At what point do we consider DayZ dead online?

[rickyriot 1009]

Dayz is online. Sure there is an offline testing mode, but essentially you need other players to make the game worth playing - unless something happens to the zombies to make them a credible and frequent threat.

This is a screenshot of my server browser. It was taken less than an hour ago. I am based in the UK so the lowest IPs will be UK/EU based. I may be wrong here, but the weekend will see the highest player count and certainly at Sunday midday you'd expect a reasonable number of players.

If the above does not zoom for you, use this url: https://i.imgur.com/peym2O4.jpg

That is 5 pages of servers. My filters are set to show everything - even though I only play 1PP which in turn reduces further the number of populated servers available to me. To be fair there are several locked/passworded servers listed. I would have removed them but while there is a "show/hide passworded servers" option it doesn't work - or at least not for me.

Bottom line? Online games need online players. There are no players, or at least very few, so I ask again the title topic: At what point do we consider DayZ dead online?

 

 

 

[rickyriot 1009]

More stats, this time from Steam, showing the number of players:

https://steamcharts.com/app/221100

I'm not sure what anyone's guess would be, but I'm going to assume those figures don't match it.

Don't get me wrong I wish it was not the case, and you could make a case that there was a spike in December when 1.0 was released but it's fallen by over 2/3rds since then - albeit there are more players in Feb than there were in over a year stretching back from before 1.0 was released.

The sad and obvious reality is that it's a bit of a death spiral; less people playing > more empty servers > less people wanting to play > less people playing > more empty servers > etc, etc...

 

Edited to add one other thought. Considering the number of players will generally dictate the sales of the game, and sales of the game go towards paying Bohemia staff just how long is it financially viable to support/develop the game? Aside from the finances the vast majority of people in the forum bought the game as EA, now we have 1.0 that's effectively the "promise" complete. There is now no longer an "ethical" reason to continue supporting the game.

Edited March 3, 2019 by rickyriot

[aux7 234]

"  On 3/2/2019 at 10:10 AM, nikoor said:

I'd like to see more populated HC server in Europe so yeah grow some balls peeps don't always go where the fence is lowest! If the players that have left don't come back after the next update BI should consider reducing the server numbers on Europe at least. Definitely take one of the HC servers down on the next wipe."

 

"looking at the player numbers dropping, especially since Apex legends hit  . . .  I would suggest its inevitable." me on the 3rd, in answer

 

- looking at the steam numbers, it looks like they accept 1700 players, but I imagine that number of servers will reduce and will slowly close down. A lot of the current servers only started from the free weekend  last year

Edited March 3, 2019 by aux7

[rickyriot 1009]

54 minutes ago, aux7 said:

"  On 3/2/2019 at 10:10 AM, nikoor said:

I'd like to see more populated HC server in Europe so yeah grow some balls peeps don't always go where the fence is lowest! If the players that have left don't come back after the next update BI should consider reducing the server numbers on Europe at least. Definitely take one of the HC servers down on the next wipe."

Out of interest are they meaning official or community? I used to play on the official UK servers, some of which used to be 1PP (or at least I thought so) but now there is not one that is. If it's the case of reducing the official servers then job done as far as I am concerned as there is no decent official 1PP server within a decent ping range of the UK. There are two NL ones, but their ping is normally 75+

As for community, I'm not sure Bohemia would want to restrict the number of those. Hiring and maintaining a community server is clearly an act of someone engaged with the game and to restrict that would be counter intuitive.

Edited March 3, 2019 by rickyriot

[nikoor 180]

13 minutes ago, rickyriot said:

Out of interest are they meaning official or community? I used to play on the official UK servers, some of which used to be 1PP (or at least I thought so) but now there is not one that is. If it's the case of reducing the official servers then job done as far as I am concerned as there is no decent official 1PP server within a decent ping range of the UK. There are two NL ones, but their ping is normally 75+

As for community, I'm not sure Bohemia would want to restrict the number of those. Hiring and maintaining a community server is clearly an act of someone engaged with the game and to restrict that would see counter intuitive.

My quote was from the Xbox section. We have 3 1PP servers which are hardly ever medium. I'm sure Mr. AllMighty will appear soon and elaborate us all on the matter, trust me.

Edited March 3, 2019 by nikoor

[rickyriot 1009]

19 minutes ago, nikoor said:

My quote was from the Xbox section. We have 3 1PP servers which are hardly ever medium. I'm sure Mr. AllMighty will appear soon and elaborate us all on the matter, trust me.

Ah, now, I suppose I should have included the Xbox and PS4 versions into this mix. Apologies for being so "master-race" about it!

I'm guessing if Bohemia can make money from the consoles perhaps there is still a motivation to continue to support the title.

[nikoor 180]

10 minutes ago, rickyriot said:

Ah, now, I suppose I should have included the Xbox and PS4 versions into this mix. Apologies for being so "master-race" about it!

I'm guessing if Bohemia can make money from the consoles perhaps there is still a motivation to continue to support the title.

I'm optimistic, for now. The truth is it's never been this quiet on console. We are getting the biggest update yet in this month (pc 1.01) which I'm hoping brings more life to it. 

[MorphineJunkie 13]

Maybe if you sorted by player count instead of ping you would get a more honest image of how many players there are. Empty servers usually have great ping 😉

https://imgur.com/a/3afG6QE

[rickyriot 1009]

2 minutes ago, MorphineJunkie said:

Maybe if you sorted by player count instead of ping you would get a more honest image of how many players there are. Empty servers usually have great ping 😉

 

It's a fair point to raise.

I'd counter that my first post is subjective. Those are the servers I see and the pings I get. I don't mind playing on foreign servers, it just needs to be a decent ping to do so.

The second post with the link to the Steam stats is probably a fairer judge of player-base. As far as I am aware those are global, but I could be wrong.

[Guy Smiley 534]

Oh the sky is falling.  Woe is DayZ.  It doesn't help that everyone and his dog can run a server now.  Playerbase being segregated over a bazillion servers.  

[MorphineJunkie 13]

I agree the steam stats look a little bleak. The game is no PUBG for sure, but I would say that its getting healthier compared to last year. Maybe if the devs sort out some of the game breaking, rage quitting bugs like  vehicles that fly if wheels are missing etc. it will stabilize. 

You will never see 50.000 players online on dayz anymore, that time has long passed. I do hope that dayz team manages to retain a loyal playerbase.

I had the most fun I ever had on dayz SA the last two months. Community servers with dedicated communities are key to having fun in this game imo. Also mods that fix game balance flaws that devs refuse to realize are present, like base building that is completely useless on official servers etc.

Edited March 3, 2019 by MorphineJunkie

[MaxwellHouse69420 87]

2 hours ago, nikoor said:

I'm optimistic, for now. The truth is it's never been this quiet on console. We are getting the biggest update yet in this month (pc 1.01) which I'm hoping brings more life to it. 

Pc players already have this patch and it’s nothing special . Be prepared for even less players in your region .

Truth is the devs need to haul ass to bug fix , add content (barricading , advanced soft skills , aerial vehicles) , bug fix AGAIN , and then balance all of the content they added and THEN they need to add all the extra content that wasn’t even promised until after 1.0 (shooting from vehicles , bears , birds , extra vehicles like bikes) . Not until all that has happened will the population begin to rise again - although it honestly seems like the devs dont care anymore ; as we are in such a dire situation yet we still see the same slow progression of development that we saw for years , no new content being pumped out and the fixes are coming soooo slowly it almost doesn’t matter to tune into most of the new patch notes . 

Just an overall disappointment really , I never visioned dayz being so unhealthy and poorly managed this far along , especially not in a 1.0 stage .

[rickyriot 1009]

49 minutes ago, Guy Smiley said:

Oh the sky is falling.  Woe is DayZ.  It doesn't help that everyone and his dog can run a server now.  Playerbase being segregated over a bazillion servers.  

Setting aside the overly dramatic nonsense, which nobody has suggested, your point has some validity - there are more servers so in essence that will spread out the player base. I think it's fair to assume that the weekend will be "peak users" and that lunchtime on a Sunday would in itself be one of the most active times within peak. It might very well be the case that some of these servers need consolidated a little, fewer servers but a higher user count overall.

I have a hunch that you might have interpreted my OP as being one calling the game dead online, when I was more querying at what point do we make that general call. No game really "dies" of course, that's a judgement call rather than a literal one.

49 minutes ago, MorphineJunkie said:

You will never see 50.000 players online on dayz anymore, that time has long passed. I do hope that dayz team manages to retain a loyal playerbase.

Yeah, the hype train never really set up a regular service. It's not all bad of course, looking at the overall stats: https://steamcharts.com/app/221100#All It's noticeable that the ~30k users they managed for the 1.0 release shows there is still some interest in the title. The way it trailed massively off is telling though - even if it's now almost double what it was 6 months beforehand.

Edited March 3, 2019 by rickyriot

[MorphineJunkie 13]

5 minutes ago, rickyriot said:

The way it trailed massively off is telling though - even if it's now almost double what it was 6 months beforehand.

Yeah, to be honest they really did an oopsie calling this 1.0, it was a bad marketing strategy and made it seem like cash grab. I dont know how long it takes for dayz team to implement the stuff they had earlier, like more vehicles etc. But they shouldn't have called this 1.0, seemed like a purposeful deathblow to the title.

Edited March 3, 2019 by MorphineJunkie

[rickyriot 1009]

1 minute ago, MorphineJunkie said:

Yeah, to be honest they really did an oopsie to call this 1.0, it was a bad marketing strategy and made it seem like cash grab.

Tell you what though, if you want doom and gloom, I've often held up Miscreated as a game that if it just made some serious jumps forward it could match much of what most of us want from DayZ. Within the last 6 months or so they've improved quite a lot, added dynamic weather including a rather nifty snow effect and updated the UI yet have a look at the stats compared to DayZ...

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/221100,299740#All

DayZ in green, Miscreated in blue.

[Guy Smiley 534]

The biggest issue, and this is coming from a whiteknight fanboy, is this hilarious release they call 1.0.  I'm sorry but that was the dumbest decision that BI could have made and then charging people $59.99 for this half-baked game.  Sadly, we, the consumers, are to blame for allowing companies to release half-baked products into the gaming world and still throw money at them.  This has got to stop.  Stupid people are the reason why we get watered down games with nothing but cosmetic paywalls

[rickyriot 1009]

3 minutes ago, Guy Smiley said:

The biggest issue, and this is coming from a whiteknight fanboy, is this hilarious release they call 1.0.

I'd say most agree with you on the exact way beta/1.0 has been framed.

[eno 1049]

40 minutes ago, rickyriot said:

I'd say most agree with you on the exact way beta/1.0 has been framed.

Yup.

[pilgrim* 3514]

5 hours ago, rickyriot said:

Edited to add one other thought. Considering the number of players will generally dictate the sales of the game, and sales of the game go towards paying Bohemia staff just how long is it financially viable to support/develop the game? Aside from the finances the vast majority of people in the forum bought the game as EA, now we have 1.0 that's effectively the "promise" complete. There is now no longer an "ethical" reason to continue supporting the game.

I think Xbox is the intended principal answer to that problem.
Also - in fairness, BI have a history of supporting games completely free of charge and virtually ad infinitum, sales or not ..
Of course - in order to continue with that 'established' tradition, they must always have sufficient revenue coming in to pay their staff.. which predicates new sales/new games/new markets

#note# Back in BI history, they have ONCE previously aimed to move into the Console market, but that experience went (very?) badly, leaving them in financial difficulty.
[disclaimer] This is purely my understanding, and my reading  -  they were 100% a PC company and got into deeper water than they could handle.  Now times & tech have changed and it seems they are again moving "seriously" into consoles ? (while retaining / in parallel with, the PC market)  .. let's see ..

also BI is a private company.. even one retirement or 'change of life-plan'  COULD alter (some, many, or various) things ..radically..

[ honestly = bottom line is I like BI, but my person opinion isn't bringing them any pieces of eight ]

[OrLoK 16185]

A game is only "dead" when official support stops and server are removed.

Like the game or not, DAYZ is here for a good while to come. As pointed out BI have good from historically for supporting their games for an extended time.

DAYZ is massive for BI even if the virality has now ceased. They're not going to cease support any time soon barring an act of god etc.

[rickyriot 1009]

14 hours ago, OrLoK said:

Like the game or not, DAYZ is here for a good while to come.

I don't think there is anyone here who doesn't like DayZ, any disparaging comments tend to be borne from frustration than dislike, but the second part of your comment is obviously good news.

I genuinely think there is an audience for the game, but it needs to match what people want (and what is offered by other games).

14 hours ago, OrLoK said:

DAYZ is massive for BI even if the virality has now ceased. They're not going to cease support any time soon barring an act of god etc.

Ultimately developers don't work for free and I say that as a dev (albeit in a different sector), as adults we have to accept the financial realities of things and if the product is not selling then there is no income. Merchandise can help with that, and DayZ has branding that has remained strong despite the age of the title, but it can't cover over the cracks.

To me, fairly empty servers suggests that people are not buying the game because they are not playing the game. You might have had a bump in December due to 1.0 but even that across the whole year and I can't imagine it's enough to sustain the title. Consoles are a different revenue stream and I have to say I have no insight into the numbers on those platforms.

Out of interest, and in regard to the "virality" comment, do you feel that the way 1.0 was framed was perhaps not ideal? You look at the stats and a lot of people "came back" to test it but those have dropped off somewhat and I feel (although only conjecture) it's the divide between expectation and delivery that has seen that drop.

[aux7 234]

I dont know the economics of running a server for BI, other than supporting a game sold by them, suggesting its in their interests to maintain servers.. to encourage buyers

In my opinion I dont think its just a case of people not buying the game, as they must have sold so many licenses in the past. Its a case of people retrying the game they remembered enjoying, finding they still enjoyed it, but the faults still remained the same, and so use tails off.

A server I was on from multiplayer which is an official server  has gone from regularly hitting max (60) between 4pm and 12pm CET, to barely getting above 20 in the last week. As I said before, if numbers dont pick up, I would imagine a reduction in server numbers will occur at some point.

Looking at history the last big jump was for the free weekend and the big 1.0 release, so for the numbers to go up BI would have to do something in the same order.

Or another discount, Steam was offering a 10% discount a while back, I dont know if they still do.

The village (my current) showed a dip after apex but seems to have recovered, so you might be able to say private servers are healthier. (On a survey of one its not statistical, but I hope its going to be a keeper. Another server I was on has shut down so I lost my character) But I dont know how the economics of private servers without subscription works either .. .

Edited March 4, 2019 by aux7

[hemmo 55]

18 hours ago, eno said:

Yup.

Prob internal stakeholder pressure. No doubt about that.

From my experiance, when dayz is almost buggless, thats the moment you will see the playerbase increase.

However, it's core is verryy good and the potential is massive. Dayz has all the potential to be a wordlclass #1. However.. bugs...

 

Tbh, dsyz is aloooot better than before and its actualy quit fun. The bslace between zeds, food req, and danger is quet nice.

Simply just play another game and come back in 6 months 🙂

 

[nikoor 180]

20 hours ago, MaxwellHouse69420 said:

Pc players already have this patch and it’s nothing special . Be prepared for even less players in your region .

Truth is the devs need to haul ass to bug fix , add content (barricading , advanced soft skills , aerial vehicles) , bug fix AGAIN , and then balance all of the content they added and THEN they need to add all the extra content that wasn’t even promised until after 1.0 (shooting from vehicles , bears , birds , extra vehicles like bikes) . Not until all that has happened will the population begin to rise again - although it honestly seems like the devs dont care anymore ; as we are in such a dire situation yet we still see the same slow progression of development that we saw for years , no new content being pumped out and the fixes are coming soooo slowly it almost doesn’t matter to tune into most of the new patch notes . 

Just an overall disappointment really , I never visioned dayz being so unhealthy and poorly managed this far along , especially not in a 1.0 stage .

I and I assume many others won't care about the content to be honest. The main issue right now on Xbox is the performance. Buildings not rendering and reappearing in front of you, major framerate drops in big cities and around other players (<10fps). It's been like this for 3 months now. That on it's own is enough a problem to not to play the game. 

[pilgrim* 3514]

3 hours ago, rickyriot said:

do you feel that the way 1.0 was framed was perhaps not ideal?

you have some knowledge of software (I seem to remember?)

I think the DayZ game structure (totally deigned bottom-up for PC) had been taken a step backwards, deliberately,  to find a core of common ground with Xbox & controllers - THEN start the process outwards again (coming back up to the full game) - keeping the reworked additions operable on both platforms. When the development game model on BI servers is fully cross platform all the way up, then it can be forked at the "output" into PC or Console.

I think this is the plan, and explains why DayZ on PC seemed to jump back from around .6xx to  .. er .. a 'more primitive' version ?

When THAT runs cleanly on PC and Console, THEN all the real & expected bells and whistles can be added

So state of play (IMO) at present is :

1) A single LARGE core game that fits both PC & console
2) Dealing with the common development model at the  final stage of the utput fork to PC & Console - which definitely [obviously]  includes the game control parameters (some problems are being worked on there)
3) Some bugs in the common core game itself - that express differently on PC or on console (or sometimes on only one of the two). These have to be dealt with in the core, OR moved to the output stage (BI needs to fork the game as LATE as possible, so that something in the core does not produce one effect [or bug] on console and a different effect [or bug] on PC). dealing with this will let them develop the entire core game itself as one project, indifferent to what platform it goes out to 

Ive noticed (slight) references that indicate IMO technical moving around and arrangements of compatibility and methodology, development software standardization,  inside BI-DayZ development. We don't see any of that from outside - except as "delay".. but it is essential work if my understanding of their focus of effort is correct, as above.

The only truly unfortunate thing was that 1.0 boasted "base building" but coincided with the unexpected persistence bug. If that hadn't popped up 1.0 could have passed without great comment, and would have been a better option than putting it off for smaller game glitches or (invisible) internal reasons...
And a bug like the persistence problem (really a kind of disaster combo jumping out from base-building and 1.0 being pushed up front together) - that would DEF have the devs tearing their hair out and injecting caffeine into their jugulars :[  (right, devs? )

- well, hell - WORSE things have happened to Microsoft (in FACT nearly EVERY TIME they release anything) , and Microsoft are MEGA-BIG ..AND.. EXPENSIVE. 

So that was a pisser but I guess it can be forgiven?   New players would take that badly though.
Evil exists - Shit happens.  oops, Real Bummer!

I think the BI-DayZ devs have the strength, stamina (and speed) and resources to deal with that unpredictably unfortunate release. Let's watch what happens.

I'm still playing. < But I never had much interest in perma-base-building anyway > I guess me becoming an antisocial backwoods terrorist (freedom fighter) destroying the clustered camp-followers, will just have to wait until it is worthwhile.

*