Status Report - January 2019

[nl 986]

"this year"...

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

Our crew and community have been DayZ patriots since early 2014, after the decision to cut Beta short and release the game with non-working persistence as a full release, well, that was the last straw.  We have moved on to Atlas, which funny enough has working persistence, epic base building, and seriously fun ship battles.  And our hosted servers don't crash. It reminds us of DayZ alot, only it works with fewer glitches.  I can't accept what we have in DayZ , none of our community can, actually.  Like so many other long time members of this community, we have moved on, maybe DayZ will be something one day, we will continue to watch, but as much as I have personally worked toward bringing Persistence to the forefront over the last several months, and warned everyone that without persistence, the game is toast, the numbers don't lie, total number of players continue to tank, and dedicated communities continue to close.  I suggest Atlas as a really fun diversion, it will remind you how great DayZ could be.... one day.

Edited January 29, 2019 by THEGordonFreeman

[RaptorM60 392]

On 25. 1. 2019 at 8:28 PM, IMT said:

That's it? I'm glad that I didn't get high hopes for this Status Report because I would've been seriously disappointed. This is just a summary ([issue] -> "We're working on it") of what we've already knew with a few small details we didn't know. It took you 1 month to write down most of what we already knew? The Status Report was delayed because you guys had to get your plan together for 2019, where is that plan? Where is that juicy Status Report with the planning of all the features and the rich details?

And why the secrecy? You want to be better at communicating to the community, right? Then give us some transparency! No "we'll give out more details later", just give the details already. Even if they lack, are a work in progress or might change. Just give the details and tell us that they might change. At least people won't be so disappointed then and it gives us a better understanding about what is happening behind the scenes.

This is a shame, a real damn shame.

Just to be clear: this is not the roadmap post where we wanted to lay out 2019 development. That's still coming (but even that's definitely not going to be an all-answering piece that will finally make everyone happy - no single moment in DayZ development can provide this, ever). This is a Status Report that we did not really plan to do before our roadmap update, but put it together in the end because questions were already coming about what's happening with development (we've actually had people asking us if the development stopped because we're quiet). So this is a report that we (= our community team + BI marketing) put together with Eugen to explain where we are at before our internal planning is done and before we can talk about public roadmaps. 

I understand where you're coming from wanting to know everything there is. But here's this: I think history taught us well that sharing development plans and ideas before they are firmly decided or properly scheduled internally leads to a complete disaster in the developer-community relationship, so we will not do that. That was happening across 2012 - 2015 on DayZ big time (where some things were publicly discussed or revealed before even being discussed internally first...), and to some degree even until last year, too.

Exactly this approach, combined with general development struggles, is why we're all in this complete mess of unrealistic expectations and unfulfilled potential. The approach of "only share details once ready" is applied in-house on other Bohemia projects (most notably Arma 3, but also Ylands), and so far it's proven to lead to a more honest relationship with realistic expectations from the community.  And expectations is what we need to set right going forward.

I think we are still open, hinting at what's the day to day like in the office (as explained in the SR: lots of planning meetings, going through backlogs of features and content and deciding priorities, while developers writing code and data do their daily contributions to the game development). That's really the best description of what's up with development now. When we sort through our backlogs and possibilities for the year, the result is a plan for the rest of 2019 that we will be able to present and talk about. 

Doing a sort of a "reality show" of providing our meeting notes or preliminary discussion results to you in the community is truly not the way to improve things, even though I understand why it's tempting to think that it would feel better. In reality, though, that would just set expectations wrong (e.g. as soon as we hint at anything new being discussed to be possibly available in update 1.XX, even without us really being sure about the date or having any date set, the community expectations are that the new thing will just make it into the game). In turn, wrong expectations would create even more mess in the long run. Nobody wants more of that now.

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

1 hour ago, RaptorM60 said:

I understand where you're coming from wanting to know everything there is. But here's this: I think history taught us well that sharing development plans and ideas before they are firmly decided or properly scheduled internally leads to a complete disaster in the developer-community relationship, so we will not do that. That was happening across 2012 - 2015 on DayZ big time (where some things were publicly discussed or revealed before even being discussed internally first...), and to some degree even until last year, too.

Exactly this approach, combined with general development struggles, is why we're all in this complete mess of unrealistic expectations and unfulfilled potential. The approach of "only share details once ready" is applied in-house on other Bohemia projects (most notably Arma 3, but also Ylands), and so far it's proven to lead to a more honest relationship with realistic expectations from the community.  And expectations is what we need to set right going forward.

I understand what you are saying; however, you are neglecting the elephant in the room.  the ONE MONTH BETA.  That, by far, was the biggest faux pas development has made.   Missing deadlines, promising this feature or that, cutting this feature or that, was NOTHING compared to having Beta for one month.  All of the other could have been handled better, but you guys are missing what the community is truly upset about.  The fact that you were in EA for years, and you had a one month beta, then went straight to release... ARBITRARILY, if we are to believe what Eugene has said that the Dev team were under no obligation or duress to do so, that it was a "team" decision.

If that is to be believed, then THAT decision was the biggest blunder, everything else is window dressing.  There is no way in hell, no way IN HELL, that kind of decision gets made on other projects by other software development houses and someone doesn't get fired twice from their position.  The laundry list of major game breaking bugs that SHOULD NOT have been there had you had a real BETA phase is too long for me to recap, but the number one item on that list is PERSISTENCE.  There is literally no excuse for not dealing with that prior to going full release.  You guys have known about it since at least .62, it was reported again, and again DURING THE ONE MONTH BETA, and you did nothing to fix it.   Zilch.  Zero.  Nada.  Eugene said you were not aware of it and you couldn't reproduce it in house.  I'm sorry, I don't buy that.  It was reported on the bug tracker  since .62 was released.  It was posted on social media and on the DayZ twitter, and in the very forums and on reddit.  It became the hot button issue almost immediately when Beta hit, and NOTHING was done.  You still went full release.  Persistence is an advertised feature on your steam page and it's broken.  How could this not be the single most important issue to resolve before full release.... oh, that's right, BETA was ONLY a month long... right, right.

There are a lot of things I could say about that and the 'WHY'  ultimately, it'd be  speculation on my part, but I will say this.  By not talking about things, you have gone the opposite direction, you don't have to be specific, you can be open without spoiling things.  Right now, I refer you to Dead Matter.  Those guys are developing their product IN TANDEM with their community.  I have seen few development teams willing to do that.  They don't give away the store, but they talk daily with their backers and people that just want to know what's up.    And they tell people straight, like if an idea sucks or not, or is just not right for their game.  They don't beat about the bush.  That kind of honesty is refreshing and frankly, they won't have a pissed off community because feature A didn't make it in their game, or feature B got nerfed.  They have been open and told the community long before expectations got out of whack.

Having trouble filling those servers up on Exp.? Yeah, closing them down was smart but telling, the community is no longer willing to test when it was plainly obvious from the one month beta, that whatever internal testing  that was done was INADEQUATE.  Eugene said you couldn't hire enough people to test this kind of game.  And he asked the community for help.... funny enough, two people on one server were able to expose a problem in persistence after about an hour of messing with it.   Managing expectations is nice and all, but being open and willing to provide information and engaging the community to talk about these things OPENLY would do way more for your credibility and restore trust and willingness to want to help in Exp.  As was seen by Eugene asking for specific help.... be OPEN.

I want DayZ to succeed.  I want you guys to deliver a great experience, but shutting off the community at this critical time and completely ignoring glaring concerns and issues is not going help, it's just going to further divide us.  Not being forthcoming with REAL straight answers is also not conducive to trust.  You guys have a credibility problem right now within your own community.  You should own up to it and make it right. 

Edited January 29, 2019 by THEGordonFreeman

[OrLoK 16185]

No one is "shutting off" communications with the community.

Relax your jets.

Info will come as and when. We've only *just* had the SR after the holiday period.

[Survivor1431 116]

32 minutes ago, OrLoK said:

No one is "shutting off" communications with the community.

Relax your jets.

Info will come as and when. We've only *just* had the SR after the holiday period.

And a perfect status report at that.

[IMT 3190]

4 hours ago, RaptorM60 said:

Just to be clear: this is not the roadmap post where we wanted to lay out 2019 development. That's still coming (but even that's definitely not going to be an all-answering piece that will finally make everyone happy - no single moment in DayZ development can provide this, ever). This is a Status Report that we did not really plan to do before our roadmap update, but put it together in the end because questions were already coming about what's happening with development (we've actually had people asking us if the development stopped because we're quiet). So this is a report that we (= our community team + BI marketing) put together with Eugen to explain where we are at before our internal planning is done and before we can talk about public roadmaps. 

I understand where you're coming from wanting to know everything there is. But here's this: I think history taught us well that sharing development plans and ideas before they are firmly decided or properly scheduled internally leads to a complete disaster in the developer-community relationship, so we will not do that. That was happening across 2012 - 2015 on DayZ big time (where some things were publicly discussed or revealed before even being discussed internally first...), and to some degree even until last year, too.

Exactly this approach, combined with general development struggles, is why we're all in this complete mess of unrealistic expectations and unfulfilled potential. The approach of "only share details once ready" is applied in-house on other Bohemia projects (most notably Arma 3, but also Ylands), and so far it's proven to lead to a more honest relationship with realistic expectations from the community.  And expectations is what we need to set right going forward.

I think we are still open, hinting at what's the day to day like in the office (as explained in the SR: lots of planning meetings, going through backlogs of features and content and deciding priorities, while developers writing code and data do their daily contributions to the game development). That's really the best description of what's up with development now. When we sort through our backlogs and possibilities for the year, the result is a plan for the rest of 2019 that we will be able to present and talk about. 

Doing a sort of a "reality show" of providing our meeting notes or preliminary discussion results to you in the community is truly not the way to improve things, even though I understand why it's tempting to think that it would feel better. In reality, though, that would just set expectations wrong (e.g. as soon as we hint at anything new being discussed to be possibly available in update 1.XX, even without us really being sure about the date or having any date set, the community expectations are that the new thing will just make it into the game). In turn, wrong expectations would create even more mess in the long run. Nobody wants more of that now.

That's where you guys took the wrong turn. Everyone was expecting a big first Status Report with a lot of information and a lot of details about how DayZ is moving forward into 2019. Instead, we get this Status Report with what we already knew (the most pressing issues and that you guys are working on them) and some small details. What you're saying makes a lot of sense, but it is the communication where it goes wrong. No where in the Status Report is it mentioned that this Status Report is just to reassure the community that you're guys still working on the game and figuring out your internal plans and whatnot. If this was the first thing stated in this Status Report, I and the rest of the community would've or might've received this Status Report in a total different way. It's the very thing you guys trying to avoid where you went wrong. Promising us a good Status Report but delivering a "we're still alive' Status Report, while this clearly wasn't the intention. The expectations were high on the very first Status Report but we feel let down, while that wasn't your intention in the first place. You see what I'm trying to get to here?

About sharing details, I definitely 100 % agree that you guys shouldn't share details if it isn't set in stone internally, that only makes sense. But a simple "we're working on it and will provide details later" doesn't work. We need those details, given that they are discussed internally already. Take for an example the persistence issue, every build notes contains a "we're working on a fix and will give you details later" message. You guys are working on a fix, this means this is already internally discussed and the details are already recorded on paper. Why don't share information about the fix? Bring the community up to speed, acknowledge that you guys are actively working on the case. Now we just see words but no proof and let's be honest here, most people take your words with a grain of salt nowadays. The same goes for Status Reports, give us teasers, pictures, videos of the progress of new content or features. Someone recently on Reddit posted a topic about this, I think it is a very good one and you guys should definitely read it and also do something with it. The link to the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/akr2ln/the_communication_and_expectation_disconnect/

Again, we don't want details of things which aren't set in stone internally but there is no way you guys can't give details about anything right now. Because that would mean that you're literally doing nothing. I already gave the persistence as example but another example are the two weapons mentioned in the Status Report. Why don't you guys give the names or the weapons or even better yet video or picture teasers of the two weapons. That's ultimately what not only the community wants to see but the customer, which we are as well, and that is progress and proof of that progress.

Seriously, give out more details of things which you can give us details on and try to communicate better with the community. It will go a long way and the developer-community relationship will get better because of it.

Thanks for addressing my post though. Know that most of us love DayZ but we don't love the stuff which has gone wrong or is going wrong with the development. Just like you, we want the game we all love to succeed.

Edited January 29, 2019 by IMT

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

43 minutes ago, IMT said:

About sharing details, I definitely 100 % agree that you guys shouldn't share details if it isn't set in stone internally, that only makes sense. But a simple "we're working on it and will provide details later" doesn't work. We need those details, given that they are discussed internally already. Take for an example the persistence issue, every build notes contains a "we're working on a fix and will give you details later" message. You guys are working on a fix, this means this is already internally discussed and the details are already recorded on paper. Why don't share information about the fix? Bring the community up to speed, acknowledge that you guys are actively working on the case. Now we just see words but no proof and let's be honest here, most people take your words with a grain of salt nowadays. The same goes for Status Reports, give us teasers, pictures, videos of the progress of new content or features. Someone recently on Reddit posted a topic about this, I think it is a very good one and you guys should definitely read it and also do something with it. The link to the topic: https://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/akr2ln/the_communication_and_expectation_disconnect/

^^^^^^^THIS.... SO MUCH THIS!^^^^^^ and persistence!

[Mister Fahrenheit 2]

I have 3500 hours in this game played on and off since release and all I want back are the payday masks and the guns, base building will never be done right give up and gave the modders the code they need to finish this fucking game you broke dick morons 

[Parazight 1599]

8 hours ago, RaptorM60 said:

In turn, wrong expectations would create even more mess in the long run. Nobody wants more of that now.

You can't re-create industry standards and have them only apply to your product.    It is a pretty standard expectation across all of gaming that 1.0 is a finished and polished product.  Any new customer can easily see that what was promoted for DayZ 1.0 is pretty far from reality.

[emuthreat 2837]

I quit playing late last year because there was no more enjoyment from the game.  Persistence issues made any attempt at meaningful long-term play a sisyphean exercise in self-flagellation.  Pair that with the unfortunate circumstances of 80% of my deaths in 1.0 sessions having been from getting stuck in the hinges of doors and being beaten through the walls by zombies, and it was just the last straw.

I once died fully geared at the western roadblock gas station to only two zombies.  I had beaten down more than a dozen along the wrecked vehicles and through the tents using my trusty glowstick and taking practically no damage; circled back to the gas station and tried to beat one more down inside the tin shed by the big white fuel tanks. Another heard the kerfuffle and I tried to close the door before he got there.  At this point, I don't know what happened, because my glowstick clipped into something and I couldn't do anything but punch blindly from a presumably locked position with no indication of a door prompt, leaving me helpless and in darkness as I got beaten to death over an extremely frustrating period of nearly ten seconds.  Only at the instant before the killscreen, did I see my glowsick clip back out of the geometry and fall from my cold dead hands.
Numerous times things have gone similarly to this.  Catch aggro from a distance at dawn, while double carrying right after a Tisy run; decide to play things "safe" and sprint to the nearest house with 3 aggro in tow, taking a couple hits along the way; open the door and rush inside, closing it behind me; drop the gun and pull out my axe, only to realize that I am bound to the wall at the hinges to the door; cycle the door state two or three times while getting hit through the walls by three zeds outside; finally free, I swing to knock back the closest before trying to close the door again; drop dead from the unreasonable amount of damage dealt through the wall while I was helplessly bound into the map geometry.
Not cool, man, not cool at all...

And regarding persistence and server performance:  Is there any chance that these issues may be relieved by increasing the hardware allocation of each server instance? Are there some constraints that would prevent this from being possible?  Has it already been done since .59, or ever in the history of SA development?
Forgive me for seemingly stating the obvious, but how else is the game going to run any better than is does now; with only two kinds of vehicles, constantly abating persistence, and roughly half of the content apparently missing?

[Brandon Clinch 50]

How you guys can go from terrible to even worse in handling the community is to me not a suprise but still f%cking baffling. Last year you just dropped a full game for 399.99 Euro, which is a broken mess with very little longivety for the players. Our game is a disastrous trainwreck and there is nothing we can do other than wait for you to repair it and release new content at a snail pace, that is a reality and what we are used to after all these years, no real news there, but do not, I repeat DO F#CKING NOT mess up the communication with your community as THESE are the last people on earth that has your back and power as a word-of-mouth buffer out to the rest of the world, the sporadic players no longer trust what you say. They trust and listens to us and SepticFalcon, RunningmanZ and the likes.

I have said this before and I'll say it again, if I would translate your way of communicating, hinting at things, transperancy and honesty, the basic give-and-take, promising to improve what needs to be fixed in the communication and regaining trust into a real life relationship, I would bolt the f-out of there. I've been in a relationship for over 14 years and if my partner would act like you do she would have been toast and gone within the first few months of our life together. I can only speculate and wonder how the relations and communications are within the team when you act the way you do with the outside world. It is plain to see that you no longer care about this community and even less so about Dayz, or perhaps the other way around. 

How noone in the higher positions of the team has not yet been fired and replaced is to me mind-boggling. [Edit: I would not be surprised if we'll see at least one drop out this year, hope it's just a good one and not a bad if it comes to that..] I've done enough bands and artistry work to know that the chain is never stronger than its weakest link. Cheesy but still the reality. 

 

We are leaving you. 

Edited January 30, 2019 by Brandon Clinch

[McWendy 675]

Communication has always been a disaster when we talk about dayz.  

Time after time a New(er) mod/dev stood up to promise better comms. Like the stability of the servers that promise is good for a week. Then Its Down Hill from there on. 

Lets face it. We are horses following a carrot. As it seems after 5 yrs (approx) we will never get that carrot. 

Dayz will be surpassed by better more optimised games. Scum was definitely not it, but it got close.

I will continue to keep a weary eye on this game, but my heart is (for some time now) no more in it. 

Sadface..... 

 

[kopo79 426]

i stopped playing when i noticed that i can force loot to spawn just running away from lootpoint.
take all the loot from house...then run away 200 meters away and wait...new loot spawns to that house...its like magic
if honest...i stopped playing when i noticed that there is not diseases other than eternal sneezing.
just began tired of eating raw meat and loot farm.
not hardcore survival game
when we get penaltys to eat raw meat.....force us to cook it?
when loot farming is gone?
when coldness of enviroment comes the thing?
is fishing mechanic or bow ready?when we can see return of these things?
if want more communications with community,just some infos to my question?

 

Edited January 30, 2019 by kopo79

[Freud was a stoner 2]

I see so many insignificant responses. 

I think you should focus on bringing back basics like bow and arrow, finally some damned bicycles. You dont need to prep them for stable, but having at least a form of transport so I dont have to walk and search an hour everytime me and my buddy want to play this game. Get rid of this annoying running simulator, and make sure we can actually team up, and test the hell out of this game. 

A couple of bikes would make all the difference, without any funny sjizzle, where I have to steal a saddle from the north to combine it with wheels in the south and a pump from the east, to finally find my buddy in the west. This aspect keeps me from running this game on a frequent basic. I have mentioned this 4yrs ago already.. and it was alwys dismissed with other so called priorities, which most of them are now not in the game AT ALL.

So instead of focussing on pistols, focus on playability. And by that I do not mean the persistence.

Like other users have validly stated: there is no use for persistence, if there are no items / goal, that is valuable enough to build a base or bury in the ground.

Focus on group dynamics, and game dynamics that actually make it more playable. A wrong particle isnt gonna ruin the gameplay, if there is no one to play with!!

 

And for the record, I get these reactions are highly demotivating for staff, but something has to change. A 4 week beta period is absurd, and as far as I know has never happened. The manager who decided this should be fired on the spot. We want people working on this game that actually are skilled and committed. This shows neiter. 

I personally am in love with this idea of a new apocalyptic world where there is no rules, and a ton to do - explore - discover - connect and most of all is roamed by players with whom you have to talk to survive. And sometimes its kill or be killed. This is why it hurts so much to feel that bohemia is not living up to its potential, and seemingly is just trying to keep shut us up and mainly dong reputaional damage control for any new project. While we have been waiting for the best game ever created. It doesnt sit right, hence the frustration of so many people. Please be advised and show us what is happening. Enable us, and dont shut us down with some roadmap where a couple of chicken get more priority than decent mulitplayer dynamics.

Edited January 30, 2019 by Freud was a stoner

[deewd27 5]

23 hours ago, RaptorM60 said:

I understand where you're coming from wanting to know everything there is. But here's this: I think history taught us well that sharing development plans and ideas before they are firmly decided or properly scheduled internally leads to a complete disaster in the developer-community relationship, so we will not do that. That was happening across 2012 - 2015 on DayZ big time (where some things were publicly discussed or revealed before even being discussed internally first...), and to some degree even until last year, too.

So you guys shared ideas that were not even decided, discussed and/or scheduled internally and now we, as the community, have to live with the mistakes you(as BI) have made? I mean after more then 5 years you guys still have no real plan where this game is going, that´s what I read from this statement(maybe I´m wrong, since I´m no english native)?

[RaptorM60 392]

4 hours ago, deewd27 said:

So you guys shared ideas that were not even decided, discussed and/or scheduled internally and now we, as the community, have to live with the mistakes you(as BI) have made? I mean after more then 5 years you guys still have no real plan where this game is going, that´s what I read from this statement(maybe I´m wrong, since I´m no english native)?

Yes, and we feel the mistakes every day, doesn’t make us happy either :) With the advantage of hindsight, I think it’s safe to say that in DayZ development, too much was shared publicly too early, in extreme cases things that were really not properly discussed internally, but more often things and ideas that were just too optimistic. It was partly because of the hype back then and the pressure coming from it, partly because of sheer excitement and perhaps a bit if carelessness (this part, I still only judge on my own perceptions and stories I hear from the olden days, as I too was just a fan back then). As I hear often from our most experienced devs in the company, that normally happens in development, you start ambitious and then scale down based on reality, but behind closed doors. With DayZ, it unfortunately happened publicly, and very organically so to speak. Combined with the complex technology change and other general struggles of game dev business, we’ve ended up where we are today. 

The dev team is of course not clueless about what to do with the game further, there’s still so much to do to realize the DayZ vision, but what we’re doing since our December release is planning out (as carefully and responsibly as we can) what’s realistic to deliver to DayZ within this year.

And we’ll only share it when we give it a decent consideration internally, to not repeat what didnt work in the past.

[THEGordonFreeman 664]

53 minutes ago, RaptorM60 said:

Yes, and we feel the mistakes every day, doesn’t make us happy either :) With the advantage of hindsight, I think it’s safe to say that in DayZ development, too much was shared publicly too early, in extreme cases things that were really not properly discussed internally, but more often things and ideas that were just too optimistic. It was partly because of the hype back then and the pressure coming from it, partly because of sheer excitement and perhaps a bit if carelessness (this part, I still only judge on my own perceptions and stories I hear from the olden days, as I too was just a fan back then). As I hear often from our most experienced devs in the company, that normally happens in development, you start ambitious and then scale down based on reality, but behind closed doors. With DayZ, it unfortunately happened publicly, and very organically so to speak. Combined with the complex technology change and other general struggles of game dev business, we’ve ended up where we are today. 

The dev team is of course not clueless about what to do with the game further, there’s still so much to do to realize the DayZ vision, but what we’re doing since our December release is planning out (as carefully and responsibly as we can) what’s realistic to deliver to DayZ within this year.

And we’ll only share it when we give it a decent consideration internally, to not repeat what didnt work in the past.

So what does hindsight tell you about the one month beta mistake?

[pilgrim* 3514]

9 hours ago, THEGordonFreeman said:

So what does hindsight tell you about the one month beta mistake?

It tells me you said in December << I am tired of fighting this battle >>
your Constant Theme is : How stupid the devs are and what a big mistake they made.
Then you follow on with 30+ posts saying the exact same thing, for exactly the same reason, regular as clockwork.
It's ALL you EVER do =  Shit on the devs.  The one same message again and again.  (apart from the ads for your clan).
- Aren't you TIRED of fighting this battle ?

Hey Gordon, we GOT the message, they got the message, everyone got the message -  It's a very simple message and you SAID it THIRTY FIVE times.
Now do you expect the devs all to come over and commit Ritual Suicide in front of your door?  

xxp

Edited January 31, 2019 by pilgrim*

[g4borg 74]

16 hours ago, Freud was a stoner said:

I think you should focus on bringing back basics like bow and arrow, finally some damned bicycles. You dont need to prep them for stable, but having at least a form of transport so I dont have to walk and search an hour everytime me and my buddy want to play this game. Get rid of this annoying running simulator, and make sure we can actually team up, and test the hell out of this game. 

i think there is a consensus amongst a lot of players, at least i heard this proposal quite often until now, that bicycles and bows would be wonderful to have.

i also think, it would be nice if experimental features can be activated by private servers, so we can test them out, like certain weapons or vehicles, which are not yet done. it would give the community something to do.

--

i still think the biggest actual issue is, that many things are client and server side blocked, there is no way to have autoloading of mods when you join. I know I repeat myself, but too many issues seem to show, this should be the one biggest feature they should work on yesterday. 

Downloading a server side mission to the client in arma might have been annoying, from time to time also an easy way to implement cheats, but given you could just do it in myriads of other ways even more efficiently, and it could be also used to mark cheaters in fact, it was definitely a nice way to deliver content and scripts to the client for your personal use case. We do not have this option in dayz, instead we have mod support. But none of this is really working. DayZSALauncher already has a working third party solution, all dayz team would need to do is implement a similar system into the current client.
_{Well I will write this together in a suggestion.}

Edited January 31, 2019 by g4borg

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

2 hours ago, g4borg said:

i think there is a consensus amongst a lot of players, at least i heard this proposal quite often until now, that bicycles and bows would be wonderful to have.

I'm so surprised at the outcry about the bow removal. Do you think people really used them or is it more like "how dare you remove an item I've never used" thing? I've never met a player with a bow and in fact, I was kinda embarrassed to admit how I like this weapon. :D

[IMT 3190]

2 minutes ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

I'm so surprised at the outcry about the bow removal. Do you think people really used them or is it more like "how dare you remove an item I've never used" thing? I've never met a player with a bow and in fact, I was kinda embarrassed to admit how I like this weapon. :D

I used it many times to take out infected silently.

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

3 minutes ago, IMT said:

I used it many times to take out infected silently.

Yeah, but I'd name like 5 people, you included, whom I'd suspect of consistently using a bow. And now it seems one of the most asked-about features. Nice but weird.

[g4borg 74]

11 minutes ago, Kirov (DayZ) said:

I'm so surprised at the outcry about the bow removal.

to a certain extent, yeah. Given I know I am kind of that niche player, who actually loves weapons like the bow also in RL (It was the first item I tried to craft in 1.0 without knowing it was removed) - So even tho I had a deep interest to get that weapon, I was less stressed when I realized I have to wait for it. However I heard it more often by now by friends, or strangers I met aswell.
Given it is one of the most basic weapons of Ark, Rust or Minecraft players, I get the "demand".
Bicycle however was mentioned even more.
Which however does not interest me that much, even tho mountain bikes were cool in the mod, and might have been more successful if it were not such a late addition.

[p4nnus 42]

Ive been optimistic for a really long time now. The one month beta was a huge mistake as someone already pointed out. I think its time to change that steam review to negative now.