The Psychology of Understanding Alpha

[xalienax 621]

DayZ SA is my first Alpha experience and wow, what a ride. I love it! New updates (stable as well as exp) are like Christmas to me. I understand the concept of pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release. Not all that complicated, very cut and dry imho.

 

I run a community with a few thousand people in it. I, as well as my staff team of administrators (they all have a high level of education) and moderators deal with certain issues on a daily basis. Needless to say, we see a lot of issues. Some issues are new, most of them aren't new.

 

A recurring issue I can't seem to grasp is: alpha development related complaints. They all know its alpha, but at the same time its like they don't. There is a perpetual state of forced ignorance.

 

I know a certain pre-alpha tester here that just so happens to have a degree in Sociology. I posed this question to him. His answer was: they payed money for SA and have inherent expectations.

 

Is this really the case? Despite warnings and detailed info plastered all over the place, all of which gets ignored?

 

Surely there has to be more to it than that? Is the current generation consumer really that simple, surely not?

 

I want to learn and understand this phenomenon. Looking forward to a healthy deduction here.

Indeed.

 

Look as subscription based games! they feel a genuine right to -attack- anyone associated with the company if sever maitenance. is extended. even people who have nothing to do with maitenance. In many of thier minds "I pay a monthly fee to your company. you all work for ME. i am ENTITLED to 24/7 SERVICE NOW!!!"

[hekeetsu 86]

Dayz I have what, 400-500h

Actually, you are right about no skills to master or new stuff to learn! But think about it, you have 400-500 hours in, and thats a lot of hours for the money. Probably a lot more than you have in many other games?

[ZomboWTF 527]

DayZ SA is my first Alpha experience and wow, what a ride. I love it! New updates (stable as well as exp) are like Christmas to me. I understand the concept of pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release. Not all that complicated, very cut and dry imho.

 

I run a community with a few thousand people in it. I, as well as my staff team of administrators (they all have a high level of education) and moderators deal with certain issues on a daily basis. Needless to say, we see a lot of issues. Some issues are new, most of them aren't new.

 

A recurring issue I can't seem to grasp is: alpha development related complaints. They all know its alpha, but at the same time its like they don't. There is a perpetual state of forced ignorance.

 

I know a certain pre-alpha tester here that just so happens to have a degree in Sociology. I posed this question to him. His answer was: they payed money for SA and have inherent expectations.

 

Is this really the case? Despite warnings and detailed info plastered all over the place, all of which gets ignored?

 

Surely there has to be more to it than that? Is the current generation consumer really that simple, surely not?

 

I want to learn and understand this phenomenon. Looking forward to a healthy deduction here.

 

People always expect something for their money, if they see something they think should be better, they complain about it, because they payed for it, they feel entitled to do so

 

Even if they put 200 hours into a game, they give the game a bad rating, because "it is buggy, boring etc.",

but at the same time throw twice as much money at a game that nets them 8 hours of mediocre boring shooter fun, which they never play again

 

People also have an inherit way of concentrating on the bad things: Sure, yesterday you had an hourlong session with your friends playing Dayz, and today you died with your gear due to a bug

what do you think is more proabable? someone writing "Had a very fun session yesterday with my friends in this game, it's awesome" into the forum, or "The stairs bug is annoying, fix it now!"

[Avant-Garde 229]

Actually, you are right about no skills to master or new stuff to learn! But think about it, you have 400-500 hours in, and thats a lot of hours for the money. Probably a lot more than you have in many other games?

Yeah man, tbh, reading again my post I think I was way to harsh with this game. You see, its totally worthy it, even with kinda low replay value its a goddamn fun and creative game, its simply not "more of the same" and that by itself its a huge thing in my opinion.

 

When I said it wasn't worthy it, I was thinking on DayZ mod you know, that offers a better experience (at the moment at least) costing less then Standalone. But you are correct, this is one of the games I spent more time on, its one of my favorite games indeed. Maybe that makes my expectations high as well you know, I love DayZ, I want this game to be fucking good and not " generic zombie survival game nº3123". DayZ has SO MUCH potential its unbelievable tbh, I would be really sad if all this potential is not explored as it can be.

Edited August 24, 2015 by Avant-Garde

[mercules 1290]

This game has been in alpha for 2 years which is longer than a lot of games full development.

 

1. No it's not, most games take 3 to 5 years to develop if they are A titles. Some take longer.

 

2. They changed the scope from, "Let's make it so people can play DayZ without buying ARMA III, they can just buy DayZ and have all those basics there." Basically including the ARMA II engine with the Mod built in; to "Lets actually redesign the engine to make it do what we always wanted it to do so that this game is more than just a kludged together mod of a war simulator." Zombie AI is hugely different from the Mod. Zombie animations and graphics are so much better than the mod. The weapon systems and melee systems are much improved from the mod. The health systems didn't really exist in the mod in any fashion near what SA has. 

 

3. The have to swap out pieces for the new engine they decided to build. Every time they do they ARE going to introduce bugs, some huge. Because we are playing the game actively while they are doing this they can't leave some of those bugs in the game. One of the devs(I think it was Hicks) recently did an interview explaining that very issue. In a normal development you can leave a bug in that crashes the server when you do X, Y, Z and tell the testers and others "Don't do X, Y, Z just like that until this issue is addressed." With the public playing it you can't let that go into your stable build and you can barely let it go into the experimental build. Some people would spend all day doing X, Y, Z to bring down servers over and over and over just for the joy they get griefing people. So instead of putting out a warning and fixing it when that area of the code was going to be swapped or worked on anyway, you have to go in and track it down and fix it then... 

 

This wastes development cycles and thus time meaning that because we can play it actively now while it develops, it will take LONGER to develop. The nice thing is that we can give them feedback that influences decisions that might have been hard to reverse later on after they had built the majority of the systems so hopefully we will get a better game in the end. 

[xalienax 621]

2. They changed the scope from, "Let's make it so people can play DayZ without buying ARMA III, they can just buy DayZ and have all those basics there." Basically including the ARMA II engine with the Mod built in; to "Lets actually redesign the engine to make it do what we always wanted it to do so that this game is more than just a kludged together mod of a war simulator." Zombie AI is hugely different from the Mod. Zombie animations and graphics are so much better than the mod. The weapon systems and melee systems are much improved from the mod. The health systems didn't really exist in the mod in any fashion near what SA has. 

This right here is what has angered many of us. A crap ton of us bought in on the first day it went live on steam- Expecting dayZ Mod 2.0 with bug fixes and better anticheat.. maybe some refinements.

 

Im still not convinced that re-inventing the wheel was the direction to go. I feel a lot of the vanilla mod's 'feel' has been lost with the "add all the things" explosion. i would have happily paid 59.99 for a refined version of the 2012 mod made less vulnerable to game destroying cheats.

 

I've completely stopped playing SA because Right now i basically have zero percent faith that dayZ SA will be the game i had wanted- at least until modding comes along. A lot of my gripes (and it's not just me) are a result in the change of scope and design direction. maybe it will all work out in the end.. maybe some 'legacy' style mod will give me what i want.. i don't know yet. but for right now more cities and more clunk do not make the game better. Having weapons stats arbitrarily modified by attachments like this is some CoD/BF unlock tree that is aiming for balance annoys me.

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

I wonder if a part of the issue isn't just the current wave of pre-alpha grab-and-run games. Maybe people think they need to light a fire under the devs' asses to ensure the game gets finished and they don't just walk with the cash and start a new project?

Weird way to look at it given that it's BE and they've already out-lasted a large number of pre-alpha bullshit deals.

[Calvin Candie 189]

1. No it's not, most games take 3 to 5 years to develop if they are A titles. Some take longer.

2. They changed the scope from, "Let's make it so people can play DayZ without buying ARMA III, they can just buy DayZ and have all those basics there." Basically including the ARMA II engine with the Mod built in; to "Lets actually redesign the engine to make it do what we always wanted it to do so that this game is more than just a kludged together mod of a war simulator." Zombie AI is hugely different from the Mod. Zombie animations and graphics are so much better than the mod. The weapon systems and melee systems are much improved from the mod. The health systems didn't really exist in the mod in any fashion near what SA has.

3. The have to swap out pieces for the new engine they decided to build. Every time they do they ARE going to introduce bugs, some huge. Because we are playing the game actively while they are doing this they can't leave some of those bugs in the game. One of the devs(I think it was Hicks) recently did an interview explaining that very issue. In a normal development you can leave a bug in that crashes the server when you do X, Y, Z and tell the testers and others "Don't do X, Y, Z just like that until this issue is addressed." With the public playing it you can't let that go into your stable build and you can barely let it go into the experimental build. Some people would spend all day doing X, Y, Z to bring down servers over and over and over just for the joy they get griefing people. So instead of putting out a warning and fixing it when that area of the code was going to be swapped or worked on anyway, you have to go in and track it down and fix it then...

This wastes development cycles and thus time meaning that because we can play it actively now while it develops, it will take LONGER to develop. The nice thing is that we can give them feedback that influences decisions that might have been hard to reverse later on after they had built the majority of the systems so hopefully we will get a better game in the end.

Well if that is the case and we, the public, are slowing down the development as the team has to iron out huge bugs just so we can play anyways broken version, then close the alpha for public!

Game is baaad anyway might as well speed up the development.

[byrgesen 1341]

Well if that is the case and we, the public, are slowing down the development as the team has to iron out huge bugs just so we can play anyways broken version, then close the alpha for public!

Game is baaad anyway might as well speed up the development.

 

I dont believe closing a public alpha would speed up development, on any game tbh.

A public alpha/beta is a VERY strong and resourcefull tool for a developer and the way Bohemia is using it with DayZ (and did with Arma III) is a great way of doing it.

Everything is tested must faster, bugs are found much faster and ideas are developed much faster, during open development, because thousands of people pitch in.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

Yep. About 3 weeks ago Stranded Deep went from unity 4 to unity 5.

 

 

That game is amazing. Schwabam gifted it to me since he had an extra copy. Very promising. 

 

Interstellar Marines went through the same transition. Apparently Unity 5 has some tech that helps facilitate better CPU utilization for more than 2 cores so it was a big deal for most devs to get the chance to offer a solid performance increase through migrating to the new version.

 

On the topic of the OP: 

 

This is the first Early Access title I have ever participated in. I have one year of college under my belt majoring in Game Design (not programming). I have played games regularly since I was 5 years old and my dad bought a Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog. I have owned nearly every major console since 1995 including most handhelds and I have dabbled in PC gaming, switching to primary PC only last year, since around age 8.

 

Even I occasionally find myself feeling a bit impatient with this game and I KNOW THAT IT'S IRRATIONAL. More than most even. I am completely aware of how this dev process works and I see nothing amiss or majorly throwing up red flags. I still have to work hard (and am mostly successful) at keeping my tongue in check. 

 

I attribute it to the fact that this game has a massive schism, dividing the playerbase fairly decisively in two. There are those that look at this game as another vehicle for PVP. There are those that look at this game as a zombie apocalypse sim. To my mind, using this game as another MP shooter severely cheapens and undermines what this game is and has the potential to be. Shooters are almost literally a dime a dozen. The genre is so saturated that a person could buy a new one every day for years. Zombie apocalypse sims are few and most are knock offs of DayZ. This is the game that all of us who watched Dawn of the Dead and thought "yeah that sucks, but that would be kinda fun too" have been waiting years and years to play.

 

Every time I see ANOTHER Youtube video that Hicks puts in the Status Reports showcasing what is not only arguably the weakest aspect of this game technologically speaking, but also the least important aspect of the game as far as progress within the industry, I have to prevent myself from raging a little. Every time I see another post about PVP in Elektro, Cherno, Berezino...every time I get KoS'ed without a weapon in hand, posing no threat to the attacker whatsoever...every time I see things that accentuate and proliferate the thing that I like the least about this game, I mentally throw up in my mouth a little bit. (For the record: with zero threat from other players, this game would suffer dramatically and I fully acknowledge that.)

 

So bringing this whole thought process full circle, every time the devs do something that, whether by design or simply by circumstance, makes it easier or caters more to PVP only gameplay, I struggle to keep myself from feeling let down and must go through a process wherein I remind myself that "this is alpha" and so on.

 

For example, the current stable build: nothing to be found for people who want a zombie apocalypse sim. Same thing with 0.58. I'm already anxious for 0.59 simply because there is a slight chance zombies will come back.

 

I still don't feel like I made my point well. This is almost too complex a topic to talk about it in text. This is almost worth a Google Hangout among many of us to really have a deep conversation over.

Edited August 25, 2015 by ColdAtrophy

[Coheed_IV 381]

I dont believe closing a public alpha would speed up development, on any game tbh.

A public alpha/beta is a VERY strong and resourcefull tool for a developer and the way Bohemia is using it with DayZ (and did with Arma III) is a great way of doing it.

Everything is tested must faster, bugs are found much faster and ideas are developed much faster, during open development, because thousands of people pitch in.

1. It's not going to close. 2. the A3 alpha was much further along, more of the typical supposed "public alpha" that's closer to a beta. 3. Doing the public alpha IS slowing them down a ton, and they have said as much. But, your right it is a very strong tool, and probably the right decision just alone for server optimization and networking.

Edited August 25, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[byrgesen 1341]

1. It's not going to close. 2. the A3 alpha was much further along, more of the typical supposed "public alpha" that's closer to a beta. 3. Doing the public alpha IS slowing them down a ton, and they have said as much. But, your right it is a very strong tool, and probably the right decision just alone for server optimization and networking.

 

I know its not going to close and i was there at Arma III alpha, got 1200+ hours in that awsome game :)

It might be slowing down development, because they find things they didnt expect to find or they come up with new ideas because the old ones only worked as a theory but not in reality, can see that happening, but overall for a game like DayZ, i think EA is the best way to go, because they are so very "new" at developing games like this and wasnt a big company at the time of development start.

They are bigger now and have alot more resources, but that would never have happened without early acces, in the first place. They would proberly still be a very small team of less then 20 people working on the game, instead of the 80+ now (as far as i remember at least).

Does that make it better or worse? I dont know, but it certaintly gave them more options and more resources during development.

 

Look at a game like Killing Floor 2. That EA is a disaster, IMHO, in the sense that they dont even need an early acces program because they havent released any updates in over 5 months, because they want to "polish" them before they release them. Theres a ton of communication to the public, but they arent relasing anything that might be broken.

In my world thats not very clever, and completely defeats the putpose of early acces, but it could give them more silence to develop the game they thought out in the beginning.

 

Bohemia does things in a much different way and i really prefer it that way. I loved the development branch af Arma III during the alpha and beta, it had almost daily updates, both big and small, but it was a joy to be part of and experience the process. DayZ is almost similar, but they are moving towards that model. At least according to the devblogs, they want to focus more on experimental and have longer time between stable updates, which is exactly what they should do IMHO.

[OrLoK 16185]

Hello there

 

Ive bought into several Early Access games and even I get irritated by the lack of new "stuffs" in some games.

 

When one spends a lot of time at the keyboard the time does seem to drag.

 

Also, it can be frustrating to see if other games come out in the meantime as they often appear to be more *complete*.

 

BUT, I make sure I know what a project is before I buy into it.

 

Everytime I dont research I get burnt. (I still mash that "buy" button too quickly sometimes), so on the whole I know Im going to have to wait a while to get a return on my cash.

 

I see it as an investment for the future when I may not have as much spare pennies.

 

Dont forget those games though that purport to be in a beta or whatever but are almost  "gold", just advertised as such to get sales before a full  public release.

 

I can see why folk get grumpy, I just think a little more investigation on their behalf would reap dividends.

 

lastly, people LOVE a conspiracy and to be able to uncover a scam is something many would love to do.

 

Rgds

 

LoK

[mercules 1290]

This right here is what has angered many of us. A crap ton of us bought in on the first day it went live on steam- Expecting dayZ Mod 2.0 with bug fixes and better anticheat.. maybe some refinements.

 

Im still not convinced that re-inventing the wheel was the direction to go. I feel a lot of the vanilla mod's 'feel' has been lost with the "add all the things" explosion. i would have happily paid 59.99 for a refined version of the 2012 mod made less vulnerable to game destroying cheats.

 

O-kay.....

To do that you would have to remove all the scripts that the mod used to do things and replace them with built in code.... so some things were going to HAVE to be rewritten. Updated means probably updating to at least the ARMA III engine.. but that still wouldn't have fit the needs for an updated DayZ.

 

Well if that is the case and we, the public, are slowing down the development as the team has to iron out huge bugs just so we can play anyways broken version, then close the alpha for public!

Game is baaad anyway might as well speed up the development.

 

The game is actually a lot of fun through most of the builds. What most of you "It's not going fast enough!" people need to do is find something else as well to do. I'm playing ARK, MWO, and Diablo 3 along with DayZ SA. Heck I'm playing EpochMod as well from time to time or Wasteland. Thus my gaming life doesn't revolve around what is in the current build.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

FrustrAtion =\= failure to accept alpha. Imo perceived product direction is more important than current build performance but hicks and his team still seem to have an eye on the acceptance of current build, as evidenced in the .58 moving forward video/PowerPoint recently released. This is probably to do with trying to provide minimum standard of function and performance throughout the development cycle.

Also I think that early access models contain as much risk, if not more, probability for buyers remorse than pre-order, where the information is generally there or available for research, or reviews are to appear shortly after release as compared to longer periods of uncertainty in EA due to work in progress.

Edited August 26, 2015 by q.S Sachiel

[grimsonfart 49]

Well let's just say this; broken promises (this is not a development of the mod, this is something completely revamped), slow development (because they want to add so much on an engine barely able to stand on it's own feet), constant delays, a lot of fundamental issues still not fixed after over 2 years of development (performance, zombies (?), lag, hackers to some extent). The mod (and it's mods) has for some reason much more content than SA even though it's being developed by professionals (yeah sure, quality is better but then quantity suffers). 

 

Lots of bugs is just the surface and since this is EA it's nothing to complain about, the rest however is worthy of critique... Sure will be a fine game when it gets released, but let's not get ahead of ourselves and stick to right now

 

(SA has kind of turned me into a hater sadly since i played a bit too much of the mod and expected a bit too much out of this but trying to keep this as honest as possible)

Edited August 30, 2015 by grimsonfart

[eno 1049]

It's almost as if this whole development process is "the" game for many of us. 

 

I mean... really. We're all going to squirt out the end of this thing and suddenly we're going to be faced with a finished game. What on earth are we going to do then? Many of us will have been playing it for years, looking forward to dramatic changes and introductions of new functions and features every other week or so until everything is finished. 

 

Then what? 

 

Am I investing all my time now so that I have a polished game that I can sink another thousand hours into? I'm not sure that I am. In fact, I think I'll cross the finish line and throw my computer out the window. 

 

But I will enjoy the journey... well- some of it. Okay- most of it! 

[xalienax 621]

It's almost as if this whole development process is "the" game for many of us. 

 

I mean... really. We're all going to squirt out the end of this thing and suddenly we're going to be faced with a finished game. What on earth are we going to do then? Many of us will have been playing it for years, looking forward to dramatic changes and introductions of new functions and features every other week or so until everything is finished. 

 

Then what? 

 

Am I investing all my time now so that I have a polished game that I can sink another thousand hours into? I'm not sure that I am. In fact, I think I'll cross the finish line and throw my computer out the window. 

 

But I will enjoy the journey... well- some of it. Okay- most of it! 

This was one of the many 'dangers of early access' topics covered by several youtubers and bloggers. There is a very real risk that if you go public with your product to early you run a risk of it going final release with little novelty or 'new' experiences left to hold the interest of the player base as many will have seen it change little by little over time, done everything there is to do a thousand times over and burnt out by the time it goes full-release.

 

Lets be honest, they game isn't going to become 'brand new' to someone whose been playing the entire alpha/beta when release hits. it'll just be one more patch, one more 'mile stone' reached.

 

i can see many folks getting to release day and being like "hmmh.. well nothing really new or exciting.. k thnx bye"

 

-Edited for too many typos

Edited August 31, 2015 by Sovetsky

[pilgrim* 3514]

..//..

I posed this question to him. His answer was: they payed money for SA and have inherent expectations.

..//..

I want to learn and understand this phenomenon. Looking forward to a healthy deduction here.

..//..

 

OK -  then tell your friend he's stuck in the Keynesian view of economy (check the neo-Keynsian world, dude, it's not working), but like many folk he hasn't much grasped the subject.

Remind him about Giffengoods

Giffengoods are things you pay money for because you don't have expectations (definitely you don't have the "expectations" your friend implies when he uses that word)

 

ps (no offence) expectations have to be "inherent" else they are not expectations, you can't have a "non-inherent expectation" you can only have an expectation that has no relation with its object: this is equally true if you pay money, find it free, or it drops from the sky.

 

so "inherent" is a catch-all word - in context it could mean "justified" or it could mean "ridiculous" or "drug-crazed" or "statistically predictable" or "legally enforceable" or "totally inane". Unfortunately your friend doesn't clarify, he plays safe.

 

but lets not get into complexities Check "Giffengoods ["Giffen good" wikipedia for ONE type of example, there are others, some economically very different] -  Giffen proposed them to point out that Keynes hadn't fully grasped economics; that his theory was, and is, incomplete.

 

Because your mate is a Sociologist I forgive him, he's using terms in their "common usage" but he's doing it in order to (seemingly)  describe their common usage, which is not possible - so natch, he's not able to explain anything at all, he can only repeat the standard common things that folk say, when often those folk have little or no idea why they say those things.

It's a problem with Sociologists.

 

I'll bet he enjoys games-testing (to relax, Sociologists need that). I know a senior Air France pilot who tested many games for the Gameboy between flights, he really thought it was fun.

lol - as for the Air France Captain - that's definitely got nothing to do with money.

 

xx

Edited August 31, 2015 by pilgrim

[xalienax 621]

OK -  then tell your friend he's stuck in the Keynesian view of economy (check the neo-Keynsian world, dude, it's not working), but like many folk he hasn't much grasped the subject.

Remind him about Giffengoods

Giffengoods are things you pay money for because you don't have expectations (definitely you don't have the "expectations" your friend implies when he uses that word)

 

ps (no offence) expectations have to be "inherent" else they are not expectations, you can't have a "non-inherent expectation" you can only have an expectation that has no relation with its object: this is equally true if you pay money, find it free, or it drops from the sky.

 

so "inherent" is a catch-all word - in context it could mean "justified" or it could mean "ridiculous" or "drug-crazed" or "statistically predictable" or "legally enforceable" or "totally inane". Unfortunately your friend doesn't clarify, he plays safe.

 

but lets not get into complexities Check "Giffengoods ["Giffen good" wikipedia for ONE type of example, there are others, some economically very different] -  Giffen proposed them to point out that Keynes hadn't fully grasped economics; that his theory was, and is, incomplete.

 

Because your mate is a Sociologist I forgive him, he's using terms in their "common usage" but he's doing it in order to (seemingly)  describe their common usage, which is not possible - so natch, he's not able to explain anything at all, he can only repeat the standard common things that folk say, when often those folk have little or no idea why they say those things.

It's a problem with Sociologists.

 

I'll bet he enjoys games-testing (to relax, Sociologists need that). I know a senior Air France pilot who tested many games for the Gameboy between flights, he really thought it was fun.

lol - as for the Air France Captain - that's definitely got nothing to do with money.

 

xx

altho i don't have any formal education on either sociology or economics, I do think at some fundamental level people feel entitled to some 'value' for their money. as in no amount of warning or disclaimers will ever make substandard 'okay'.

 

'I paid, therefore i'm entitled' mentality in a nutshell.

 

I know I'm guilty of it myself. I bought in basically on day 1 before the scope got expanded. when we were all still expecting mod with some optimization and better security. I don't agree with many design choices they have made since expanding the scope of the project, and do as a result feel 'cheated' despite all the warnings i had to go past to play this alpha.

[Greaves 131]

i can see many folks getting to release day and being like "hmmh.. well nothing really new or exciting.. k thnx bye"

 

I agree, though it'll depend on the development speed from now on as well. The game is pretty fucken shitty at the moment, because there are no zombies.

If they manage to keep the alpha as terrible as it is now until they hit beta, the change will be bigger. And if the beta is shitty as well, release will be all the more sweet. Unless release will be shitty too, in which case ''k tnx bye'' applies again.

 

Not shitty would be: No lag/desync, hordes of scary zombies with decent AI, all the features (base building, loads of different vehicles) minimised clunkyness/solid controls (without loosing the realism), balanced loot, little to no hackers, etc.

 

So message to devs: Keep the alpha and beta disgustingly horrible to play, and release a shiny well functioning game with all the shit implemented to keep the biggest possible playerbase.

 

Edited August 31, 2015 by Greaves

[ZomboWTF 527]

Then what? 

 

Modding, my friend, modding will be the new "new content" everyone will wait for

 

just like there were a bazillion mods for source engine games, DayZ will have dozens of maps, with different mods and weapons, everything easily downloadable because of the Steam Players Workshop

Can't wait for modding, Namalsk will be awesome for 20-30 players

[pilgrim* 3514]

altho i don't have any formal education on either sociology or economics, I do think at some fundamental level people feel entitled to some 'value' for their money. as in no amount of warning or disclaimers will ever make substandard 'okay'.

 

'I paid, therefore i'm entitled' mentality in a nutshell.

 

I know I'm guilty of it myself. I bought in basically on day 1 before the scope got expanded. when we were all still expecting mod with some optimization and better security. I don't agree with many design choices they have made since expanding the scope of the project, and do as a result feel 'cheated' despite all the warnings i had to go past to play this alpha.

 

Well with no formal education in those things - you still say it better and clearer than the guy I was quoting.

 

People often buy games and then decide its not a good game, so it stays on their shelf with the other games but they don't play it. I know plenty of folk with 20 or more games, if you ask them about one "Game X" they just say " nah, I dont play, it's crap " - but they don't get mad and write about it to the game forum for months. They bought it, they don't like it much, they don't play it, end of story. Or maybe they buy it and play for a couple of weeks and then drop it and move on, but that's normal and it stays on their shelf covered in dust but they don't write to sound off every week for a year or two.

 

They'd be happy if they bought a 'finished game', decided it was crap, and threw it away. No problem - because a lot of games ARE crap.

 

So my guess is - people think they are buying the development process as well as buying the game. Like - "if you pay the money you become an official Alpha Tester". Lots of normal gamers would like to test games (it's romantic and cool, right?) but to get in to a real standard limited alpha test you have to go through some hoops and be fairly serious. Here it seems as if you can be an Alpha Tester just by buying this cheap game - they think that on the box it says < Your tester status is included as a free bonus in the package ! >

 

- even if that's not the way it works.

 

So IMO - the discontent is about the player's status as a TESTER - when they say "I don't like this, it should be different" they expect the development team to jump. THAT'S where they think their money's gone.

 

 

*

ps - I hear what you're saying about the Mod. I think that was my expectation too = 'DayZ Mod without hackers' . So, moving all the software decisions from the home PC to the server stopped those hacks - but brought up the other new problem we know about (all about lag and synch and server processing capacity, right?). If the game today with all the additions was 'put back' to run from your PC instead of from the server, it would run just as good as the Mod (better in fact), and we could have all the old style zombies, BUT, we'd get the great swarm of game-destroying mega-hacks back again.For me the only real problem with DayZ SA is the bottleneck between the server and the player's screen. It's the ONE serious problem. How can you exchange the info from server->PC->server to deal with 50 zombies in one location in real time? If you can do that you can do everything else.

 

Is there any other way this can be done, that a dedicated BI core team is working on ATM?

 

I liked those old crazy zombies with crap tracking, that chased you around in zigzags, and might turn up 10 or 20 at a time. Remember shooting off a weapon in an apartment building and all the zombies in the area started coming in the ground floor and up the stairs ? eight or ten of them on the stairs and 10 more on the way - wow..

 

Need to look at pc<->server bandwidth (different approaches), or more powerful servers, or some kind of hybrid solution (radical!).

 

xx

Edited August 31, 2015 by pilgrim

[sushimaster 6]

I want to learn and understand this phenomenon. Looking forward to a healthy deduction here.

This phenomenon you speak of, is known as a temper tantrum.  people throw hissy fits because they never learned how not to.  they will come up with a any excuse, just to promulgate their  boohoos. And that's okay actually... it's all part of the process.

Edited August 31, 2015 by sushimaster

[BlinkingRiki182 54]

and I see nothing amiss or majorly throwing up red flags.

I'd have to respectfully disagree.

The major mistake with this project was that Rocket didn't wait for the Arma3 engine to come along. I agree that DayZ SA is a great game and all but people are expecting much more than what the engine can deliver, imho.

Let's talk about red flags - the major aspect in which this iteration of the RV engine is lacking is the net code. The result is a clunky experience when interacting with the world - sometimes players might be lying on the ground but they are actually crouching when seen by others, a player might be hitting a wall when running but he's glitching through the wall in someone else's perspective, dead bodies might shoot you down, trying to jump over a fence is a key-bashing fiesta, trying to pull out your gun is also a key-bashing fiesta, zombies hit you through walls, interacting with items is impossible sometimes, ghosting issues etc. Sure, the game is in alpha but that doesn't mean that they wouldn't have fixed those glaring problems if they could and I do not believe even for a second that they have shifted all their attention to adding content. Those issues are there for ages and the fact that they've improved some of these means one thing - they are working on it but they can't nail it. That's why I believe that what we see now in terms of responsiveness and interaction is pretty close to what we'll get in the end product. The pace with which they're fixing those engine problems is the red flag.

I'm not bashing the devs or the game, I think they are doing great considering the fact that they work with an inherently "broken" engine. I just want to warn people that expect a new melee system or a major change in how the engine handles movement, shooting etc. that it's not gonna happen (imo at least). Those that expect a high number of Zs will probably be disappointed too.

We could've had a better game if the devs were working with the Arma3 engine, no doubt about that. The development process would've been way faster. That are just my 2cents on that. I might be wrong, time will tell.