DayZ Development progress makes no sense

[hypergolem 39]

Meanwhile Zombies still walk and see you through walls and melee fight is almost impossible to deal with...

The core of the game is not at Alpha... it is still at a concept level... Yeah they added more guns, more clothing items, more towns... big deal

Oh by the way... I'm stuck under some freaking rocks ... You have quite some road to do before this game will be playable even at Alpha level.

[Guest]

These threads. I don't even...

Releasing as an early access is clearly a double-edged sword: if the game is interesting enough, you get great financial boost for the development, possibly opening numerous new doors, but as an unwelcome "bonus" you get all these smartass imbeciles who just know better. Why don't you apply for a job at BI, eh? With all these awesome cheerteam leader skills I am sure they will instantly boot Rocket and employ you.

 

I don't really give a flying fuck how long will it take for the final product to be released. I don't even actively play the game. I paid €24 to support a development of a game with an awesome concept and I don't regret it.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Guest

[hypergolem 39]

These threads. I don't even...

Releasing as an early access is clearly a double-edged sword: if the game is interesting enough, you get great financial boost for the development, possibly opening numerous new doors, but as an unwelcome "bonus" you get all these smartass imbeciles who just know better. Why don't you apply for a job at BI, eh? With all these awesome cheerteam leader skills I am sure they will instantly boot Rocket and employ you.

 

I don't really give a flying fuck how long will it take for the final product to be released. I don't even actively play the game. I paid €24 to support a development of a game with an awesome concept and I don't regret it.

But you should start worrying where your money went after a while... or are you used to throw your money away?

Because a part from doing some sightseeing, the game did not add anything really to what it was last year. Zombies especially...

[Doomlord52 62]

No - you're not justified, because you're not understanding that it's not a full release version. The game is still in the testing phase. It is just open testing. 

 

Just because they don't release a basic part of every major part of the game does not mean that they're now somehow in the public regular build version.

 

Granted, you (probably) have the right to complete free speech wherever you may live, so you obviously do have the right to complain about them. However, you are not inclined to be taken seriously, because the game is not at all intended as a regular release and is not being treated as such, whether you want to throw around definitions or not.

Yea, exactly. It's supposed to be in open testing, but it's not. The last update was almost a month ago. The game is still in testing phase, but only internally. As an external tester we/us/the community has nothing to test. We have a build that has mostly gone through QA (which is questionable at best), with no objectives as to what to test. Is there some bug that is exceedingly hard to find that we should be looking for? No - we have no idea because no one told us.

We can't even DO basic testing. We have no low-level information that could be used for performance profiling. Even basic stuff like a frame-rate counter is missing. Can we report on strange areas of that map that have abnormally high DP, poly count, shadow count, etc? No, because we don't have the tools. Could we report on crashes in detail? No, because the current log system is atrocious. I would love to do real testing, as an alpha 'early access' test would imply, but I can't since there are literally no tools to test with. What's worse, is that if I try to use 3rd party tools to get the information needed to properly test the game, I'd likely get banned because it messes with the renderer and would look like a cheat.

 

Like I said before, I know it's not a full release, but the dev team acts like it is. There's no debug tools, there's no render info tools, there's no real logging, there's no frequent builds, and the builds that we do get go through QA. All of these signs point towards a game that the devs think is no longer in testing, but is instead a full release. How am I supposed to test the game in "open testing" without any of the tools required to do so?

 

I will ignore your comments towards QA as I find them a bit offending coming from someone who doesn't really know what's going on.

 

If I remember correctly, the video said that SC2 had over 16 thousand builds. These are internal builds. There are many, many internal builds of DayZ. We do not release every single build we create for internal purposes. SC2 obviously had an alpha. Every game has one at some point. And make no mistake, some (if not most) of the 16000 builds of SC2 were most likely broken, especially during alpha. As is the case with every game. It was just not public.

 

What you're saying about the SC2 development is your opinion and is almost certainly wrong. The first clip was more or less a proof of concept and I would say that not a whole lot of the data that was there was in the development builds once the game reached the alpha phase. The second clip most certainly did not have all of the game's features implemented. They even said that they started working on Protoss in a later clip and Zerg even later on.

 

As for opinions..

 

Before you complain that I marked nigh on everything as opinion, please prepare a list of sources that you used to make these claims ;)

 

Ignore the comments on QA, but that doesn't explain how basic stuff such as water-bottle fainting got through it. If there was no QA, that would make sense. But there is, and they (should) have access to the internal change log. That log probably shows that something related to the water bottle changed, and as such, it should be tested. Obviously, that wasn't the case. QA should test for bugs, and a bug got through. If I've somehow missed what's going on, please tell me. But what I've outlined is basically what every studio does during development. Change happens -> Change gets logged -> logged changes get tested by QA.

 

Yes, I'm aware that SC2 had 16k builds, that is a ton, and I wouldn't really expect any game to get that high. And yes, DayZ has tons of internal builds, again that's expected. However, what's unexpected, and quite frankly strange, is that likely 99% of those builds never see the light of day. Every single project I've ever worked on has had daily, or worst case weekly builds internally. However, in the case of DayZ, the testing team is supposedly the community (according to the steam page, rocket, etc.). Unfortunately, this testing team is almost always limited to monthly builds with zero in the way of testing tools, objectives, etc.

 

The only explanation for not releasing a build is basically that it's completely unplayable. I.e. it doesn't launch, or fails to connect 100% of the time. However, that obviously can't be the case all the time. I can believe it happening every now and then, but not for periods so long that no semi-stable build exists for over a month. If you're really worried about a thousand posts of "this game doesn't even run", add a nightly branch to the game, and change the splash screen text to say so. That way, only the people who are committed to testing will actually run it. They won't complain about random bugs, since they're expected, and if the build actually comes with anything in the way of tools, they might give some very useful information.

 

 

 

As for the SC2 video, I could say that your statement is just as wrong. In the first clip, he simply says that "they started with the SC1 units": he never says that they started with only the SC1 terran units. He then goes on to say they began to add NEW units, which started with the Terran team. Again, no where does he say that ONLY terran existed at this point; only that terran were the first to get new units. In fact, by the 2nd build, you can see that there are newly done terran and zerg units (1:08). Remember, features are not things like units, features are game systems. Even in that first build, they had unit movement, building, resource gathering. It's possible that they also had combat, but it's hard to say, since it wasn't shown. The only mechanical systems that weren't in at this point were the Protoss energy grid and Zerg creep.

When he goes on to say that they started working on Zerg/Protos, this likely only refers to implementing new models/icons/etc. not the team as a whole, as like I stated before, Zerg units are clearly visible much earlier (1:08 in the video). Without the actual builds to play with, or at least a much more detailed explanation as to what was in each one, it is hard to make solid claims on what is in or not. However, you are most certainly wrong about when Zerg/Protoss were implemented in an initial form, just based off the evidence in the same video.

 

As for my opinions, well, ok. I'll get some links.

 

• As such, you'd expect only the smallest of bugs to get through to the final game (keyword: final game)

Yes, final game. However, the way DayZ is being treated, it feels like the dayz team thinks its a final game, or close to it. Why QA things in an Alpha? Why do art passes? Why add non-gameplay critical elements such as 40 different shirts when basic elements are still missing? These aren't alpha-stage things, these are late-beta things.

 

• What doesn't make sense is how bugs like 'passing out after drinking from a water bottle' gets through QA (Opinion).

Not really an opinion. It's a known bug that you pass out (or at least collapse) after drinking from what a water bottle. What's the point of QA'ing a product if stuff like that gets by? You might as well just push without it going through QA. That way players get more frequent builds, and the same bugs will likely be in there. Use the public as QA, since that's what they signed up for.

 

• DayZ Development progress makes no sense (Opinion).

Well no, it doesn't. That's my whole argument. You don't QA an alpha. You don't art pass an alpha. You don't road marks from Q2, then continue to miss them throughout all of Q3. It should go Q2 -> Q3. Instead, it seems like Q2 stuff was missed ('advanced weather', world containers, fast-time servers) and was then pushed aside for Q3 stuff - which was also missed (multi-core, central loot, fixed zombies, advanced animals, barricades, basic vehicles, mod support, player stats, horticulture). Now were in Q4, and I honestly doubt we'll see those three Q2 features in by the end of the year. Everything is behind schedule, and there's been no update to the road map to represent this.

 

If you want things to make sense to me, and probably most of the community, we need transparency. Why did those three Q2 features slip? What's the status on them? We got a vague mention to horticulture 2 weeks ago, and that's about it. Maybe update the roadmap on Steam, or really anywhere, that outlines what we'll have and when we'll have it.

 

• Firstly, this isn't a "this game is buggy" post. This is the exact opposite of this: it's a look at how the devs are handling the game, and how their actions don't fit that of a game that IS in alpha (Opinion)

Ok, the first bit where I can agree it's an opinion, but one with valid backup. Since you didn't 'opinion' flag the definitions of alpha/beta, I'm going to assume that we both agree on what those are. So, if the game is in Alpha as you, the steam page, and basically everyone claims, I have a few questions. Firstly, why are art-passes, such as re-textures, new barrels, new hangers, etc. all happening in Alpha? Alpha is, as per the definition which you seem to have agreed with, mostly used for grey boxing. However, beta is for art passes: that's conflict #1. 

Next we have the whole thing of 'feature freeze' and 'optimization'. Feature freeze occurs first, since if you optimize and then add features, you'll almost always break features. But again, we're getting things like code optimization, animation optimization and stuff, all while in alpha. Conflict #2.

Why do we have so many weapons? Are they all really so unique that each one has a totally different game system that must be tested? Why are new pants/jackets/etc. always being added? Do those also contain new mechanical features that we haven't been able to test? Again, the answer is no. Conflict #3.

I could go on, but there's really no point. Things are happening in Alpha that should happen in beta, and things that should happen in Alpha haven't happened yet. The later is fine, but it's somewhat annoying when it appears as if it's being delayed by the former. Look at the new Unreal Tournament pre-alpha. I can download and play it right now, and almost all of its weapons/hud are right from UT3. The maps are grey boxes. Meanwhile in dayZ we have these nicely polished assets with bug-tested and optimized code. This isn't an alpha.

 

• So, we now understand what alpha and beta phases are - so, which is DayZ? Well, it's an akward limbo between the two(Opinion)

This is basically the same as above. Actions which should only occur in Beta are happening in Alpha. Things that should be happening in Alpha have been pushed out to at least next year.

• An alpha, by nature, SHOULD be full of bugs, since fixing them isn't the top priority. Beta is when you remove bugs and increase usability. "Bow animation polishing" - I don't even need to comment on this(Opinion).

Again, same thing. Anything along the lines of 'polishing' should be in beta, if not late beta - not alpha. And yes, alphas have bugs. That's not really an opinion.

 

• Lastly, I want to bring up something that everyone has been asking for for a long time: vehicles. The approach taken on this also makes very little sense
• This isn't how you would do an alpha feature implementation(Opinion)
•  

Well, it doesn't. Here's a nice post from someone who worked on Crysis 3, and it shows how they developed their game. As you can see, the level starts off as a mostly grey box with extremely low quality art. Then once they were happy with it from a mechanical standpoint, the art was tuned. Here's a thing on the new Unreal Tournament, which also shows dev progress (they post tons of stuff, it's great). In UT, you can hear him talking about how everything (elevator move speed, item placement, etc.) is all super temporary, and that's he's still messing around with it. But regardless of it being incredibly unfinished, I can still go out and download the current project - which is often updated several times a week.

 

But instead, if we look at the latest dayz change log, all we get is that vehicles are in early prototyping. That's good, but what does it mean? Can we see any of the car models placed around? Are any of the parts pickable yet, even if they are trash? No, none of that is available, because as Rocket said, the dayz team is going to 'one-shot' it, and put every single mechanism in at once. The road-map agrees with this, as it says that initial, "simple vehicles" would be in by Q3 and more complex vehicles with upgrades would be out in Q4. Neither of that has happened, and the differentiation of the repair system, part-swapping and the vehicle system is never made. No where does it say "at first vehicles will be super basic, with no repair system", it's just "at first we will have bikes/card". Like I showed above, that's not how anyone does it. You would release basic vehicles as static art first, then as drivable, then maybe as repairable/refuel-able and then finally as upgradable.

• From a logical standpoint, the first feature which is required for testing is vehicles(Opinion).

I don't see how this is an opinion. For any of the vehicle sub-systems to work (repair, refuel, part swap), vehicles need to exist first. I can't test the repair system without a vehicle to repair.

 

• However, this isn't how the devs are handling this(Opinion).

Two quotes above show that this is exactly how it's being handled. Vehicles will be added in basically one big 'patch', which adds all the features. There's no breakdown of sub features which will be released one at a time. It's either nothing or everything (and then more vehicles).

 

• They instead want to one-shot the ENTIRE vehicle system, with repairing, fueling, combining parts, etc. This is NOT how you do an alpha(Opinion).

Again, not an opinion. Quotes show vehicles will be done all at once, and the stuff from Unreal/Crytek shows how that's not how you do an alpha. You would first add grey-box vehicles, then basic-functioning ones, and then ones with proper sub-systems. I can get even more documents showing that you never do development all in one go, and that it's broken down into sub-systems, but I really hope that's not necessary.

• So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us in a situation where there's realistically very little hope of the game being even feature complete any time soon(Opinion).

Road map said Q3 for vehicles. It's Q4 and we don't even have Q2 features.

 

• If we're lucky, we'll hit that point at the end of 2015(Opinion),

Currently, the road map has been wrong by about 100%. Features that were supposed to be in by Q2 are (at best) going to be in by Q4. That means 6 months = 12 months. Most of the Q3 features aren't in yet, and likely won't be in during Q4. Extrapolate that and you end up with end of 2015 for the completion of 'Q4' vehicles. Will that be 100% accurate? I don't know, I don't have a time machine. But unless you feel like making a 100%, unbreakable, set-in-stone promise (with some sort of consequence) that vehicles will be 100% complete BEFORE the end of 2015, it's not really a false claim.

 

• meaning that it'll have taken over two years to get out of alpha. However, this shouldn't be the case(Opinion)

I very much doubt that alpha began the very day that DayZ was put on steam. The first version was released on December 16th, 2013, and that was version 0.28.113734. The current version, 0.48.124737 was released on Aug 8, 2014. That gives us a 235 day time span in which the game incremented by about 0.2 in terms of versioning. Now, that transition isn't linear, obviously, but it's a good scale to use. Remember that a long time ago, rocket said that the alpha would be released in December 2012. For that claim to make any sense, development had to have started by then. So that gives us a year and 3 months to work with. Interestingly enough, if we use that 235 days = 0.2 version increment, and scale it back by the entire 0.28 version history, that gives us about 329 days. Subtract 329 days from the actual December 16 release date, and you get January 21, 2013. Not too far off from the initial estimate release date.

 

So basically, we have two separate confirmations that development must have started in 2012, exactly when is unknown, but 2012 is pretty much assured. That means that by the initial release, dayz had been in Alpha for pretty much a year. By the end of this year, it will have been two years.  And, again, unless you want to make a statement that guarantees the community fully, complete vehicles by the end of 2015, that means we'll still be in Alpha at year 3 (two years of public release).

 

Why should this not be the case? Well, the main factor is that games, even games as big as DayZ, don't take 3 years to get out of Alpha. World of Warcraft, which even at release, was a bigger game than DayZ, took 4-5 years to go from concept to release. Minecraft, which is the same in many respects, started in May 2009, and was released as 'official' in Novemeber 2011 - that's 2.5 years. In addition, pretty much every commercial game takes about 3 years to make.

 

So yea, taking 2+ years to get out of alpha shouldn't happen.

 

• Adding new features, such as vehicles, should not take all that long to implement.

See above. It's almost certain that any other major dev studio would have an internal beta by now, assuming development started in late 2012.

 

• As it stands, the current Steam page is a lie

WARNING: THIS GAME IS EARLY ACCESS ALPHA. Well, it's not. I've covered why.

PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACTIVELY SUPPORT DEVELOPMENT. Well, i'd love to. Too bad I have no tools to do any supporting. Again, covered above.

 

PREPARED TO HANDLE WITH SERIOUS ISSUES. There aren't any, since builds are so sporadic, and since it goes through QA.

 

 

• It states that DayZ is "in alpha" and that you shouldn't buy "unless you want to actively support the development of the game". Neither of these statements are true

It's not in alpha, I've covered that. And I'd love to actively support the development, but I can't because everything is QA'd, everything is locked down, there's no debug tools and logging is non-existant.

 

• As shown above, the devs (somehow) belive that DayZ is in BETA, and they do NOT want people actively supporting the devlopment of the game, short of giving them money(Opinion)

 

Prove me wrong. Art passes and polish are for beta, you yourself agreed to that definition. And like I said, I'd love to support development with more than just money, but since there's literally no tools, and 3rd part tools would get you banned, I literally can't help you. Just give me something half as good as RenderDoc and I can give way more detail as to why the game runs horribly at random times. Give me wire-frame and comment on models. Give me network logs, and network people (not me) can comment on that. Give me access to lower level game settings, and I can tweak them to make the game run better. Literally anything would be better than what we have now.

 

• If the statements were true, we would have far fewer guns/shirts/hats and the initial stages of the vehicles available for play(Opinion).

Yes, because grey-boxing is what happens in Alpha, as does system development, and not art passes.

 

 

 

 

Hope that covers everything. If you really want links... sure.

Edited September 8, 2014 by Doomlord52

[GunnyITA 107]

the hands still does not have hitboxes...

If you do try to shoot to the hands of someone that put his hands up, you won't hurt him.

 

 

My gloves are always pristine and never take damage

 

 

I love it <3 !!!!

 

This to say one of the things are not working :lol:

Edited September 8, 2014 by GunnyITA

[q.S Sachiel 470]

Gee Willickers, Batman

That's a post!

[Guest]

Holy shit, I don't remember if I ever saw a post where I had to press Page Down six times to get to the next.

 

I've also only did it like 3 times in my life, but sorry:

TL;DR

Edited September 8, 2014 by Guest

[ChainReactor 922]

Doomlord, mind to comment to my post #122, since you actually repeat what has been adressed earlier in many of your points?

 

Sorry, just finished work and i am to lazy to re-type everything again to make it match your latest post.

[WhiteZero 72]

Doomlord, mind to comment to my post #122, since you actually repeat what has been adressed earlier in many of your points?

 

Sorry, just finished work and i am to lazy to re-type everything again to make it match your latest post.

At this point I think he's just staunchly entrenched in a pissing contest with Accolyte. Basically Doomlord think that he (we?) should be the equivalent of low-level internal testers; rather than the paying customers who get preview builds and get to leave feedback on that we are. Maybe Doomlord has the qualifications to be an internal tester, but the vast majority of the 2.5M+ players are not and would be crazy to try and sort through the feedback submitted by that many people if we got tons of broken internal builds.

 

I'd think that most of the issues with internal builds don't need millions of people to test and bug test, because those issues will be readily apparent. He keeps harping on the canteen fallowever glitch, would could have been caused by any number of things outside of canteen specific code (such as an associated animation script), I assume there are lot of dependencies for these kinds of things. 

[Karmaterror 982]

The thing, that's been said a lot already, is that you cannot have everyone working on the same thing. The art passes, new cloths ect, they are done by different people that the coders making the vehicle mechanics. If they threw everyone from the art dept into the vehicle coding room it wouldn't get done any faster.

 

Should they all just sit on there hands....."Stop it.....were not in beta yet! Roll another j and fire up the x-box"

 

Or should they make some nice extra stuff for us during alpha aswell, then polish more in beta?

 

The QA thing has me baffled...First its not an alpha because there is QA....Then you moan that a bug got through....While you argue that you cant test properly.

 

Its like you said, normal procedure would be to QA the changed items. What if no changes were made to the waterbottle...but say to the nutrition system, then that creates the bug. The QA guys would probs just console command everything, but as the waterbottle isn't on the list of changes no reason to specifically test that. That's where we come in, whining on the forums while the devs have a little facepalm moment, and voila you are involved in the development.

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

Can I file a lawsuit? It seems frivolous, I know, but you have no idea how much mental anguish this thread has caused me.

 

You see, every time I see it so high on the General, I ask myself; "Why? Why can't they stop? Why are there so many? Why can't I enjoy a good discussion on the game without these useless Alpha complaint threads littering all the forum?".

 

It hurts, it really does. That's why I demand money for reparation.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Cap'n

[RAM-bo4250 213]

Holy shit, I don't remember if I ever saw a post where I had to press Page Down six times to get to the next.

 

I've also only did it like 3 times in my life, but sorry:

TL;DR

Uncle, uncle uncle.

 

Btw, what did he say? Can you repeat it?

Edited September 9, 2014 by RAM-bo4250

[Chaingunfighter 917]

Yea, exactly. It's supposed to be in open testing, but it's not. The last update was almost a month ago. The game is still in testing phase, but only internally. As an external tester we/us/the community has nothing to test. We have a build that has mostly gone through QA (which is questionable at best), with no objectives as to what to test. Is there some bug that is exceedingly hard to find that we should be looking for? No - we have no idea because no one told us.

We can't even DO basic testing. We have no low-level information that could be used for performance profiling. Even basic stuff like a frame-rate counter is missing. Can we report on strange areas of that map that have abnormally high DP, poly count, shadow count, etc? No, because we don't have the tools. Could we report on crashes in detail? No, because the current log system is atrocious. I would love to do real testing, as an alpha 'early access' test would imply, but I can't since there are literally no tools to test with. What's worse, is that if I try to use 3rd party tools to get the information needed to properly test the game, I'd likely get banned because it messes with the renderer and would look like a cheat.

 

Like I said before, I know it's not a full release, but the dev team acts like it is. There's no debug tools, there's no render info tools, there's no real logging, there's no frequent builds, and the builds that we do get go through QA. All of these signs point towards a game that the devs think is no longer in testing, but is instead a full release. How am I supposed to test the game in "open testing" without any of the tools required to do so?

Use the bug tracker. Sure, it's not a lot, but it is certainly a tool, and most of the bugs get fixed within a short time. Persistent bugs are acknowledged by the devs and usually exist because they're more complex than people understand.

 

The developers haven't given us a test version of the game, they've given us a play version of the game while it's still in early development. However, we as users have the option to report new findings and bugs so that they may be fixed. QA isn't able to test every single aspect of the game every single time they push out an update, that's why they have the open alpha (yes, I am going to call it that.)

Not while it's still in development.

 

Sure, it's atypical, but it's still in development and we certainly do have the tools to test & play, however limited they are.

[boneboys 7988]

OP is stuck in a loop, it is apparent that "DayZ Development progress makes no sense", in his opinion and what anybody else thinks is of no consequence or concern, that includes those on the development team.

 

I made the mistake of not closing this Topic when first posted, my apologies.

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

Holy walls of text, Batman.

 

I'll be honest - I seriously do not have time to read through the 9 pages in this thread, let alone more then one or two of the OPs posts.
What I'm seeing here seems to be a whole hell of a lot of text, and opinion - without actually saying much of anything, aside from being upset that vehicles are not ready yet.

I will try and address the bullet point issues I see from the original post.

 

• You start off by citing the Wikipedia definition of an "Alpha milestone". This is a flawed basis of argument for several reasons. The first of which being that anyone that has worked in game development of any scale knows that milestone definitions can be fluid internally, especially on the publisher side. Case in point: Microsoft Game Studios (Now Microsoft Studios) frequently use a model of internal milestones similar to the following structure for 1PP and 3PP projects.
  
  First Playable: The title will launch, can crash - but it is possible to launch the application at a base level and at least reach the main menu
  Alpha: Title launches, crashes are limited to those that do not interrupt the basic gameplay loop. Very basic framework of what the title is is present. (User can enter gameplay, navigate the world at a base level, etc)
  Code Complete: All critical crashes are addressed, the core functionality of the title is present (large chunks of content however can still not be present) any non critical crashes are flagged as high priority fixes for moving to the next milestone
  Content Complete: Levels, artwork, music, the meat on the bones of the title is complete and in the build. No crashes should be present at this time, issues with content are allowed but must be addressed in order to pass this milestone.
  Release Candidate / ZBR: This is considered the final milestone, when high level final tests are run past the build - the title is checked for a complete play experience in all provided areas of gameplay. All design document functionality originally laid forth in the greenlight process must be functioning. Once past this milestone the title will proceed into certification testing for whatever platform it is intended to release on.
  
  Now, these milestones are just a rough example and can and have been applied to projects as short as six months to as long as three years. The specific definition of each of these milestones (and any additional that may be project specific) would be declared in that projects TLA, Contract, or internal project documentation (What works for Minecraft, might not work for Gears of War)
  Every developer and publisher will have their own way of operating, and their own naming scheme for their milestones.
  What is important to understand is the difference between what the consumer market prior to Early Access views as an "Alpha" or "Beta" and how these terms are used internally months, and sometimes years before a consumer would normally have the option to touch a build.
   
• OP seems to object to the definition of what these milestones mean for DayZ, and wants to hold them to how he believes they should be defined. To be fair, I have on numerous occasions spoke on this.
  
  

  For those of you who are not turned away by these warnings, this is what you can expect for the project major milestones moving forward.

   

  - DayZ Early Access Alpha: Feature development, during which the vast majority of major bugs are created/occur.

  - DayZ Early Access Beta: Content development, during which the "meat on the bones" is added to the title, alongside the beginnings of major bug fixing surrounding issues created during the feature development of alpha.

  - DayZ Early Access RC (Final Beta stages): Bug Fix, optimization, and balancing. During which the stone is polished, until the DayZ dev team feels the title is ready to go live.
  
  Wikipedia's wonderful definitions of milestones do not benefit from the unique animal that is actively developing your title in a live environment. We -cannot- stick to just traditional methods of creating the base systems and leaving bugfixing or small balance/polishing to the beta phase. We have an install base of over 2.5 million users, within reason we have to try to keep the stable branch a base level experience for those that have picked up the title.
  It costs us valuable time, but it comes hand in hand with this new unknown thing that is Early Access.
  
  Again, no project is held to the wikipedia definition of their milestones during principle development. Each developer or publisher defines things differently, both in a legal and project management standpoint.

• OP is upset because he believes the active DayZ userbase is not being used as testers. This is partially true. There is a point in which you get diminishing returns from trying to use a public, opt in userbase of a project this visible as your testing group. This follows with the approach we take, which I again - have been very vocal on.
  While we do get some outstanding bug data from the feedback tracker, the core base of testing comes from a combination of internal QA, and smoke/stress testing on experimental. 
  
  What Early Access offers us is something far more valuable than a large testing headcount. It allows us to not listen specifically to what the vocal users -say- and instead focus on what the active playerbase -does-. Early Access users of DayZ actively shape the design of the title as it is developed by playing the development builds. We track metrics, we observe how players interact with systems and adjust based upon this. We also actively parse community feedback for potential improvements to the experience.
  
  So OP is right. You are not testers.
  
  You are designers.
   
• OP believes the Steam store page is essentially a lie. Harsh language, for sure. The first thing I would like to do is quote a stickied post on the official steam forums for DayZ.
  
  

   Title: Should you buy this game?
  

  I see this question asked a lot, so I figured I could answer this from my perspective - and pin it.

   

  In short, during Early Access? No.

   

  *Unless* you are interested in actively being part of the development of the project. Early Access for DayZ is quite literally the creation of the title.

   

  What this means for you is bugs, glitches, and systems that sometimes do not function properly. You might lose a character to a bug, a server might crash and get you killed, or you just might think the way a feature happens to work at the moment is just plain stupid.

   

  On the positive side, when DayZ works - it works like no other experience. Your heart will beat, your palms will sweat, and the time will fly by faster than you realize.

  This is the experience we look forward to providing to everyone, and I invite you to join us, but if the above mentioned warning on bugs, glitches, or otherwise concerns you - by all means, I encourage you to wait.. come back during Early Access Beta, or even the full release.
   

• Next I would like to point out why I feel OP is incorrect when it comes to challenging the statement that DayZ is an open and community driven development.
  
  We have weekly status reports giving you transparency into the development of the project that you just will -NOT- see outside of Early Access/Kickstarter like public development models. (Eg: Standup notes, communication from the leads directly)
  
  We have weekly dev streams on twitch (twitch.tv/dayz) - Every Friday (New schedule starts this weekend)
  
  We engage on our forums, on the steam forums, on reddit, and on our personal twitters.
  (I personally find myself answering random tweets regarding DayZ at all hours of the day and night)
  
  The people that work on this project work on it for love. This leads a lot of us to spend way too much of our personal off time stressing about how you, the consumer view the current development build. I can admit to coming into the office on many a late nights and weekends.​