A dedicated game engine that seems not so dedicated...

[rickyriot 1009]

Long time player, from mod to SA to many variants of SA to current build.

Overall I'd like to say I've got my money's worth out of the title. I paid nothing for the mod (albeit I paid for A2) and I bought SA on the very first day it was released on Steam for something like £15 (GBP). Overall I have certainly recouped that amount in terms of enjoyable game play however in the last 2 years or so I have drifted away from the title simply because it was becoming a mess. It locked itself into an engine not capable of providing the experience that was being aimed for. I totally understood the decision then to move to a new engine and despite long delays the resultant look and feel of the game has certainly improved. It's cost a lot of time, and lost a lot of it's player base but it was a decision that is now showing to be the correct one.

With that said I'd like to address the core mechanics of DayZ which should, imo, come down to 3 main tenets; Player vs Player, Player vs Zombie and Player vs Environment (PvP, PvZ and PvEnv). Pretty self explanatory, I'd hope. The question we have to ask ourselves is, "has that been achieved?" I appreciate the current beta release is not complete (but as this is DayZ, nothing has ever been "complete"!) and it's certainly an improvement on 62, which is obviously a positive, but I do not believe that my initial premise has been achieved - or at least to the level of it's peers. Granted there is nothing quite like DayZ in terms of game experience but there are a lot of DayZ-esque games, many of which perform considerably better in these core aspects.

So in short:

PvP, the gunplay has not been fully implemented, certain scopes and guns are "missing" and from my experience the gameplay has been clunky and not reflective of real world ballistics when trading shots with people. Key bindings are not available making an already different control scheme all the more difficult to adapt to. I took on someone with a shotgun recently and no amount of cajoling could get it to fire more than one round per time without having to reload the weapon - something that may get better with experience, at present seems to be a bug rather than a feature. The UI makes it difficult to differentiate between ammo calibres due to the black circle stating the amount. I honestly can't comment too much on the hitboxes purely because the gun engagement seems so unreliable that it was difficult to really tell how well that has been implemented.

PvZ: Awful, just awful. This is my biggest gripe with the latest build (although certainly not restricted to it). Fundamentally the thing that made DayZ different was the interaction with the zombies. I know AI is difficult to code, but it's not impossible, yet it beggars belief that a game that effectively positions itself as a zombie survival game has such a glitchy, unreliable and poor implementation of the main game enemy. When you write an engine for a game that specifically needs these AI elements, you really should expect that element to be fairly mature when hitting beta. As it is, zombies spawn out of nowhere, glitch against all sorts of objects, have entirely inconsistent movement and are dumber than a bag of extremely dumb hammers. What's more when it comes to actual engagement you just get out a melee weapon and hit them a few times and they are down. No challenge and certainly not fun.

PvEnv: Beta is clearly being rushed out the door to placate those waiting, and I understand that. I am a developer as well and of the things that you can control, timescales and people's expectations are not some of them. However, to not include survivalist elements such as fishing or bow making seems short sighted. Leg breaking and interaction with the environment via jumping and vaulting either doesn't exist or is a very poor implementation of it. I have stood next to knee high fences, ones that in real life I'd just step over, and I can't get past it no matter how high I jump even at full stamina. Sure I can walk back and take a run at it, but that's not the point, it's not realistic to need to do that. PUBG is not DayZ, not at all, but it's noticeable that they went from an inability to vault to vaulting and climbing within several iterations. 

Ultimately I am just one person, my say (even as an experienced gamer) shouldn't have any more weight than any other average Joe, however as we have now reached the fated beta release it seems incredible that for all the effort that has been put into the engine to make it look and feel as it does (and the environment at times is a joy to experience - that has been one huge plus switching engines) that the core elements of the game are so poorly implemented in it.

Now doubt I'll get the "it's only beta" and "those things will be added later" but honestly while I was happy to accept that argument, especially so when the engine itself was replaced and more time was needed, but as we have hit beta I believe it's acceptable to criticise the offering before us. Not unfairly, and I do not believe I am being unfair, I've kept my counsel for years hoping that the new engine would deliver a far better PvP/PvZ/PvEnv offering but sadly it just doesn't.

 

What does all this mean for a player like me? Well nothing really. The game continues to sit in my Steam library, and will do in hope rather than expectation. As it is, this beta release is effectively still 6 months away from having even close to the requirements that DayZ has promised time and time again. I do wish the developers well, and I really wish I wasn't spending my Saturday morning writing out a post that will no doubt be pulled apart via false dichotomy and whatabootery, but I just had to vent the feeling that after waiting for so long for a beta to finally drop that it's insufficient in so many departments.

 

 

 

 

 

[Vernon_Price 135]

Im sorry, but that's a big of nonsense - the thing you wrote.

You judge the engine as a whole, and call it "Non dedicated", or say that "PVP wasn't implemented fully" by lack of long range scopes (Which is related to content, not features. PVP is a feature (ability to shot guns fe.) Long range scope is an item - content.) Let's go to the next things - UI, while I understand someone might not like/understand it, again - its only a design thing, its up to devs how they make it, and there is no engine limitation to change/improve it. I won't be mentioning the Infected or glitches - cause again, we're in BETA, BETA is the right time to balance and fix bugs, which they do very fast. 

By saying that you are developer by yourself, then saying that "Beta is rushed" you make yourself not trustworthy, cause by saying that you ignore basically all the things that they've said in Status reports, posts and twitter, where they explain very well "why?" and 'what" made Beta what it is over the last year, and that's not how a developer behaves if it comes to speaking about something related to developing. :-) 

Jumping - You've said several times that you have issues to get over fences, yet jumping isn't meant to be used for them, there is missing Vaulting and Climbing system, which again was talked about a lot of times in the past. Even with implementing this very first implementation of jump they've said that. 

Ending that - Basically all the things you've said arent even related to engine that much it self - and there are no problems with making them right and implemented, the only thing it needs its T.I.M.E. to get balanced, and bug-free (Ofc on lvl that's possible, cause if you're developer you know that there is no game or programm without bugs. :-) ) And yea, Enfusion can handle a lot and there is a lot more possible to make on it than what we've got now. :-) 
 

Cheers! 

Edited November 10, 2018 by Vernon_Price

[rickyriot 1009]

3 minutes ago, Vernon_Price said:

... stuff ...

Essentially you've done exactly what I said people would do..

25 minutes ago, rickyriot said:

...a post that will no doubt be pulled apart via false dichotomy and whatabootery, but I just had to vent the feeling that after waiting for so long for a beta to finally drop that it's insufficient in so many departments.

Although for a start you are incorrect in saying I called the engine non-dedicated. I at no time suggest that, in fact the opposite. It's the fact that an engine written (or at least altered) specifically to underpin DayZ doesn't cover the main elements. There have been huge strides in the environmental aspects of the game. Something I have highlighted but the lovely eye and ear candy is of little value when the framework of the game is so clunky.

However, Vernon, you have just used the time honoured excuse "it's only alpha" except it's no longer alpha so that now needs to be retitled "it's only beta" and trotted out the same old tropes "don't worry it'll all get fixed". That excuse, my friend, is irrelevant in the point I'm making and I'd actually go so far as to say you've actually missed the point of my post, in that of the three tenets that the game supports (and you could of course argue against those as being tenets) you would expect a dedicated rebuild engine to support them from the get go, not be an add on for future updates. I don't doubt things will be added, this isn't a tirade against the devs or Bohemia at all and certainly shouldn't be considered as such.

I have followed quite closely the development of the game, and have done so since SA, so to suggest I haven't is just a bit ad hominem to be honest bud - although I'm sure you didn't necessarily intend to do so.

 

[Vernon_Price 135]

And im not saying "Hey, its only Beta" and ignoring the issues, I'm saying that this is BETA, and issues are still to be expected. If shits like this happens after 1.0 as a released game - Then you can write up these things, for now there is just no sense in it. And that's what I meant. 

[Parazight 1599]

Sounds to me like a lack of communication on the part of developers and business executives.  Seems like developers are overly optimistic on how smooth development should go while not correctly calculating actual development time.  At the same time, business owners (and other people with the money) not really understanding the ups and downs and problems faced in a factory that only produces 1 thing (the game).

People can't be excellent business owners, technical developers, and level 5 (read jim collins) management directors all at the same time.

Sometimes, you have to take the good.  You have to take the bad.  You take them both, then there you have;  the facts of life, the facts of life.

[Saylor Twift 34]

48 minutes ago, Vernon_Price said:

And im not saying "Hey, its only Beta" and ignoring the issues, I'm saying that this is BETA, and issues are still to be expected. If shits like this happens after 1.0 as a released game - Then you can write up these things, for now there is just no sense in it. And that's what I meant. 

You should stop focusing on words like "beta", "alpha", or "finished" and just look at the time. It's been 6 years in development and zombies are still a broken mess. I don't care if it's beta, alpha, delta or whatever you want to call it. Look at the time. After 20 years if the game is still in beta and zombies still won't be fixed people will defend it cause it's beta and "it's expected". And that's true, in beta bugs are expected, unfinished content is expected, but not when it's been "worked on" for 6 years and still barely functions while also being the single most important part of the game. 

It should never take 6 years to create proper zombies in any game, on any engine. If it does then there are only three possibilities: 1. the engine is so difficult to work with that it takes this long. 2. the devs are inexperienced 3. the devs don't care or aren't putting enough time into it. If you have a good engine and enough skilled people coding then it would never take 6 years to fix zombies. (keep in mind I say finished but the current zombies are far from being finished even after 6 years).

Edited November 10, 2018 by Saylor Twift

[zykrem 17]

...

Edited November 10, 2018 by zykrem
can't delete...

[Parazight 1599]

3 hours ago, rickyriot said:

With that said I'd like to address the core mechanics of DayZ which should, imo, come down to 3 main tenets; Player vs Player, Player vs Zombie and Player vs Environment (PvP, PvZ and PvEnv). Pretty self explanatory, I'd hope. The question we have to ask ourselves is, "has that been achieved?"

Of course all three both have not been achieved.  It's nonsense to believe that a balance with PVE and PVP will ever be realized.

See, this is the exact problem open-world sandboxes have had since the beginning of online gaming, where people pvp.   You simply cannot balance PVE elements with PVP AT ALL.   Btw, Player vs Zombie and Player vs Environment are the same thing.  For example, you can balance a zed versus a single player, sure, no problem.  But there's no scaling whatsoever.  And no separated instances to provide an increasing challenge as you become better kitted. As soon as you group up with one other friendly person, ALL PVE (your pvz +pve) becomes ridiculously trivial.  Additionally, unless you're playing chess, you're always going to be able to out-smart and out-maneuver artificial intelligence and learn to adapt to static environmental coding.  

The whole premise from day zero with Derp Hall providing a social experiment is incredibly naive from the start, anyway.  There's no actual consequences, ever.  Permadeath workarounds have been a real thing since the beginning. 

It's pretty much been a shitshow from the beginning, save the awesome and unique experience the title has provided, which you're already aware of. 

[Evilsausage 87]

Overall I agree with OP. 

Especially the PvZ is an issue. It's bad when the Zombies almost felt better in the 2012 mod then today. I mean they where really bad back then aswell and glitched more then now. But atleast they where a threat, they spotted you and chased you like crazy. Unlike now when they are just kinda useless. 

I totaly belive that PVP/PVE balance could be alot better then what it is now. 

[blackberrygoo 1416]

23 hours ago, Vernon_Price said:

And im not saying "Hey, its only Beta" and ignoring the issues, I'm saying that this is BETA, and issues are still to be expected. If shits like this happens after 1.0 as a released game - Then you can write up these things, for now there is just no sense in it. And that's what I meant. 

These things surely will be In 1.0 release . I have literally 0  faith that these devs will pull off a full release in less than 2 months (especially from this build - it’s a mess in so many departments - zombies , lighting , transparent objects / buildings , broken vehicle physics , vehicles too fragile so they disappear when damaged - they don’t blow up or anything cool they just ... disappear ...).

Yuck , so many chances to have a great beta and this is what they come up with ? As a long time player and supporter I’m so pissed that it took another 1.5 years to get from .62 to .63 stable beta and yet somehow .63 stable beta seems like it has less weapons , less items , and more glitches than the .61-.62 versions had . 

Edited November 11, 2018 by blackberrygoo

[Vernon_Price 135]

2 hours ago, blackberrygoo said:

These things surely will be In 1.0 release . I have literally 0  faith that these devs will pull off a full release in less than 2 months (especially from this build - it’s a mess in so many departments - zombies , lighting , transparent objects / buildings , broken vehicle physics , vehicles too fragile so they disappear when damaged - they don’t blow up or anything cool they just ... disappear ...).

Yuck , so many chances to have a great beta and this is what they come up with ? As a long time player and supporter I’m so pissed that it took another 1.5 years to get from .62 to .63 stable beta and yet somehow .63 stable beta seems like it has less weapons , less items , and more glitches than the .61-.62 versions had . 

I don't give a damn about your "faith" in devs. 

[Wili 156]

For a Beta nothing seems to work properly, not combat or basebuilding, persistance, vehicles, zombies...

I think a Beta should be like polishing minor bugs, but it seems every important aspect of Dayz is well broken right now.

[sneakydude 480]

18 hours ago, blackberrygoo said:

These things surely will be In 1.0 release . I have literally 0  faith that these devs will pull off a full release in less than 2 months (especially from this build - it’s a mess in so many departments - zombies , lighting , transparent objects / buildings , broken vehicle physics , vehicles too fragile so they disappear when damaged - they don’t blow up or anything cool they just ... disappear ...).

Yuck , so many chances to have a great beta and this is what they come up with ? As a long time player and supporter I’m so pissed that it took another 1.5 years to get from .62 to .63 stable beta and yet somehow .63 stable beta seems like it has less weapons , less items , and more glitches than the .61-.62 versions had . 

Well this thread is backwards, was hoping to hear much better news about Infected. I guess 2 more years? Its still Alpha to me, i never expected anything less then 2019 for beta and that's at the end of 2019. But i really wasnt hoping to hear about the vehicles and the Infected are still an issue.

[sneakydude 480]

On 11/10/2018 at 11:31 AM, Saylor Twift said:

You should stop focusing on words like "beta", "alpha", or "finished" and just look at the time. It's been 6 years in development and zombies are still a broken mess. I don't care if it's beta, alpha, delta or whatever you want to call it. Look at the time. After 20 years if the game is still in beta and zombies still won't be fixed people will defend it cause it's beta and "it's expected". And that's true, in beta bugs are expected, unfinished content is expected, but not when it's been "worked on" for 6 years and still barely functions while also being the single most important part of the game. 

It should never take 6 years to create proper zombies in any game, on any engine. If it does then there are only three possibilities: 1. the engine is so difficult to work with that it takes this long. 2. the devs are inexperienced 3. the devs don't care or aren't putting enough time into it. If you have a good engine and enough skilled people coding then it would never take 6 years to fix zombies. (keep in mind I say finished but the current zombies are far from being finished even after 6 years).

Although i do not know the workings inside BI but i am starting to wonder what the actual team is doing? It only confirmed what was already confirmed back in early stages. But is this a completely new team? or smaller team? or a bunch of interns now. I am seeing the 1 yr of development go sorta sideways again.

[Evilsausage 87]

Bis has had other projects. So my guess is that the team on DayZ has been rather small. I mean its not normal to have this slow progress. 

Hopefully more people are working on it, now when its so close to release. 

[JimmyThePiece 5]

The important thing is.....its Eugen's not yours. You paid for the opportunity to take part in the beta. 

[JimmyThePiece 5]

If we could work through the "This is a final release" "This is beta?' stuff we'd get further faster. When I Beta tested E.S.O it was garbage....... I mean GARBAGE!!!!! That wasn't Skyrim....not even close....and I waited 7 yrs for this?????Eugen says 63 ppl on DayZ team. I couldn't even begin to guess how many ppl were working for Bethesda on ESO for years and years and years. We are helping. I know its foreign to have to pay to help.....but its a big dream I think, and when DayZ hits VR and people are really dying from the sheer scope of badassedry that you helped polish you can tell your kids.....I helped make that!!!!!!! It will make sense that you pitched 30$ to some friends to make the best vidja game ever.

 

[hemmo 55]

I love it how you say "|in short..." and a wall of text appears.

Cba to even start reading this abomination

[amadieus 316]

'deleted'

Edited November 12, 2018 by amadieus

[Evilsausage 87]

6 hours ago, JimmyThePiece said:

If we could work through the "This is a final release" "This is beta?' stuff we'd get further faster. When I Beta tested E.S.O it was garbage....... I mean GARBAGE!!!!! That wasn't Skyrim....not even close....and I waited 7 yrs for this?????Eugen says 63 ppl on DayZ team. I couldn't even begin to guess how many ppl were working for Bethesda on ESO for years and years and years. We are helping. I know its foreign to have to pay to help.....but its a big dream I think, and when DayZ hits VR and people are really dying from the sheer scope of badassedry that you helped polish you can tell your kids.....I helped make that!!!!!!! It will make sense that you pitched 30$ to some friends to make the best vidja game ever.

 

First off, Bethesda didn't make Elder Scrolls Online. Zenimax did. Bethesda only helped publish it.
The game had been in development in 7 years, but there is no info at all about how many where involved with the project from the start. First year or 2 could have been a small crew of concept artist, programmers to create a foundation. Hard to say the crew size.
Still they made a MMO, everything from scratch. All the monsters, quests, the world etc...

DayZ was based Arma 2s world and many parts of the enviroment are still used in the DayZ. DayZ mod resulted in maybe a couple of millions sold copies of Arma 2? Then 3 additional million copies for DayZ SA. 
That adds to quite alot of money for a medium sized company. But you want people to give them more money?
They have had alot of resources and time to develop DayZ but this development has been messy. Features added then removed, then new features added. Then removed again never to be seen again. They have been experimenting with alot of shit and in the end has just gotten scrapped. And the bugs, so many bugs and wonky stuff. Even many very obvious stuff is bad even for an alpha. As if they have no playtesting at all over a their studio to se what work and what doesn't.

Harsh truth is DayZ had its glory days in 2012/2013 and thats the time most people bought the game. Now DayZ has maybe like 1/10th the players? All of which has already payed for the game. They know there really isn't much money to be made from new fans and that there is alot of work to really make DayZ fully finnished. So I bet the team has been smaller then 60 people these past years.
I hope they put in some propper work now when they are about to release the game and actually get reviewed by critics. Beta is promsing but at the same time its still very unpolished. So who knows what will really happen with the full product. 
 

Edited November 12, 2018 by Evilsausage

[Guy Smiley 534]

15 minutes ago, Evilsausage said:

DayZ was based Arma 2s world and many parts of the enviroment are still used in the DayZ. DayZ mod resulted in maybe a couple of millions sold copies of Arma 2? Then 3 additional million copies for DayZ SA. 
That adds to quite alot of money for a medium sized company. But you want people to give them more money?
. 
 

And that money went into funding the creation of the Enfusion Engine alongside other projects.  The money still goes to Bohemia to pay their staff, pay their bills, buy their Lamborghini's(sarcasm), fund other projects etc....

[St. Jimmy 1631]

Agreed with the PvZ. Just bare fist fight them or just outrun them. No real challenge with them.

Edited November 13, 2018 by St. Jimmy

[Private Evans 1303]

Devs promised 3 weeks ago to release beta and even 1.0  before christmas...They also clearly stated that the main focus will be on bugfixing, polishing and tweaking so that we will have a stable and solid running basic version of the game including all basic features working by the end of the year. This a bit more than 5 weeks from today on.

I say we wait until Christmas to see what 1.0 will look like....hoping for the best ( maybe a miracle)

...we all know that they are fucked if they can not manage to deliver an at least solid running functioning basic version of the game by the end of this year...so yeah :/

 

[sneakydude 480]

On 11/12/2018 at 10:55 AM, JimmyThePiece said:

The important thing is.....its Eugen's not yours. You paid for the opportunity to take part in the beta. 

You do know we have been here awhile right? It was pre alpha most of us where involved in.

[Evilsausage 87]

On 2018-11-12 at 11:47 PM, Guy Smiley said:

And that money went into funding the creation of the Enfusion Engine alongside other projects.  The money still goes to Bohemia to pay their staff, pay their bills, buy their Lamborghini's(sarcasm), fund other projects etc....

That money went to pay their staff is kinda obvious and ofc for making the Enfusion Engine. How much Enfusion is a new engine or just a highly tweeked Arma 2 engine. I don't really know.
Still at this point there really is no good excuse as to why the game feels so unfinished.