Xbox Development Briefing - November 16, 2018

[RaptorM60 391]

Hello Xbox Survivors! 

Since launching in Game Preview, we haven't really released any major content update for DayZ, and especially now after the PC BETA update, we've been getting lots of questions about when you can expect it to drop. Well, good news - it's right around the corner! Read on to find out when, what's in it and what else do we have planned for DayZ on Xbox this month.

---

Basebuilding & Vehicles Update

Alright, let's start with it right off the bat - if nothing goes wrong during internal testing, we'll be releasing a big Game Preview update on Thursday, November 22 - next week. We're announcing this with a little bit of a warning since there are quite a few things that can still break the build, but hopefully, we should be all good and ready to release what's without any doubt the biggest game update we've done on Xbox so far. Along with bringing new things to try, the update should also be addressing some of the very annoying issues that you've been reporting. Let's take a look:

Content & Features Highlight

• new vehicle: ADA 4x4 + parts and other necessary items
• base building + necessary items to make it work (tools, planks, nails...)
• new shotgun + ammo
• tents and barrels for making improvised camps and loot stashes
• improved nighttime (don't throw away those road flares everyone! You'll need them ;)
• lots of other new items configured for spawning in the Central Economy
• slightly increased numbers of infected

Bug Fixes & Quality of Life Improvements

• fixes for the annoying hit registration bug
• some missing controls should be added, as well as some new options (we'd like to add leaning, switching fire mode, weapon zeroing and switching between multiple user actions)
• we've gone through the first round of optimizations improving the performance and stability of the inventory (evaluating the performance will be one of the things we will be monitoring)
• changes to Central Economy and item spawning quantity in general
• lots of smaller animation and sound improvements
• general improvements to game stability

Black Friday Deals - get your friends into the game for 15% OFF!

The other big news is that since yesterday, DayZ is featured in the Black Friday sale! This is one of the very few chances to get DayZ on Xbox for a really advantageous price of $33,99 / £26,99 / 33,99€, so if you have an undecided friend, or still think about buying DayZ on Xbox, it's probably time to give it a shot. Don't forget that there's still the 1-hour free trial available! Click the banner to go to the Microsoft Store page, or simply just find DayZ (Game Preview) on Store in your Dashboard.

 

Upcoming Inventory & Usability Improvements

One of the things that we'd like to resolve during the Game Preview is the general usability of the game, and the inventory/UI functionality. The DayZ game design team joined forces with our friends and colleagues in the Vigor team and for the past 2 weeks, they have been brainstorming possible new concepts for the DayZ UI and inventory usability. We've done a pretty extensive research in this area and identified a lot of specific things that would be worth taking a look at. This effort should result in a set of specific improvements that we will want to try implementing in order to make DayZ a bit more user friendly.

While it's too early to show any results and the implementation phase is always the hardest one, we're taking this very seriously and will update you whenever we have any concrete results. Your feedback on this will be very important, so get ready to bring it on! :)  

DayZ will support mouse & keyboard!

Lastly, at XO, Microsoft announced that mouse & keyboard support is officially coming to Xbox One - and DayZ is one of the games that will take advantage of this new feature! While we don't have a specific day to roll out support for mouse & keyboard input, it's safe to say that we will most likely not be able to do that before we leave Game Preview. Figuring out a good controller experience is the priority for us at the moment, and while it may seem like it's easy to just bring over the PC controls to Xbox, there's actually quite a lot of programming and scripting work that would need to be done in order to support this - and we need our programmers and scripters on other things right now! 

And with this - let's wrap up today's Development Briefing. See you all in Chernarus, Survivors!

 

[awalsh47 200]

Well done guys. Really looking forward to this ! 

Edited November 16, 2018 by awalsh47
Spelling

[awalsh47 200]

Oh are you wiping characters with the update? 

[RaptorM60 391]

7 minutes ago, awalsh47 said:

Oh are you wiping characters with the update? 

Yes, it’s very likely that there will be a full wipe. Unfortunately this is to be expected with every update in the Game Preview.

[TheYetiBum 790]

Firstly loving how soon many mechanics and items will be coming to xbox, great news and great work by the whole BI team. 

But I'm looking for some clarification on whether we will get separate servers for controller & M&K due to the distinct advantage M&K users have with accuracy and inventory etc? 

[McPhorce 139]

Hallelujah! See ya'll out there on Thursday!

[BravoXSkull 1]

Well this update fixes the sky effect/bug/glitch I noticed the sky has a hard time figuring out if want to be day or night time 

 

[RaptorM60 391]

1 hour ago, TheYetiBum said:

Firstly loving how soon many mechanics and items will be coming to xbox, great news and great work by the whole BI team. 

But I'm looking for some clarification on whether we will get separate servers for controller & M&K due to the distinct advantage M&K users have with accuracy and inventory etc? 

Yes, it is definitely our goal to not mix players with different input methods.

[TheYetiBum 790]

4 minutes ago, RaptorM60 said:

Yes, it is definitely our goal to not mix players with different input methods.

Thank you for response, wise choice there I feel & hopefully it doesn't split the player base too much. But I'm sure we will see many new players after the launch of 1.0 .

[Mazama541 0]

Super excited for the new update. Thank you for your hard work on pc/Xbox game keeps getting better and better. ???

Edited November 16, 2018 by Mazama541

[DayzDayzFanboy 1280]

Exciting times. Well done guys, didn't expect to see this drop till the new year. 

[BillyMays22 1]

I have 2 questions, 1. Will there be new clothing items added? 2. Will the bug were you can’t chamber a mosin be fixed?

[xzDIABLOzx 157]

4 hours ago, RaptorM60 said:

The DayZ game design team joined forces with our friends and colleagues in the Vigor team and for the past 2 weeks, they have been brainstorming possible new concepts for the DayZ UI and inventory usability. We've done a pretty extensive research in this area and identified a lot of specific things that would be worth taking a look at. This effort should result in a set of specific improvements that we will want to try implementing in order to make DayZ a bit more user friendly.

Very cool to learn of these things you guys are doing for the game. It's been a really interesting experience watching the game development process and Dayz just fufills the gamer in me that all other games I've played have not. Great work and looking forward to the future!

[Haggard45 0]

So just to be clear the game is gonna be down on Xbox until Thursday?

[Haggard45 0]

If that’s the case then sad face 

[Stefan345 0]

Hi when it comes out of preveiw will you have to buy it again because i was sayin that kinda seem dumb but i just wanted to know?

[BravoXSkull 1]

8 minutes ago, Stefan345 said:

Hi when it comes out of preveiw will you have to buy it again because i was sayin that kinda seem dumb but i just wanted to know?

No once you paid for the game it’s yours but for the people who don’t pay for now once the game come out of preview  the price will jump up $10 

[Tristan Wixom 0]

So are the servers still down for other people? Because I've been trying since like 2:30 East Coast time and it's now 10:30 East Coast time and it's still not allowing me to play. The weird thing is my buddy in the same area as me can still get on and play perfectly fine. I keep getting a server outage message and it won't even launch the game just, wondering if anybody else is having the same problems.

[Undeceived 22]

BI, hearing about the M&K controls is absolutely amazing news! Also the separation of controller types on the servers.

Are you considering to implement cross play with the PC as well? That would be a dream come true (for me as PC player at least as I have some Xbox friends that are highly interested in the game). Of course I wouldn't expect it now but only after things have stabilized, etc.

Or did you definitely decide against crossplay, even after hearing about Microsoft's M&K support for the Xbox One?

Would be great to hear anything from you on that.

Edited November 17, 2018 by Undeceived

[oldson 2]

Nice one guys n gals, looking forward to it, loving the game, so glad it came to xbox.

[Sqeezorz 839]

13 hours ago, RaptorM60 said:

Yes, it is definitely our goal to not mix players with different input methods.

Does this mean that "M&K" XO players have access to the hives of PC servers? Or will it be separate hives? (within the XO Hives).

[Arctic Volkssturm 95]

10 hours ago, Tristan Wixom said:

So are the servers still down for other people? Because I've been trying since like 2:30 East Coast time and it's now 10:30 East Coast time and it's still not allowing me to play. The weird thing is my buddy in the same area as me can still get on and play perfectly fine. I keep getting a server outage message and it won't even launch the game just, wondering if anybody else is having the same problems.

Did you ever download the last update?

[Tristan Wixom 0]

1 hour ago, Arctic Volkssturm said:

Did you ever download the last update?

Yes I did. I made sure all recent updates were installed, hard started my Xbox to make sure no programs were running in the background, completely restarted my router and uninstalled the game and reinstalled to make sure the files were not corrupted or messed up. Xbox won't even let me file a complaint that the game is not working, because when I go to register there's a problem it doesn't even appear in the games selection to file it. I'm honestly have no idea at this point.

Edit: (I don't know what happened but during the 12 hours of me sleeping my game will now finaly connect to the servers again!) Thanks for the suggestion though.

Edited November 17, 2018 by Tristan Wixom

[NE75 6]

Im so excited thankyou for the great news!!

Is there any possibilities on private servers for Xbox One? Having played so much of PC on whitelisted servers Id like to do the same to be honest to be able to play with dedicated role-players, may I have your take on that? If so, would there be less options? I can imagine the tweaks being rather difficult to make, but I was thinking you'd come up with how Battlefield Rent their servers out and allow a few customisations? Basically I just want to rent a passworded server lmao

[Man Parts 241 686]

16 hours ago, Haggard45 said:

So just to be clear the game is gonna be down on Xbox until Thursday?

Yea, they're gonna shut down until the update x\

Cuz that makes a lot of sense. Not!

Smh