The problem with the game. My views

[blacklabel79 949]

Same here, maybe another game will become a good survival game one day.

 

"the long dark" is really nice. They also finaly announced the storymode comming to fruitation. One gripe i have with this right now is that the town at the coast has way,way ,way too much loot. There is no reason to go out if you camp it out in the houses. Also the difficulty levels need a bit of tweaking. I guess this will all be adjusted.

[Noctoras 409]

Doesn't quite catch me from what I read. I do appreciate PvP elements. I do appreciate PvE. I basically long for a real sandbox game, haven't yet found one, though. I would prefer a "real" setting, which is putting me off ARK and the likes.

 

Basically, I would love a DayZ, where PvE is a challenge, human interaction is meaningful and PvP only is an element amongst others, characters are different (skill wise) and I can lead a "life" the way I want.

 

I know, many people prefer it to be different, but hey, I can keep on dreamin, can I not? B)

[blacklabel79 949]

Yeah i agree tho. I like the long dark for the setting but everytime i play DayZ lately, even with people there is just nothing to do. Like really nothing to do. Wanna go NWAF ? ah cant be arsed...back to the coast ? gah too far...maybe grow some..ah nevermind. Wanna look for some "nice" gun ? for what ? There is no reason or rhyme to it right now.

 

Well time for a little break i guess.

Edited September 28, 2015 by {Core}BlackLabel

[emuthreat 2837]

This game does not really promote such slow gameplay as its easy to gear up and a life is not worth anything. If there was an element where you only got so and so many deaths a day people would most likely change their playstyle and be more careful. The game would also become extremely boring as ten people sit in a bush around the NWAF and nobody wants to do anything.

I prefer to try and play the game as the final product will likely be, rather than just giving in to the "nothingelse to do" attitude.  I can see a large number of people acclimated to close range chaos finding this game very unsatisfying wehn they can't do anything fun without dying twice.  Soft skills are for wimps they will say, while secretly crying themselves to sleep.

[Noctoras 409]

I prefer to try and play the game as the final product will likely be, rather than just giving in to the "nothingelse to do" attitude.  I can see a large number of people acclimated to close range chaos finding this game very unsatisfying wehn they can't do anything fun without dying twice.  Soft skills are for wimps they will say, while secretly crying themselves to sleep.

 

If these soft skills are, as announced, only reaching as far as someone being able to perform an action faster, I don't see it getting anywhere. Who needs to chop a tree in 5 seconds instead of 10?

[VIPEREYE1 17]

Yeah i agree tho. I like the long dark for the setting but everytime i play DayZ lately, even with people there is just nothing to do. Like really nothing to do. Wanna go NWAF ? ah cant be arsed...back to the coast ? gah too far...maybe grow some..ah nevermind. Wanna look for some "nice" gun ? for what ? There is no reason or rhyme to it right now.

 

Well time for a little break i guess.

 

This is exactly where im at right now, boredom. I've had my character for 10 days now, 14 kills, fully geared, i have made 3 trips around the entire map. visited NWAF 4 times, been back to the coast 3 times. So yeaaah, nothing left to do but die and i don't think that will be happening anytime soon.

 

This is why i argue that zombies really need some major focus and work. We need something to survive against, im all for rough weather also. one of my most intense moments is when it rained on the server for an entire day and it was literally a fight for survival against the elements, that was interesting. 

 

More then anything i want zombies that make sense, i believe they should be a game changer, Good A.I could change the game completely. Otherwise its just going to be another Dayz mod with a face lift, I got bored of Dayz mod quickly, great experience initially, but that magic wears out after awhile.

Edited September 28, 2015 by VIPEREYE1

[Noctoras 409]

This is exactly where im at right now, boredom. I've had my character for 10 days now, 14 kills, fully geared, i have made 3 trips around the entire map. visited NWAF 4 times, been back to the coast 3 times. So yeaaah, nothing left to do but die and i don't think that will be happening anytime soon.

 

This is why i argue that zombies really need some major focus and work. We need something to survive against, im all for rough weather also. one of my most intense moments is when it rained on the server for an entire day and it was literally a fight for survival against the elements, that was interesting. 

 

More then anything i want zombies that make sense, i believe they should be a game changer, Good A.I could change the game completely. Otherwise its just going to be another Dayz mod with a face lift, I got bored of Dayz mod quickly, great experience initially, but that magic wears out after awhile.

 

I had mine in 0.55 ... hours played (with apple picking, mind you!), still no gun. finally found a gun, felt like a king on the server (it was a crappy gun, but I had gun + ammo), but was close to starvation in stary. Had lost my mate to starvation already. There was this pond. Zombies were still mute (with hindsight that was cool). Needed to drink or die. drank. Zombie I didnt hear coming hit me from behind. Dead.

 

Now all is dull. Ever since loot tweaking in 0.55 gearing is no issue, survival is none. Only question is whether my screen goes black because someone shoots me or I shoot someone's screen black. In the WORST case I survive for ages .... worst case, since dull becomes super dull.

 

And in 0.59 I get:

- VSS Vintorez. Another gun for blacking screens.

- Vehicles. Quite cool, but if I get hyper bored in a Lada or in a V3S, well ...

[FrigginTommyNoble 61]

Its just not a good "survival" game. And my doubts grow everytime i read a devblog that it possibly never will be.

 

This is my primary concern by a country mile. I'm not sure the designers really actually want to make a survival game. The core game mechanics are shooting and moving, at the moment. All the survival elements are hacks, bolted on to a PvP engine. Although this is as expected, I'm surprised we're still here with basically a modded Arma engine.

 

Before I get bum rushed by alphapologists, know this: I'm withholding judgment until the new game engine is fully phased in. My sincere hope is that these survival elements will be core modules in the game engine, not just extensions that hook into the PvP damage and inventory systems. I want a totally different "feel" to how survival impacts your character, from the UI, to the state changes, to the way temperature, hunger, illness, injury, etc modify your character/animations.. everything.

[VIPEREYE1 17]

This is my primary concern by a country mile. I'm not sure the designers really actually want to make a survival game. The core game mechanics are shooting and moving, at the moment. All the survival elements are hacks, bolted on to a PvP engine. Although this is as expected, I'm surprised we're still here with basically a modded Arma engine.

 

Before I get bum rushed by alphapologists, know this: I'm withholding judgment until the new game engine is fully phased in. My sincere hope is that these survival elements will be core modules in the game engine, not just extensions that hook into the PvP damage and inventory systems. I want a totally different "feel" to how survival impacts your character, from the UI, to the state changes, to the way temperature, hunger, illness, injury, etc modify your character/animations.. everything.

I have been following development for a long time and have remained faithful and protected the alphaness of dayz.

Honestly..i expect radical changes as well. And ill be pretty depressed if some thing ground breaking is not implemented. The game is very bland in between player encounters and once the initial glamour of being a new player wears off, it leaves you with very little to do.

 

All i really expect is a mechanic, that keeps you going keeps you interested, gives you goals, progression, challenges you to survive beyond player encounters. I have discovered a play style that has allowed me to survive and dispatch other players without much threat. I play safe and usually always get the drop on other players...this gets boring quickly... I need some thing else to challenge me beyond players.

 

If the zombies don't get a major over haul or at least some thing else to catch my interest and keep me busy then my confidence is obviously misplaced.

[blacklabel79 949]

As for the WIP videos of zombies and the extension in movement plus adding a real stamina system wich factors weight of gear ect. this all sounds very intruiging. Maybe i just have another case of dayZ fattique. They happen freqently to me only to find myself playing allweekenders at times after some 3-4 week hiatus.

 

Iam not a great hoarder. 1-2 barrels hidden in "plain sight" is enough for me. Tho i konw people that play that way and have alot of stashes hidden around. This allways amazes me altho for me the time invested is time lost on other more enjoiable tasks.

[scriptfactory 620]

I feel like SA has many problems currently; the biggest one being lack of focus/expertise/transparency in game design. DayZ SA has been surpassed in the game mechanics aspect by virtually every "survival game" on the market. The engine refactoring (under the guise of a new game engine) has significantly delayed development progress and (I assume) has taken development resources away from the game design team. The game designers do not communicate their design concepts with us. Peter Nespesny last posted on these forums something in May 2015.

 

TL;DR: Game design transparency @ Bohemia is not great.

 

That being said, I personally believe that DayZ SA will become a great platform for other people to build their mods on. Modding support can't be released soon enough.

[FrigginTommyNoble 61]

I feel like SA has many problems currently; the biggest one being lack of focus/expertise/transparency in game design. DayZ SA has been surpassed in the game mechanics aspect by virtually every "survival game" on the market. The engine refactoring (under the guise of a new game engine) has significantly delayed development progress and (I assume) has taken development resources away from the game design team. The game designers do not communicate their design concepts with us. Peter Nespesny last posted on these forums something in May 2015.

 

TL;DR: Game design transparency @ Bohemia is not great.

 

That being said, I personally believe that DayZ SA will become a great platform for other people to build their mods on. Modding support can't be released soon enough.

 

I agree with you here. My lady was watching me play this morning, and she made fun of the drinking mechanic so hard. I went up to a well pump and did the usual spam F to drink and cancel action and drink (as if I'm gonna be troubled to wait for that ridiculously long animation if I don't have to).

 

Well, naturally, in the lower left it said:

 

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

I drink some water from the well.

 

This is what I'm talking about. Clearly, this mechanic is awkward, and the UI is justifiably laughable. I hope all these systems really do get swapped out, and not just ported over to the same Arma 2 engine with a new renderer.

[Salty seadog 125]

I hope some big changes come in the near future so I'll stay optimistic till release, but there's a few things I really want to see when the games ready. I'm sure a lot of these are just my opinions but this is what I'm really hoping for.

1. Fix up the engine, a friend watched my character frozen in place for 12 minutes until it updated and showed where I really was. I also hope it dosent turn out like the arma 3 engine, AI taking 7 shots with weird glitchy animations and bullets constantly hitting targets and not registering as hits. I know there's no aI but something just felt off. Also I really hope the gun sway isn't the same as arma 3 but more like arma 2.

2. Zombies. Of all kinds. Some slow, some even faster than I can run so shooting is the only option. Waves of them blocking out the sun in some random swarms. I want a reason to team up with people and risk getting back stabbed. If the zombies are so difficult maybe it'd be a good enough reason to team up with other survivors.

3. Some more original places to be created. There's that cool big ship but no reason to explore it, and because of the way your character freezes when he falls down stairs everyone I know and myself just derped off the edge and don't go back. I feel this is a massive hole in the game.

There's those large quarry doors (I forget where) if they opened that up and made a large area heading underground. You need flashlights to head in there, large amounts of zombies, need some players to team up with and head in. You could put some good loot/crafting items in there.

I'd love to see an oil rig far out in the sea with some abandoned chinooks an mil gear, maybe the odd bunker randomly scattered around, could even stumble across a rare doomsday ppreppers bunker with mountains off food and an svd or so. That underground bunker that used to be in to be opened up and made into a huge underground complex. Some more islands with something interesting on them. Hidden caves. Radiation zone maybe. That half sunken ship near that island, maybe you could swim round the side and find a way in. Opening up the regular buildings was a huge step in the right direction but we need some original attractions to give certain towns identities.

4. A way to stop server hopping, or maybe not to stop it but to give a bigger incentive to hit different locations in the same server, if only certain things maybe spawned at different locations instead of all at nwaf, and scatter them to some interesting places like above. These points could change around every server restart or so, I dunno, just a reason to hit up different locations and explore.

5. Spawn points and spawning in. It just feels weird that poof, you just appear on the beach and go spam an apple tree then go to nwaf. What if you spawned absolutely anywhere, in any clothes. Arrived in a boat in fishing gear and really thirsty/ woke up in a wrecked Cessna and need some morphine/ parachuted in as a convict with handcuffs on and left for dead/ woke in hospital/ opened up the door of a bunker because your out off supplies. Something different. I get they don't want everone geared super quick but if there was a way to spread out out the different types of endgame loot that in my opinion would be way better. You would meet people on the road more often instead of 70% of the server camping every possible angle of berezino. And the rest being relatively empty.

6. Polish up all the survival aspects. Also some ways of cooking are just not that viable. Having a tripod and cooking pot and setting all that up to cook fish and it takes absolutely ages to cook food. Then you can just use a stick and save yourself lugging around the extra tripod and cook meat in a matter of seconds. It's pointless.

Netting fish traps break super fast for such a rare material. Some actions for things look the same or a bit derpy like spamming water fountains.

7. Body de spawning, maybe it's just me on this one but I really feel it could be extended quite a bit. I've taken out someone and by the time I realised his friend logged the body had despawned. I'm not a fantastic pvp'er but I've had it happen a few times now and it's miserable.

8. The ghille suit to work, maybe with the new renderer coming in there might be changes but even if they made it 100x harder to get the materials but made it actually good. The devs made a really cool looking one just a shame it's not useful.

9.Dynamic spawns. Would love to see the choppers crash and flying around the map. Also a bit more spread out into the east.

10. More junk loot in the mix.

11. Better craftable supressors. Could use oil filters for cars/motorbikes as rifle/pistol supressors. Also the ability to spray paint them. Maybe they could last somewhere in between the bottle and real supressors. Make them hard to find/ could also be used as parts in vehicles.

12. Spray paint tent. Or camo tents.

I have high hopes for dayz, and to be honest I'd probably just settle for lots of zeds but I really hope they consider a few of these things. Btw I'd love to know if anyone feels the same about spawning randomly and spreading the loot around or if it's just me on that one. Cheers

[Noctoras 409]

random spawning and more random loot sounds cool - however, DayZ should become MORE than a mere Arma copy and this is one of the big drawbacks at present. So I do not think weapon sway, ghillie suits should be high on the priority list. Actually, what this game lacks most is content to make it stand out from "just another Arma ..."

 

This game is no survival game, let alone a sandbox or open world game. There is little else than collecting these endless amounts of guns and shoot people with it until they shoot you.

 

Zeds. Definitely, they need to be back. But this should not be the end of the story. Just my opinion.

[pillock 850]

DayZ has essentially been, for as long as I've owned it (year and a half, maybe), a Womble simulator. You move around collecting things. Underground, overground, making good use of the things that we find, things that the everyday folks leave behind.

 

As a survival game, the focus has GOT to shift away from collecting loot. Looting should be a means to an end, not the end itself.

 

Survival is about careful management of your character's health. The main focus of the game should be looking after your nutrition levels, warmth, illness and injuries (these last two should be more-or-less constant problems, to varying degrees), exhaustion, fatigue and physical condition of your character. That's what survival is. Finding bits of stuff lying around and making useful tools out of it should be something you do from time to time, when needed - it shouldn't be the entire gameplay experience.

 

We need complex, detailed character health and fitness levels that we can build up over time by making successful decisions, and will lose over time (or suddenly) by making poor decisions. That's where interesting, rewarding in-game progression needs to come from in this genre of game. It doesn't come from hoarding better equipment than the next guy.

[FrigginTommyNoble 61]

We need complex, detailed character health and fitness levels that we can build up over time by making successful decisions, and will lose over time (or suddenly) by making poor decisions. That's where interesting, rewarding in-game progression needs to come from in this genre of game. It doesn't come from hoarding better equipment than the next guy.

 

I strongly agree. What feels so bolt-on about the survival aspects of this game is the fact that your health, hunger, and thirst are things that the game actually encourages you to forget about, both in the way status is presented in the UI, and the (lack of) effects it has on your character.  You can still sprint just fine with a sprained ankle. And you rarely/never sprain your ankle.

 

Players just drink and eat until everything is super-green and they can stop being annoyed by the nagging UI messages. Then they just set about actually "playing the game" (searching for loot). You spot-on nailed what I meant in a previous post, when I said the survival features need to become core mechanics fundamental to the game engine itself. Right now, hunger/thirst/health/injury/illness feel shoe-horned into a PvP engine (which they are), and aren't compelling, or core to gameplay. They're annoyance mechanics to be swatted away like flies.

 

Instead of expecting to be super green at all times, I think we should always be managing some kind of problem core to basic survival. Whether it's open wounds, hunger, upset stomach, shelter from the elements, whatever.. If the gameplay was structured such that we expected to be under constant survival pressure, then it would really help drive interesting choices, made out of necessity, not just boredom and/or greed/hoarding. I think making the player states more granular will help with this. If we know our states are constantly changing by very small amounts, and had some way of sensing that in-game (rather than just casually noticing status whenever we open our inventory to check if loot's in the vicinity), it would work wonders.

 

I'm not very encouraged by just how excited Hicks is about helicopters, and how there's little/no info about any of the survival mechanics of the new engine. I'm getting a sense of where the devs' passions lie, both in what they're saying, and in what they're not saying. It doesn't seem like building an engaging survival experience is very high on their list.

 

Now, I could be dead wrong, and I hope I am. If anyone has info/evidence to the contrary, please feel free to share that with me. I mean, helicopters seem cool... but if I wanted to hide in defilade from helicopter strafing runs, I'd play Arma, BF, or suchlike.

[Whyherro123 2283]

^ What is funny is that the developers, Brian Hicks included, ripped on "PvP exclusive" players a couple of months ago.

 

Where that all went, I don't know.

[Bororm 1156]

I don't understand the idea that we should be constantly starving and cold and fighting for basic survival.  Just because the apocalypse hits doesn't mean everything else changes and becomes so desperate.  The opposite scenario could be true, and over abundance of resources as everyone else is dead or left.  All those clothes, nonperishable foods, medicines, tools, supplies in your house don't simply disappear because zombies.  And now we're a handful of survivors in an entire country worth of supplies.

 

I think there's a bit of a weird situation where people define the term "survival" as eating bugs and making lean tos, probably a result of too many shows with the word in the title featuring just that.  The term encompasses a lot more, or even a lot less on a basic level.  Surviving other players fits the definition just as much as surviving starvation.

 

I also don't think it's any surprise that a game development studio specializing in military sims, creating a game based on a military sim engine, from a mod that was popular because of pvp, is creating a pvp centric game.

 

All that said I'm not saying I'm not in favor of more pve elements, they need to catch up to the pvp.  But I just think people have an expectation this game is going to turn into something it's not simply because their definition of survival is limited.

[Whyherro123 2283]

I don't understand the idea that we should be constantly starving and cold and fighting for basic survival.  Just because the apocalypse hits doesn't mean everything else changes and becomes so desperate.  The opposite scenario could be true, and over abundance of resources as everyone else is dead or left.  All those clothes, nonperishable foods, medicines, tools, supplies in your house don't simply disappear because zombies.  And now we're a handful of survivors in an entire country worth of supplies.

 

I think there's a bit of a weird situation where people define the term "survival" as eating bugs and making lean tos, probably a result of too many shows with the word in the title featuring just that.  The term encompasses a lot more, or even a lot less on a basic level.  Surviving other players fits the definition just as much as surviving starvation.

 

I also don't think it's any surprise that a game development studio specializing in military sims, creating a game based on a military sim engine, from a mod that was popular because of pvp, is creating a pvp centric game.

 

All that said I'm not saying I'm not in favor of more pve elements, they need to catch up to the pvp.  But I just think people have an expectation this game is going to turn into something it's not simply because their definition of survival is limited.

 

Never said we have to be constantly starving and cold. Just want it to have more of an effect on gameplay.

 

The "overabundance of resources" thing has been touched on in other threads, and to sum it up: Yes, there would be an overabundance of resources (food, meds, clothing) in the larger cities. The thing is, there are no "cities" in South Zagoria that could really count as a "city". Hell, look at Novo, the largest city on the map. That would barely count as a decently-sized town in the US. I, just by myself, could eat my way through the "town" in a couple of weeks.

 

Oh, and we totally are not playing in an entire country. We are playing in the region of "South Zagoria", a northern region of the country of Chernarus that is known for being poor, rural, and underdeveloped.

 

On top of that, there is nothing that says that civilization "fell" instantly. What is infinitely more realistic is that the situation degraded over a couple of weeks, and in the meantime, the survivors ate food, used medication, shot bullets, etc. Even the people not immune to the "zombie disease" (aka those both "turned into zombies", and those that died from other means) also used materiel before they died. Couple that with 1) a complete shutdown of trade, both inside the region and outside (as a result of quarantine), and 2) a gradual loss of infrastructure. Without power, there is no refrigeration, no sewage, no police when that looter busts through your door. We are at the "tail end" of the breakdown of civilization, not the "beginning".

[Bororm 1156]

Those are large cities, the map is just scaled down like everything else.  If you can eat through even a small towns worth of food in a couple of weeks you have an eating disorder =P

 

 

Have you been to third world countries?  There are many places that exist without power, refrigeration, sewage (I mean you notice that all the outskirt towns have outhouses right?) and police.  They aren't all struggling to survive.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Bororm

[Whyherro123 2283]

How many people do you think lived in Novo before civilization collapsed?  2000? 3000? I think even that is pushing it. And that is the largest "city" on the map. Oh, and we run at 30 kph, in real time (time in-game is still not accelerated to any extent). You can run across the length and breadth of Cherno in less than 5 minutes. What does that say about how large the city is?

 

South Zagoria is tiny. One of the towns I lived in, Wareham, has 1/2 the land area we can play in, with 21,000 people. And Wareham was rural. Like, "banjos in the backwoods, 45-to-an-hour EMS response times" rural. Kamyshovo is pretty representative of a "Small town" in-game. How many people do you think lived there? How many supplies would they have? Not many: they don't even have a public store in-town.

 

As for supplies: grocery stores often only have a weeks worth of stock on them. In the case of an emergency, these stores would be picked clean faster than you can say "public panic". Same thing with clinics and gas stations. Anyone with a car and 2 brain cells to rub together would have been running for the border as soon as they could, directly into the guns of the CDF and the Russians, might I add. Why people think they should be able to find food in grocery stores, gas in gas stations, and medicine in clinics/hospitals, I don't know. They obviously have never been through even a harsh snowstorm before.

 

Finally, Chernarus isn't a "3rd World Country". Yes, South Zagoria is poor and underdeveloped, but that is by Western standards. They all have electricity running to their houses, TV's, PC's. They weren't living hand-to-mouth. What does that mean?

 

When the "supply of material" is stopped, people will die. Sure, they might have a outhouse, but when the power runs out and they drink bad milk, there aren't any doctors, nor effective antibiotics, to help. Or, they might have a generator, but what happens when the generator breaks, or they run out of gas? They can't call the factory for replacement parts, nor run down the road for a jerrycan of gas. Or, they take too much of some medication, and they OD and die.  Or, eat slightly bad food, get food poisoning, and die from dehydration. Or fucking trip and fall down the stairs. Point being: "1st World" society and infrastructure is unsustainable, in many many ways. Interrupt, much less stop entirely, that supply chain, and people will die. Probably many people.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Whyherro123

[Bororm 1156]

2-3k people in Novo are you kidding me?  The city Cherno is based on has close to a 100k population.

 

The point about third world countries is that people live fine without electricity and plumbing.  The generators and plumbing go out, so they start drinking rotten milk?  Do they suddenly become idiots without electricity?  I don't drink or eat bad food when my power is on why am I going to start doing it when things get shitty?

 

How in the world did people survive tripping before electricity???  Seriously absurd.

 

The map supports the notion that either the majority of people are now zombies or got the fuck out.  We don't know how long that took so that's all speculation.  It's always been implied we're pretty early into the outbreak.  I'd say it's easily evidenced that the virus is fast spreading considering the amount of zombies (that are supposed to be in/in the mod) or else people would be gone before being infected.

 

Yes, many people will die.  That's the exact scenario.  We're a small amount of survivors in a landscape encompassing multiple towns and cities.  So unless everyone evacuating brought all their food with them (something that isn't even feasible), there's still going to be a ton of stuff left behind.  Where do you think looters go with all the stuff they loot?  You think they're filling their cars with groceries to evacuate?  If you're evacuating you're getting the basic necessities and getting the fuck out.  I'd argue you're probably an idiot if you're even bothering, besides having gas and basic food that you likely already had in your home.  You're going to stop to do some looting when the world is going to shit or are you going to make it to the nearest evacuation zone?  In a snowstorm people are looting/buying everything up and bringing that shit home.  If we assume they did the same here, then the stuff still hasn't left the cities it's just redistributed.

 

If you wanna figure out the amount of zombies to survivor ratio and extrapolate it and scale everything up be my guest.  I don't need to do the math to know that there's hardly anyone left alive in a partial country's worth of supplies.

 

 

Any ways it's all nonsensical because at the end of the day it's a video game.  None of this has any actual impact and is all speculation.  My guy dies within hours every day and respawns.  The game has zombies.  So make up whatever scenario you want.  The main point is that the devs have a scenario they've decided on (and they've admitted to leaving it extremely vague so the player can impart whatever they want), and that if you think the game is going to change drastically when the beta is slated to come out in half a year and we're getting patches every 2-3 months, you're going to be disappointed.  "Survival" was a shitty tag to include because people have a horribly flawed (limited) definition of what it should mean, but hey, communication has always been one of the weakest points of BIS.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Bororm

[FrigginTommyNoble 61]

I think there's a bit of a weird situation where people define the term "survival" as eating bugs and making lean tos, probably a result of too many shows with the word in the title featuring just that.  The term encompasses a lot more, or even a lot less on a basic level.  Surviving other players fits the definition just as much as surviving starvation.

 

I agree with you, that we shouldn't constantly be starving, or freezing. I think the survival element needs just the opposite. The fact that we go from well fed/hydrated to "I need a drink" in like 10 minutes is the problem. The survival elements are so basic, and really severe. I want survival to be a more subtle thing, and I don't think it should just cause death so quickly. It should affect how fast I run, how well I aim, how far I can see into the distance, etc.. but in small, subtle ways.

 

I'm just kind of spitballing here, but does that make sense?

[Whyherro123 2283]

The city "Cherno is based on", not the "city Cherno is". Just like how Chernarus is "based on" the Chech Republic, it isn't literally the Chech Republic. Jesus.

 

No, the point about "people living fine without electricity and shit in 3rd World Countries" is not that it is impossible, it is that overwhelmingly, "1st Worlders" lack the skills that let "3rd Worlders" survive in those conditions. They know how to find safe (which is immensely different from any water at all, mind you) sources of water, how to preserve food, how to navigate across country, etc.

 

And, no they start making desperate (and poor) choices because they get desperate. "Well, the children are so thin because we have no food. This milk seems kind of iffy, if we don't drink it, they are certain to die". "Hmm, all these cans of food just got left behind! Awesome, tonight we eat like kings!"(can you honestly point out what botulism looks like?) "I am so thirsty, but the municipal water and all the private wells go shut down with the electricity. That drainage ditch ........ has water in it (dehydration can make you do REALLY stupid things)" "Desperate times = desperate measures", and all that

 

Take the average "1st World-er", and throw them in a survival situation. Chances are, they won't come out too hot. Now, have them do that, every day, for the rest of their lives, without them breaking down. I teach a wilderness survival course to Boy Scouts. They get three hot meals a day, access to showers and electricity, etc. 95% of them end up in tears at least once over the course of the week, usually from frustration, when they realize that nature isn't just going to bend over and do what they want.

 

As for your question "how did people survive tripping before electricity?". Chances are, they fucking didn't, in all seriousness. Trip and break your leg with access to modern medicine, and it is no big deal. Get a cast and some crutches/a wheelchair for a couple of weeks, NBD. Do the same in a situation where you lack access to modern medicine (and painkillers, mind you), and you are fucking dead. Either you can't feed yourself, due to being immobile, or you get a blood/marrow infection and die horribly. If I broke my leg in a "survival situation" where I wouldn't have access to modern medicine, I would be slitting my wrists pretty quickly. An infection from a splinter can kill you, when you don't have doctors and powerful antibiotics (hint: those tetracycline tabs from the store won't do jack shit to a "real" infection). And then, people have to take care of you while you heal! In a situation where you are either 1) scrounging for supplies from the ruins of the Old World, or 2) practicing subsistence agriculture, that is a very very difficult thing to have to handle. You have this guy that can't work, stays in bed all day, and eats up food and meds while doing so. Better hope you can make yourself worthwhile in the meantime!

 

How does that map support that? That ..... isn't how diseases work. Nothing says "evacuation".

 

It also hasn't been implied that "we are pretty early into the outbreak". Have you been to the "new" Berezino? It has been a couple of months, at least. It definitely has been less than two years, but anything other than that is up to debate.

 

As for the whole "evacuation" shtick, it is 1) not supported in basically any way by the current in-game info, and 2) entirely nonsensical with how real-world disease monitoring and prevention works.

 

"Yes, let us just let a highly virulent, highly obvious, and highly lethal disease traipse across national borders, in the form of a compulsory evacuation" said no fucking health official ever. In all likelihood, the entire region was probably put under quarantine, instead, which is in line with real-world practices. The CDF holds down the regional borders (and got their ass kicked by local militias and the Chedaki), and the US, UN, and RU Special Forces fly over in helicopters to monitor the status of the outbreak (hint, this is why you can find helicopters smouldering "months" after society fell). 

 

No one enters, and no one leaves. Hell, if you want to get technical, (and this is supported by in-game evidence, in the form of the numerous roadblocks you can find around SZ), local quarantine was probably in effect as well. This effectively would localize the disease, but it was also possibly make other diseases break out (especially if the power was shut off. No refrigeration, no sewage, remember?), as well as making the civilian population very pissed off.

 

Oh, and finally, the "zombies" in-game totally aren't. They just are people infected with a disease, aka "tweakers with the flu", which in all seriousness, isn't exactly too far-fetched for a society-ending event. Humanity as a whole gets slammed with a pandemic that heavily impacts society every couple of centuries, if not sooner. And we are actually "due" for one.

[Bororm 1156]

I'm not bothering to read that because I'm sure it's more of the same and I can tell by the first sentence you're still failing to understand what "scale" means.  I understand you're a survival instructor and desperately want your real life skills to mean something, but the reality is people are stupid but not that stupid and can survive just fine without modern conveniences.