Hello survivors and banditos,
I just wanted to make a post voicing some concerns i have about the game in its current state and see where everyone else is at in regards to a few of these topics. I did post some of this buried somewhere in another thread but i wanted to go into a little more detail and hopefully see other peoples opinions (especially no.1)
Well having made the move a few months ago from console to PC, specifically for dayz, i have managed to get a decent amount of time into dayz mod, Breaking point, arma 3 and now a good bit into the standalone. Im bringing this point up because i feel each of these variations have brought something else to the table, but unfortunately it seems like some of the great features from each where forgotten in the next iteration. This has been my first alpha experience alongside watching star citizen grow, and i have to say in all honesty that im really underwhelmed by the speed at which things are being implemented and developed. I dont want to bash the devs by saying this as i think there is alot that has been done really well but i dont want to stand idly by and give praise when its very hard to see reasonable ground being covered and a deadline fast approaching. i do understand that this is an alpa, so i will be reserving judgement until final release, or a patch or two after!
1. Flow of the map and spawning. So its apparent that the flow of the map at the moment is to "work your way from east to west collecting items and ammo types until you hit nwaf and then make your way back to a spawn town and shoot bambis or geared people". This is in my opinion the biggest problem in the way that dayz plays at the moment. I pictured a Chernarus where you could have chance encounters around every corner, in almost every town there would be the possibility of running into a potential friend or foe and that the player count of 70 would be spread nicely out over the map, making hotspots the heli crashes or barracks. Instead what we have to me seems as if 90-99% of the players in any full server are camping every single possible angle that you can possibly come up with of the spawn towns and the rest are bambis trying to punch someone in the face for a gun. Wtf is going on! its like a deathmatch in which half the people have guns and the other half commit suicide on the nearest building, theres no zombies! its not even anything like whats advertised as a semi realistic survival game! I want to know is this the experience that everyone wants when playing this game or not?
So, what if instead of just "poof" appearing on a beach, you could spawn absolutely anywhere, i mean like 1000 possible spawn sites spread evenly across the map, also what if instead of just magically appearing on a beach there was maybe a very small cut scene in which you appear in the world after a 30 second vague backstory(the respawn counter time) and you could be in any clothes, any gender or charachter? any health and mostly in any different starting scenario like arrived in a boat in fishing gear and really thirsty/boat capsized or ran out of fuel a mile off the coast/ woke up in a wrecked Cessna and need some morphine or have the other dead occupants that are now zombies biting at you ankles as you crawl out/ parachuted in as a convict with handcuffs on and left for dead/ woke in hospital/ opened up the door of a preppers bunker because your out off supplies/ car runs out of fuel as you arrive at a town/criminal that got locked in one of the police stations(have to make enough noise in direct for someone to let you out or commit suicide!)/escaped from the boot of someone's car/ last of your platoon that hid under some dead bodies from zeds and you lost your gun, the list goes on... i dont know how hard or how much time this would take to implement but just appearing on the beach as the same person 30 seconds previous, really doesn't do anything for immersion and stops any bond of trying to keep that character alive, which to me is the point of the game alongside surviving zeds and the player interaction!
2.Spreading loot and more and better unique places. Some play to kill zombies, some to kill players, some to horde items and a lot of us to explore. I really feel strongly that there isnt enough unique places on the map and enough hidden gems around the map that satisfy the explorer. 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. those large quarry doors (I forget where, solnichny?) what if they opened that up into a large abandoned mine, full off zombies. maybe you would need guns with flashlights to head in there and you could put some great loot at the end of it or crafting/base building materials.
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 the game i think? could 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. Then i think military loot should be spread around zones like these instead of exclusively at nwaf, maybe your more likely to get an m4 from the oil rig but youll have to check for bandits before you hop in the water, maybe the double mags for it mostly spawn at prison island, acogs on dynamic police cars or in one of the semi sunk ships and so on. Opening up the regular buildings was a huge step in the right direction but we need some original attractions to give certain towns identities and to have fun exploring.
To be honest Taviana is a great example of a map that offered a really interesting array of attractions and unique locations, I was hoping when they made this game considering that they haven't made a new map they could have worked with a few of the creators of the top maps and just really polished up 3 or 4 of them. Taking taviana as an example, the map really could have used the touch of a proper dev team to iron out some bugs and touch up and open some buildings, but thats what i really hoped would happen, or at least really do everything they can to help the modding community achieve these goals.
Theres been so many iterations of this game each of them really lacking in a few areas, not so much the mod,but i really hope this is the game that they can stand back at the end and say "we nailed it" because at the moment having to judge it now, i would say its going to launch with the absolute minimum amount of content ive seen in a game to date. Charge me 3 times as much for the final product if it means you can hire the extra staff if thats the case, but lets finally make this game everthing that it should be.
3. More survival mechanics and a better fleshed out system. 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 gas cooking canisters dont even cook one meal! (you could add in a really rare portable stove called the dragonfly that runs on petrol/diesel/kerosene and is reusable) Some actions for things look the same or a bit derpy like spamming water fountains. Maybe using leather could allow you to add more pockets to certain clothes, Cough*ghille suit Cough!
4. Zombies. The main attraction but also the big downfall of all the dayZ' to date, in varying degrees. They were either not a threat/ definately not enough/ too derpy or, well, not enough. i hope to see so many zombies the sun itself struggles to pierce the wave of them that splash around the map. If survivors have a common enemy that is actually a challenge rather than an annoyance it might unite players for the common good. The enemy of my enemy is my friend!...for now...
5. Fix up the engine, the desync is so really real! also seeing people hiding in buildings and oddly desync out for a second is a problem.
6. Way more junk loot or mildly usefull stuff. the houses look so barren, although i like the rarer loot i think more filler in the houses would go a long way.
7. Better craft-able suppressors. Could use oil filters for cars/motorbikes as rifle/pistol suppressors. Also the ability to spray paint them. Maybe they could last somewhere in between the bottle and real suppressors or give 5 shots to bolt actions. Make them hard to find/ could also be used as parts in vehicles.
8. 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. Im sure this one is probably a private server solution, but i dont know if anyone has any ideas on this?
9. Bodies de spawning. Not that i think you should be able to get to your gear after you die but ive had plenty of instances where the person ive killed has despawned as i was looking for his other friend that logged. its not great.
10. 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 due to the way people render in. the cons far outweigh the pros, which is camoflage and its failing at its one selling point. Would be cool if you needed way more to make but maybe you could also make a low profile backpack only the size of the school backpack or so. Also i think you should be able to pour water over yourself to get the soaking status and use water pumps to do the same thing.
11. Chopper crash sites. This one breaking point did really well, you could see them fly round the map and crash and it really added to the feeling of being a helpless survivor on the ground. It made it feel like things were going on outside the map and added to the immersion, instead of a chopper just appearing on the ground.
12. Spray paint tent. Or camo tents
13. Health. It would be cool if there was only so many times you could spam an apple tree. if you could only get 2-3 it would benefit the survival aspect. would also be cool if you added an extra level above healthy for those that have cooked and eaten fresh meat/veggies in the last day or two so it gives a little more incentive on that front. And i think it should take longer to heal from low health so iv bags and blood bags are worth finding and using.
14. super rare dog companion that you can send on ammo missions or whatever. who doesn't want a dog to explore the wasteland with!
15. Really good base building! and balanced base building, if it takes someone 100 hours to build a base and collect a nice stash of guns, it shouldnt take fred and the [NOOBZ360YOLO] clan 20 minutes to break in when your fast asleep, maybe a base that appears when your online? i dunno..
16. AI, this one isnt for everyone i guess, and is more my opinion but i kind wish that heli crash sites had a few ai that guarded the choppers that crashed, then radioed for help before extracting in another chopper and blowing the wreck or something, would be a cool gamble to get the best guns.
17. An auto run key wouldn't be the worst idea.
18. A way to catch the land fish... wait... wrong game.
This game has a really long way to go in my opinion and i think at this point its up in the air on which side of the fence its going to land, but this game has been modded into 2 armas already, in which the community has already done alot of the work. I really feel this game deserves to not only succeed but knock it out of the park and i hope the feedback we give now helps to shape that outcome. And before anyone chimes in with "this is an alpha" and "you cant run a marathon without putting a few band-aids on your nipples" i know, i just want this game to succeed!