A average person grievance with DayZ

[Scarleth 0]

Before you start saying "omg, its alpha !! there are meant to be problems!!"

Alpha is just a tag the developer puts on for as long as he wants. Minecraft didn't magically become more stable and stop receiving features when it stopped being named beta. As long as he has it tagged alpha, he should also want feedback from players.

You might not agree with all my points, but I do believe these are all valid problems/annoyances for many.

Zombie Behaviour

When a Zombie sees me outside.

I expect : To see the zombie walk or run straight at me and try to chomp on me.

What happens : The zombie sprints in seemingly random directions untill it reaches me and then starts to chomp on me.

Problem : Zombies are too damn fast ! And un-predictable to be able to dispatch untill they have come to a stop to attack me.

When a Zombie sees me inside.

I expect : To see the zombie walk or run straight at me and try to eat me.

What happens : The zombie slowly walks straight at me and starts to chomp me.

Problem : It's such a large contrast to when they see me outside, it feels weird. Zombies shouldn't care if they are inside or outside, make them move as fast outside and inside.

When I use a loud gun.

I expect : Zombies within hearing distance to walk/run torwards the source of the sound

What happens : They either sprint straight towards me or totally ignore it.

Problem : There's no middle ground. It's binary.

When I shoot a zombie in the head.

I expect : The zombie to fall over dead immediately.

What happens : The zombie sprints or walks forward for half a second, then falls down dead.

Problem : I think the death animation for zombies includes a few frames of them walking forward before dying. I believe these animation frames should be cut to give players better feedback.

Spawn locations.

I expect : Higher population of zombies around the larger towns and military bases than around a simple shack in the middle of nowhere.

What happens : If there's a building, there's a few zombies around it. Even if the building would generally be vacant at all hours before the zombie apocalypse.

Problem : It's binary. to make the game more forgiving and rewarding there should be some items reachable where there are no zombies around, and where there's plenty of loot there should be more zombies than there currently are.

Darkness at night-time

The night might be realisticly dark, but its too dark to be practical in a game. The night starts at around 20:00 server time. For people coming home from work/school at around 16:30 or 17:30 this means you have a 3-4 hour window to play the game is you do so immediately, if you have other responsabilities for a hour or two before you can play, you're pretty much out of luck.

I realize there's a conflict of interest because of NightVision goggles, but the other day, my friend tried to start a new game to join me and my other friends, and he found himself unable to play the game. It was simply to dark, he couldn't even see loot piles.

There are ways to make NightVision very strong while still allowing players to play without them, such as local illumination around the player to let him see points of importance close to him. This way people with NightVision would still have the upper hand by being able to spot people from a distance.

The timezone of the game could be adjusted to take into account that most people have other obligations during the day, offset the in-game time by 2-3 hours.

There are more people trying to play the game in the evenings than in the very early mornings 05:00 - 07:00.

Starting with no weapon, food or drinks

This one is a mixed bag. Most people don't carry guns with them wherever they go, but this isin't meant to be hour 0 of the zombie apocolypse is it ? You are meant to have survived for a little bit before you gain control of your character ? Isn't it likely you have had a gun in order to survive to this point ? I also realize that this greatly changes how people interact with each other when they just spawned. You are less likely to "spawn-kill" when the person you are killing has no items of value to you. But couldn't this be accomplished by reducing the ammount of ammo you spawn with ?

A single magazine in the Makorov has 7 rounds. Thats hardly worth using to kill another person who might shoot back and use some his rounds on you.

Currently, a newly spawned player simply feels too helpless. Even with the mechanic of outrunning zombies with line of sight.

PvP

When it comes to the PVP, I don't really have any problems. People play the game as they want. If they want to shoot on sight and loot the corpses of other players, that's fine. If they want to team up to try to loot places with a high ratio of zombies, that's fine too. I believe a higher concentration of zombies around the high loot areas would make the later case more viable.

Currently the only system that encourages team-work seems to be the uncousious mechanic. When you are at less than 9000 blood, a single zombie hit could mean your death if he knocks you uncounsious.

Peronally I feel this system is too harsh against people playing alone, but im not sure how to improve on it.

[Bleddyn (DayZ) 0]

I agree on every single one of your points. I made a blog about my first impressions. I wont post it here as it is nowhere near subjective enough to be classed as feedback, but if you are interested, here it is: http://terribleatgames.tumblr.com/post/25488304355/dayz-first-impressions