Standalone Discussion/Critique from an Old DayZ Fan.

[DayZ_Friendly 145]

 

Playing the game without a gun is a little bit lol. I use whatever I can until I find a gun, but I'm not going bandit hunting with a knife :)

 

 

Actually I would love to find some murderers camping in Elektro and spawn in where there are at with just a combat knife and silently take them out.

 

That would be awesome.

[TOPMO3 119]

It's cheating.

 

This is probably what Dean wanted to have to make SA more brutal.

 

The map basically tells you where everything is.  Water pumps, important buildings, the distance in meters from one spot to another.  There are maps in-game that you have to find.  Those are the maps you should be using.  It's cheating.

 

Vent or teamspeak is cheating.  

 

 - "Is that you in the cowboy hat?  I'm gonna shoot!!!"

- "Wait don't shoot it's me I switched from the helmet to the hat."

- "Oh ok, cuz I woulda shot you."

 

If you did go to your friends house and played, then fine. But don't use "global chat" to get around having to talk in-game or through walkie-talkies.  It's cheating.  It's telepathic cheating.

 

Turn off the crutches bro and play as a fresh spawn again.  Maybe you'll get more appreciation for the game.

 

There is so much WTF here I don't even... 

 

Ok let me try and explain myself. Your counter to my suggestion of this game being non-threatening right now is "Don't play via voice with your friends, and don't use the browser map, and restart your character?" 

 

If I don't use any map, and don't play with any friends, that isn't going to make living in the woods more fun. It isn't going to make the zombies hit harder, or make them more of a threat. It isn't going to make people too scared to play at night. It isn't going to bring back all of the tension that used to be there in the mod, but is currently a critical missing piece in DayZ SA. All it's going to do, is make my time playing DayZ just a "tiny" bit more involved, not a whole lot. I play DayZ without friends online plenty. I don't need TS or the Map to tell you that currently, the core mechanics that made the mod amazing to play, are not in place. 

 

I know that "most" of the stuff I mentioned is confirmed "to be put in the final release". I'm happy to hear that. I am also equally worried however, that it isn't IN THE CURRENT BUILD OF THE GAME. I guess my overall point of view is that I wish this game to be great, and I think it could be in a very fun playable state already, if those things were added in, instead of new cities, cooking mechanics, and other stuff I don't consider to be high priority core mechanics.

[DayZ_Friendly 145]

I guess I have issues with people saying the game is too easy when they aren't even playing it as "hardcore" as they should.  How can you be a "real-deal" gamer when you have a map open with everything on it and a global chat to organize with friends.

 

Would you really be able to find the water pump in that small village in the middle of the map if you didn't rely on dayzdb.com.  You dead from thirst.

 

Would you really be able to find that grocery store? You dead from hunger.

 

Would you have been able to meet up with your buddy so he can give you that Mosin he doesn't want anymore without teamspeak?  You ain't got no gun to kill no zombies.

 

I understand that maybe you've got the map memorized and play mostly by yourself.  But take a minute to think about what I'm saying and maybe give your self a challenge before the dev team implements what you want.

 

The tension is still here for a lot of us.  You may have gotten yourself into a rut and hoping the devs will hurry up to get you out of it.

 

I just want stuff I put on the ground to not take 5 mins to show back up...or at all.

[Jamz 253]

Nice OP, made me remember by first weeks playing the mod.

 

I expect the level of difficulty to creep up but items and mechanics are being tested (by us) at the moment - when everything is in and works, I hope the rest follows quickly so the SA can eventually surpass the mod. I'm not sure it will ever have the mods level of difficulty though sadly, the basic survival mechanism is too easy at the moment so I hope that when diseases come in they will improve this.

 

Can you imagine buying a game (alpha), trying to figure out what's going on (because you didn't play ARMA 2 or the mod), and getting instantly killed by one zombie because you are a fresh spawn and have nothing?

 

 

I don't have to imagine this, its what addicted me a couple of years ago. I ran faster the second time... found a hatchet the third time... people learn fast when under pressure.

[TOPMO3 119]

I don't have to imagine this, its what addicted me a couple of years ago. I ran faster the second time... found a hatchet the third time... people learn fast when under pressure.

 

I guess I was the only person who played Super Mario Brothers, and ran into the first goomba, which killed me not 3 seconds after starting the very first level. 

 

I didn't have any instruction. No pop-up appeared telling me to jump. But a few months later I had beaten the game, and for a 10 year old it felt like I won the life-time achievement award.

 

Making something really hard, also makes your success at it exponentially more unforgettable. 

[DayZ_Friendly 145]

Well, I will agree that the zermbies are kind of a joke right now, especially when you are geared.

 

I would like it if one or two shots puts the zombie on the ground, but doesn't kill it.  It should get back up and start attacking again.  It would be cool if only straight-up headshots killed them.

 

The zombie respawn is definitely a step in the right direction.  No more looted ghost towns.

 

It should be that every time a zombie hits you, something gets ruined.  There's been a couple of times when I wasn't paying attention and a zombie hit me, checked my gear and everything was fine.  That shouldn't happen.  The hits should damage gear.

 

I just would hate for DayZ to become a glorified "Left for Dead."

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Solid discussion gents.

 

I've found I intentionally gimp myself while playing lately.  Even early on I would ditch my pack or drop my vest on a road somewhere (perhaps some lucky guy stumbled upon it) but lately I've been ditching such treasures as the fireaxe and resorting to punching zeds to make life more difficult in Chernarus+.  I drop these items to force myself to pick and choose what I really need to carry, to force myself to decide if I need that extra roll of bandages or that extra mag.  I even try to carry one book just to make the loot choices hard.  I've even found myself opening fire on zeds in fresh towns just to burn off ammo, which can lead to greyed out screens of potential death as quite a few zeds come running at me from various directions.  I even ditch the weapon once its out of ammo. 

 

I now play on hardcore servers not for the "hardcore" challenge but for the impact on the view certain gear such as the down coat or larger backpacks provide.  All of which makes my game more challenging and enjoyable for me as I have no desire to hunt freshspawns on the coast.  I do this for the fun and I strongly suggest this to anyone who feels they've mastered the basics of what I consider level 1 of DayZ.

 

Do I need to?  Obviously not, but I find this to be the only real survival challenge at my skill level while I wait for the threat of soaked clothing, the need to remain indoors during storms, the coming need to warm up next to camp fires or die from hypothermia, and the hunting and hopefully skinning of animals.  I see the changes they're adding and I see the potential for long lasting survival challenges.  So I wait.  I don't mind, I see the steady progress and I trust in rocket's vision and the talent at BI. 

 

As for zeds, they don't offer a decently geared player much challenge at the moment but they're simply not complete.  There is work to be done on that front and I expect them to change quite a bit over the next six to twelve months.  A lot of players never get to experience them properly because other players decimate their numbers shortly after a server restart.  They will respawn, eventually, and that'll offer quite a bit of challenge, especially when their AI and pathing gets some real attention.  Until then, I'll wait for diseases, wish for randomly damaged wells, and box zeds like a young Mike Tyson while mocking their inability to get up in direct chat.

[Buffaloe 87]

I don't really think you can call using TS or any other external means of communication "cheating". When you develop a multiplayer game (/mod) you should and most likely will always assume that people use those to play with their friends. People not doing that is close to unthinkable.

 

Yea, the map makes looting easyer, especially for someone like me who does not know the map.

 

You can't say that the game is hard enough, we just have to stop using ts/dayzdb map or other tools like the wiki.

That's pretty close to saying: "Hey the game is hard enough if you just stop using your right hand"

 

What can't be circumvented has to be accepted and compensated for in another way.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Buffaloe

[Wyrmgol 26]

100% agree on zombies.

 

In the mod:

-I remember learning the distances between me and the zombies and having to figure out when I needed to prone, crawl etc

-I remember bolting past 20 zombies and then running all the way up to the top floor of 5 story building, running into a back room and dropping to the floor, heart pounding, as I wait for them to amble upstairs and hope they don't come into the room I am hiding.

-Even the noises they made were scary.  Dropping aggro in a bush and then listening to the zombie right next to you make all kinds of weird noises was terrifying sometimes, especially when they already had you bleeding.

 

The other day in SA we were running down the road fully geared and I started messing around with the zombies.  I got into a fistfight with 1 and then grabbed 2 more.  I got hit once the entire fight(no bleeding) and continuously knocked them all out over and over.  It was pretty sad.

[Katana67 2907]

I don't really think you can call using TS or any other external means of communication "cheating". When you develop a multiplayer game (/mod) you should and most likely will always assume that people use those to play with their friends. People not doing that is close to unthinkable.

 

Yea, the map makes looting easyer, especially for someone like me who does not know the map.

 

You can't say that the game is hard enough, we just have to stop using ts/dayzdb map or other tools like the wiki.

That's pretty close to saying: "Hey the game is hard enough if you just stop using your right hand"

 

What can't be circumvented has to be accepted and compensated for in another way.

 

Unfortunately, when these things are a detriment to gameplay, it's sort of unwise to just roll over and accept it.

 

I've never even heard of anyone trying to implement a TS-block of some sort in any game, so maybe it's worth trying. If they can mitigate hacking to a degree, I'd assume they could do the same for legitimate third-party programs.

 

Granted, that won't happen, simply because it's pretty insignificant to the development process. But for the day-to-day happenings of DayZ, it's immensely significant.

 

It's not cheating, no sir. But is it detrimental to the game? I'd say absolutely.

 

I personally can't stop you from using TS or maps, but I can voice my disagreement with the practice all the same.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Katana67

[BadAsh (DayZ) 1513]

I can only agree regarding zombies becoming a threat. I dont particularly agree that they should become fast zombies is the only soluition, because it isnt, but they being a threat is a necessity.  

 

Regarding nights, OP didn't mention the most important current problem which is gamma exploitation. We can't have a proper night scenario until that crap is fixed. Then we can talk IR and that sort of thing. Currently nightiime is non-playable or indeed very playable for anyone who knows how to use options, because gamme exploit makes it equal with daytime. That is your IR gear right there, for every noob to abuse. I would rather have IR equipment in game, very rare of course, than this current menu driven IR option.That is the real problem, and we haven't had any dev response to that, if they are even capable of fixing that major issue.

[DayZ_Friendly 145]

 

You can't say that the game is hard enough, we just have to stop using ts/dayzdb map or other tools like the wiki.

That's pretty close to saying: "Hey the game is hard enough if you just stop using your right hand"

 

What can't be circumvented has to be accepted and compensated for in another way.

 

Your right hand can telepathically talk to your friends?  Amazeballs.

 

In SA, global and side comms are disabled.  Why? Because that's how it's supposed to be.

 

You can't just talk to someone that's all the way on the other side of the map.

 

I'm just saying that using only the mechanics in-game is the correct way to play.  Using anything outside of it...is cheating.  

 

How coordinated would bandit groups be without teamspeak?  They would end up killing each other before killing anyone else.

 

Just because it's accepted and prevalent, doesn't mean it's not cheating.

Edited March 18, 2014 by DayZ_Friendly

[superftlol 72]

 

 

1) Bring back scary zombies. They have to be fast, they have to be plenty, they have to 2-3 hit break your legs, and 5-6 hit kill you.

 

 

....And they have to play by the rules. We can't have wall clipping/floating/sinking/teleporting zombies that kill you in a few hits.

If you think about it they haven't yet managed to perfect player collision, something that surely must be addressed before working on the Z's.

I will admit that I am happy they aren't devoting too much time to Z's as ai will always be ai. No matter how you dress it up people will work out the dynamics and before long the ai becomes essentially, at best an annoyance and at worst redundant.

I prefer my Dayz experience to be player driven not scripted ai. The goal is 150 players on a server all adding to the story, hell even writing it. There's no way (in this or any game) ai can ever replace the random nature of a human so the less time and resources spent on it the better.

I do agree that currently the Z's are next to useless and frankly might as well not even be there. Even on experimental, where they respawn on you, they pose little threat. But I totally disagree that they need to focus on it as to me, Dayz will always be about you and your interaction with others and not about a scripted event or ai.

[Katana67 2907]

I do agree that currently the Z's are next to useless and frankly might as well not even be there. Even on experimental, where they respawn on you, they pose little threat. But I totally disagree that they need to focus on it as to me, Dayz will always be about you and your interaction with others and not about a scripted event or ai.

 

Well, the genre of DayZ sort of demands zombies in the game. Unless BI intends on rebranding DayZ, zombies will remain a core aspect of the game.

 

Granted, we've NEVER had threatening zombies, ever. Not even with the mod. So it's still (unfortunately) a bit premature to dismiss them in favor of player interaction.

 

Plus, it's not like player/non-scripted interaction would therefore be short-changed by more robust zombies. Either way, zombies are an active area of development, so they are being focused on whether we like it or not.

 

I can't see a way in which player interaction would be degraded by the zombies getting a bit of love.

[Wyrmgol 26]

....And they have to play by the rules. We can't have wall clipping/floating/sinking/teleporting zombies that kill you in a few hits.

If you think about it they haven't yet managed to perfect player collision, something that surely must be addressed before working on the Z's.

I will admit that I am happy they aren't devoting too much time to Z's as ai will always be ai. No matter how you dress it up people will work out the dynamics and before long the ai becomes essentially, at best an annoyance and at worst redundant.

I prefer my Dayz experience to be player driven not scripted ai. The goal is 150 players on a server all adding to the story, hell even writing it. There's no way (in this or any game) ai can ever replace the random nature of a human so the less time and resources spent on it the better.

I do agree that currently the Z's are next to useless and frankly might as well not even be there. Even on experimental, where they respawn on you, they pose little threat. But I totally disagree that they need to focus on it as to me, Dayz will always be about you and your interaction with others and not about a scripted event or ai.

I agree that the player interaction is what drives DayZ and it's story.  But the zombies and the apocalypse are the stage and are just as important.

[superftlol 72]

 

 

Granted, we've NEVER had threatening zombies, ever. Not even with the mod. So it's still (unfortunately) a bit premature to dismiss them in favor of player interaction.

 

Breaking point attempted to add insanely hard and unpredictable blood suckers to their mod - at the same time people left in droves.

 

I concede that if a title is themed as a zombie survival it has to have zombies, it's just a case of prioritising. The bottom line - there is zero point increasing their threat until they aren't clipping and wall walking. Fix the collision and then buff the threat. But that fixing the collision/pathing bit is gonna take some work.

[Katana67 2907]

Breaking point attempted to add insanely hard and unpredictable blood suckers to their mod - at the same time people left in droves.

 

I concede that if a title is themed as a zombie survival it has to have zombies, it's just a case of prioritising. The bottom line - there is zero point increasing their threat until they aren't clipping and wall walking. Fix the collision and then buff the threat. But that fixing the collision/pathing bit is gonna take some work.

 

I agree that it'll take some work.

 

I'm not entirely sure I agree with your characterization of BP though. I played the mod well after Bloodsuckers were introduced and noticed no distinguishable drop in server population until more competitive mods (like Overwatch) came to the forefront and SA was subsequently released. Bloodsuckers weren't the cause of BP's population drop by any stretch. They weren't even that common or annoying, in my experience.

 

Regardless, I don't think anyone here is suggesting having an uber-zombie which requires mutiple mags of 7.62x39 to bring down, as would be the case with the Bloodsucker. This is actually an approach which I despise, having more powerful hyper-zombie types (a la L4D). However, as was done in DayZ+, simply upping the damage that zombies inflict to a more appropriate (and threatening) amount worked wonders in making zombies a threat.

 

Couple that with larger numbers, respecting game boundaries, and variations in speed, I think zombies would become a force to reckon with. Rather than a passive non-issue or an occasional annoyance. It would obviously have to be offset with a revamped zombie aggro system (i.e. having zombies actually respect players who're prone OR an AI revamp which is similar to the way police work in GTA) that would allow the player to mitigate/manage zombie aggro. But, I certainly think it's worth the time they're spending on it just getting the zombies performing correctly (much less with regard to balance).

Edited March 18, 2014 by Katana67

[Sgt.BigBeasty 6]

love the critque and its very true, i agree one hundred percent for this being a zombie apocalypse game the zombie are quite lame and even inn the experimental with the added threat more needs to be done!

[ld-airgrafix 403]

Agree with everything except sprinting zombies, and 5-6 hit death.

Atm some zombies almost match your running speed, but not your sprinting speed. Seems easy now just to sprint past them, but when they add more zombies and getting tired effect, apparently even a heart attack is in plans, it wont be as busy.

Strongly against 5-6 hits resulting in player death, mainly because this is an online game, and server lag occurs frequently, so i really dont want to die because of this. Just take a look at infestation, they have 3 -4 hit approx, and death always results due to lag and glitches. I think zombies are fine the way they are now, maybe reduce their supervision, at the moment as long as nothing obstructs their vision, they will see you a km away, makes it hard to sneak around because they see you way before you even make it to a town and buildings.

Also why dont they concentrate on fixing zombies glitching through walls its a big game

[ld-airgrafix 403]

Agree with everything except sprinting zombies, and 5-6 hit death.

Atm some zombies almost match your running speed, but not your sprinting speed. Seems easy now just to sprint past them, but when they add more zombies and getting tired effect, apparently even a heart attack is in plans, it wont be as busy.

Strongly against 5-6 hits resulting in player death, mainly because this is an online game, and server lag occurs frequently, so i really dont want to die because of this. Just take a look at infestation, they have 3 -4 hit approx, and death always results due to lag and glitches. I think zombies are fine the way they are now, maybe reduce their supervision, at the moment as long as nothing obstructs their vision, they will see you a km away, makes it hard to sneak around because they see you way before you even make it to a town and buildings.

Also why dont they concentrate on fixing zombies glitching through walls its one of bigger errors in the game

[TheFarm 158]

Good points and thank you for the texture pack OP. I played the mod, enjoyed it, but wasn't hooked like many of you guys. Instead I was really into base building in wasteland mod...

Imagine if the towns were the only places that were potentially safe, with the terrifying wilderness like OP described. I'm not taking about no combat zones like some people have asked for, rather low/no zombies spawns in towns. Traveling hordes that move from town to town raping them like we players do now, and they respawn randomly in the forests or something. Instead of towns being used as tdm_elektro/Where's Waldo loot edition, players would group up in and fortify the towns.

I imagine most of the pvp would then happen between communities, for example if I were part of the elektro community and our walls were falling apart/no ammo, then we're going to scout cherno. See that cherno is way more fortified and populated and then the elektro community has the toughest decision to make. Do we sneak in and fight the cherno community to steal their supplies? Do we try to set up trades, or is it so bad that we have to abandon elektro and ask to be assimilated into the cherno community?

If any of you have gotten into wasteland then you can probably picture what I'm talking about. After 3 hours of building up your teams base in wasteland you either stay in your cozy walls defending, or you go out and bring something back for the team.

Anyways it's just something i think would bring dayz to the point of endless fun, and this thread seems like the right place to bring it up for the first time.

Edited March 18, 2014 by TheFarm

[doctorbadsign 645]

Critiquing DayZ in its current state is analogous to critiquing a film based upon a few disparate unedited scenes. 

[Buffaloe 87]

Constructive criticism and suggestions during the making of the film can lead to a better product though.

[Jex 1104]

3 - While I agree that NVGs and Thermal Optics shouldn't necessarily be in the game, two things. One, night needs to be made playable. I'm not saying I should be able to see across a field with perfect sight at night, but sometimes I have trouble even telling if my screen is on or off when playing DayZ because it's unplayably dark. They just need to rework the lighting so that nighttime is both playable and tense. Two, I wouldn't necessarily be against NVGs if they were suitably rare, difficult to maintain, and required suitably rare batteries to power. It was silly in the mod because you just got NVGs, period. The only way for them to stop being available after that is if you died.

 

They should make the day cycles shorter, like 7 hours with 2 hours night time and the ability to see in it like you say above. Not perfect vision but enough to see around.

 

As it's a game we play, we can code out the pitch black nights where you can't see a thing because nobody in their right mind would venture out into it. Would you go out in the woods in the dead of night in The Walking Dead series? Nobody would even think about it - it's death from zed for sure.

 

Most people are going to be asleep during the night realistically so it seems that a 2 hour "night time" window is perfect. It gives players enough time to get things done and running it at 7 hours a day will ensure it rotates so everyone gets some night time experience on the server's they frequent.

[abrown3 1]

I don't think the problems are as basic as 'make the zombies harder' and 'remove military loot'.

 

To me, and I love Dayz, the problem is there's no progression of achievement, so boredom sets in. Keep the military loot, make massive zombie hordes, but keep them in certain high-value loot areas. Make some zones so inhospitable that you need certain gear to reach -- then allow bases and high value loot there. Give geared players something to do and strive to keep the game realistic. IRL, someone who can loot their local NG armory, police station, etc. would not just camp in the woods to kill someone for their 1 can of beans or for fun. They'd move on to find more people to group with and start to re-take a town.That needs to be the end-game focus, not just pvp.