Status Report - 10 January 2017

[Baty Alquawen 3688]

Hello survivors!

New Year is here and with it the first Status Report. Brian would like to present major goals for 2017, Peter talks about reasons why the game is more hardcore than before and Baty summarizes your Christmas experiences.

Contents This Week

• Dev Update/Hicks
• Dev Update/Peter
• Community Spotlight

 

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors!

Its our first Status Report of the year - and as we've had team members trickling back in through the first week of the year it might be a bit of a dry one, but lets take a look at the major goals going forward as well as what has occured so far in 2017.

As work on 0.62 and the Beta milestones move forward, internal teams have contined in our goal to address the remaining issues in 0.61, and hopefully introduce vehicles to stable branch. Over the last few weeks the team has been cycling issues through exp, and onto stable directed at:

 

• Known Server Crashes
• Adjustments to Infected Behavior
• Adjustments to Hypothermia damage
• Fixes for Vehicle and Tent Lifetime
• Fixes for Invisible Body Parts
• Vehicles on Exp falling through terrain
• Fireplaces not being able to be placed in Stoves

 

In addition to these adjustments cycling through the Exp/Unstable branch, the development team is tracking and working to address a number of additional issues:

 

• VOIP Volume/Proximity Dropoff
• Vehicle client side performance
• Server side performance drops (Causing issues such as player position desync, delayed actions, etc)
• Server side memory consumption
• Additional known server crashes
• Infected spawning behavior issues
• Contined polish and work on addressing remaining issues with vehicles

 

As mentioned this is all in addition to ongoing work for both 0.62 and Beta milestones - Once we get internal builds in a state we are confident to start showing examples of both visuals, and client side performance for 0.62 we'll be sharing that. All of us here on the dev team are excited about this, as the small team of artists and support programmer begin to start preperation for branching for this milestone. I know this Status Report is chock full of cool and amazing things, but our first goals as we kick back into the groove for the new year are squarely focused on addressing the critical 0.61 issues you've all been experiencing, and pushing forward into 0.62 and Beta.

We all hope you had a great holiday season, and were able to spend time with your friends, families, and most important loved ones.

- Brian Hicks / Creative Director

 

Dev Update/Peter

With the release of 0.61 version of DayZ, one major issue raised by the community, which is still discussed back and forth, was the noticeable increase in difficulty of the PvE challenge in the game. I wanted to comment on this.

Recently we took advantage of the new dynamic spawning system and because of that, concentration of infected is much higher then ever before (and I hope, there will be even more of them in future with the possibility of hordes when everything goes well). Now, when we finally achieved some reasonable numbers of infected in locations for intended gameplay purposes, it is unthinkable that they will just stand there, ignoring you while filling up empty space in settlements like scenery. It seems some don't remember how harsh infected were in the mod back in the days, when crawling on your belly for long minutes to observe a town to choose an entry point with the least resistance wasn't anything special. Don't forget that infected are meant to be a real threat to survival in Chernarus. You either need to avoid them or fight them (or eventually flee if you are lucky).

There are some known issues in AI which need to be fixed and I understand that it may be hard to have a stealth approach with old habits that came from nearly nonexistent infected in the past, and without the planned presence indicator (combined with how much noise you make and how well you are visible) in the upcoming HUD, you can try to follow some general rules which might help you - stay low, keep distance and avoid their line of sight (yes, they have peripheral vision too). As far as close combat goes, it will be overhauled once the new player is ready and we already started to prototype it in meantime. Of course reported issues like infected running through seemingly closed doors, or spawning right next to you are unacceptable and will be fixed.

If you would like to read more about design of the Infected, check out the Status Report released in 3rd March 2015. (https://dayz.com/blog/status-report-3-mar-15)

Also, rain and ensuing low body temperatures become a factor to consider in the fight for survival. Which again, is nothing unexpected and you shouldn't be afraid of it, just adapt to it. When all the systems like metabolism, diseases, injuries, stamina, weather impact, infected, predators and others will fall in place and became fine balanced you will witness a definitive survival game, where you need to be careful, have to plan ahead and get prepared for possible upcoming situations - this is DayZ people.

Stay strong and never give up... see you in Chernarus folks!

- Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

 

Community Spotlight

Christmas and New Year celebrations are now behind us. You might have done some of your celebrating in DayZ, where Christmas trees were added and as a little present you might have found cute little teddy bears with surprises hidden inside them. They were able to protect your equipment from damage if you kept them with you.

You were so excited about them, that you kept sending pictures showing your happy findings to our official Twitter.

Dystopian Gaming sent a screenshot from his Christmas celebrations with the message:

"I ❤ my pink teddy! Merry Xmas!"

 

Sam Kingswell was really thrilled about the number of furry soft toys that he encountered in Chernarus!

 

Not everyone was getting presents only in-game. Streamer https://twitter.com/BlueandQueenieMrBlue  got some DayZ style gear from his girlfriend. Awesome!

And last but not least, we received a New Year greetings from Watchman.

 

I would also like to wish you all a happy and successful new year, full of good health, love and fun.

Header image by: berdu

 

- Baty / Community Manager

 

[MrBlueandQueenie 15]

Oh my lord! :D

[OliverPlotTwist 458]

11 minutes ago, Baty Alquawen said:

When all the systems like metabolism, diseases, injuries, stamina, weather impact, infected, predators and others will fall in place and became fine balanced you will witness a definitive survival game, where you need to be careful, have to plan ahead and get prepared for possible upcoming situations - this is DayZ people.

This! This is all I ever wanted. Man, I'm one happy fanboy right now.

[Tatanko 5591]

I think there may be a section missing, Baty... I don't see the update from Mirek?

[Gobbokirk 546]

26 minutes ago, OliverPlotTwist said:

This! This is all I ever wanted. Man, I'm one happy fanboy right now.

Mmmm suffering the way it should be:D

If a survival game doesn't make you curse at it, then its to easy :D

[igor-vk 909]

Surviving hypothermia is not hard if placing fireplace kits works. 

I miss different zombies that Mod had, crawlers, hoppers, monkeys...

[Espa 711]

Awesome updates guys! Really looking forward to some footage of the new visuals! Also, the new HUD sounds neat.  I wonder how it'll be implemented and reduce the cost to immersion breakage from it :)

One more thing, as a DayZ fanboy, these waits between SRs is totally so hard to do!! Can we get any word on the implementation of other Infected designs?  -- Like when will they begin to break down doors? 

[Red_Ensign 990]

BOARS OR RIOT

also would be nice if you fixed fireplaces and campfire locations.  the hypothermia thing would've been fine if fires could've been reliably placed and lit.

[Ovrclck 21]

Digging the mod tribute. Zeds were definitely a threat back then. Can't wait!

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

\m/

More patches please.

THANK YOU

[Espa 711]

Contents This Week

• Dev Update/Hicks
• Dev Update/Peter
• Dev Update/Mirek?
• Community Spotlight

@Baty Alquawen Did we miss a section, Baty? Haha

[Lingo 1]

Is it just me, or are infected super dumb again?  Before last nights change I had to be on my toes, crouching, waiting, etc... now I'm running through towns again without much aggro.  I liked it before!

[ClaireOpen 116]

5 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

Don't forget that infected are meant to be a real threat to survival in Chernarus. You either need to avoid them or fight them (or eventually flee if you are lucky).

 

For the first time since I started playing, I came, this weekend, to dread the sound of the Infected.  Crouched by the well at Kabanino, hearing them beyond the wall, I felt very trapped and very alone (despite having Mr Hicks the teddy bear with me).

Well done. 

 

[Sqeezorz 839]

I'm a bit irritated about the new HUD. Must it really show me how loud I am? Or how well I might see an infectet? Can not you imagine that? Clothing which has eye-catching colors looks everyone better. The harder and more massive shoes are the louder they are. If you carry a lot of things, they will move louder. Does the game really need a pointer to help those who do not know what real works? This message about the HUD makes me somewhat disappointed.

 

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

8 hours ago, Baty Alquawen said:

 

Dev Update/Peter

With the release of 0.61 version of DayZ, one major issue raised by the community, which is still discussed back and forth, was the noticeable increase in difficulty of the PvE challenge in the game. I wanted to comment on this.

Recently we took advantage of the new dynamic spawning system and because of that, concentration of infected is much higher then ever before (and I hope, there will be even more of them in future with the possibility of hordes when everything goes well). Now, when we finally achieved some reasonable numbers of infected in locations for intended gameplay purposes, it is unthinkable that they will just stand there, ignoring you while filling up empty space in settlements like scenery. It seems some don't remember how harsh infected were in the mod back in the days, when crawling on your belly for long minutes to observe a town to choose an entry point with the least resistance wasn't anything special. Don't forget that infected are meant to be a real threat to survival in Chernarus. You either need to avoid them or fight them (or eventually flee if you are lucky).

 

 @Peter

 

If anything, we need even more difficulty.   Every door we open should be risky.  Risk shouldn't be entirely based on what town we enter or where on the map we choose to loot.  Please do not cater to the masses here.  The "run to Military Gear, get vehicle, deathmatch" crowd will be catered to with the inevitable easy mode mods.  Please make the vanilla game far more brutal than the mod ever was by making every choice a risk.  Yes, the deathmatchers and weaker streamer friends will ragequit and talk shit, but they'll obviously come back with the carebear mods.  Those of us that want a BRUTAL experience will be here and those that wanted that from start will come back.   The average lifetime displayed on the site was a major draw for many in the old days.  People wanted to see how well they could survive or how long it took them to conquer the experience.  Nerf it and you'll force modders to hack in the experience it should be rather than letting modders nerf it for the plebs.

[scriptfactory 620]

5 hours ago, sausagekingofchicago said:

 @Peter

Please do not cater to the masses here.

This is horrible advice for a company trying to take care of all of its customers. Horrible.

[themightylc 56]

1 hour ago, scriptfactory said:

This is horrible advice for a company trying to take care of all of its customers. Horrible.

I get what you are saying, but in this instance, in my opinion, you are wrong.

The "masses" here have already paid. And not for a game, but for a vision of a game. Maybe they understood that vision, maybe they didn't. They should provide feedback and help iron out problems, but in no way shape that vision along the way.

Peter sums it up perfectly in his last sentence. And boy am i hyped for it.

[scriptfactory 620]

I agree to a certain extent, @themightylc. I truly welcome a brutal experience. It should, however, be possible to take care of everyone in the vanilla game and not just the hardcore players. They could make zombie spawns and damage configurable per hive, for example.

In my opinion the goal should be to keep as many people interested in the vanilla game as possible. Enough people have been pushed away from the game.

[BAHADIR 124]

8 hours ago, sausagekingofchicago said:

 @Peter

 

If anything, we need even more difficulty.   Every door we open should be risky.  Risk shouldn't be entirely based on what town we enter or where on the map we choose to loot.  Please do not cater to the masses here.  The "run to Military Gear, get vehicle, deathmatch" crowd will be catered to with the inevitable easy mode mods.  Please make the vanilla game far more brutal than the mod ever was by making every choice a risk.  Yes, the deathmatchers and weaker streamer friends will ragequit and talk shit, but they'll obviously come back with the carebear mods.  Those of us that want a BRUTAL experience will be here and those that wanted that from start will come back.   The average lifetime displayed on the site was a major draw for many in the old days.  People wanted to see how well they could survive or how long it took them to conquer the experience.  Nerf it and you'll force modders to hack in the experience it should be rather than letting modders nerf it for the plebs.

HEAR THIS GUY !! PLEASE HEAR HIM AND PAY ATTENTION !!  okay joke aside, he is right. Even now the zombies are proof the game is on the right track, cheers.

[Baty Alquawen 3688]

17 hours ago, Tatanko said:

I think there may be a section missing, Baty... I don't see the update from Mirek?

I am sorry, my fault. He was sick this week. 

 

[Coheed_IV 381]

8 hours ago, scriptfactory said:

This is horrible advice for a company trying to take care of all of its customers. Horrible.

The indie/EA/kickstarter movement is our outlet to NOT have games which cater to the masses. It gives gamers a voice in what they want. DayZ mod became a phenomenon as a anti game. 

Games made for the masses suck, that's why we're here.

BI supports modding for this reason, to keep their vision focused, not watered down. Obviously ArmA is not for the masses and it's done rather well.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Coheed_IV

[blackberrygoo 1416]

"I know this status report is chock full of cool and amazing things"

lawl . Sarcasm too stronk , give us a good one next week !

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

Hey all,

 

I wanted to take a moment today to elaborate a little more on what we're tracking as issues on 0.61 - and where our headspace is on them.

 

We're tracking some issues related to degradation of server performance that can cause a lot of frustrating behavior. This didn't come up in experimental builds as it looks to have been related to some of the fixes in post 0.61 stable update builds, which didn't get as much attention as the pre-stable update experimental builds. This can cause stuff like player position getting stuck, player to player sync issues, slow infected, and several other issues. In addition to that, we're obviously aware of VOIP dropping off too quickly (distance wise), character heads appearing black, some client crashes, server memory usage (possibly related to the performance drop off), server crashes, and client crashes.

 

Obviously there are plenty of other things I'm sure players want to see addressed - but will come with iteration, and of course the introduction of new technology. Things like improving the distribution of items in the economy, melee, sway, and so on. As well, don't forget we're still focusing team members on reintroducing vehicles to stable branch - which aren't yet where we as developers are happy with them - but players would like to see introduced. Rest assured, there aren't any major issues we're not aware of guys - but with a lot of things when the technology powering the title is still in development, a quick fix isn't whats needed - or even healthy.

 

So just bear with us - file those tickets at the feedback tracker (Way more help than you probably know!) and keep putting your feedback into the forums.

[Espa 711]

1 hour ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

--Awesome Dev-

Thanks so much, Hicks, for all the hard work you guys do and letting us know where things are with Development. Honestly, even with the flaws and issues that arise occasionally, DayZ is still one of the most communicative titles and I just love that.

I don't know how far away fixes are for these issues, but I trust that all these things are underway. As for the new technology that may be better to implement than a quick fix, what kind of timetable would that take, I wonder? -- I guess it doesn't matter as long as it gets done :)

-Question: Where would the Devs like to see Vehicles? - How many more iterations are we away from a Stable release of them?

[emuthreat 2837]

Are we going to see fully persistent vehicles on experimental before the stable push?  I feel that the low populations on Exp. these past few weeks aren't going to be enough to work out all of the kinks.

Maybe throw a new gun onto Exp. to get all the crash test dummies back online...