Final Thoughts from an Early MOD player....

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

I started DayZ back in the early days of the MOD. The VERY early days. Before all the overhauls and re balances started, when it was first becoming a wildfire. It was first brought to my attention by fellow ARMA players and i soon found my self immersed in this strange new thing. Trading in my M1A2 Abrams tank for a pack and some survival essentials and setting off into the wilderness the perpetual tension and uncertainty kept it intense at all times.

 

Some of my best memories aren't of pitched battles in the NWAF or of Killing noobs in cherno ,but of wandering thru the woods in the dark a nervous wreck because im sure i heard foot steps but cant see anything.

 

 

Like many I was excited the moment I heard the announcement that there would be an SA! Great i thought! Finally we can get back to the official version with some optimization and anti cheat improvements. Also like many, I was eager to throw my money at something I knew I already Liked.. or thought I already liked. I purchased the first day it was available on steam and that first week was probably the high point of the SA for me. As time drew on tho, as change upon change rolled out i cant help but feel the SA is trying to separate it's self from the MOD rather then be a continuation of it with improvements.

 

 

I've already gotten more Joy from DayZ then many AAA titles I Paid 59.99 USD for only to hate and wish i could get my money back 2 days later. But the nagging feeling remains that the SA will never recapture my haydays in the mod and will likely just be to little, to late. I feel there is a move towards gamey-ness and Balance that was lacking by nature of ArmA being a simulator which i found to be preferable. I hate the attachment system, the shared ammo that shouldn't actually work. and disagree with many of the developer's priorities.

 

 

All-In-All I don't care what rocket's vision was. it doesnt matter to me. brand/dev loyalty is nothing but harmful to the individual consumer- But i would like to thank all the developers for all thier hard work and many hours of fun in both the official mod and early days of the SA. Sadly I'll now be retiring to other titles probably until full-release when i may take another look to see how it all turned out. I don't feel the SA will ever be the vanilla mod 2.0 with Better FPS and security that I had hoped for.

 

See you on the flip-Side;

-A  Bitter Mod-Vet :P

 

Sorry to hear you don't enjoy access to the development builds of DayZ. One thing I've personally found - as someone that has a strong emotional connection to the early days of Ultima Online, is that you can never truly go home again. We can, and will continue trying to capture lightning in a bottle - but in the end, who we are - who you are now, is different than who we were when we first hopped into DayZ mod back in early 2012. We'll never be able to look at the title with the same naivety and wonder that we did back then.

However, you should understand that games rarely resemble their final product this early on in development. Be it Gears of War, or Monopoly for Windows Phone. What you might find refreshing is that we as a team constantly reference old videos of gameplay from those days, and I keep an internal dev server running DayZ Mod that the team frequently plays on, and uses as a touch stone.

I'm glad you at least feel you got your monies worth out of the purchase, and hope you find the experience you are looking for somewhere out there.

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

One last thing to add, then I am going to shut my cake hole for a while.. :lol:

 

With .55 stable we have sine positive changes in my view. Zombies are more of a challenge to deal with and have much better AI. There are real tactics you can use to avoid the, stealth. I had to fight a few of them, right off I noticed shooting them was the best way. Loot count is also better, it more scarce, which vary much turns it into a survival game. This is good. BUT with these new challenges in place, persistants really needs to work well all the time. When I played .55 stable it did not work well at all, in fact I lost allot of stuff, by putting faith into it. It vary wishy washy right now. So if there is one thing that really needs to get dialed in 1st, In my view that is if it is indeed going to turn into a real survival game. 

 

That really should be looked into. I think in its the current state of the SA with persistants working really well, it would make it so much better on all servers. I can deal with the truck bugs, server wait times/crashes, bugs and the heat turned up. But we need to be able to store gear, make a camp, ect ect. Now I know some servers work way better then others. Its tribal knowledge which ones they are, they ALL work well across the board. Otherwise why even play.

 

Then I would strongly suggest you take a break, and come back at 1.0. During development, anything can (and more than likely will) break.

[Damnyourdeadman 1045]

Sorry to hear you don't enjoy access to the development builds of DayZ. One thing I've personally found - as someone that has a strong emotional connection to the early days of Ultima Online, is that you can never truly go home again. We can, and will continue trying to capture lightning in a bottle - but in the end, who we are - who you are now, is different than who we were when we first hopped into DayZ mod back in early 2012. We'll never be able to look at the title with the same naivety and wonder that we did back then.

However, you should understand that games rarely resemble their final product this early on in development. Be it Gears of War, or Monopoly for Windows Phone. What you might find refreshing is that we as a team constantly reference old videos of gameplay from those days, and I keep an internal dev server running DayZ Mod that the team frequently plays on, and uses as a touch stone.

I'm glad you at least feel you got your monies worth out of the purchase, and hope you find the experience you are looking for somewhere out there.

 

With all the respect Hicks,that was a very diplomatic answer.

All the people posting here are only intersted in your game and your game only (and you know it).

Nothing else on the market beat the experience provided by DayZ.

 

Despite the state of the game being adressed as "early access builds",game has passed it's 1.5-2 development milestone.

Consider this as a plea requesting for something to restore our faith and interest in the project.

 

Then I would strongly suggest you take a break, and come back at 1.0. During development, anything can (and more than likely will) break.

 

A large portion of the fanbase is curently on the sidelines waiting for the day the game is "reasonably fit to play".

As 1.0 is a very long way from now,is there any planned feature,for players to look forward to in the near future?

[Jonah_Hobbes 171]

This isn't the first time I've seen comments like this from different posters, but what exactly is everyone saying has been watered down?

What are people saying that BI has dumbed down to cater to apparently console based players or people who want a more mainstream game?

I'm not advocating either stance, I want this game to be hard even though I can't play it a lot because I enjoy the struggle... I'm just curious as to what exactly these issues are, if people could expand or explain I'd be grateful.

 

There is a split between those wanting DayZ to be be the ultimate survial game that includes making stuff and farming/harvesting just to stay alive with less attention to pvp. They are called Bear-Gryllers, Harvesters, Hobos, Hickians.

 

There are the others that want the ultimate survial game that includes a bit of crafting, hunting, etc but not at the expense of damping down pvp action and zombies. They are called Whiners, Casuals, (even though the ain't) or The Game is Not For You-ers.

 

Both want slighty different things, both however want a a really tough game and a very similar game.

 

The majority of real casual players want the current game but with less bugs and a pretty easy game at that. A game where they can run around the coast and try and eat each other whilst wearing dresses. Both of the the above camps reckon most of the casuals will move on from the game when it gets too hard for fresh spawns to survive.

 

Both camps probably need to stop arguing on here, (myself included), and sensibly let the devs know that there should be room for both types of players in a single game.

[CJFlint 357]

Then I would strongly suggest you take a break, and come back at 1.0. During development, anything can (and more than likely will) break.

Hicks,

 

I am going to for while, I am going to follow the progress on dayz tv and twitter.  I played dayz sa pretty much none stop since Feb last year all the way til recently prob .53 stable after that not as much. I also don't want to burn my self out on it, because I love the concept. There has been quite a bit of growth, bumps in road, but over all a pretty interesting different gaming exp like no other and really fun at times. I played for more hours in the SA then most of the games on my steam list which says something.  

 

I really hope this turns out to be a epic survival game, and hope your team knocks it out of the park when its all said and done.  :thumbsup:

Edited May 1, 2015 by CJFlint

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

A break is definitely something those of us who spend a lot of time in Chernarus. Hell, the team is aware 0.55 was a rough build - its why I try and remind people that this is expected to happen during development. 

 

0.56 will have its issues, but I'm hoping turning the loot spawning system back on - and addressing infected movement bugs will provide a more enjoyable build.

Mark my words - we'll have more rough spots throughout this year. There are a lot of upcoming merges for the engine coming up, and with a monthly build push to steam occurring - things will break.

[Damnyourdeadman 1045]

A break is definitely something those of us who spend a lot of time in Chernarus. Hell, the team is aware 0.55 was a rough build - its why I try and remind people that this is expected to happen during development. 

 

0.56 will have its issues, but I'm hoping turning the loot spawning system back on - and addressing infected movement bugs will provide a more enjoyable build.

Mark my words - we'll have more rough spots throughout this year. There are a lot of upcoming merges for the engine coming up, and with a monthly build push to steam occurring - things will break.

 

I really admire your honesty about all the upcoming future hardships without trying to sugar coat anything.

Concerning myself,i have still hopes that you 'll make it through eventually.

Tech is a major restricting factor,so i'm going to support your decision on overcoming this Goliath.

That being said i'm very eager on what the new updated CLE has in store for us.

[jtw1984 3]

Hicks i also played ultima online. I understand not being able to capture that feeling again. Great game for its time.

That being said, I never played the mod but I love this game. It gives me a similar feeling ultima did at one time.

The best feature of this game is how hard they work to keep hackers out. I have only been killed once by hackers. That's impressive.

They need to work on a few things still but the devs know what those are and are fixing them.

[SniperV (DayZ) 43]

Beef bacon , let me fill you in on why all these people are so butthurt over a crappy ,script ridden , mess of a mod ... The mod had helicopters, tanks , base building , a crap hero / bandit system that ruined immersion and free play styles , it was riddled with pvp and literally EVERYONE used global chat to TROLL (ya imagine ten retards in bright blue print yelping "gay gay gay everyone at balota is gonna die get REKT " ya you though the shit talking in SA was bad you should go experience the shitty global channel that was built into all the mods ).

The mods had no sense of survival, you hardly had to eat or drink you never goT cold , hot or sick (except for crappy zombie virus) you hardly EVER had to worry about zombies because there were so many of them they would bug out and half the horde would just walk through you and get stuck somewhere in the building , eventually forgetting you were ever there .. Oh and let's talk calibers of weapons and weapons in general , you just spawned in with your trust makarov (or revolver/ hatchet depending on the mod) all you now need to do is rush the nearest firestation for an automatic weapon , sound strange? It gets stranger ... You then find an UMP-45 at the bottom floor with five magazines , you say "agh that's not my absolute fav, let's check upstairs" . You proceed upstairs to find a beautiful cZ550 hunting rifle (with many clips mind you) ... You ignore the unrealistic fact that you just found multiple firearms in a goddamn fire house and rush outside to the sound of a helicopter , you then swiftly shoot it down with the hunting rifle (this is where CALIBERS start to get weird and again unrealistic) how the FUCK did I just take down a heli with a hunting rifle ? Shot the gun through the window , he was at least 500 meters away, yet somehow my magical bullet took his ass out ... Exciting ? Yes , fun and realistic to a point of playing it all the time ? Definitely not .

Another thing that's been mentioned is the base building, well I have to say it was exciting in ONE mod (dayz aftermath) but besides that it was always unrealistic, and clunky. There was no barricadin like standalone is working on , locking cars was only available in certain mods and there was no locking of buildings , oh and almost 85% of all buildings were UNEnterable ... The only reason why these people are so obsessed with the mod is because they truly aren't the type to be playing a survival game , I mean in Every one of their arguments they say that the simple UI from the mod needs to come back because they can't be bothered reading status messages (which are turning into a Toggleable UI soon) and also that the calibers and weapons are all wrong yet they are SO much more scarce than in the mod , and what weapon are you so concerned about that has unrealistic interchangeable properties ? Last I heard the mosin and blaze are using their proper ammunition now .

Face it guys the mod was and still is complete crap , it was a gimmick back then because nothing compared to it but yet it still didn't live up to it's Survival name because of many many engine limitations and terrible design decisions (like keeping global chat while trying to maintain an apocalypse feel. Yu can always see little kids shit talking over global) the spawn system was so simple and easily abused , there were waaaay more cheaters , almost every server had access to their own database If they knew what they were doing so they could change their server to a 1 million vehicles high PVP server... The mod was ok but in reality all it was was a huge PVP fest with hardly any potential , I've had SO MANY more exciting moments in standalone than the mod , and I played the mod for 2 years ( and many different mods as well like I Said dayz aftermath was the ONLY mod to get close to the survival feel that standalone gives me .

Long story short : don't just get nostalgic for things because you can , truly look back and see how riddled the mod was with problems In the design : too many weapons all over with too much ammo, unrealistic ballistics, vehicles too easy to find and repair , pvp far too prevalent because there's no way to damage clothes or equipment , zombies were a joke and really just annoyed you instead of making you fear them, huntin was too simple , global chat was allowed, too many bugs not being fixed and swept under the rug to this day even ... Many many more bad things and the only good things was that the game was simple enough to hunt , make a base , and have some PVP but you people got too obsessed and are now hurt over the fact standalone is finally taking away from PVP and closer to a mix of survivals and PVP !

If you haven't played the mod , well then yu are lucky to see the greatness that is dayz standalone first , because even though the mod had base building and all types of vehicles it was just a terribly designed game based off of another game that didn't suit it's needs , dayz standalone has WAYY more potential we just need to wait to get to the content the mod has and when it reaches that stage standalone will have 10 times as much content seeing as all this "extra stuff" that the OP think is a waste will be added as well.

 

Sorry, my bad for experiencing DayZed and other great mods.

 

 

One more thing. If people could stop talking about nostalgia that would be great. I don't need anybody to tell me what I can and what I can't enjoy.

In fact, I regularly come back to some older games and they're still great even when comapared to recent titles.

 

I've actually spend a few hours this weekend playing DayZ mod and it's variants. Surprise - still good and exciting. Will stick to it while waiting for changes in SA.

Edited May 4, 2015 by SniperV