Status Report - 09 Sept

[boneboys 7988]

Note: Our Community Manager is out of the office with the flu, we'll return to the established Status Report format next week - appreciate 
everyones patience!
 
Greetings Survivors!
I hope all of you that we had the privilege to meet up with at PAX Prime have recovered, and are ready for some more Chernarus Survival, because we certainly are!
While in Seattle for the Penny Arcade Expo I spent a good amount of time live casting from both the Twitch, and Astro stages. We discussed everything from the newly launched .58 update, to upcoming Community Combat Scrums, the Anti-Cheat Bounty initiative, and even the Survivor GameZ joining the Bohemia Interactive portfolio.
For those interested in a recap, DayZ Content Creator "Septic Falcon" was kind enough to put together a quick recap over at

- Head over, check it out, and maybe drop him a sub!
 

 

 
Now that 0.58 has hit stable, we've been keeping an eye on the Official Forums and Feedback Tracker. Huge thanks to all of you who were exemplary testers and filed outstanding tickets giving us strong repros on the critical issues not caught on experimental. In addition to the known issues, the community helped us identify issues with the cleanup of certain items (eg: some firearms, etc). 
Internally, while development on 0.59 is ongoing - a small portion of the team has forked off to work on a potential hotfix for 0.58 Stable addressing:
- Session Lost / Connection Issues when around large/medium player camps
- Certain items not being cleaned up by Lifetime (Age) cleanup
Once we have a build we feel is ready for larger testing, it will be pushed to the Experimental Branch. The build will have to check out after a minimum of 2 days testing - and then will be eligible for a push to Stable. (Cross your fingers!)
As 0.58 Stable continues, we've closely monitored loot saturation and dispersal. The average operating range for item quantity as of the time of the launch of 0.58 was approximately 21,000 items. With the initial release, iteration and configuration was still needed on a good deal of items within the central economy control. Below, you'll see the dispersion of items three days after the launch of 0.58 to stable. (Public server, High population)

Several days ago, we completed a gradual configuration and increase of loot quantity. Tools, clothing, survival resources, and such were increased incrementally - bringing the average resting quantity of loot across Chernarus to 26,000 items. Weapons, non perishable food, and military gear retained their configured numbers from Experimental Branch. We'll continue to iterate this as 0.58 is ongoing, and the pending hotfix addressing the cleanup of specific items will continue to make the survival experience in Chernarus engaging.
With TwitchCon coming up at the end of this month in San Francisco, we're looking forward to talking about Aerial Transport, Contaminated Terrain, and more - so be on the lookout for specific information on when/where to watch that!

Lastly, this weekend we will be trying out our first Community Combat Scrum. We've extended invitations to the first evangelists we'll be trialing the program with. The following community members will be joining us this weekend:

Break71
xSmak
Deadly Slob
Respawnonme
M1NDR
IwinUloseLOL

The results of the scrum will be included in next weeks Status Report, and assuming the program results are positive we'll start looking into expanding it to evangelists of the Survivalist type gameplay as well.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

[boneboys 7988]

Note: Our Community Manager is out of the office with the flu, we'll return to the established Status Report format next week - appreciate
everyone's patience!

 

Keep it clean, keep it tidy.

[scriptfactory 620]

1. What is the "Community Combat Scrum"?

What is the selection criteria for the "evangelists"? Are these community elected players or just random streamers?

What influence will these players have on the game direction?

What is the criteria for success or failure of this program? Is it objective or subjective?

[q.S Sachiel 470]

Does this mean that DayZ is progressing along a more PVP oriented vein, and if so, how do the developers expect this avenue of development to affect the production process as a whole?

[Noctoras 409]

emuthread has posted in the other thread on the subject

 

"I'm pretty sure that the Community Combat Scrum is an organizational tool being implemented to further streamline the game as an open-world PVP shooter, based on the name, and the nature of the streamers listed.  At a glance, it seems like pandering to what the prevalent playstyle has devolved into with SA in its current incomplete state.  It seems somewhat unnecessary, as PVP is pretty much the  acknowledged dominant playstyle to date.  I noticed that Hicks also mentioned plans to organize a Survivalist Scrum.  This sounds about as pointless as the current two-party system of US politics; especially when the the chosen terminology is "evangelists."  So naturally I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to find out what these terms actually mean, both semantically, and in terms of long-term gameplay development concerns.  For now, it looks like we have just enough information to speculate wildly on what it might mean."

 

 

And I so hope this does not hold true. That said, KOS has become the all prevalent playstyle anyway, so there is little that can be damaged anymore *shrugs* ....

[VahidkinG 192]

I don't really know why there is so much confusion about this, if you watch this re-cap video you will have all this questions answered i guess. 

They are going to talk with people representing different areas of the game (like this streamers here, Devs think they represent Combat aspect of the game, because they are doing combats as the main goal in this game their streams)using google hang-out and use their suggestions and concerns to improve that aspect of the game.

 

they are doing this weekly, so this weeks talk is about the Combat playstyle, next week might be about Role-play playstyle and different streamers which represent RP playstyle  (my favorite, Mr.Moon). 

 

so basically we are gonna see Community X Scrums from now on (X would be a specific play style)

Edited September 10, 2015 by VahidkinG

[Noctoras 409]

we'll just have to wait and see I guess

[themightylc 56]

I'm a little confused - I hear all those amazing things Hicks talks about in this and the last conference video and cannot help but wonder: Is Beta at the end of 2015 or early 2016 still a goal? Beta usually means feature-complete, right? Measured against the pacing we are used to and the fact that sometimes things that "will be fixed in a few days" take weeks or months, and that we have not ever seen a glimps of camps, more vehicles, better animations, let alone the new renderer in action it feels rather unlikely to me that 1.0 should be in our hands before the end of 2016.

 

Sorry, but does this feel almost a little Molyneux-esque or is that just me? A few short videos from the internal testing builds that show at least SOME of this stuff actually being worked on would restore my faith by quite a lot i guess. 

Edited September 10, 2015 by TheMightyLC

[OrLoK 16182]

I'm a little confused - I hear all those amazing things Hicks talks about in this and the last conference video and cannot help but wonder: Is Beta at the end of 2015 or early 2016 still a goal? Beta usually means feature-complete, right? Measured against the pacing we are used to and the fact that sometimes things that "will be fixed in a few days" take weeks or months, and that we have not ever seen a glimps of camps, more vehicles, better animations, let alone the new renderer in action it feels rather unlikely to me that 1.0 should be in our hands before the end of 2016.

 

Sorry, but does this feel almost a little Molyneux-esque or is that just me? A few short videos from the internal testing builds that show at least SOME of this stuff actually being worked on would restore my faith by quite a lot i guess. 

Hello there

 

I wouldnt worry too much.

 

That said Id rather have a great game in 2018 than a broken one in 2016.

 

Rgds

 

LoK

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

 

1. What is the "Community Combat Scrum"?
2. What is the selection criteria for the "evangelists"? Are these community elected players or just random streamers?
3. What influence will these players have on the game direction?
4. What is the criteria for success or failure of this program? Is it objective or subjective?

 

 

 

1. The scrum was described as an idea for chatroom pow wow sessions used by another developer to work more closely with testers from different play styles to try to work out issues and features related to that style.

 

2. Twitch and youtube popularity are probably one criteria and maybe some preference is being given to people Hicks plays with.

 

3. They will probably mostly address bugs and offer ideas for features. I doubt they will have a huge impact on core features but I guess it's possible.

 

4. I would assume that if Hicks finds these chats to be productive from a dev stand point he would consider them a success and continue on with them.

 

 

-snip-

The results of the scrum will be included in next weeks Status Report, and assuming the program results are positive we'll start looking into expanding it to evangelists of the Survivalist type gameplay as well.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

 

*5. I want to know what Hicks considers a "Survivalist". Is he using this term to describe Hermits/Mountain men? Is this his term for what I call a "zombie hunter"?

[gannon46 788]

aslong as we don't end up with a toxic community like another game i know that starts with an H its ruled by streamers the devs cater to streamers on that game give them special perks like servers and they have even quit working on the survival portion for a stupid ass streaming event. Like i said i don't see the dev's here doing this they tend to give a shit about the game which is why i don't worry as much. And i must be getting old because i think this streamer shit is fucking stupid and they should never have the ears of a dev i don't care if they have 50,000 viewers they can go make there own game i say, all the survival games are doing this i don't understand does the success of H's BR really that big of a deal. and i could care less if they finish the game this year theres other games coming out that are neat they should just take there time and make it the best they can.

Edited September 10, 2015 by gannon46

[themightylc 56]

 

That said Id rather have a great game in 2018 than a broken one in 2016.

 

 

That's what I think most people want, but I also seriously think that 2018 would be so late that the game will have so little impact left that it will disappear into obsurity very fast. Just my opinion. I can tell for sure none of my friends - myself included - will have much DayZ drive left in 3 Years from now. We're almost burnt out as it is.

 

The question remains though if and why 2016 is an unrealistic target window for a release. 

 

Just a fun fact: In the previous presentation Hicks talked about having played about 5.400 hrs. If he's talking about Standalone since EA that would close to 8 hours every single day. Even when we talk pre-EA that would be 6 extra months if I am not mistaken, so still over 6 hrs a day for 7days a week. I think that must be a little exaggerated, otherwise I don't know when he sleeps and actually works inbetween ;)

Or maybe he meant the mod? IF so - how does THAT help our game ;)?

Edited September 10, 2015 by TheMightyLC

[JiJi (DayZ) 223]

Dean Hall wasn't a modder at any given time? See what his DayZ mod did to ArmA 2 !

Modders are content makers in the true sense of the term.

 

Sure it may turn technic and not as sexy to "scrum" with low-charismatic nerds than with conniving vip streamers/youtubers.

Well it depends if you want that to lead to some game improvements or game marketing...

Edited September 10, 2015 by JiJi

[SMoss 2101]

1. The scrum was described as an idea for chatroom pow wow sessions used by another developer to work more closely with testers from different play styles to try to work out issues and features related to that style.

 

2. Twitch and youtube popularity are probably one criteria and maybe some preference is being given to people Hicks plays with.

 

3. They will probably mostly address bugs and offer ideas for features. I doubt they will have a huge impact on core features but I guess it's possible.

 

4. I would assume that if Hicks finds these chats to be productive from a dev stand point he would consider them a success and continue on with them.

 

 

 

*5. I want to know what Hicks considers a "Survivalist". Is he using this term to describe Hermits/Mountain men? Is this his term for what I call a "zombie hunter"?

@ point 5: Yes, from what I understand, then he was referring to players adopting the hermit playstyle.

 

The team is still focused on not pushing a specific playstyle on people, so the scrum is not to be taken as steps going down the road towards turning DayZ into a full-on PvP experience.

[Noctoras 409]

@ point 5: Yes, from what I understand, then he was referring to players adopting the hermit playstyle.

 

The team is still focused on not pushing a specific playstyle on people, so the scrum is not to be taken as steps going down the road towards turning DayZ into a full-on PvP experience.

 

thanks for this information (albeit it currently is a PvP shooter ;) )

[joe_mcentire 2073]

i would have liked to ask about the contaminated zone, because i genuinely feel it's a terrible, generic idea. I understand, there are literally dozens of people who asked for this feature but do you actually think it's a worthwhile addition to the game or is this some form of "giving in" to a popular community-demand?

 

i would like to know the reasoning behind this decision and potential areas that would make sense. Especially as you mentioned the infection is airborne, how would that make any sense...or isn't this about the infection at all?

Edited September 10, 2015 by joe_mcentire

[Valdenburg 200]

The loot Map is very interesting! :D

Very nice that they still share things like this with us.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

@ point 5: Yes, from what I understand, then he was referring to players adopting the hermit playstyle.

 

The team is still focused on not pushing a specific playstyle on people, so the scrum is not to be taken as steps going down the road towards turning DayZ into a full-on PvP experience.

 

If we're all being honest, I think that, deep down, that's all most of us really wanted to hear. The things we like to do in DayZ aren't as much fun to watch on Twitch. Hope you are feeling better.

Edited September 10, 2015 by ColdAtrophy

[Noctoras 409]

If we're all being honest, I think that, deep down, that's all most of us really wanted to hear. The things we like to do in DayZ aren't as much fun to watch on Twitch. Hope you are feeling better.

 

yep ... only shoot and run is good for videos, but not for gameplay

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

yep ... only shoot and run is good for videos, but not for gameplay

 

Exactly. I mean, ffs, I spent two hours running around gathering stuff to make an impromptu "fishing only" camp this morning, where we are only allowed to eat baked beans, caught and cooked fish, and drink Rasputins. I can't imagine anyone wanting to watch that on a stream, but I damn sure loved doing it.

 

EDIT: When the beer is gone, the fishing trip is over.

 

Edited September 10, 2015 by ColdAtrophy

[VahidkinG 192]

i would have liked to ask about the contaminated zone, because i genuinely feel it's a terrible generic idea. I understand, there are literally dozens of people who asked for this feature but do you actually think it's a worthwhile addition to the game or is this some form of "giving in" to a popular community-demand?

 

i would like to know the reasoning behind this decision and potential areas that would make sense. Especially as you mentioned the infection is airborne, how would that make any sense...or isn't this about the infection at all?

me too. im seriously don't think this is a good generic idea too. first me either can't understand the logic behind it, the back story. if this is gonna be like what radioactive is in Rust (the very first time it came out with zombies and stuff) i can't see myself playing the game anymore (beside mod's probably)

 

i really like that making some Hot-spots filled with zombies idea. think of creating a shark animal and greatly increase it spawns rate around prison island, or making a bridge filled with zombies to that place. or ideas like this.  

 

If we're all being honest, I think that, deep down, that's all most of us really wanted to hear. The things we like to do in DayZ aren't as much fun to watch on Twitch. Hope you are feeling better.

 

yeah i guess that's true. that's more than likely the reason why DayZ in twitch is a low viewer game. things you do in dayz are not enjoyable to watch, but are very enjoyable to do. you won't enjoy watching someone struggling to find some food but you sure do enjoy doing it. like i was searching for a glow plug like 3-4 hours with no chance and i'm sure no one would enjoy watching it, but i can't describe the moment i found one. 

[yeinzy 5]

i want the zombies back as soon as possible pleeaasee! :D

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

@ point 5: Yes, from what I understand, then he was referring to players adopting the hermit playstyle.

 

The team is still focused on not pushing a specific playstyle on people, so the scrum is not to be taken as steps going down the road towards turning DayZ into a full-on PvP experience.

 

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer from your sick bed.

 

All you guys traveling and sharing exotic infections has got to be rough.... :(

 

Get well soon!

[Wyrmgol 26]

i would have liked to ask about the contaminated zone, because i genuinely feel it's a terrible, generic idea. I understand, there are literally dozens of people who asked for this feature but do you actually think it's a worthwhile addition to the game or is this some form of "giving in" to a popular community-demand?

 

i would like to know the reasoning behind this decision and potential areas that would make sense. Especially as you mentioned the infection is airborne, how would that make any sense...or isn't this about the infection at all?

Will likely have nothing to do with the infection as it has been stated many times the survivors are immune.  I'm thinking a chemical or radioactive plant or some such will be added somewhere (way NW?) and it will have been affected by the circumstances of the infection outbreak leading to spill areas etc.  There will likely be some kind of suit that also has to be gathered to enter these areas safely.

 

Edit: as for potential areas... If it is a chemical spill, it's as easy as adding a turned over truck/train in random areas that were carrying the chemicals as well as the plant itself.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Wyrmgol

[joe_mcentire 2073]

Will likely have nothing to do with the infection as it has been stated many times the survivors are immune.  I'm thinking a chemical or radioactive plant or some such will be added somewhere (way NW?) and it will have been affected by the circumstances of the infection outbreak leading to spill areas etc.  There will likely be some kind of suit that also has to be gathered to enter these areas safely.

 

Edit: as for potential areas... If it is a chemical spill, it's as easy as adding a turned over truck/train in random areas that were carrying the chemicals as well as the plant itself.

personally, i would have liked to see a village/complex of buildings/facilites completely burned down to their cores. all charred and black with smaller spots where nature is slowly claiming back what belonged her anyway. however i understand that a "zone" would provide more gameplay options (endgame/loot-dependencies e.g.). from a pure narrativ pov i would prefer the prior :D

 

edit:

 

also want to give the opinion of /u/20somethinghipster

 

Here is a counterpoint? What if the containment zones didn't have better loot, what if it was worse loot? What if it had more infected?

I would dig a containment zone where the ammo is super scarce, buildings and wells are far apart. What's the reward? More wildlife, and hunting and crafting was a requirement to survive.

The containment zone wouldn't be for bandits or bambis. It would be for hunters and lone wolves. It would be a place to craft and camp.

and my take on this quite good idea:

going against a traditional "high-military loot" reward and more into a "unique" loot direction. throwing around words and ideas here but e.g. a rare bottle of wine, a smartphone, a cigar, a tuxedo, a bigfoot suit or traditional garments a.s.o.

a place where stealth would be the key, easier for lone-wolves and harder for clans and (even motorized) groups.

 

guess i was a bit too narrow-minded about the term "contaminated zone" as it could as well mean something as the example posted by /u/20somethinghipster

Edited September 10, 2015 by joe_mcentire