All Time Low Population

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

1 hour ago, [Gen]Adzic said:

Actually I've been a jerk.. the stuff I said was silly and unwarranted. 3+ years into a supposed 5 year dev cycle? maybe I've been premature and should have listened to Rocket when he said don't jump on the hype train that early. My problem was DayZ rocked, I spent too much of my life playing the mod and I might have wanted in, the price was fairly low.. 

 

What the heck.. Lets just wait a few more years and then maybe those views I had a few hours ago will be relevant and tolerable, that is if the game is still crap. I just hope not, this roundabout has span around a few too many times for my liking.. makes me grumpy and as a 34 y/o.. immature.

So, maybe 6 years for a AAA title which will be supported well after release and will be released on consoles?

That seems reasonable, especially historically, and considering the size of the team, and managerial complications, right?

[Samuri_Bake_Pie 96]

My whole issue is this. The game came out, it was popular, the Dev's made money, it was great. I put in around 800 hours in the first 3 months. I had no life other than DayZ. I loved the game, updates were coming out, people kept buying it, and at some point, it just stopped. Now, I'm not saying I expect an update every week. But 6 months, without a single update is ridiculous. Now, I know nothing about games, or making games, but with the amount of money they made I could hire a staff to do it. What I still to this day don't understand, is why they didn't expand the team if they were so swamped with work that they couldn't update it once every 2 months even. I get it, they all have lives too. But seriously they made so much money off this game its not even funny. The timeline was set, and it failed. another was set, it failed too, and now we will be in Beta in around 8 months? I feel like every time I come back to this game it just keeps disappointing. Don't get me wrong, alot of the stuff they added was great. Alot of it was bad. A small amount was game breaking. The issue for me is that they keep releasing new stuff, locations, audio, when we can't fix bugs that have been out since day one. You have to mash buttons to pull a weapon out, you die climbing up ladders still (albeit alot less often now) and you can't properly jump over a fence successfully half the time if not more. I realyl do appreciate all the work the Dev's put in, and I defended them from the start, but its crazy at this point. Alpher this Alpher that. I get it trust me, I've logged into that screen more than the vast majority of people. But its been how many years and we are still in Alpha? If they Dev's had set up a more reasonable timeline, I wouldn't have any issue. What gets me is the timelines that keep changing. We still don't have bases, boats, functioning vehicles, barricading, survival, not randomly dying do to the terrain bugs, synchronization bugs, and we still can't pull out a weapon without having to stop and mash buttons. Inventory items STILL randomly glitch out and force you to relog and risk death. Persistence was nice for a while, being able to set up a camp. I didn't expect to be able to keep a base from say 2014 to the day it came out, but its silly that they wiped rarely when a server restarted. I was so into this game and the opportunity it brought, the customization of vehicles, clothing, characters, your own story and your own mark on the world. I guess the opportunity was missed as hardly anyone plays anymore. Maybe one day my kids will be able to play the full released game. 

Edit: Logged on to try and play, and guess what? Takes 5 minutes to log the main screen, I can't even click on stuff on the main menu without a 2 minute delay. Thought this was just my internet being shitty, but nope, same issue with my buddies. GG.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Samuri_Bake_Pie

[-Gews- 7443]

5 hours ago, BeefBacon said:

When DayZ hits beta or when it's released - certainly when modding becomes available - the number of players will shoot up.

Modding—that is the big one right there. That will make or break it. Wolves? Bears? Helicopters? Even survivor bases? Haha, nope. Maybe for a patch or two until folks get bored. Ancient history says it's the mods that will draw the crowds... or not.

Unfortunately, I never much cared for the mods of the mod, and I expect the same thing will apply to standalone.

 

(the biggest problem I had with all those mods was the addition of countless ridiculous and inconsistent weapons packs, or worse, stupid changes to existing guns. I seethed at DayZero and quit playing that one in large part because they 'nerfed' the Lee-Enfield and other weapons for 'balance'. I'm picky about that stuff)

[sneakydude 480]

5 hours ago, sai (DayZ) said:

I remember when dayz was top of steam for months.. I have to wonder if there was bribes etc to keep it there. Overall I'm very negative about the game, perhaps I'll be proven wrong, I hope so as it was fun during the mod.

It wont ever again, too many bad reviews now, people laugh at the even talk of it out there.

I hate to even ask them, if they own dayz SA.

 

My hopes and dreams of a once good idea, fresh look on survival has been on a very thin line lately. I hope it changes, really i do.

 

 

Edited September 9, 2016 by sneakydude

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

So, I've got some legitimate concerns about DayZ, but I'll get to those in a moment.

First, I feel like there's a certain aspect of reality that some people in this thread are ignoring. No, it's got nothing to do with the alpha tag. Nothing to do with development. It has more to do with the dwindling population numbers. I'd give a drum roll, but I'm too lazy, so here it is: it's the middle of fucking August. August, people. It's summer. People are going outside. It's like DayZ only the graphics are better and it's slightly harder to find military loot. It even has no zombies! It's DayZ+. In all due seriousness, though, it's the hottest summer on record around here; sitting in front of the computer for the hours-at-a-time that it takes to really get a good kick out of DayZ is a recipe for bedsores from the sweat. Worry not on the numbers, they're just busy having lives.

Second, Samuri - if you know nothing about game development, as you professed just a few posts back, why are you saying that six months without an update is ridiculous? You don't know. That probably sounds like I'm insulting you or goading you on, but I swear I'm not. It's just clear that you weren't around in the old days when six months was about the expected time between game patches, and many retail games didn't release bug-fixing patches for a year or more. Your perspective seems limited. And if you think DayZ's dead, I can promise your perspective is limited. =)

But now, let me talk about my actual concerns. Hicks seems... perhaps 'off his rocker' would be too strong a phrase. I haven't actually watched any of his announcements, but the actual words I hear reported on his behalf seem... unreasonably optimistic. It doesn't feel like we're less than a year from beta. The Status Reports don't feel like the kind of communication I expected when I signed up for an Early Access game. The developer-player dialogue feels non-existent to me. Between the somewhat grandiose public announcements to the world, and the lack of a more private discussion with the community at large, I'm starting to think there's a major disconnect between the perspective of the developers and the perspective of the long-term playerbase, which strikes me as a recipe for disaster. Maybe the news that ARK recently released paid DLC while still in unfinished Early Access has me rattled, but I'm starting to worry that there's a significant aspect to the development that's not being communicated to the players. It's almost always a bad idea when developers start relying heavily on the opinions of what's often a vocal minority on the internet, but it's also bad when they drift out of touch.

There was definitely a clear direction, a general feeling of certainty, when Rocket originally announced that he wanted to pursue a standalone version of DayZ to expand its functionality and kill off the skiddie population. I don't feel that certainty any more. Thoughts?

[thedogfoodyayho 295]

Just come back to the mod. Still getting a major updated every few months, with a new update featuring the return of base building about to hit here soon...

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

22 minutes ago, thedogfoodyayho said:

Just come back to the mod. Still getting a major updated every few months, with a new update featuring the return of base building about to hit here soon...

Eh, I bought the SA for a reason. =p

How are the hackers in the mod? =)

[Samuri_Bake_Pie 96]

40 minutes ago, Funkmaster Rick said:

Second, Samuri - if you know nothing about game development, as you professed just a few posts back, why are you saying that six months without an update is ridiculous? You don't know. That probably sounds like I'm insulting you or goading you on, but I swear I'm not. It's just clear that you weren't around in the old days when six months was about the expected time between game patches, and many retail games didn't release bug-fixing patches for a year or more. Your perspective seems limited. And if you think DayZ's dead, I can promise your perspective is limited. =)

 

You know, I literally just said in my post that I've been playing this since day one. In the old days when I "wasn't around" there didn't need to be an update every month because 90% of it was functioning and working correctly. Updates were simply new features. Now its bug fixes. Say what you wish, I'm not gonna sit here and argue that the game is dead or isn't. Just take a look at the charts and you will have your FACTUAL answer. 

[emuthreat 2837]

As for the population fluctuations, I think Rick got it right with calling out summertime.  It's almost like some folks don't know how to expand the timeline of a graph to see what the seasonal pattern is. I guess I took for granted, the understanding that yearly usage fluctuates on a fairly consistent month-to-month basis--much like my utility bills.

The protracted development process is another thing.  I understand that this is a very complicated, technically specific, undertaking.  It is quite a different thing from simply designing a game in an existing engine, or even developing an engine from scratch for a game that doesn't exist yet. They are building an engine not from scratch, but from scrap and scratch, while the game is still running in an online multiplayer capacity.  I have used the analogy before, of a mechanic doing a complete restoration/customization overhaul, while letting the customer still use it as a daily driver.  So if it has been this obvious to me from the beginning, how big of a job this is, then why hasn't development seemed to have caught on yet?  Maybe they are being overly optimistic, or they know that people are better off getting the answers they want, instead of the hard truth up-front. After the introduction of vehicles, and the following few patches, I knew better than to think this was going to be anywhere close to the predictions being made.

Objectively, the time it has taken so far, combined with the rest of the time that it will take before the 1.0 release seems pretty average, especially for a proprietary engine.  What scrambles me is why the developers didn't just say "it's going to take a few years."

Looking back on 2015 and the cynical responses to the roadmap predictions, 2018 seems like a pretty reasonable estimate that was flippantly foretold by a few people.  Perhaps in a couple years, I'll be handing out some beans.  Wait.  Where the f*** are the beans?  Hearts? Still?  No wonder so few people hang around anymore.  All this PC, progressive BS...

They could always just shelf it for a decade and release it in 2027 as "DayZ Forever."

[-Gews- 7443]

52 minutes ago, Funkmaster Rick said:

First, I feel like there's a certain aspect of reality that some people in this thread are ignoring. No, it's got nothing to do with the alpha tag. Nothing to do with development. It has more to do with the dwindling population numbers. I'd give a drum roll, but I'm too lazy, so here it is: it's the middle of fucking August. August, people. It's summer. People are going outside. It's like DayZ only the graphics are better and it's slightly harder to find military loot. It even has no zombies! 

Middle of August? Are you sure of that? Hehe.

But I don't think this theory holds water. Looking at Steam Charts, I don't see a noticeable drop or rise in population that can be associated with this season (highlighted period, beginning August to beginning September)

 

[philbur 476]

52 minutes ago, -Gews- said:

Middle of August? Are you sure of that? Hehe.

But I don't think this theory holds water. Looking at Steam Charts, I don't see a noticeable drop or rise in population that can be associated with this season (highlighted period, beginning August to beginning September)

 

That paints a better picture for the statistical trend-challenged out there.

I think, though, that when the game FINALLY gets beyond .61 word will spread just as it did in 2014 (via the popular streamers) that DayZ SA is worth a go. Once again, the two years leading up to now have been indicative of just how stagnant and dare I say "directionless" this title has become in absence of Rocket's vision. If there is a driver behind the declining player base I would submit that it might have more to do with the poor hand-off of duties on the public (Game Owner) information side of things. The dev cycle can ebb and flow...but a LOT of the end-user frustration can be mitigated by consistent and positive information releases. I know several people who would have been great fans of the SA, had they just been as patient as I have been. I also know a few others that bought the Alpha...played it for 200 hours and then...in the absence of any clear AND CONSISTENT progressive information simply gave up and went away with the knowledge that they had gotten their money's worth.

Content would surely help get boots back on the ground, but maybe I'll try to recruit a couple new people into the fold and see if they have the same reaction to SA as I had in 2014 when I started playing it.

If new users can be free of the years of frustration and missed/broken promises I have endured and they exhibit a keen excitement at the possibilities of the DayZ SA experience then I would be slightly more convinced that this epic journey still has a happy ending ahead.

[sneakydude 480]

1 hour ago, -Gews- said:

Middle of August? Are you sure of that? Hehe.

But I don't think this theory holds water. Looking at Steam Charts, I don't see a noticeable drop or rise in population that can be associated with this season (highlighted period, beginning August to beginning September)

 

Its going to drop even further, once people start purchasing all the new games that have been released, and the ones that are survival are being released soon.

Being 4 years past its idea, the argument is just not holding any water, but what the OP said its dropping and for a reason.

and i bet none of the shit i bug posted will even be fixed.

Honestly, if it ends it ends, and we can move back to arma 3 and mod our own. Simple fact.

Edited September 10, 2016 by sneakydude

[thedogfoodyayho 295]

2 hours ago, Funkmaster Rick said:

Eh, I bought the SA for a reason. =p

How are the hackers in the mod? =)

Haven't seen any since 2014. They all moved to arma 3 )))

[exwoll 255]

Well, I just think most people went to play Rust, judging by steam trends 

[Noctoras 409]

8 hours ago, Samuri_Bake_Pie said:

Now, I'm not saying I expect an update every week. But 6 months, without a single update is ridiculous. Now, I know nothing about games, or making games, but with the amount of money they made I could hire a staff to do it. What I still to this day don't understand, is why they didn't expand the team if they were so swamped with work that they couldn't update it once every 2 months even.

 

Hiring more team members would just mean reducing their profit. Given the early sales, there hardly is lots of sales potential left. So every investment likely is a loss for the company. So I understand perfectly well, why they did not expand the team. It's not their fault, that everyone jumped on the early access band wagon. If I paid you for your life's work in advance no matter the future performance, you would not clock extra hours at work every day either, right?

Sometimes life is very simple and straight forward. The only incentive BI might have is to use it as a blockbuster generating revenue for further games. For the blockbuster aspect, the reviews and the press comments got too negative, though.

To me it is as understandable as frustrating that resources allocated to DayZ SA are limited. From a business point of view, investment in DayZ exceeding the existing commitment is dead capital.

[Arthur Dubrovka 376]

3 hours ago, Noctoras said:

Hiring more team members would just mean reducing their profit. Given the early sales, there hardly is lots of sales potential left. So every investment likely is a loss for the company. So I understand perfectly well, why they did not expand the team. It's not their fault, that everyone jumped on the early access band wagon. If I paid you for your life's work in advance no matter the future performance, you would not clock extra hours at work every day either, right?

Sometimes life is very simple and straight forward. The only incentive BI might have is to use it as a blockbuster generating revenue for further games. For the blockbuster aspect, the reviews and the press comments got too negative, though.

To me it is as understandable as frustrating that resources allocated to DayZ SA are limited. From a business point of view, investment in DayZ exceeding the existing commitment is dead capital.

Thats just not true. For shure they expanded the team. Torchia made a lecture about gamedev, expanding your team and get everything managed. I think it was at DevGamm in Hamburg, Germany. It's a very honest lecture in my opinion.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5qJEBj9mfxg

 

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

You can't just hire people to work on a proprietary game engine.

They would need a lot of time to become familiar with the engine and possibly take time away from others to be trained which would slow things down even more,

Money cannot fix everything.

[St. Jimmy 1631]

1 hour ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

You can't just hire people to work on a proprietary game engine.

They would need a lot of time to become familiar with the engine and possibly take time away from others to be trained which would slow things down even more,

Money cannot fix everything.

Yes people who think that should watch Chrish Torchia's speak about outsourcing and hiring a lot of people in the team. It sounded like a very rough ride.

It's the video that's posted in the "Was Chrish fired?" topic. I can't now remember was there another talk about the same stuff by Hicks somewhere.

[Noctoras 409]

3 hours ago, imunone said:

Thats just not true. For shure they expanded the team. Torchia made a lecture about gamedev

 

The Torchia that has meanwhile left the team, lectured about the team. Alright, next please?

They might have adjusted to some extent, nonetheless, the company does not just produce for fun - and that's what a SIGNIFICANT team expansion would mean. If they spend 5% of the additional revenue on two additional people, that's an econoomically well managable placebo on the other hand. I sometimes really wonder about the people who think that BI proiduces and hires for love and honor ... it's a company. It needs and wants profit in order to expand, fund further development and even prepare for a fail .. sooner or later there is a game bound to fail. But you may believe whatever you want.

[sneakydude 480]

1 hour ago, St. Jimmy said:

Yes people who think that should watch Chrish Torchia's speak about outsourcing and hiring a lot of people in the team. It sounded like a very rough ride.

It's the video that's posted in the "Was Chrish fired?" topic. I can't now remember was there another talk about the same stuff by Hicks somewhere.

Yes well we all understand that, and we all forgave that in 2015 what was going on inside the company. There is only so many jackets, hats and gloves we can have in a game.

Now its time to start moving this beast forward and not behind. More then enough time to fix the team.

[scriptfactory 620]

2 hours ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

You can't just hire people to work on a proprietary game engine.

They would need a lot of time to become familiar with the engine and possibly take time away from others to be trained which would slow things down even more,

Money cannot fix everything.

This isn't true. Development speed increases when you add more developers to a project. The impact each individual developer has on development velocity is variable but always positive after a certain "warming" period. The reason more developers haven't been added to the project are most probably related to cost and RoI.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

1 minute ago, scriptfactory said:

This isn't true. Development speed increases when you add more developers to a project. The impact each individual developer has on development velocity is variable but always positive after a certain "warming" period. The reason more developers haven't been added to the project are most probably related to cost and RoI.

Have you ever tried to adopt a project of this size, midstream, while being a completely new engine and script language, being built on an old proprietary framework, swapping out components, and bug fixing for public play-ability all the while?

[JBURNS489 165]

There is a game called The Forest that is developed by Endnight Games. They are an independent studio in Canada, and have literally NEVER made a game before. The Forest is their first title, and with a small staff and little to no experience , the game gets updates at an almost ridiculously fast pace. I would even go as far as to say the graphics are slightly better than DayZ (only because you dont see thing pop into high resolution 10m away). They are also still in early access, but you can expect a major patch at least once a month, and hotfixes almost daily. I love DayZ, but something is definitely up with the speed of development. How can a smaller company with no experience and less resources, produce and develop a similar and arguably better game in a shorter amount of time? There are many examples I could have used, but I feel like DayZ and The Forest represent the extremes of development speed on both the slow and fast side respectively. With all that said, I still check the forums for DayZ pretty much daily for new updates. I have over 300 hours in the game so far, and I am sure I will put another 300 in once the game reaches a stage of development that can sustain my interest. 

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

1 hour ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

completely new engine and script language, being built on an old proprietary framework, swapping out components, and bug fixing

The Forest (albeit an interesting title) is not really comparable to DayZ for the reasons quoted above.

I can't say I know a whole lot about the technical differences but I have seen the Forest and it didn't seem to have a fraction of the flexibility, size, or detail that DayZ has now, not to mention what new features will bring in the future.

DayZ as a whole has no direct counterpart that I have seen, for a myriad of reasons.

They helped spawn the massive EA flood and had missteps and rough patches along the way.

If they get to 1.0 within 6 months to 1 year of their own predictions I personally consider that fair if the end product is to my liking.

[scriptfactory 620]

1 hour ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

Have you ever tried to adopt a project of this size, midstream, while being a completely new engine and script language, being built on an old proprietary framework, swapping out components, and bug fixing for public play-ability all the while?

Do you mean join a project of this size as a developer? Yes.

Do you mean taking lead on a project of this size from another development studio? Yes.

I have never rewritten a game engine but I do have 15+ years of development experience, currently have 60+ developers under me and have a good understanding of the development process.

Edit: I am not trying to patronize you... even though that is exactly what I am doing. :( Many people quote Brooks' Law without having a fundamental understanding of it and ways of solving the problems that it illustrates. It is a gross oversimplification of the problems that can be exhibited when adding new programmers to an already late project. There are many ways of surmounting these problems and its actually a part of my job to make sure that programmers are as fungible as possible.

Edited September 10, 2016 by scriptfactory