DayZ is still DayZ... (My First Impressions of SA)

[DayZoey 110]

So I'm going to say right off the bat I did two things when I first started playing DayZ SA. First, I bought it on steam. Second, I pirated a copy and figured out how to host a LAN server on my computer so I could play by myself. I bought it on steam because I feel this game, even when it was just a modling suckling off the teat of Arma 2's game engine it still consumed enough of my time and still made me have a large enough amount of fun that the developers have earned every penny I gave them. I pirated a secondary copy for two reasons though, the first being that I wanted to get back in to playing the game again without getting shot every other time I spawned and the second; I wanted to see how buggy the game actually was before I started getting shot every other time I spawned.

 

With that in mind and the fact that I've already given the devs my money (I feel I have to emphasize that because some shart-for-brains will read that I pirated it and immediately run to the forum mods to get me banned or something) I wanted to give my thoughts on the game as it is and what I feel needs to change as well as what has been done very right. Keep in mind this is completely subjective and is my opinion, don't get all vagina-stipated because I disagree with what you think DayZ should be.

 

How DayZ is DayZ in a really good way (doing it right)

 

These are just some of the highlights of things that I really appreciated playing the game and think the devs did a great job and should keep doing a great job on.

 

-The Graphics: This is actually something that I'm very happy with, it's not so massively overdone that I have to play on lowest settings to get a decent frame-rate but it's still nice that it doesn't look like I'm playing Arma 2 anymore. I was a bit skeptical when I saw the screenshots in that I thought only insanely boss computers would be able to play it, while I am working on building a boss tower I don't have a boss tower right now so... it's nice to see that Dean'n'Devs aren't just catering to the people who have already dumped four to five figures on their machine.

 

-The Houses: Lovely detours! I adore how so many of the houses are now able to be searched and scavenged, with so little loot but plenty of variation thereof makes rooting through peoples' former homes feel like lots of fun and not a chore as scavenging used to be as there was always a checklist of places to check in every town before moving on. Every time I enter one home and pick up everything I can find and then find out there's still tons of places to go. Not to mention cover and places to hide from bandits, getting caught in the open by gunfire was pretty much a death sentence before all these homes to bob and weave out of. The devs promised expanded content and did they ever deliver, they're not even done either so I can't wait!

 

-The Night: Dear goodness gracious thank you people on the DayZ development team for fixing the day to night transitions and the sustained night. I have yet to spawn at night or be playing at night to have the screen suddenly go pitch black on me out of nowhere (when I'm getting mauled by a zombie was the worst timing ever). It's nice and dark in appropriate places but very bright (for night time) out in fields and open ground which offers me a wonderful choice of being able to see where I'm going or having the cover of canopy.

 

-The Zeds: While the strafing zombies did add challenge to hitting them, it was annoying as balls to spend an entire mag and then some just to nail one of them. They go down easily enough (one or two bullets at the most in my experience thus far center mass) so it's not really a challenge to bring them down en masse when you have a gun.

 

-Magazines: I'm not sure if this was a promised feature but I love the ability to load magazines with ammunition, I do wish there was an animation for it (for cosmetic sakes) but I'm fine enough without it personally. Finding new magazines isn't a pain anymore and keeping ammunition fresh isn't as challenging. Got two mags already I can just empty the ammunition to save space in my inventory and load them up later. I love the reusable nature of the magazines as well.

 

-Clothing: Again, content the devs promised and darn well delivered. They've made a believer out of a long time skeptic, I honestly had quite a few doubts when the game was delayed time and time again (especially last year when it was supposed to be out before 2013) and this is one of the cases where leaving the bun in the oven for a little longer has made it better across the board. Another thing is variety of clothes and the makeshift bandaging you can do with them.

 

How DayZ is... still DayZ (Bugs and Glitches)

 

I'm well aware this is Alpha and there's a lot to be worked on and so forth, these are just things that I noticed that could use a fixing up.

 

-The Zeds: Obviously a priority, it seems odd to me that the game would be released when the selling point of your game is essentially broken. That'd basically be like selling a fighting game where the women weren't wearing outfits that look like they were designed by 12 year old boys with scissors for hands. Or selling a Call of Duty Game that actually wasn't a load of complete copy/paste tripe (uMad COD fanboys? Yeah you are). What's more is they're even worse than the mod which... blows me away actually. Granted I don't know much about coding so I won't presume to tell the devs their job or how to do it, it just seems odd is all. They ignore physics like nobody's business and phase in and out of buildings on a whim to chase after you, they completely run through obstacles or things I jumped over to get some distance between them and I and they make me bleed 2 out of 3 attacks they land on me. The goal is authenticity right?

 

Just so you're aware, zeds are basically infected humans. Humans are not the sharpest, most clawed or even most fanged of the animal kingdom. We survived because of our wit, our ability to craft and use tools that did all the stuff evolution had given animals like lions, tigers and bears (oh my). To say that one Zed giving me a smack would make me bleed profusely enough to require bandaging otherwise I will bleed to death is... a ridiculous proposition at best, downright silly at worst. In order to get that sort of bleeding, they'd have to not only have very sharp (and durable) fingernails but also hit a very vital area (like the neck or eyes, someplace soft that bleeds basically). I could buy that they're biting and then pulling flesh off if there was an appropriate animation for it but as it is, it looks like they're ambiguously dual slapping me and I'm bleeding like a hemophiliac. Profuse bleeding should come from being shot, being stabbed, being bitten or otherwise having a significant amount of flesh being seperated/torn/penetrated. Not from silly smacking.

 

Yes I'm aware it's Alpha and that Zeds are still being fixed. Still worth complaining about though. Given the way they are, it's probably best that there are so few of them (maybe a dozen to an entire city like Elektro as a whole) otherwise it would just be a bad day everywhere. I will commend the devs on making it so they don't break bones as often as they used to, that crap was annoying because of it's frequency.

 

-Consuming but... Not?: There have been a bunch of times where I'll try to eat/use something, my character will pause as if doing it but nothing will happen. No animation continuing, no item used up and my status unchanged. This is very problematic when say... I'm trying to bandage after being smacked by a zombie bleeding all over the place. Mostly though it just happens with eating food or consuming drink, I have to move forward, try to use it again and the game will give me a prompt "You are already using something" before it lets me actually use the item. The weirdest thing happens though, I get an item with 0%, with cans, fruit, bandages (not rag bandages, real ones) and the like.

 

-Some Spawns... Not spawning: Yes I'm aware it's an early Alpha, this is just a bug that I've noticed in military areas wandering around by myself without having to worry about getting shot at and being able to formulate patterns in my head. It appears that the military tents with two entrances very consistently spawn two items, never one, never three. It's always two items, though they vary here and there it's always two. The tents with single entry ways, the cylinder barracks (without the shower) and the first aid tents have never had anything in them. Similarly with barn houses as well (the tall white ones with hay bales on the second floors separated by a gap) where nothing at all has ever spawned for me. It seems like they should have items and with the before mentioned military tents, variety in spawn number and frequency.

 

-You Are Unconcious: This is more of a personal gripe of mine and I'm not sure if it's a bug but I have yet to get a "You are dead" screen. Granted I'm playing by myself so if I ever go unconcious near zombies it's just about a guarantee that I'm dead and need to start over, it just seems odd that there would be no threshold where the game actually tells a player that they are dead and need to move on to their next play through. Maybe it's just me.

 

-Backpack-Inception: I've not done this yet but I've heard of it happening and when I try to swap my backpack it gives me the option to add my new pack to my old one. I think a way to fix this would be to make the backpack occupy more slots than any backpack could ever hold (just as a quick fix, since the largest backpack so far is 35 slots, make every backpack occupy 40 slots and up. This won't work for the implementation of vehicles but it'd be a quick fix right now to stop exploitation).

 

-Gun Durability: So far the only guns I've come across are the M4 and the FNX 45 (which is kind of silly but that's another section) and neither of them tell me the condition of the weapon itself. The M4 tells me that the stock, sight and grip are all in varying conditions of arse when I find the weapon but the pistol I have no way of knowing it will actually fire when I pick it up. The only way to find out is to find ammunition, a magazine and squeeze off a round. If the M4 is capable of being broken in the same way (or any of the other guns for that matter) then it might be worth looking at in my opinion.

 

-Backwards Gun Spawns: One thing I remember incredibly clearly about what Dean Hall said numerous times across multiple show-cases is that military hardware would be less focused on and civilian grade equipment would be more emphasized. It's hard to take those words seriously when I'm coming across M4A1 Carbines left right and center. Pistols seem as frequent across different kinds of spawns (from Civilian, industrial and military) which is okay, pistols are indeed a pretty low grade weapon in the grand scheme of things. An M4A1 Carbine though? They're blood everywhere and so is the ammunition and magazines, which is just... mind blowing really. I actually found one in an office building in Chernogorsk which I think is... pretty ridiculous (unless it was a post office, in which case comment retracted). I have yet to come across a single Mosin Nagant or even a shotgun (if there even is one). I've come across plenty of ammunition though so if I ever did come across a Mosin Nagant I'd be pretty darn set but considering all the magazines, bullets and parts for the M4A1 that I'm finding I don't know why I'd bother. I am playing by myself so I suppose I'm not burning ammunition fighting off bandits but it does seem odd that I was at one point carrying two ammo boxes which were filled mostly with 5.56mm ammunition.

 

Also... why on earth would we be starting with the M4 as a weapon in a Russian state/proxy nation? In at least one of the video showcases Rocket did of the game he was using a functioning AK-family weapon. The devs went as far as to replace the Lee Enfield with the Mosin Nagant, why would they make the M4 and 5.56mm ammunition so commonplace? Don't get me wrong I do love the aesthetic of the M16 family weaponry, the fixed bayonet on the end while not useful for anything but cosmetics is pretty boss. I can certainly imagine american weapons have found themselves in whatever part of Russia controlled territory Chernarus is supposed to be based in, it's just... odd that they're so frequent and they're the automatic military weapon we're being given to start with.

 

DayZ is... still DayZ (The Bad Things)

 

Again this is all very subjective, I'm just hoping someone from the development team reads this and it actually means more than just a fart in the windstorm. I doubt it but it never hurts to try...

 

-...It's still Quake DM: I'm not even playing against or with other people and I can already tell that a large majority of the population of the game will be hunting other players just because they think it's fun to ruin someone else's day. Want to know how I know? My first thought when I spawned in to the game, despite being all by my lonesome was: "Gotta find a gun. Where do I find a gun? Balota, Cherno, Elektro, Berezino, NE or NW Airfield." Not even spending five minutes on the forum too (Not even in the bandit discussion section either) only confirms my suspicions that many people are just rushing to the gun-spawn hotspots to get a military grade rifle to either hunt other players on the beach (bambi hunting) or to make themselves less of a helpless victim for said hunting. Even playing by myself as soon as I had my basic needs covered (food/water) my next instinct despite playing what is supposed to be a new game, was to find a weapon to start killing people who even come within seeing distance of me.

 

I would let this point slide off a bit were it not for my earlier point of backwards gun spawns (did I mention that I'm aware it's Alpha and they're working on it?) where it's ridiculously easy to find military weapons and a bit ridiculously hard to get a hold of more civilian level firearms. I wasn't playing against people so I'm not really aware of the effectiveness of melee combat in this game, though what I can tell you is that the melee against zombies is incredibly lackluster. The only useful weapon I've found for downing zombies that has a 50-50 chance of me not leaking like a sieve is the hatchet or fireaxe, everything else I might as well just be fighting the zombies barehanded (thanks Devs for giving us fists btw).

 

So with automatic weaponry being so easy to attain, ammunition being one lucky industrial spawn or one unusually unguarded military spawn away; the first thing after covering basic needs people will be doing is securing their spray and pray weapon as quickly as possible to gun down other players for their stuff or because they just KoS because they're tired of bandit crap. Even then without guns I'm pretty sure people are hatcheting and fireaxing each other to death the second they see one another because they can't tell if the person means well or not so why trust them?

 

-Playing Nice Isn't: There still isn't enough incentive to play with other people or to take chances that they could be friendly. Sure you can blood-bag/saline one another back to full health but aside from that there's really no other reason to work together with total strangers. I won't purport to know what could be done about this but it seems that co-operation is really not that rewarding so most people elect not to.

 

I can't even begin to name the number of YouTube videos where someone is very clearly charging or shooting at the person doing the recording and then the second they realize their plan is going tits up, they begin barking "FRIENDLY FRIENDLY FRIENDLY" in to their microphone. I guess they're more forgiving than I am because if someone ran straight at me with a hatchet or fired off a couple shots at me and then started calling friendly when I started shooting/swinging back, I'd call bullshart and keep going until they were dead and then take their stuff.

 

It seems to me people only play nice when it's a severe disadvantage and/or risk to them losing all their gear if they don't. Playing nice and cooperating shouldn't be a last ditch resort for a desperate person about to die, it should be... playing a darn game and having fun with other people surviving. I don't get particularly attached to my gear anymore (I used to really badly in the mod because good stuff was so hard to find) but I would still cut a pretty loud "F*** an actual duck!" when I die to a bandit who shot me for no reason other than for sport on the beach when I spawned.

 

-Playing Solo... Kinda sucks: This does contradict my previous complaint but it's just as true. With hunting animals no longer available thus no way to restore significant amounts of lost health over a short time, with zeds being the way they are and bandits being as numerous as they are conniving jerks playing by yourself is pretty much a non-option unless you're incredibly patient and are willing to wait for that blood to restore itself. What I do have though is a suggestion for this part, we already have antibiotics, charcoal tabs, vial jars (no idea what these do) and all sorts of stuff... why not erythropoeitin supplements? Our health is how much blood we've got right? Erythropoeitin is a hormone secreted by our kidneys that stimulates and accelerates blood cell growth based on the body's needs at the time. While I'm not suggesting this method should be as fast as a transfusion or saline infusion, I think it should accelerate health restoration up to a certain percentage or time (in which time frame, eating and drinking would accelerate it faster/in greater quantity).

 

And that's it, those are my thoughts on the game so far. Do you agree, do you disagree and why?

[GrumpyGat (DayZ) 497]

I stayed far too long on the toilet reading this.

I agree with almost everything except the zombie bitch slapping quarrel. I could easily (as a human) use extreme force to do considerable damage to flesh with just my fingernails. And hungry as a zombie would theoretically be, they would surely have the incentive to exert full force.

[DayZoey 110]

See I disagree, our fingernails aren't even that rooted to our fingers. Sure we could rip some flesh but to cause the profuse bleeding that the Zeds do in a single shot most times? That's just silly, you need to tear way past epidermal tissue to get that sort of bleeding, like a good quarter inch or so. If the nails were too long, they'd catch on something and rip out, if they were too jagged they'd catch on something and break apart, if they're too short they wouldn't tear at all.

 

I could by their attacks doing arterial spray amounts of bleeding if say... the victim had no clothes (equipment) on and the zombie was grabbing what amounts to as handfuls of flesh. If you could get a grip on fatty tissue and keep it, yeah it would tear pretty easily we're fragile creatures. We also however did not survive millenia of evolution by being something predators could easily latch on to, our entire body is build cylindrical and smooth for a reason: claws and other hooking attacks glance off and/or fail to grab anything meaningful on the first attack. Most creatures, even predators are designed with this natural deflection mechanism because everything that didn't naturally deflect to some degree got eaten.

 

Now if they made the zombies -actually- pounce and knock you over to lay a beating, rather than this Shoryuken leap they do in the air before giving you a regular smack they do now... even without bleeding that crap would be terrifying to have happen.

[Krirub 13]

DayZoey, how did you play dayz standalone in singleplayer? Please tell me.

[DayZoey 110]

 

 

So I'm going to say right off the bat I did two things when I first started playing DayZ SA. First, I bought it on steam. Second, I pirated a copy and figured out how to host a LAN server on my computer so I could play by myself.

Google it my friend, I've already given you all the information you need to make an educated search.

[flygamer1 176]

See I disagree, our fingernails aren't even that rooted to our fingers. Sure we could rip some flesh but to cause the profuse bleeding that the Zeds do in a single shot most times? That's just silly, you need to tear way past epidermal tissue to get that sort of bleeding, like a good quarter inch or so. If the nails were too long, they'd catch on something and rip out, if they were too jagged they'd catch on something and break apart, if they're too short they wouldn't tear at all.

 

I could by their attacks doing arterial spray amounts of bleeding if say... the victim had no clothes (equipment) on and the zombie was grabbing what amounts to as handfuls of flesh. If you could get a grip on fatty tissue and keep it, yeah it would tear pretty easily we're fragile creatures. We also however did not survive millenia of evolution by being something predators could easily latch on to, our entire body is build cylindrical and smooth for a reason: claws and other hooking attacks glance off and/or fail to grab anything meaningful on the first attack. Most creatures, even predators are designed with this natural deflection mechanism because everything that didn't naturally deflect to some degree got eaten.

 

Now if they made the zombies -actually- pounce and knock you over to lay a beating, rather than this Shoryuken leap they do in the air before giving you a regular smack they do now... even without bleeding that crap would be terrifying to have happen.

tldr 

Zombies need to be 1 hit 1 bleed because they need to be a threat in situations that you need to think twice about such as fighting a group in a important area

Edited December 31, 2013 by flygamer1

[tingkagol 9]

Couldn't agree more (especially the bad things). There just isn't a real incentive to play cooperatively with other people- it's more a choice rather than a necessity at the moment, And I believe it's because the survival aspect of the game is too easy to beat solo. Now, if the environment were more life-threatening for a group of 5 (moreso for a solo player) I believe it would encourage cooperative play more.

 

Once players form groups, they're pretty much invincible to the environment and the only thing that poses a threat are other groups/players - PvP ensues.

 

This shouldn't be the case. This is the zombie apocalypse. Entire communities are never safe not while zombies roam the landscape. That's my major gripe with the game - both the mod and SA - it won't take long before you eventually get to a point where you feel 'safe' from the environment / the zombie threat - without much work really.

Edited December 31, 2013 by tingkagol

[DayZoey 110]

Well that's more or less an old horse that has been long beaten to death, these are just my impressions of the game thus far.

[serenityrick 218]

The key, in my opinion, is making the zombies a legitimate threat. This will force people to work together in order to loot a small town when you come across them and simultaneously discourage other players from killing on sight since that usually involves making a lot of noise.. and a lot of noise = a lot of zombies.

 

We need lots of zombies.. as much many as a server can hold. And more than usual should be spawned around military areas with high value loot.

 

Imagine a KoSer on top of one of the ATC towers who has tunnel vision... sees another player and fires whatever weapon he has in order to feel dat pvp rush.. well.. he didn't think about the dozens of zombies in the area.. in no time there are zombies gathered at the ladder and tons of them piling in through the front door... 

 

he doesn't have enough ammo to kill them all..

he can't combat log because he's too close to a threat..

 

God. That would be awesome to see from a distance.

[DayZoey 110]

See I had something like that in the mod but I wasn't shooting at players, I was sniping zombies for my friends as they were raiding NWAF with an M24. Just doing my thing, minding my own business bam bam bam bam. We had cleared out the zombies under the tower I was sniping from so I wasn't too worried.

 

Then after a little while I heard what sounded like a quadruple layer zombie scream and ladder climbing and stopped what I was doing to look down and see shart tons of zombies climbing the ladder. I think it ended up being around ten zombies and four glock 17 mags later (couldn't aim because by the time I got my shart together they were laying a beating on me so I was just mag dumping). That doesn't happen in this game as it is I feel, which is weird because it was supposed to get better than this rather than worse.

 

Like I mentioned in the OP, it seems backwards to release a product when the selling point of that product is severely broken.

[DayZoey 110]

Oh something else that I've noticed too, just a minor nitpick but the women make man sounds (breathing, pain, etc etc)