(Poll) How do you feel when playing DayZ?

[yamiks 6]

so cast your votes and let everyone know how u feel in dayz!

Edited December 2, 2012 by yamiks

[battle-snail 1]

my heard goes pumping every time i enter a lootspawn, even if i m all alone on ther server...

[djcounta101@hotmail.com 3]

i love the paranoia of pvp and the silent protaganists , zombies , thirst , hunger ..................

[Sgt.Asshat 607]

I fell like everybody is a noob and i kill them for that

[St. Jimmy 1631]

"It feels like open world PvP w/ some looting and some zombies"

"I feel like TARGET, always beeing watched and shot at by snipers and bandits"

These two. I started to feel only like that so I quit playing DayZ while ago and returned to normal Arma 2 or PR.

[Sutinen 635]

Where's the "It feels like a survival game" part? In my opinion it does not feel like the real apocalypse (See The Walking Dead) and it's far from an open world PvP with looting.

[BSB Jimmy 360]

vunerable

[Inception. 9443]

I feel untouchable in my white offroad.

[dallas 5195]

I feel alone and safe, until I hear or imagine I hear human activity and then I get worried.

Funny thing is I'm scared of dying, but every time I do, I'm so happy to start all over agian.

Edited December 2, 2012 by Dallas

[yamiks 6]

I feel alone and safe, until I hear or imagine I hear human activity and then I get worried.

Funny thing is I'm scared of dying, but every time I do, I'm so happy to start all over agian.

same here .. about that starting fresh part.. since i have died A LOT .. it doesnt surprise me anymore

[brent2 11]

I'm an adult in my 20's, and there aren't a lot of non-casual games which still appeal to me. When I first started playing the mod, back when it was newer, I felt about as immersed in a post-apocalyptic environment as any video game up to that point could have made me feel. Zombies were scary as hell, shambling along the countryside (or maybe it was just the threat of zombie attack, rather than the actual zombies themselves). I was paranoid... military crawling around the countryside, crouch-running from building to building during the rare occasions when I had the stomach to run through a village, heart pounding, etc. Finding beans or a Makarov was an accomplishment. The experience was sort-of like if the movie "I Am Legend" were made into really good video game--it was awesome. But as time passed, I slowly learned that I could simply sprint through cities to major loot spawns, sprint out, and use whatever I obtained to loot the "best" loot spawns on the map... and not just if I got lucky, but almost every single time. I think that the way that I was playing originally was how the game/mod is meant to be experienced, and the way that I eventually came to play was a result of the shortcomings of the game mechanics. The experience essentially evolved from post-apocalyptic survival to a slow-motion Call of Duty deathmatch. I feel that this can be fixed in a few ways:

• Loot spawns should be dynamic rather than static locations. I mean, there should be some variability in where various types of items are found, rather than having them in the same exact spots every time. I don't think that there should be a 100% chance of finding an AK-74 if I visit the same circuit of places, which is the current case. Static loot spawns help turn the game into a slow-motion Call of Duty deathmatch, wherein the "load-out" menu is replaced with brainless grinding, and the map is a little bigger.
  
• Make zombies a significant threat, more so than other players. If zombies are the primary violent threat, it should force the kind of stealthy, careful behavior that I utilized early-on. It might even make group play more sensible than solo play.
  
• Make large cities like Cherno have ten times the zombie concentration that the small villages and countryside tend to have. This fits in with the "lore" of the game due to probable population density before the "infection" hit, and it would balance out the current high reward for sprinting through big cities.
  
• Make food and ammunition rare instead of common, and make matches and matchboxes finite and hard to come by. Before I stopped playing, I was consistently finding more food than I could even carry. The fact that carrying an alternative primary gun in one's backpack is common really speaks to how unbalanced the "survival" aspects of the mod/game are right now.
  
• Remove bandit headscarves. I know DayZ does not necessarily strive to be "realistic", but bandit headwraps are about as far from "authentic" as you can get. Just too synthetic for my tastes, even if I don't play as a bandit.
  
• Make characters gain strength, stamina, and resistance to illness as time goes on. This will discourage Call of Duty gameplay and will reinforce the importance of permadeath. Perhaps vaccines could be implemented which have a one-time use and are limited to a single "life".
  

I know all of this has been suggested many times before, but I felt the need to bring it up again anyway. Maybe the more that these things are heard, the higher the chance they have to catch on as implemented features. It may be in bad taste for me to say this, but I think that while DayZ has a lot of potential, it's best kept a niche game which should appeal to the kinds of people who enjoy its "authentic" roots as a post-apocalyptic survival game, rather than pandering to the sort of people who want to pretend that it's Call of Duty: Slow-Mo Edition. Depending on how the standalone turns out, it could very well be either one of my favorite games of all time, something I spent hundreds of hours on over the course of the next few years, or a huge let-down, something I pass up completely. Not very many games could go either way like that, so I'd like to see something come of it.

Edited over 3,000 times for clarity :)

Edited December 2, 2012 by brent2

[Aki11u 22]

I'm an adult in my 20's. When I first started playing the mod, back when it was newer, I felt about as immersed in a post-apocalyptic environment as any video game up to that point could have made me feel. Zombies were scary as hell, shambling along the countryside, and I was paranoid... military crawling around the countryside, crouch-running from building to building during the rare occasions when I had the stomach to run through a village, heart pounding, etc. Finding beans or a Makarov was an accomplishment. As time passed, I slowly learned that I could simply sprint through cities to major loot spawns, sprint out, and use whatever I obtained to loot the "best" loot spawns on the map. I think that the way that I was playing originally was how the game/mod is meant to be experienced, and the way that I eventually came to play is a result of the shortcomings of the game mechanics. The experience essentially evolved from post-apocalyptic survival to slow-mo Call of Duty deathmatch. I feel that this can be fixed in a few ways:

• Loot spawns should be dynamic rather than static locations. I mean, there should be some variability in where various types of items are found, rather than having them in the same exact spots every time. I don't think that there should be a 100% chance of finding an AK-74 if I visit the same circuit of places, which is the current case. Static loot spawns help turn the game into a slow-motion Call of Duty deathmatch, wherein the "load-out" menu is replaced with brainless grinding, and the map is a little bigger.
  
• Make zombies a significant threat, more so than other players. If zombies are the primary violent threat, it should force the kind of stealthy, careful behavior that I utilized early-on.
  
• Make large cities like Cherno have ten times the zombie concentration that the small villages and countryside tend to have. This makes sense due to population density before the "infection" and the current high reward for sprinting through big cities.
  
• Make food and ammunition rare instead of common, and make matches finite and hard to come by. Before I stopped playing, I was consistently finding more food than I could even carry. The fact that carrying an alternative primary gun in one's backpack is common really speaks to how unbalanced the "survival" aspects of the mod/game are right now.
  
• Remove bandit headscarves. I know DayZ does not necessarily strive to be "realistic", but bandit headwraps are about as far from "authentic" as you can get. Just too synthetic for my tastes, even if I don't play as a bandit.
  
• Make characters gain strength, stamina, and resistance to illness as time goes on. This will discourage Call of Duty gameplay and will reinforce the importance of permadeath.
  

I know all of this has been suggested many times before, but I felt the need to bring it up again anyway. Maybe the more that these things are heard, the higher the chance they have to catch on as implemented features. This may be in bad taste, but I think that while DayZ has a lot of potential, it's best kept a niche game which should appeal to the kinds of people who enjoy its "authentic" roots as a post-apocalyptic survival game, rather than pandering to the sort of people who want to pretend that it's Call of Duty: Slow-Mo Edition.

As a bandit, I agree with this. The game should be more difficult to add to the fun. If there is a sniper in elektro/cherno, it should be a big deal because zombies will converge on his position. I would love to see the snipers crap their pants when they realized that their bambi kill had just resulted in a few dozen zombies running to their location. However, more zombies = more lag, as even servers have difficulty accounting for several hundred AI calculations, plus it would be a strain on the clients to render that much.

[brent2 11]

As a bandit, I agree with this. The game should be more difficult to add to the fun. If there is a sniper in elektro/cherno, it should be a big deal because zombies will converge on his position. I would love to see the snipers crap their pants when they realized that their bambi kill had just resulted in a few dozen zombies running to their location. However, more zombies = more lag, as even servers have difficulty accounting for several hundred AI calculations, plus it would be a strain on the clients to render that much.

Personally, I'd also like to see a use for high-powered rifles other than just sniping players. I don't want PVP to become harder or impossible, necessarily--but it would be nice if cooperative play had an incentive. Maybe some sort of super zombie with above-average strength, speed, size, and so on, which a sniper rifle was most effective on. And I think it'd be nice if the actual act of acquiring a sniper rifle was incredibly difficult without some kind of group cooperation. At the very least, this would encourage clusters of bandits, and I'd rather have clans of bandits roaming about, who have work to survive just like everyone else, than solo players who do almost nothing but PVP, if only to add to the immersive, "authentic" experience. Having scary bad guys try to murder me is actually a lot of fun, but when it becomes the predominant theme of the game, it takes away from the overall potential experience.

Edited December 2, 2012 by brent2