So, after a looooong break...

[synystr 118]

I went back to playing the mod and WOW... you can't beat the feeling. Is it wrong to get nostalgia from something that is only like 2 years old?

 

I don't get the same enjoyment from the Standalone in its current state. It doesn't have the same atmosphere and it doesn't completely fill me with stress and anxiety. 

 

I mean the standalone is fun, but the mod still holds it own against it. By a long shot... What is it missing?

[Dagwood 680]

Depends. Which mod are you playing? Because the stress filled experience you mentioned could be from a mod like epoch or one like 2017; two very different feels. But I agree, the standalone is not the same. Part of the difference is probably tolerance. Mod was fresh. Standalone is sort of a remake and less "new"

Edited September 2, 2014 by Dagwood

[BC_Hawke 276]

The SA is missing these things:

 

• High saturation of zombies at every location you visit (one of the KEY things that makes the mod tense): I don't know if they'll ever be able to reproduce this with server spawned zombies.  They'll never be able to optimize the game enough to spawn the amount of zombies server wide that would replicate the saturation of client spawned zombies you had to deal with in the mod
• Player movement across the map: NWAF is barren, we would spend HOURS moving around NWAF, Vybor, Veresnik, Stary, Zelenegorsk, Cherno, and Elektro and not see anybody.  It seems the biggest factor contributing to this is a lack of loot spawn balancing and lack of really high end military loot like GPS, rangefinders, NVGs, Sniper rifles, LMGs, etc that would spawn at military bases.
• Exciting heli crash sites: not only do they look terrible, but the loot isn't that great, and there are no zombies to serve as a threat when looting them.  I know SA is all about already populating the world with server controlled zombies and not having them spawn via client proximity, but crash sites are boring to loot without dealing with military zombies in addition to the risk of getting sniped
• Vehicles: one great source of tension is trying to gather the parts to repair a vehicle or chopper before someone else gets their grubby hands on it.  Race against the clock, then you run the risk of getting sniped while repairing it.  Also, you don't have that adrenaline rush that you have in the mod when you hear a vehicle or chopper approaching.
• Performance: all the desync and random glitch sounds just takes away from the experience IMO
• A good player base: for some reason SA has attracted a community of people that are just derpy in general.  Seems 90% of interactions in-game are people dancing, wiggling, playing music over direct, talking like Morgan Freeman and Hank Hill, and just being idiots.  Players in the mod take it a bit more seriously.  Not to the point of it being an RP game, but just to where you can interact with people and chat, help each other out, share info on other players/squads in the area, or betray and kill each other.  I love so much of the interaction in the mod.  When I meet people in SA I feel like I stumbled into a middle school party.

 

Of course, there's the obligatory DayZ Reddit response "IT'S AN ALPHA!!!!  IT'S AN ALPHA!!! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND GAME DEVELOPMENT!!!".  Yes, some of the things I listed will eventually change as they complete the game, but I honestly don't see them being able to fix all of those issues based on their current approach to the game and the speed of development.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Bullet_Catcher

[Jock McScottish 216]

As the bullet man says, its that mob of zeds waiting on you at every turn, knowing that every wrong move attracts the zeds and gives your position away, every stray gunshot making things worse... and that's just for starters.