Open Letter to the Developers

[leviathanapsu 94]

Dear Developing Team,

 

I only found out about the existence of DayZ in any format a short while ago. Not interested in buying Arma, I contented myself just watching videos of people who were playing the game. Eventually I stumbled across Standalone. It was then that I rewatched every video I had already seen along with those of Standalone. Instead of getting bored, I just kept getting more interested in the idea of playing the game. I have not yet bought the game and won't for a bit as it will take time before my spare funds come in to spend on nonessentials. Hopefully I will have those funds soon, but that is neither here nor there.

 

To content myself, I have been reading the forums and commenting on a few as well. Time and again, someone disgruntled with the pace of development will post how they are 'quitting forever' and why. I can agree with them to a degree. It most certainly is a long development time, though I have seen far worse for less impressive games. I am led to understand the team working on this project is considerably smaller than is normal for such undertakings and is probably a large part of the slow progress. I don't know why that is the case, but I am sure there is some reason to keep the team tight.

 

What I will say is this: Don't think that there are only two opinions. It isn't the die-hards saying how great it is and the old disgruntled bitching about the pace. There is a stream of fresh blood out there who like where you are going. Some of us indeed understand that working with code from the ground up means you may take far longer to produce the same work. In so doing, we also know that the nature of that work is going to surpass what came before it. It is an easy thing to slap a new face on an old product and just tweek a few things. It is something else entirely to start with a skeleton and piece it together from nothing. I have seen aspects of early development and recent development. The quality is high on those things which get added and doubtlessly debugging has been a real chore with enough players hanging around to almost be a beta test rather than an alpha.

 

If it takes three or four more years to see the full development of aspects of worth found in the original mod, I believe I speak for at least part of your player base in saying that it will still be worth it. Worth it because the quality will be higher and the execution tighter. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. Keep up the hard work and thank you for suffering the endless slings and arrows of those who felt like a small team should have been able to build a perfect product at a breakneck speed. You've done enough that I am breaking my rule of never paying for alpha/beta test games just to have a crack at it. Or at least I will be once my play funds come through.

 

Thank you,

Signed: Another random player

[Jfiles 439]

Dear Developing Team,

 

I only found out about the existence of DayZ in any format a short while ago. Not interested in buying Arma, I contented myself just watching videos of people who were playing the game. Eventually I stumbled across Standalone. It was then that I rewatched every video I had already seen along with those of Standalone. Instead of getting bored, I just kept getting more interested in the idea of playing the game. I have not yet bought the game and won't for a bit as it will take time before my spare funds come in to spend on nonessentials. Hopefully I will have those funds soon, but that is neither here nor there.

 

To content myself, I have been reading the forums and commenting on a few as well. Time and again, someone disgruntled with the pace of development will post how they are 'quitting forever' and why. I can agree with them to a degree. It most certainly is a long development time, though I have seen far worse for less impressive games. I am led to understand the team working on this project is considerably smaller than is normal for such undertakings and is probably a large part of the slow progress. I don't know why that is the case, but I am sure there is some reason to keep the team tight.

 

What I will say is this: Don't think that there are only two opinions. It isn't the die-hards saying how great it is and the old disgruntled bitching about the pace. There is a stream of fresh blood out there who like where you are going. Some of us indeed understand that working with code from the ground up means you may take far longer to produce the same work. In so doing, we also know that the nature of that work is going to surpass what came before it. It is an easy thing to slap a new face on an old product and just tweek a few things. It is something else entirely to start with a skeleton and piece it together from nothing. I have seen aspects of early development and recent development. The quality is high on those things which get added and doubtlessly debugging has been a real chore with enough players hanging around to almost be a beta test rather than an alpha.

 

If it takes three or four more years to see the full development of aspects of worth found in the original mod, I believe I speak for at least part of your player base in saying that it will still be worth it. Worth it because the quality will be higher and the execution tighter. I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. Keep up the hard work and thank you for suffering the endless slings and arrows of those who felt like a small team should have been able to build a perfect product at a breakneck speed. You've done enough that I am breaking my rule of never paying for alpha/beta test games just to have a crack at it. Or at least I will be once my play funds come through.

 

Thank you,

Signed: Another random player

To be completely honest, they have been moving really quickly compared to how other games have. I think the game will never be COMPLETELY finished. But. I think it is moving at a great pace. and there will be some things that will bring the youngings who tend to "complain" about the pace, but, the game is and i would presume will always be good. Just can't wait for base building. I can't wait for my Hero House.

[Intactus 128]

It's nice to see people that have still maintained some sort of touch with reality.

 

So many games recently have been just rammed through development too hastily cutting all corners while shareholders snap their whips for a fast refund.
From there we get two bad thing: Entitled kids who go nuts staring at screen, holding breath waiting for the release and ofcourse, shitty games.

To put things in perspective, let's look at (obviously not too well organized) development of Stalker, a singleplayer game that started from a scratch to produce something new alltogether:

- Announced November 2001 and had its release date, originally in 2003.

- In late December 2003, a pre-alpha build of the game was leaked. This build, marked as version 1096, inadvertently acted as a fully functional tech demo of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s engine, despite its lack of npc enemies and fauna. (DayZ Pre-alpha, anyone?)

 

- In February 2005, THQ expressed a desire to see the game released toward the end of its 2006 fiscal year (March 31, 2006) but maintained that no release date had been set.

- February 2006, THQ revised this possible release window, saying the game would not be in stores until the first quarter of 2007.

- In 2006, the game came 9th in Wired's Vaporware '06 award :D

- On March 2, 2007, it was announced that the game went gold.

And what did we get? Well, some could argue, but to me; The very best, multifaceted, compelling, atmospheric, singleplayer action game since Doom.
It still has very active playerbase in 2014 and new mods incorporating hundreds of new features are still released. Not too shabby eh?

To date, no other game hasn't even come close to the experience i had when i first started my journey across the zone.

I followed the development since 2003 when the demo leaked and witnessed the same sort of frustration, tantrums and outbreaks every time there was a gap in comms of another delay.

Them kids will always kick and scream and curse like it's the end of the world but they'll live.

 

Edited April 19, 2014 by Intactus