All Time Low Population

[sneakydude 480]

Bascially, its been written on paper, grabbed with two hands and crumbled up so many times... is what your really saying.

 

go check offtopic i posted a free game, limitted time left.

[varobun 19]

From someone who has this many hours,

here are a few reasons why i only play once or twice every month now:

• Hackers and glitchers is probably the easiest reason. Hackers are scarce after an update, but dupers/wallglitchers/groundglitchers/etc are there after every update. The sad part is that you can reliably find out how to do these in about 10-20 minutes.
• Time spent for fun/excitement. With items getting rarer, you spend more time finding what you want. This often only pays off for a shortwhile in the current state of pvp and leads to a person taking a break after a death.
• Lack of reward for killing zombies. Boring zombies. I know that they are adding loot to their bodies soon. Maybe ill return and more people will want to team up at that point. 
• Lack of server capacity to populate map. PVP areas are not varied. Out of our 60 player servers, hardly any of those are spread out. In my opinion there are usually 10 people at NWAF, 5 at kamy(kami?), 5-10 at cherno, 5 at elektro, 3-5 berenzino, 3 at Balota, 3 at three valleys corner (this place sucks arse), 3 at svetlo. Out of all of those only one is not a coastal spawn location. There are probably only like 10 people on average actually roaming the map.

Im sure there are more and better reasons, but after thinking for 10 minutes this is what i came up with first.

[sneakydude 480]

1 hour ago, varobun said:

From someone who has this many hours,

here are a few reasons why i only play once or twice every month now:

• Hackers and glitchers is probably the easiest reason. Hackers are scarce after an update, but dupers/wallglitchers/groundglitchers/etc are there after every update. The sad part is that you can reliably find out how to do these in about 10-20 minutes.
• Time spent for fun/excitement. With items getting rarer, you spend more time finding what you want. This often only pays off for a shortwhile in the current state of pvp and leads to a person taking a break after a death.
• Lack of reward for killing zombies. Boring zombies. I know that they are adding loot to their bodies soon. Maybe ill return and more people will want to team up at that point. 
• Lack of server capacity to populate map. PVP areas are not varied. Out of our 60 player servers, hardly any of those are spread out. In my opinion there are usually 10 people at NWAF, 5 at kamy(kami?), 5-10 at cherno, 5 at elektro, 3-5 berenzino, 3 at Balota, 3 at three valleys corner (this place sucks arse), 3 at svetlo. Out of all of those only one is not a coastal spawn location. There are probably only like 10 people on average actually roaming the map.

Im sure there are more and better reasons, but after thinking for 10 minutes this is what i came up with first.

This is the norm now of many above 100 hours game played. We are burnt out of the same game play week after week. Some of us return, many times over the quarter to refresh things, test for bugs, post them to geez and get annoyed.

That is exactly how we feel. Ill tell you right now 100% of people are annoyed with bugs, just because they dont say anything they are. Some are having fun with groups and only say it to themselves but are annoyed by the bugs as much as the next person.

Lack of things to do at this stage is exactly where we are today.

I caught a cheater, i doubt it got vac ban like it should have been done. I had all the evidence you can get.

[philbur 476]

Also...There is the simple method of just setting milestones and "forcing" your team to meet them....

Features may not materialize that were once hoped for...and content may not be as fully developed as originally planned....

But the damn project gets done. People get paid...and then the versions to reach the original goals are slowly worked on and released. Every OS, Game, or mainstream program that hits it big usually does it post-RTM build.

Just because the "product" is virtual (and essentially only entertainment) and does not carry any forward progress for our species it is easy to justify the departure from mainstream accountability and results-based metrics.

Those who spend their entire working lives in an industry that doesn't actually "produce" anything "real" cannot be asked to meet the expectations of those that do. The ultimate measures of success are not even remotely comparable.

I find it tough to buy into the exponential reasoning and excuse-making of why processes that are not 100% familiar to me are not meeting goals promised to me by the very people that presume to know better. If you know so much about a process...then why is it not working the way you said it would...and why, then, does your primary defense of that failure always return to "you don't know what it takes"? If something is not happening they way it should..then something is broken or in need of review.

If you simplify it down to a business that delivers a product to a customer then it is all too clear where the main issues lie.

It does not appear, in my opinion anyway, that there has been enough "business" done on this project and the feeling I get from the updates is more along the lines of a cool little project a bunch of enthusiastic people have going.

I thought this was a "thing" so I paid for it (yes...I got it for cheap because it was not a finished "thing"!). Had I known it was just a "thought" I would be less justified in my scepticism.

In other words....the main issues for me are the seemingly poor efforts to run this project as a business. The dropping player base probably won't stabilize until the "perception" is that there is leadership that has the proper methodology to get this done. The player base will, I am confident, rise as they approach RTM and I am still betting this "game" will be an immensely immersive and fun experience....I probably regret the decision to go ALPHA, though, because as much as I have been fascinated by the process....I am now to the point where I just don't see how it can deliver on my own confused and irrationally conceived expectations. As long as I make an effort to deliberately ignore outsiders' perspectives on how this title is progressing then I will be fine....but when the emperor finally finds out about his poor choice of outerwear it usually comes at a crisis of conscience.

All that said... I think the first batch of players to give up on DayZ SA have been the die-hard KOS kiddies and I am just fine with that. Hopefully there is a plan afoot in the BI offices to make a concerted effort to advertise and promote DayZ SA when they finally go Beta. That is something I guess we all forgot about, eh? This game has yet to be fully marketed and yet we are already looking at it as a full release title that is doing poorly....

"We" gotta stop doing this to ourselves....sheesh!

[stinkenheim 249]

34 minutes ago, philbur said:

Also...There is the simple method of just setting milestones and "forcing" your team to meet them....

Features may not materialize that were once hoped for...and content may not be as fully developed as originally planned....

But the damn project gets done. People get paid...and then the versions to reach the original goals are slowly worked on and released. Every OS, Game, or mainstream program that hits it big usually does it post-RTM build

I'm old so maybe my memory is fuzzy but I certainly remember the years spent eagerly waiting for new games to come out and the constant slipping of deadlines that came with it.

I remember preordering Legend of Zelda- Twilight Princess when it was first announced for the gamecube. I was pumped for that game.

Never happened though, about a year, 18 months later it got pushed onto the wii instead and I still had to wait ages for it to come out on that platform. 

Games are an odd product because so many things can, and often do, go wrong with the development of them. Sometimes bug fixing isn't a linear process or something that works brilliantly in internal testing doesn't work properly on a larger scale. I'm not defending or insulting the development speed of this game, I do though remember waiting  years for games with only the occasional screenshot to keep my interest. It's unusualv (or rather, was) to have such a wide open access to a game this early in development. Lots of lessons have been learned from it by both sides and many still need to be learned. 

It's not smooth sailing, it's not always enjoyable, often it can be tedious waiting for something to be put in that you hope will change the way the whole game is played but hey. We signed up for this despite being told by the devs that we shouldn't.

I'm just happy I can play a game which mostly works while I wait for the standard 4-5 year development until it's finished. 

[scriptfactory 620]

29 minutes ago, stinkenheim said:

I'm just happy I can play a game which mostly works while I wait for the standard 4-5 year development until it's finished. 

Since when is 4 to 5 years standard in the gaming industry?

The majority of games take 1-3 years to complete. The longer a game takes to develop the more it costs. The longer a game spends in development the less likely it is to recoup development costs. Many games take 1-2 years to break even.

[scriptfactory 620]

37 minutes ago, stinkenheim said:

I'm just happy I can play a game which mostly works while I wait for the standard 4-5 year development until it's finished. 

Since when is 4 to 5 years standard in the gaming industry?

The majority of games take 1-3 years to complete. The longer a game takes to develop the more it costs. The longer a game spends in development the less likely it is to recoup development costs. Many games take 1-2 years to break even.

Edit: Where are you guys getting your information about game development?

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

20 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

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.

I know of your dev background and in all honesty it never seemed to bolster any of your points in the past and doesn't seem to do so now.

You have cherry picked what you chose to reference and are quoting Brooks' law which I was not referencing at all.

21 hours 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?

Means mid project, and has way more impact as a factor than merely the size.

 

20 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

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

No. What I wrote was clear. Now you're taking another meaning from what I said to merely state what you've done.

20 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

It is a gross oversimplification of the problems that can be exhibited when adding new programmers to an already late project.

You are denying the fact that this project brings enormous and unique problems never before tackled at this level. There is no counterpart to DayZ as far as dev path or the depth of changes made to every aspect of the game.

Virtually everything is being overhauled or completely swapped out from a legacy component from the renderer, to animations, to hit boxes, to the fucking grass models.

Please please please please show a similar example either that you have worked on or that has legit reference somewhere on the web.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

43 minutes ago, scriptfactory said:

-snip-

Edit: Where are you guys getting your information about game development?

History?

You know, 35 years of gaming?

[scriptfactory 620]

People ignored me back in 2014, too...

Quote

I'm always careful with what I say - 3 year standard development cycle, meaning in standard terms this would be a 3 year, closed development cycle. Early Access changes a lot of that, I don't need to tell you. We are still aiming for end of 2014 to hit our beta phase entry. You can be certain the weekly status reports will keep everyone updated on that.

We're trying to effectively do a 3 year standard cycle in 2 to 2.5 years. It might be a lofty goal, but as long as I have something to say about it - you will all be kept updated as to what is going on.

 

[philbur 476]

Without actually needing an answer to this, I look at recent big titles like BF4, Battlefront, CODx, and ARMA and wonder about how I am using these as a reference to SA and why it might be the wrong way to go about it.

Does anyone know how long it took for Frostbite, Source, Unreal, and CryEngine to be deployed? As in NOT "developed"...but actually used in titles AFTER their initial game debut?

There are several updated versions of all of those by now and some of them still carry with them a few major bugs and performance issues.

Dropping a new game development project into one of these PRE-ASSEMBLED game engines is no less of a guarantee that the dev process will be painless....but the time frame MUST be considerably less, right?

I am using this liberal assumption to moderate my ebbing patience and I still maintain that "once the engine and tools are complete" the game will come together quickly and smoothly.

It's too bad we have the worst of BOTH worlds, right now....the delays and uncertainty of the source engine development and then the similar pain associated with the design and implementation of a game that runs on it.

Hopefully, those that have "left" the community are still willing to give it a go after Beta kicks in. I'm betting the majority are.

 

Is this just me being a hopeless apologist? It seems like there are a few in this Forum that choose to jump down the throats of others that post their feelings and observations instead of creating interest in their own way.

If the development is going sideways and we have opinions about why we feel it could be done "better" then it's just good manners to let each others' perspectives be heard...and discussed...but not attacked.

Clearly, there are numerous topics that qualify for extreme ridicule (gotta love the Graveyard content!) but I will be honest with you guys and say that one of the KEY reasons my enthusiasm for DayZ SA has not diminished to the point where I am effectively OUT of interest is this very Forum, and the E-conversations we all engage in.

[scriptfactory 620]

That was a really nice post, philbur. These forums are a great platform for discussion. We are all here because we love the idea of DayZ. I need to remind myself of that. Thank you for being a voice of reason and compassion.

 

[stinkenheim 249]

5 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

Since when is 4 to 5 years standard in the gaming industry?

The majority of games take 1-3 years to complete. The longer a game takes to develop the more it costs. The longer a game spends in development the less likely it is to recoup development costs. Many games take 1-2 years to break even.

Edit: Where are you guys getting your information about game development?

When games aren't just re-skinned sequels like the CoD franchise or Fifa they take more than 1-3 years.

The more you can borrow from preexisting games the quicker the development speed.

Fallout 4 likely began around 2010, Skyrim took about 4 years, No Mansfield Skype started in 2012.

A lot of games take more than 3 years to develop. Originally Standalone was to be a refined and polished version of the mod. It's not surprising that initially the development timeliness was much shorter.

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

9 hours ago, philbur said:

Also...There is the simple method of just setting milestones and "forcing" your team to meet them....

Eh, this point bothers me when I think on it. That's how companies like EA get such terrible reputations for abusing their staff. 'Crunch time' is a horrible concept, an abuse that relies on exploiting your employees' love for their field to get them to work in a manner that is notably unhealthy. That kind of managerial behaviour isn't tolerated in businesses where there's no passion to exploit - your employees just leave, unafraid of being black-balled from the industry.

[scriptfactory 620]

Crunch time (in Europe) isn't some kind of slave labor shit. It usually just means you work as quickly as possible while incurring massive technical debt and bugs.

Edited September 12, 2016 by scriptfactory

[philbur 476]

Crunch Time can mean many things I agree.

It is also a term to use when a project has entered its' most critical phase and everything HAS to go right in order for success.

It is a term to DEFINE your character and prove your work ethic. If you succeed in "Crunch Time" then you are able to focus and apply your skills (and maybe sacrifice a few suppers and weekends if need be) to overcome tight timelines and complicated processes to finally deliver, and you are usually rewarded for it or at least respected for it.

Unfortunately the three levels of corporate staff usually get the wrong types of rewards when a project get finished.

Managers, Leads, Team....... Raise, Praise, Sundaes......

When it goes wrong?...Well...

Managers, Leads, Team....... Raise, Affirmation, Termination.....

[Lexman61 78]

There are many valid reasons and opinions regarding the "long" developing time of DayZ, but ultimately, the shrinking player numbers and an ever growing frustration of those who see no light at the end of the tunnel is undeniable. Maybe the developers are quite happy to eventually deliver a finished game for a (relatively) small group of dedicated players and not aim for the AAA crowd and millions of copies sold.

A clamorous turning point from the above mentioned scenario could only take place if DayZ is released for the Xbox and PS4 and turns out to be a great success with the console people. This would obviously create new interest for the game and revenue for Bohemia. Otherwise I just don't see how DayZ can bounce back to it's former player-count and initial enthusiasm.

I'm also concerned about where the developers really want to take this game. I hope not from one extreme to another. From a KOS run and gun to a survival simulator where "toilet needs" will be added just to make it feel more "realistic".

Time will tell!

[BeefBacon 1185]

On 09/09/2016 at 11:14 PM, -Gews- said:

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)

I never played the mod. I watched plenty of videos, though, and it looked neat. Saw mods that added a lot of STALKER content, and I'm super keen on a STALKER-themed mod for the standalone. I expect that vanilla will have a pretty short lifespan, though that isn't necessarily a problem. I'm looking forward to how DayZ evolves when the community gets their hands on it.

On 11/09/2016 at 0:56 PM, scriptfactory said:

Since when is 4 to 5 years standard in the gaming industry?

The majority of games take 1-3 years to complete. The longer a game takes to develop the more it costs. The longer a game spends in development the less likely it is to recoup development costs. Many games take 1-2 years to break even.

Edit: Where are you guys getting your information about game development?

If you'd said this a few years ago you might have been right, but this isn't 1995 any more. Hell, Half-Life 2 started development in 1999 and was released in 2004 - that's a good 4-5 years right there for a game that's practically ancient. As others have pointed out, Skyrim and Fallout 4 took many years to develop, as have many other games. Some games take 6 months. Some games take 6 years. Most big games tend to take longer - indies are usually smaller in scope and so often require less development time (unless they're unfunded, of course). BI isn't a huge studio, and the scope of DayZ is fairly large. Just throwing money at the devs doesn't magically make them work faster, in fact - as I've pointed out in the past - it actually made them work slower. The huge early access sales lead them to make DayZ a bigger, more ambitious game rather than just a version of the mod that didn't require Arma 2, which was pretty much the original plan.

Edited September 12, 2016 by BeefBacon

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

18 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

Crunch time (in Europe) isn't some kind of slave labor shit. It usually just means you work as quickly as possible while incurring massive technical debt and bugs.

Good for you guys. It's a very different picture on this side of the pond.

[emuthreat 2837]

 

21 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

Crunch time (in Europe) isn't some kind of slave labor shit. It usually just means you work as quickly as possible while incurring massive technical debt and bugs.

I learned a new word today. And it made me a little sad.  Completely interchangeable/replaceable staff is not so great for the human aspect of business.  I know Europe typically has better human needs standards for employees, but that concept seems to walk a narrow line between project flexibility, and a distressed/disposable workforce.

 

2 hours ago, Funkmaster Rick said:

Good for you guys. It's a very different picture on this side of the pond.

Your conversation about ethics has caught my attention.  @philbur added a nice little bit there too, regarding compensation trends.

Looking at recent news about Mylan jacking the price of epipens, two thing jumped out at me.  First, they are doing this as part of a four year incentive plan for top-level executive compensation bumps, where the target is an arbitrary stock price they wish to achieve.  They do this by selecting a cheap to manufacture product (which has an inelastic market because of people having an unwavering desire to avoid dying due to anaphylaxis) in a market where the only major competing product just issued a recall, and increased the price by around 500%.  It's profiteering, plain and simple, at the expense of people's lives.

Wells Fargo is also a great example of a company that  over-incentivized their sales staff to increase the number of "products" that existing customers subscribed to; namely primary checking accounts.  Ever actor in the economy is understood to make decisions out of rational self-interest, "will this benefit me" is a great way to express this criteria for decision making.  In this case, people had an opportunity to game the system by opening accounts for customers without their knowledge or consent, in order to increase their incentivized sales numbers, and ultimately line their own pockets.

If the past couple hundred years of history have taught me anything, it is that corporations, especially publicly traded ones, have no regard for human welfare, beyond the immediate compensation of their investors and executives; and when absolutely necessary, the people on the ground who are asked to do the dirty work.  It's nobody's fault, really, that it ended up this way.  After all, corporations were conceived as a way by which people with too much money, could loan some of it to ambitious individuals to go and carve out more fortune from this seemingly endless world of untapped resources.  Though, sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, things changed, resources were no longer functionally infinite.

It's nobody's fault that things got that way, but I would suggest it is the fault of everyone alive right now that they seem to persist in such a way.

At least BI seems to be one of the better examples in the field.

 

[philbur 476]

@BeefBacon said:

"Just throwing money at the devs doesn't magically make them work faster, in fact - as I've pointed out in the past - it actually made them work slower. The huge early access sales lead them to make DayZ a bigger, more ambitious game rather than just a version of the mod that didn't require Arma 2, which was pretty much the original plan"

In response I would ask...Is it maybe because the oversight of this project has allowed too much ambiguity to creep in to the studio?

It almost seems that way to me at least.

It's great that the team is doing really fantastic things with the look and feel of the Alpha...but at what point is there a conscious decision to stop "playing" with the project and start taking deadlines or ultimate deliverables seriously? That's my fear....one where BI, as a corporation, does not care about finalizing this title because of the revenue they have already received from the Alphers. (or better said, we paid for their new engine development and in return they let us mess around with it).

I would hate to right on that one. When .61 drops I think we will have a better idea of just how serious they are about finishing this crazy little thing called love.

Edited September 13, 2016 by philbur
Sorry...my "quote this" is not playing nice anymore

[nl 986]

I have to be honest, I am losing some trust lately in what the end product will be. I really hope I am wrong. It somehow feels the momentum has gone and with it my enthusiasm. Maybe it's just blues because the summer is coming to an end.

[exwoll 255]

Well, at last we got some light at the end of the tunnel with someone that gave us a glimpse into where the project is now:

Question:

Quote

 

I am beginning to question the development architecture style of this game. As an Alpha, there is no expectation that you have to publish "stable" (production) code. But, we know the desire is to push code to experimental -> stable.

Now, I could see going months without a stable build, but going months without an experimental build is telling me that there is a serious problem between different tasks being merged into master. The projects architecture, which should be designed by senior development leaders, appears to have hit a stumbling point where adding new code to master continues to bring up more branch destroying bugs.

This is concerning long term. While they dont need to have experimental/stable builds as an Alpha, not being able to produce experimental builds to us outside of internal testing is very worrisome at this point.

This isnt a Brian Hicks issue, or the programming team overall, so go easy on them guys. Something is fundamentally wrong in the code base that continues to break, and short of re-writing a very large majority of the game, they will never get around it. Bohemia, it might be time to get some experienced senior developers to assume the project leadership role. Your reputation is starting to get a nasty hit, and if it doesnt stop soon, you might hit a point of no return with this game. Which would suck.

 

 

Reply from a Dev:

 

Quote

 

There is a fundamental difference in how you view the subject and what is the underlying problem. But again its a hard one to understand without all the information. And putting that information out there costs a lot of time and causes giant overhead where people need to be focusing on the project.

We have a strong team with people that have 10s of years of experience. (and it has been that way for most of the timeline on the project, except early start) and unless I`m mistaken were hovering around 80-90 depending on how you count external sources. Which is a huge two site team for a company of this size. Yes were not GTA and cannot have hundreds of developers here in czech republic/slovak republic. The growth and numbers of people create overhead that would not come with faster development.

So here is how our process works.

Internal branch (code)

Internal branch (data)

Internal client repository

Internal server repository

Internal srvlet repository (backend)

Stable branch (code)

Stable branch (data)

Stable client repository

Stable server repository

Stable Srvlet repository (backend)

Tools repository

Console repository

Build pipeline with automation that covers pipelines for all branches and systems

-uploading builds to steam cdn

-buildings pbos

-navmesh generation

-building binaries

-building tools

and much more

Some jobs can be requested, some are automated, some are done during night. The time on the jobs varies greatly. Some are more time consuming, some less. With multiple slave to soften the time contrain and load. (you still have to understand that building a single version of executables takes 30-45 minutes (server,server64,tools,client,client64, and more)

The documentation process is covered by atlassian package of products for the most part. So we use confluence for documentation. Jira for tasking. So both sites (bratislava and prague) are in sync. There are rules for commit logs, documentation, meeting notes, daily reports on crashes, daily reports on build state and more.

We have a daily scrum for cross site cooperation and where we talk about what we have done day before and what is on plan that day. Each team (animators,designers,production,QA,engine,gameplay) is represented by a lead that covers organization within the team itself. All guys in the team are amazing with tons of experience and I believe in what all of us here do.

QA is going through couple builds daily (QA lead with two senior guys and testers (20-40 depending on the day) finding repro on bugs, reporting them to Jira, and using proper tags and labels to sort them in categories and pass them onto leads for respective parts of gameplay/engine etc. Leads distribute the tasks for team members and consult on daily progress.

When we branch and RC we shift a big part of the focus on getting it out.

However and here is something you have to understand. The development is flat and it has a good reason, without having base technology in the game (because its being worked on for better part of three years). You cannot have feature teams working on single feature, because the dependencies are far and wide and interconnected. There are base engine modules gettings changed and they are sometimes built with backwards compatibility in mind (when we can, and it can be separated, like sound engine), and sometimes they are part of bigger chunk of engine, because they cannot have the backward compatibility with modules of old engine. And as such can be merged into internal only when all of them are done. Sometimes they are running in tandem with old stuff while we test them.

So you have giant number of variables that change how the game behaves and tons of developer switches to test in the intermittent states of different parts of game. Lot of the work because of how time consuming engine development is, is done before the modules are ready because it would take insane amount of time if we would wait. All that while we change core tech, architecture etc.

All of that is quite complicated when you look how early the early access was in hands of the consumer base. With the success came goals to make the game much more up to todays standards. And I believe we can deliver. I can`t show you how far we are yet, because things are always in flux and we want to avoid making anymore promises. Because missing deadlines is never fun and even you are angry at us, we are even more.

Because of how games are made, and there is lack of understanding of the process, people never see how broken things can get, even looking at other games that are in early access not a lot of them are going through what we are so its really hard to find a good comparison. Most of these things that we do now, happen behind closed doors of large studios. And open betas/open alphas that get into publics hands are either on stable technology or they are not alphas/betas at all. Just a finished game thats underoging public testing.

The technology backlog to get game into this century was huge and were getting the snowball effect going. The technology debt is no small part of it. So I`m sitting here reading all these comments after spending 11 hours at work today trying to get a good set of features with the guys out while we march towards the release of beta/1.0 with all the people here. Its so hard to explain all this without going into too much detail/not revealing new stuff. But please know that we are not going anywhere, were going to finish this game and deliver what makes the DayZ we love so great.

 

Guess we all can go home now.

 

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

On September 11, 2016 at 10:12 AM, scriptfactory said:

People ignored me back in 2014, too...

 

If I'm not mistaken, that quote from Hicks came before the console post for PS4 was announced which brought in the funding for the new engine and renderer. Naturally this changed development for the better, despite pushing beta back.

[blackberrygoo 1416]

On September 9, 2016 at 0:16 PM, sai (DayZ) said:

I played the mod a lot, then when this game came out I played that for a few weeks, and I could see where it was going, anyone else hanging on has poor judgment of the future. This game still is nowhere close to the mod for game play, and thats ridiculous. It's not even a zombie game, it's about infected. That killed it for me long ago. I was sold on zombies, got switch baited and have been watching it dwindle since. They got their money, did lame updates to keep people somewhat happy, and now eyes are no longer on the game they can relax on the millions they got. I doubt it will ever be properly finished, whats the point, it's not popular anymore. 

You haven't even played this game since the first few weeks of its release ? Get outta here you joke .