Questions About The Current State of DayZ

[jovlon 32]

I know that there are perhaps other topics that are similar but being that the community doesn't seem to be as active as it once was, I wanted to maximize the potential for an OBJECTIVE discussion on the current state of DayZ.

 

I haven't played DayZ in quite a while now so I've been trying to refresh myself by reading reviews and catching up with general information. However, I've come across a few worrying trends. Whereas in it's infancy (as in when it was first released) it seemed to get significantly more positive reviews. However, the more that it's aged, the more negative reviews that I tend to see, some from fairly dedicated players. I also attempted to find more information from the development team but it seems that I'm either looking in the wrong places or they're not posting as much. I'd like to see the standard updated list of pipelines, the timeline, and (though not likely) if possible the documents that detail the allocation of financial resources. 

 

I know that the forums are generally populated with far more people that support the game still than not so I know that a lot of people will perhaps get defensive about me bringing up negative comments. I don't want to turn this into a yelling match. Yes I know that there's a disclaimer and I do believe that most people that bought the game were prepared for the ups and downs and wanted to support this great idea. 

 

A lot of the reviews that I've seen generally state the same set of things:

 

- No optimization (which I think usually comes later in the development cycle) 

- Glamour updates as opposed that functionality updates... new sound design and skins as opposed to clipping for example

- A lot of people seem to have issues with their mouse disappearing and thus not being able to even play

- That the price went up without a reasonable explanation 

- The updates are coming slowly and they tend to be smaller updates as opposed to major updates

- There's still active hacking

- There's still now way to access (move around) the map quickly so you're still running for a while

- That it became extremely boring and predictable - This one is usually from people that loved it, took time off, and came back. Obviously I'm sure if you're on the forums you'll disagree with this one. But I guess for this one I'd like to know how gameplay has changed and if it's objectively less exciting now

- That it's harder to kill people... not realistic. I've watched gameplay and saw people get shot several times and not die. The last time I played I remember my friends and I had an hour or so long shootout with another group and it was more or less one/two shots killed

- Less loot and zombies with each update

 

I'm sure you guys have read all of the other negative stuff. Again I just haven't played in a while so I wanted to kind of get your take on these things. How has the game progressed? What the the current biggest issues? When do you truly expect it to move into beta? Or do you expect that it will be completed at all? Etc. Thanks.

 

Edit: I was just reading old emails from a few of the people that either were or claimed to be in the industry and it reminded me of the main issues that I've seen. The engine simply being unable to handle the project. And project management. Not necessarily a criticism of ability but rather the perception that things aren't running smoothly and resources are being used effectively. Again, you guys would probably be more knowledgeable about this as I haven't been keeping up with the game. 

Edited September 11, 2015 by jovlon

[papazombie 25]

Game is stuck at this moment in .58.

It's unplayable; no zombies, no risk...just Boring can kill you.

No updates since months.

I think Dayz is dead.

Edited September 11, 2015 by papazombie

[Whyherro123 2283]

Game is stuck at this moment in .58.

It's unplayable; no zombies, no risk...just Boring can kill you.

No updates since months.

I think Dayz is dead.

(Underlined emphasis mine)

 

'Stuck this moment in .58"? 

 

It just updated to .58 a couple of weeks ago, and .59 is on the way

 

"It's unplayable: no zombies, no risk .... just boring can kill you"

 

Let us not be melodramatic, here. Zombies and animals were removed to test things, for very good reason. If you find straight PvP boring, that is on you, but that has literally been what the Alpha has been since release, so there is no change from release til now, in that regard

 

"No updates since months"

" I think Day Z is dead"

 

Oh Jesus Christ. It is readily apparent that 95% of forum-members have no clue on how Alpha-status and "early-access" works. Tell me, do you know how long it takes to develop a game, from start to finish?

 

 

Alright, OP, let me address your points, one by one.

 

1) No optimization yet? Yeah, that is what Beta is usually for. Optimizing and bugfixing is pointless when there are still mechanics, items, animations and suchlike to add to the game

2) The team that makes the skins and animations is not the team that works on code. I used to make this mistake as well, before I was educated on the difference.

3) This is the first I've read about that particular bug. Regardless, did they report it on the "bug thread"?

4) A whole $4.99 in price increase? OH NO, THE WORLD IS ENDING. The game is likely to be $60 or so on release. Get it early, and you pay less

5) Not true

6) Weird, I haven't seen any hackers since the Battleye update a couple of months ago, and neither have I read about any on the forums. Is there still some hacking (read: scripting) somewhere? Probably, no game is 100% script-free, but, believe me, the game is much better now than it was a year ago.

7) Get used to running/walking. A stamina/weight system is in the works, and the sprint speed will be slowed down signifigantly, so you won't be able to sprint across the map. Also, there won't be 50 trucks across the server on release: A developer on Reddit (forget who, I think it actually may have been Brian Hicks) stated that they wanted there to be a maximum of 10-20 vehicles across a single server.

8) Yeah, that happens when all you can do is shoot people for a year and a half. Nothing happened to the game, people just got burnt out on doing the same (stupidly easy) thing over and over again

9) this is a result of lag/desync and the ability for clothing to "absorb" damage from bullets and melee weapons. Both of which are being worked on, and will be removed to the best of the developers ability

10) This is a result of the problems with the CLE and the need to test the server capacity, respectively. Basically, the reason zombies were removed is that, with the new (*in its "infancy", really) Central Loot Economy, you could either have 1) A decent amount/ a lot of zombies, or 2) a decent amount of loot. Also, with a lot of zombies, on the "old" renderer/server stuff-and-suchlike, the more zombies, the more lag.

 

TL;DR Someone doesn't know how early access alpha works.

 

[edwin3 74]

1. during .58 a lot of work had been put in optimisation, fps went up significantly, player desyn has been reduced but not eliminated.

2. this applies to many of your points: most parts of the engine are getting rewritten an implemented on a modular basis. bugs arent fixed on basis of the old engine, as e.g. the clipping errors, which will be resolved when the according piece of the engine is implemented. things to come: renderer, soundengine, ui, player controller - sure i missed something

3. never heard of that

4. price went up as wee are reaching the end of alpha. its always been clearly stated that the reduced price were meant for early access participents. there has been some chatter that the coming update will bring some major engine changes, maybe thats the reason.

5. idk how to measure such stuff. there had been more issues with cle than anticipated which slowed a bit and .58 had been longer in experimental than usual, as they were struggling with some bugs they wanted to get rid of. always keep in mind, we only see a piece of what they are doing. most work isnt in yet.

6. hacking had been reduce significantly and i didnt see many reports either. encountered one speedhacker this year.

7. theres a truck in for several months, three cars coming next update.

8. depends on where you hit them, except the .22 headshot is one shot. there has also been some discussion if armor had been changed or not. but most likely problems with syncronisation client-server-client. tho basicly balancing -> beta

9. zombies are really rare atm (animals arent), they had problems as the (wip) ai ate the servers performance. will take some time till they return (not before .60, maybe later). loot distribution has been changed in its basic functioning, as cle and persistence are in by now. but loot will get reduced in the future. atm there are some problems, but tbh most servers got a lotta loot.

 

basically most of your questions are talked about in the status reports, maybe you dig into them or spend some hours ingame and judge yourself. theres no objectivity in taste, what you like or not will always be subjective.

 

the current version is really good and if you hadnt played a while theres a lot of new items and mechanics to explore. bugs are quiet rare and its enjoyable. except the missing zeds theres nothing that should keep you from playing.

 

idt that bi will publish its financial resources to you, but i also dont think that they will ruin their reputation over dayz. that the old engine doesnt fit dayz is clear and has been stated by the devs years ago. maybe thats why they are rewriting it... imho you arent well informed and theres a lot more the forum has to offer - go check it out.

 

greets

 

@papazombie - too dumb to realize

Edited September 11, 2015 by edwin3

[jovlon 32]

@Edwin3 @WhyHerro123: I think that Papazombie is entitled to his opinion. If only because it gives insight into how some players feel. I did indeed check the forums, reddit, dayztv, tumblr, etc. Every source I could find. 

 

The status reports and developer updates don't always address new or enhanced issues. That's essentially what players are here to do. They also have to remove things sometimes and don't mention it in their notes.At least in the past. I obviously can't speak of the current. I do indeed plan to dig around and play myself but I want to identify potential universal problems rather than those specific to me as I'm debating on whether or not to recommend this to a huge group of friends that finally switched from console to pc. For example, if your comp specs are close to my friend's and you have reasonably decent optimization for this stage of development than I could feel comfortable recommending it to them. But if I didn't come here and I was getting terrible optimization with my specs I might misinform them without having a working knowledge on how others are affected by certain variables. Continuing with this example, obviously normally, based on the specs you know if a a game will run better on one computer as opposed to another but I read a lot of people who had issues regardless of specs. Now again, it has to be asked if that's relative to their specs (they can run Skyrim on Ultra with np but only get 25fps) or is it universal? I don't know if any of that made sense but I'm just trying to help you understand why I would also try to gather opinions of the community.

 

@WhyHerro123: You said something else that I wanted to mention and originally what I was going to make the topic about. There are a lot of former players who love SA but have a fear that by the time of what most people consider a stable release, the community will be dead and people will have permanently moved on. I was looking at the steam rankings and while of course there are always various factors to consider, it does seem that there's a trend of a slowly dying community. I mean 8-9k is still pretty large and definitely enough to enjoy but I wanted to also gather opinions on that. 

 

I know some will just say "They don't understand EA and they're stupid" but that's missing the point. Do you think that the community will still be alive once the game is released? 

[emuthreat 2837]

...the documents that detail the allocation of financial resources. 

 

Would you walk into a grocery store and complain about the high price of asparagus while it is out of season, cite other peoples' possibly outdated negative feedback about the general state of things, and then proceed to ask for their financial details and how much each department is getting?  I don't think you are going to get too far with the financial document request.

 

I'm sure you guys have read all of the other negative stuff. Again I just haven't played in a while so I wanted to kind of get your take on these things. How has the game progressed? What the the current biggest issues? When do you truly expect it to move into beta? Or do you expect that it will be completed at all? Etc. Thanks.

The best advice I can give you is to just get the game now while it is still reduced price, and get used to playing it with all its bugs, no zombies, and crappy framerate; because when the full release arrives, you will already know the game, and it will seem like a breeze compared to people diving into the finished product in a world already populated with experienced players.  If you don't like it, wait  a few months; it will almost surely be completed within the next calendar year.  Things like summertime activities, the addition of new game elements and their related bugs, as well as the release of other popular games like GTA 5 have impacted the current player base, but the game is basically only half- finished.  You wouldn't say a kid is basically dead already because they have mostly stopped growing by high school; people who say DayZ is dead because of development delays and player base fluctuations might not be the sharpest crayons in the box.  To address you concerns about the eventual completion of the game, I'll touch lightly on the financial state of the project in the form of pre-release sales revenues;  they have sold many copies for aggregate many millions of dollars, and for this reason, they are obligated to deliver the finished product in a form mostly consistent with their projected goals.  No need to worry about if it is ever going to be fixed, or if it will be better than the MOD, because both of these things have a guarantee backed by a mulitmillion dollar fire lit up under the developers' collective ass.  All that being said, your concerns were largely subjective, but I encourage you to play the game and see for yourself how much you would recommend it to your friends.

 

Game is stuck at this moment in .58.  We are all constantly stuck in our current state at each and every moment.

It's unplayable; no zombies, no risk...just Boring can kill you.  I'm still logging hours, testing new mechanics and loot spawn behavior, and occasionally practicing PVP.

No updates since months.  No update this month, last couple updates averaged 2 months, and Hicks recently projected slightly longer periods between future updateds.

I think Dayz is dead.  I think DayZ is still months away from being issued a birth certificate.  Note the complete lack of conventional advertising.  Expect advertising shortly before release of finished product.

Boorish idjit, you must try much harder to be accepted into the troll guild.  Remember, every good put-down must be somehow seeded in truth.

Edited September 12, 2015 by emuthreat

[Jock McScottish 216]

strangely enough? after leaving the SA alone for a while I jump back in and there are NO zeds. I find myself liking it! SA right now has the feeling of how things might be after the zombie epidemic has passed, and suddenly its how do the survivors react in this now zed free world... I will enjoy it before the new and improved zeds invariably make their comeback just when we think the world is safe again...

Edited September 12, 2015 by Jock McScottish

[stinkenheim 249]

Patches change the players' opinions of the game.

I loved early .55 and played mostly private hives (was lucky that they weren't bugged ones) and clocked so many hours in those early days. In contrast .57 was horrible for me and I rarely played because there was no value to the character or gear. If I did play I played as an ass and just shot people but it was boring for me.

As soon as .58 went to exp i swapped and loved it, it was a challenge finding gear and there was a good mix of friendly interaction and shoot outs.

Different people want different things, 2 of my friends won't play atm because they got frustrated with dying from bugs. Fair enough. I still enjoy parts of the game but I don't play much due to work commitments.

As development moves along you'll see people return to the game and others leave it but right now it's competing with a lot of big games- ark, rust, h1z1, mgs v, mad max, gta v etc and sure some will be a flash in the pan (mad max for example I find dull, played about 4 hours and not fussed playing more tbh) but others like ark are offering things that dayz doesn't yet.

In short I've had more enjoyment from this £15 game than from most £40/50 full release games I've played.

[OrLoK 16182]

isnt there already a thread on this?

 

https://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/228785-what-are-your-thoughts-on-the-state-of-the-game/

[Coheed_IV 381]

I didn't read the entire thread. The current state is they are heavily developing the engine (Enfusion) for the game, while generously working on stable. This is why the updates seem slow, and also the reason why people think their priorities are messed up. The engine updates are needed to improve all the most important parts (hacks, movement, animation, infected count, client optimization, server optimization, communication) everything you said and more.

 

Also, these parts I laughed at the most. :lol:

 

- Glamour updates as opposed that functionality updates... new sound design and skins as opposed to clipping for example

 

- There's still now way to access (move around) the map quickly so you're still running for a while

Access the map quickly? Bwahahahaha!

Edited September 12, 2015 by Coheed_IV

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

If DayZ is dead, that just makes it a zombie. Zombie game becomes uber-zombie, eats all faces. Makes sense to me.

[emuthreat 2837]

Access the map quickly? Bwahahahaha!

We NEED fast travel, like, yesterday. Some folks will never survive long enough to drink from the well between the red and green two-story apts in Sinistock.

 

Magic subterranean warp tubes is the only logical explanation.  We also need fire flowers and super grow-big mushrooms.

[Grimey Rick 3417]

I think the game is fine. I can still have a blast playing DayZ, even at 1,600 hours. Is it buggy? Of course—it's still in the alpha stage. They're pretty much where they said they'd be at this point. People need to untie their panties, and wait.

[grimsonfart 49]

1. during .58 a lot of work had been put in optimisation, fps went up significantly, player desyn has been reduced but not eliminated.

2. this applies to many of your points: most parts of the engine are getting rewritten an implemented on a modular basis. bugs arent fixed on basis of the old engine, as e.g. the clipping errors, which will be resolved when the according piece of the engine is implemented. things to come: renderer, soundengine, ui, player controller - sure i missed something

3. never heard of that

4. price went up as wee are reaching the end of alpha. its always been clearly stated that the reduced price were meant for early access participents. there has been some chatter that the coming update will bring some major engine changes, maybe thats the reason.

5. idk how to measure such stuff. there had been more issues with cle than anticipated which slowed a bit and .58 had been longer in experimental than usual, as they were struggling with some bugs they wanted to get rid of. always keep in mind, we only see a piece of what they are doing. most work isnt in yet.

6. hacking had been reduce significantly and i didnt see many reports either. encountered one speedhacker this year.

7. theres a truck in for several months, three cars coming next update.

8. depends on where you hit them, except the .22 headshot is one shot. there has also been some discussion if armor had been changed or not. but most likely problems with syncronisation client-server-client. tho basicly balancing -> beta

9. zombies are really rare atm (animals arent), they had problems as the (wip) ai ate the servers performance. will take some time till they return (not before .60, maybe later). loot distribution has been changed in its basic functioning, as cle and persistence are in by now. but loot will get reduced in the future. atm there are some problems, but tbh most servers got a lotta loot.

 

basically most of your questions are talked about in the status reports, maybe you dig into them or spend some hours ingame and judge yourself. theres no objectivity in taste, what you like or not will always be subjective.

 

the current version is really good and if you hadnt played a while theres a lot of new items and mechanics to explore. bugs are quiet rare and its enjoyable. except the missing zeds theres nothing that should keep you from playing.

 

idt that bi will publish its financial resources to you, but i also dont think that they will ruin their reputation over dayz. that the old engine doesnt fit dayz is clear and has been stated by the devs years ago. maybe thats why they are rewriting it... imho you arent well informed and theres a lot more the forum has to offer - go check it out.

 

greets

 

@papazombie - too dumb to realize

Wait, performance improved? For me it has got worse in .58 :/

Edited September 13, 2015 by grimsonfart

[aasand 92]

I need performance, stopped playig while waiting. Any news on the renderer and development?

[edwin3 74]

Wait, performance improved? For me it has got worse in .58 :/

 

strange, i read of another guy who said so. for me & all buddies fps got up. .57: 15-25 in cities, with drops to 5. .58: nearly stable 30 in cities with drops to 20.

 

is your system on the high or low side?

 

greets

Edited September 14, 2015 by edwin3