Dekatris

i hate to be a downer, but i wouldn't buy this game. i'm gonna be honest here and say that i will usually steal a game until i know it's good. i'll play it for a few weeks and if i feel like it's a good game, i'll pay for it. Back in the day, there were demos, so this wasn't something i did, but now a days... not so much. for a game like this, it is a matter of the game drawing me in and keeping me engaged over the long haul. it doesn't. once you learn the map and get kitted out, there really isn't a goal. the survival game plays out pretty much the same over and over, and that gets boring quick. you have a little bit of difficulty nabbing some basic kit, after which it becomes easy to expand your kit so the only thing you are left with is pvp. if you're like me, pvp is great, especially the part where people cry about being killed and how the community has gone to shit and nobody works together... really, that shit gives me a massive boner. except not for ever. it's not that much of a thrill when you can get a full kit in a few hours. i'm not generating a deep enough sadness for even the pvp to be worth it. see... the thing about the total chaos of a real apocalypse is that it's boring. once you reach a certain point, it's just repetitive and shitty. the whole concept seems good at first, but when you think about it, unless repeating the same process for the same rewards ad infinum is fun for you, the premise of the game is kind of doomed. this is something i didn't recognize at first... i thought "WHY HASN'T THIS BRILLIANT THING BEEN DONE YET?!" however, over time. you get all the guns, you survive a while, you kill a bunch of zombies and survivors... so what? you end up wanting something more, which the game simply doesn't offer. players can "create" their own content in a sandbox, sure, but that is completely fleeting because there is no mechanism for persistence past log-off. you can build a stronghold like you could irl, but you eventually have to log off and someone will eventually find it while you are logged off and take your shit and it all becomes a game of when all of that will happen. the game as it is designed right now does not lend itself to true persistence because it is too close to reality to be a game. literally nobody is hardcore enough to stay online 24/7 to defend anything they might build and what you accumulate as an individual just caps off to quickly. i stopped playing 2 weeks ago and probably won't come back, but i wanted to express all of this because the concept has potential, but will need a LOT of work to become commercially viable.

you lose the whole element of danger in the scenario i presented there. it's an element that is not present in most other games. sure there are snipers in other games, but the ranges are much different, the maps and shootout scenarios much more predictable. you lose nearly all the value in having such a vast landscape as the arma 2 engine provides (as far as i can tell, the only GOOD thing about the arma 2 engine) when you limit combat to close and medium ranges. EDIT: also, don't take this as confrontational, i'm just trying to better emphasize my point.

getting sniped does suck, but it's also part of the realistic allure of the game. i mean, just last night, i logged in for the first time in a few days because i had some RL stuff to do over the weekend. i had an m4 with the red dot scope and flashlight, g17, TONS of ammo, food, medical supplies and an almost complete kit, just missing a rangefinder and nvgs. i run for a while through the woods to the north east airfield and hang out in the treeline, checking out the whole scene with my binoculars. Treelines are clear, tower is clear, every sniper spot i know of is clear. i hang out for 5-10 minutes just watching for movement anywhere on or near the airfield. after i am certain, that nobody is there, i start moving in from the north, working to minimize threat vectors. i make it to the actual strip and take a look around again; no one in sight. i get up into a crouch and start making my way to the hangars, now very much in full view of anyone looking. painfully aware of this and while distracted by that danger, i don't notice a zombie that was inside the hangar. he aggros on me and i reverse direction to kite him and take a shot, killing him instantly. i immediately go prone, knowing that if anyone was around and not paying attention before, they were now... i was right. i hear a round land right next to me and roll in the opposite direction. a couple of more rounds land but they are landing all around me, there is nowhere to go to dodge or hide, i'm too exposed. i can't hear the shots, so i can't even tell where to look to fire back. the fifth shot hits me and instantly, i'm dead. 12,000 blood to dead in a single shot. he wasn't good, but he was smart. it's an element you face in this game, just as you would in a real scenario like this. i would much sooner see survivors start armed again than see sniper rifles removed. there is an undeniable element of realism to scoped rifles being in the game; many hunters have them. it is much less reasonable that somebody would survive this far into the zombie apocalypse unarmed, and even so the starting condition is an arbitrary element to be decided by the storyteller. EDIT: Grammar

this is demonstrably false.

i agree as much as it is possible to agree. the super-human zombies are absolutely game breaking, despite what the sado-masochists may want you to believe. ignore for a moment how unrealistic that the undead would bear the tremendous speed and coordination these zombies manifest, the game engine simply can't handle fast zombies. the frame rates are too low, regardless of hardware specs, and the client-server communication is too laggy. arma 2 is not a run-and-gun engine, putting run-and-gun style zombies into it does not work well.

it's really great that such a great idea for a game is being brought to life in such a myopically boring and seemingly masochistic manner... really... a zombie survival game would never be fun if you could go around blasting zombies. i mean, who would want to do that? it's not like most people have limited free time and can't afford to spend 45 minutes watching zombie movements to sneak into a firehouse that ends up spawning a bunch of ammo for every gun you don't have. it's not like there are OTHER play styles that people enjoy. seriously, this is great news for new players; "oh, you thought you could spawn in and have fun? you know what's fun? sitting there and waiting. so much fun. sooooo, sooooo much fun." c'mon... i appreciate that the OP is trying to be helpful, and he definitely is for the present state of the game. but the present state of the game is NOT helpful to end goal of having fun.

he're the problem... this is an alpha, right? alpha's are about getting a read on functionality of various elements, right? by introducing an element like "starting without a gun," you are not testing functionality, you are testing user response. when users complain about that element, they are doing what they are supposed to. if you are s sperglord for realism and like it, good for you, start a thread about it (just like you did here, except without complaining about other people's opinions). if your dick gets hard whenever you have a bad time, cool, "rocket needs YOU!" to tell him what a masochist you are; kudos! if you think people aren't going to complain about starting in a game where the main focus is surviving and killing things without a gun for literally no reason other than to make it harder*, you are most likely further along on the scale of autism than you think. * - i say this because how the hell is it more "realistic" of a scenario that you start halfway through a zombie apocalypse without a gun? the back story is ENTIRELY in the hands of the developer and the developer is face with a choice for how hard he is going to make it. he may be committed and not interested in what we have to say, he may not be. last i heard, he did read these forums and does consider how people feel. so by all means, advocate your position, cool, but don't come down on people with differing opinions because when you do, we're going to do the same to you.

true fact: i play this game to kill players in a zombie apocalypse sandbox setting. i don't care when other people kill me, i get more mad when some retarded zombie aggros me through a wall than when a player actually makes me dead.

Perfect example of a good argument ruined by immature posting. Why can some people not present their arguments like a normal adult? so you are complaining that someone that you assume is a grown ass adult that is playing a video game is acting childish. someone must see the irony here... anybody?

agreeing on the general premise of zombie combat being terrible, though i don't think making them more powerful is the solution on it's own. as they are they are faster than the player by a good margin, but have to stop to attack, meaning that while they will ALWAYS keep up with you unless you break line of sight (which is hard when they have xray vision and super-hearing, or at least did in 1.7.1.4 before i uninstalled out of frustration with things getting worse, not better). they also jink harder than a fly - if you have ANY framerate issues or lag, you are consistently not going to hit them, no matter how good your aim is. they should move like players do, be slower than a player running at full sprint, but be able to attack while moving. none of this darting left and right like crazy and STILL catching up to you. i am with you on the leg breaking mecahninc. i am not for removing the bleeding and knockout dynamics, the are a critical part of creating a tension in the game. however, the bleeding should be slower than it is now from zombie bites or scratches and much faster from say... bullet wounds.

good, i hope everyone starts doing this because starting with nothing is retarded.

be mindful of the version of the servers you connect to - if the server is a different version, you will usually have no debug monitor, no sound, or any number of other issues.

there are some serious issues with weapon sizes in this game... i fully understand an assualt rifle taking up tons of space, but how the hell are pistols, flashlights, or hatchets as big as they are? how about we bring SOME realism to the size of items.