DayZ Development progress makes no sense

[trtk 81]

rambo i think you should probably go lie down and seriously consider the fact that you have been fanatically posting non-stop for eight hours in every thread that complains about the game

[leviski 2152]

After reading that wall of text, I can tell you have not followed development closely from the getgo

 

Lots of things were promised to be in at the Get go and no one seems to understand what that means.

 

Server based loot spawning was promised from the start, a system where one big computer controls all of the loot spawning across all servers, and states how much of what items may spawn.

 

 

along with that many others things you are talking about are promised to be in the game, and since they are not. this remains an alpha.

 

this game may never get out of alpha until one simple problem is fixed, and thats KOS, the lack of player interaction. 

 

 

and sadly the only way the KOS problem can be fixed is with Game admins, that can govern and watch the server. This is also flawed however because admins like to abuse the game.

 

Biggest problem that will always prevent this game from alpha is death-matching. Yes its a part of the game, but its too much of the game.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

Yes, the hidden cameras are to your left. No, It's pretty dead, though. I mean, bug #363, from last year, which is incredibly basic (pressing hotkeys doesn't always work) is STILL listed as new. The devs haven't even acknowledged it: If it's not a bug, then close it, if it is assign it. It's not rocket science, it's using the tools you want the community to use. Do I expect every single report to be acknowledged? No. But the #3 most voted for bug report from last year? Yea, probably.

 

There aren't even the full patch notes under the change log section. It shows two 0.27 builds and one 0.44 build.

 

Yea, I know. This is my point, the name alpha contradicts the actions of the devs. This is literally my ENTIRE point. We don't get to Alpha test it because we don't have nightly/weekly builds and it goes through QA anyway - hence, it can't be a public alpha. However, its full of bugs, and it seems like the DayZ community LOVES to dismiss these bugs by saying "ITS ALPHA". These two contradict eachother. If we had an actual alpha to play with, then saying "it's alpha" would actually make sense. However, we don't, so it's not.

Being completely dismissive of bugs and saying that there's nothing wrong is something I don't like about part of the community.

However, we aren't justified complaining about bugs, because the game is in early development, even if they take months to fix.

 

It seems like your problem is that people are using that one word to justify something that is justified at this stage, because it just happens to not meet the exact definition.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

*Dupe*

Edited September 8, 2014 by Chaingunfighter

[Demoth 366]

Right because constructive criticism is never valid. I guess you should have "read the fucking disclaimer" and waited for the game to be finished when lobbying about the direction the devs were taking with weapons.

 

If you would have taken the three minutes to read the OP, would have taken note that he does have some valid points rather than it being another generic rant thread, compared to the development of other games like Starcraft 2, it is very haphazard.

 

 

 

 

I complain a lot and have a professional Job, the military. Lets see how my conduct would read if I acted like a dev-

 

Staff Sergeant, did you complete the weapons parts inventory?

 

The inventory is in alpha, I know you were expecting by XXX time, but I I'm going to need about a year and a half to finish it, I got the letterhead and about 1/15th of it done, can you approve my leave?

 

Staff Sergeant, teach these three personnel how to use an M2 machinegun in three days

 

After three days, I can safely say these three individuals can drive and operate an MRAP. I know you were looking forward to seeing them be proficient on an M2 and hopefully in about four months we can get an M2 team ready for mobility. 

 

Staff Sergeant, when can the Armory be ready for it's annual inspection?

 

Its been great working with you sir, after a satisfying career of six years, I am ready to receive my full pension. Good luck to you.

 

 

1. Comparing building a game like SC2 to something as huge in scope as DayZ is... bad. I mean, Why can't an entire functional city be built in the same time as a cabin in the woods? Lazy woodland people.

 

2. Your analogy about game development to doing inventory in an armory is... well, you know what, nevermind. I don't even know where to being, or whether you would understand, how this makes no sense.

[dgeesio 1034]

After reading that wall of text, I can tell you have not followed development closely from the getgo

 

Lots of things were promised to be in at the Get go and no one seems to understand what that means.

 

Server based loot spawning was promised from the start, a system where one big computer controls all of the loot spawning across all servers, and states how much of what items may spawn.

 

 

along with that many others things you are talking about are promised to be in the game, and since they are not. this remains an alpha.

 

this game may never get out of alpha until one simple problem is fixed, and thats KOS, the lack of player interaction. 

 

 

and sadly the only way the KOS problem can be fixed is with Game admins, that can govern and watch the server. This is also flawed however because admins like to abuse the game.

 

Biggest problem that will always prevent this game from alpha is death-matching. Yes its a part of the game, but its too much of the game.

 

KOS isnt a dayz problem. must we go down this route ?

 

people are nasty, they love blood more than they love baskets of flowers. you wont solve KOS cause people love to do it. thats why cod is most popular game every year.

 

trying to mask over this by adding crafting is just a waste of time.

 

 

why is it a waste of time ? the quickest answer is the loot itself  !

 

so basically KOS is part of the game a a very large part dont try and dilute it with flower arranging all that does is make dayz look stupid.

 

 

this game has had decent sales 2/3 million units 90 percent of those will be those very killing machines as they want quick decent fun. so why would you cater for the ten percent ? they would be the first ones to die ! its a zombie survival game . survival of the fittest .

 

the funny thing is that what will probably happen is the dev team will add even more crap/crafting in to dayz while in alpha and you know when this game gets modded which will probably happen in beta the very first thing all the biggest popular servers will do is add all the guns up all the death and theyll be full 24/7 !

 

all the no pvp no griefing this and that lets hold hand mentaily will have tumble weed blowing across their empty servers.

 

actually pains me too keep saying that.

 

Focus on survival , on brutality , reality !

 

people want blood ,they want action, they want zombies !

 

that is all.

[RAM-bo4250 213]

rambo i think you should probably go lie down and seriously consider the fact that you have been fanatically posting non-stop for eight hours in every thread that complains about the game

It wasn't exactly about defending the game as much as raging against this:       Especially you and dgeesio and your like.

 

 

 

So yeah, I'm tired, and time to move on. This just isn't entertaining any longer. A little tidbit before I go: In the future when you purchase something be aware of what it is you're purchasing.  Seeya monkies. Moves on to the lions, my favorite.

[Accolyte 1727]

 

Right because constructive criticism is never valid. I guess you should have "read the fucking disclaimer" and waited for the game to be finished when lobbying about the direction the devs were taking with weapons.

 

If you would have taken the three minutes to read the OP, would have taken note that he does have some valid points rather than it being another generic rant thread, compared to the development of other games like Starcraft 2, it is very haphazard.

 

How so? The Starcraft video perfectly illustrates how game development works for the most part.

 

You can clearly see that they were implementing things that didn't even make it into the release. They were completely rewamping some features, eg. you can see the old Creep Colonies were originally in the game still as means of spreading creep, yet they changed that to creep tumors instead for the actual game. I dare say that Starcraft 2's development was much more haphazard than DayZ and that's just going off of that one video. Obviously you just didn't get to see the development like you can with DayZ.

 

Also note that in the video you can see that bugfixing and optimization is the very last thing they did which is, if I recall correctly, what OP was also calling for in his initial post.

 

OP's original post was very far from constructive criticism. It was full of opinions that he presented as facts and complete misinformation.

 

 

You do a skillful job of selecting only the bad arguments and sidestepping the good ones, as is usual protocol for Bohemia damage control.

 

Do I? Please point these valid arguments out for me and I will address them as well. It's hard to not "sidestep" the good arguments when their arguments are mostly "bad".

[Inception. 9443]

Non-constructive and inutile comments are a waste of time. Take some time to think before posting.

[WhiteZero 72]

The community essentially has two choices, it's either a true alpha (which it's not, since it's not nightly/weekly, and it's QA'd) or it's a fully-fledged product which goes through QA - in which case the whole "IT'S ALPHA" thing doesn't hold any water. It would also mean that literally everyone (devs included) need to stop calling the thing alpha. It's not.

 

Except it's not such a binary choice. Just because Alpha patches go through a modicum of QA testing to make sure everyone doesn't CTD at boot doesn't mean the "It's Alpha" doesn't hold any water. "True Alpha" is a completely contrived definition, since the developers choose how to define their development milestones, and clearly players such as yourself deem to have their own definition as well. Define it however you like for your own amusement, but we all click "I Agree" to that disclaimer when we boot up the game. Thats not to say the developers have no accountability for the state of the game, but I'd say we're reasonably within the purview of that disclaimer.

 

We are indeed more "alpha players" than "alpha testers," because "testers" are all expected to provide proper feedback on a regular basis, while there is not requirement or even serious expectation that the majority of DayZ Early Access players will give proper feedback. You could even go as far as to only define a proper "tester" as someone who is on the BI Staff and whose job is indeed "Tester." That doesn't preclude the "Alpha" tag from having its full weight.

 

EDIT: Case in point, even Exp patches aren't released if there is a major client crash present. QA is necessary to make sure our test builds are actually testable.

Edited September 8, 2014 by WhiteZero

[stielhandgranate 480]

1. Comparing building a game like SC2 to something as huge in scope as DayZ is... bad. I mean, Why can't an entire functional city be built in the same time as a cabin in the woods? Lazy woodland people.

 

2. Your analogy about game development to doing inventory in an armory is... well, you know what, nevermind. I don't even know where to being, or whether you would understand, how this makes no sense.

 

Oh wow a mild attempt at an insult from the "Never question the development process of this game under any circumstance" fanboy crowd. Maybe if you read the post I quoted the analogy would be clear. Of course maintaining control of an Armory is different from developing a game. However the user I quoted made a comment claiming that anyone providing anything but a positive analysis of the development of the game could not hold down a profession. A silly declaration.

 

On your first point, what you are implying is ridiculous and ignorant. BI isn't some volunteer group of amateur coders trying to design a game from one of their buddies garage. This game has already cleared multimillion dollar sales,has received nothing but good word of mouth from video game review websites,magazines and blogs, and has received mainstream media attention. BI may not be at the level of power as Blizzard Activison, but they are no small family owned business trying to compete with walmart, and have cornered a market where others have failed. Further more the game is part of the zombie craze, which is something easily marketable and profitable.

[stielhandgranate 480]

 

 

 

How so? The Starcraft video perfectly illustrates how game development works for the most part.

 

You can clearly see that they were implementing things that didn't even make it into the release. They were completely rewamping some features, eg. you can see the old Creep Colonies were originally in the game still as means of spreading creep, yet they changed that to creep tumors instead for the actual game. I dare say that Starcraft 2's development was much more haphazard than DayZ and that's just going off of that one video. Obviously you just didn't get to see the development like you can with DayZ.

 

Also note that in the video you can see that bugfixing and optimization is the very last thing they did which is, if I recall correctly, what OP was also calling for in his initial post.

 

OP's original post was very far from constructive criticism. It was full of opinions that he presented as facts and complete misinformation.

 

 

Wow, dialog with a developer, I am honored. What Blizzard did while developing starcraft 2 was import resources from it's predecessor to use as placeholders or build upon them. But why was this not capitalized as BI did grant access to use resources form ArmA 2 and ArmA 3? Surely there were weapons,clothes,camo patterens,food and medical equipment skins that would have sped up item implantation, or at least use the old AI for zombies from the mod as the current AI seems to have a lot if issues such as hit detection?

 

Another thing that boggles me is why hasn't BI asked to use intellectual property form weapons companies and military suppliers except for CMMG? Surely companies like Trijicon,Crye precision,Colt Defense,Fabrique Nationale, Berreta and Česká zbrojovka would allow free use of their IP as they have profited from free product placement in video games in the past. Such companies had no problem with their IP in use with ArmA 2. It would add another level of immersion.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

Dale does have a point that SC2 as an example (and all sequel/franchise based games) have both a solid brand to launch from, as well as previous resources such as textures/balance data/models/story/gameplay mechanics/general code... the list goes on.

While DayZ incorporates elements of FPS, open world mil-sim from ARMA games and other elements of MMO etc, the scope and functions as a whole are from what I can tell, mostly new.  Other games & developers can sidestep this issue, as imagining, creating and executing the way things work are mostly if not wholly pre-existing.

 

Take some imaginative sandbox games such as minecraft and terraria as another example.  They all incorporate elements of this or that, and at the end of the day you're just laying down textures and objects but the idea and vision and execution are so far beyond other games before them, that the challenge is quite immense.  I'm not saying DayZ is some groundbreaking messiah, though i do love it, but lets have some consideration for both the professional and artistic aspects involved in the game's creation :).

 

Kids pick up trigonometry with general ease now-days. 

Could you imagine being pythagoras back in the day and saying FUCK ME these three sided shapes have a predictable nature that I can exploit, they even apply to circles.  Aren't they all pretty and curved? Discovering Fire? Inventing the sandwich?  It's all well and good to look back on the trail that others have blazed and say 'that's easy watch me do it' but to be out there threshing takes a degree of effort that is not always acknowledged.

 

Also, I'm guilty of providing analogy here or in other similar threads too, but we've really got to move away from the software-physical product analogies as the two are so far removed... software and coding is like pulling planets from the cosmos (ANALOGIES!!) it's so abstract and imaginative/creative that the two do not really even compare.

 

As an aside: again it changes from territory to territory, but incorporating real-world products (such as pepsi/coke/Heinz and brand-name weapons) in a free modification of another product is a far cry from including those copyrighted and trademarked items in a dedicated, stand-alone product that you sell for money.  If you make no monetary return most people overlook it.  The second you start making money, those companies start to consider whether the attraction of your product is based upon the brand-power that their product(s) have built, and they start demanding compensation/just payment for said use of their names/images/performances.

This is why games like GTA made by big big companies do not list badges or model names of the vehicles they include (but still mock them in their hillarious sarcastic ways).

Edited September 8, 2014 by q.S Sachiel

[Accolyte 1727]

Wow, dialog with a developer, I am honored. What Blizzard did while developing starcraft 2 was import resources from it's predecessor to use as placeholders or build upon them. But why was this not capitalized as BI did grant access to use resources form ArmA 2 and ArmA 3? Surely there were weapons,clothes,camo patterens,food and medical equipment skins that would have sped up item implantation, or at least use the old AI for zombies from the mod as the current AI seems to have a lot if issues such as hit detection?

 

Another thing that boggles me is why hasn't BI asked to use intellectual property form weapons companies and military suppliers except for CMMG? Surely companies like Trijicon,Crye precision,Colt Defense,Fabrique Nationale, Berreta and Česká zbrojovka would allow free use of their IP as they have profited from free product placement in video games in the past. Such companies had no problem with their IP in use with ArmA 2. It would add another level of immersion.

 

First of all, BI did not grant anything really. BI itself is working on DayZ.

 

There were definitely some things that were carried over from Armas into DayZ. Houses (Arma2) volumetric clouds (Arma3) are the first thing that come to my mind. It was decided however that a lot of the stuff was to be built from ground up to better fit DayZ. Even houses were extensively changed (hint, interiors). The reason that a not a lot of stuff was carried over from the mod is that creating a mod and a standalone game are two very different things. Some mechanics will work better than in the mod, but it will take more QA, more fine tuning and more time.

 

As far as trademarks are concerned, I don't really know personally. They might be added later once we have all the guns we want in the game. Key word "might", don't quote me on this.

[stielhandgranate 480]

First of all, BI did not grant anything really. BI itself is working on DayZ.

 

There were definitely some things that were carried over from Armas into DayZ. Houses (Arma2) volumetric clouds (Arma3) are the first thing that come to my mind. It was decided however that a lot of the stuff was to be built from ground up to better fit DayZ. Even houses were extensively changed (hint, interiors). The reason that a not a lot of stuff was carried over from the mod is that creating a mod and a standalone game are two very different things. Some mechanics will work better than in the mod, but it will take more QA, more fine tuning and more time.

 

As far as trademarks are concerned, I don't really know personally. They might be added later once we have all the guns we want in the game. Key word "might", don't quote me on this.

 

Fair enough but what about the ArmA 2 ballistics mechanics? For example the M4A1 has a reach of about 75 meters in DayZ when it's real life counter part has an effective range for a point target at 550 meters and this range could be achieved in ArmA 2. Arguably ArmA 2 had the most true to life representations of weapon ranges in a video game sans the ACE mod. Why was it not carried over as the only thing missing from range mechanics was the effects weather have on projectiles in flight? It seems the development team started from scratch and now have to work up to a product that will be comparable to ArmA 2, only to then catch up and build on that rather to start from that stage.

[Jex 1104]

Good post OP.

 

My only complaint about the game is BIS didn't jump on the Mod when they should have done and were slow to pick it up. Saying they're changing the engine halfway through development wasn't and was good to hear. It really depends on who you are. Me, I can wait a year or 2 or whatever but I think had Bis decided on a new engine to begin with, who knows where we would be now.

 

So I have a question. If the game comes out and is the best zombie game ever - does it matter if it comes out in a week or 2 years time?

[FragBeer 7]

After reading that wall of text, I can tell you have not followed development closely from the getgo

 

Lots of things were promised to be in at the Get go and no one seems to understand what that means.

 

Server based loot spawning was promised from the start, a system where one big computer controls all of the loot spawning across all servers, and states how much of what items may spawn.

 

 

along with that many others things you are talking about are promised to be in the game, and since they are not. this remains an alpha.

 

this game may never get out of alpha until one simple problem is fixed, and thats KOS, the lack of player interaction. 

 

 

and sadly the only way the KOS problem can be fixed is with Game admins, that can govern and watch the server. This is also flawed however because admins like to abuse the game.

 

Biggest problem that will always prevent this game from alpha is death-matching. Yes its a part of the game, but its too much of the game.

I dont think you can force people to stop KOS. The best way (in my opp.) is to lead them into not doing it. The whole idea of sandbox games is options. Thats why they are so popular. You dont have to do anything. But at this point there is not much to do in this open world of Chernarus, so people KOS because of the lack of other options. Earlier in the alpha people loved going around force-feeding other players but that pretty much stopped after a while. Give people more options and they will choose different..

Edited September 8, 2014 by FragBeer

[Doomlord52 62]

This thread is still going? Impressive.

 

Being completely dismissive of bugs and saying that there's nothing wrong is something I don't like about part of the community.

However, we aren't justified complaining about bugs, because the game is in early development, even if they take months to fix.

 

It seems like your problem is that people are using that one word to justify something that is justified at this stage, because it just happens to not meet the exact definition.

No, we are completely justified in complaining about bugs. QA exists purely to stop bugs from getting into the public version of the game. In any AAA, or really any mid-sized studio, they'll test out the game on a bunch of hardware/software setups, with a bunch of different in-game settings. As such, you'd expect only the smallest of bugs to get through to the final game. Again, calling back to the Company of Heroes 2 bugs I found with a friend, those bugs were so insanely obscure and hard to reproduce (yet still game-breaking if done), that it took nearly an hour specifically trying to replicate it once. That kind of bug I can accept getting past QA, since it requires testing way outside of what anyone would do in-game (a normal game lasts ~20 min).

 

What doesn't make sense is how bugs like 'passing out after drinking from a water bottle' gets through QA. This is something that everyone does in-game, and requires zero setup: just get a water bottle, and drink it. Or, if you paint the fairly new AK-folding buttstock, it causes it to disappear. This list goes on. These are all very easy to reproduce, and all of them should have been caught by QA. However, they weren't. By definition, QA is supposed to stop bugs from getting out, and in this case they didn't - which means they failed.

If, however, that QA team didn't exist, it would mean two things. 1, more frequent patches as they wouldn't need to go through QA, and 2, a legitimate reason to not complain about bugs. Just take Firefox for example: there's the regular build and a nightly build (as well as few others). If I find a bug in the regular edition, it's incredibly annoying and Mozilla failed to deliver a decent product. If I find a bug in Nightly, well, that's the point of Nightly. If DayZ wants to put out a nightly build beside the current build (some kind of extra-experamental build) then yea, I'll hop on that asap and never complain about bugs again (or, at lest until mid/late beta).

 

 

How so? The Starcraft video perfectly illustrates how game development works for the most part.

 

You can clearly see that they were implementing things that didn't even make it into the release. They were completely rewamping some features, eg. you can see the old Creep Colonies were originally in the game still as means of spreading creep, yet they changed that to creep tumors instead for the actual game. I dare say that Starcraft 2's development was much more haphazard than DayZ and that's just going off of that one video. Obviously you just didn't get to see the development like you can with DayZ.

 

Also note that in the video you can see that bugfixing and optimization is the very last thing they did which is, if I recall correctly, what OP was also calling for in his initial post.

 

OP's original post was very far from constructive criticism. It was full of opinions that he presented as facts and complete misinformation.

 

I'd have to disagree there. The StarCraft video showed a much better development process. The difference here is that StarCraft 2 never had a paid/open Alpha. While the Alpha existed, it was only for a very select few (high-level professionals, etc.). DayZ on the other hand has a paid/open Alpha which is pretty much all anyone has to go on, and is, as such, the only thing we can compare to. Firstly, look at the number of builds. In one year, SC2 had about 1300 different builds available - at a constant rate, that's about 975 in 9 months. DayZ has had 17. And, to avoid the whole "but DayZ is actually open", just look at Planetary Annihilation, which had 20 different builds in the span of 6 weeks during its initial alpha.

Then we had the way they implemented things. The first thing Blizzard did was add the SC1 stuff as a starting point. DayZ kind of did this, but ignored things like ARMA2/3s gigantic weapon list, vehicles, and so on. Then they went on to add other major features, like cliffs and lighting (since it was a new engine). Right now, we haven't even reached a build comparable to the 2nd clip in that SC2 video. DayZ SA still doesn't equal the mod in terms of features, while the SC2 build had all the features of SC1 implemented (although much more rough).

 

And then yes, the last thing they did was tons of optimizing at the end. As far as I'm aware, this is how every studio does things.

As for the call-back to my OP, I would like to hear what misinformation I posted, or what opinions I presented as facts. Everything I posted was based upon the current public version of DayZ, as well as my experience with game development.

[WhiteZero 72]

snip

I think you're still way over estimating what DayZ internal QA does. Obviously they aren't like QA for a retail game where they make sure every aspect of the game is functioning properly. E.G. with the canteen fallover bug, clearly QA isn't there to test every little specific thing like Drink All specifically from the Canteen. They're there to ensure that builds are actually long-term playable/testable for us.

[bonesnap 75]

Half the reason the devs were working on things like loot balancing during Alpha is so the game can be somewhat playable still. So people will/may WANT to play the game, and help them alpha test.

 

If you have a problem with it, you shouldn't have bought into an alpha/beta game. I'd say come back in a year when the game is more refined. We get several of these threads every week. We already understand not everyone agrees with the developers choices. It is something you must put up with.

 

TL;DR, alpher, deal with it? B)

[blowurselfup 54]

ALL this can be squashed by saying a few simple things -

 

If you like the game, but think it could be better (most of us) - Be a tester and the game will get better

 

If you do not like the game as it is now - Do not play the game now! Let the Devs  and the testers do their thing and check back every once in awhile

 

If you do not like the game, but still want to play anyways- Stop whining! Don't be so negative. Be a tester and the game will get better

[Chaingunfighter 917]

This thread is still going? Impressive.

 

No, we are completely justified in complaining about bugs. QA exists purely to stop bugs from getting into the public version of the game. In any AAA, or really any mid-sized studio, they'll test out the game on a bunch of hardware/software setups, with a bunch of different in-game settings. As such, you'd expect only the smallest of bugs to get through to the final game. Again, calling back to the Company of Heroes 2 bugs I found with a friend, those bugs were so insanely obscure and hard to reproduce (yet still game-breaking if done), that it took nearly an hour specifically trying to replicate it once. That kind of bug I can accept getting past QA, since it requires testing way outside of what anyone would do in-game (a normal game lasts ~20 min).

 

What doesn't make sense is how bugs like 'passing out after drinking from a water bottle' gets through QA. This is something that everyone does in-game, and requires zero setup: just get a water bottle, and drink it. Or, if you paint the fairly new AK-folding buttstock, it causes it to disappear. This list goes on. These are all very easy to reproduce, and all of them should have been caught by QA. However, they weren't. By definition, QA is supposed to stop bugs from getting out, and in this case they didn't - which means they failed.

If, however, that QA team didn't exist, it would mean two things. 1, more frequent patches as they wouldn't need to go through QA, and 2, a legitimate reason to not complain about bugs. Just take Firefox for example: there's the regular build and a nightly build (as well as few others). If I find a bug in the regular edition, it's incredibly annoying and Mozilla failed to deliver a decent product. If I find a bug in Nightly, well, that's the point of Nightly. If DayZ wants to put out a nightly build beside the current build (some kind of extra-experamental build) then yea, I'll hop on that asap and never complain about bugs again (or, at lest until mid/late beta).

 

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.

[Accolyte 1727]

-snip-

 

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..

 

 

This thread is still going? Impressive.

 

No, we are completely justified in complaining about bugs. QA exists purely to stop bugs from getting into the public version of the game. In any AAA, or really any mid-sized studio, they'll test out the game on a bunch of hardware/software setups, with a bunch of different in-game settings. As such, you'd expect only the smallest of bugs to get through to the final game (keyword: final game). Again, calling back to the Company of Heroes 2 bugs I found with a friend, those bugs were so insanely obscure and hard to reproduce (yet still game-breaking if done), that it took nearly an hour specifically trying to replicate it once. That kind of bug I can accept getting past QA, since it requires testing way outside of what anyone would do in-game (a normal game lasts ~20 min).

 

What doesn't make sense is how bugs like 'passing out after drinking from a water bottle' gets through QA (Opinion). This is something that everyone does in-game, and requires zero setup: just get a water bottle, and drink it. Or, if you paint the fairly new AK-folding buttstock, it causes it to disappear. This list goes on. These are all very easy to reproduce, and all of them should have been caught by QA (Opinion). However, they weren't. By definition, QA is supposed to stop bugs from getting out, and in this case they didn't - which means they failed(Opinion).

If, however, that QA team didn't exist, it would mean two things. 1, more frequent patches as they wouldn't need to go through QA (Opinion), and 2, a legitimate reason to not complain about bugs. Just take Firefox for example: there's the regular build and a nightly build (as well as few others). If I find a bug in the regular edition, it's incredibly annoying and Mozilla failed to deliver a decent product. If I find a bug in Nightly, well, that's the point of Nightly. If DayZ wants to put out a nightly build beside the current build (some kind of extra-experamental build) then yea, I'll hop on that asap and never complain about bugs again (or, at lest until mid/late beta).

 

 

I'd have to disagree there. The StarCraft video showed a much better development process(Opinion). The difference here is that StarCraft 2 never had a paid/open Alpha. While the Alpha existed, it was only for a very select few (high-level professionals, etc.). DayZ on the other hand has a paid/open Alpha which is pretty much all anyone has to go on, and is, as such, the only thing we can compare to. Firstly, look at the number of builds. In one year, SC2 had about 1300 different (internal) builds available - at a constant rate, that's about 975 in 9 months. DayZ has had 17 (public builds). And, to avoid the whole "but DayZ is actually open", just look at Planetary Annihilation, which had 20 different builds in the span of 6 weeks during its initial alpha.

Then we had the way they implemented things. The first thing Blizzard did was add the SC1 stuff as a starting point. DayZ kind of did this, but ignored things like ARMA2/3s gigantic weapon list, vehicles, and so on. Then they went on to add other major features, like cliffs and lighting (since it was a new engine). Right now, we haven't even reached a build comparable to the 2nd clip in that SC2 video(Opinion). DayZ SA still doesn't equal the mod in terms of features, while the SC2 build had all the features of SC1 implemented (although much more rough).

 

 

Edit: As some of you pointed out, I accidentally said vehicle prototyping should be done in beta. I meant to say Alpha. This was my mistake, and it has been corrected. Sorry for the confusion this caused.

 

DayZ Development progress makes no sense (Opinion)

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). It's also a look at how the game has been progressing, and how they will likely continue in the future.

 

Firstly, let's quickly look at what an "alpha" is. From the so-often cited wiki page, "The alpha phase of the release life cycle is the first phase to begin software testing". What this means, is that your product is at the point where it's playable (ignoring crashes, bugs, etc.), and you want to start getting feedback on mechanics: "Does movement feel good", "does combat feel right", etc. It's also the point at which you expand on mechanics to some degree. If your game starts Alpha with only a semi-auto rifle, you might want to add in variations like an automatic rifle or a pistol. Similarily, you might want to add in new mechanics, like vehicles, or base building - basically things which aren't just expansions of already existing gameplay mechanics - things which need to be made for the ground-up.

Secondly, let's also quickly look at what a "beta" is. Again, from the same wiki page: "Beta is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete". Basically, once your game works from a feature standpoint (i.e. I have my SMG, rifle and pistol mechanics and my movement mechanics, etc.), you polish them. This ranges from improving art, to refining balance, and increasing variation (i.e. low RoF, high damage SMG, high RoF, low damage SMG) and of course polishing them from a technical standpoint (performance, code cleanliness, etc.).

So, we now understand what alpha and beta phases are - so, which is DayZ? Well, it's an akward limbo between the two(Opinion), where it seems like one group belives it's a beta, and the other belives it's an Alpha. Why? Well, look at the patch notes as well as the existing stuff that has been added since the December release. Let's start with today's status report, which basically demonstrates my main argument: that the dev team has no idea if this is alpha or beta.

The first topic is loot distribution and adding "more granular control over the quantity of each type of item that spawns". This isn't a feature, this is feature refinement - balance adjustment. Fine tuning the amount and types of loot that drop isn't a new feature, it's a variation of an existing feature, and a minor one at that. This is something that should be happening in beta - not alpha. Further down we have "The Rossi R92 is finished being animated. We're just waiting for sounds and then it'll be good to go.  The animators also began work on the M133 earlier this week so it won't be too far behind the repeater.". Again, why? This is a new weapon - a variation on a system which already works. DayZ has weapons, the weapons work as weapons. Hence, that feature is from an alpha standpoint, complete. While an argument could be made for the weapon feature to be truely complete it needs to have a larger variation of weapons, this simply isn't supported by the dev actions. These weapons are being rigged, textured, and in the case of the AK101, re-textured. None of this has any place in an alpha - this is all stuff which should be happening in early beta. If it were truely an Alpha, weapons would only exist for the sake of feature testing - not art. As a result, they would likely be borowed from other BI Games (i.e. ARMA2&3).

Scrolling down further on the status report, we are just left with item after item of what would be beta-status changes: New 55-gallon drum art, New zombie skins, AK101 retexture. Of all these art changes, the only ones which make any sense are the addition of the smoke grenades (new mechanic - smoke nades) and waterproof bags. Every single other art change is something which should be occuring in beta(Opinion). The animation changes are also what should be done in beta(Opinion): "BugFixing" - this is a purely Beta+ feature. 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).

 

Scripting is the one area which gets some actual credit:

• Vehicle classification prototyping
• Vehicle component prototyping

This is what SHOULD be done during a alpha (this used to say beta, I typed wrong - SORRY). Prototyping and addition of new features. However, our good friend "bug fixing" is still there. It's also there in programming, which has another DayZ-"alpha" feature, 'Code cleaning and optimizations' - something which, again, should only be done once the game is feature complete.

 

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(Opinion). From what we've heard from people like Dean, the idea is to implement vehicles, vehicle repair and vehicle 'combining' (red door from one car onto other blue car). This isn't how you would do an alpha feature implementation(Opinion). From a logical standpoint, the first feature which is required for testing is vehicles(Opinion). As such, what you would implement is vehicles which spawn. In a true alpha, these vehicles would be pretty basic in terms of gameplay. Initially they would be invincible with infinite fuel, but once features such as fuel and damage were implemented, they would take on those characteristics. As mehcanics such as using parts to repair were added, the vehicle mechanic as a whole would advance, until it is feature complete. However, this isn't how the devs are handling this(Opinion). 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).

 

 

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). If we're lucky, we'll hit that point at the end of 2015(Opinion), meaning that it'll have taken over two years to get out of alpha. However, this shouldn't be the case(Opinion). DayZ is built upon an already existing framework. Adding new features, such as vehicles, should not take all that long to implement.(Opinion)

 

As it stands, the current Steam page is a lie(Opinion): 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(Opinion). 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). If the statements were true, we would have far fewer guns/shirts/hats and the initial stages of the vehicles available for play(Opinion).

 

Basically, I don't want my money back: I want to know what the ~$75 million in sales has gone, because it sure hasn't gone into making an 'open' and 'community supported' development cycle.

 

 

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

Edited September 8, 2014 by Accolyte
colors

[RAM-bo4250 213]

Arguing with a developer over internal processes, in which the developer is intimately knowledgeable, can't be anything but opinion. And presumptous. Arguing with a developer over, say, clouds is still an opinion but at least there's a little knowledge.

Edited September 8, 2014 by RAM-bo4250

[hypergolem 39]

Even with references it's not a reputable source. As I stated, anyone and I mean anyone can write on Wikipedia. Try to use Wikipedia on an educational paper. The teachers would give you an "F".

True, everybody can write on Wikipedia but it is also true that if you write BS or wrong information and data, you will get corrected almost instantly by a huge community of writers