So I took a hiatus...but saw this fancy new patch

[DeatHTaX 1217]

I was rather displeased with the direction DayZ was going sometime back. I used to be very active and put over 2000 hours into this game.

 

So I heard some cool stuff about it and thought I'd try out the experimental after a year or so of taking a break from it.

 

I joined one of the experimental servers and managed to find two sodas, a knife, a pointy stick, and then I starved to death after searching for berries and looting town after town finding nothing but pants. Also encountering several bambis begging for death so they could respawn somewhere else. (Surefire sign of incredible game design)

SO I figured it was just the experimental being experimental, so I joined a mid-pop server.

Same result.

This game got super fun while I was gone.

My biggest problem with this is the META gaming I have to do to even be able to survive. None of it feels intuitive anymore. I really don't like having to google recipes for crafting items or watching videos on how to play the damn game. I'm old school. I want to figure it out on my own...but this game as it stands, in my limited newly found experience and humble opinion, just doesn't make it convenient in any way or fun...

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post inevitably, but this game is far from what it used to be...which was a shit ton more fun than the Run-n-Starve simulator this seems to be now.

 

*EDIT: Oh shit I just saw my sig...I can't believe it's still relevant after all this time.

Edited June 23, 2018 by DeatHTaX

[cirkular 178]

You should be flamed for your post :D

[amadieus 315]

Dunno what to say actually... I mean there is enough food to survive and I cannot see how bambi's begging to get killed because they want to spawn near their friends is bad game design...

[nl 986]

4 hours ago, DeatHTaX said:

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post inevitably, but this game is far from what it used to be...

The game is not in its full state yet, no point judging it at this stage. Many features are not in right now because we are basically testing core mechanics like server performance and client stability, also the loot economy is not in its final stage yet. You should wait until the game hits beta some time this year.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

10 hours ago, DeatHTaX said:

I used to be very active and put over 2000 hours into this game.

Yeah but were you ever actually interested in testing the game?

If you test most of the patches and read all of the status reports you will never be left wondering.

In 2,000 hours did it ever occur to you that how you were playing might have to change?

In the time it took you to post this thread you could have gone back and read some recent status reports to get a better grasp of the state of development.

No one here is going to hold your hand and get you caught up on the months you were gone.

People act like they love DayZ so much but can't be bothered to actually learn about the development or contribute to testing or the discussion in a proactive/constructive way.

[DeatHTaX 1217]

10 hours ago, nl said:

The game is not in its full state yet, no point judging it at this stage. Many features are not in right now because we are basically testing core mechanics like server performance and client stability, also the loot economy is not in its final stage yet. You should wait until the game hits beta some time this year.

Whoa whoa whoa...so what you're telling me is the game isn't done yet?!

Dear Jesus thank you so much for letting me know. I had absolutely no idea.

And it's been almost...shit how many years? Four? And they are STILL working on the loot economy? Dear Jesus. 

 

4 hours ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

Yeah but were you ever actually interested in testing the game?

If you test most of the patches and read all of the status reports you will never be left wondering.

In 2,000 hours did it ever occur to you that how you were playing might have to change?

In the time it took you to post this thread you could have gone back and read some recent status reports to get a better grasp of the state of development.

No one here is going to hold your hand and get you caught up on the months you were gone.

People act like they love DayZ so much but can't be bothered to actually learn about the development or contribute to testing or the discussion in a proactive/constructive way.

Yes. I tested and provided feedback for almost every single patch for about a year. Then I pretty much gave up on it because people kept clamoring for more retarded shit to be thrown into the game like fucking beards, more realism (like dying of hunger in 30 minutes...OOH fun.), burying fucking bodies (smh) and the devs kept caving to the demands of people who wanted The Forest but with zombies.

Don't get me wrong the game looks great now, and they seem to have FINALLY somewhat optimized the game engine.

Also, if I have to look up a Wikipedia page on how to craft items in a game, that's poor game design. Pure and simple.

I'm just a guy who misses the old days of DayZ SA. It was such a fun adventure to play with your friends and meet up, and get into absolutely insane and tense fights with random people. You also didn't starve in half an hour then.

I came from the time of the loot bugs, being able to crawl under the hanger at NE AF, glitch through the wall of any ATC building, the net-code issues.

Even with all those flaws the raw version of DayZ was infinitely more fun than what it is now IMO. I just think they're going the wrong direction and getting away from what made the game such a hit in the first place, which is player interaction...not the satisfaction of making your own fire and warming up beans while doing digging animations to bury the zombie you just killed.

Edited June 23, 2018 by DeatHTaX

[Funkdoc 46]

what do u expect from a game never had clear goals since day 1.

there was to much fluctuation on ideas, team, and implementability.

what we have now with the 0.63 experimental version is a prototype where the game should have been 2 years ago. But its okay... they built up a new engine and now we can say it gets more playable. I think we should trust in the work of those guys. when they get dayz in a modable structure, write tools for balancing and CLE scalable and some more things...all will be fine. 

[DeatHTaX 1217]

That wouldn't be an issue if the game weren't currently less playable than it was four years ago.

That is not great progress IMO.

I'll take the buggy, dysfunctional, incomplete first build over "QUICK FIND SOME FOOD" simulator.

[Solopopo 330]

44 minutes ago, DeatHTaX said:

That wouldn't be an issue if the game weren't currently less playable than it was four years ago.

That is not great progress IMO.

I'll take the buggy, dysfunctional, incomplete first build over "QUICK FIND SOME FOOD" simulator.

It's true that the development of DayZ has been ridiculous. They have been working on the technology to make a game, not the actual game itself. They basically hit the reset button about 2 years ago and rebuilt the entire thing from the ground up. It has a new engine, renderer, and player controller now. Ultimately these are all good decisions for the development of a game, but not for the development of an Early Access title people are already playing in my opinion. Releasing DayZ on the original engine was irresponsible. It was impossible to do the things they advertised they would from the start.

However, they are slowly but surely transforming DayZ into the true experience we all want. Some of the more recent changes to the current alpha are actually great. They have separated the official and private hives. The servers are now organized into different tabs in the server search menu. The result is that official servers are actually popular now and they will always be a safe haven from over modded servers in the future. The new trees and foliage are also not just for show. They don't disappear on low graphics settings anymore. Essentially everything you see in the world everyone else sees now. We see the same clouds, the same rain, the same weather. This might seem like a trivial thing, but it really isn't. Many games have false effects that only you see. You can be certain that the grass is hiding you now if you go prone. 

Character and item permanence is impressive in the alpha as well. Items dropped stay in place for a long time. So do bodies and anything else really. Character wipes basically never happen anymore. I have had one character for over 8 months now. There are also container items you can use like tents that will store your items. These tents can last months if they aren't raided. 

It is true though that you cannot just organically learn to play DayZ without referring to outside resources. You won't be able to navigate if you aren't using a 3rd party map. You also won't learn all the things you can do with crafting without looking it up. This is a result of what I described previously. They haven't implemented any game play elements yet. They have only been working on the technology to implement the game-play. Honestly, I don't think DayZ should even be called a game. It isn't a game. It's a prototype of the technology that will be used to design DayZ. We shouldn't have access to what it is right now. There is absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever for this thing to have released as an alpha. 

Edited June 23, 2018 by Solopopo

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

1 hour ago, DeatHTaX said:

just a guy who misses the old days of DayZ SA. It was such a fun adventure to play with your friends and meet up, and get into absolutely insane and tense fights with random people. You also didn't starve in half an hour then.

Oh, I understand now.

You'll be wanting to play a modded version that's more PvP focused.

Modding is still a ways off so maybe come back in a few months or simply just follow dev news until you hear modding has been implemented.

I'm not sure you'll like vanilla DayZ SA.

I'm not sure I'll like vanilla either.

Let's hurry up and wait....

[amadieus 315]

You keep saying that you die of hunger but that is just your inexperience. Keep eating what you find till the arrows pointing upwards won't appear any-more. You can go on for like 1.5 hour of jogging without the need to eat.

[Funkdoc 46]

 

44 minutes ago, DeatHTaX said:

I'll take the buggy, dysfunctional, incomplete first build over "QUICK FIND SOME FOOD" simulator.

the eat and drink period, is something that has changed nearly every stable patch but i also dont know why they always adjust it... over the 0.5x upgrades (high server population), it should be clear how often to drink and to eat.. i think they adjust it to analyze duration and pathfinding of a survivor. with new values like stamina and overall health (0.63) depending on eachother, it has to be new defined.. how much, how long and how often u have to do something to revitalize. at the moment dayz is still in alpha, and they can test anything they want, dont forget that. its for us and for the game.

[DeatHTaX 1217]

43 minutes ago, Solopopo said:

The new trees and foliage are also not just for show. They don't disappear on low graphics settings anymore. Essentially everything you see in the world everyone else sees now. We see the same clouds, the same rain, the same weather. This might seem like a trivial thing, but it really isn't. Many games have false effects that only you see. You can be certain that the grass is hiding you now if you go prone. 

Character and item permanence is impressive in the alpha as well. Items dropped stay in place for a long time. So do bodies and anything else really. Character wipes basically never happen anymore. I have had one character for over 8 months now. There are also container items you can use like tents that will store your items. These tents can last months if they aren't raided. 

Thank God. The client-side issues were such a pain in the past. 

As well as the disappearing foliage.

[emuthreat 2837]

4 hours ago, DeatHTaX said:

Also, if I have to look up a Wikipedia page on how to craft items in a game, that's poor game design. Pure and simple.

I'll agree with you here.  I like that they added the trails system with map boards at major points of interest.  They should have a few kiosks scattered around at the different holiday camps with posters of survival tips, including descriptions of common crafting recipes and some tips about wildlife and foraging. 

Different campsites could have different wilderness skills kiosks depending on the location and surroundings.  Perhaps the one north of Sverograd could cover wolf behavior and tanning;  Belaya Polana could have information about chickens, building fireplaces and crafting bows and arrows;  Black lake could have fishing pole and bait instructions, as well as tips for angling;  Tisy campground could have information about firearms handling and bears;  Gvozdno camp could cover wild boar behavior and mending clothing;  Ozerko could cover elk hunting and medical skills;  Topolka dam could cover ocean resources and foraging;  the Dolina-Polana camp could cover cows, vehicle maintenance;  Green Mountain could cover radios and orienteering, and roe deer hunting;  Khelm camp could explain firearms maintenance, tool repair and goats; and novy Sobor camp could include information about farming and sheep--and perhaps even animal domestication if they decide to include that.

The point is that they could just put out pamphlets to pick up and read, and they should at least do that. But there is much more richness that can be added by putting out information booths at the places that naturally make sense; places that people would have normally gone to commune with nature.

[themightylc 56]

I swear I'm not even trying...

... but I have no Idea what you are talking about. Anyway you know that your point is moot because this is not even close (let alone supposed to be) a balanced experience, right? 

Right? 

Just kidding, I know you do, but on a more sincerely interested note: what does "oldschool" mean? The mod never lived up to a survival-simulator save for the impossibly difficult (because bugged) zombies. For "experienced players" it was nothing but sprinting to the next military spawns. That's never what DayZ (the original vision from Dean Hall) was supposed to be. If you want to simulate "starving" in a game you can't expect it to take a realistic amount of time, that is just plain silly. If you want to increase the starvation to plus 2 hours - while obviously employing a playstyle that implies a gameplay-loop of less then that - well fuck, it might as well not be in the game then.

Luckily, there are ton's of games out, that have perfected this gameplay loop in a condensed version, called "Battle Royale" games. They seem to be quite hip right now. 

Unfortunatley you probably won't be able to make friends in those games, but I'm guessing that's not the point.

Edited June 24, 2018 by themightylc

[deewd27 5]

I´m happy with the system as it is right now. Finally some planning and adapting to your actual situation. The old system was so annoying with fresh spawns running straight up to NWAF, without having to worry about anything related to survival.

[Sqeezorz 839]

1 hour ago, deewd23 said:

I´m happy with the system as it is right now. Finally some planning and adapting to your actual situation. The old system was so annoying with fresh spawns running straight up to NWAF, without having to worry about anything related to survival.

Correct. And it's the beginning, when the illnesses and environmental influences come to it will be a bit more difficult. It could come so far that you will be a hero if you have a trading post or kiosk in Solnichi ^^.

[themightylc 56]

13 hours ago, Sqeezorz said:

Correct. And it's the beginning, when the illnesses and environmental influences come to it will be a bit more difficult. It could come so far that you will be a hero if you have a trading post or kiosk in Solnichi ^^.

I had a blast last night trying to survive with the character pictured above, fear-of-loss-of-gear and all that - we'll call it a very stressfull, but nonetheless fun experience. I was on the brink of death a few times, had to make some tough decisions including the virtual death of a dear friend, crapped my pants on several occasions... as I said. Very much fun if you like that sort of thing.

I'm still very much alive and kicking - if you see someone with their hands inside a chicken at any given time, that's probably me. Man those things aren't more than a snack.

EDIT: in respect to the OP I feel it's worth mentioning that I met/saw at least 20 other survivors and did not discharge any of my guns yet. Won't if I don't absolutely need to and that doesn't detract from the experience for me at all.

Edited June 25, 2018 by themightylc