A Positive Thought

[Death By Crowbar 1213]

It's easy to get sucked into the numerous posts with random people popping in and posting things such as:

1. I haven't played in 3 months, I log back in and... no visible development progress! WTF?
2. I heard bad things from friends about the stability of the game, why would I buy this?
3. Flashlights go through walls at night and it's a big effort to fix in the current engine, this is GAME BREAKING and we must abandon ship!
4. Why are you adding more hats and jackets rather than fixing ladders and zombie pathing?
5. Devs need more pressure.
6. I'm not playing again until the fire ax is un-nerfed (LOL, really???)

When I first purchased DayZ Standalone and knew little to nothing about it nor it's paid "early access alpha" (new concept to me) I used to chime in on these sort of posts and stoke the fire. I would do this because I honestly liked the game and concept and was completely appalled that issues as big as zombies walking through floors/walls, random zombie noises, and other just general strange quirks were in the game at all. Then a few times after painstakingly attempting to survive and not knowing the map but figuring inland remote areas were safe, got rather geared up and had enjoyed surviving only to seemingly have my character's gear wiped. Then I also dealt with a few incidents which can only be described as "hackers" somehow taking advantage somehow through speed running, teleporting, item duplication/glitching, etc. Dev blogs happening list frequently during this time (they seemed to taper off after 2013) didn't help and added to the impression that not much was happening. As someone who doesn't visit Reddit I assumed what's relevant to DayZ Standalone would be posted on the DayZ Standalone site/forums (I think most people would expect that).

 

Then I matured and evolved as a player and member of the community. I learned where to look for information. I started talking to people in game more about the game (the ones that weren't KOS). I started searching bugs, adding info, voting, and also reporting a few that weren't already reported. I've seen reports of cool things that are happening with hiring a team to work on zombies and zombie pathing related issues alone, tweaks being made to the engine to help achieve the vision, etc. I'm starting to understand what "early access alpha" means, and even though I paid my dues to play it ($30 or whatever it was) I'm being given an opportunity to lock in that very reasonable price (which I can certainly say at 200+ hours I've gotten my money's worth) and also participate in the development processes through feedback and bug reporting.

 

I think there's something very good here, and it's going to be interesting to have the game experience change every week as incremental fixes or tweaks are made, and as major features such as vehicles are finally introduced. My biggest dream is, out of sheer amusement, being able to handcuff and burlap sack zombies. I know that might be a lot to ask, but after having it done to me a bunch of time if I'm on a low pop server and looking for some short term amusement abusing zombies would certainly be awesome.

 

I'm interested in other's thoughts on this. It's so easy online to get lost in negativity, because after all, people are far quicker to complain about something than to praise something - it's human nature.

[TheFearOz 9]

Absolutely, for a game in i's Alpha stage to sell over 2 million in 6 months (standalone), which is purchased by the moaners included, the game still has a long way to go. As it is now, it is very enjoyable and it seems from recent updates a lot of the features from the mod are going into SA such as hunting/camp sites ect. I find myself unable to tear myself away at times while other times can be a little apathetic such as interacting and dying as a result or hackers.

[Bororm 1156]

I wish everyone shared your attitude.  The majority of the complaints I see stem from ignorance, either misunderstandings of systems or not putting in the effort to see if the issues they are complaining about have been addressed/discussed.  I mean how many of the same topics do we see every day, complaining about the same stuff.  It's tiresome, I try to provide links or at least point out things that have been addressed by Rocket and the devs, but after so many times I just get frustrated with it.  What good does complaining about the same topic every day really do?

 

It's great that you decided to start searching for information, and trying to learn more about the game and have taken a more open minded approach.  I wish more would do the same.