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Hi mate, been a while. I, for one, find your idea interesting but not really fitting the concept. Chernarus in my opinion should remain vast, even if there seem to be areas of "nothing" in-between. Not only it is often not nothing and in the seeming middle of nowhere you can find some interesting structures, both to marvel at and hide a barrel in, but the space itself serves a purpose. Can you imagine vehicles in a 1sqm area? Even if only one spawned, half the time you would hear some engine constantly droning in the distance. And what about hunting, what kind of animals could you successfully chase and hunt in such a small habitat? And personally, I just like having vast spaces all to myself. Until the final game mechanics arrive, I give a wide berth to all those "exciting interactions" because I find them actually somewhat boring and ridiculous. First of all, interactions can't possible give me anything, i.e. there is literally nothing I could use another player for (at the moment, unstucking vehicles is probably the only thing an experienced survivor could use a hand with). Therefore, the possible outcomes are limited to either "okay, we had a nice chat" or "one of us is dead or sent running". Strategically speaking, as far as surviving chances of my toon are concerned (and I really try to "be" my character), approaching another player is the most stupid thing we could do next to drinking gasoline. Perhaps if the game was much harder...? Secondly, DayZ combat "physics", under which everyone runs faster than bullets and punches harder than the Hulk, is... look, I just don't think there's a less authentic FPS on the market, unless we count the first Wolfenstein. 75% of videos I've seen, the only thing they miss is that Benny Hill soundtrack. But I firmly believe that the devs have something up their sleeve to actually make interactions worthwhile and interesting in more ways than "I'm bored with looting and thus ready to die". Until then, I'm just happy with focusing on making my toon thrive and explore, drive around and hunt.

Not at all considering I could link you some of those “lists” that say how everything is going to be complete ... in 2015 , 2016 and 2017 ... you surely see why we don’t take those silly lists as concrete info , yeah ? The dayz devs have simply lost their steam , they are operating at half the speed and passion that they were before , despite saying that patches would be bigger and more content laden now that were closer to beta . Hicks said that, what , 8 months ago and we still have yet to see one patch with content improving the game towards its final goal? They mentioned that big patches would be more spread apart but I hardly think anyone was ready for this long dry spell that seems to be becoming the norm for the dayz devs ; where as before they were taking longer for patches they would at least be talking to us CONSTANTLY on Twitter , forums , showing us new stuff on trello , and now ? All we get is baty chiming in when there’s another useless experimental that no one will play except for those silly die hards ... We all want to follow this game , but every time we check for info it’s the same sad story : “we’re getting close to beta , here’s a list of bullshit for you to read but we won’t show any more gifs , videos or screenshots of concrete proof we’ll just talk about it as we have for the past year by telling you about how we finally have rivers” . Week after week passes , month after month - what happened to the dayz devs transparency ? Are they now only allowed to talk to the community that supports them (and made this game what it is ) when status reports come ? Which, btw , have been lacking hard the past few months - just regurgitating the same old info in each one. All we can say is things have changed with the dayz devs for the worse - and you can’t argue that as a fact - less tRansparency and more regurgitated BS “to keep us busy” is a slap In the face of the community and their intelligence , and always a bad thing , not a good thing - if your devs dont have time anymore to talk to us then fucking hire someone with our money that we poured into your development 4 years ago . We’re not stupid , we know things can at least be talked about if it’s taking this long .. the fact that everything is being kept tight lipped is either a huge dick move to “pleasantly surprise us” (unlikely at this point) or more likely it’s simply a tell tale sign that things aren’t going as smooth as they present it to be behind the scenes . Let’s hope the devs go back to their roots , because as of this point I can’t respect their decisions to keep so silent , and I definitely can’t play the game with it being broken in many ways (Cle , vehicles fucked on full servers + no one destroying the engines to respawn them , pvp is janky and desync ridden , zombies are a joke , survival is a joke , etc etc).

To the DayZ development team. Starting this of I currently have 300+ hours on the DayZ standalone game with more than 1000+ hours on the Arma 2 DayZ mod and other mods like Arma 3 Exile ect. The reason I am naming that is because I would like to share my opinion about DayZ and how it can be improved and brought back on its feet. DayZ is an hardcore survival game, but there needs to be a line between fun and being a chore. DayZ is currently not fun unfortunately. The game feels as if it does not know what it wants to be. In the past when DayZ standalone was announced all that the people wanted was the Arma 2 Dayz mod without the bugs and with better graphics... Not with 100 more clothing items. DayZ still has massive potential that can be seen by just looking at the amount of people still playing the Arma 2 DayZ mods. There is still a market for this game it just needs to be looked into. Unfortunately the player base has changed and have grown used to features like base building in mods like Exile and Epoch. Though this is only because it is a late game feature and something to do after acquiring a full gear set. If DayZ can invent a new "late game idea" it could already attract that player base. Now to get to the feedback on how to improve DayZ and how to get the player base back. Firstly we have 3 stages in the game = Early game, Mid game and Late game. But before we jump into those stages DayZ needs to improve on something. Its atmosphere. When I think back I get a certain feeling in my belly when I think about the Arma 2 Dayz mod, and that is what you want to create here as well. I think a huge missed opportunity thus far is sounds and music... by adding these (with additional options to turn them louder, softer or off of course) will immediately make the game more atmospheric. I mean just imagine a horror movie with no music... not scary. So for example adding this or something similar: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r68uZehZqN8 ) Could greatly improve the overall feeling of the game. I mean just read the comments on that video... that is what made DayZ great THAT is what you want in this game! EARLY GAME: Weapons: Currently the early game basically is just running around on a coastal city picking up clothes and engaging in fist fights and melee weapons. This is unfortunately boring. Human interaction is what makes DayZ a great game but not by forcing it onto people, it is having the option to kill. Thus weapon spawns needs to be increased. If weapon spawns are increased it will immediately improve early game fun and increase the tempo of the game. I am not saying make every house a gun shop but there needs to be a decent amount. It also adds the opportunity for a early game character to kill a fully geared person, already adding a new dimension to your game. Of course I do not mean start spawning M4's and AK's in civilian houses. There needs to be civilian weapons like in the early Arma 2 DayZ mod. With weapons like Lee enfields and Winchester shotguns spawning at civilian buildings. High tear weaponry must still only be acquired at military locations like Balota airfield, North West Airfield etc and then only the top tier loot at heli crash sights. Then another important point, from my experience having a gun and no ammo is something really frustrating so I think having the guns have a 75% chance of spawning in with a fully loaded mag in the gun and a 45% chance of having extra mags spawn with the gun would make the game more enjoyable for players, since the player base have become accustomed to getting guns much earlier and easier that before. Items: This leads me to my next point. The amount of useless items in the game is to high. This needs to be reduced. I know you want to have immersion, but we come back to the point of being fun and being a chore. If I am a fresh spawn I don't want to pick if I want a green or red shirt... I think that having a variety is good but to keep it to a minimum. Spawning: This is a small point but I still feel to bring it up. When you spawn on the coast line it does not feel as if you need to survive. What I mean by this is that there needs to be a sudden hint of danger. In my opinion this can be done by adding new spawn clothes. These clothes are teared and shredded and barely hanging on to the player almost as if the player was ship wrecked. Also I feel that the first impressions are important. Look at a game like ARK for example. When you spawn there, your character clearly shows he is confused, adding to mystery and a certain feeling. If this can somehow be implemented that would be fantastic. Character stats: Having to constantly feed my character like a baby is a chore. Having to eat and drink is a big part in a survival game yes, but its still a game. Having the character have to eat and drink less and having the player focus more on the game and enjoying themselves rather that worrying about feeding their character could greatly improve the game play. Keeping it simple and easy, but still fun is what matters. All that I am saying here is just increase the time it takes to become hungry and thirsty. MID GAME: Now that we already have higher gun spawns and less unwanted items and a atmosphere the game will already be more fun and exciting early game, but this will only last for a couple of hours then the players will want to do something new. They will thus want to start moving inland for higher tier loot and having more things to do. Unfortunately having a running simulator is not fun but you cant have a million vehicles spawn either. Bicycle: This is a good middle ground for not having to run, but not having a vehicle either. The Bicycle can be introduced in a very simple way. By having a box named "BUILD YOUR BICYCLE TODAY!" spawn in industrial loot areas that players can pick up and then build a bicycle that they can use to ride inland (additional things could be added like having to have a toolbox to be able to build a bicycle). The bicycles will despawn after restart so that you do not end up with 99999 bikes. By adding this ,your player base will explore the map a lot more and will help by making the game less boring. Humanity: Adding another element to the game is humanity. Now this system is a difficult one and for a developer team I know this is though, but its very very important as this is one of the things that made the core of the Dayz mod. My suggestion for this is as follow. You start with 0 humanity. When you shoot a player you lose a certain amount for example -500. When you shoot a player in self defense (They shot first) you then do not gain or lose any humanity. To gain humanity a new system needs to be added called "Shaking Hands". This is an option that players can get. When standing close to a other player you can scroll on them and say "shake hands". When both players do this within a certain amount of time you will gain a certain amount of humanity for example +500. You can only shake hands once with an specific player so that friends cant abuse the system. If you then shoot a player that you shook hands with you will lose double the humanity with -1000 for example. The rest of the humanity topic will be discussed in the late game section. LATE GAME: Now this is where DayZ currently has a little bit of a problem. So now the player has kitted up and has all the weapons they need, with a healthy character. They have explored the map and lets say they have killed a few people and they are standing on -1500 humanity now and they even found a vehicle. What do they do now? Hero and Bandit: Now that the Humanity system is in place, heroes and bandits can once again be implemented in the game. Having 5000 or -5000 humanity will either make you a bandit or a hero. But this has to have a meaning. Two new locations need to be added on the map. A Hero and Bandit trader both at different locations. ( I am only calling it traders for the time being ). At this location for example the Bandit one it can be a large building somewhere north in the map. To be able to enter and see what is inside you would have to have -5000 humanity to open the door, if you do not have the required humanity simply nothing would happen. Once inside it can be like a "pub" feeling with an NPC standing behind the counter. The player can then interact with this NPC. Two options will then be displayed. "Ask for bandit clothes" will be the one and "Quests" will be the other. When selecting ask for clothes the NPC will then spawn a certain bandit outfit that can only be obtained by him in a chest which the player can access next to him. The same idea will be at the hero trader just with a different theme and different location. The clothing needs to be iconic and I would suggest using the same clothing models for hero and bandit as it was in the Arma 2 DayZ mod. This will now let players know who is bandits and heroes and give players something to work for. Quests: Another part of the late game. After achieving the hero or bandit status the trader can be asked for quests. These quests will be things like "Kill 50 zombies" and the reward will be a certain gun with 3 mags for example. The Quests also start small with something like for a bandit: "Kill 1 player" then for smaller quests there are also smaller rewards like for that quest it would be an certain bandit head piece. The Quests will be bandit or hero related. for example the hero cant get a quest telling him to kill 5 players. There will then be for example 5 quests for each trader. Not making them to long that the player gets bored. After the 5 quests are complete a sixth one is unlocked called "Travel to Namalsk" (This is now entering later plans for development) Then the Namalsk map is unlocked to be played on. This not only gives a purpose for late game but keeps the cycle going adding the early game then to Namalsk. Of course people will want to keep playing on Chernarus and thus we need an alternate late game from the Namalsk idea. People are use to having base building so having an more realistic version of a base building idea could solve that. BONUS IDEAS: -You only have 60 players max on a map. Do not make Chernarus bigger. You are only making the game play more boring and causing the game to become more of a running simulator than ever before. Player encounters is what makes this game fun. The more encounters the better. -For late development, character customization even if it is basic is important. -Having a functioning map where markers can be put onto so that new players don't get lost so easily. -Having campfires give bonuses like healing faster etc. And that is it! Thank you so much for taking the time in reading this and I truly hope you take this seriously and realize that there is still a huge opportunity for this game! If anybody feels that they disagree or would like to improve please comment below. Kind Regards Alex

I hope the new engine can have shaders for water and mud effects on everything, water, roads, weapons, vehicles. Can you do something about the sudden LOD changes and popping in of models on the horizon? Can you implement a simple dark decal under distant trees so we can have shadows that render cheap but give the distant object some 'grounding'? No shadows past a 100m looks unnatural. Good to hear streams and rivers are in. Love to shake off some wolves that are tracing my smell. Also driving some dear into the river and shooting them as they are swimming. I know the team likes quality animations, but when you say animations have improved I like to see a side by side. I like the non floating legs, I hope the cpu creatures have that too. Thank you for the update, I appreciate it.

It's been only a bit over two weeks in 2018, but we're already seeing some nice progress in DayZ Development! Eugen is providing a quick summary of our current production, Mirek and Viktor detail their ongoing work on the new player character (among other things), and Adam opens up 2018 in style with a major update regarding watercourses on Chernarus! As always, Baty closes with your community content - this time rather unsurprisingly focused on the bygone holiday season! There's also one song included, though. Let's go, it's the first Status Report of the year! Contents This Week Dev Update/Eugen Dev Update/Mirek Dev Update/Viktor Dev Update/Adam Community Spotlight Dev Update/Eugen The year of DayZ is here, and the first two weeks of it are behind us. I'll be looking over the decision making and work happening during the recent ramp up, with the entire team fully focused on 0.63 Experimental build delivery. We looked over the state of the game more energised after the holiday break, and came up with a selected subset of experimental features that will get us to a playable game state as soon as possible. Even with this goal of fast implementation in mind, we understand how critical it is to, after all the time with legacy builds, get the game out in a good state. Making sure that the long standing issues that bother us all the most get fixed for once: performance, stability, cheating prevention, and functional gameplay mechanics. We are aiming for a good balance of polish and progress, but don't get me wrong: 0.63 Experimental and BETA are still going to represent an Early Access game, sothere will be issues. On the other hand, we will also work with a faster iteration speed to fix the remaining issues, to implement remaining content and features from our BETA/Experimental goals, and to go through all your valuable feedback. The past two weeks were spent on actionable items mostly within the player character feature set. I'll try and explain in more detail what are we dealing with right now: Polishing prone mechanics Besides waiting on polished animations and player prone turns, we still need to deal with limitations of weapon movement and ground collision. It's slick as hell though Tweaking the new melee combat prototype Moving to last iteration should bring us closer to final state and give us time to balance things out - damage and speed-wise There were some changes to control scheme and targeting options Implementation of Inverse Kinematics on player's legs Huge step towards a right balance of player turns Functional system that prevents extreme zig-zagging and visual fidelity of movement Cleaning up error logs Also looking into slimming the data and getting more order into current state of things We do come back regularly to clean up the mess in logs and error messages in order to keep them in a readable state Ladder climbing The nearest major step in the new player movement implementation Still needs more work on code, but script implementation is already waiting to be switched on Camera More details in Mirek's part There is a lot more work that has been done in these two weeks, but some of it is just at its very beginning. After we're done with the new player character, you'll see more stuff done on the infected side of things. The same goes for vehicles and helicopters - once they are working and we have them in some presentable state on 0.63, you'll be the first to know! - Eugen Harton / Lead Producer Dev Update/Mirek Hello survivors, I'm afraid I don't have much to show you visually today, because a large amount of our work is still in progress. In any way, I will at least compile a short list of what we're currently working on in the programming team: Client side prediction of inventory actions this ultimately means preventing network lags when players manage their inventory the implementation is now done, we're fixing bugs that this change introduced in the game Player Character - Inverse kinematics for legs the implementation is almost ready Player Character - Movement on ladders work is in progress, we're hoping to show some visuals in the next Status Report Central Economy - Dynamic spawn of items around players a system that can spawn items like stones, sticks or mushrooms around the player this is in a prototype stage we need to review the prototype with our game designers 3rd person camera collisions improvements in camera collisions prediction we're happy with the implementation now, but there's more tweaking to be done during BETA I hope you're not too disappointed for now, but I believe we're getting pretty close to showing you you more visual content in the following Status Reports, as we're making progress towards connecting new animations for the infected, as well as character's animations related to vehicle interaction. These will keep us busy in February. - Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer Dev Update/Viktor Hi there! The animation department is currently focused on a couple of player character features. Last week, there was a small motion capture session where we recorded a bunch of missing animations for prone, combat, ladders, as well as first batch of unconscious state animations. Do you remember the prone GIF from the previous status report? Well, we have progressed with the prototype of this new prone behavior a bit. At the moment, the player character is able to turn on his back freely with every item, as well as aim and shoot with weapons. We have only the placeholder animations implemented at this point, so it's an ideal time to start replacing them with polished ones. The melee combat has seen some iterations and on the last week's mocap session - we have captured some new animations for this part of the game as well. Among others, we recorded butt-stock, bayonet, pistol and other melee attacks with firearms. We will work on these in the upcoming weeks. Our next focus will be ladders. We have adjusted the animation graph and prepared some enter/exit animations for that over the past couple of weeks. Of course, we also continue on weapon animations, as well as adjusting existing vehicle animations. The player character movement has received some love as well. The rework of turns is progressing well, with great results as you can see in the attached GIF. We are now looking forward to the inverse kinematics on feet, which is being worked on at the moment by programmers. This will provide us with an additional set of improvements, and will take care of unwanted sliding that is still present during movement. - Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator Dev Update/Adam If you have seen my Q&A video (Part 1, Part 2), you may remember that I touched upon the commonly asked subject of having actual flowing water in our environment. In our everlasting effort to have one of the most immersive game worlds ever created, I am proud to announce that at last, we've made significant progress towards having proper watercourses! Unless something goes wrong, this will be available for all of you to check out in 0.63: Watercourses are really important to the landscape - simply because they add a sense to what we are trying to recreate. In real life, it is completely normal to go down into the valley and find at least a small stream or some kind of wet area. And like a power-line, a road, a railway or even a tourist trail, finding a watercourse can help you navigate within the game world. Will you go up against the flow, or down? The choice is yours. The days of the legacy renderer and the limitations we had to deal with when creating other-than-ocean water are long gone, and with the recent engine improvements made, namely: Ability to have multiple water materials per map Ability to define wave animation using the flow-map Ability to have a floating water moss we can now improve the visual quality of our static water bodies, and also implement watercourses. We can now visually distinguish different water bodies on Chernarus (some can be dirtier than others) while still having multiple materials for watercourses. Our current implementation considers two types of a watercourse: STREAM Narrow and shallow watercourse Used mostly inside small valleys They either connect to another stream or into small river SMALL RIVER Wide and shallow watercourse Used in major valleys They form multiple streams and connect to the sea They have a name Some stream/river parts even have several variants with rocks and custom flow-map to simulate the flow of water around the obstacles, but we of course also focus on adding additional details around the watercourse when we feel it still lacks something. Stream/river beds also have a gravel ground texture (the same surface you have on the coast and is commonly used to collect stones).Since our game world is spread across 225 square kilometers, we have decided that our implementation has to be something we can recreate within such large scale. The approach is quite straightforward - we first prepare a stream/river bed by simply carving out the terrain where needed, and then we use different stream/river model parts (similarly to railways, roads) to fill the river bed with it. This implementation, however, has its downside to it as well - our terrain resolution of 7.5 meters makes some stream/river beds weird looking due to jagged edges. We try our best to mask it out whenever we can, but it is not an easy task. You may say, why not increase the resolution? While we would probably find a way how to make the 3.75 meter resolution working (performance wise), at this point in development, such detailed grid would end up not being used on most of the map anyway - terrain resolution often defines the way you design things within your environment (mainly when it come to hilly areas). We can't just go and rework everything again (just to utilize the existing option), so I feel like increased terrain grid would mostly be nothing more than an FPS sinkhole at this point. Also, I would like to mention the fact that there are no physical currents, dropping an item won't make it float downhill and given the shallow stream/river beds, do not expect an ability to traverse the map using some kind of a boat either. Most of the stream/river beds were designed in a way that you can traverse them without swimming, so it is up to you whether you cross (and get wet) or invest some time and find a bridge or a rock to take you to the other bank. We are in the process of evaluating the impact of watercourses on the navmesh (AI navigation), and it is also important to note here that at this point in time, the new player implementation is missing interactions with any water (sea, lake, streams...), so exact behaviour will have to be tested, but it is good that the watercourse solution is ready in data and environment, so it is something we can work with while implementing the interactions of player character and water bodies within the environment. We are also looking into further visual improvements to the way water flows/collides, and we're also adding local particle effects for smaller waterfalls, including some kind of audio samples to stream/river model parts. So, you may ask - when can we expect watercourses on Chernarus? Our progress in this whopping landscape task can be divided into four stages: Analysis and prototyping of the watercourse solution Adding watercourses to the western areas of Chernarus Rework of existing old stream-like ponds network Adding new watercourses and connecting reworked streams (from 3rd point) As I have already mentioned in my Q&A, western areas that have been reworked in the update 0.62 already have stream and river beds prepared (I am sure many of you noticed that already). This was really convenient for us, as we could use them to prototype best shapes for stream/river model parts. And it did not end just at the prototyping stage - I am happy to announce that 17 kilometers of watercourses have been already implemented there, and will be available for all of you to check out in 0.63. But what about the other points? We, unfortunately, cannot give you any ETA for that as of now. We do have quite extensive watercourse network planned and obviously, we would like to implement it over the whole landscape, but it unfortunately is not a simple task, and it's something to work on even after the 1.0 release. We will keep you updated on the progress though. These are really exciting times, thanks for reading and see you in Chernarus! - Adam Franců / Senior map designer Community Spotlight Hello Survivors! I am really glad for the amazing feedback we got from the Christmas update. You sent us tons of screenshots and videos with Christmas themes and I saw them all (at least I hope!). We decided we will keep the Christmas boxes until at least the end of January, because we know you like them a lot! Santa Joshua was in Chernarus and he had a bodyguard with him, just in case. Chernarus isn't a safe place to bring presents, you know: Another Santa BrianM sends greetings from his travels through the post-apocalyptic world: And Miklós Tóth probably killed the Santa and took all his presents just for himself: We've found some beautiful New Year greetings on our social networks: This one is from Reddit user Wargasm011 - a New Year greetings card in Chernarus style! Another one is from the French server The Team Onu. What a beautiful artwork! And here are two videos from your in-game Christmas adventures by BarelyInfectedand SepticFalcon: But Christmas is gone now, so let's check some of your best moments in DayZ. The Nomad Gaming is known in the community as a professional long sharp-stick killer. He put his best funny moments into one video, where you can see his skill, funny bugs, or how he trolls other players: TopeRec made a best-of video from his stream again. He tried some role-play as Rick Grimes from The Walking Dead and it is pretty funny: Streamer M1nder became a hostage and someone tried to save him… but it didn’t go as he planned. What about some real life things? Partypomcer has shown to all people from Reddit that he lives in a landscape similar to Chernarus (Northern Arkansas). Look at the barn in the distance! Tikacika sent us a new decoration he created on his wall. It is a vinyl DayZ logo and he made it by himself! Good job! And the last content from the community is a song! I love DayZ songs so bad, I have a list of them in my phone and I listen to them almost every day. This new one is called Hotel Chernarus, it was made by WiseManLofty and it is pretty cool, but we'll never forgive you the part about Adam and trees… ;) Riddle time! The answer to the last question was "The house is between Stary Sobor and Rogovo." The fastest responses were from these survivors: Jakon72 Claire (Eclaire)‏ GriZz Daniel Leon Spencer R. A. Raygor Go Up Uncle Zettie HumbleAtomicBohemian BigBANGtheory‏ Bryce TheReverned Frank the Tank Sqeezor Rustycaddy lexx 1 eyed gamer Hanno Spitteler Uncuepa Goran Buntic Volern JoK3R JAMMIELAD Sniperllama Ze-Krush REEMOTE Good job! The question of this Status Report is: What is the name of this place? Send me your answers to our official Twitter account and your name can be here next time! That is all from me today, have a nice game and see you in two weeks! Header image by Anki . - Baty / Community Manager

Clickbait lol But I agree, it is possibly the best map ever. But is it playable,in other words - is it the best in terms how it merges with gameplay ? I really don't think so. Mostly because its size. It is definitely too large for a game where vehicles are really really rare, or/and doesn't work well. Too large for a game which fits way less than hundred players. Too large because devs wants you to really use it all, by nearly disabling loot in the coasts. Too large to get a proper interactions happening frequently, which is why I got interested in DayZ - thats gone. I also want to point out that I really loved the old Novo :) It was the best place. Also trees LOD'ing has to be fixed. Also doesn't feel like vertical aka 3D grass works as a cover, ever. Probably will be superb in 0.9 iteration.

Yeah, I agree on this beautiful Chernarus map. I guess there's this thing with map sizes for some time now. I've seen that clip on youtube where someone compared the map sizes in bunch of games and Chernarus was pretty much up there on the list. Anyway, these are all games after all, and having fun while playing and exploring is one of the most important things for a game. I enjoyed all of these games. If you go for realistic or immerrrrrrsive (oh boy, what a trendy word) type of gameplay, I think it's best if map scaling follows that route too which is very hard. For GTA V, Skyrim and Fallout, the devs opted for somewhat scaled down and dense versions with more detail, locations and content which still makes them big games. Concerning map size of Chernarus, as well as design time and technology limits we have currently, I really never saw the reason for implementing choppers and planes for this kind of survival gameplay - stuck in an area. Having road vehicles was more then enough so far, in my opinion. MAYBE something like crafted gyro-copter we saw in Mad Max 2 movie, that couldn't go very high and far anyway. What I'd be really happy to see is more maps for Dayz one day or at least Chernarus expanded.

Aaaaand a month later and still no status report ... thanks for being so terrible at developing and transparency in the home stretch BI , as of this point it’s just a silly waiting game when we should be testing that.63 patch ... but you keep perfecting that build for those investors dayz , I’m sure it’s more worth an actual player base . .63 maybe in spring , and in half assed shape at this point due to hardly any insight on the progress of half of the supposed “beta features”. Sad development strategy here , the game literally just halted in development ever since .61 debuted (was that really seven months ago?) and it hasn’t gotten any better since - not to mention devs have just stopped responding to people, no news updates on any of the typical venues , and worst part is the forums are drying up with no new info just fanboy ramblings. I sincerely hope the devs come out from under that rock they’ve been living at for the last seven months and get to developing ... i want this game to be fun again , but at 2k hours of playtime I can’t bring myself to play the Desync ridden , coastal wars , broKen vehicles dayz (vehicles break after being used on the server for more than a week). There was a time when all that didn’t matter but here we sit more than four years later and the game plays very similar to how it was 2 years ago but without the fun of vehicles being smooth like they once were . Hell even star citizen hit its monumental patch before dayz reached its long talked about beta - and that’s just sad .

I tried playing the mod early this year, but had a hard time finding a server that wasn't littered with vehicles and other non-vanilla stuff. Got any suggestions?

Most of the stuff you covered will be included with beta/1.0 content additions. Right now, it sucks, but is still very decently playable if you know what you are looking for and put in some effort to find the right server. There is a whole other level of difficulty in trying to get established on a consistently full server. Go find some vehicles and try to keep them running long enough to get a few tents and barrels stocked with sets of your favorite items. See how many times you have to move before your camp is untouched for a week. Learn a little bit about the finer details of the game that most people still haven't noticed yet: Adding coolant to vehicles will greatly extend the life of the engine, especially if you redline low gears constantly. Crafted stone knives will consistently give you higher percentage cuts of meat from skinned animals. Treating crops with disinfectant will prevent blight and increase your yields. Crafted leather clothing will make you something of a juggernaut--I have taken a repeater shot to the chest point-blank and didn't even bleed, and almost exclusively kill wolves with melee weapons. I can't stress this enough. Leather clothing is the shizzzzniiiit!!! There is a lot that you seem to be frustrated with, and most of that is due to the content backlog that is waiting for the final versions of the underlying tech to be implemented. There are plenty of things that will change in the coming months, apple-spamming being one of them. Maybe you could try to get ahead of the curve, and swear-off the abuse of apple trees? This will give you an appreciation for farming and hunting, as well as an edge against returning players who won't know how to feed themselves without exploiting the infinite apples. Try to set-up and maintain a base stocked with two of everything. Make yourself a set of leather clothing and go try to kill a wolf with one of every melee weapon. Without defining what you consider to be the benchmark of fun or success in DayZ, it is hard to know what can be suggested to help you get the most out of the experience right now.

Best moments: An early best moment was back in the days when trucks were working okay, but no other vehicles had been added yet. i was in Krasnostav driving towards the coast waiting to hear from my friend when he knew where he was. I passed a guy on the road and asked him to hop in for a ride, and decided to stop for the well at the east edge of town. He shared some food with me, and we both ate. Then I went to drink from the well, and saw him level a Longhorn against my head. It's a good thing I had just gotten a haircut, because it was too short to pull out by the fistfulls that day. More recently, I heard some shots at Tisy, and ran to investigate. I found two guys by the garages, and asked if I could collect the wolves they had just killed. They said sure, and went on to loot the barracks. I got some free food and pelts, and confused some strangers in the process Worst moments: After having finally survived long enough to get decently geared and make it off the coast, I had finally managed to make it to Sverograd. This was near the end of my first week of playing, and I didn't know the map or any skills beyond looting and consuming loot. I used up most of my bandages from Berezino and my vision was pretty washed-out from blood loss, so I decided to check the hospital for medical supplies. I found a lot of medical supplies, so much that all my inventory was full. At this point, I was on the second floor hall and noticed i was getting very thirsty. I thought that something on the wall looked like a drinking fountain, and saw the icon to drink. I soon learned that the bottle of disinfectant spray that I found, was not in my backpack, but rather in my hands. And thus ended my first successful journey off the coast. Just yesterday, I was being stupid and running too much, not finding much food, and being too proud to pick apples this far into a life. I went to Tisy to hunt wolves with a friend, and found no wolves before he had to log off. I decided to loot alone, and assumed a couple cans of tacbac would certainly fall into my lap. I killed a chicken to hedge my bets, but had lost almost half my blood by the time I could get a safe distance out of the fence and make fire. The server reset. Fresh loot! Surely there would be more tactical bacon here now. I ran to the usual bacon spots, picking up an extra gun, snatching and stuffing and shuffling magazines. I killed two more chickens just in case, and went through the barracks on my way to go fish for survival. By the time i heard the footsteps, it was too late to pull out my axe. One-slapped by a zombie while half-starved at Tisy mil base. I died neither to the zombie nor the starvation; but rather my hubris, greed, and haste.

Hello! It's just too repetitive for quite some time but, yeah Baker here is right. Well, it was good to write down that, which is actually, what you expect from this game. But it IS still in its early access phase. I think you should stay away if it frustrates you, come back later maybe when you catch some news that it's changed and improved. We didn't pay a full price because it isn't a full game. Now it's buggy and lacking in some things by definition and still in fixing stages and also feature development. Most of the people were impressed back then, it was a big source for some youtubers' content, then they got simply fed up with it, started releasing videos about Dayz being dead, and this is why you see the player base shrinking and moving on to something else for the time. Or just abandoning completely never to return which I doubt, but we'll see. No one can say they didn't have some good time with it beside the bad times. I think this long early access phase caused this feeling of being fed up since you've already explored so much of it. You don't need too much to know about every area and nook and cranny of the map, even this big. I have about 1200 hours in two and a half years since I bought it, but I didn't play it much really, if at all, for almost a year. We all have/had a bunch of ideas about features, similar to yours, to a lesser or bigger extent, written about many times before here on the forums. Except status reports, nobody here except devs can't tell what it will be like finally, but so far, a game this open, with no clues or quests and story line to guide you through, seems to me that it needs to be enriched by players themselves. In general, your experience depends on how you want to play it. Your character needs to survive, as long as possible. He needs food and medicine, and for that he needs to loot areas for it and risk being killed or mugged. Or you can hunt for food, or grow it somewhere, then maybe trade it. This is why you see those pointless tools and seeds. As far as vehicles, for me they've been too much of a hassle for a map of this size. But I look at Dayz as more of a platform for gameplay in apocalyptic scenario then a regular complete game experience with an actual ending, story etc. which we're all used to. People were talking that most of this game's experience will be from (drumroll for this) player interaction, since there's not anything yet that seems like a goal or a general quest in Dayz for the player. Apart from what you mentioned, getting the best equipment to defend yourself. It's not just about PVP and killing on sight and looting, but of course, absolutely everyone is still allowed to play like that. But, there certainly are other play styles from other players and groups of players which will just complement this. You can't expect feeling like and turning out to be a badass on a chaotic mix of players on a public server but it's not impossible. But also, knowing there's a bunch of private servers hosted by communities, as they call themselves, it will be up to them to make their little world of Dayz.

Hello Guys and Maybe Devs So i don´t exactly know how i should start this topic or even if its the right section for this. Im also pretty sure alot of people are sick seeing other people complaining. But honestly i need to write it down and just rant a little (sorry for that). So lets start this. I´ve been playing DayZ Standalone for more than 500 hours, i also know people that played the SA for over 1500 hours but mostly on Roleplay Servers. My biggest issue with DayZ is : It´s empty. It´s so empty that it´s boring. Sure in my first hours it was all new and exciting, sneaking around, looting, learning the map, discover the hotspots for loot and pvp and so on. But lets be honest. All you do at the moment is rushing to a military base and get your loot. That´s it. Most cities, villages are abandoned from the players because theres almost no loot or just bad loot. The whole North-East Part of the map - no players at all. The North - East Airfield - Useless. Nothing to loot, nothing special. Why should players bother to go there? The old police buildings (that one with the field beds on the second floor, mostly found on airfields or military bases) no loot at all for years. Total useless unused buildings. These were just a few examples but the list would go on forever. The loot system overall is just..sorry bad. It makes almost 75% of the map useless. Nobody bothers anymore to loot through cities. The clothes most people like are mostly on military terrain. Well honestly almost everything you need-/want is on military bases. Sure when i spawn i look through houses and stuff, until i find a melee weapon and thats mostly it. Then i try to find an Apple tree, eat dozens of apples until im healthy and then i go straight to military bases. Cans of Food, bottles or drinking cans - i dont really care anymore. Best and easiest Food are Apples, they fill up your hunger and thirst almost equally - Perfect! That´s another issue i don´t understand, when your character spawns for the first time "Hungry" or even Hungry and Thirsty so you don´t even have alot of time to think what you need to do. It´s just dumb. In my opinion new characters should spawn hydrated and energized. So i don´t need to rush in an instant to the next Apple tree, abuse the apple picking bug and then i start to "explore". Okay let´s move on to the next issue. Useless Junk and mechanics almost nobody uses. I NEVER repaired a vehicle on public Servers. Why? Vehicles are so damn useless in DayZ SA its not worth the effort. It´s loud as Hell, it´s clunky, your frames go down after a period of time, you need way too much stuff to repair it. I mean come on, i know its a survival game but look at the DayZ MOD - it´s done way better than the SA. We don´t even have Quads and bicycles the most popular vehicles. Fast, fairly "quiet" and just a nice thing to get from point A to B. Helicopters in DayZ SA? No way. The game cant even handle the trucks and cars that are implemented yet. Just imagine flying over a bigger city with a helicopter and the game tries to load all kinds of junk items, tries to spawn the "dynamic" Zombies and human players ..it will crash instantly. You even notice the laggs when you drive through cities.. Next. Plant Growing Stuff. THATS Dumb. This seems like a mechanic created for private role playing servers but not for public Servers. Total useless for 99% of Players. "You dont like it, dont use it then" right? Well yeah of course but think about it, seeds packs are items, vegetables are items, your tools you need to grow them are items. Its valuable Space. Think about it how often you find tools, seed packs and nobody cares to take them. These are items your game has to load and makes the perfomance more worse. Pretty Sure in the whole world there are like 500 "useless" tools lying around, lots of seed packs and so on. Same goes for mechanical Stuff for repairing vehicles. It´s just too much and makes the perfomance more worse. But enough of that, i think (or hope) i showed my points here. Next One: Who the f*** did decide that there are NO Ammo or Magazines if you find a weapon? How dumb is that? Yeaah of course it could be a weapon a player left without any mags or ammo but most of the times you find a weapon at the loot spawn. Sometimes you get a magazine but for most of the time you only find a Rifle and thats it. Even on Military bases you only find the weapon. What logic is that? And again thats something the MOD did better again! Okay i´ll try to shorten this a bit. - A Game that is about survival and Zombies, lacks in Zombies and the threat of them - Almost everything seems empty - Big Map Parts, buildings, cities are useless (Loot-/good Loot) - Some Spawn locations don´t even make sense or the loot itself doesn´t make sense (weapons without mags-/ammo) - The map itself is boring due the lack of content and threats - Still performance problems in form of FPS Drops mostly in cities and villages - overcomplicated Vehicles (for repairing, just not worth it) - Animations are still really bad and not fluid ( New Melee Animations are still horrible, stiff and artificial. They look awful to be honest) - Unused Buildings, locations for YEARS even on military terrain - Lack of different Terrain (look at the MOD again and its different maps, most popular Namalsk) - Lack of loot spawn locations (what happened to the loot locations on defect military trucks, cars, tanks and so on?) - Useless Mechanics for most public players (Fishing, Plant growing) - Lack of different Weather states - Lack of Different good-/unique weapons - Lack of really unique clothings I could continue the List much longer than that but it should be enough..I really don´t hate the game and i know that some things got better but it´s just frustrating to see less and less players. The community is shrinking every Day and the Problems are obvious (atleast for me). Its taken way too much time and we are not even in the Beta yet..after almost 5 Years. No wonder why the community lost the hope for this game..but i still have faith in it. I wouldn´t be a Fan if i wouldn´t have some Ideas to make the game better (atleast in my opinion) So here we go with some Ideas: - New / Different kinds of Zombies like "Walker, Runner, Crawler, Zombies with a chance to infect you, Zombies that you see and you KNOW thats a tough one - Radioactive Areas or poisoned Areas where you need Gas masks to survive and to make the threat even bigger --> Zombie Hordes or something like this - More threatening zombies so that you really think twice to get to this house, area, base or if you really want to risk a shot-/attention (And i don´t mean Zombies that gives you unfair onehits...we all know the problem of lagging zombies, clunky melee.. so just stronger Zombies is out of competition) - Maybe something like a safe Zone for Trading with others (idk if that would be a good idea because of campers outside of this area) - Give us some unique stuff like weapons, clothing that you only can obtain from an Heli crash or a specific area (f.e. "bulletproof" vest with 12 Slots so you can survive a critical shot or survive 2 shots more, special helmet which has more endurance (or looks cool), A different Sniper Rifle, Assault Rifle with a better accuracy or slighlty increased damage, Special shoes so your footsteps are more quiet, a full gillie suit with pockets or compatible with a backpack, Night Vision goggles, special SWAT-/STALKER suit with some kind of an bonus or just cosmetic, there are so many possibilities) - Better dynamic weather -/changes (slightly Raining, Heavy Raining, Overall Foggy, Maybe snow, Thunder and lighting, Heavy Storms) - Better -/More vehicles-/better perfomance and more stable, maybe even more userfriendly in terms of repairing - More different Character Models So i know that there are some things planed like growing a beard, getting scares, base building, open for modding and so on thats why i didn´t mention that stuff. I also hope that i don´t need to say that they need to improve the things i mentioned on the "negative list". I´m also pretty sure (sadly) in the end the talent of the community through modding will make DayZ the game we really wanted... but i kinda feel reliefed after i wrote this down. I really really like the game but its frustrating me for years now. So thats my overall feedback until now..pretty sure is missed bugs and other important stuff. Please ignore any tipos, my keyboard is kinda broken (chattering keys). Greetings Roecky

We're entering the last two business weeks of 2017, and before we let the holiday spirit take over our offices on 23rd, it's time for one more update from our teams - today, Eugen is recapping some of the recently made bullet-point style progress across departments, Peter takes a look at ladders, climbing and the melee combat of 0.63, Adam teases the NWAF changes along with tourist trails, and Viktor has two sexy GIFs, one of which teases a feature that will change DayZ combat in a totally unexpected way. After a pause, we also have Baty back, with loads of your amazing community content <3. Let's read, it's good for you! Contents This Week Dev Update/Eugen Dev Update/Peter Dev Update/Viktor Dev Update/Adam Community Spotlight Dev Update/Eugen Dear players. First, I would like to thank you for all the critical feedback on the last status report, it was a hard one. Expectation were high, and we chose a road littered with risks going for the new engine, for the larger benefit in the long run. The team knew this wasn't going to be easy, but almost all major uncertainties are resolved and we are looking at brighter future for both you the players, and the team here. We also understand and agree the call for a more visual representation of this years' progress and there is an end of the year video in the works right now. Many of you were asking about the console version of DayZ and the team working on it. Our goal has always been to release a PC version of DayZ first before we turn to players on PS4 or Xbox. That hasn't changed. There is only one person working on each of these ports at the moment, keeping things intact so we have an easier time adapting the experience when the team is done with the PC version. We will be happy to share more details once we are in a better state of things with the PC version. There is more to enjoy visually in the rest of the Status Report, and there is no reason to repeat myself more, so let's take a quick look at some of the work that has been done over the past month / is in progress - and then we are just going to get back to work, and get more shit done :). Programmers Team Network optimisations - bit stream implementation, network traffic optimisations for AI and players Weapon & inventory bugfixing Movement tweaking of character controller for better gameplay experience Character's prone state New offline database Hive refactorization for 0.63 Login system bugfixing Damage system - new texture switching of damaged entities Bugfixing and optimizations of central loot economy AI - Animals: Threat state behaviour and actions Animals freeze in random intervals fixed Various crash fixes External launcher - adding local mods Design Team Items for Christmas event configuration and setup for Central Economy for 0.62 version Melee combat refactor of targeting and implementation of it's second check at hit event Connected item quantities to Central Economy Optimalization of UI client/server middle layer Notifiers code clean up Localization support Options screens refactor Stamina system refactor Firearms unjamming refactor Implementing state machines for AKM and SVD Implemented new network synchronization for electricity, traps, fireplace, cooking, placing, life span, user actions Implemented sounds for bear trap, landmine, defibrillator Parts of HUD can be toggled on/off by pressing or holding [~] Implemented prototype particle for AKM, UMP and CZ61 Animated perimeter for a land mine Identification of blood type in inspect menu after blood test Animation Team AKM, SVD reload animations implemented Polishing for prone 360 aimspace poses Player turns improvements Animations for Hatchback reworked due to vehicle scale changes Animals herding behavior: the most of the progress has been done on new herding behavior for domesting animals. Although it doesn't require massive support from animation side we found usefull to change some poses and especially lookat mechanic to bring as natural feeling on close distance as possible. Most of the work has been done in new AI tools on animal configuration side. Anyway we already have functional prototype of a herd that can be shepherd through the map. Animals animations: Sheep animation pack is progressing. Goat animation pack has been finished Art Team NWAF assets Radar tower rework 2-floor barracks Fuel tanks Reworked Pile of tyres Reworked Blast covers Weapons rework Abandoned Chernarus – harvester header Reworked male heads Decayed textures Christmas items Animal damage zones Bugfixing doors firegeometry geometry visual issues foliage issues Map Design Team Chernarus tourist trails We have finished 200km network along with tweaks to the satellite and surface mask and final checks and polish Tourist trails are now ready for survivors in 0.63, the only thing that is left to solve is the map stand that is located at several key trail crossings, but that on itself does not block / prevent people from using the trails as there are 93 detailed directional signs to help them where they want to go NWAF overhaul Improved satellite and surface mask within the whole NWAF area Object layout improvements and fixes Coal power plant prototype done (last missing object) Tentapocalypse We have prepared varied interiors for two of the mostly used military tents to make such important object more interesting for players and more suitable for central economy to spawn items All instances of military tents on Chernarus were replaced with these new variants - Eugen Harton / Lead Producer Dev Update/Peter As the new character also have to traverse vertical differences in structures, we've started with new implementation of ladders. You don't need much to observe that the behaviour of old character on ladders in 0.62 (and older) is quite unpleasant visually and partially lacking also from the functional point of view. Transition animations for getting on off a ladder will be added for several situations, even from/to water, as well as to sides when there isn’t any free space available behind the ladder. As we unified dimensions of ladders thorough all structures, the positioning of character hands and feet will match that of ladder steps. It’s still valid that getting on a ladder is done through interact action (same as manipulating with doors) and getting off will be automatic at the end of the ladder. We would also like to add proper continuous ladders going through more floors, on which character can optionally get off the ladder, and where it won’t be necessary to ‘pixel hunt’ for proper interact action to get on the ladder and continue in desired direction. However, this has a lower priority as we need to solve simple ladders first. As climbing the ladder is exposing you in situations that can be relatively dangerous, we are adding the possibility to quickly scale up the ladder, or to fast slide down the ladder. I would like to also see jumping off the ladder as it could be useful in some critical situations - in trade off for a higher risk of injury after landing. But again, this is lower on priority list for the ladders implementation. When I mentioned jumping, let me make it clear: we will be adding jumping, alongside with climbing over obstacles later, after ladders are done, as smooth traversing through environment is very crucial for DayZ gameplay. Ongoing work is being done on a melee combat system to make it skill based with clear rules. Blocking and evades are implemented and functional, awaiting a polishing run. We are trying different control schemes for melee combat iteratively to achieve intuitive controls. Same goes for timing animations and their cancellation, as we want to have combat flow as seamless and fluid as possible to avoid clunkiness. Knockdowns to the ground and finishing attacks on laying character are still on the TO DO list. These are directly related to melee combat in prone, which was just a step away, as we had a request for absolute freedom of aiming firearm in prone in 360 degrees, which is done thru smooth and continuous turn of character from belly to back and vice versa. After knockdown during melee combat to the ground on back position (or in case of turning character to back from belly) you can use push kick to push opponent back, may it be survivor or infected, to avoid being hit with his finishing attacks which can be potentially devastating. Similarly, I would also like to see push kicks from stand with raised hands as well (applicable for firearms too), which will add really nice flavour and together with attacks, blocking and evades adds depth and open possibilities for tactics in melee combat (and additionally allows us things like kicking doors and others). Anyway, I would like to thank you for your support during the tough year 2017. DayZ has the best community and it’s amazing to have you around. Thank you all! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year... see you in Chernarus folks! - Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer Dev Update/Viktor Hi everyone. Today, I'm going to provide you with a short update on what is happening in the animation team. Our priorities are pretty clear - main focus is still on the player character animations. That includes finishing turning animations, improving locomotion and adjusting the player graph. At the same time, we have been working on some exciting stuff recently. Our player character now has a much wider range of motion while in prone. You can now fluently turn on your back, aim and shoot. This gives better control over the character and I am sure it will lead to many interesting situations in game. We have a basic prototype working and now we are starting to polish the animations, poses and camera behaviour. This will also require small motion capture session where we will record necessary transition animations. In addition to that, we have also recently re-done enter/exit animations for some vehicles, so that player can enter and exit vehicles much faster. Recently implemented weapons in 0.63 include SVD, AKM and there is an ongoing work on the Mosin. - Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator Dev Update/Adam It has been quite a long time since my last contribution to Status Report, but do not worry, it is just that we have been working very hard pushing towards our 0.63 goals. But before we talk about that - given the fact that is a last status report of 2017 - let me first dive a bit into the things that happened in 2017. In 2017, Chernarus has gone through what probably is the biggest change since its inception in Arma 2. We have introduced a complete overhaul of forests aimed at bringing much needed variety to the landscape of Chernarus. This overhaul essentially doubled the object count (1.4 million to 2.8 mil., but with .63 changes, we are nearing 3 mil.), an increase that was only possible with the introduction of the Enfusion renderer (update 0.60). In addition to this overhaul, update 0.62 also introduced phase 1 of a big western border rework (the last area that remained basically untouched since Arma 2 days). We have also overhauled the entire railway network and made global changes to the satellite texture. Vegetation model swap and the re-generated forests areas introduced quite a lot of issues with object placement (objects misplaced or clipping) and we will work hard to eliminate as much of these issues as possible prior to the stable 0.63 release to make sure the first BETA build is a step towards a more polished experience from your travels on Chernarus. Now you may ask, what else can you expect from the map in 0.63? Completely re-done North West Airfield (NWAF) along with surrounding landscape 200 kilometres of tourist trails New locations on the western border of Chernarus New points of interest across the map New models for bushes and rocks New textures for roads and road damage decals We will cover these points in better detail in future Status Reports. For now, we would like to thank you for joining us on our journey towards one of the most immersive game environments ever created. Very excited to show you what we have in store for 0.63 and beyond! Merry xmas and happy new year! - Adam Franců / Senior map designer Community Spotlight It's nice to be back with another Status Report - it's been 4 weeks already and I have a lot of community content that I need to show you. So sit down comfortably, this will be long. Life doesn’t always bring only good things, and that is what I want to talk about today. The first sad thing that happened is Wobo's leave. One of our big and longtime supporters is leaving the content creators’ scene, because he needs to take care of his mother who has cancer. He did his last stream to raise funds to help his mother and the DayZ community surprised him a lot. He had 4000+ people on the stream and raised over 35 000 dollars to help him with taking care of his mother. You can see here how amazing the DayZ community is! Wobo's mum underwent a 9-hour surgery and she will stay in the hospital for the next two weeks. Everyone from DayZ Dev team wishes Wobo's mum good luck! Stay strong Wobo! The second sad message arrived to our team from Tim, Max, Nils, Dominik, Vincent and Jonas. These guys are a group of DayZ players who lost their friend Phil in a tragic accident this year. They are reminiscing about their first meeting: "We met him at the very beginning of the DayZ standalone near the Rify in that old helicopter crash site (one of these that did not spawn randomly). It was a pretty hilarious situation as me and him did’nt see each other until the moment we both went inside the helicopter. We both panic so hard :D Even thought most of the players shot on sight at this time, we did not and 2 minutes later we both laught so hard together in his teamspeak, it was the beginning of the best friendship in my whole life. There are so much more great memories we shared together because of DayZ. Me and my whole squad really want to thank you for this memories!" They sent us this message because it was Phil's birthday and they asked us to commemorate him in the game on the spot where they first met. So we decided to place a memorial at this place in a form of a small cross. This cross will be in game since 0.63 and if you come across it, just remember it belongs to Phil, one of the players. When we are talking about a group of players, Ferosso shared with us this amazing ugly-Christmas-sweater DayZ party photo and it looks so cool, I want to jump into it and join them! And look at the Chernarus map on the wall! Just wow. I want to show you some nice edit by Spuddy0108, who turns a DayZ screenshot into The Long Dark's style. I really like it! One more screenshot for you - Adam sent us a really creative picture of tents with chemlights inside and it looks awesome! And how about an event this week? A lot is happening this Saturday 16th! You can choose from plenty of events: Noobs server is organizing The Hostage event where you need to take out the captors and successfully retrieve the hostage. More information here: DayZ UK Alliance invites you to The Genocide Run IV - a battle royale style event in teams of two. Or you can join Christmas RP event in the Green Dragon tavern on The DayZ Village Let’s check out some videos now. I don't like long videos. But this movie by gekofish is awesome and I can't stop watching! You should check it out. If you like stories, you should watch this video by PolishedGuy, whose channel is full of interesting videos with good editing. Another movie by Tickle - Ghost is telling us the story of a retired nurse, Ashley Gradham, discovering the complexities of the zombie apocalypse through a budding friendship with Richard Maxwell, a daring and quiet man with a difficult childhood. What about a cinematic? This is by Aschmad and he is challenging viewers to dive deep into the video and tell him what the character lost. The last video is just a preview of a movie randmanq is working on. I am looking forward to the full movie! Let's talk about Christmas. You will have your Christmas in Chernarus, we didn't forget, don't worry! There will be Christmas trees, and maybe a little smomething more, but that's still a secret. Watch our Twitter feed for more information! We are almost at the end, but there is one more thing - the riddle! These guys answered correctly last time, good job: Skunkey‏ Uncuepa‏ JammieD96 KalleKBerlin Waffels Alejandro Miranda‏ Vetovote And this is the riddle for this Status Report. Between which towns can you find this house? It is not that hard, so I expect a lot of correct answers on our official Twitter account. That is all from me, have a nice holiday and see you in 2018! Header image by Kwaakt - Baty / Community Manager

Bohemia devs is exactly like me in CGI job, i do 1week job in 3months. I would fit perfectly in Bohemia lol. I think DayZ team is extremely small ( 5-10 ppl who is responsible for .63 cause they're doing only programmig right now, animations is fast to do, sound fx is fast, modelling and texturing is fast.. ), that's why its so slow, if the team is bigger then they're just lazy or unexperienced. Motion capture, Sound FX ppl and graphics designers doesn't count. I have feeling that DayZ Dev team is all the Bohemia's junior artists.. If DayZ taking 5years and counting, then there's no way the same people made Arma 3 in 2 years. And the 5years was only for bug fixing including environment,renderer improvements, that's crazy.. Hire 30 random student people from various forums, give them $1.000.000 and i bet they would've done it faster even through major trial and error. And DayZ team only now figured out that they need to "change" the engine, if they would have started it at around ~.61-.62 release probs we would've seen 1.0 right now or atleast .63 early experimental. Also the vehicle fixing took ages, damn.. Look at Arma 3 code where vehicles works perfectly -> profit. ( I've heard that they cant use anything from arma3, but it's the same studio they can do whatever they want. )

This is not a troll post, do not remove or censor this post please. This is a very sad move for me, but I am unfortunately withdrawing my will to invest any additional time in DayZ. DayZ mod was a breakthrough that lead me and the best of my friends to play it and the ArmA games. With over atleast 4000 hours on ArmA 2 DayZ mod, 2000 recorded hours on ArmA 3 and just a few (400) hours on the standalone - I wish to say I am very very sad to make this decision as this time was the best of my teenage years. But I should have it done earlier. We (my friends) got to DayZ mod by watching all of FRANKIEonPCs videos (before the whole hacking scandal was discovered) on DayZ. I remember we decided to buy it when he released his 27th video on the mod. DayZ had a charm we never seen before (we were much younger back then). Our whole middle school period was coming home, going on skype and playing DayZ. It was fucking amazing. We played entire weekends, and after school having awesome experiences. It was very special. We also played countless games on ArmA 3 Epoch, meeting long lasting e-relationships with people abroad. We know so many people because of the VOIP ingame. That period still is the best gaming years I've had. But times changed. The standalone was released, it was buggy but hella fun. I remember the first day it got out we bought it. Only the M4, SKS and Mosin were available. We would run all around the coast having amazing fights. Honestly we didn't need vehicles. I didn't mind running half an hour from Elektro to Kamenka military. But really it got worse from that point. Practically every patch released made the game less fun for us. When vehicles were released, we weren't happy. To this very day, we believe patch 0.55 wasn't the nail in the coffin, but the dirt ontop of that coffin. Dean was long gone from the development team, bad decisions were obviously taken in-house but what killed it are the happy status reports as if it is all good - do you guys remember the "helicopter reveal, base building and contaminated zones"? Yeah, barely do I. DayZ got me into modding back in the day. Modding was a unique experience. It was so fun and I learnt so much, no doubt it helped me carve a future to a programming career. I have built soooooo many projects from scratched (have barely released a fraction of, usually scrapped them eventually). I think quarter my time on ArmA 2 and half my time on ArmA 3 is purely modding. Modding is very beautiful when you get to know it well, it is a great concept BIS had always admired. I feel like ever since Dean took off, DayZ was *falling* from the high mile club of success. I am very sad to see that. I have been in these forums for years trying to look for a good sign in status reports but really, it seems each status report is just emptier than the other. We will never be told what goes behind the curtains really, but it just seems like one dead end. I miss the old times so much, it is hard to let go of them and continue on but it must happen at some point. In a week I am enlisting for a 5 year service in the Israeli Defense Forces, it is a big change in my life moving forward I planned on releasing a map for DayZ Standalone as the devs promised modding tools before the end of 2017. That has sadly not happened, therefore I wish to say that I have atleast finished half of it now (and that half is fully playable and beautiful). It is based on Namalsk, Taviana and Panthera. My 3 most favorite maps of all times. I wish you all a happy time moving onwards, and hope you will find more enjoyment with DayZ once the new engine is up! Before I end this, I wish to shoutout for Adam Francu, for being one brilliant modder who is currently a level designer in the team. Also IceBreakr, who made legendary maps for ArmA 2 (also used in DayZ mod) - Panthera is an all time favourite map mod of mine in all games! Taviana by Martin Bauer is the most beautiful creation I have seen in a mod. Last but not least, Dean "Rocket" Hall for making this mod and game - giving thousands of players all around the world great time. Long last DayZ.

Yea... i kinda feel the same way about this. I loved the DayZ Mod so much, i played over 1000 hours of Standalone... but this Status Report has finally done it - i don't really care any more either. Just a reminder: v0.59.130861 (10 Dec 2015) v0.60.133516 (15 Jun 2016) v0.61.136770 (19 Dec 2016) v0.62.139835 (07 Jun 2017) *yes, the forest looks much better now, but except some map changes nothing really happened here So in two whole years we got 3 major updates? Yes i read every single Status Report and yes i do understand the reasoning behind this development "process". But still... all i feel is disappointment and frustration. And honestly, by now i have grown to hate reading those Status Reports. "Soon you will be able to play the game we always intended to make", "Once Beta is out, content will be added so much faster", "Look at this juicy SR - so many new informations", "This SR is a big one, sit back and enjoy the read", "Helicopters, Bicycles, Vehicles, Basebuilding, Electricity, Barricading, new Weapons..." when all i kinda cared about was a rough release date for the next update or at least any good news. The reality is: 2,338.7 Average Players in November 2017 with a Peak Playercount of 4,822 (steamcharts.com) - that reflects just what happened with all the people i played with. My real life friends stopped playing DayZ long ago, whats left are 1-2 mates who occasionally care to play a little bit... almost everyone i know has moved on, and i guess so should i. its just so disappointing...

Very disappointed that so many features are being pushed past 1.0 (barricading , birds , aerial vehicles, bicycle / motorbike , car modifications) , also extremely disappointed at the pace of the dev team this past year .. we literally had 2 stable patches all year i believe. I also see them pull that “this year is shaping up to be the best year for dayz” card every year . The final product will be great , sure , but I’m starting to think we will see star citizen at 1.0 before dayz even gets close to it’s 1.0 (that’s a huge burn btw , for those of you living under rocks that don’t get that joke).

I love the amount of detail in this status report, it gives me a much better idea of what to expect during the beta phase and after. However I gotta be honest i'm kinda disappointed with the amount of vehicles listed for beta, especially when you compare it with what was available in the original mod. there are so many classic vehicles from the mod they could bring back like -Humvee -UAZ -SUV -Pickup Truck -Huey -MI 8 Also there is no mention of boats at all, so are boats just being cut from the game entirely? I hope not since they were a pretty important vehicle for moving across the coast and traveling to islands. I guess there is always the prospect that mods will reintroduce these vehicles, if one of the devs could elaborate more on this it would be nice.

I'm not disappointed that we won't get 0.63 exp before end of 2017. I'm kind of disappointed by the limited features will be introduced in the initial Beta build. It's less than what is currently in 0.62 overall. i.e. firearms & current vehicles. I'm happy that melee is being revamped. I recall a point where that wasn't even a focus moving forward. I brought it up here and it seemed to get some steam within the community. I still believe in the process and this dev team just disappointed we are where we are currently after defending this for so dang long.

Meh, this is what vehicles are for. Having to haul a Wheelbarrow, Wagon, Hand Cart, or even just a plywood/metal sheet to be used as a stretcher would still have to be quite tiring, make you slow and vulnerable.

Hey, gang. I've been out of Chernarus for 5 months, right after .62 dropped, and after two days. I've noticed a few things different than before: CON • damaged mil tents cannot be repaired by leather kit or sewing kit to have worn quality cosmetics • can no longer stow a quick-barred melee weapon from back slot while moving • vehicles appear to have a "bad alignment" issue, and pull to one-side when driving, even when tires are pristine • vehicles drive more roughly/hazardous handling when not on a road ie. driving through grass • toggling VOIP channel text can no longer be read so you have to guess at which channel you have toggled • due to .62's revamped and very loud ambient soundtrack, the more intimate sounds can scarcely be heard, such as eating an apple PRO • infected will pursue a vehicle a much longer distance, and then start roaming once they give up the chase at their new displaced location The one about the zombies not withstanding (as that's pretty cool and dynamic), are any of these other items known issues longstanding or recent developments? What else might I encounter that was different than before, I wonder.

that point is exactly that... all mr hicks does is refer to beta INTERNAL builds and the 'demo' of beta they had running.. 300 people playing for 5-10 min each doesn't make for good feedback because we all know how the servers work 10 people perfect 20 people good enough 30 people playable 60 people please go home because half of us are having issues.. there was talk of upping the server numbers (100 slot servers etc.) just imagine the carnage that'll bring to the workload of the server.. most of the 'player discussion' happens AFTER people have spend 30+ minutes on exp with full 60 slot servers.. especially if you have your own team on the server (groups of 5-10) that is actively bounty hunting bugs instead of playing GTA/COD because of constant K.O.S. talking about 'we're doing X internally because we're testing for Y internally doesn't spark reactions.. that only IMO says that the game isn't done by a long shot and 'it will take a few more months' the only way this game will generate the hype it used too have is when 300-400 people play on the servers for hours on end and find new stuff/areas/weapons/vehicles/mechanics/bugs like the last 30 something patches please correct me if i'm wrong @Hicks_206 (DayZ)

Just curious, does anyone have an actual running vehicle in DayZ anymore. We've played countless hours and haven't come across a serviceable vehicle at all.

If you are looking for interactions, whatever the kind, it is mostly determined by the types of servers you choose. After I hit my "basic proficiency level" at surviving more often than dying from player encounters, I took a strategy of getting set up on boring public servers, with dwindling populations, just to go out and meet newer players who were still weary of being wary. There is some strange reward in contacting a player who is just so grateful that i didn't KOS them, and helping guide them to the place they want to explore, or help them to find or craft that thing they have been wanting to see. More recently, The Vilage has been one of the more rewarding servers I've ever played. You can find pretty much every playstyle extant in some form or another on that server, and the player movements are as diverse and widespread as their intentions. I don't think it is productive to wait for the game to change player behavior, though I am certain that contamination zones and limited spawns for increasingly varied transportation and basebuilding loot will do plenty to mix things up. A large part of the stagnation of gameplay and lack of emergent player behaviors has been directly due to the regression of the average player towards being an asshole--completely devoid of empathy, rational forethought, or goals that go any further than looting your dead corpse or despawning every camp they find. Players choose the destructive option at an alarmingly high rate, almost as a rule in DayZ. Many rationalize it as meta strategy for the good of the server; despawning gear to put it back into circulation, or killing geared players to give them something to do again; and others use the survival strategy of denial, removing batteries from vehicles they cannot take to prevent others from using them as easily, or despawning camps to deprive their potential enemies of the weapons and food. Spending time on the village was a pretty good indicator, that no matter how many people you got to try to contribute to building something special and different, there were twice as many people who would abuse it to get easy kills, or log on overnight and disassemble everything that had been built. So far, no encampment has lasted more than a couple weeks, and not for lack of trying. It is simply impossible to maintain 'round the clock protection effectively and indefinitely, from the hundreds of random players who make it their life's mission to destroy anything that anyone else has made on a DayZ server. So with these things in mind, i find it far easier to blame the lack of interesting thing to do in DayZ on the players, rather than the game; people are trying to make gameplay interesting and emergent, but there are even more people out there trying to stop us.