A Returning Players Thoughts

[ACOGshot 38]

So I played the shit out of DayZ mod, and many of the mods that spawned as a result, so I was hugely excited when DayZ Standalone came out, just before Christmas last year. I paid for the game on the day of its release, understanding fully that it was an alpha, but played anyway, expecting to recapture some of the Elektro/Cherno magic of old, back in the day of the OP Lee Enfield rifle.

 

My first experience back then was getting some interesting loot, mouldy this or that, and a nice gun, before running off to the next town. I didn't make it to the next town however, I went blurry about 200m down the road, and gave up after sitting there for 10 minutes while my character repeatedly said it was hungry and thirsty.

 

I went back to the mod.

 

So now 1 year later I have decided to give the Standalone another try, figuring that in A WHOLE YEAR, things will have gotten better. Oh how wrong I was. I honestly feel as though my experience has been worse. I have just spent one hour trying to log in, fix that stupid resolution bug, alter my default character only to see it makes no difference whatsoever (I am still a black chick for some reason), and then run around looking for loot, finding absolutely NOTHING. Maybe I am playing on a bugged server or something, it was something that affected the mod from time to time, but I mean come on, this isn't the mod anymore, it is not a free mod of another game anymore. I also felt the game running very sluggishly, both in the menu's and during gameplay, way more than I remember.

 

So you may see this as a rant, yeah it is, but I do feel that as consumers we have the right to express our feelings on the game, no matter how positive or negative, and I trust that this will not be moderated by any of the forum staff who I am sure do a fantastic job. Seeing that the 'user reviews' on Steam rate this game as 'Very Positive', I honestly expected more development to have taken place and the silly little bugs ironed out.

 

Am I the only one who feels this way?

 

Am I the only one who feels as though this game is a colossal step backwards from the mod?

 

I would be interested to know, and I hope this can be seen as a constructive thread, not just a negative rant.

[Timmymachine109 (DayZ) 235]

Totally agree, considering the game has been released to early access for a whole year and there was a whole year of work done before that I think it's shocking progress. Still keep coming back every now and then though lol!

[creature 1189]

I played a couple hours on experimental exactly 2 patches ago. 

[Heatofbattle 49]

I feel as if it is an improvement in some areas(like UI, survival, all buildings enterable) and needs work in others(pure content, optimization, bugs)

But. My answers to your complaints are:

1. The no loot thing is a glitch from .50, and if you get that you should probably switch servers.

2. New renderer coming this quarter, so no omptimization till then.

3. Resolution bug easily fixed if you look it up.

4. Game still in alpha, be paitent.

I'd recommend waiting another year if you really prefer the mod.

Lastly, the Standalone is meant to be a survival game, not a military sandbox, so it will be very different from the mod.

[ACOGshot 38]

Thanks for the responses. I've just switched to a server which wasn't loot bugged and it wasn't so bad. I did look up the resolution bug as soon as I encountered it and fixed it, but I had kinda hoped to run into bugs during gameplay, not within 5 seconds of pressing the play button on Steam.

 

I'm definitely gonna wait a while before I play again, and as you say, in maybe another year it might be in decent shape as a game. I just look at games like Rust which have spawned because of the 'DayZ Revolution', and cannot believe how far behind DayZ is now, and I wouldn't have believed it 1 year ago.

 

I play DayZ for the survival aspect, not the sandbox aspect by the way. Theres no point in playing a survival game otherwise, might aswell go dust off my Xbox controller and turn on one of the many FPS derp games.

[jubeidok 495]

Totally agree, considering the game has been released to early access for a whole year and there was a whole year of work done before that I think it's shocking progress. Still keep coming back every now and then though lol!

 

Ya, I have to agree with this. There is very little evidence of improvement over all systems for what should be a years worth of work. I have to imagine that internally they are working on a build far more advanced than what they give us, the new engine even. There is far too little iteration occurring from build to build to suggest anything else. Art drops seem to be the most common that we get, which would make sense as this would probably be the easiest to port over to their new shit. Take loot spawning for example: we get a build where it's everywhere or it's nowhere and very little in between. With looting being a major part of the gameplay, you would think that this is something being worked on on a day to day basis. Therefore what we should see on a month to month release schedule should offer us vast improvements/changes over time. Has there been any evidence to suggest that? 

 

 

The thing I find the most astonishing however, are all the peeps that see this as a huge improvement over what they had last year when the only real difference is that there are far more places to go looking for a gun(I say it this way because it's what 99% of the community is doing).

 

Pretty sure we're being led by a carrot on a stick here.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

I feel as if it is an improvement in some areas(like UI, survival, all buildings enterable) and needs work in others(pure content, optimization, bugs)

But. My answers to your complaints are:

1. The no loot thing is a glitch from .50, and if you get that you should probably switch servers.

2. New renderer coming this quarter, so no omptimization till then.

3. Resolution bug easily fixed if you look it up.

4. Game still in alpha, be paitent.

I'd recommend waiting another year if you really prefer the mod.

Lastly, the Standalone is meant to be a survival game, not a military sandbox, so it will be very different from the mod.

 

I'm most excited for the new renderer.

 

I think/hope that if you gave the SA another 6 months you would/should see a massive improvement.

 

I took 6 months off from DayZ and have been playing again a bit since around .45 and I've seen some interesting stuff added and tweaked and it's been fun/interesting for me to see what the devs test on us in experimental builds, which can be a unique short term DayZ experience of sorts.

 

A really deep game can take 3+ years to make on average, right?

 

If you think about what still needs to be added to DayZ and how ambitious their goals are and even the unusual path the SA took when launched, I would say the pace of development is at least fair as well.

 

I am prepared for the possibility that things could "go bad" with DayZ but to judge the game at less than half done isn't really fair at all.

[DeatHTaX 1217]

I sure can't wait for that banwave, because the hacking for me has just been out of control as of late. I've run into 6 hackers in the past 2 weeks, all but one resulting in me dead.

Edited January 2, 2015 by DeatHTaX

[xhiril 43]

I sure can't wait for that banwave, because the hacking for me has just been out of control as of late. I've run into 6 hackers in the past 2 weeks, all but one resulting in me dead.

 

 

Believe it was said it is coming this week?

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/2qw1oy/can_anyone_give_me_an_update_on_the_battle_eye/

[Beizs 186]

First, you got annoyed originally because you got hungry and thirsty? What? It's a survival game. That's a feature, not a bug or an issue? You just start hungry.

The game is being built from scratch on an improved engine compared to the one the mod (and Arma II) was made on. That's why it's a step back from the mod in some ways. It's also a massive step forward. You're not looking at it from the right angle. It's nowhere near finished. They're rebuilding all of the systems that the mod had (and more) from scratch so that they can make things better overall. The loot system is ongoing, though generally, loot is not that rare. You were probably on a persistent or bugged server which wasn't respawning the loot. That's being worked on right now though.
 
The game isn't a step backwards at all. It's just earlier in its development as the mod used all of the systems directly from Arma II, which meant that they were already complete, even if they weren't well suited for the game. They've laid the groundwork for a massive amount of work now - and I'm incredibly excited about the next year of development. This is where it'll start really improving over the mod as they work on zombies and get the loot systems finished along with the new physics and rendering engines.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Beizs

[ChainReactor 922]

I did look up the resolution bug as soon as I encountered it and fixed it, but I had kinda hoped to run into bugs during gameplay, not within 5 seconds of pressing the play button on Steam.

 

I really don't understand why people call this a bug. From my understanding, it's completely normal that you have to set up a game on it's first launch, Neither is it really hard to figure out - wrong resolution set? Might check the video configuration menu.

Edited January 3, 2015 by ChainReactor

[McWendy 675]

I really don't understand why people call this a bug. From my understanding, it's completely normal that you have to set up a game on it's first launch, Neither is it really hard to figure out - wrong resolution set? Might check the video configuration menu.

Because most games dont have a menu where you have to set 2 resolution settings the right way or it doesnt work.

User interface and video resolution need to have the same parameters in order for it to display properly. Some call this a bug. I somewhat agree. I too had to fiddle around at first before my settings "stayed"

Edited January 3, 2015 by McWendy

[Beizs 186]

Because most games dont have a menu where you have to set 2 resolution settings the right way or it doesnt work.

User interface and video resolution need to have the same parameters in order for it to display properly. Some call this a bug. I somewhat agree. I too had to fiddle around at first before my settings "stayed"

 Think they should have them both on the main screen. Make it easier to see and people should be able to figure it out from there.

 

You don't need them to be the same though. You just need to set the UI res to your screen resolution and then you can set the rendering res to anything you like.

[McWendy 675]

Think they should have them both on the main screen. Make it easier to see and people should be able to figure it out from there.

 

You don't need them to be the same though. You just need to set the UI res to your screen resolution and then you can set the rendering res to anything you like.

I agree the way it is now is confusing for people new to the game and not that good with pc's in general.

I thought you HAD to have them the same. Learned something. Today is a good say ;) ty sir for that haha.

My geforce experience wants me to play optimally on 1300/768 (or similar) but i like 1980 :)

[Beizs 186]

I agree the way it is now is confusing for people new to the game and not that good with pc's in general.

I thought you HAD to have them the same. Learned something. Today is a good say ;) ty sir for that haha.

My geforce experience wants me to play optimally on 1300/768 (or similar) but i like 1980 :)

 

I think that the GUI is kind of a mess in general at the moment. Of course, it's something that they'll probably work on much later in development, as in, just before release, but yeah.

 

IIRC (I generally just use the config file rather than the GUI) there isn't even a windowed mode option in game, despite the fact that it runs absolutely perfectly in windowed (other than the fact that if you set it to nopause in the Steam launch options it doesn't pause but only updates every few seconds, which is a pain when I'm multitasking and playing DayZ. Probably shouldn't, but shh. :P). Mouse position does get reset too when doing certain things, which isn't much of a problem. Just slightly frustrating.

Edited January 3, 2015 by Beizs