New player struggles ( gear, people, etc.)

[CaptRandom (DayZ) 5]

Okay so I just bought the SA after not playing the mod for  a LONG time ( hadn't played mod for very long but liked it ) and I'm a bit confused about what to do.

Early P.S.(This got longer than I thought it would but it gets there eventually.)

 

I was watching a guy streaming the other day and so at first I followed along with what he was doing. You spawn on the east coast, grab some water and try to get to the Cherno area for some gear. After about 4-5 hours of firing up the game I had about the same experience as what I saw but with much less luck. Run around for an hour collecting basically nothing and almost everyone I meet with weapons is in KoS derpmode. Spent my first day of playing basically stuck with no weapons, hungry because everything on the SE coastline is picked clean, and dead to the first person I meet. Cool. No big deal, I read up on where I can get gear some where else because it's a big map.

 

Day two begins and I first try joining a low-pop server so I don't get slaughtered before getting to balota for weapons. Yes I know it's the super cheesy way to go about it, but I wanted to get more action than running around hiding from people with m4's and mosins with scopes while hungry and dying of thirst. Get there, find a gun, no ammo. That's fine, I can look for some somewhere else. Starts getting dark and goes into night. This is at 8am pacific(wtf?). -__- Okay, fine, it's alpha and the games time is 12 hours shifted from my time zone. Swap to a Singapore server so it's daylight in game. Also, yes I know nighttime is part of the gameplay, but with only a flashlight to be a dead give away to anyone within a mile with an m4 and no night-vision goggles, I wanted some ammo before going into nighttime ninja assassin mode. So I change servers, walk out the door and, bam, shot in the face by someone camping Balota. Fantastic. Spawn, alt-tab and search for other places to get weapons. Find some other places and decide to suck it up  and head inland for some gear. Spend several hours trekking to the airbase up north, collecting stuff as I go along. Not bad, had to do a bit of hard searching to find what I wanted but I got some good stuff. Get to the aribase, which is deserted of course because no body seems to leave the coastline, and manage to score loads of ammo for the m4 and a couple pistols with some ammo. Now I'm at a crossroad...

 

I did a little bit of searching around to see what people talk about the most and it seems to be about KoS, spawns, and loot. Nothing about actually surviving other than "oh by the way if you don't eat/drink right your doing it wrong."

 

What I've noticed from my quite limited experience with the game is that no one leaves the coast and the game is currently in a FFA BF3 survivaly game state. No one leaves the coast because there is literally no incentive to. You can get all the weapons and gear currently available in Cherno and Balota and all the spawn points are closer to there then any other place to get weapons. So no one leaves the coast which means when people spawn, they start heading into elektro but everything is picked clean by now but they are probably able to find a melee to swing around. Continue on toward Cherno and everyone goes into KoS mode because all the weapons are taken and are being carried around by people hunting down newly spawned players because its the only thing really to do. 

 

This is where I'm at now. Sorry for the story time but I wanted to give some context to how my first 10 or so hours of DayZ have gone. What I'm a bit I guess disconcerted with is that now I'm a solid half hour sprinting distance inland where even on a full server there is bound to be no one within 5 km and I can just continue trolling around the inland area looking for stuff, which is unimaginably easy. Or I can sprint for 30 minutes back to the coast where I'll most likely get no more than an hour to live before being KoS and waste the 3-4 hours I spent slow rolling inland. I don't really know which to do at this point...surviving zombies is so easy you don't need weapons at all. I found out,while heading to the airbase, that if you strafe around in a small circle, zombies will never hit you and you can just literally punch them to death if you feel like wasting time. I found an ax after a while so I just walked in circles two hitting every zombie; just because I could.

 

Surviving just isn't hard  and after watching the video about how food/water/energy work together I feel it would be even easier. I feel like that's the biggest problem so the only thing to do,really, at the current stage is to just kill other people. I remember the small bit of mod I played was a virtual hollywood zombie apocalypse. I would spawn with a gun and some ammo in the middle of no where, and even if I found another player to team up with we'd both be dead to zombies within a couple hours if we didn't find enough people or a vehicle that worked to outrun zombie packs to search for things we needed. 

 

With that all said I think my only suggestions after my first couple days of playing would be to increase availability of gear/weapons and make it much much harder to avoid zombies and survive. I've noticed zombies are only near buildings. I can't remember running into any in the "wilderness", there are not a lot of them any way, and they are extremely easy to kill. You can simply outrun them if you want, or just circle strafe and melee them all. I feel like keeping the spawn points where they are could work fine because it would make it easier to start off finding people to band together with if you start in the same general area. Also maybe starting with a pistol with one mag. I only suggest the starting pistol idea because if it's made as hard as mod, you'd be dead to the first zombies you see with no weapon very quickly. 

 

Sorry for the rant, this ended up being much longer of a post than I thought it would be. Any input/feedback is appreciated and thanks for reading if you didn't give up by now.

 

TL:DR(for you lazy people like me most of the time): Just started playing, running, collecting, KoS. Lots of KoS. Try to KoS for guns, fail. Try to get my own guns near spawn, fail. Slowly work my way inland to Northern airbase for gear, success! But getting there was super duper easy and If I go back to coastline....KoS and long hours wasted for things I could kill someone for in 30 minutes on the coast. Don't go back to coastline and I'll never see anyone again while I run around melee'ing the 5 zombies in each town( <_< ). Game turns into survival FFA BF3 because there's nothing to do but kill people.

 

Fix by: Make it damn hard to live from zombies. Zombies, lots of zombies. ( yes matrix reference.) So many zombie, that are hard enough to kill, that if you lone wolf it you're pro status and are bowed to as you stroll thru town to get food. People don't KoS because they won't live w/o other people, you have to venture other places to find supplies because simply killing the guy next to you would also get you killed to zombies and the game starts looking like mod again. All the vehicles and base things that get added in later on just add complexity and add more options to choose from. Just my $.02...

[K474N4 2]

Be patient Bro, if your not enjoying it now, give it 12 months then come back and have another go.

 

b well, K.

[CaptRandom (DayZ) 5]

I will likely keep playing. I haven't recruited friends to play yet so I don't have anyone to buddy up with right off the bat to help me out so I'll probably just have to hop on the bandwagon and kill anyone with a gun and run around hunting people with guns for fun until there is something else to do. I just hope it doesn't stay this way. I only vaguely remember the mod and how even starting off with an m4,backpack, and some ammo(might have been server specific to the one I played on) wasn't enough to run around by yourself for very long. If you lone wolf'ed it, you would have to hunt people down for their supplies because you couldn't kill off hordes of zombies guarding supplies and that was the fun of it. You would spawn and quickly try to find anyone you could because you NEEDED other people to start collecting good stuff.

 

I don't know why it took me 10 hours of play time to notice that the easiest part so far is surviving from zombies... it took until I realized I had the choice of staying away from other people ( KoS reasons ) or go back and be forced to join in on the FFA.

[accurize 10]

I wouldn't get too discouraged by the coastal KoS at the moment. Right now there just isn't that much to do inland. No tents to keep you from storing your 'life savings' on your back, no vehicles to move quicker around the map, thus spreading people out easier, no helicopter or events to draw people seeking battle, no animals to hunt, no buildings to build, no radios that work to communicate with others at a safe distance...I'm sure there are many more future additions that I'm forgetting. I think your expectations are a little much since this is in an alpha state. This is the time to work out technical bugs, not to tweak user interaction. I know it's tough though, I have a few friends in the same exact place you are with it. As stated earlier, just give it some time.

[CaptRandom (DayZ) 5]

The thing is, you don't really need all the extra bits like helicopters, and trucks,etc. to get the same basic experience. The map has stuff everywhere for people to go and get, the only thing really keeping people from leaving the coastline clusterfucking is they don't have to and if they do it gets boring after a few hours because you'll have a weapon and a pack to store food/water and can now fight off the 1 zombie per square mile indefinitely. So what if the AI is a little buggy and they die easy, add a shit ton of them and make them faster and I think people will have to help each other out. Once loot isn't just bunny hopping from one KoS to another, groups will have to go to other places to find supplies once they pick one spot clean. 

[HIHBGaming 14]

Patience is key this early in the piece, things WILL change when more features are implemented.

I can guarantee you that Zeds will be there to kill and be an absolute threat, along with sickness and dealing with the environment. The majority of us want this and as far as I'm aware... So do the Devs.  ;)

[CaptRandom (DayZ) 5]

Yeah, I was a little redfaced when I hiked out there basically for an m4, didn't find one and realized it's easier to just bum-rush a dude with an ax and take his. Came to the forum to see what other people are doing to get gear and where to go and 90% of what I see has to do with gameplay. The functionality I find very impressive. I haven't been frustrated at all with any mechanics of the game so far.  :thumbsup:

[Zeppa 562]

Maybe there had been more to play at this stage if you had stick with the high pop server(full). Its not like you could walk to any military location not expecting company.. ofc there is not much to play if you go non pop server and gear up, thats it at this stage of the alpha.
And if you die that much, you are not carefull enough when looting places(doing it wrong). Also switching server inside of military zone, bad idea to start with.

Edited January 2, 2014 by Zeppa

[liquidje 38]

I am in more or less the same situation as OP, having just played for about 4 hours of SA, but having enjoyed the mod a lot.

 

I think your biggest error is staying at the coast. Yes, it seems that players don't spread out as much, thus the more reason to go immediately land-inward. I would not even bother with finding drinkable water at the coast, unless the server pop is low and the server has restarted recently.

 

And please remember, the lack of zombies and loot is due to being alpha: loot is not respawned and zombies are limited as they are not yet optimized for high numbers. So this is not a design choice.

 

For now, just head north, get some melee weapons, food and drinks. Then do whatever you want, get your revenge on the bandits at the coast perhaps? Getting ranged weapons seems a bit tougher at the moment, but finding the melee/food/drinks should equip you to go further looking for firearms.

[apollovulcan 93]

Basically, if you want to gear up there's plenty of places to do it, that aren't Balota, Cherno, or Elektro.  Don't go around sprinting everywhere, always top off with water at fountains before leaving a town and when entering them.  I always avoid people if I'm not in voice chat already with them, if they pose a threat you have to choose how to handle that.  Check and scour every house, you'll eventually get rewarded with food.

 

I do agree though, that after gearing up, what else is there?  Going hunting for players?  Just moving about and "surviving"?  I hope they do add some sort of "class" and skill system to give incentive to players to work together with other random players and "work together" to survive the apocalypse.  Right now, all a random player is a chance to get shot in the back and another mouth to feed.

 

Be cool to see some doctor classes, crafting specialists, maybe military specialists that could repair weapons.  Time will tell.  Personally I would love to see the ability to hold a flashlight in one hand and  use a one handed melee, hammer, screw driver, knife, etc, in the other.  Right now doing anything at night with no moon really requires two people and one to almost always have their torch on.

 

On the lack of zombies bit, I just started messing around on the mod again after a few months away (back when the barrel roll jump was first added, 1.7.6?) and the zombie population is EXTREMELY out of hand in some of the major cities, the smaller cities aren't so bad, but they can get heavy really quickly.  I guess with the vastly improved zombie AI in SA it won't be so bad if you're truly sneaking around but good lord, you go into a building on the mod to take some refuge, and they just keep piling in the door.  I know Rocket is a huge 28 Days Later fan, but not all Zombies/Infected people need to be so athletic and persistent, some more Walking Dead style stuff would be a nice mix with the current agile and running Zs.

Edited January 2, 2014 by McG2

[JackinatorLP 21]

You just watched the wrong livestream.. ;)

"Day two begins and I first try joining a low-pop server so I don't get slaughtered before getting to balota for weapons. Yes I know it's the super cheesy way to go about it, but I wanted to get more action than running around hiding from people with m4's and mosins with scopes while hungry and dying of thirst."

Maybe try another game?

Edited January 2, 2014 by JackinatorLP