Something I must get off my chest....

[OfficerRaymond 2064]

It has been a long time since I have lurked this forum, and until just recently I had honestly forgot it had even existed... Some of you may even remember me. Anyways, just last night I was browsing my steam after taking an extended absence from gaming for quite some time, and I happened across the copy of DayZ I had bought right after launch. I can't remember the last time I played, and honestly I hated every second of it the last time I did. I decided to give it an install, and after just having put 3 hours into it... I still loath this terrible game.

 

Before you all rip my head off with "Ermagerd the gaem iz still alpher!", I have some questions... Legitimate questions.

 

1) How can a game, with a ridiculously amazing amount of hype and humongously enormous following for an indie game, be in an extended alpha for OVER 2 years after grossing $90 million+ total in sales... Still have some of the bugs it started off with on it's day of release? Or even better yet..... STILL BE IN ANY FORM OF ALPHA?!?!

 

2) This is a game with "zombies", right? Or infected... whatever. In my 3 hours of play I saw a small handful of Zomfected, and not once were they ever an actual threat.

 

3) Why does it seem that the game has lost features? It seems as if last time I played, picking up items was easier, the names were listed on pickup, and the inventory system (while crappy) was far easier to use. I picked up like 3 items that I couldn't equip (despite being items that, well, are equipment), and another 2 that I couldn't even get to register to pickup in the first place.

 

I just cannot seem to wrap my head around it. I used to love playing the mod. I ran a server for 3 months, a popular one. I dedicated a few hundred hours of my life to surviving all the PvP, chaos, and insanity the mod had to offer. Hours I will never forget. I met people that have been some of the coolest people I've ever met online. All of it culminated in 2013, when it was all shat on with the release of a game that is one of the biggest disappointments (and tbh, one of the worst games I've ever played) in my life. I log in once every 5-6 months, and every time my hopes are dashed to oblivion when I find out it's still a broken, buggy, lifeless, boring, and truthfully pathetic excuse for a game.

 

This is obviously all my opinion. Some of you may be "hardcore" DayZ players. But take my opinion for what it is. a severely critical analysis of DayZ by someone that has been with it since it was born in the mind of an ambitious developer working for one of (IMHO) the greatest underrated publishers in gaming.

 

For the love of god.... don't mention the alpha status.

 

Also, mods... Please don't prove your bias. This isn't a bait nor a topic meant to spark flame wars.

Edited December 15, 2015 by OfficerRaymond

[Bororm 1156]

All your questions have been answered a near infinite amount of times.  The information is out there, go do some research.

[sneakydudes 278]

@Bororm +1 make it happen boneboys!

[OfficerRaymond 2064]

All your questions have been answered a near infinite amount of times.  The information is out there, go do some research.

With the forums search function I'm assuming? Don't get me started on that. As for research, I googled 50 different variations of the phrases "Dayz updates", "Dayz changes", "Dayz reviews", "Dayz bugs and problems", and "Dayz development status" and really didn't get anything more than people answering the questions presented by people with the same concerns as I with "the gaem is alpher", or similar to your "do your research" post. What little useful info I did find came in the form of patchnotes that didn't really answer my questions.

 

Maybe instead of a generic (and kind of lazy) response, you could provide links for me to find this information and supposed answers, instead of adding one more generic "answer" to the google query.

[OfficerRaymond 2064]

@Bororm +1 make it happen boneboys!

This is what I was talking about.... Someone posts something bad about this game, and everyone cries to the mods for a lock. All this does is prove that this community can't handle criticism, regardless of what type it is. I'm not coming in here insulting anyone, nor am I looking for a flame war, trollfest, or a lol. What I'm looking for is discussion on the topic of this game and why YOU think it isn't bad.

 

If mods indulge a lock without allowing discussion, it really just confirms what I've said about bias. I've not broken a single rule in posting this topic, thus it does not warrant locking.

Edited December 15, 2015 by OfficerRaymond

[DemonGroover 8836]

I am not going to lock this but i do fail to see what you are trying to achieve?  A discussion on what exactly?  If this is your opinion then the only responses will be "I agree" or "I don't agree"

 

For some DayZ has a long ways to go before it is playable - yes the dreaded alpha status.  I myself enjoy each update and seeing the game slowly growing towards 1.0.

 

Maybe you just need to wait a bit longer.

[Bororm 1156]

I'm not trying to be rude, but I just don't know what answer you want.  It's true that it's difficult to find a place with all the information together, but it's something you need to invest effort into if you actually care.

 

The short answer, that you don't want to accept, is exactly what people tell you.  It's alpha, the game is in development.  2 years is not unheard of for an alpha, game development takes time.  The engine was gutted and remade, the game was started from scratch.  Before early access and before the trend of allowing players to play during active development, people weren't as aware of the length it took to make a game.  Look up the development time of original titles (not talking rehashes like the CoDs and battlefields they kick out yearly).

 

Your thread isn't anything unique or new, and it comes up daily.  So I'm sorry, but people (or at least myself) are tired of answering the same exact questions over and over again.  Maybe some one else is feeling more sympathetic/patient.

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

It has been a long time since I have lurked this forum, and until just recently I had honestly forgot it had even existed... Some of you may even remember me. Anyways, just last night I was browsing my steam after taking an extended absence from gaming for quite some time, and I happened across the copy of DayZ I had bought right after launch. I can't remember the last time I played, and honestly I hated every second of it the last time I did. I decided to give it an install, and after just having put 3 hours into it... I still loath this terrible game.

 

Before you all rip my head off with "Ermagerd the gaem iz still alpher!", I have some questions... Legitimate questions.

 

1) How can a game, with a ridiculously amazing amount of hype and humongously enormous following for an indie game, be in an extended alpha for OVER 2 years after grossing $90 million+ total in sales... Still have some of the bugs it started off with on it's day of release? Or even better yet..... STILL BE IN ANY FORM OF ALPHA?!?!

 

2) This is a game with "zombies", right? Or infected... whatever. In my 3 hours of play I saw a small handful of Zomfected, and not once were they ever an actual threat.

 

3) Why does it seem that the game has lost features? It seems as if last time I played, picking up items was easier, the names were listed on pickup, and the inventory system (while crappy) was far easier to use. I picked up like 3 items that I couldn't equip (despite being items that, well, are equipment), and another 2 that I couldn't even get to register to pickup in the first place.

 

I just cannot seem to wrap my head around it. I used to love playing the mod. I ran a server for 3 months, a popular one. I dedicated a few hundred hours of my life to surviving all the PvP, chaos, and insanity the mod had to offer. Hours I will never forget. I met people that have been some of the coolest people I've ever met online. All of it culminated in 2013, when it was all shat on with the release of a game that is one of the biggest disappointments (and tbh, one of the worst games I've ever played) in my life. I log in once every 5-6 months, and every time my hopes are dashed to oblivion when I find out it's still a broken, buggy, lifeless, boring, and truthfully pathetic excuse for a game.

 

This is obviously all my opinion. Some of you may be "hardcore" DayZ players. But take my opinion for what it is. a severely critical analysis of DayZ by someone that has been with it since it was born in the mind of an ambitious developer working for one of (IMHO) the greatest underrated publishers in gaming.

 

For the love of god.... don't mention the alpha status.

 

Also, mods... Please don't prove your bias. This isn't a bait nor a topic meant to spark flame wars.

 

1.a) Game development for a title as ambitious as DayZ takes approximately 5-6 years of work. By starting with the Take on Helicopters engine and modding it from there, they saved a huge chunk of time, but they did not save four years with that move. If I had to guess, I'd say they saved maybe 18 months of work, given that they're redoing parts of it.

 

b) They didn't hire an army with that ninety million. That would be silly. At the end of the project, they'd have to lay off a lot of those employees as they wouldn't have the money to pay them anymore. It doesn't make good business sense to expand to the degree that your statements seem to presume they should have. The more people you throw on a project, the more they get in each other's way. There's a balance to be found, and they're in the right spot.

 

2.a) Most of the map is reasonably zom-free at the moment, but there are a few spots where they're reasonably thick.

 

b) This is the first stable build in a while with zombies in them. They're still fiddling with numbers, gathering data, and plotting their course.

 

3.a) Those features that you say the game has lost were only ever meant to be placeholders, and were never meant to be in the final product.

 

b) It works fine. Given that you don't play much, you probably just need a bit of practice.

 

Oh, and: Ermagerd the gaem iz still alpher!

 

Really, now. Don't mention the alpha? Not meant to spark flame wars? Mods don't show your bias? You do know most people aren't too stupid to see when you're trying your damnedest to stack the argument in your favour, right? You're like the kid who wants to play cops and robbers with all the other boys, but only if he's the police chief, and he has to be allowed to arrest other officers if he wants, and he has bullet-proof armour, and his gun is actually a machine gun that can shoot through everything.

 

Your topic won't spark flame wars. We're bored already. Any mods around? Surely there's already a thread like this one out there. Merging is good times.

Edited December 15, 2015 by Funkmaster Rick

[mercules 1290]

1) How can a game, with a ridiculously amazing amount of hype and humongously enormous following for an indie game, be in an extended alpha for OVER 2 years after grossing $90 million+ total in sales... Still have some of the bugs it started off with on it's day of release? Or even better yet..... STILL BE IN ANY FORM OF ALPHA?!?!

You apparently don't know what "early access" means. You also apparently don't understand how long it takes to develop software much less game software.

So, early access means that we get to play the game while they develop it. This means the game is in Alpha when we start playing. Normally players of any sort don't even see the game until late Beta. We were in the game before most of the systems were developed and to add to that they discovered some of those existing systems(like the renderer) just won't do what they want to accomplish so they are working on swapping them out while still leaving the game playable in the meantime. That means an even further delay. This seems bad but also has a good point to it, instant feedback and the ability to gather data from a large amount of sources.

Most games take years of development to reach Beta, several years. As in more than 2. With those they are not even worrying about if it is playable for those years which slows things down. So fully expect this game to be alpha for another year at least. In fact I am amazed at all the progress they have made with the handicaps they have to work with by having end users on the system.

 

2) This is a game with "zombies", right? Or infected... whatever. In my 3 hours of play I saw a small handful of Zomfected, and not once were they ever an actual threat.

Yep... you know why? all the new systems being added. They are adding in a whole new animation system. They are also working on AI not only for "zombies" but for predator and prey animals. They want all that NPC AI to function well. Right now it doesn't and because they have the overhead of old-renderer+new-renderer and other unfinished systems each doing a part of the work AI causes LAG on the servers. So they have some in for testing purposes, but not nearly what they will be able to put in once they are past the mish-mash of systems and running hybrids of old and new and have all the new systems in that should hopefully streamline some of the processing.

 

3) Why does it seem that the game has lost features? It seems as if last time I played, picking up items was easier, the names were listed on pickup, and the inventory system (while crappy) was far easier to use. I picked up like 3 items that I couldn't equip (despite being items that, well, are equipment), and another 2 that I couldn't even get to register to pickup in the first place.

See that crap above I have been talking about? Mish-mash system.... lag... server lag will make things break. They fixed an equip bug, but lag will STILL make it impossible to equip while it is bad. A LOT of servers lag right now when they approach full. I know 1 that went to 30 person to help prevent that since at 50 it would constantly bog down.

 

I ran a server for 3 months, a popular one.

Wow... a whole three months huh? Then you must know all about server lag. Maybe you can give the devs a hand with troubleshooting servers now.  :rolleyes: 

 

Some of us ran servers for a year or more and others are running the server you likely play on now. Sorry SA ruined your fun but the Mod was limited. 

 

Think of it this way. You have a house and want to add on but the foundation is cracked. You can't build a second story on that house. That was the Mod.

 

So you want a 2 story house. You have to build a new foundation that is whole AND can support a larger two story house. That is the SA.

 

With the old house you could redo the kitchen and bathroom, maybe even add on a bedroom without a basement under it, but you could not do all the things you can do with a new foundation.

 

With the new house we have the walls up, the electricity in and it has a well, but we want a nice bath with jets in it for the master bedroom and we don't have the plumbing run over there. In fact we determined that the older water heater we pulled from the old house is not going to cut it so we have to buy and install a new one before we can add the larger bath. 

 

 

For the love of god.... don't mention the alpha status.

So we are not allowed to make an argument out of one of the most valid pieces of information there is on the topic. The game is literally in a flux state right now, waiting on certain systems to resolve some of these issues before bothering to mess with the code. Why improve FPS by messing with current textures when a new renderer should improve FPS and they would have to redo some of that work?

Basically you are playing a game that is not even "feature complete" much less at the point where stomping bugs and optimization will occur. But you are in part complaining about bugs and optimization.

 

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

Not sure if someone has mentioned it, but the OP should really consider reading the status reports. They are the ultimate source of information regarding development progress.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

It has been a long time since I have lurked this forum, and until just recently I had honestly forgot it had even existed... Some of you may even remember me. Anyways, just last night I was browsing my steam after taking an extended absence from gaming for quite some time, and I happened across the copy of DayZ I had bought right after launch. I can't remember the last time I played, and honestly I hated every second of it the last time I did. I decided to give it an install, and after just having put 3 hours into it... I still loath this terrible game.

 

Before you all rip my head off with "Ermagerd the gaem iz still alpher!", I have some questions... Legitimate questions.

 

1) How can a game, with a ridiculously amazing amount of hype and humongously enormous following for an indie game, be in an extended alpha for OVER 2 years after grossing $90 million+ total in sales... Still have some of the bugs it started off with on it's day of release? Or even better yet..... STILL BE IN ANY FORM OF ALPHA?!?!

 

2) This is a game with "zombies", right? Or infected... whatever. In my 3 hours of play I saw a small handful of Zomfected, and not once were they ever an actual threat.

 

3) Why does it seem that the game has lost features? It seems as if last time I played, picking up items was easier, the names were listed on pickup, and the inventory system (while crappy) was far easier to use. I picked up like 3 items that I couldn't equip (despite being items that, well, are equipment), and another 2 that I couldn't even get to register to pickup in the first place.

 

I just cannot seem to wrap my head around it. I used to love playing the mod. I ran a server for 3 months, a popular one. I dedicated a few hundred hours of my life to surviving all the PvP, chaos, and insanity the mod had to offer. Hours I will never forget. I met people that have been some of the coolest people I've ever met online. All of it culminated in 2013, when it was all shat on with the release of a game that is one of the biggest disappointments (and tbh, one of the worst games I've ever played) in my life. I log in once every 5-6 months, and every time my hopes are dashed to oblivion when I find out it's still a broken, buggy, lifeless, boring, and truthfully pathetic excuse for a game.

 

This is obviously all my opinion. Some of you may be "hardcore" DayZ players. But take my opinion for what it is. a severely critical analysis of DayZ by someone that has been with it since it was born in the mind of an ambitious developer working for one of (IMHO) the greatest underrated publishers in gaming.

 

For the love of god.... don't mention the alpha status.

 

Also, mods... Please don't prove your bias. This isn't a bait nor a topic meant to spark flame wars.

 

Trying hard to not quote kirk facepalm on each and every question buttttt

 

1) hype is from the community.  Community doesn't build SA.  BI Does.  Money doesn't build games.  More money only means you have a larger, stronger base to work from, a taughter safety net, and more time to develop.  It does not imply any particular speed increase.  Same as employing more and more monkeys to write your scrpt, it doesn't make it any better or come along faster.  Valve has a game empire but where is HL3?  Episode 3? This is basically a non-question because you seem to fail to understand the basics of imaginitive/artistic creation, project management, etc... 

 

2) There are less zombies than in the mod atm.  Yes.  and i'll state it outright, this is a WIP. NWAF has more than a handful, Zeleno has more than a handful, plenty of places have upwards of 30+ zombies that i've seen, although there is talk of people unsure as to whether they respawn currently after being killed, so they may have been killed off in your limited exposure to the current patch.

 

3) The game has not lost features as far as i can tell.  If you're talking about why the complete overhaul standalone game does not have the exact same features as the frankenstein of a mod does?  That mod that was built upon a fully functioning open world game with vehicles and weapons already developed, and a guy called Dean slapped in some buggy zombie AI and a few 3D models for them?  Well, the answer (believe it or not) is: WIP.

 

Please note these are direct responses to your questions of limited scope.  The response (and indeed your questions) ignore the large positive change that has come about since Alpha release, the marked increase in stability from previous updates in 0.59, and the upcoming work planned.

 

Also, you honestly can't expect to go around talking ignorance and then pleading that mods don't remove the thread, or people don't mention 'the alpha' when a) you're basically uninformed, ignorant, or too lazy to research, and B) the game is still in development - read alpha.

 

It's like me abusing a cop and telling him to stay calm,

or asking why things fall towards earth but the teacher can't mention the word gravity.

 

I'm unsure as to the basis of your frustration though.  Is it impatience that the game isn't done yet and you want to play it, or that you're bitter and have no faith in the project and seek to tear it down?  Also while i may frequent these forums, i wouldn't consider myself a 'hardcore' DayZ player.  I've probably got less then 500hours played (closer to 300) and only jump in sporadically to check out each patch.  I've waited 10 years for games like HalfLife2, the new Diablo, Prey and Bioshock, and i'm also over 13 so i have the patience and comprehension to acknowledge and appreciate work being undergone, before we cry 'fanboi'.

Edited December 15, 2015 by q.S Sachiel

[General Zod 1114]

Because instead of doubling the team for $$$ they got they read the complains and did this :

[boneboys 7988]

Now that you have got that of your chest...

 

https://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/156031-before-posting-a-topicread/#entry1563051