Day Z Is Going In the Right Direction

[Solopopo 330]

I recently made a post commending BI for their work with the new zombies, while acknowledging that in general I am not satisfied with Day Z. As I've had a little more time with .61, I've really come around to it. I recently had my first wolf encounter and it was amazing. I killed their pack leader and they split up and ran away. About 20 minutes later I found the same wolves in the next town and had to deal with them. I've seen some complaining on these forums about wolves and the new difficulty their presence adds to the game. I am frankly surprised that people aren't overjoyed by these new threats. Players seem to have gotten accustomed to the ease with which they can just run for miles without a care in the world. I for one think that's maddening and I've always hated it. I love that there are finally reasons to be cautious. There are actually things to survive from now in this survival game. Dealing with zombies, wolves, and even weather has been a blast for me. The clothes you chose to wear actually matter now. Finding water resistant and warm clothing can actually be the difference between life and death. I've had to craft multiple fires to dry my clothes and warm up to avoid dying of hypothermia. Locking myself indoors with lock picks and setting up fires has become a pretty regular thing for me. In fact, I think my cooking is what drew the wolves to begin with, which is awesome.

Another thing I've really come around to is persistence, now that everything isn't always spawning in the same spot with mostly nothing everywhere else. I know this still happens sometimes, but the last time I tried playing Day Z it was so bad the game was literally unplayable. I've also really come to appreciate walking as opposed to running, similar to how Arma 3 is played. Somehow slowing down has made me more patient while exploring, because keeping my breath down has become an objective, like the objective of getting to my destination. Soon enough when vehicles are implemented again BI will be adding new, more punishing, stamina features making it so that we can't run forever. I'm really looking forward to that. Stamina management can be a game in itself, and it can really break up the monotony of endlessly running straight for miles. The way Day Z has been up until now, and the way some have become accustomed to, the fun needed to be sought out at far away loot locations that took endless running to get to. The way Day Z is going, the game will be fun wherever you are. That is a better game. That is the Day Z we want, meaning we should be more receptive of new challenges in my opinion.  

Day Z is certainly deserving of some criticism, but I think it's important to criticize the right things. Getting used to a survival game with nothing to survive from and then being put off when the developers actually deliver on survival features doesn't really make sense. What does make sense is that Day Z has taken so long to develop that it has already cultivated a community who have come to prefer Day Z the way it was. While I think this is a mistake, it's hard to blame them. However, it is reasonable to assume that many changes to come are going to be hazardous to your survivor's health, so it makes sense to embrace these new changes and adapt now. What Day Z has been up until now is quite poor; don't cling to it. There is so much better to come. 

Anyway, I just wanted to express how much I am enjoying myself right now at a time when it seems a lot of people are taking a break. For the first time in a long time I am excited and confident for the future of Day Z. The 64-bit client, along with the new Enfusion engine, has made the game more smooth than I thought would ever be possible. I am delighted by how smooth even the mouse is on the main menu screen, a true hallmark of optimized games lost even to Skyrim. Things also look incredible. I sometimes marvel at the detail of forests, unlike anything I've seen before in a game, with so many individually placed trees of different species. The new sound is fantastic as well. I remember when sound was so broken it was more likely that any sound you heard actually happened hours ago, and I'm not exaggerating that time frame. Sound is now very reliable as a form of defense and also as a way of seeking out any hidden threats. That may seem rudimentary, but it's something Day Z didn't have for a long time (it had it in the very beginning, but then lost it). And they finally got rid of that damn ambient noise audio loop they had for years; the one that would play random chain link fence sounds every ten minutes regardless of whether you were swimming in the ocean or in an empty field. The ambient noise is actually appropriate for the situation now. When it comes out, the new player controller, with it's new animations and features dependent on those animations, will significantly improve the overall presentation of the game. It is the last major piece of the puzzle to make Day Z what it needs to be, and it's the next thing on it's way. Then new physics will be the icing on the cake, and it's just smooth content releases and optimizations from there. I expect content will be released quickly then, with BI finally having put in place the main infrastructure they plan to build on, which is a goal they set years ago. The majority of the development team is working on beta as I write this, as I'm sure a lot of you know. .62 may be the last update before beta. We are coming into the home stretch! 

edit: It is now cofirmed that .62 will be the last update before beta

Edited February 21, 2017 by Solopopo

[Jack5h1t 2]

Hey Solopopo, I pretty much agree with everything you said, I've only been playing for about 5 months and had gotten quite used to 0.60 when they changed everything. Basically I had to re-learn the game. And the howl of wolves is terrifying. Love it. 

[NickNasty6 21]

Everything will change this game is indeed going in the right direction.   It's just funny that a week or two ago you were on here trashing the devs and posting as if you had no clue of the engine change and how that factored in the development.    Glad it seems you understand now and that you're enjoying it.  


Personally i'm on a break from testing.  I don't want to burn out on it and not enjoy it as much at 1.0

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

I think dayz will be a fine game in spite of the players LOL

[Solopopo 330]

On 2/15/2017 at 10:35 AM, NickNasty6 said:

Everything will change this game is indeed going in the right direction.   It's just funny that a week or two ago you were on here trashing the devs and posting as if you had no clue of the engine change and how that factored in the development.    Glad it seems you understand now and that you're enjoying it.  


Personally i'm on a break from testing.  I don't want to burn out on it and not enjoy it as much at 1.0

If you read what I wrote, I acknowledged the engine changes. I said I wasn't impressed given how long it took to release. I am still not impressed, relatively speaking. I am saying now that the game is going in the right direction. The overall development of this game however has been disgraceful. They charged 30 dollars for an alpha, knowing full well the entire thing would need to be gutted eventually. They were fully aware the infrastructure they had then was not suitable to support where they wanted to take the game. Dean Hall himself acknowledged this publicly and then bailed on the entire project. Day Z should never have released as an alpha. It was a shameless cash grab, and no amount of disclaimer writing can change that. The alpha release has only slowed down the development of this game in the long run. They have been dividing their attention between stable branch and actual development. The concept of early access is a plague to the gaming industry. The fact that they are now getting their s*** together does not change that. 

I do believe that it is important to acknowledge when things have been done right, regardless of any other issues surrounding them. That's why I say Day Z does indeed deserve some criticism: the right criticism. We don't want them thinking they are doing it wrong once they've finally started doing it right. I have been following this game for a long time. I stopped giving BI the benefit of the doubt a long time ago. Now that I have had a good amount of time with .61, and I've read into what the devs are working on currently, I am willing to acknowledge that things are going in the right direction. That does not mean I think BI has done a good job up until now, or that they are deserving of much more than a steady golf clap. It means am confident that Day Z will someday soon be what it was always meant to be, and that it will be great.

Early access is a very real threat to the gaming industry. Charging money for promises is bad practice. It turns out that BI is respectable enough to follow through on promises. One look at Arma 3 proves that. It started out as an Alpha that is now a great game BI is still working on for free at this point. Charging money for an unfinished product on the promise that it will be better one day is wrong, because there is no legal obligation to deliver, and many companies have taken to this strategy to make money with no intention of ever delivering. It turns out that BI is not one of these companies, but only recently have I been able to say that with confidence. Day Z gave life to the early access craze that is now strangling the industry of it's integrity and passion. It is very hard to forgive such a thing, even if Day Z becomes the greatest game of all time. 

Edited February 16, 2017 by Solopopo

[Mad Scientist 73]

This is the first time that DayZ Standalone has felt like a) a zombie game (yes infected...) and b) a survival game.

There is still a lot of potential still to be realised in the game but the devs are making the right decisions and are moving towards the game that we all know it can be - a harsh survival game with numerous infected in a world populated by the downright insane (KoS'ers) bandits (PvP'ers) and survival junkies (PvE'ers) all trying to survive!!!!

[FlimFlamm 509]

The only worry that I've ever had for DayZ is that the devs wouldn't be able to pull it off. The vision and direction we have right now however is impeccable and unquestionably excellent.

My worries have been proven valid in that it has taken the devs much longer to progress than everyone involved hoped for, but like the humble turtle, slow and steady will in fact get you across the finish line.

Regarding in-game content and people worrying that one element of gameplay will be focused on rather than another (example: pve and raw survival needs over hard core pvp), don't. What a lot of people don't understand about the once and future nature of DayZ is that it is modular and has extreme variety server to server. Vanilla DayZ servers are a brief beginning compared to how it will evolve and diverge, and as soon as dev tools are released for modulating private servers we're instantly going to get access to a panoply of servers which cater to all possible variations of play-styles. Don't like wolves? Some servers will turn them off and some will turn them up! Don't like MG's? same thing. Vehicle preferences? Don't even get me started.

Without even broaching the subject of full blown "mods" which actually add content, it's pretty clear that servers will have an extremely easy time customizing their server settings to exactly the kind of community and game-play styles they want to promote.

I can appreciate how difficult and complicated it must be to create a brand new engine, which is why you will pretty much never see me sprinkling salt anywhere regarding the time it has taken. But as far as satisfaction with what DayZ is becoming goes, I'm still just as psyched as ever because I know we're not going to get just one version of DayZ that caters to one specific vision; we're going to get them all.

Edited February 17, 2017 by FlimFlamm

[Solopopo 330]

At this point, I think there is more than enough proof that they will pull this off. If they never released Day Z as alpha we would hear nothing but praise for the work they've done. It's not like any other companies are doing this. They are pushing the boundaries of what's possible every day. It's only in light of the fact that it was expected so long ago that it begins to seem less impressive, and I don't mean to say the time frame in which they have accomplished their work is unimpressive, because it actually is impressive. I only mean to say they essentially promised it sooner, which was a mistake.

My concern is that once the game becomes open to the community, they will strip Day Z of it's survival emphasis and enforce hardcore PvP. This is what happened to Day Z Mod over time. Day Z SA is built on the concept of the original mod. Towards the end of Day Z's original life-cycle, with mods like Epoch and Overpoch, the game had lost a good bit of it's original spirit, and all anyone wanted to do was kill each other. Sure, we will have the option to play on servers customized however we like, and some servers will emphasis survival. Options are good for sure. I am concerned though that the majority of the community will shift what Day Z is to something it's not over time. This has always been a concern looming in the back of my mind, even from the start.

This is partly why I was motivated to post this. The devs, particularly Brian Hicks, have an incredible vision of what Day Z should be. Despite where it's at now, and where it was in the past, where they mean to take Day Z is unquestionably golden. I hope that Day Z will indeed succeed in spite of it's players, as grandbob said above. And I hope I will be able to find good vanilla servers even years after Day Z SA's official release, and good modded ones too of course.

 

Edited February 17, 2017 by Solopopo

[Mad Scientist 73]

Modding is going to be the death of DayZ IMHO.

It will fragment the player base to either full on PvP servers (probably 95%) where all environmental effects are turned off (rain, cold, hunger, hell even infected) and you spawn in with whatever load out you want or full on PvE RP servers with no PvP allowed (probably 4%). The other 1% will be vanilla DayZ where there wont be many changes but you can still PvP without getting banned and survival (PvE) will still occur.

 

[FlimFlamm 509]

12 hours ago, Solopopo said:

 

My concern is that once the game becomes open to the community, they will strip Day Z of it's survival emphasis and enforce hardcore PvP. This is what happened to Day Z Mod over time. Day Z SA is built on the concept of the original mod. Towards the end of Day Z's original life-cycle, with mods like Epoch and Overpoch, the game had lost a good bit of it's original spirit, and all anyone wanted to do was kill each other. Sure, we will have the option to play on servers customized however we like, and some servers will emphasis survival. Options are good for sure. I am concerned though that the majority of the community will shift what Day Z is to something it's not over time. This has always been a concern looming in the back of my mind, even from the start.

I can see what you mean, but at the same time it must be noted that the original charm of the DayZ mod only lasted for so long; there's only so many times you want to gear up, load up some tents, and just survive. In the end the DayZ mod could not offer what is required to make it a highly playable game over long periods of time. Admittedly the original mod itself wasn't really a mechanically polished or content laden game whatsoever, but it provided the bare bones for seemingly new kinds of player interaction, and that is the singular crux of what truly makes DayZ great. Mods like Epoch and Overwatch added much needed content to the game but more importantly provided a stimulating and rewarding reason to play DayZ over longer periods of time: base building/ownership. Without them, it's popularity would never have lasted so long. It might even be the case that the popularity of the mods were essential to drumming up interest in the DayZ standalone

Discounting what are going to be invaluable quality of life improvements to the game in terms of animations and how we interact with the world, the new medical and injury system, the vehicle maintenance system, wolves, et cetra, already drastically alter the ways DayZ can be played. Since there was very little to do in the original DayZ other than kill people it was rather natural that this became a trend simply because it's stimulating. But in DayZ SA... People are going to be too busy building a fire to warm up and dry their clothes when they get wet because their raincoat got destroyed when the zombies attacked when they were eating the pills to cure the disease they got from the pond they had to drink from due to dehydration caused by an extended wolf chase which began with the necessary shooting of a hoard of zombies which had them cornered in the now looted remnants of their destroyed base.

This is in my opinion a more fleshed out and detailed version of what the original DayZ sought (and party achieved) to be. It created a whole new genre of video games, and we complained constantly (we never stopped actually) in our thirst for better and more content, less lag, better mechanics. Some of the original DayZ mod mods took the easy route and more or less turned DayZ back into a pvp military simulator feat. sky-towers. I'm not gonna deny they had their place in the shortage of good DayZ content, but there were many thriving servers which managed to resist the allure of allowing cinder-block sky-scrapers and having [1000+ VEHICLES BONANZA SERVUR LEL KEK!!!!] mode turned on while still furthering what DayZ is great for: player interaction (beyond pvp in this case).

[FlimFlamm 509]

4 hours ago, Mad Scientist said:

Modding is going to be the death of DayZ IMHO.

It will fragment the player base to either full on PvP servers (probably 95%) where all environmental effects are turned off (rain, cold, hunger, hell even infected) and you spawn in with whatever load out you want or full on PvE RP servers with no PvP allowed (probably 4%). The other 1% will be vanilla DayZ where there wont be many changes but you can still PvP without getting banned and survival (PvE) will still occur.

 

So 95% of the player-base will play [CHEATS ON] death-matches while 4% play god mode RP only and the remaining 1% will just play vanilla...

Those are some epic mods that you totally have the imagination to envision...

[Mad Scientist 73]

2 hours ago, FlimFlamm said:

So 95% of the player-base will play [CHEATS ON] death-matches while 4% play god mode RP only and the remaining 1% will just play vanilla...

Those are some epic mods that you totally have the imagination to envision...

Really? What happens on most full servers now? Most of the pop is PvP'n wherever they can find (mostly on the coast but also Gorka and Stary now), a few are out hunting and gardening and a couple are just trying to survive. Do you think that is going to change even if the most imaginative mod ever envisaged was developed? Nope. Most will be PvP'n as hard as they can and a few will be RP'n and others just surviving.

[Sqeezorz 839]

I think the developers already know the modding much of "Vanilla" core can destroy. It is therefore in the hands of the devs how far modding the balance of the "ur-thoughts" can change, or even destroy. The Enforce is a new dynamically designed game engine, which is not only to be used for DayZ. That is what is not possible in DayZ in things modding does not have to apply for other titles. Since the start of DayZ many Survival games have come onto the market, most of them also in EA, all want a part of the cake, and yet they have all the finished license engines on board and try to make the best. In this regard, BI has taken a courageous step to design something new. So many survival titles are also available, graphically and soundly better than DayZ, but with all these titles the salt of the real survival is missing, and this is because the games build on an engine that was not explicitly created for that. For BI, the step they made with Enforce was a daring horse ... time as the biggest competitor, but it will be worth it.

Love it, change it, or leave it. BI have "change it" the hard way for back to real Love it.

^^ Respect Guys ^^

[FlimFlamm 509]

On 2/18/2017 at 9:47 AM, Mad Scientist said:

Really? What happens on most full servers now? Most of the pop is PvP'n wherever they can find (mostly on the coast but also Gorka and Stary now), a few are out hunting and gardening and a couple are just trying to survive. Do you think that is going to change even if the most imaginative mod ever envisaged was developed? Nope. Most will be PvP'n as hard as they can and a few will be RP'n and others just surviving.

Absolutely.

Everyone is out killing everyone else right now because that is the only existing end game. That's the entire reality of it.

With base-building and vehicle permanence the kind of group play that inherently stifles PVP will emerge. People will have a reason to group up and cooeprate. Instead of running around looking for pvp ation these groups will run around looking for food, tools, medicines, vehicles, vehicle parts, building materials, and new recruits. These groups will PvP with eachother once multiple groups emerge on a single server, but the good news is that it's entirely possible inter-group alliances will form when these groups get tired or think better of constant mutual destruction.

[FlimFlamm 509]

On 2/18/2017 at 2:28 PM, Sqeezorz said:

I think the developers already know the modding much of "Vanilla" core can destroy.

It's impossible for that to happen.

If DayZ vanilla is the best DayZ then there will always be people playing it; no possible amount of modding fiascos will ever change that.

All it can do (by virtue of being optional content selectable on an open market) is give us access to more content or modified game experiences which will either enhance the original DayZ vision, or exist happily along side it.

In the days of the mod, then epoch, over-watch, and then over-poch came out, almost everyone was playing these mods because they significantly enhanced the game, but there was still a dedicated (and there still is) playerbase which remains stoically loyal to the pure vanilla.

Now... If we never had the additional mods, all those extra players would not have magically be funneled into vanilla servers, they would have in all likelihood played something else entirely. Mods increased the lifespan of the game immeasurably where otherwise it would have fizzled quickly into obscurity.

Mods are a win win.

[Mad Scientist 73]

1 hour ago, FlimFlamm said:

Absolutely.

Everyone is out killing everyone else right now because that is the only existing end game. That's the entire reality of it.

With base-building and vehicle permanence the kind of group play that inherently stifles PVP will emerge. People will have a reason to group up and cooeprate. Instead of running around looking for pvp ation these groups will run around looking for food, tools, medicines, vehicles, vehicle parts, building materials, and new recruits. These groups will PvP with eachother once multiple groups emerge on a single server, but the good news is that it's entirely possible inter-group alliances will form when these groups get tired or think better of constant mutual destruction.

We had persistent vehicles and the rudiments of base building (true, just tents and barrels etc) from 0.51 (IIRC) to 0.59 and that did absolutely nothing to change how the majority of the player base played the game. They still geared up, went to the coast, PvP'd, died, rinse, repeat. Groups had the ability to look for food, etc but they didn't, beyond getting gear for more PvP'n.

Will there be some servers where what you suggest is happening? Sure, we are currently doing that on hihbgaming.net servers in AU, US and EU (and no, we are not PvE, RP or PvP promoting server, we are just vanilla DayZ with no rules except don't be a d*&khead) where we have multiple factions/clans running around looking for food, tools, medicines, and new recruits AND yet still the majority of the server just do it for the PvP.

If we are doing that now, on multiple servers across all regions with the way the game is now, what makes you think that it will change with more features?

[FlimFlamm 509]

1 hour ago, Mad Scientist said:

We had persistent vehicles and the rudiments of base building (true, just tents and barrels etc) from 0.51 (IIRC) to 0.59 and that did absolutely nothing to change how the majority of the player base played the game. They still geared up, went to the coast, PvP'd, died, rinse, repeat. Groups had the ability to look for food, etc but they didn't, beyond getting gear for more PvP'n.

Having only the rudiments of a thing doesn't mean you actually have a functional thing.

For example, persistent vehicles alone means little to long term players if you cannot park it behind a locked door or some other such obstacle. It's as insane as loading up barrel after barrel when any fresh spawn with the location can turn it into their personal cache with zero effort.

Having a chicken in your pot and a car in your garage is valuable in and of itself (or will be when vehicles actually work right and nourishment/food scarcity is balanced right), but being able to build a base around that home and garage (your tent and barrels) gives way to a much more interesting end-game: Designing, building, expanding, fortifying, improving, and defending that home, whilst managing it all in the changing and dynamic server/community it happens to be located in.

The reason why there is not much long term play right now is very simply because there is no way to create adequate security to make that kind of play stable enough on the whole.

Edited February 20, 2017 by FlimFlamm

[Solopopo 330]

On 2/18/2017 at 1:14 AM, Mad Scientist said:

Modding is going to be the death of DayZ IMHO.

It will fragment the player base to either full on PvP servers (probably 95%) where all environmental effects are turned off (rain, cold, hunger, hell even infected) and you spawn in with whatever load out you want or full on PvE RP servers with no PvP allowed (probably 4%). The other 1% will be vanilla DayZ where there wont be many changes but you can still PvP without getting banned and survival (PvE) will still occur.

 

This is my nightmare

On 2/20/2017 at 0:09 AM, FlimFlamm said:

It's impossible for that to happen...

Mods are a win win.

I see what you are saying. I really hope you are right. 

Edited February 21, 2017 by Solopopo

[bfisher 561]

I've been playing a bit and here are a couple of thoughts:

The zombies are better, but the game won't be anything but a PvP fest until they can create zombies that are numerous enough and dangerous enough that they pose a threat to a single player.

I did run a bit of an experiment in one of the towns that worked out pretty well:

From the doorway of a 2 story house, I dispatched several zombies with a silenced pistol.  Pretty decent distance shots IISSM.  The zombies went down without drawing attention.  Then I went upstairs, shut the door to the room and killed a couple more with single shots from an AK-101.  That drew every zombie around.  I could hear them all running around and inside the house on the other side of the door, which they noticeably did not teleport through.

[emuthreat 2837]

Have you tested how much you can get away with by firing single, unsurpressed shots, @bfisher.  I know it takes time, but it will work in a pinch; you just have to wait for the others to calm down a minute between each shot.

I've noticed that M4 shots will not aggro zombies most of the time, unless they are directly in the background to hear the bullet crack go past them; same goes for surpressed 9mm.

[bfisher 561]

3 hours ago, emuthreat said:

Have you tested how much you can get away with by firing single, unsurpressed shots, @bfisher.  I know it takes time, but it will work in a pinch; you just have to wait for the others to calm down a minute between each shot.

I've noticed that M4 shots will not aggro zombies most of the time, unless they are directly in the background to hear the bullet crack go past them; same goes for surpressed 9mm.

No, it was more an impromptu test of the "dinner bell" effect of firing a rifle in town.  I got killed by another player a short time later anyway.  And in a typical shitty glitchy DayZ manner.  I could hear the guy approaching so I pulled out my AK.  As I'm waiting, I just silently fall over and a few seconds later hear some out of sync gunshots.  So looks like some work is still needed.

[emuthreat 2837]

Haha, yeah.  There is still much to do.

I was just wondering if you had many experiences with one loud rifle shot not aggro-ing the whole town.

[bfisher 561]

Had an interesting encounter today.  I'm minding my own bussiness, running in the Solnichniy to Tisy 20k and I hear a couple of gunshots in the distance a few clicks northwest of Alter Radio Station.  Their in my path, so I investigate.  I start hearing more shots, which I eventually determine to be coming from a small cluster of houses about a click away.  All of a sudden, I see movement coming towards me off in the distance.  On closer inspection, it appears to be a bunch of wolves, spread out in two groups of 2-3 about a thousand meters apart.  I manage to book it out of there without them tracking me.  Never did find the source of the gunshots or what happened to them.

I like those little touches when you encounter evidence that there are actually other players on the server.  I mean besides when you encounter some other asshole in an airbase going for the same weapons cache.

 

[Noctoras 409]

On 16.2.2017 at 8:54 PM, Solopopo said:

The concept of early access is a plague to the gaming industry. The fact that they are now getting their s*** together does not change that.

I don't want to go into individual games here, but I wholeheartedly agree. Early access is a dangerous road to go down from a consumer perspective.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

On 2/18/2017 at 0:14 AM, Mad Scientist said:

Modding is going to be the death of DayZ IMHO.

It will fragment the player base to either full on PvP servers (probably 95%) where all environmental effects are turned off (rain, cold, hunger, hell even infected) and you spawn in with whatever load out you want or full on PvE RP servers with no PvP allowed (probably 4%). The other 1% will be vanilla DayZ where there wont be many changes but you can still PvP without getting banned and survival (PvE) will still occur.

 

This is probably true but it doesn't bother me. Since the moment I first considered it, I've always known I'd fall into the 1% category. If I have to build a server box myself, that's where I'll be, and if there are only a hundred people who play vanilla DayZ that will be enough. An adherent to the core philosophy of what DayZ aims to be does not require a massive player base to find fulfillment in the experience.