DayZ noob's opinions on the Alpha build.

[LigerNoir 4]

Howdy y’all.  I’m LigerNoir and I’m a DayZ noob.  I’ve been lurking at the game here and there since the release of the original mod.  When the Alpha released, I thought I would give it a chance.  I’m just going to give my opinions of the alpha release from the pov of a new player.  I’m going to be doing this in a timeline of my two lives and things I noticed through my play playing.

 

EDIT: If this is in the wrong section, please move it to the correct one, thank you mods.

 

WARNING: IT’S LENGHTY!

 

Being a FPS gamer for years It didn’t take me long to figure out the ArmA2 system (never played, but it did feel a lot like America’s Army 2).  I was extremely clueless w/ the lack of HUD, but I liked that feature.  I didn’t do any research into the mod before starting, so I had no idea what I was doing.  When I reached my first town, I found a bunch of canned goods and that’s just about it.  I found it very difficult finding a backpack and weapon.  It took me over an hour to find this gear.  When I finally found a weapon, it came at the cost of a zombie finding me.  I would eventually bleed out from the zombie (didn’t figure out I could use rags to bandage up till later).

 

Going back to the zombie, I noticed that it would run through fences and clip through the floor of the map.  Other zombies I would see before dying would do that often.  Oh the problems of an Alpha tester XD .

 

I spawned again and this time I decided to rush inland after finding a few things in a gas station.  Seems that’s the best thing that can be done.  I found a dead player and, more importantly, an M4 with some ammo!  It seems that I stumbled on what must have been a military zone with a clinic and school.  Found some more stuff and left.  I later came across a rubber banding player crying for help.  I attempted to help him, but the Alpha took him.

 

I noticed a lot of clipping with movement.  Was this a problem in ArmA2?  I got around a lot of that by going into 3^rd person, but sometimes 1^st person suits the situation better.  Hope it gets fixed later on.

 

Moving on, I stumbled across a nice military checkpoint leading into a good sized town.  I found some nice goodies and lots of Ammo.  I attempted to cheat the game by loading into new servers and looting the same area.  I learned NOT to do that.  I lost over 300 rounds of 5.56 and 10 Magazines.  Very frustrating, but part of that was me trying to cheat, so I only blame myself.

 

I found a person looting a nearby building and he just started shooting.  Sadly for him I had a vest on and he did not.  I was unable to loot him because his body disappeared.  Zombies would also just disappear after I killed them.  To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

 

I was shot and the screen went blurry.  Loss of blood, understandable.  What was annoying is that I loaded the game up a few hours later and the blur was gone.  I loaded the game up a few minutes ago and the blur was back.  I take notice to conditions of food and water as to not eat/drink contaminated things.  I was wondering why the blur is back.

 

The rest of this post will be observations and opinions.

 

Another problem I have is traveling at Night.  ITS TOO DARK!  In a land without electricity, you would think that the night sky and moon would light up the world better.  I also found the headlight (torch) very annoying.  It didn’t angle itself with your crosshairs so I would be doing all this awkward head movements to figure out where I was going.

 

I noticed a lack of zombies, which I LOVE.  Being new and figuring everything out through trial and error with a low zombie count is great.  I also love the 1 shot headshot kill and a quick burst will also kill zombies quick.  Shoot and scoot!

 

I found A LOT of M4s and FN45s.  I didn’t find another weapons and have yet to find 45 Mags.  Sucks for me.

 

Lastly, before closing, I wish I could restart without getting killed/killing myself.  I have too much pride to let the game kill me, so a restart function in the menus would be nice.

 

After playing roughly 6 hours, I’m very impressed with the Alpha.  I only wish I could play with others and my friends are skeptical about playing an Alpha (can’t blame them).  I can’t wait to see more of the game as it comes along and I hope to help the Developers in their progression. 

 

Happy hunting fellow survivors.

Edited December 20, 2013 by LigerNoir