My thoughts of dayz

[larsofdoom 0]

Hi everyone.

I've been playing this for some time now and I thought I'd share my opinions and some experiences of the mod so far.

One word: AMAZING.

I've had some truly wonderful times playing this. And even dying after 16 hours or so of ingame time, it can't piss me off because the experience was so worthwhile.

Now with that said, if you are up for a wall of text with personal experiences and opinions, continue reading, otherwise have a nice day!

When I thought this can't get better (except for additional features and bug/performance-fixes), they released the 1.7.1 patch yesterday and made the game even more interesting. I really welcome the additional challenge to avoiding zombies, the fact that you can now hide from them adds to the immersion.

I'm not sure if this was a mistake in this patch with the spawnrates, but me and a friend had an epic zombie encounter in the electro firestation yesterday. He pulled a zombie on the way in, I decided to shoot it (bad idea) and in a couple of seconds, the horde had arrived. Zombie after zombie came running through the doors, when we thought that this has to be over soon they just kept coming in larger numbers. They actually pushed us up through the stairs to the second floor.

100 combined zombie kills later they still didn't stop coming and our ammo was running really low, I told my friend to go to the top floor while I readied a frag grenade (first time I ever used one), when he was safe up on top I tossed the grenade and ran like crazy up the stairs, I made it one floor above before: *BOO-BEEEEEEEEEEP*.

We were both completely deaf (ingame), the blast from that nade was completely insane and I can't remember last time either of us laughed that hard. I looked at my zombie kill counter and it was up another 30 kills or so. We hid out for a while on the top floor before proceeding to look for remaining zombies, they were all annihilated. My friend died while trying to crawl down the stairs, he teleported outside somehow and fell down haha. I survived though and I'm still alive.

Just to mention the pvp part of the game, I love it as well.

I am one of the (most common I guess) people who shoots first and shoots some more to make sure later. I have of course been on the other end of that situation, where some guy gets the drop on me and ends my life before I even notice what's happening. This is something I welcome, 4/5 times this happens I made a mistake and got shot unknowingly from behind, 1/5 times it was a fair fight and he was the better gunman. In either case it's a learning experience.

I know some people complain about killing for loot or deathmatch pvp down the coast, but for me this adds even more to the immersion of the game. Zombies ain't what scares me most of the time, players are. They keep me on my toes, without players to worry about I'd probably be bored. The deathmatch pvp will probably somewhat go away now that you don't start with a gun, I bet people are more inclined to keep safe when they do get a hold of a gun now. And if they do fire at someone, it's likely more carefully planned out and not as mindless as running all over electro shooting like a mad man.

But even I get hit by bad conscience sometimes. Yesterday right before the firestation scenario I described above, we were holding up inside a barn. Suddenly a guy armed with an AK ran inside yelling "FRIENDLY FRIENDLY FRIENDLY!", I didn't hesitate a split second before I shot him in his face, he managed to yell out a last "FRIENDLY DAMNIT" before he died. We proceeded to loot some ammo, his alice backpack and some other items. I think the main reason I shot him was because he got to close and was well armed, had he backed outside and tried talking to me I would probably at least have talked to him. Anyway I felt kinda bad for the guy afterwards, even though he was somewhat responsible for jumping us like that.

Still I enjoy being a murderer and also surviving attempts at my own life by others. A solid firefight is one of the best things I know, of course I try to keep the odds in my favor by being a sneaky bastard, or simply avoid confrontation if I can't. But the excitement when it does happen is unbeatable.

I can't think of anything I dislike about DayZ. I'm not going to mention bugs or performance issues since this is just alpha. They will be sorted I'm sure of it. Unless rocket completely loses his mind, or goes with the "carebear"-crowd this mod can't ever go south.

Sorry for using the carebear-word but you know what I mean. Make a game like this too easy or start punishing people for being assholes and it won't be all that exciting anymore. This is my personal opinion of course, you are free to disagree but please don't turn my last statement into some flamewar.