septuscap

I gotta say, I was seeing red at first but Lee Vilayer handled this really well imo.

I think it's important to bold the "features" because while DayZ is billed as a sandbox, there is a HUGE distinction between sandbox games and sandbox mentality. I could join a BF2 game and aside from the fact that there is a win condition, it has the same "sandbox" elements as DayZ -- that is to say, none. The persistence + LACK of a win condition ALLOWED players to mess around like they would in a sandbox, but there are no sandbox tools besides those inherent to any game. Take away the win conditions of ANY shooter, and you'd have the same essence as DayZ. I can snipe in BF2, or heal people, or hoard vehicles, or take their kit after I kill them. Compare this to an ACTUAL sandbox like Ultima, EVE, minecraft. Players can take on different roles entirely all within the same game. In order for that to happen, the GAME needs to create environments that FACILITATE players filling these roles. Clearly some games are more suited to certain roles than others, but I just don't see it ever developing in DayZ. It's been 6 months with zero progress, I expect the same pace in standalone.

This game has the shittiest synchronization I've ever seen, keep fanboying.

Or maybe you use your eyes before instinctively hitting reply and posting useless shit?

You keep saying there are no statistics when arma2.swec.se offers them. And the numbers aren't good. What does the industry think about LOSING 1.3 million players in less than 3 months? And really 1.3 million means jack shit when you have hackers cracking your cd keys and giving you a +1 every time they evade their ban. I will always be grateful to DayZ for showing the industry how much people want sandbox games, but I was not impressed with the quality of the game. Except that DayZ crashed mid-summer around July.

You're the guy that had to wait for everyone else to point out Waldo aren't you. "O-o-o-of course I saw him already I was just waiting for the next one" -Muffinman at age 5

http://arma2.swec.se/game/statistics gives real stats (including "unofficial"), and the game has been crashing and burning. DayZ is in alpha, ARMA IS NOT. Game is broken, bugged, and hacked, mod delivers no new features for months on end. Pair that with fundamental flaws in design and you get players moving on. Edit: to your point, yea once everyone bails on the game, hackers will get bored trolling the 20k remaining fanboys.

If you're playing a game of chess and some one comes by and knocks all the pieces over, you don't have to care a lot about chess to be mad at the fucker. He has a problem with HACKING.

Yes we call them fucking morons.

1. You don't just trust randoms, and you SURE AS SHIT don't trust them when you have gear you want to hold onto. Would it have been so hard to put your shit on a tent/vehicle and go meet them with some scrub gear? 2. When some one with a thick Australian accent asks you for no reason if you're an American, the correct answer is 1) NO, or 2) *SHOOT THEM IN THE FACE* 3. You purposely turning your back on some one aiming at your head does not inspire trust. You're a moron. 4. If you don't say something interesting, what do you offer to the group? In other words, you must at all times add more value than the novelty of killing and teabagging your corpse.

There's rarely one cause for anything really, and you listed a few of the factors. A lot of it had to do with DayZ being the only sandbox available. Like early MMO's, when you're the only game on the block you don't have to offer much. Moving to the next game was NOT the chief reason though. Yes Guildwars2 came out, but most people I know play multiple games, and I see many people playing OLDER games instead of DayZ. You can only offer a broken, buggy, hacked game with no actual content besides hunger/thirst for so long before people move on. Boredom, frustration, better alternatives, whatever you want to call it. The PvP was decent but the context rarely changed (I would argue making vehicles rare had a lot to do with this, but that alone would only have added so much). The goals were pretty weak (drop tent, drive vehicle around, that's it?). The features were pretty poorly implemented (server hopping, combat logging, humanity farming, etc). The pace of new content was extremely slow, bordering on non-existent (oh we removed pistols on spawn, we changed cz spawn rates, we removed bandit skins, we added bandit skins -- when the fuck will a new feature ever be implemented? My bet is on never). And the level of polish of ArmA, the underlying game, gave little confidence for the standalone, and made for a hugely frustrating DayZ experience. It's easy to overlook killing a buddy by walking into him, getting killed by trees/rocks/doors/etc, having to work around a shitty interface for loot, doors, doorWAYS, ladders, etc, hacks, etc. But eventually you just say fuck it.

Okay here's "constructive." When random gamers fix your bugs in a private hive before you do it on the official mod, you're going to get shit for it. And people will question your ability to make a proper product at all. When you constantly argue ArmA's niche means you can get away with sloppy coding (re: blatant security flaws, shitty UI, horrible desync with < 50 players, horrible physics bugs killing you, etc), you hurt your future sales. I am in software, and it pisses me off to no end when people use budget as an excuse for shitty code. It wouldn't take you MORE time to have coded it right, you just made the MISTAKE of coding it wrong. And you hiding behind a small company or low budget just makes me think I'm in for more of the same with ArmA3/standalone DayZ. Big surprise, the fanboys' kneejerk reaction of "NO IT'S JUST PRIVATE HIVES" was complete bullshit.

I personally knew upwards of 100 people playing DayZ. Of those, I know of 2 who still play. I don't think I'm an isolated case either, so you can shove your head in the sand if you want, but the 250k -> 70k stat is the only hard # you have. Even a casual glance at the lobby will show utterly vacant servers.

So if some one else loses their gear it's okay but you losing your gear is unacceptable. Typical ArmA idiots.

Venthos, there is a difference between "sanctioned" and sloppily coded. Letting anyone run a script on the SERVER is sloppy. In fact it's not just sloppy, it's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of. HACKING from the perspective of an untrusted client leaves you a lot less room to exploit (ie. reading incoming data destined for your client to figure out there is another player in the vicinity, etc, versus spawning in weapons, teleporting around the world, implementing god mode, etc). How about auth servers to prevent rampant cd key hacking? I could go on but you're obviously even more retarded than Bohemia. Thanks for linking some pseudo-education which most people use to inform themselves instead of actually knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

the best is when you're prone by a tree for cover and as you turn you get "caught" on a root and the tree kills you. AAA gaming right here.

rocket's already said as much with his "minecraft model" (how dare he sully the name really), aka shitty bug infested hacked to shit arma release.

from 220k players daily to 100k and falling. You're gonna eat those words. I personally won't buy anything from Bohemia again.

Sometimes "realism" isn't very real because gamers will just meta-game the system. So you've taken away quick healing? Great now everyone's just suiciding in a safe location and running back to get their gear. Instant heal, annoying gameplay, but everyone would be forced to do it so that you'd be at full hp for your next encounter (as your opponent most definitely will). Giving some one a transfusion back to full HP may not be realistic, but it makes for damn good gameplay; from hitting hospitals for meds to covering fallen allies while they're resuscitated. And whoever complained that people are popping blood bags and "getting right back into the fight" obviously doesn't PvP very much, because USUALLY when you're hit in this game, you're respawning. If not, your allies have to risk their hides to get to you when an enemy is obviously staring at your bloody carcass through a scope. In that regard, ArmA hit the nail on the head I would say; it's awesome to lay out some suppressive fire and drag your buddy behind a building to heal him up, fantastic gameplay. Honestly the whole grayscale/shaky/blurry vision thing is stupid and would be better replaced with reduced run speeds, louder breathing fx (similar to how players can hear you pop a soda), etc, that could last even after a blood bag; say once you're critical, you're debuffed for 30 minutes regardless of whether you heal -- long enough to matter, short enough that no one'll be suiciding to work around it.

I don't know if this is well known, but you can still operate a broken vehicle. FIRST thing I do when I find a spawned vehicle is hide it. THEN fix it up.

The "thrill of death," aka the 10 minutes it would take me to re-gear sans tent? How about the thrill of fighting other groups to keep your vehicles and tents secure? Because I found that to be the feature that kept many people playing. I, and most end-game players, can grab gear from a coastal city in no time flat, it's just not even a factor in our gameplay. How many tents do you see stocked with backpacks, compasses, binoculars, matches, etc? You don't, b/c end-game players literally just pick it up within 30 seconds of spawning.

If SURVIVAL is difficult/exciting for you, you're a moron. Literally. Go sit on a hill, kill a boar, start a fire, then sit there for 4 hours eating meat. The reason tents and vehicles add so much to the game is because they are the subtle beginnings of territorial conflict. For those players who are actually IN clans, you start noticing who is grouped with who on your server, where they tend to be, where their STUFF tends to be, and how best to take theirs and keep yours. You might be the kind of guy who maxes a char to level 40 in an MMO and instantly rolls another one to start at level 1, but for many people, that's not a game, that's a hamster wheel. Yes, it's exciting to play a game for the first time and be "completely lost," but it's pretty tough to keep getting that feeling from the same game. It's not something any dev should try and aim for, because it'll always be trumped by the actual act of PLAYING A NEW GAME.

Haven't seen a single legit feature change since they started this "experiment." Weapon/ammo/food/zombie spawns + sandbox. I am a huge sandbox fan, but ArmA was always a shitty game (everyone I knew put up with it for the sake of zombie sandbox), and the development has basically been at a stand still, with rocket talking out of his ass here and there. If Bohemia knew not to trust the client there'd be less prolific hacking. If they knew how to code there'd be fewer physics glitches. If they weren't total retards we wouldn't be wrestling with THE worst UI in gaming history. If we're lucky, the industry will notice the demand for sandbox gaming and assign competent developers to this starving genre.

Consider the fact that once the sniper rifle is spawned in, it is in the game for good. When you die, chances are some one else will pick it up. So yes it takes "all night" to farm a sniper rifle from NWAF. But as time goes on, more and more sniper rifles are being spawned into the game, and very few are being flushed out via unlooted players and bugs. The best way to "farm" gear is to look for PLAYER CAMPS. Take what you need, don't be greedy, and many camps won't even bother moving (they'll chock it up to bugs, a buddy must've taken it, etc). There is so much gear floating around the map now I'm surprised when I encounter a player who's NOT in military gear. Well, except that I don't play anymore, the game is crashing and burning from hacking and bad designers/developers, etc. From 220k players to 150k, and falling. GJ rocket, the players basically HAND you a game of the year by setting up shop in your bug infested shithole (read: only sandbox on the market), and you can't deliver.

Hopefully people take note that people are ditching the game en masse due to ArmA's script injection "feature" (aka sloppy coding).