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I suspect you have nothing to back this suspicion. I remember very well my first steps, when I was eating all those vitamins, purifying water (which wasn't a thing back then), carrying useless stuff like duct tapes, syringes etc. and I was hugely dismayed when I found out that most of this stuff doesn't even work yet. Many players expect DayZ to be super hard because that's what 'survival' means. And fun definitely shouldn't expire at 500hrs ingame. As for 'alienating people', it's precisely what I was talking about - people forgot the meaning of the word 'survival' and expect a shooter but with Soviet vehicles. This why it was wrong to accommodate PVP so much in the first place. A game which provides for multiple various game styles will never be really good at any of them. This is why there is no hunting mechanics in Civilization 6 and no strategic turn-based combat in DayZ.

Im a simple DayZ player. I see "Vehicles", I upvote...

Was it still raining as you lit a fire on an unsheltered rooftop? If you don't get under a tree or some compatible structure to block the rain, your are going to have poor results. First of all, they have mentioned numerous times that guns have been removed from crashsite spawns for this patch, as they had an issue preventing them from controlling the number of guns at those spawns. So don't expect crashsites to have guns, until further notice. A few others have mentioned the first day of stable patch, ergo, hoppers. Take your time and plan your moves, but be efficient and cover lots of ground. I was disappointed with the amount of loot I found in Myshkino tents, so I ran to Lopatino and started chipping away at a herd of cows with my Longhorn. Now all I need is a couple boxes of nails. Find a way to make your own fun; don't sit there crying about the loot gods not smiling down on you enough, when really, you have just been out-looted by other players. Git Guud, Persistence seemed to work fine on Exp over the weekend, and I've got a tent and a couple barrels on stable, so it is working. That being said, there is still an Experimental branch for continued development of .61. I believe the goal is to get vehicles back in the game, with the desync issues resolved. I haven't heard either way, but I would 100% expect to see a wipe when the final version of .61 is merged. I wouldn't be surprised to see multiple wipes to stable over the coming weeks, especially if new problems arise after vehicles make it back in.

Soft skills, stamina AND beards - oh my! and vehicles - Well, that was enough Stable for me. Back to Experimental!

Hello Survivors! Christmas is coming and we have a small gift for you - 0.61 on Stable branch, Brian is going to tell you more about it. Peter talks about character growth and Mirek has information about vehicles, and their presence on Exp/Unstable. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contents This Week Dev Update/Hicks Dev Update/Peter Dev Update/Mirek Community Spotlight Dev Update/Hicks Greetings Survivors, For those that weren't aware - we pushed 0.61.136770 to Steam stable branch yesterday. While there are still some issues we want to address (VOIP Volume, Supersonic cracks, Container contents desync, Infected footsteps volume, status modifiers stuck, and more) we looked at the experience the tests over the weekend provided, compared to what was going to be available to those on Stable branch over the holiday break and decided to go ahead and make the move. This allows us to ensure that users on Steam stable over the holiday season will be able to enjoy a stable DayZ 0.61 experience, while we continue to address the issues the team is concerned about on Exp/Unstable branch, and pending build health potentially push these over to Stable on our regularly scheduled Wednesday maintenance. Lets take a look at the milestone goals for 0.61 Stable, and then we'll cover what is currently on Exp/Unstable branch - as well as what is pending a new Exp/Unstable update. 0.61 Milestone Goals: Server Login Queue Merge of New Audio Technology from Arma 3 Eden Update. Update of Weapon Sounds for New Audio Technology. Dynamic Spawning of Infected. Predators (Wolves) Dynamic Shadows Network Synchronization Improvements New Server Browser While we're happy to say that we've hit all of these milestone goals for 0.61, there are still issues that need to be addressed. Currently on Exp/Unstable we have build 0.61.136796 which is focused on the following changes: Fix for issues with container contents desync Fix to address supersonic cracks Adjustments of animal SFX levels Adjustments of infected footsteps levels Adjustment to Infected swing SFX In addition to the build currently in test on Exp/Unstable we are focused on more Exp/Unstable updates to address: Status Modifier Updates Adjustments to Dynamic Lights VOIP Volume too quiet Issues with Hand Slots on corpses Some clients experiencing FPS drops And lastly, as promised - future 0.61 Exp/Unstable builds will also be pushed (more than likely after the holiday break) with changes to test network sync on vehicles in DayZ. These builds likely will have vehicles set up to spawn ready to drive, but don't expect that change to follow through to Stable branch! We're all enjoying watching, reading, and hearing about your adventures in the latest change to Stable branch DayZ and we hope you all have a safe and enjoyable holiday break. This will be our last Status Report until January 10th, so see you all in the new year! - Brian Hicks / Creative Director Dev Update/Peter Don't get attached to your gear. This well known DayZ rule is there with us from very beginning. But then what is it, that you should be attached to? In short, it's your character, a survivor in post apocalyptic world full of infected and other threats, where every choice matters and has its consequences. It's easy to say that, but currently the only attachments your character has is his/her gear, his/her location within the world and his/her state. Losing all the gear, getting seriously sick or suddenly need fast travel often leads to sacrificing your character and starting from scratch as a fresh spawn. This behavior goes against the survival idea behind the DayZ in general. To build the value of your character we have planned three pillars which are connected to his life span and activities. Probably the most desired and awaited one is the visual representation of your character appearance like growing beards, scars, bloody hands and others which really reinforce connection between player and his character in world. Second pillar is pretty straightforward and it is connected directly to upcoming stamina system. With stamina in place, sprint wouldn't be intended for traversing long distances (that's what vehicles are for right?), however it will be an important factor for fleeing from immediate dangerous situations you may encounter on reasonable distances. Keeping the character alive longer will benefit from being able to carry more load until the penalty for overload in terms of shortening available stamina strikes in. Third pillar is obviously soft skills, which we have implemented in prototype state for quite some time. Same as with other stuff (for example stamina system mentioned above), this mechanic is waiting primarily for introducing his majesty, the new character himself, which as you may know will be formed from interconnected systems like new animation system, new controller and state machine, new physics, new damage system, new user actions and others. We had been speculating about soft skills for quite some time. Skills leveling system based on gained experience as we know it from traditional RPG games doesn't fit DayZ very well. First draft of soft skills was close to it, there was enclosed skill sets defined by actions which tried to mimic exact roles like medic, mechanic, hunter, builder, farmer and few others. Performing actions within skill sets add experience points to its pool and eventually raising its level. Such system leads to mindless grinding of actions without any meaningful gameplay context which, I believe can really easily ruin the gameplay experience for plenty of players just to witness such behavior. To minimize it, there needs to be some anti-grind solution like simple maximum cap for points per timeframe, or other more elaborate solution which demands more or less UI elements to be clear for players what are the rules and what's going on with experience and skills. In the end we decided to strip soft skills to bare minimum and dare to take different route once again so the vision of DayZ stays intact. Soft skills should not be mandatory, however they should reward long living, dedicated characters and reflect their past actions. Main idea behind it is simple - with little abstraction it's safe to say that if you can stitch up someone, you for sure are relatively able to gut animal or pick seeds from harvest, and on the other hand if you can build fences and watchtowers it should be relatively easy for you to cut tree down or dig garden plot. We introduced so called specialty, which is axis with two poles - precision and roughness, when a character is spawned the pointer is in the middle, neutral position. All actions in game can be divided between precise or rough ones. Even actions from traditional roles like medic can be categorized independently and sit somewhere else in specialty spectrum, for example transfusion as precise action while CPR as rough action. Performing actions in game is moving specialty dynamically towards one pole or other, every action can have different weight so it can move specialty in different amount, let's say while performing transfusion you gain more precision then with simple bandaging. Dedicated characters will be able to profit from current state of their specialty in terms of performing given specialty actions with shorter times, less materials used, wearing out tools less and more outcome gained as current specialty is multiplier for all of these. Not dedicated characters who don't care about specialty or those who feels like jack of all trades are not punished in this system as their specialty will be moving around the middle neutral position which means no penalty as both precise and rough actions will take default time, use default amount of material, worn out tools for default value and gain default outcome. Note, that we are not planning to punish dedicated characters yet (but there is a possibility to do so), if your specialty is more towards roughness you will be stitching yourself as you would do while your specialty is in middle position. I think it's kind of unique approach and it doesn't spoil DayZ with unnecessary tables, numbers, UI clutter and undesirable player behaviors. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year... see you in Chernarus folks! - Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer Dev Update/Mirek Today it will be quick again. We released stable version yesterday, but we're still working on fixing some major issues, like broken modifiers and statuses for some players. We might have a fix today on experimental branch. Looks like it's happening only when one player is connecting at the same time when another is disconnecting, which can happen very often for waiting players in the login queue. About vehicles, we made some progress with synchronization. It's still not perfect and you will experience some micro-teleportation during driving when it hits experimental branch, so please keep in mind that it won't be in its final state. Currently there is just one known blocking issue and it's related to passengers not being able to get out of vehicle sometimes. I don't want to give any promises, but it's still our target to release vehicles on experimental branch before Christmas and if we don't make it, it's priority No.1 at the beginning of next year. I wish you a Merry Christmas and happy New Year. - Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer Community Spotlight I'm sure this happens to you sometimes. You meet a fresh spawn on the coast, befriend him, travel and loot together. But when he finds a gun with ammo, you hear a shot and your screen goes black and you are dead. Your trust in other players is down, but is it like that every time or is there hope for friendly players? YouTuber Cyborg Lyzard had an idea about a social experiment which would prove whether or not players are as cruel and hostile for real. When he released his first social experiment video it was a real successful. Look at this social experiment on update 0.59. Cyborg Lyzard gave a weapon with ammo to a random player and waited to see what happens next. 31% of players killed him immediately. The remaining 69% were friendly. This is not so bad. He tried it again. But in the second experiment he gave the players a gun with ruined ammo. What a lecture on trust and morality! He repeated this experiment again a few weeks ago on update 0.60 and he found out that players are more friendly than before. And what about you? What would you do if somebody gave you a weapon with ammo? Would you put a bullet between his eyes or thank him and go your own way? Let me know on our official Twitter! Header image by: MrBlueAndQueenie Merry Christmas for all Survivals! - Baty / Community Manager

I held PKT once (detached from APC). That thing is really heavy and you cant sprint with it on your shoulder. Back in dayz mod, some machine guns didnt let you carry backpack in same time. Anyway, it will be huge pain in the ass to load one box of ammo just to spend it in 6-7 seconds. It would be cool if it could be mounted on vehicles.

Exp .61 is amazing. Since the last update though I haven't encountered any wolves and I've been in the north country almost exclusively. Is it down to luck/averages that I haven't encountered any wolves or did the latest patch make the wolves rarer? I hope that isn't the case as the wolves really make this game great. A real threat, unlike other games where the wolves are easy to kill and there's only a single wolf. Wolves should be super tough and hard to kill. I love .61 and I'm not all that pressed for vehicles to be added back into the mix yet. I'd love to see bikes make it into the next iteration of exp. Is there a list of what works/doesn't work in .61 + all new additions? Has anyone taken the time to make such a list? DayZ is shaping up to be something very special. The developers have done an excellent job. Oh yeah, this latest update seems to have made .308 ammo disappear from the game. Has anyone found any .308 Winchester? Schweinsteiger Lives!

B. Hicks said "[...] continuing to iterate/update the 0.61 experimental branch with the time we have left before the holidays. [...] adjustments to network sync for vehicles [...]". So ... no vehicles in stable branch, before they will fixe it in next exp. 0.61 builds.

Great stuff! Will vehicles spawn on stable or wait for the next patch ?

Hey guys, Its looking like Friday's Exp update will be pushed over to Stable branch today (estimated 12h update duration / stable server downtime). Now, while we're all aware that there are still some remaining critical issues to be addressed for 0.61, such as supersonic cracks not functioning, status modifiers getting stuck, and gunshot audio being out of sync for some players. The holiday season means that if we don't want to leave you all with 0.60 on Stable branch for the rest of the year, we need to begin the process of moving 0.61 over to Stable branch as soon as possible. That said, we're going to begin updating the stable branch servers today, while continuing to iterate/update the 0.61 experimental branch with the time we have left before the holidays. Fixes for supersonic cracks, adjustments to network sync for vehicles, and other bug fixes are still to come - so bear with us while we go through the long process of updating the Steam stable branch servers!

it would be nice to hear the new audio tech applied to vehicles. Apparently the server positioal authority was developed in part to allow vehicles and passengers to play nice. I am concerned that they will be held off until beta.

A few bugs and the reinsertion of vehicles. Only two bugs I know of are the 'Black-Face' one and the Status modifier freeze. The rest of .61 looks pretty good.

Food will never be a problem until they do something with apple trees. Regardless of the loot, server pop or spawn place, I'm energized within 10 minutes of spawning, always. Even if the F spamming is removed, it will just prolong initial apple picking sequence. The number of apples per tree should be limited. But yes, loot is super scarce, especially since all the exp servers are full/almost full all the time. Don't even bother looting coastal infrastructure, head inland. I didn't experience any problems with cold, but maybe because I'm constantly on the run from zeds and wolves. Keep your eye out in the woods! Wolves are so much tougher than zeds. I don't recommend shooting at zeds, but they go down in melee easily, although melee combat seems bugged and desynced like it never was. The old "click and wait until the game decides that you hit something" never applied more. Vehicles are out, probably for the better. Still, exp. 0.61 is so much better than 0.60. Give it a try!

You would have yourself a ton of time writing that book of a comment if you had read some status reports or looked into whats coming for DayZ :) they are almost ready to implement a new player controller system that will supposedly fix all of your concerns. My guess is either the next patch or possibly the next patch after that. The only true content i have seen added recently would be a pair of sneakers. There havent been any new weapons in almost a year, that im aware of anyway. No new vehicles either. You could make the argument that predatory wolves are new content, buts that neither here nor there. The menu changes, shadows and lighting systems, dynamic zombie spawns and audio updates are all part of implementing the new engine. I think the Devs are already doing exactly what you're asking..now its your turn to do your part, and read up on the planned changes and patches before posting any more silly comments :)

Yesterday I've tried day Z for the first time in like 9 or 10 months. Been playing on experimental 0.61 and so far i've noticed the improvement on fps performance both because the new engine and because I bought a new computer which allows me to have 160 fps on the wilderness and 50-60 in a city with everything maxed out from the 30-15 fps I had before. Also, i've noticed the huuuuge amount of new stuff, the new improved inventory and many many things the devs are spending time, money and effort in doing so.. ... and still... if I change weapons while walking on a roof, the char doesn't stop even if I release 'W' and commits suicide. So.. after almost a year, the character maneuver is still really far far away from any other fps game since... dunno, the 90's? A lot of people in this forum asks for content. All the posts I see is people asking for new weapons, new clothes, more vehicles, more facial/hair customization, new animals, new buildings, new this, new that... Well, not me. Today I came to ask the devs to, instead of focusing so much effort time & money on content, instead, try to improve the game and to make it at least playable before adding more content. What about a prediction system? every game has one and it's what masks the latency and connection problems? ArmA is probably the only videogame without one. Why does need the client to ask the server to know what to do with an apple? ("Retrieving data..." for 2 seconds before the "Eat" option appear). Why do I need to stare at a door/ladder as an idiot for 5 seconds looking for that exact pixel that allows me to interact? Why do I have 1-2 seconds latency to jump? IF I get to jump at all? why does my character spawns items on his hands instantly? isn't there a "default" animation instead of having to do one for each item? Or those which have it why the animation blocks everything else (sometimes commiting suicide because I can't stop walking as I said). Why, given the lack of prediction system, the action to draw/holster an item from the quick bar is the same button? didn't the devs predict we would press it more than once when it doesn't react and when finally it does the char would draw-holster-draw-holster the item many times? Why my hands are floating when reloading my weapon and the sounds are not synced? this is not new techonology, even games from the 90's had synced sound/animations. Why is melee combat still undoable? Yesss, we're at alpha stage. I know. Yes, they working on it. All we have to do is have patience, etc, etc, etc. I know all that but I can't help it, every time I see "we added a new weapon!" all I see is "We spend hundreds of hours on an thing we already have tons of instead of focusing on making this game playable". Usually a game development is the other way around, first the engine, then, the content. Even at the point we are in the development, I still think that even buying the license for an already better made game engine will be better, faster and cheaper than having to do all the above by yourselves. And in the end, the game would be a lot better.

Hahaha I think there'll be a natural disparity between the types of players then - Those that really want to fly, and the vultures who fawn over the crashes of their fallen neighbors xD Besides the Little Bird, I am hoping for at least one military transport helicopter - Maybe a Medivac :D Hm - Do you guys imagine that .62 will appear as more than just a Enviornmental Visual Update? I may be reaching, but I assume it'll also be updating forest/town audio, AND placing in the vehicles/guns. If that includes helis, that would be a surprise, but I definitely think sedans, trucks, and bikes will be inserted also.

After their big edits are in, things like inserting bears, more items, more vehicles, even more land mass to Chernarus are going to be coming in like hot cakes! :D Curious, however, about the new player controller! Will it also affect AI in that it will give new postures/status appearances based on damage or weather - Much like I assume injured poses will be included in this update for players. Gods, what is there left anyway? - Player controller, Base Building, Soft skills? - The rest are just variations of already included hardware :D

*Here's the status report for others like myself who DO NOT check dayz.com and have for years simply followed the forum version of the SR. Baty is under the weather so I hope this thread will suffice! Status Report 12/6/2016 Greetings, survivors! We have Brian and Mirek on this week, mostly covering the recent improvements in server performance and our final push to have 0.61 out on Stable before Christmas. Additionally, Brian provides a bit of an insight on the intended DayZ survival experience, we have some exciting news regarding vehicles on Experimental branch and share several forums threads that we think you'll find interesting! Contents This Week Dev Update/Hicks Dev Update/Mirek Handpicked: DayZ Forums News Community Spotlight Dev Update/Hicks As many of you may know, we're in an Exp/Unstable branch iteration phase - on the road to moving 0.61 to Stable branch. So, this Status Report I'm going to break my part into two. First part covering where we are with 0.61, and what our current critical issues for moving to Stable branch are. For the second part, I'll talk briefly about my opinion on 0.61 as a build and our goals with it as an experience. Now that all of our milestone goals for 0.61 have been implemented, we're currently in a rapid iteration phase. For those testing on Exp/Unstable branch this means a lot of things can change quickly, not to mention break. Over the last few builds, we've been focused on both improving server performance and trying to tackle issues that were caused as a byproduct of work on optimizing client network traffic. While that may be frustrating for those of you excited to try out 0.61, it is absolutely critical for the development process that we are able to iterate, and test these changes under a larger load than internal QA resources allow. Additionally, a good deal of the critical issues we've been seeing on the Exp/Unstable branch servers simply do not reproduce internally. Thus, us being able to test through the Unstable branch, and provide the team with the critical crashdumps, debug logs, and profiler data is is absolutely required for 0.61 to get to Stable branch on Steam as soon as possible. So, the next time you run across a server crash, frustrating bug, or gamebreaking issue while testing on Exp/Unstable - do your best not to get frustrated, head over to the feedback tracker and give as much data as you are able to. Every ticket and comment on the feedback tracker helps, even if you might not feel like it does! For Stable blocking issues, we're currently tracking: Characters twitching/stuttering when crossing rubble/bodies Client Crash(es) Some structures not having proper shadows Items stuck in hands Server crash(es) VOIP Too Loud Infected Vocalizations too loud Naked Characters / Silent Gunshots Mirek has some fascinating insight into some of the issues we've discussed above, as well as where we are with improving the vehicle simulation - I encourage you to scroll down and read what he has to say, the information is critical to understanding what is going on with the gameplay programming team (which has a large impact on how DayZ plays!) For the second part of my text this week, I'd like to comment on the swing towards survival with 0.61. It is no secret that DayZ set out to be a punishing survival title from the start of the project. Much of the mechanics that would drive this type of experience have been in prototyped phase, with the full functionality of them dependant upon technology from the engine, optimization to make them a threat, and so on - because of that, for the majority of our development period they have had little impact on gameplay unless you intentionally sought them out (or a bug related to them caused larger issues, such as the hyperthermia issue on 0.60). With this side of the game being present in such a state, most of DayZ's gameplay throughout the Early Access phase has centered around social interaction, and gunplay. With little incentive, or push for anything else to occur. As bugfixing, feature implementation, and optimization has allowed us to bring some of these mechanics more to the forefront of gameplay, I fully expect the large portion of the Early Access playerbase that might not keep up to date on development to be surprised, and even push back on these changes once they hit stable branch. I'm fully aware many of you love DayZ for the action you experience when you get into a gunfight, or the interesting (and often hillarious) social situations that player interaction creates. I do not want you to feel ignored. Everything in DayZ should come with a cost, be it struggling to survive, choosing to make a beeline for the closest military base looking to pick a fight, or creating a farming commune on the coast. The closer we move to Beta, and Early Access release this will become more apparent, and we will of course ensure that all styles of gameplay are as viable as possible, assuming you make the correct decisions to overcome the environment that seeks to kill you. Be it through starvation, infection, murder, the cold, or being eaten alive by wolves. Excited as we are by the slow but inevitable progression to that unforgiving survival experience we set out to create back in 2013, we're all very aware (as you all should be) - that this is a development build. Many critical pieces to the final puzzle are still missing, and there will be bugs, but we hope that you find these changes compelling, and enjoy your experience inside Chernarus even more. I've rambled on enough for this Status Report. I'm sure you all wanted to see more fancy screenshots or gifs - but these things slow down as the team wraps up what is in 0.61, and starts to focus on bugfixing in order to get to stable branch. Once we get past 0.61 and can start talking about 0.62, I'm sure we'll have more eye candy for you. - Brian Hicks / Creative Director Back to Contents Dev Update/Mirek Last week, we were mostly focused on server performance improvements. We rewrote the updating strategy of network objects and the results are pretty good. This part is now about five times faster. On the other hand, it reintroduced the "naked characters" bug. Things like these can happen quite often, because this mechanism is very complex. As server performance is one of the major blockers of stable release, we had to release it into Experimental branch as soon as possible, so there wasn't much time to test it internally. I hope you won't get angry when things like these happen on Experimental branch. Another bug we found is that Central Economy (CE) limits for infected count didn't work properly, so too many infected were spawned over the entire map. This slows down server performance too much and it's the source of incorrectly updated character modifiers, or the "persistent unconsciousness". We also decreased the simulation rate of distant AI units, so this should help the server performance a lot, and it should also lead to a general decrease in network traffic. All of these fixes are scheduled for merge into Experimental branch this week (it's possible that some of them are already merged by the time you're reading this). Now about vehicles. In the last status report, I wrote about two blocking issues. The broken simulation of more players in a vehicle is now resolved, but because the server is now authoritative over player's position and movement, new small issue appeared. You won't be able to see some animations (like head movement) of remote players sitting in the vehicle. We're not planning to fix this this in 0.61 - we will be taking another look at this issue when the new player controller is merged in, because we want to avoid doing things twice. Client side correction still doesn't work well and I'm not sure how long it will take to fix this. Also, because we would like to release Stable build before Christmas, we will release it without vehicles. We will, however, continue releasing Experimental builds with vehicles included, when they get ready. We've also made other vehicle simulation improvements, which will hit Experimental. Here's the short list of changes: dashboards now reacts to switching vehicle lights player can use zoom when sitting in the passenger seat engine animation now correctly reacts to all user actions, damage etc. cars can be drown in any water, not only in the sea working particles from wheels updated suspension physics and collisions cars can now drive over small obstacles based on wheel's radius suspension along with wheels now correctly reacts to land surface The second part of my status report will be dedicated to infected. We are working closely with designers to tweak them a little bit for 0.61, mainly improving their movement and attacking. Pushing won't be solved, as there is still the issue with AI units having a new physical controller built on bullet physics, while players use the legacy Arma collision detection. In this case, what happens is that infected penetrates into the player (because it's unable to find a collision), but player detects that he's in collision with something and moves away from the collision. We won't be able to resolve this without the new player controller, so we're trying to at least improve it by tweaking some movement parameters. This is all for now from me. - Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Progammer Back to Contents Handpicked: DayZ Forums News Our official DayZ community forums provide the easiest way to discuss all things DayZ. The discussion there is free of the usual constraints of other channels, like the 140 character limit on Twitter or the occasionally questionable voting mechanism on Reddit. The forums have a solid user base and are also the place where developers have been staying in touch with survivors basically ever since the early DayZ Mod days. For these reasons, we'd love to drive most of the discussions there - both those where members of the dev team engage with you, the DayZ community, and those where you simply talk to fellow survivors. Supporting the effort to keep the forums a busy place, we'll do our best to handpick some of the new content from the forums for each new Status Report, and highlight interesting posts or threads created in the past two weeks as a recommended reading material. Occasionally, we will also open a discussion on a topic we want to hear you opinions on. Mind you, there will likely be exceptions to the schedule: Status Reports often turn into truly massive behemoths already, and development updates should always be the main focus here. Then, sometimes, people simply get too passionate about one or two particular threads and just won't let go of them - and so we usually don't need to drive additional traffic to such threads. But now, let's get to it, here's what's been happening on the official DayZ community forums lately. Friday Experimental Build Thread As you probably know, the 0.61 build we deployed on Friday suffered from some serious server crashing, and the discussion that unfolds on the first 5 or 6 pages in the related thread is a nice practical example of the nature of the Experimental/Unstable branch of DayZ. Often, even if you can't really play the game properly, you may have actually helped the development team (and we appreciate that a lot!): Read the thread » While in this particular case, we've already gathered enough data about the crashes and our Deployment Engineer David sacrificed a bit of his weekend to revert the Experimental branch to previous build, it should be expected that Experimental builds may stay all over the place like that for some time. If that happens, we'd like to kindly ask for your patience, ask you to read this post over here to understand the nature of the Experimental branch, and ultimately ask you to switch over to Stable if you just want to play DayZ. 0.61 Stable Loot Thread Loot has always been a massive discussion topic in the community, and even internally. cs_wolf has started a thread where he's expressing his own hopes for the vanilla loot distribution of 0.61 on Stable, and while our design team is getting a clearer idea of where the vanilla experience is going themselves, feel free to fantasize about your own ideal setup with your fellow survivors: Read the thread » Best DayZ Weapon Combo Thread When you've managed to get the basics to survive, it's the best time to get properly armed. kataro posted what he believes is the most efficient weapon combo in DayZ, and is asking you to share your own deadly combos. Even our Community Manager Baty, a truly experienced survivor, is sharing her personal favorite, so hit the image to read the thread and see what her best weapon combo consists of: Read the thread » BETA Content: CR 550 Rifle Thread The last entry in our handpicked section of the Status Report is actually a start of what will hopefully become a series of sneak peeks on some of the BETA milestone content and features. This week, Brian is keeping it simple, teasing the already announced CR 550 and asking what your personal expectations and hopes are for this new piece of weaponry: Read the thread » Back to Contents Community Spotlight The news for update 0.61, which is on Experimental branch right now, are new dynamic shadows. Shadows look great, and the way you all are using them to take screenshots is really amazing. Besides facing the Infected, you also have to deal with an additional level of paranoia because dynamic shadows create a new dynamic, all happening in real time. Player XRW64 utilizes the new shadows and backlighting to create an interesting visual experience with a friend. It's like open world DayZ shadow puppet theater! Say hello to yourself! Test the new dynamic shadows and send us more rad images. Like JoeBandit. Wanna get really creeped out? Imagine a silent infected hiding somewhere in this room. Bibix is a very successful streamer from France, and he has a great talent for capturing unique moment. We love his screenshots. For more pics click HERE. All of these screenshots are great examples of how creatively Bibix uses the flares. It really sets a frightening mood. I don't know about you, but I definitely don't want to find someone (or something) dangerous inside, much less an evil clown. This is what can happen in the world of Chernarus. If you play on Experimental/Unstable servers, don't forget to use our Feedback Tracker to submit bugs, and for the newest info or a place to share your screenshots, follow the official DayZ Development Team Twitter account. Header image by: BIBIXHD - Baty / Community Manager Back to Contents

Hmm, it's a tough question as it all comes down to a matter of taste. I really enjoy the post-apocalypse survival genre, make it zombies, aliens or robots. (Sadly there's not enough alien or robots/AI post apocalypse games out there...) but I have to admit that after trying out so many survival games, I seem to always come back to DayZ. It's by far one of my favorite games. Now clocked at 2125 hours in-game, I'd say it's totally worth it. At least half of this play time was in experimental, as I love to try out new things and test new mechanics and report findings. Yes, there are bugs, but stable in 0.60 is horrible imo with terrible desync,duping, glitcher, hackers, etc. while personally I only had good experiences with experimental 0.61. When I play on stable, it's 100% of the time on private hive servers like the DayZ Colony US-2, DayZ Underground US or EU servers or the Gents Of Novo server. Currently, even though I really enjoy DayZ, I wouldn't call it a "game" per say, as it's still a work in progress and will change a lot once we get the new player controller, new animations, new vehicles, completed and reworked graphics plus sound engines, etc. But, that' doesn't mean you can't have fun while testing it out. Welcome to DayZ! And safe travels survivor! Cheers!

Yes, I want to see stages of effects for sure. The shaking is an ok start but I would like to see increased possible failure rate when crafting or performing more complex actions, and tunnel vision and blacking in and out before totally passing out etc. The endgame should be what you make of it in an open world sand box context. I think simply building and maintaining a base and vehicles while warding off people, infected, and predators will be common end game type activities. When people talk about end game loot etc, I tend to roll my eyes a bit because for some people that's an ushunka hat and a fish trap. Though I doubt I will play many of the mod's of the SA I am fascinated and very excited to see what comes out of the modding community.

I have to say .61 experimental has the best performance (server and client wise) of all past builds . Not only are the servers up almost all day which is a big thing for experimental, but the client gets great fps even on low end rigs . I know because my awesome computer broke two weeks and ago aand I've since then been playing on an I-3 intel onboard 5500 graphics laptop but yet I still get a solid 30-40 fps in cities-rural areas . if you haven't played dayz in a long time and are especially waiting for a little better and scarier survival experience : try .61 experimental , I believe it will impress you immersion wise (lots of scary moments with the wolves and dynamic zombie spawns , only issue is how slow zombies are and how they push you , also no vehicles right now but not for long).

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday! For the last year things have been really REALLY slow update wise given that so much of the engine and renderer (and other under the hood aspects of the game) are finally reaching the implementation phase of their development. Vehicles in general have out of necessity been put on a back burner until things like network optimization to reduce desync and other various mechanics can be worked out. This video was released almost one year ago to date. I bet they had planned on having it implemented in the following few months but this is when (according to my observations) the dev team must have began encountering the time delay causing obstacles they've been dealing with for the last year. To give a sense of just how far behind the dev team is from where the thought they could be (vehicle wise) consider that prior to last Christmas, Hicks teased that we might possibly see an initial implementation of aircraft in Chernarus as an early Christmas present to play with. After this lesson in the merits of caution, for the last year Hicks has been keeping his head down in terms of making promises he might not be able to keep and the dev team has been working hard on on less than glorious but necessary changes to the game that are still yet to come to fruition. I like it as a strategy if it brings the release of 1.0 closer to present (the long run), but of course the major gripes that players have right now are a lack of any new core features and content like (working) vehicles, aircraft and basebuilding. Maybe small object vehicle interaction has been scrapped by now, or maybe it's been put to the side until vehicles are better optimized, which has been put to the side until more core systems are re-worked and overall optimization can actually begin. Even though my heart desires vehicles and this kind of physics quite badly, my brain understands that if the devs are forced to implement features in any order other than their own choosing, then the resulting debugging and complications are just creating more and more work down the road.

Cant wait to see what will updated NWAF look like. I really is out of date. Id like to see more wrecked military vehicles around map. Maybe they can borow some from Arma 3 team.

Hello Survivors! we have a juicy Status Report for you again! Victor presents a video full of new animations, Adam is talking about military base changes and Baty is showcasing all the cool wolves footage from our community creators. Contents This Week Dev Update/Hicks Dev Update/Peter Dev Update/Miroslav Dev Update/Fido Dev Update/Viktor Dev Update/Adam Community Spotlight Dev Update/Hicks Greetings Survivors, So as many may know, it has been a pretty busy few weeks. We've had a good deal of experimental updates go out. For those that don't follow our posts on the official forums I'll try and give you all some perspective on what those updates have been aimed towards, and what our current priorities are for 0.61. Server side performance is one of our major goals for improvement on 0.61 experimental. Aside from stability (server side crashes), this has the largest impact on the actual effectiveness of the major changes gameplay wise for 0.61. When server performance drops below the acceptable line on these servers, it will reduce and impede the functionality of these areas. To give you guys an example, server performance can cause issues such as (but not limited to): Modifier/Damage Application can be stuck or delayed AI Reactions and Speed can be reduced (Infected, Wolves, Wild Animals) Door States can be reported incorrectly Obviously, as you can see the above issues are critical to have reduced as much as possible for 0.61 Stable. In addition to that we're looking into issues related to: Infected vocalizations being too quiet Infected response to firearm types being uniform (Suppressed/Lower db ammo not having proper effect) Infected able to push characters through/into model geometry (potentially causing characters to be stuck/die) VOIP Volume too loud / Adjustment not functioning Today we pushed an additional update for Exp/Unstable branch addressing previous issues caused by the latest update. Characters displaying as nude in some situations, some gunshot sounds not being played for all players, a new server crash, and some adjustment to predator AI behavior. We'll continue our march forward to getting 0.61 to Stable branch, and I think I speak for the whole team when I say we're all very excited to see the .61 changes in the hands of the larger stable branch update. This of course is not where we want DayZ to be yet, but it is a great step forward to that experience. Don't forget to grab a raincoat, don't waste those bullets, and head over to the official DayZ forums at forums.dayz.com to participate in the ongoing discussion! 0.61 Milestone Goals: Server Login Queue Merge of New Audio Technology from Arma 3 Eden Update. Update of Weapon Sounds for New Audio Technology. Dynamic Spawning of Infected. Predators (Wolves) Dynamic Shadows Network Synchronization Improvements New Server Browser - Brian Hicks / Creative Director Dev Update/Peter With the recent addition of dynamic shadows casted from point lights and spot lights you can notice that they are quite dark due high intensities of lights in general. Overpowered lights are also causing unpleasant effect with camera exposure in new renderer as it tries to clamp and scale down huge differencies in scene luminancy for display output, which is resulting in pitch black surroundings outside the reach of lights. Power of lights was intentionally set higher in the past as they were compensating former pitch black nights in old RV engine renderer. In new renderer we approached the night time differently so there shouldn't be a need to change your gamma settings to see at least something when you play fair, of course those who doesn't we prevent unfair gamma abuse, but it's currently very low on priority list. What's on the top of the list regarding lights is for sure first balance pass of their intensities which should bring them to reasonable values for new renderer and its camera. You can expect to see these changes any time soon in 0.61 experimental releases. In future, for 0.62 version we would like to tackle day time and night time lighting to pull out more potential from new renderer combined visual updates for environment. Another troublesome behavior in 0.61 experimental releases you witnessed is infected and their movement and attacking. Actually it's quite a problem as currently both player character and infected are using different physics which doesn't like each other. However we are doing our best to fight these issues for 0.61 release via changes to configuration of AI which are the only weapons available for us now. With new player character, the old physics will be ditched and we gain more freedom in implementation of infected as well. One more thing I would like to mention is, that alongside new synchronization for players, vehicles are being worked on too. Count in they are getting so much love implementation wise so I hope we will be able to get some of these changes in 0.61 to make vehicles much more reliable and pleasure to drive. In the moonlight... see you in Chernarus folks! - Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer Dev Update/Miroslav Today will be just a small update. We merged server performance improvements into experimental branch, which introduced some new bugs, like gear despawning for remote players (that's also the reason why you can't hear some gunshots - because remote players don't have weapon in their hands). Anyway, we fixed this issue and it should be available in the next experimental update. New server performance improvements won't be enabled, as we have to deal with some new server crashes. When these are resolved, we will enable these improvements. Another big task is finishing vehicle synchronization and it's priority No. 1 now, as we want to bring vehicles back as soon as possible. There are two blockers now - client side correction and bad simulation, when two or more players are inside the vehicle. - Miroslav Maněna / Lead Gameplay Programmer Dev Update/Fido We’ve implemented terrain light reflection, variable coloring of trees (to add a bit more of the autumn feeling to Chernarus) and managed to progress with implementation of the new SimulWeather/TrueSky technology that we use for rendering the sky and clouds. These are merely some experimental visual effects, adding a little bit of “drama” to the world. - Filip Doksanský / Lead Engine Programmer Dev Update/Viktor Today I would like to share with you a short video that demonstrates some of the new player character features. We still have a lot to do to make all transitions work perfectly and we are also in the process of refining the animations. There are a couple of interesting things in the video however. I would like to describe them for you in more detail. First of all you will notice new camera and movement. The animations have been polished so they feel more natural and fluent. The camera system has been redone and now we finally are able to adjust the camera to our needs. The version you see is still WIP and we are constantly working on it. But in short, new camera options allow us to adjust camera per stance or even per animation if needed. One of the most visible changes in the character movement is the possibility to interrupt almost any animation. This gives players greater control over the character. We have talked about this in previous status reports a few times already but it is a really big change compared to the old system. The way character look around is also different. Now we have the ability to use poses for look at things or aiming. By creating aim-spaces we are able to adjust character poses properly to certain angles which gives us perfect control over how the animations look in the game. Gestures, actions and other animations now are divided in two groups. Some are full body animations and some are upper body or other body part animations. This had to be done to allow movement while eating, drinking, greeting and many other situations. It's important however that all of them are interruptible as you can see in the video, with the LYING DOWN gesture. Most of these actions are made of three parts - IN, LOOP and OUT. We play IN animation at the beginning, then the character starts doing actions like chopping trees, and when players release the mouse button, OUT is activated. Hopefully you enjoyed this small video preview. I am pretty sure we will put together some more. For the next couple of weeks we will be focused on implementing animations for weapons, new combat and of course, continue improving the player character. - Viktor Kostik / Lead Animator Dev Update/Adam If you were playing .61 experimental over past few weeks, you may have noticed that we have added little military location on Sosnovka pass. Many of you were probably wondering why something like that was added, well, wonder no more. In this status report, I will cover major additions and changes to the military locations on Chernarus! Please bear with me, this may be a bit longer, but I feel that such thing needs to be explained in greater detail so we avoid any misinformation. The overall aim is to start finalizing important pieces of the map prior beta so there is a solid ground for associated Central Economy tweaks. To achieve that, we have been looking with designers into options on how to deal with the current situation of military loot locations, which is without doubt one of the main drivers behind the survivor movement on Chernarus. While we are quite satisfied with the way concrete military buildings are distributed as of now, the distribution of improvised military objects (mainly tents) is something we need to tackle. To get rid of military loot saturation within Myshkino and North West Airfield tent camps, we have decided to significantly reduce tent count in these locations and use newly created "buffer of tents" to either add to existing or create completely new military locations on Chernarus. So let me now go over the existing locations to see what was exactly changed including pictures (for some locations, keep in mind that they are work-in-progress). Myshkino tents Previously positioned on the coast south of Balota airfield, this military camp is one of the biggest military locations (as of .60, both in terms average loot availability and size). With this change, this camp has been stripped to 1/4 of its previous size. It has been built more or less from the scratch (so it will spice up the game-play for a while), but the general location still stays the same. For now - as I mentioned in October status report, we plan to change this area significantly as it is part of much bigger plan that is aimed to a complete re-design of western border of Chernarus (more on that in later status report/s). North West Airfield One of the most famous locations on Chernarus and well known since early days of DayZ Mod. Again, focus was on the military camp. This camp has been reduced to half and completely re-designed from scratch. I also did some minor modifications to its surroundings to - hopefully - offer some new tactical possibilities. Now I should mention that in no way you should consider this change to be permanent. We will soon formalize internally a clear plan for a complete re-design of North West Airfield. NWA is one of the few locations on Chernarus that basically still look like it did in Arma 2 version of Chernarus (and it looks completely out of place compared to other areas of Chernarus+). Even after the change within northern tents, we expect this area to be still very active and we will do our best to make sure that the airfield and its surroundings will look and play just as good. We will of course keep you updated as we progress towards this goal in future status report/s. Kamensk military base Fairly a new military location, which was however changed quite a lot over time (someone remembers pit of death?). It has received a slight face-lift along with its surroundings (and will receive more once new forests will arrive). This base utilized "tent buffer" and received number of military tents scattered among the ruins. This change along with other (smaller) additions to northern highway should hopefully increase traffic in this part of the map. Tisy military base One of the newest additions on Chernarus - concluding the northern expansion - is slowly crawling to be the location of first choice for all survivors, who seek top tier military equipment. Located in North West corner of the map, players need to venture through the whole Chernarus to reach it. To properly reward them for taking risks of doing so, large military camp was added into the perimeter of the base. This camp should give you an idea that it has been built in there to stay for a longer period of time - assuming its inhabitants would survive long enough. I should mention (the usual) disclaimer - Tisy military base is still not yet considered to be done and this military will change in the future. The new stuff! 9 military locations were added (with one already present on .61 experimental) on Chernarus. They are represented either through a military roadblocks of different sizes or through a smaller military camps (similar to the one in Stary Sobor). If you are looking for a list of new locations along with pictures, you wont find them here. I think we need to keep some things as a surprise, so I will let you figure it out once this hits public (experimental) branches. As you can see, Chernarus just got even more interesting to explore. And we are definitely not stopping there. Our aim is to have more locations that would resemble humanity's struggle to tackle day zero situation. But again, more on that in later status reports. We understand, that this particular change could easily be one of the most significant changes on Chernarus during its development and so - once it will hit consumer branches - we will be actively looking into our data and feedback from you to see how this change performs in the live environment and implemented tweaks if necessary. But of course feel free to discuss this already and let us know what you think! And given the progress that has been made in this particular task for the past few weeks, we are actively discussing the possibilities of testing these changes within .61 update (if not, then .62). So stay tuned! - Adam Franců / Map Designer Community Spotlight Wolves are the new thing for the 0.61 update, and we had amazing feedback from your side on our social networks and forums. You have sent us a lot of amazing screenshots and videos from your first contact with wolves. We are as excited as you are because we love to watch your reactions when you meet them for the first time. For the first time you are scared, you are running for your life, someone fights, someone dies. It is not easy to survive encounters with wolves. Look at this great reaction by John Connor who met these predators face-to-face. Check out this amazing performance with wolves by CamCANTRUN. His touchingly sad story should affect everyone. In my case, he's definitely succeeded. When Man Becomes Prey When Man Becomes Prey II Player jakon72 dealt with the wolf in his own way, He killed it and made a dinner from it when the wolf attacked him. If you did not meet any wolves yet, you can try to find them on our Experimental/Unstable servers. Check the map of wolf locations by DAYZTV here. I hope you enjoy 0.61, and if you have something you'd like to share, send it to out official Twitter account . Header image by: Sweetest_Kill - Baty / Community Manager

I've played a lot of 0.61 experimental, and the dynamic spawning system is exactly has Weyland describe it. Currently, when you scout a city or town from 500-600M +, and there's no infected roaming around, it simply means there's no player there. When you get closer to the town, you can actually see them spawn right before your eyes. In 0.60 or before, the infected were there, but stationary, and only started moving if a player was in the vicinity, but right now, it's much more similar to what we have in the mod. Even though I really like how many there are when you start shooting weapons and a few players are in the area, it's still too depended on players and gives away too much info about players in a certain area. Also, right now you can't clear out areas, the infected will respawn endlessly. They just kept coming... Of course, we all know it's still a work in progress, and I'm looking forward to the changes for the forests, new vehicles, new animations and player controller, refined lighting and shadows, the rest of the animals coming back, etc. But I would love to have an independent system for the infected spawning that doesn't rely on players in a certain area.