to start branching out, get the dayZ Launcher and use that.

actually i would like loot scalled back across the board- then hunger/thrist rates reduced in scale (eating/drinking maybe 1-2 times per hour at most, of active traveling to maintain state) but passing thru many villages to find one canned food/drink item. having 5 bullets and a firearm should feel like an achievement. serious impact on stamina from weight carried too. id like to have to actually choose between that extra magazine or the canteen for a long trek and making the wrong call to be possibly fatal when i find the next town devoid of food/drink.

Sound interesting, but im still waiting for major improvements in game play and the ability to focus on more long term goals. Before i can really get back into SA i'll need to see- - Zombie pathing/collision truly fixed. - Hit detection and desynch (netcode) addressed and resolved. No more phantom hits from things that clearly should have missed. (even if client connection standards must be tightened on official servers to ensure quality) - building/barricading in and working with a degree of reliability - Global loot actually working as intended across the public hive. - Persistence and persistent storage actually being reliable. - Stamina that actually makes sense and scales with load/exertion/time

the choppers need to fly around the map and actually crash and burn. allowing players to hear them flying/crashing/exploding and see the smoke column of a fresh one. central loot economy will address excess amounts of M4 concerns. lesser Mil loot and attachments can be supplemented into the chopper crashes as needed.

it's literally gotten to the point that i find the constant belly aching and elitism about perspective 10x worse then any harm to gameplay caused by 'peeking'. geeze. the mere fact that the community had to be split over it is disgusting- but then, i don't expect most folks online to have any semblance of rational thought or the ability to carry on a constructive debate/discussion based on facts and verifiable information. instead its always the dividing into 2 camps, then pointing and blaming the other side for all that's wrong with the game. because you know, that's the easy thing to do. to be entirely frank; When and if the game ever gets to a point that makes me want to play again, I'll play what ever servers the people i like to team with are set up on. 1pp, 3pp, public, private, it's all bullocks to me. It's all about the experience and immersion right? for me that comes from the people i play with. Not rather a floating camera can or cant be used to see over a stupid wall. Tl;DR At this point i have moved out of the 1pp/Fix 'broken 3pp' camp into the neutral middle ground of 'I don't care at all'. Mainly because of the narrow minded attitudes in the 1pp camp.. and things aren't much better in the 3pp camp. both sides are fulla folks who are un-interested in practical solutions that will produce an enjoyable experience, even if it's not one that caters to their individual taste.

@ Evil, well written mate. I think some of the hostility may come from the use of the term 'exploit' kinda makes its sound like anyone playing in 3pp is 'cheating'. As you pointed out, And I too; feel the vast majority just don't care about how the camera can be 'abused' and aren't actively 'trying to abuse' it. I have played a fair bit of 1pp and 3pp In dayZ mod, SA, Arma 2 & 3 alike, and both are interesting in their own ways. That said I do appreciate that the way the camera is positioned so far back, and worse above the player model can in fact be used to gain an advantage that massively changes HOW you play the game. Infact many of us do it without even thinking about it. Look at almost any 3pp video and your see things like people running up to walls to 'peek over' or even deliberately manipulate the camera so that it goes 'inside' a wall thus allowing you to see thru the building your in. neither of these make for good gameplay.

actually BM is basically Halflife HD i bought it from steam expecting nothing more then to relive HL1 with updated graphics and got what i paid for. Don't really see the 'need' to develop it further. As for dayZ- I bought it on day 1 hoping for vanilla mod with with better anti-cheat and optimizations. time will tell if it will give what i had hoped for or not. Recently i have started playing mod again and it felt like 'going back home'. I hope the finished version of SA gives me the same feeling- if it doesn't then it fails as a continuation of dayZ in *my eyes*. *Its worth stating that I don't thing being different make it a bad game- just that my view point is colored by playing mod since 2012. vanilla mods IS THE STANDARD anything with the name 'dayZ' will always be compared to for me. much like many people enjoyed Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Taken by it's self it was a great game with some nice inovations, but i was always resentful towards it because i associate the BF franchise with the likes of BF2 and BF1942.

I do like the size and variety of Altis (thats the big one right? been a while since I Played A3) it think it would go a ways to vary things up having the epidemic seem more global across other parts of the 'world'.

1. fruit/berries/etc should be visable, Physical objects 2. If there is none, there is none. button mashing and hoping RNG is nice to you is a horrible mechanic for something like dayZ. FAR to gamey. it needs to be "What you see is What you get". 3. When fruit is generated (perhaps at restarts?) it should vary between primarily ripe fruit, Primarily raw/non-Ripe fruit, and pramarily rotting fruit/no fruit. simply looking at the bush should tell you if its worth bothering.

+1 to OP. I don't agree with many choices the devs have made, but ultimately, I had to accept I just can't tolerate the current state and have left the SA until release or late beta. Maybe it will deliver what I like, mabye it wont. In the mean time, I have the more hardcore & vanilla Mod servers and Elite: Dangerous to keep me occupied :) No Point in wasting afternoons 'shitposting' with anger directed at people who enjoy/appreciate something that I just don't. As i have said in my 'going away' post- Spending so much time in the mod has left me with a very narrow view of what i will consider a 'good dayZ'. it might be a great survival game, but if it doesn't remind me of the times i Had in the vanilla mod i wont like it, because that is the benchmark against i will always compare anything bearing the name 'DayZ'.

@OP If your frustrated with the state of game I suggest you do the same I did; and take an extended break until beta/release. (the last I played was after the failed deployment of the global loot economy and roll back of that) Maybe you'll like how it goes, maybe not. I had many of the same 'gripes' in my wall-o-text 'im leaving the game' thread. I don't completely agree with many design choices, Priorities, etc, and would have much rather had that "ported-over and fixed-up" version of the vanilla mod. I guess that's the can of worms you open when you try to iterate on a free mod that went Viral and had a HUGE playerbase. you are dealing with a sizeable contingent of your customers who will have well defined notions of what 'makes the game what it is' and that's not gona change. all the new toys and 'features' in the world wont make us happy if it doesn't 'feel the same'. -see you on the other side

I started DayZ back in the early days of the MOD. The VERY early days. Before all the overhauls and re balances started, when it was first becoming a wildfire. It was first brought to my attention by fellow ARMA players and i soon found my self immersed in this strange new thing. Trading in my M1A2 Abrams tank for a pack and some survival essentials and setting off into the wilderness the perpetual tension and uncertainty kept it intense at all times. Some of my best memories aren't of pitched battles in the NWAF or of Killing noobs in cherno ,but of wandering thru the woods in the dark a nervous wreck because im sure i heard foot steps but cant see anything. Like many I was excited the moment I heard the announcement that there would be an SA! Great i thought! Finally we can get back to the official version with some optimization and anti cheat improvements. Also like many, I was eager to throw my money at something I knew I already Liked.. or thought I already liked. I purchased the first day it was available on steam and that first week was probably the high point of the SA for me. As time drew on tho, as change upon change rolled out i cant help but feel the SA is trying to separate it's self from the MOD rather then be a continuation of it with improvements. I've already gotten more Joy from DayZ then many AAA titles I Paid 59.99 USD for only to hate and wish i could get my money back 2 days later. But the nagging feeling remains that the SA will never recapture my haydays in the mod and will likely just be to little, to late. I feel there is a move towards gamey-ness and Balance that was lacking by nature of ArmA being a simulator which i found to be preferable. I hate the attachment system, the shared ammo that shouldn't actually work. and disagree with many of the developer's priorities. All-In-All I don't care what rocket's vision was. it doesnt matter to me. brand/dev loyalty is nothing but harmful to the individual consumer- But i would like to thank all the developers for all thier hard work and many hours of fun in both the official mod and early days of the SA. Sadly I'll now be retiring to other titles probably until full-release when i may take another look to see how it all turned out. I don't feel the SA will ever be the vanilla mod 2.0 with Better FPS and security that I had hoped for. See you on the flip-Side; -A Bitter Mod-Vet :P

This came later. When the official vanilla "public hive" was the only show in town things were much better. its was the ideal mix IMHO. There was and will always be PvP, But you could avoid it or even turn it to your advantage. More then once i watched 2 survivors shoot each other up only to watch one kill the other and then the 'winner' of the fire fight bleed out or get mobbed by zeds.. leaving me to pick thru both thier loot :P Again no point in arguing which offers more 'enjoyment' as that is subjective, All i can say Is SA feels like to much extra 'clunk'. I like a nice clean UI not those nagging textual messages. Gear Menu in SA Feels fumbly as well compared to arma.. tho arma's gear could be just as bad for someone who didnt already have several years of arma experience so i'll plop that in the subjective category as well. After they got illness in Mod felt 'Survivaly' enough to add a unique element. zombies worked better, and there were more of them. That said I Won't go full rose-tinted glasses either- There were clear issues and exploits that went un-checked for a long time. The lack of any way to limit spawns long term meant that you clouldnt balance by rarity as eventually everything would end up getting either duped or just farmed via 'loot cycling'. Long range fire was to easy just using page up/down to dial up the range and fire with laser accuracy. I dont think the solution is craptastic weapons that basically mandate 'attachments' to be brought anywhere close to realistic accuracy values. rather get that central loot economy working right. Add more calibers of rounds and do away with the interchange-ability that wouldn't work IRL. now having a gun an 5 bullets is an achievement.

I have done for a While. I wouldn't say its all cynical either. as i mentioned in my OP it has already earned its price and then some. Not done following it and will certainly keep an 'ear to the ground' but as it stands I feel they have made certain choices (not bugs/Alper-related Issues But actual design decisions) that move it further away from what I had hoped for. At this point i would say my position is "Hoping for the best, But not expecting it". I will definately give it a Looksie if they do anything HUGE or at release but im pretty much done playing for now. I wouldn't call it 'Greater immersion' i would call it 'more tedious approaches to the same thing'. I think in some ways less was more. just adding tons of STUFF doesn't make something good. But this is ultimately a matter I'd have to respectfully disagree on, as what results in 'better game-play' or 'more immersive' is extremely subjective. I still stand my my assertion that dayZ was better for being part of arma. Sure they can focus more on civie gear and mre detailed medical simulation, But at the end of the day ArmA was never intended to be balanced at all and that was a good thing. They should have gone even further and made the shooting mechanics more akin to ACE and kept as realistic ballistics and damage model as feasibly possible within technical limitations. The move towards balance disgusts me and feels like casualization of the worst kind. few Examples; The current effect of Clothing on damage The simplification of ammo types that would not be interchangeable IRL (makes it easier to gear up and be wreckless) Gimped Base Stats on weapons to incentivize attachment system. 24/7 day even being an option Accelerated time even being an option Again im speaking as a soley consumer/Player. I dont care at all about the business side/ IP value / etc.

Too Much detail imho. For me it's a case of less was more. SA has become a bit of an exercise in tedium. (And this from an EVE online player, A game many have described as 'spreadsheets in space'). It's not so much about game's pacing either. heck im all for less loot, less hacks, More challenge, etc. For example the Textual status messages and having to go to the gear screen to see a permanent status message. I much prefered the basic HUD in vanilla mod. A clear representation of I have a broken bone, I Am hungry(and how severely) same with thirst and body temperature. It's not easy mode.. i don't want the debug screen back that shows exact amount of Blood and all that but a constant real time representation of the things i would be able to 'feel' in real life would be much better. I also Hate 24/7 daytime, Accelerated time. etc. I wanted Mod part 2 with improvements- primarily focused around fixing bugs/exploits and improving performance. Many of us who bought on day 1 before a clear roadmap was out pretty much had that expectation. not about being dramatic or anything just pretty much 'has nothing more to offer' at this point. atleast nothing more that i care for.

Maybe for some? I know myself and many others just wanted vanilla mod 'fixed' and released as standalone with optimizations. take my money and leave it alone before you break something! lol t some extent I think that was the original intention more or less untill it sold like hotcakes and they got more ambitious. personally i think that was a detriment. To each their own i guess. I wanted vanilla mod without the hackers and better FPS in towns. maybe throw in a few new elements but that's about it.

Sorry "de-forrested" I miss the rolling hills of dense trees. :'(

More crappy urban just what we (dont) need.

Welcome to MMO land. Also this has nothing to do with being over or under powered its about getting the best, and giving your avatar the best possible chance of surviving. Better gear is no certainty but it is definitely an advantage.