Areas of the game that could/should be improved.

[blazed 71]

Please note: This is just my opinion of the game at its current stage, yes I know it’s in alpha and I eagerly wait for all the changes and improvements to come to this game. I noticed people take others criticism of the game personally like someone just insulted their mother, share your own opinion but don’t get personal just because you don’t like other’s opinion. I’m just trying to contribute and give something back hence why I took the time to write it all down.

 

Below I have separated and discussed about the various elements of the game.

 

Best factor of DayZ – The tension, hands down. Getting into a situation where you just don’t want to die. The nerve wreck. That is the one thing that DayZ offers that I don’t see in any other game.

 

Fun factor – Killing other opponents/geared players/bandits doesn’t bring enough joy to counteract the pain of death, in the end everyone soon or later dies, everyone is in a way, a loser.

 

Player Vs Environment – Lacklustre, boring, dehydration and hunger are just annoyances that you need to consider in this big PVP world, they don’t offer any valuable gameplay it doesn’t contribute to the fun. Besides the players and zombies the environment is just big static meshes that have been recycled over and over.

 

Zombies – Pointless at the moment, they are just annoying, so many bugs with them I won’t even bother mentioning. The fact that people just walk around them and ignore them shows how pointless they are. They have messed me up on a few occasions totally underserved. For example I was on a sniper hill eyeing an enemy, this zombie all the way in elektro far, far into the distance aggro’s for no reason (didn’t even shoot) and came chasing after me, 5mins later I got flanked, thanks to the zombie giving my position away (yes I did move positions, but was probably being watched by this time).

 

Loot – Predictable. Need guns? Police station, fire stations, schools, those red buildings, airstrips, military bases. I no longer try to gear myself up, it’s not worth the time, now I just Find melee weapon > try to knock out geared guy > steal his loot. Works pretty well and it’s more fun.

 

Hacks – hacks and glitches happen quite often, often running into players with hacked amount of ammunition and non-reloading guns (proof when you loot their shit), some people have insane sight skills but a part of me says ESP hacks, who knows, unfortunately this one doesn’t leave evidence behind. A defenceless hacked game is a pointless game, I’m wondering how this happens with both VAC and BE running?

 

Spawns – uninspired, boring, East coast all the time, Berinzo is the new elektro, takes forever to get to other locations besides the east, takes forever to run back and group up with friends. I know a lot of DayZ community for some reason love running over and over in this virtual world, then again some people are into foot fetishes and food p0rn, my point is you are catering to a small amount of the potential player base. I am really looking forward to the controlled spawn point’s rocket had talked about. Spawn near Berinzo > run to Berinzo > PVP > die > Spawn near Berinzo, works more well than any other alternative right now.

 

Priority Development – I’m going to get hated for this but I for one think your development priorities are just plain out wrong. I don’t know why anyone would focus on fixing the interiors of a car when the car has missing wheels or an engine. Looking at the update list I can see one great update, the 100 man servers (hopefully) and I applaud you for that. The rest like campfires, bow and arrow, and wild life are not game changers. After a brief amount of time with those items people are still going to go around PVP in major cities. It would make much more sense to fix your glitches, bugs, desyncs, zombie AI, add vehicles, controlled spawn points, bring in group identification (armbands, icons) etc.
I don’t know maybe just focus on the core of the game rather than add more crap into the mix that’s already barely working.

 

Map – Way too big for its own good, even on a 100 man or 200 man server, a lot of places will be ghost towns with a  few dedicated PvP zones. Vehicles might fix this problem depending on how many vehicles per server. The most irritating thing in this game is spending hours running around without a single sight of a person, even worse is to getting KOSed from the back without even seeing a single person, how people can spend 1-2 hours camped to shoot down 1 person is beyond me. I think that is too much time invested for a short lived gratification.

 

PVP – This is a Player Vs Player game, I don’t why people deny this, let’s take out multiplayer for second and make this a single player game, would you play this game now because it offers so many things to do in terms of survival and fighting off zombies etc. No it doesn’t, its utterly weak without the threat of other players. There are much better games out there for surviving and hunting, Far cry 3 was awesome with the camps, bows, and the wild life. There are also better hunting simulators out there. DayZ will never be at that level of single player gameplay, it shouldn’t aim to either. It needs to focus more on PVP and make it work better.

 

Business Role - Let’s face it guys, I am pretty sure this game has already made (and is still making) a lot of money through sales. All that matters at this point is: will developing this game more bring more cash that is worth it? If the answer is no then it’s time to wrap up and call it a day. Believe it or not games are more of a business than passion these days, unfortunately this game can get halted at any time before even making beta because it may be not worth it.

 

Alternative game – At the moment I feel that Arma III battle Royal is the closes thing to being what DayZ is, sure it does have its own set of problems but it seems to take all the best elements of DayZ and get rid of the all bad ones. For example there is actually a winner in BR, the map narrows down, allowing guaranteed action. The fights are still tense as death means getting kicked out and having to join a new game but at the same time is a lot quicker to jump into action as opposed to DayZ. The game (usually) is more bug/glitch free than DayZ, and no stupid zombies ruining the pvp either. DayZ needs to use the big open world to its advantage and make gameplay work better, it needs to define what it is more clearly.

 

Conclusion – I have probably generated a lot of disagreement in my opinion and hate with all the criticism towards the game, but even Dean Hall “Rocket” said “I don’t think it’s even a good game yet” in the Roadmap video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es42HrtPB3I time: 4:08) I totally agree with him, it’s a weak game, the only thing it has going for it at the moment like how I said before is the tension, gun shootings have never been as important as they are in DayZ, you just really don’t want to die in this game. Playing DayZ is like being in a bad relationship, you just want to love it but it screws you over and over again till you no longer want to be with it, and there are no future changes to the game to change that. As a last note, Dayz has been selling very well for many months on steam usually always leading spot number one, but it doesn’t fair the same in hours spent playing the game, definitely a lot of people are putting this game down, I’ve made many friends in DayZ who all happen to quit after a few days, and it’s the same pattern with everyone I meet in game, people don’t tolerate it for too long, such a shame.

Edited April 19, 2014 by blazed

[Zedertone 378]

Alpha.

Lol just kidding, good post! If anything, awesome effort.

take my beans.

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

E for effort

[Jumbaliah 113]

 

Business Role - Let’s face it guys, I am pretty sure this game has already made (and is still making) a lot of money through sales. All that matters at this point is: will developing this game more bring more cash that is worth it? If the answer is no then it’s time to wrap up and call it a day. Believe it or not games are more of a business than passion these days, unfortunately this game can get halted at any time before even making beta because it may be not worth it.

 

 

Sure, and continuing with this business mind set, would you want a bad name for your gaming company such as "doesn't go past alpha"? They already made their money on this game but their reputation is at stake. 2 million people who may have never bought a game from these guys have been waiting for this release for months. Failing to deliver on this would have a much worse impact on their business than giving up and cashing out now would. 

 

I know I would never buy another game by these developers if they never full released, let alone not making it past alpha. The bar is pretty high and they need to impress people with their games for future releases.

[Irish. 4886]

No but seriously, Alpha.

 

Its far too early to start trying to make adjustments on our end.

 

Alpha is for adding content, Beta is for fixing the bugs, and by final release this game should play out much like the mods did. 

[yogi92 50]

I will only address the priority issue now:

For f*cks sake, when will you guys understand, that DayZ is NOT created by a single dev, who needs to devote time to certain areas of development? They have multiple teams, some for core development, some for graphics, some for sounds, some for items or mechanics... and they all work simultaneously. You guys would stop playing DayZ months ago if small features and new items weren't added in the meantime of fixing bugs (which takes plenty of time)

[Intactus 128]

It's nice to see people take their time to voice their opinions in a bit more thorough manner than two word "Fuck this".
Even so, i think majority of posts like this take really shallow approach to what makes DayZ, DayZ.
Like stating that the map is too big because they just played two hours without seeing anyone etc. Think things a bit further if you really want to evaluate things constructively.

Not trying to hijack anything here but take a look at my personal brainfart here and check third headline "How to sell another 1.8million copies"
Now would you say that even those things in place you'd still want to change half of the game? Are you sure that DayZ is the game you want to play?

To put things in perspective development wise, 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. :)

Cheers.

[Jumbaliah 113]

 

 

Priority Development – I’m going to get hated for this but I for one think your development priorities are just plain out wrong. I don’t know why anyone would focus on fixing the interiors of a car when the car has missing wheels or an engine. Looking at the update list I can see one great update, the 100 man servers (hopefully) and I applaud you for that. The rest like campfires, bow and arrow, and wild life are not game changers. After a brief amount of time with those items people are still going to go around PVP in major cities. It would make much more sense to fix your glitches, bugs, desyncs, zombie AI, add vehicles, controlled spawn points, bring in group identification (armbands, icons) etc.

I don’t know maybe just focus on the core of the game rather than add more crap into the mix that’s already barely working.

 

 

 

Also this is dumb too. The people making interiors for cars aren't the same guys programming zombies. 

[DannyRed 32]

Map – Way too big for its own good, even on a 100 man or 200 man server, a lot of places will be ghost towns with a  few dedicated PvP zones. Vehicles might fix this problem depending on how many vehicles per server. The most irritating thing in this game is spending hours running around without a single sight of a person, even worse is to getting KOSed from the back without even seeing a single person, how people can spend 1-2 hours camped to shoot down 1 person is beyond me. I think that is too much time invested for a short lived gratification.

If there were too much confrontation the tenseness would not feel the same anymore. I think that it's great to have the game fooling you time and time again that everything is fine until you see someone and you panic and don't know what to do. Nothing beats that after playing so much of mmo's or other multiplayer games like the regular fps. 

The zombies and the enviroment are supposed to give us the difficulty and challenge and not the other players only but it's not there as of now. That's why we really cannot consider to make any conclusions on the game until this is done. Good that you voice your opinion though.

Edited April 19, 2014 by DannyRed

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

The emptiness on Chernerus, even on full servers, is what gives the game it's atmosphere.  It can be dead quiet for hours and then, bam!!!.  Guns, blazing, people raging, bodies dropping and a lot of people coming to the forums to post about it.  So much is still yet to be out into the game and I am very much looking forward to what lies ahead.  I just hope some survival options will be coming soon.  I want to have to keep warm at night, find shelter in the rain, rest from running too long, hunting and hell, fishing for food.

Edited April 19, 2014 by Caboose187