I feel like neither the Mod or SA are for me any more...

[scaramoosh (DayZ) 4]

It feels like the SA came out, killed the mod and now the SA is dead too because of the lack of development. I loved the mod from around April until Sept 2012, but then it started getting massively popular and it all went to koS and all these stupid mods came out which ruined the experience for me. It came to the point where the mod was dead, everyone was playing this other versions of the game which just sucked. So I quit the mod and decided to wait for the SA as it sounded like it was getting back to the roots, my friends did the same and we waited and waited....

 

The SA finally came out and it was like they stripped everything out and had this empty shell of a game. It has now been over a year and it still feels broken and empty, my friends have all moved on and don't care any more. I come back once every few months, but it never feels like there has been any progress. The loot system is still broken, I really don't get why we all spawn in the same locations if you cannot get the loot sorted? There are still no zombies, no vehicles, and all the promises of bases are stuff are another life time away. 

 

Like what do I play now? Both versions are shit and they feel dead too.. I mean I remember in the height of Dayz I was meeting so many people in the game. There were constant conflicts and meeting people was just so much fun, the game felt so full of life. Playing SA now the map feels empty, I hardly ever meet someone now and if I do it is KoS, like all the players full of personality have now moved on. I find the SA and the Mod so lifeless and depressing to play now.. it just feels like everyone has moved on. 

 

I think having so many enterable buildings in the SA not only makes finding loot not fun but it hides a lot of the players. I hate the apartment blocks, they are so big but there is never anything in them, it was so much better where all the loot was just on the stairs and in the top rooms. 

[applejaxc 2500]

To be fair, alpha.

 

To be honest, I know how you feel. I haven't played DayZ SA for more than a few minutes since a month out of release and have been waiting for a devblog that actually interested me. Who knows who long it will take, who knows if Virtual whateveritsfuckingcalled engine 1.x will somehow revolutionize the ArmA experience. But don't give up! You can probably join a whitelist hardcore RP server owned by a haxxing 6 year old whose dad totally works for Microsoft and will ban you if you have fun. <3

[BC_Hawke 276]

I completely agree.  I was getting sick of the lack of vanilla mod servers by mid 2013 and hacking made it too difficult to play on the public hive.  I was really down about it because vanilla DayZ mod is such an amazing game and the interactions and intense fights were incredible.  The popularity of all the carebear mods and private hives depressed me, but I was so stoked because SA was on the horizon.  Ironically, SA ended up being the stake through the heart of vanilla DayZ.  Anyone that still played on vanilla servers or the public hive went to play SA, but sadly Dean Hall and BI completely lost focus and SA retained virtually nothing that made the vanilla mod such a great game.  SA has gone so far in a different direction that I doubt it will ever offer the same experience as the vanilla mod.  It's a different game entirely which is really sad because the mod had such a great thing going.

 

Thankfully, there's a small community that still likes playing the vanilla mod.  Servers like US434 have kept that alive.  I've been so glad for all the fun I've had playing on US434 in 2014 and 2015.  Unfortunately that won't last forever.  It seems like the end of an era.  I don't see anything on the horizon that can replace vanilla DayZ mod.

 

EDIT: your comment about enterable buildings is spot on too.  Even though Chernarus is still the same sq km in area, they've virtually increased the size of the map by 10 fold while only being able to have 40 players on at a time.  Even if this number increases to 100 or more, I think the idea of adding thousands upon thousands of identical looking rooms to have to scavenge for loot is a terrible idea.  They should have taken a much more conservative approach to adding enterable buildings to the map.  Go crazy with visual enhancements, but adding endless apartments and big cities was the wrong move in my opinion. 

Edited January 29, 2015 by Bullet_Catcher

[BC_Hawke 276]

To be fair, alpha.

The thing is, it's not about the lack of being completed.  It's the fundamental and complete change in direction of the game.  It's a totally different experience in almost every way, and not for the better.  The interactions are different, the look and feel of the game have changed entirely, the addiction to adding insane amounts of enterable buildings has changed so many dynamics of how people use (or don't use) the map...it's just far to different from the vanilla mod.  Even when it reaches 1.0 release it still won't offer anything close to what vanilla mod does.

[applejaxc 2500]

-snip-

How, exactly, have enterable buildings negatively impacted the dynamics of the game? Because there's so many more potential loot locations that large cities are no longer occupied or what? Because the Balota airfield is still the only good place to find people?

I'm not trying to say you're wrong; I didn't enjoy my limited experience with DayZSA (99% of the servers were nighttime only, the other 1% had 1 slot and/or auto-kicked), and I don't think any number of enterable buildings will actually positively affect a game solely because the movement is soooo fucking awkward in ArmA (Like in ArmA 3, if you walk onto the balcony of any building for more than a few seconds, you will get stuck in the ground, which will either slowly absorb you until you're on the first floor or drop you to your death. I mean, seriously guys, the fuck. You want to sell a new terrain? How about you make your building models work?! You want to advertise your "Stances" system that revolutionizes PvP? HOW ABOUT YOU  MAKE YOUR FUCKING MOUSE ACCELERATION WORK!?) I... ugh. If it wasn't for the editor, I wouldnt play ArmA. I think I can safely give that ultimatum. Hopefully when I'm rocking a not-ass laptop the movement won't be so difficult for me but... I don't know.

I'll definitely give DayZ a try in the future. I've already paid for it, and H1Z1 allows you to buy airdrops. Fingers crossed for Survive the Nights, amiright? ...

[nevada_scout 0]

If you're missing the original mod, someone on reddit has set up a pure vanilla 1.7.6.1 server.

 

More info is available here: http://www.reddit.com/r/DayZmod/comments/2tgfbe/feeling_nostalgic_ive_just_set_up_a_vanilla_176/

[BC_Hawke 276]

How, exactly, have enterable buildings negatively impacted the dynamics of the game?

First off, your question should read "How, exactly, have an insane amount enterable buildings negatively impacted the dynamics of the game?"

 

Like I stated in my comment above, the addition of an unbelievably large amount of enterable buildings has virtually increased the size of the map by 10 fold.  What I mean by that is that looting a city can now take you three or four hours if you actually check all the rooms.  Searching for loot is very tedious, especially in cities like Cherno.  It adds a significant amount of time that it takes for players to move from one area to another, and adds what seems to be an infinite number of of nooks and crannies that players can be tucked away.  What this means is that it really reduces the amount of contact that you have with other players.  The map is significantly larger than the mod due to all the enterable buildings, yet as of now the max player count is 40.  Even then, most servers only have 20 or less players.  When you add this to the lack of incentive to venture to places like NWAF, you can literally play for hours on a max population server without seeing a single person (unless you want to deathmatch at spawn areas).  SA is incredibly boring.  I can't tell you how many times my buddies and I ran all the way to NWAF, looted it 2 or 3 times, then ran all the way back to the coast and didn't see a damn person even though it was a 40/40 server.

 

Another factor is the hit on performance that the servers and clients see.  100's of apartments means 1,000's of objects and textures.  Given the horribly optimized state of BI engines, this KILLS server and client FPS.  Honestly so many of the apartments, buildings, and houses are just cookie cutter copypasta that's just unnecessary and uses up resources.

 

You see, there's a good middle ground.  OF COURSE the original A2 Chernarus map had a severe lack of enterable buildings.  Adding more was the natural thing to do, but they took it way too far.  DayZero is much closer to that middle ground with the added interiors to houses, police stations, and hospitals.

[applejaxc 2500]

-snip-

I've never considered that point before and I appreciate you pointing it out. Now that I think about it, that is a significant barrier. There's so much (read: the thing over and over) to do that player interaction is an all time low. I, personally, absolutely hates every single person in DayZ except myself without exception and I won't reinstall until I'm able to host a private 1 slot server where I can have a number of zombies comparable to the loss of players because I hate player interactions, but I know that was 99% of the joy in the mod. Player count does need to scale with map size and we probably won't see that until the playercount drops off so significantly it won't even matter, and only RDM players will persist (or worse, RDM clans with their CheatSpeak3...).

 

Before I stopped playing the SA, I remained on an apartment roof in Chernarus that overlooked 2 corner stores, a barn, and the wide, open field between them that had no cover. My M4 only had a broken ACOG but I decided logging in every day for 30 minutes until I emptied 5 30round magazines (have they reduced military weapon spawn rates?) at random players, which very quickly become at random zombies, and then at the floor hoping to attract attention. I saw maybe 3 players and only killed 1 on 40/40 servers day or night.

So don't take the above as me disagreeing with you. At the very least, I agree with you now.

[anderse 10]

One of the "cool" thing in SA was supposed to be a lot more enterable buildings and rooms..bigger cities. But is this actually a good thing? As people have stated here, it has pretty much ruined the game for me personally. The amount of time people are spending indoors running around endlessly for items makes player interactions extremely rare, and even if you run into someone now and then it's a very boring, one-sided fight to where you will kill someone in the back from 3 meters. Interesting to see other people admitting the problem, because I haven't really read much about it. It's probably still a well used argument to why SA is better than the mod, though, without actually reflecting what it does to the gameplay. I have the same complaint about Arma 3 and Altis in particular.

 

Also agree with the fact Bohemia destroyed the mod with this SA release. Pretty much been doing everything to make players stop Arma 2, even though the SA is completely broken. The mod would have deserved to be recommended and supported until at least 2016-2017 and with that I guess I'm thinking about taking care of Arma 2 security patches and keep the public hive alive. Instead they did a bad copy paste, changed things to the worse and made the game run much worse on top of that. The core game/engine is absolutely terrible compared to Arma 2 and this haven't changed one year after release. Don't get me wrong create a standalone game but how they did it was very unsavoury and only a matter of making money on a hype. The end result was leaving the good game and split the player base into private servers and different games.

 

________________________________

 

What to do? I'm creaming out as much as there's left of the dayz mod, the game that hooked me a few years ago. You have at least two popular choices for vanilla. Dayz Europa and a US server. And I don't think they are "dying" anywhere soon. So not many choices but at least you can still play and enjoy the vanilla mod.

[Jock McScottish 216]

I don't know lads, for me the latest vanilla dayz is the best, SA doesn't come close gameplay and feel wise. BUT, as a lone wolf player I love the enterable buildings of SA and can happily loot away for hours, finding food, guns and different clothing etc. I get so bored seeing my character in the mod with his skip cap, body warmer and cargo pants all the time only being able to check doorsteps for beans!

 

Vanilla mod mixed with SA's enterable buildings and ability to change your characters clothing is my idea of Dayz perfection!

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

I still can't see how having more enterable buildings is a bad thing.  I can't really wrap my head around that at all.  And so what if it takes 3 hours to loot all of Cherno, that is entirely your choice.  I don't even go there myself and have no problem gearing up or surviving.  I also don't have much trouble finding people to run into if I actively choose to.  They're just not camping Cherno roof tops and watching the handful of locations where loot spawns.  Oh no, the game is ruined.

 

I'm also concerned by what you believe is a lack of development in the SA.  It may not have been as fast as we all would have liked but to suggest they're not working on it is asinine.

 

When people complain about the "direction" of the game changing I can't help but wonder if they were just playing it for the PvP or the survival aspect that Rocket had always pushed.   Sometimes I wonder if they even played vanilla at all.

 

The mod is still supported.  I'm sure the people who work on it in their free time, as it has always been, probably love it when proclaimed fans of it believe it's dead.   And who cares about the public hive for the mod.  The vast majority of players abandoned it long ago to the hackers and server hopping combat logging idiots in favor of private hives.

[JIJOK 49]

Do you create a thread every time you stop playing a game ? 

[Greu 0]

I also don't like the fact that people can pick their spawns now ;\ sort of kills the struggle of dayz you have to go trough since you can just spawn in elektro/cherno/balota constantly after each death get geared up go north or whatever and repeat. And not really feel any punishment for dying 

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

Do you create a thread every time you stop playing a game ? 

 

Even worse he made an account to strictly complain about everything, Locked.