First impressions

[Kobo 0]

Hello everyone!

I just thought I'd share my first impressions of this mod. I decided to give it a try since one of my friends has been playing it. After a particularly obfuscated installation procedure, I was able to log in. Here's how my first two deaths both went:

Spawn with no gun.

Find some town with a bunch of houses.

Fail to find any houses with doors that actually open. I'm not familiar with Arma so maybe this is just a limitation of the Arma engine.

Discover that my sneaking skills aren't as good as I thought they were when a zombie pops out of nowhere and hits me.

Die in a stupidly protracted manner.

So my first impressions are as follows: it is not fun to spawn with no means to defend myself and very little means to acquire said defenses. It is not fun to be chased by enemies that run as fast as I do, will never stop chasing me, and who I cannot damage.

It was unrewarding, not fun, and frustrating. I'm sure someone can hop on here and suggest that there is either A) a deficiency in player skill or B) misconstrued expectations. That may be, but my first impressions are that this game mod is needlessly difficult to the point of being unplayable. I am aware from my brief perusal of the forums that difficulty level is valued around here, but this is like a thousand times harder than Dwarf Fortress (whose barrier to entry is like a swift kick in the nuts to your higher level cognitive abilities). I mean, everywhere I go is either completely devoid of anything at all or it is swarming with zombies that will aggro on me despite my sticking to cover and shadows and creeping slowly along with a crouch. Further, once a zombie has aggroed you, you might as well just be dead since he will never stop chasing you but it takes him like 2 minutes to actually finish killing me.

[Dtown 0]

Nope I agree with you. You had the misfortune of joining during patch 1.7.1 a.k.a patch "lets ruin the entire game!" I'm sure your skill is fine, the game is just horrendously unplayable now. Its really frustrating. Hopefully they fix it, because I agree, in the least, you should be able to get away from the zombies which tend to spot you through walls and from 100's of feet away...

[bbob 1]

Go prone if you are near zeds, you cant just crouch up to them and pet them like before.

If you have them aggro on you, start sprinting immediately and try putting objects between you and them. Run through dense pine, zig-zag up steep hills: find the oblique angle sweet-spots where you can still sprint, then reverse horizontal direction while still going uphill. That means that the shortest route to you will be with an angle that limits them to walking.

Its all about being resourceful.

But I hear you, it is tough. This mod is about overcoming the challenges though, the difficulty only makes success that much more rewarding.

Remember that everyone dies, its just a question of how long it takes and what kills you.

[Richocet 0]

What a great way to introduce someone to the alpha test of a game.

''the game is just horrendously unplayable now''

Thats just, the best pull I've ever heard.

The point is there though, this new update is ushering in a whole new level of pain and misery for the player, and thus the butt-hurt isn't shy of following close behind as the name suggests. Allow me to shed some light on your first encounter with this in development modification in alpha stages.

The game has only today taken a turn in spawning where your character starts off without a way to defend yourself other than your wits and sneaking skill, this is very difficult right now with some of the new zombie animations and system not in full swing yet, you'll find the specifics to that in the announcement thread being butchered by the complaints as you're hopefully reading this.

The ArmA map of Chenarus has many closed buildings as it was not made for thus purpose, you can either play through the game and learn up on what building models are enterable, or find a map or loot list which shows you first hand what places are enterable in each area.

Sneaking has become pretty challenging since the patch, and admittedly it needs to continue to roll over the large dents it has caused. If you still wish to try your chances however pay attention to zombie direction and keep prone pretty much all the time when not wall hugging, this will prevent an angry horde being up in your face. Also look to the Eye and Ear icons, the more noise you're making etc, the higher these will be.

Trial and error to keep things general, this game is not forgiving nor will it ever be. So even though you may die and die and do some more of that dying thing, be prepared that you're going to lose your things and progress very quickly, and be ready to learn from mistakes.. Though obviously not if its the silly zombie combat system being a little buggy right now. Don't give up on this mod, and you'll be up there with the veteran survivors in no time~

Ricochet:.

[Fatslug 7]

ya this mod is just as not fun as arma2 is.

BI suck at making games lol! i mean look at arma2... its buggy as shit and its 3+ years old! lol

[frankhertz 2]

Man you should write for like IGN lol. Really only thing to say is ALPHA... sorry...

[TheDee (DayZ) 9]

There is no way in hell this game is harder than Dwarffortress. After 2 years of playing DF I'm still finding out new things I didn't know before. After a week of playing DayZ I knew what I was doing and died less and less, now 3 weeks later I'm staying up in days not hours.

Just play the game and get used to it and dying, it's how most of us got better. If your going to give up after one death then your not the type of player who's going to stick it out in this game.

[deepfried 95]

I'm sure someone can hop on here and suggest that there is either A) a deficiency in player skill or B) misconstrued expectations.

There is that, I'll address B) first:

You have to bear one thing in mind, this is an alpha build thats still undergoing development to the basic game mechanics. its going to be wobbly and janky, and the difficulty is going to wax and wane from too hard to too easy between patches as they test out new development ideas. Thats just what you accept when you play a game thats in alpha.

Now for A):

Yes, this game has a steep learning curve, but the problem at the moment is that experienced players are finding it too easy, and new players are finding it impossible. An experienced player can get all they loot they need to survive indefinitely in a few hours, and thats not much fun, there is no challenge, so changes have been made to make the game more of a challenge. unfortunately that has made it impenetrable for new players, but then see my paragraph above about your point A),

That said, there will probably be another patch tomorrow and all of this will change again.... the joys of alpha ;-)