The Wishlist - Three things that need to happen

[Psyentific 1]

Standalone isn't a good game.

 

It's a markedly different game from the mod, and it's obviously incomplete. I knew that going in, and I knew that when I bought into the alpha on day one. It's an alpha - incomplete features, absent necessities, and glaring bugs are to be expected. That said, I can't really enjoy playing Standalone; each day, I feel less and less like logging on. Each life, and everything encountered in it is fleeting.

My experiences in standalone fall into one of two general categories; Feast or Famine. Feast - Maybe I get lucky, find an SKS, pristine PSO and a few boxes of ammo, find a can opener and more beans 'n bacon than I can eat. Just as I figure I'm all set, I do something stupid. Maybe I come off the second floor of a barn too fast and break my leg (Shoulda picked up those sticks!), maybe I get greedy and catch a bullet for my trouble.
Famine - Everything's picked clean. From Kamenka to Svetlojarsk, from Berezino to Cherno, there's nothing nowhere. All the doors are wide open, all the loot's gone. I'd be lucky to find a beat up hoodie or a rotten banana, let alone anything of any use (Like a pipe wrench)

Which brings me to my first (And admittedly least important) point.

 

FIX THE LOOT SPAWNS!
Feast or Famine. Nothing in between - None of the classic Mod paradigm of "Gun but no Ammo, Ammo but no Gun" or "I've got everything but matches!". Either you have everything you need and most of the things you want, or you have nothing at all. You know exactly what I mean, too. You've had it, or you're realizing it now that I've pointed it out. Or maybe you're one of the Smart Ones, like me, timing the server restarts for your preferred few (2/6/10 PST, Vancouver Dikdik). You've realized that "Feast Or Famine" is tied to server population and time since restart, more than anything else. In exclusion to everything else, really - The time the loot's been there, and the amount of people looting.

 

Because loot doesn't respawn at any time but Server Restart.

DayZ is all about the in-between - Having a mosin, but no ammo. Having 7.62, but no mosin. As it stands now, you log in 10m after a server restart and find a mosin, a scope, two boxes of ammo, and maybe a bayonet. All within five minutes of each other, in the same cluster of buildings. You log in three hours past server restart, and you won't find anything anywhere. If you implement loot respawns (On the 15m? 10m?) you're going to take a sizable chunk out of server hoppers, but more importantly you're going to almost completely alleviate the Feast Or Famine issue. That is, you're going to be repopulating areas that are rendered barren (Like Cherno) within an hour of restart.



Which brings me to my second point - Gear Persistance. Or, rather, the lack thereof.
 

You find three guns, but only have one friend. In the mod, you'd take the spare and stash it in your tent, or your car. Here? Nothing of the sort. If you find three long-range scopes, they're all gone when you inevitably die. All you accomplished by taking them was denying them to other people, which, while a valid tactic, is kind of a dick move.

I actually dropped Standalone a month, maybe two? back. What lured me back in was a rumor that backpacks were consistent over server restarts. Not perfect, no, but it gives players the ability to leave stashes (see; STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl). Or maybe Heroes can leave care packages - Talloon packs full of rags and opened cans near common spawns. Maybe Bandits could leave a box of ammo and a scope in a nook on Sniper's Hill. Even something as minor as backpack persistency would allow you to save that second press vest for another time, or stockpile .357 and a cowboy hat.

Tents. Stashes. Persistent Backpacks. Allowing your gear to be useful and accessible past your current life would be huge.



Which brings me to my third (and most important) point - Life. Or rather, Un-life. Zombies.

DayZ has always been committed to fast, Romero-style zombies, rather than slow, tireless Brooks-style zombies. I can respect that, and, while it's not my personally preferred style of zombie, it makes them a threat outside of large hordes.

However, Zombies as they are now are not a threat. Let me emphasize that some more - Zombies are not a threat - They are a nuisance. They come in ones and twos, easily dispatched, but respawning almost instantly. bugs(!) ensure that you can't lose them, and they're fast enough so that you can't outrun them. The first two are the problem.

Zombies coming in ones and twos means they're a threat in the early game, maybe if you aren't good at punching (aim for the head). Once you get your hands on anything like an axe, a hoe, a pitchfork even? Zombies are trivial - They'll land more hits if you stop while switching to melee than they will in the actual fight. More often than not, they bleed you - Again, like the mod. If you're caught without rags or bandages and you get into a fight, you're as good as dead. The problem arises with the new respawn times - Almost instant. You kill one and another takes its place. I've died because a zombie landed a bleed, and they kept coming in ones and twos until I bled out. Zombies are a nuisance, not a threat - When I pull aggro from a zombie I wasn't aware of, all the way across fifty meters of fence, building, and field? I'm annoyed. I don't think "Oh crap" - I think "Not this shit again" -  To fix this, I'd make zombies spawn in pods of two to four, maybe five in downtown cities, but cut the respawn timer back to five, ten minutes. Increase damage, decrease bleed chance. Make bleeding attract nearby zombies.

Zombies Part Deux - Bugs.

You can't play Standalone for ten minutes without encountering some kind of zombie-related bug. Everyone knows them, but I'll throw 'em down anyway for convenience's sake.
Detection ranges are way off - A zombie can spot you through 100m of dense terrain, bushes, field, maybe a fence or two. And from there, he'll beeline towards you.
And I do mean beeline - Zombies ignore all man-made terrain. All - They cannot climb stairs, nor go up ramps. They walk straight through barriers, be they sandbag, picket fence, window, or brick wall. They also detect you through them - Visually. In FPS terms, I'd say it's noclip combined with X-Ray vision - Makes me think that man-made terrain and structures just plain don't register with them.

Stealth is worse than useless - It slows you down, and any zombie that's facing you is going to see you, regardless of crouching, camo, or movement. On the flip side, zombies seem to have no hearing at all - I have sprinted across pavement to stand behind a zombie, then punched it in the back of the head. Only upon being punched in the back of the head did the zombie aggro me - Funny, considering that the same zombie would have aggro'd me before I was aware of it, if I'd approached from the front.

If there's one thing I want anyone important to take away from this? It's the zombies. Fix The God Damned Zombies. Before you add new guns, before you add tents, before you put in new animations, before you give them patrols, before you put in loot respawning, before you put in tents and stashes, before you put in all those other Major Features the mod had, Fix The God Damned Zombies.

Until then? I'm out. Standalone just isn't fun for me anymore, and I can't go back to Chernarus. Chernarus+ is just leagues better. The Mod and its mods feel so dated it's not even funny, while A3 Broken Point has its own set of problems and an almost completely different concept and feel. If Bohemia implements the three things above? Heck, that'd probably cover the vast majority of problems with Standalone.

 

 

Until then, though? Shrug.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Psyentific

[pacific_coast 632]

Hidden text.

you made a decent post OP

sorry that this fourm is a 99% dismissive elitist pc master race diabetes fest

Edited April 7, 2014 by Inception.

[Hetstaine 10852]

Feast or famine ?

 

 The only servers i have starved on (twice in 300 odd hours) are ones that haven't been restarted. One was an experimental that hadn't been restarted for days and another a public. I have never jumped on any other server and found no loot to the point where i have died. Sounds to me like have been unlucky in your servers ?

 

Loot respawning.

 

 It is an always amazing constantly changing thing. This just has to be dealt with until they find the balance they are going for. In general if you know what spawns where, you are good to go..like the mod.

 

Persistent stashes.

 

 At the moment it isn't really an issue as so many servers are dumbed down too 2, and even 1 hour restarts, It's the mod all over again already. Personally if they re-introduce tents and they stick out like they did or are as buggy as the mod, i don't want them , my opinion of course :)

 

Zeds

 

Obvious constant wip. Everything gets worked on at the same time by different people so i suppose whatever is finished at whatever point gets added. Thus we get more hats and shoes before the Zeds (which have only just started respawning) gets better.

 

 It's a waiting game dude, you just cannot take your char too seriously at the moment..although i do sometimes and shed a tear when a zed warps and busts my ass through a wall while i am bandaging..but dems the breaks :)

[novogeek 253]

@OP: Awesome post ... the rest was covered by @pacific_coast.

[Damnyourdeadman 1045]

Take a look OP,this was posted on Reddit: http://imgur.com/a/gaL2O

So as you can understand,the devs are constantly trying to fix the spawn issues.

The zombie and loot respawning will come in time,and i know for sure that it's up on the to-do list.

Zombies are shit,yes but we all know that they are placeholders because we were complaining of their

absence in the game.Devs are working on their pathfinding as we speak,also i too want to see more stealth

oriented gameplay.There are different teams for Map,animations and weapons.Some work on this and others on that,

on the updates we get what is ready,aside from what it is.I don't play atm,waiting for the game to go further down the road

development wise,you don't see me making rant-threads though.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Inception.
No personal insults please.

[alsmir 255]

Couldn't agree more OP.

 

The worst thing is that those issues should be absolutely top priority and what have been done about them since release? Zombies getting slightly better then worse again?

 

I can only laugh at people that played SA for 100+ hours since they are completely oblivious  that the old mod offers much more while having less bugs and on top of that is free.

[cruiseashimself 56]

Hidden text.

really?

he was simply saying the moderator's reply was a bit out of line. I understand the op is beating a dead horse here but wow. Isn't that what the graveyard is for?

TO the OP: all your points are completely valid, just remember you can always lick it back up in a later stable build OR post about the bugs in the correct section.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Inception.

[Jex 1104]

I don't get these threads where people complain about the state of a game where not even half of the features have been added in. 

 

Everyone knows the state of the game right now - there is nothing to do except roam the countryside, encounter other players and work out how the game works.

 

Everything in the OP is moot. It's like sitting in a car that has been half built. There's no wheels yet or an engine but the horn works, the steering wheel turns and when you make a "Brrrrroooommmmm" noise it echos around the garage. After 100 hours of this you jump out and complain that it's no fun and it should have an engine in it and a sunroof.

[Inception. 9443]

Topic cleaned.

--

 

OP, I understand that you have obviously put quite a bit of effort into your post however the post covers issues that have been covered numerous times, and the topic is more or less a rant; no rants please.

 

Locked.