Back to DayZ standalone after 3 years - thoughts

[libertine 351]

Edit: I have now learned that they are in the middle of making some big changes, so if you are a dev, please understand that I realise what I am concerned about you may still be working on. Also, apologies for my comments on Chernogorsk changes, I guess I was wrong about the severity of those changes. I had seen a streamer go through the new Cherno many times and assumed they had taken out the industrial section.........yaaaaaa...no.

I just started letting DayZ news back into my life after a 3+ year break, hoping to be surprised at all the new stuff, but I started watching some streams. I can't believe what they did to this game (or didn't do). Most importantly I expected to see a couple of new maps, one with a full cityscape like in the movie "I am Legend", (based on Rocket's comments and common fucking sense)) with new places to explore which is something absolutely crtical for the continued enjoyment of peaceful/survivor type players who don't choose to get enjoyment out of PVP'ing/KOSing. I expected a bit of a story or mystery to figure out, like Origins mod team did with Patient Zero on Tavania.

They did nothing. They basically rearranged some buildings......on a map that people already loved. They changed the trees and grass.....that people already loved. I remember being so happy about DayZ originally partly JUST because people would get to experience the beautiful Chernarus map I had known from Arma 2, a beautiful map that IMO set a presedent in gaming. They felt the need to change it apparently. While some of the changes are a small improvement, there are so many backward steps and all of this development amounts to nothing. We also have far less features than the mod, even less weapon variety. We must kill wolves now. I have no fucking desire to shoot what is basically a wild dog trying to survive. In watching streams, I see people using a tiny stick to poke zombies to death, w....t....f? Is this the type of zombie behavior/fighting you have been planning this whole time? Because I think we might have told you to save yourself (and our wallets) the trouble, not splitting the Dayz community with standalone and instead focusing on further mod dev. You still have only a few head variations and they look like they're relaxed in a fucking cubicle doing office work.

You guys took out the two best running animations ive ever seen in a game. TWO! Arma 2 had them and you took them out. Why? The new running-with-gun animations looks extremely aggressive, like "I'm going to fuck something up RIGHT NOW!!" aggressive. Looking back at some of the DayZ mod vids, the movement transitions seems so much smoother, like the transition from jogging to crouched-jogging with no speed reduction. I can't double tap the forward key to jump up form crouching and start running quickly. This is just one of a few bits of sophistication from the Mil-Sim aspect of Arma 2 that you REMOVED. We need MORE, not LESS. Its not to say there aren't some improvments with anims and such, but overall after hours of watching streams, we've got a 3 steps forward, 2 steps back game here.

They also messed Chernogorsk up, the industrial area was the coolest part of Chernarus IMO, its basically gone. The sense of massive industrial scale, dereclict and IMO quite hunting and interesting, they took out, and they did so to make that part of Cherno look exactly like any other town using building we so all over Chernarus. They added an airplane wreck that looks like it belong in a fucking comic book. Planes don't wreck like that, they are way too fragile to hold together. It looks ridiculous.

So we're they've just rearranged a bunch of stuff, on a map that already worked and looked great!?!? The area east of Chernogorsk, just to the west of Skyrim mountain for example, they developed it with some bigger buildings, but it worked well the way it was. It made sense for that part of town to be a small residential homes with that beautiful hillside backdrop, away from Chernogorsk. Does it REALLY matter that they added bigger buildings? Its...okay....I guess? Does it help improve DayZ? Not for me...

They took out canned food, one of the most interesting parts of surviving in my opinion and kind of cool and haunting to see one can of food on a shelf, and now food is everywhere, but the process of getting natural food incredibly boring, repetitive and uninteresting, highlighting repetitive, unrealistic animations. Why do the footstep sound effects suck so much (on concrete and a few other surfaces)? (maybe improved now?) In a game, anything that is on the screen full time, or heard over and over and OVER again needs to be 100%.

One of my biggest gripes is the rarity and variety of cool assault rifles. (not talking about unfair stuff like thermal scopes or high powered-click-your-mouse button-they-die-sniper-rifles) You can take this stuff out and make the game more survival oriented, but you needed to substitute it with something fun. Its just a big loot search fest right now and fighting zombies whos visual detection code barely makes any sense half the time, not adding to and sometimes even breaking immersion. WTF happened at BI Studios this last 4 years? Zombies could be a cool, dynamic element for this game if they had some variation in behavior and the combat with them was realistic, especially the animations.

One other problem I've noticed watching streams is that loot is so rare that there is no reason not to take EVERYTHING you find,  such that if you are behind someone, looting the same buildings, you may get nothing for hours, surely there is a better way?

Also, in the original DayZ, everything was a prized possession. Now I can pull an effective melee weapon out of any tree, and it doesn't even look believable (skinny unnatrually straight branch). I can find food in any old apple tree. I thought we wanted Man Vs Guns, not Man Vs. Wild. Don't even get me started about nighttime, holy shit, I could never play that because people WILL USE GAMMA adjustments to find you and you will run and loot for hours only to be shot by some kid who has never pondered the results of his actions. Its a game, there will be kids. By all means, make it dusk, beautiful and haunting. Simulate night, make it feel like night, just don't let a gamma adjustment from the monitor or video card settings give an advantage. Plus, we sleep at night.......yes, we humans sleep...at night...9 our of 10 dentists agree.

Also, why the unnatural head bounce/bob when moving forward while jogging? It feels cartoony. We evolved to see the world fairly smoothly when moving, same problem with the side-to-side movement when running. Battlefield, starting with 2142 I think has done it the best, they just give a very small hint of the movements your making, truer to real life. Can we reign that in a little bit? Look at Chronicles of Riddick Butcher Bay as a good, although too exaggerated IMO, example.

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One thought occurred to me, that the civil war in Ukraine that is sadly happening is what is effecting development and if that is the case know that I don't intend for this to make you feel bad and to just be taken as some constructive criticism.

Edited July 11, 2017 by libertine

[emuthreat 2837]

I reckon you might be just a few months early with this post.  The next stage of development will address many of the issues you mentioned, with the implementation of the new player controller and scripting language.

We are on the precipice right now; enjoy the old style game with the newfangled map for a while, and come back in December (hopefully) to see the rest of the enchilada.

[The Ghost of Hoik 92]

Better out than in I suppose... like emu says, wait for 0.63 and see if this fixes some of your major issues.

Personally I think people have rose tinted glasses when it comes to the mod, which I understand. But I briefly watched some videos of the original MOD and the run animation really wasn't significantly better IMO. I also had some reservation when the map began to change, but I can't deny that with latest update it is a massive improvement - anyway, I'm sure someone will bring back vanilla  map with modding.

[BIIdiots 5]

The SP version and editor should make modding the game to play the way you want an actual thing.  Luckily the devs aren't from Ubisoft, or they would gimp the editor to prevent that.  Problem being that the console version may highly hamper the PC version of the editor.  That was one fault with Farcry and other PC games once they went console.

 

 

[bfisher 561]

Interestingly, right after the 62 upgrade I respawed into a new life (which lasted 15 minutes) that kind of felt like the Standalone might be getting there.

I started in a big city (Cherno, Electro or Benzo...can't tell anymore) at dusk.  I found a fire ax relatively quickly and shortly thereafter, encounter another player screaming for help being chased by 3 zombies.  I dispatched the zombie and he seemed grateful.  But this being DayZ, it got a bit tense when he approached a bit too close for comfort (turns out, only to give me some food).  Fortunately a third neutral player showed up, which diffused the potentially dangerous situation from escalating.  We all seemed to hit it off so we decided to head off together and try and take out a Ghilli suited sniper one of the players encountered previously (presumably the source of the high powered rifle fire we heard).  Soon we encountered another player just standing in the middle of the street (all these players wearing the t-shirts and hats of a new spawn who hasn't found much besides hats).  I told the party I would "ax him a question" at which point he freaked out and started slashing at everyone.  The fight didn't last long as we started taking incoming sniper fire.  We all got separated in the shuffle, but I did manage to fix the snipers position, but was killed before I could ax him.  The last thing I saw was seemingly every newspawn in town rushing him as the sun went down.

 

I respawned, and since that, it's mostly just been wandering the empty countryside spamming apple orchards and acquiring military gear at the army bases.

 

[blackberrygoo 1416]

On 6/27/2017 at 11:16 PM, bfisher said:

Interestingly, right after the 62 upgrade I respawed into a new life (which lasted 15 minutes) that kind of felt like the Standalone might be getting there.

I started in a big city (Cherno, Electro or Benzo...can't tell anymore) at dusk.  I found a fire ax relatively quickly and shortly thereafter, encounter another player screaming for help being chased by 3 zombies.  I dispatched the zombie and he seemed grateful.  But this being DayZ, it got a bit tense when he approached a bit too close for comfort (turns out, only to give me some food).  Fortunately a third neutral player showed up, which diffused the potentially dangerous situation from escalating.  We all seemed to hit it off so we decided to head off together and try and take out a Ghilli suited sniper one of the players encountered previously (presumably the source of the high powered rifle fire we heard).  Soon we encountered another player just standing in the middle of the street (all these players wearing the t-shirts and hats of a new spawn who hasn't found much besides hats).  I told the party I would "ax him a question" at which point he freaked out and started slashing at everyone.  The fight didn't last long as we started taking incoming sniper fire.  We all got separated in the shuffle, but I did manage to fix the snipers position, but was killed before I could ax him.  The last thing I saw was seemingly every newspawn in town rushing him as the sun went down.

 

I respawned, and since that, it's mostly just been wandering the empty countryside spamming apple orchards and acquiring military gear at the army bases.

 

Ya it's pretty fucking boring to be honest . I can see why someone (OP) who's been out of the loop for 3 years could be pretty upset at the state of the game . Sure it looks and sounds great , but damn we need the mechanics that were promised 3.5 years ago .... base building , barricading , advanced vehicles , birds to hunt , soft skills , new animations , bears , electricity and the generators , zombies bashing in doors and windows, weed / alcohol / cigarettes (all shown in completed trello pictures over the past few years) and that's just to scratch the surface . When we get all of that we can truly have fun in dayz - but until then it's apple picking , kill everyone with a better weapon simulator .

[libertine 351]

Let me first say that I have now learned that they are in the mddle of making some big changes, so if you are a dev, please understand I get what I am concerned about you may still be working on.

I was happy to find out that the maker of Tavania was leading the project as that is a great map that looks realistic, is expansive and has a lot of interting nooks and views, but....they say they are not building a map. Maybe Brian, because of his map building experience, feels it will be super easy to make a new map, which isn't a bad sign. I am just so done with Chernerus its not funny.

One idea that I think would be nice is if they could build in some nice occlusion culling for apartment buildings so we can make a real city with a good size and also some underground areas, possibly large underground areas with little hidden entrances here and there. One idea I had for apartment buildings is creating a boulding box for each room and if the player view point doesn't have line of sight to the bounding box, then don't render any of the interior of that room. That would be one tool to help build up a vast city area like an I am Legend-like map or like in The Division.

 I don't even think it looks or sounds that much better. Sure there is some things, like the gun sounds are better, but now less varied or interesting IMO. There is a reason they use inaccurate weapon sounds in movies. They sound cool and interesting. Realism is great, but I've got some bad news for those who think realism is everything. Take a look around you in real life. Look at the realism and check out those incredible graphics, the soft shadowing OMG!. Borrrrrrriiiiiinggggg. My point is, the goal I think should be believability and entertainment, not realism. Life is just too short. But this is a highly personal thing, because, continuing with the gun sound example, someone who shoots guns all the time probably has his immersion broken if the guns don't sound real. But....moving on....trees. Trees are more varied and detailed, but they have gotten smaller and less magnanimous and less impressive in some ways. The shore/waves sound is something I really miss, even the crazy loudness of it. Same with the wind-through-trees sound that I don't hear anymore. Both lended an expansive feeling to the environment IMO.

Are we seriously not going to have guns like L85A2 or M4A1 Holo? Check out the gun list for the Origins mod (for Tavania btw). I rarely saw any of the higher end guns, only had the L85a2 or the M4A1 holo once I think) but they were there, somewhere out there for me to find and roam the map with. http://dayz-origins.wikia.com/wiki/Weapons

Edited July 11, 2017 by libertine

[Spidey (DayZ) 78]

I honestly don't know why do I still have hopes in this game. It's stuck on the same spot since it came out. And the promises with 0.63 and all that... yeah, sure, okay. Been there, done that, time to move on. I can't wait to laugh my ass off at the excuse they will use in December for not being able to release 0.63 (or beta or whatever it is they promised now). Or maybe they'll just re-release 0.62, add a couple of new shirts and pants and call it a day.