The Woes of a Long Survival

[Mach1av3ll1 1]

DayZ is a great game. I'm just getting into stand-alone but I wanted to share my experiences in the mod with falling into a degree of survivalism and paranoia that prevented me from playing it anymore.

 

I used to play with a group of mates. I spent many long hours using powerlines to track my way across Chenarus, but once we grouped up we would go on grand hunts. One of my fondest memories was using a firing line of enfields by a small village to kill wave after wave of zombies.

 

That said, the game slowly became unplayable for me. As time went on, I became progressively more geared. It started when I got my M4A1 silenced woodland edition. Following that, I acquired other gear. I slowly became our teams anchor - I was the guy who didn't die. Rare stuff got given to me. This included nv goggles, a thermal scoped sniper, gps, ghillie suit, etc.

 

Eventually I had everything. I had all the mandatory survival gear, the largest of backpacks, enough 3 water canteens, my two guns, ghillie suit, gps, and even a stashed away ATV. As we went on missions, I became "base." I'd sit in the treeline, and scout with my binos, & thermal scope. When they were ready, the boys would go on and I'd be fire support. Eventually I stopped doing this. I became a hermit. I rarely left the woods. I'd go to the edges of places, and just watch. I'd stop by a lake. I'd hunt a boar. And then go back to the woods. Even in the deep woods my fires (for cooking the meat) would be in the middle of a packet of trees, and left open only long enough to cook the meat before I'd get moving again. (My zombie count got obscene, for the record)

 

The value of my gear was too good to throw away, but it also made me far too cautious. I wanted to die, but had the burden of being gifted this gear, and couldn't just throw it away.

 

Has anyone else fallen into this DayZ trap? Where you end up being too successful? Such that you can't leave the woods without fearing certain death, and 

[bain 23]

Some people say surviving in DayZ is hard. It's not. All you have to do is sit in the forest, as you say you have.

 

I highly suggest enjoying the process of gearing up from a fresh spawn. That's the joy of DayZ.

[Kaboki 62]

Has anyone else fallen into this DayZ trap? Where you end up being too successful? Such that you can't leave the woods without fearing certain death, and 

 

When you have reached a point where it's to easy to survive in the mod, why didnt' you start to play on Namalsk, the xtreme version with earthquakes, bloodsuckers and freezing cold, where you would have to make campfires all the time just to stay alive and also take cover in houses when the earthquake sets in? That would have given you more challenge.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Kaboki

[qww 287]

When you have reached a point where it's to easy to survive in the mod, why didnt' you start to play on Namalsk, the xtreme version with earthquakes, bloodsuckers and freezing cold, where you would have to make campfires all the time just to stay alive and also take cover in houses when the earthquake sets in? That would have given you more challenge.

op didnt say it was easy to survive he said he stayed super recon,  because he didnt wana die, due to the situation he was in, that he described

[pjano 34]

I remember when my zombie kill count was in the thousands, I was very afraid to die and always had squadmates for protection / medic. I ended up setting up hidden tents around the map with the most rare things I could find and only used my favourite gun (m14). The game eventually ended up being about using the car to check all helicopter crash sites and helicopter spawn locations. After that character died (road ambush) my aim for the game was to form the biggest squad we could make. We eventually merged about three different squads together to make a squad of ~15 people, which was one of the most fun things to do. Making a large team / clan with a large base is one of the most fun end games scenarios imo. There's also an adrenaline rush from getting into squad vs squad fights and risking losing all your stuff.

 

(e.g. skip to 2 minutes into this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDBvrx3hsUk&t=2m0s or 2:20 in this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuNxVeP2aZs&t=2m20s - there were a few extremely rare times when I was pilot and we got into chopper vs. chopper fights)

Edited June 10, 2014 by pjano

[DemonGroover 8836]

I have always like the new spawn, gearing up aspect rather than being fully geared and pimped out.

 

I get to a point where i get bored and so go and do something stupid, like run down airfields or go to PvP hotspots.

 

Then i am a new spawn again.

[TyrDaishi 36]

I started the game 3 weeks ago, I have 160 hours now and I'm geared out completely for about 1 week now on regular. (Played hardcore only 2nd week). I fooled the reaper for... I dunno maybe about 15 times now?; getting shot at, evaded zombies, fixed broken legs falling from stairs and being mostly around the most dangerous places berenzino, NEAF and svetlo.

 

Personally I will never stop looking for trouble geared up or not. I fucking love this game to the max. My only disappointment so far is the bugs around sniping. Not seeing where the shot hits, no mildots in the scope, inconsistency in player model placements, desync.

 

What is the point in maxing out my gear if I don't get anything out of it? Don't get me wrong I would absolutely hate if they implement stuff like infrared scopes or DMRs that are to precise on long ranges.

 

The gear should be important to survive but shouldn't give too much of an unfair advantage and destroy the survivalist (and stealth is necessary for that) feeling! But that you care for the stuff that you could lose should be one of the most important aspects of the game! After all it helps you staying alive. And not in a night fever sense.

Edited June 10, 2014 by TyrDaishi

[rn_max 202]

Try the best of both worlds.  Open another Steam account and buy ... or add your old retail versions of ... ArmA 2 and ArmA 2 OA, for a second DayZ character. 

 

Then you can have a record breaking Grizzly Adams AND a Groundhog Day respawn addict!

 

Even better if you're lucky enough to have have a second PC ... you can then run one as a server with a private hive build whilst running a client on the other.  You can do it on one machine, but it takes a fair bit of grunt.

[BC_Hawke 276]

My friends and I fell into this trap early on, but then we went through a series of changes.  The first was finding out we could stash our valuables in a well hidden tent or stash and go Leroy Jenkins anywhere we wanted to.  Then, after dying, come back and get our gear.  Then I got to a point where that wasn't satisfying.  It took the thrill out.  So, I started going to places like Cherno and Elektro with my friends fully geared with DMR, M14, NVGs, Rangefinders, and ghillie.  I'd certainly get mad when I died with all that gear, but then, after relying on it for so long, I realized I had forgotten how fun it was to start with nothing and make my way around Chernarus with minimal gear.

 

The final step was realizing that once you become good at the game, you can re-gear in a fairly short period of time (save the super rare items like NVGs and rangefinders).  Even on a populated vanilla server you can get all the essentials without too much risk, especially if you have friends watching your back.  

[Jock McScottish 216]

Don't play with friends, and survival never gets boring.

[phL (DayZ) 63]

this is the main flaw in the dayz concept imo, you can just live in the woods by yourself forever. no need to go to a city or risk anything after you survived the initial gathering of the basic stuff. survived time counts for nothing.

hopefully with depletable items this will change a bit.

 

the ideal thing for me would be if surviving became harder with time (e.g. due to some medical condition which needs more treatment over time).

 

atm you basically have to do something "stupid" because there is no other challenge. so the game becomes boring pretty fast if you don't want to do that and only pvp remains...

[Mach1av3ll1 1]

Aye well, that playthrough was also an extreme example. I had a small hospital's worth of medical supplies, and pretty much every what I call "infrastructure item" in the game (things like compass, gps, nvg, rangefinder etc.) For me it was when I really reached literally every item I could ever want or need that the game began to be "unplayable"

 

My concern with tents was always if the server wiped haha. So afraid of losing my stuff!

 

Anyway, love the stories guys.

[RDogg 42]

I reached this point various times. Then I decided to change my play style and enjoy myself.

 

Now both me and my friends will gear up with anything we find, be it a couple of pistols or fully geared with rifles and snipers. And then, we'll go be a thorn in any groups side, basically we'll go looking for a fight. It's an incredibly fun way to play. We don't care about bases or hoarding gear, we just prefer urinating in someones cornflakes so to speak!