First impression/ my thoughts on the standalone

[JoakimTAA 4]

Hi, first of all i want to start of by saying that I have played Dayz for a long time, first picked it up a month after release and has played it regularly ever since. What i want to say is that I have some experience with Dayz, OK? Let's begin then!

 

The first thing i noticed running into the standalone was the fact that it felt more like a game and not a simulator. Your character move a lot faster and you can sprint at top speed for ever. This makes traveling A LOT faster, at least I thought it did, but I have gotten used to the slow traveling and long walks of the mod, either way it sped things up a bit. You also have this nice hot bar where you can quick select different items, pretty standard, but it is a welcome change from the mod because you can actually use melee weapons now! 

 

Survival is a way stronger aspect of the game now. Hunger and Thirst might be a bit broken at the moment, but I never felt such a struggle in the mod for survival, you could just find a can of beans and a Pepsi and then you were set to run all the way north.. Now food and water is more rare and you have to eat and drink way more often. Also there is a chance of getting infected and sick if you do not purify the water. Treating your character badly by for example running straight to Stary without stopping will have negative consequences, like you being more susceptible to diseases. You cannot simply get blood bagged by your friends any longer. Different characters have different blood types and to actually fill up a blood bag you will need to take your own blood or someone else's, this will leave the person with low blood, which means you have a very limited source of blood. The survival aspect definitely needs a lot of tweaking but when it is done I think it will be very satisfying and rewarding.  

 

Now the controls have been changed up quite a bit, but they are still very clunky and a lot of animations and actions are insanely slow. For instance if you want to go from prone to stand up and sprint, it will take way too long and might result in death. And if you want to switch weapons on the hot bar you might have to click three four times for it to work, but even then it takes another five-seven seconds for the animation to finish! 

 

The loot system is something I am very happy with. Loot is scattered around in buildings: under tables, on top of a refrigerator, inside a locker, with other words; you have to look for it. The amount of loot seems to be very well balanced as well (It might depend on what server you are playing on, but do not quote me on that) Even though I seem to find a bit too many pants and t-shirts... 

 

When it comes to the performance I am actually more than happy. First of when I played the FPS was horrible, worse than the mod, but then I tried "Googling" performance issue and I managed to very simply tweak the game so that it is running way better! If you have played DayZero, which is a DayZ mod that is highly optimized and has great FPS, it is running ALMOST as well as that for me. 

http://dayzintel.com/dayz-standalone/dayz-standalone-performance-guide Seriously, check this out, will improve the in game FPS greatly!

 

To summarize I think I am more positive than most people, and knowing what is planned to be added I am more exited than ever! If you like DayZ and have been waiting for the standalone I recommend buying it, if you can overlook a lot of problems and accept the fact that there might not be that much content at all, you will have a great time. If you can get a friend to buy it to you will have an even better time because having someone to play with makes it much easier to ignore and accept some of the issues with the alpha right now. What do you guys think? Was it worth it getting it this early or should you wait?

Edited December 21, 2013 by JoakimTAA