A Noobie's Impression and comments

[adiggers 3]

This is a longish post, but "noobs" might want to read before they invest time in the game. I'm not new to this kind of game.I was a WoW player for years on PvE and PvP servers.

First, get Dayz Commander..it mkes life MUCH easier!

To clarify, I not only played the tutorials for Arma II, I played through 7 solo scenarios and two or three segments of the campaign. I'm not a rookie at this.

I logged into 8 servers over the last 5 days to try DayZ after I set everything up through DayZ Commander. They were all US servers and some were day, some night. I ran through roughly 15 "lives"

DayZ is NOT like Arma II. In most servers you start with a bandage and some road flares (what a dumb set...who would have road flares when the dayz hits?) Nobody smokes I guess, so no one has a lighter in their pocket. No one has a pocket knife. No one has a rain coat (five of my "lives" were in the rain and one died because he caught a cold in about three hours game time and DIED). If you don't have a bandage you can't rip your shirt?

You have to scavenge for everything including drink and food. The most common loot seemed to be empty cans and broken whiskey bottles. You can DIE if you don't find drink or food (and this is in less than 4 hours play!) You can't drink from lakes or ponds and you can't fill an empty can with water (huh??) . Real people can go for days without water and longer without food. With all the damn rain, can't you drink out of a puddle?

Zombies (Zeds) are wierd. Even the "hoppers" can catch you if you run. This ain't "Walking Dead""---these suckers all "motor" like fast bloodhounds.Of course as you run you get thirsty too. The only way to lose them is run into an open building ( it seems like this is about 1 in 10) or run into a forest or up and over a hill. I did a LOT of running, particularly since the Zeds seem to see through walls and spot prone guys with ease, EVEN at NIGHT. Sometimes you can lose them if you use a smoke grenade or flare, but mostly they will chase you down.

Some things in the game are asinine. You see an ax stuck in a stump in a backyard. You can't get the ax. You can't have a melee weapon like a two-by-four or a tree branch off the millions of trees on the map. You can't even hit them with a brick. You can't trip them but they can knock you down when you try to ecape.

Good luck trying to find a weapon! In my 15 last "lives" I managed to find a machete and ONE asssault weapon with bullets. Mostly I found guns without bullets and bullets without matching guns. The one assault weapon lasted five minutes in my hands because some griefer "bandit" shot me in the back and took it. Once I approached a building at the same time as another player. He got there first. The loot was a gun with bullets and he promptly shot and killed me. My deaths in the game were roughly 10 percent from hunger/thirst, 60 percent from Zeds, and 40 per cent from other "players". It's a known fact that idiot players love to camp out and snipe at other players. How this is fun, I can't say.

I think I'll give up for now until the stand-alone game is released. It's really not that much fun to play for three hours and die from thirst.

My two cents worth of suggestions:

Modify the drink/food issue over several game days (if you live that long). Don't let players "catch a cold" and die.

Allow simple melee weapons (clubs/kitchen knives/rocks)

Either slow the chase aspect of the zeds or have them break off after a while

Have "noobie" friendly servers so people can learn the game ...this means banning PvP combat.

Thanks for reading!

hell of a long post to say this isnt the warcraft replacement i was looking for.....

[dicemanrick 1]

Although I did read your whole post you nearly lost me with this opening statement. You absolutely cannot compare the two and I say that as someone who played wow for seven years. Yes they are both online but that's where the similarities end.

That aside, my best advice if you want to "learn" DayZ is to hop on a low pop server, learn the ropes, learn the best way to survive alone before getting a group, get some looting routes and learn the map. You shouldn't be dying from thirst or hunger, let alone the cold.

Did you have matches and a hatchet? Did you know you can make a fire to keep warm? I'm not asking that in a patronising way, I died myself from dehydration on an epoch server last night (yeah yeah inb4 noob comments), my own fault for not carrying enough drinks and getting stuck out in the wilderness but i consider that the worst way to die as it is easily avoided if one prepares. Which I didn't.

In any case I hope you don't quit on the game just yet, it can be very rewarding, but also incredibly cruel. It sure isn't for everyone.

I'm not sure that "giving up until the standalone is released" is the best option, by all accounts the standalone is going to be a lot harder.

I only found matches once and a hatchet once...not at the same time. I have NEVER found a canteen. I know the basics...I read up on the game on forums before I started. I got killed three more time today...once by a bandit, twice by zeds. Still haven't found a canteen....maybe I'm just unlucky. At least I'm learning the maps.

Edited July 2, 2013 by dicemanrick

[dicemanrick 1]

hell of a long post to say this isnt the warcraft replacement i was looking for.....

Sorry you got the impression I wanted a replacement for WoW. I don't. I know this game is VERY different. I mentioned WoW only because I'm familiar with multiplayer on-line games. I also play Far Cry 3. I just talked about my experiences in DayZ so other noobies can see what I went through.

Edited July 2, 2013 by dicemanrick

[geogeorgegeo@hotmail.co.uk 50]

Empty can's would have to be kept upright if you filled them with water. just use a water bottle, you can find them in the game. The only reasonable thing you said was that zombies glitch though walls sometimes, yeah that sucks.

[dicemanrick 1]

Empty can's would have to be kept upright if you filled them with water. just use a water bottle, you can find them in the game. The only reasonable thing you said was that zombies glitch though walls sometimes, yeah that sucks.

Yeah, but I could fill empty cans with water and drink it. As I mentioned above, I still have NEVER found a canteen.

[plexico 386]

Yeah, but I could fill empty cans with water and drink it. As I mentioned above, I still have NEVER found a canteen.

Fuck have you been looting? I find dozens. Having a canteen has never been a problem for me.

It also seems that most of the problems you listed above is because of lack of appropriate knowledge for these things. I have never died from hunger or thirst, it's simple as hell to find some sodas and beans. I suggest you learn about which places on the map have good amounts of loot, where to go if you have a crappy spawn, how to get to the places with good loot, and what to do once you have enough stuff to go inland. If so many people have been successful at DayZ then obviously the problem isn't with the mod, it's with you.

[dicemanrick 1]

Fuck have you been looting? I find dozens. Having a canteen has never been a problem for me.

It also seems that most of the problems you listed above is because of lack of appropriate knowledge for these things. I have never died from hunger or thirst, it's simple as hell to find some sodas and beans. I suggest you learn about which places on the map have good amounts of loot, where to go if you have a crappy spawn, how to get to the places with good loot, and what to do once you have enough stuff to go inland. If so many people have been successful at DayZ then obviously the problem isn't with the mod, it's with you.

Hi Plexico...I've seen your name on some of the servers I've hit. I said in the post I was a noobie. I'm learning by dieing a lot. In my last spawn I found the FIRST hatchet!! I still have not found ONE water baottle in roughly 17 respawns. I did find a ghillie suit...

In the last spawn I killed 6 zeds and NONE of them had anything on them. Maybe my luck just sucks. I'll keep trying but it's very frustrating when you can't find the necessities of life. And I STILL think it's a bad decision to let a player die from thirst in 3 hours game play!

[thengeance 19]

If you don't like the latest patch, find a DayZ server that runs 1.7.6 or play one of the other mods (Taviana, Origins, Namalsk). You'll find some of these have much more loot and zombies that really don't matter.

Beware complaining about basic game mechanics here. This audience will not be amused.

Edited July 3, 2013 by thengeance

[herrjon 478]

And I STILL think it's a bad decision to let a player die from thirst in 3 hours game play!

I'm curious as to how you would suggest changing the thirst system then so this isn't the case, but you are still at risk of dying of thirst. The only things I can think of would be making soda cans and water bottles extremely rare, which would be silly imo; guns being more common than a can of coke, and/or make it so that your character gets thirsty while you're offline, which would be a bad move considering people like to hop around private servers and take breaks from the game so they don't get burnt out; I wouldn't want to come back to my private server character 2 weeks later only to find him dead.

Criticizing something without giving constructive feedback isn't very useful.

[dicemanrick 1]

I'm curious as to how you would suggest changing the thirst system then so this isn't the case, but you are still at risk of dying of thirst. The only things I can think of would be making soda cans and water bottles extremely rare, which would be silly imo; guns being more common than a can of coke, and/or make it so that your character gets thirsty while you're offline, which would be a bad move considering people like to hop around private servers and take breaks from the game so they don't get burnt out; I wouldn't want to come back to my private server character 2 weeks later only to find him dead.

Criticizing something without giving constructive feedback isn't very useful.

My constructive feed back was that dying of thirst as it's implemented in the game is bad. Humans can go a long time without dying of thirst. You shouldn't have to worry about it in a three-hour online session. Nightfall didn't even hit...and this sure ain't in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Make the thirst meter go down a lot slower, that's all. The same with getting sick from being outside...it's way too quick. I don't have a problem with it happening, but you shouldn't get symptoms that quickly.

[boatie 34]

OP, don't let the negative comments ruin the game for you. The "hardcore" fanboys love to brag about how l33t they are. Here are my tips:

1. Surviving and learning dayz by yourself is not really that fun. You need to be able to enjoy all the different stuff there is to do in the game. So the thing to do is join a non-bandit clan. Those guys do nothing but loot farm anyways, they can get you geared up right away. And the game in infinitely more fun when you are playing with some mates. On vanilla servers, duping is back I hear, so you can get lots of good gear to try out, lol. Joining a clan will also get you access to cars, helis, camps, etc. So this will add alot of new and enjoyable things for you to do.

2. About zombies, the new golden rule is don't run anywhere near them. If they are 1m from you, they are able to hit you, so make sure you give them a wide berth when they are aggoed.

3. If you need supplies, just aggo zeds and kill them in one of the big storage, farms, etc. So much easier than looking through tin cans. Once you kill about 20-30, you should be well supplied for a while. The range on the axe is like 2m, so you should not get hit back if you keep that in mind.

4. I mainly get antibotics off of other players, lol.

5. There are several exploits that the l33t players use, you should also use those too. Given that these are common and unfixable, they must be features of the game. One is the ammo duping (put used ammo, has to have more than 1 round left in mag, in your bag, disconnect and come back, you now have a full mag), bushes (you can sit in a pine tree, the leaves will provide protection and the zed cannot hit you), etc.

6. Until you are ready for pvp, you should avoid other players. Normally, I would recommend looting the main cities, given that with the new patches these are ghost towns, but the cities no longer have any real loot. You are better off looting barns and barracks for guns. Storage, construction, and orange buildings for ammo and other supplies.

[herrjon 478]

My constructive feed back was that dying of thirst as it's implemented in the game is bad. Humans can go a long time without dying of thirst. You shouldn't have to worry about it in a three-hour online session. Nightfall didn't even hit...and this sure ain't in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Make the thirst meter go down a lot slower, that's all. The same with getting sick from being outside...it's way too quick. I don't have a problem with it happening, but you shouldn't get symptoms that quickly.

You still avoided the question, how would you change it so thirst/hunger is an actual threat? If it was "real time" as in you'd have to not drink anything for 336 hours (2 weeks) of in-game time in order to die of thirst, then you may as well not have a thirst system in the first place. For me, having a rapid thirst system like there is now is more realistic and immersive than none at all.

Edited July 4, 2013 by (TMW)HerrJon

[LordDante 30]

My constructive feed back was that dying of thirst as it's implemented in the game is bad. Humans can go a long time without dying of thirst. You shouldn't have to worry about it in a three-hour online session. Nightfall didn't even hit...and this sure ain't in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Make the thirst meter go down a lot slower, that's all. The same with getting sick from being outside...it's way too quick. I don't have a problem with it happening, but you shouldn't get symptoms that quickly.

It is a game... with zombies in it... so much for realism.

The mechanics are fine the way they are. Thing are faster, otherwise if it would be "absolutely realistic" no one would die of thirst, sickness, hunger... It just adds to the suspense. Get some more experience, believe me, you will find everything in order to survive, and the game will be a blast!