Developer Appreciation

[sneakydudes 278]

All the Dev's are doing such a good job. The finished alpha product will be great. Hopefully by that time we all have enough beans to share :)

 

Rip!

[yazar8 584]

diriction, 

 

Ow yes!!

[vfxtodd 123]

Survivor says:

"He's not actually wasting time. He represents a portion of BI audience and clients. Yes, a portion that can be called immature and not caring to get even a glimpse of insight of why things in game development are as they are, but still, a portion that I bet forms a large chunk of the sales pie chart, and are not irrelevant to BI, otherwise the company would show serious inability in creating their customer archetypes."

So people that whine in the forums actually represent a "large chunk of the sales pie chart"?

How in the world did you come to this conclusion? So, people that whine and waste valuable dev time with complaints make up a large chunk of buyers? This doesn't even make sense. More then likely the largest chunk of the sales pie chart will be people who've never played DayZ. Just like most buyers of video games. DayZ is the first game I've played in its alpha state. Very few games even offer an alpha for people to play on.

Development of DayZ can only be nurtured by useful criticism and bug reports. Not whining and complaining. If more people kept their interactions to suggestions and bug reports, DayZ might be further along. Might be.

I suggest helping the devs with bug reports and playing experimental servers.

[Calvin Candie 189]

Is there some way we can show the dev team some appreciation?

In this update, these guys seem to be working extra hard. If you just look at the time stamps on the exp. .57 tweets these people are working until the wee hours of the morning and/or starting at the butt crack of dawn. Now this is just what I've noticed, but I'm sure they have been working this way for some time now. And all over the forums is negative crap. I don't think that all the good work is appreciated, but expected. I know how it is to work like that, and it does make the passion for your work waiver. As for a long project like this, the team behind it needs to love it and the people that intend to use it.

So you saw time stamps of their tweets and thought "they really must be working hard and long"?

Before I piss myself of laughter at your reasoning, let me just say I do not doubt devs work hard.

Ok now hahahaaha xdxdxdxd hahah haha ha

Edited June 10, 2015 by Calvin Candie

[smoq2 221]

Survivor says:

"He's not actually wasting time. He represents a portion of BI audience and clients. Yes, a portion that can be called immature and not caring to get even a glimpse of insight of why things in game development are as they are, but still, a portion that I bet forms a large chunk of the sales pie chart, and are not irrelevant to BI, otherwise the company would show serious inability in creating their customer archetypes."

So people that whine in the forums actually represent a "large chunk of the sales pie chart"?

How in the world did you come to this conclusion? So, people that whine and waste valuable dev time with complaints make up a large chunk of buyers? This doesn't even make sense. More then likely the largest chunk of the sales pie chart will be people who've never played DayZ. Just like most buyers of video games. DayZ is the first game I've played in its alpha state. Very few games even offer an alpha for people to play on.

 

I came to this conclusion through several years of experience in my professional line of work. Furthermore, I said "large" not "largest". A large portion of the "sales pie chart" can be stated for 5-15%, so the notion is subjective. Ultimately however, even 5% of your customers (when you count your sales globally) matter greatly and should not be treated as a leftover statistic and told in a cynical manner to sit quietly in the corner because they don't know how things work.  If treated accordingly, this group can turn around any PR backlash you might be facing with design choices, obvious development hinders, etc. Basically anything that influences negatively your project in any other area. And don't live in denial, PR passively influences everything else you do, be it production speed, income, reception, etc.

 

To relate to the second part of your statement, it's not true that very few games offer an alpha/early access as "QA" (quotation marks intended because of sarcasm and personal prejudice). Look at GoatZ... Their advertising phrase "buggy zombie survival games became a genre of their own", or something along those lines, clearly implicates that the trend has become somewhat widespread, and that the fact that DayZ is blatantly stated as the "role model" also hints of the existing infamy. So please don't spread false truths about BI being generous to let us have a "sneak peek" at their game during the development phase, if that was your aim. They did it to gain funding and if anything, should be radiantly thankful to everyone who gave them the benefit of doubt and bought the game or rented a server.

 

Development of DayZ can only be nurtured by useful criticism and bug reports. Not whining and complaining. If more people kept their interactions to suggestions and bug reports, DayZ might be further along. Might be.

I suggest helping the devs with bug reports and playing experimental servers.

 

I disagree, but it comes from my different perception of things you name as "whining" and "complaining". Of course I don't disagree with helping through the bug tracker or other tools the developers setup. I just don't support telling those who believe something is fundamentally wrong with the project to focus on the details.

 

I really hope you understand my point - it's basically saying "don't discriminate" in gathering opinions.

Edited June 10, 2015 by retro19

[DocWolf 146]

DocWolf says:

"We've already payed them a good amount of money for their product and we're still doing what is essentialy a completely free massive alpha test. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a doom sayer nor I'm trying to disrespect the work of the developing team...I'm just stating a fact: we're already showing them both apprectiation for their work and trust in their ability to deliver a good game."

Hey Doc, do you have any dirty dishes in your sink?

Try this. Take the cash out of your wallet. And throw it on top of your pile of dirty dishes. What happens? Aren't your dishes clean now? You gave the pile of dishes your hard earned cash! Why don't the dishes clean themselves? Dammit!!

You see, the money you gave Bohemia pays for the development of DayZ. The developers of DayZ have bills and rent to pay. They have to survive while developing a survival game for whiny, inconsiderate people like you. Tough job, if you ask me.

I've been frustrated by certain events while playing DayZ like a lot of people. Yes, I've complained, too. I'm no angel. But, thanks to wise words spoken here, I've decided to help the devs with bug reports. So, pardon me, I'm going to make a bug report now.

 

You really should start reading the posts you want to comment, instead of glancing the first few lines and then rush an hasty (and quite haphazard) answer. "Whiny inconsiderate"? Dude, I'm suggesting giving the developers feedback because I like the game and I want it to hit good sale results at release. If that's whiny and inconsiderate...ah, wait, no.

 

You simply read a few words, jumped at wrong conclusions ignoring the rest of the post and then posted an angry response. Nothing new here, standard interwebz procedure. Move along folks, move along

[call him Steve 46]

You know some people have got a more elegant way of saying what I have been thinking. And then there are the others who have been clogging up the posts with nothing, nothing meaningful or helpful. Now pointing out the bad or problem areas is one thing but harping on the negative and drowning out any other opinion is Bull Sh!t. If this project (not a game yet) is making people upset, they should take some time off and do ANYTHING else that brings them satisfaction. 

 

I guess I'm just done with the complaining. Not because the opinions don't matter, but because that's all that I see in the forums. And I just imagine that is how the Dev Team feels.

[call him Steve 46]

 they just need to drink the right ammount

 

https://xkcd.com/323/

 

 

 

 

<3

[vfxtodd 123]

You really should start reading the posts you want to comment, instead of glancing the first few lines and then rush an hasty (and quite haphazard) answer. "Whiny inconsiderate"? Dude, I'm suggesting giving the developers feedback because I like the game and I want it to hit good sale results at release. If that's whiny and inconsiderate...ah, wait, no.

 

You simply read a few words, jumped at wrong conclusions ignoring the rest of the post and then posted an angry response. Nothing new here, standard interwebz procedure. Move along folks, move along

You have my beans, DocWolf. Sorry for my over reactive response. I've been working 80 hour weeks. Sometimes the lack of sleep makes me over sensitive, which sometimes means I jump the gun in certain situations. No excuse though. I apologize. You wrote an excellent post. My bad.

Cheers.

[scriptfactory 620]

Are you suggesting optimisation happens first - before adding more survival-elements to a survival game?

The famous programming quote is, "We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%."

Any optimization can be seen as premature if it will NOT improve performance by orders of magnitude or there is no particular need for certain code to be optimized.

This happens independently of the testing phase. So optimization can and will occur in the development phase (that typically occurs before alpha/beta testing).

[ScipioII 176]

Devs! I dropped some beer on the ground for you all. 

 

tab and you will see it.

[yazar8 584]

Hey guys - while I appreciate the positive feedback, please don't post stuff like this.

Thats not even where our office is - that would be the Arma 3 guys. :)

 

Take my beer and leave me alone, heh, heh, heh.

[tacticj 15]

(Disclaimer: Possibly Bad grammar.)

Dont know if this is kinda off topic but... we could live in a world where Dayz SA was not a early access no one could play it outside the dev team all the good times you might have had with SA never happened.Atleast im glad that the devs took this route even when i die to a server crash while driving V3S the frustration doesnt compare to the laughs i get while  playing with friends or just spending time exploring new places being added to the map.

 

Keep at it Devs.

 

Edit:I dont want to hear arguments about money lets just pretend that there would be plenty enough to develop the game with out EA in this imaginary world.

Edited June 11, 2015 by MarsuTactics

[Blackheart 5.56 56]

I entered the jail building at Zelenogorsk a couple of hours ago. Shut the doors and two zombies came right on in anyways, like fuck doors we're magic zombies. Thanks devs!  

Edited June 11, 2015 by Taco Tuesday

[vfxtodd 123]

I entered the jail building at Zelenogorsk a couple of hours ago. Shut the doors and two zombies came right on in anyways, like fuck doors we're magic zombies. Thanks devs!

Magic zombies? Cool!

A couple days ago I fresh spawned, and I was already bleeding. Woohoo!

You know what that means?

Let's say it all together. Ready?

"It's a fricken Alpha!"

I like the devs. Because like good developers, they make sure I see the disclaimer every time I launch DayZ.

You know the disclaimer. The one that tells you that you might experience problems because the game is still under development. Yea, that one.

Haha. The cool thing is I actually enjoy playing DayZ. Sure I experience issues now and again. But, that's to be expected.

Why? All together now......

[DarkwaveDomina 1099]

Battlefield and Call of Duty have much bigger wallets and resources then most game developers. I would bet more then DayZ has. Yet, Battlefield 4 and COD: Ghosts both performed horribly when they were released. What's their excuse?

DayZ is dying on its arse? According to whom? Did you conduct a world wide poll to determine the popularity of DayZ?

 

There's a reason I stopped playing Battlefield. What makes you think I care to make excuses for those franchises?

As for the player count, you only need to look at the Steam stats or how empty the servers are.

Or are you just bored and want to fight someone? Just curious.

Oh the irony. I am not interested in a "fight", I wanted to make a point about how alpha stage (when we're six months behind schedule for beta, I might add) does not necessarily exclude fixing core parts of the game that are entirely broken.

[vfxtodd 123]

It's hard to schedule life, much less the development of a game I would imagine. So, changes in the schedule for going from alpha to beta wouldn't surprise me. Only when DayZ is finally released wouid I expect to have fewer issues to deal with in gameplay.

Reporting bugs and glitches is what we're here for. Having expectations for the progress of a games development seems unrealistic to me. I'm not with the developers day in and day out. I don't know what issues they have to deal with while developing DayZ. So how can I complain?

Edited June 12, 2015 by BulletGarden

[dayz-spike 0]

I'm not to impressed with the development. But delays  happend to other studios and developers as well. 

And while i was absolutely unhappy with the way a non-working persistence+Loot system  was forced upon players with .54 and .55(thats the moment player numbers collapsed) and the arrogance with which that happened ("live with it"), i dont forget that it is an alpha, that it is early access and that SOME things have improved in the last patch.

 

Not without new drawbacks though.

While Zombies dont cheat anymore in combat, (they only hit you when they actually hit you, not 3 times while just running past, are easier to hit and kill) they now run through doors again.

The non-working loot respawn FINALLY have been replaced with a Restart-resets-loot.  Even one daily restart was for a full server ridiculous!

So thanks for that, WHY TOOK IT SO LONG?!

 

And something amazing happend with .56 and.57. A new patch was tested and serveral times changed on "experimental" BEFORE it was moved to stable. I play dayz for much more then a year and i cant remember this happened ever before. Everyone who complains about the current patch may remember the one, where servers crashed every 15-30minutes. They did it on exp. And you thought... well they cant POSSIBLY move that patch to stable...

The patch WAS nonetheless moved to "stable" and the "hotfix" took several weeks.

 

So i hate to see empty servers, but if it taught the developers a lesson about what you can throw at players, ea or not, and what not, its done something good.

 

In the end i dont expect the "next stable patch" to suddenly finish the game or solve all problems. But there should be so much compromise for the  early access system that in a game which HAS dedicated experimental servers, stable patches are at least playable.

 

And .54 on private servers wasnt. (plucking apples for an hour is not a game, its work. And its boring).

.57 with all its flaws is playable. Thats good enough for me.

Edited June 13, 2015 by dayz-spike

[thewire 88]

We are heading to 3rd quarter soon, based on the roadmap, which of them have been achieved? like 1? 

Edited June 23, 2015 by thewire

[ErichZann 28]

Q1 2015

• Basic vehicles
• Advanced loot distribution
• New renderer
• New Zombie AI
• Basic stealth system (zombies and animals)
• Diseases
• Improved cooking and horticulture
• Advanced anti-hack system (Dynamic BattlEye)

Q2 2015

• Advanced vehicles (repair and modifications)
• Advanced animals (life cycle, group behavior)
• Player statistics
• New UI
• Player stamina
• Dynamic events
• World containers
• New physics system

 

Well, what we kind of have is basic vehicles, kind of new zombie AI (not really good though.......), and some kind of new UI (neither good nor specially different so far...).

 

So... yeah....

[Nebulae3 420]

• World containers (what does it mean?) Tents that save items after reset or? ))

Edited June 24, 2015 by Ori42

[kichilron 8550]

Pretty much everything from that list has seen its first iterations and is being tested further.

 

If you can't understand what that list of supposed milestones is supposed to do, don't bother commenting on it. Noone said that all of these milestones are to be implemented 100% and done. If they were, we'd not be in Alpha anymore.

[Etherious 907]

Man, this thread is like a mini  /r/DayZ. xD  Anyways, I also wish I could support the Devs with some Beer or even some Vodka.

[Deathlove 2280]

Why? All together now......

BECAUSE YOUR MOM TOLD YOU TO! 83

[Dothrakii 2]

Pretty much everything from that list has seen its first iterations and is being tested further.

 

If you can't understand what that list of supposed milestones is supposed to do, don't bother commenting on it. Noone said that all of these milestones are to be implemented 100% and done. If they were, we'd not be in Alpha anymore.

Why fill your plate up with so much new content when there are several fixes that the entire team needs to just fix instead of adding in broken content. 

nearly 99.9% of the content, animations, loot etc are broken..Lets use the Zombies for example...........!!!!......