I really like DayZ, but...

[TheHappyPeanut 10]

I think DayZ is the first step in commercializing ARMA and has attracted a player base that otherwise wouldn’t even given the game a second thought until something ultra trendy like zombies became involved.

Granted' date=' I’m not an ARMA hipster who constantly harps against Call of Duty and consider this to be a venue for the common video gaming elitist – it isn’t. But now this game has completely lost its identity as a military simulator and has attracted a whole new breed of players who have hijacked the server list and changed the shape of ARMA forever.

I’m generalizing here, but the bulk of new players haven’t gone through the tutorials and are completely upsetting the tone of the game. Your average person now doesn’t know how to lean around corners, they struggle to get in and out of vehicles and they’ll never get to fly a Mi24 unless it’s in the editor.

Don’t get me wrong: I really, really like this mod. It’s truly intuitive and it couldn’t have been pulled off by anyone else other than a mind at BI who knows the game code inside out and can attract broader audiences based on what the “in” thing is. I’m a business person myself in real life, I work in marketing, and I understand how much commercial attention this has brought ARMA, but…

Ah, screw it. All I’m saying is, DayZ hasn’t ruined the game, but it COMPLETELY altered ARMA and now it is known as something it never should have been!

I imagine ARMA 3 will have a DayZ like feature already incorporated into the game, and it’ll be known as a survival horror, not a military simulator…

[/quote']

They allow modding communities for a reason. Did Battlefield 3 feature a super realistic mode just because of Project Reality in BF2? Did it feature a sandbox mode because of BF2 Sandbox?

[Angry Guy 1]

Yeah - my decision to withdraw myself from my own discussion is pretty much concrete at this stage,

Scratch that for a second...

They allow modding communities for a reason. Did Battlefield 3 feature a super realistic mode just because of Project Reality in BF2? Did it feature a sandbox mode because of BF2 Sandbox?

Did Project Reality generate EA substantial income and increase the playerbase by the thousands? Did Project Reality cater to a popular entertainment culture currently overhauled in video games, TV and movies?

[dallas 5195]

DayZ didn't water down neither ArmA's choppy gameplay or it's dificulty, but it allowed players to utizile the entire Chernarus in one ongoing mission, to deliver a platform allowing pretty dynamic player interactions only seen before in fantasy mmorpgs. DayZ contains Coop, PvP, singleplayer experience(paranoid lone survivor), capture the flag(bandit's UAZ/chopper), king of the airfield and DayZ was a mod that finally got popular zombie/post apocalyse world just right.

There would be grounds for consern if DayZ had been a total easymode health-regen COD immitation, but it's impossible to accuse DayZ of exactly that.

[CalUKGR 4]

I don't understand the OP's misgivings at all. The fact that DayZ has attracted huge new sales of ArmA II (still number one Top Seller on Steam as I write) is not - in any possible way - a negative thing for Bohemia Interactive or for their core ArmA brand. Far from it. The unexpected influx of both hard cash and many thousands of new 'brand-aware' DayZ players can only be seen a massively positive thing, with absolutely huge implications for the well-being of the core ArmA brand.

DayZs' popularity does not - in any imaginable way - harm ArmA's standing as an excellent military simulator. To argue otherwise is arrogant and patronising.

Going forward, I'd imagine BI are over-the-moon at the new business opportunities DayZs' unexpected success (both financially and socially) had now afforded them. They can plough the profits from this huge upsurge in ArmA II sales into both pushing the marketing and final development costs of ArmA III and, hopefully, into a more polished and accomplished version of the new DayZ 'side-brand'.

Rocket and his team deserve a medal (and pay rise), whilst BI can now start planning a new creative and financial future for their existing brands and for the wildly successful debut of DayZ.

[masacrualex 6]

Meh no, arma is arma and this is this. It's just a mod, there's other games which got mods and besides the player base, nothing is changed. People will see the mod as a mod. Obviously.

[LackofCertainty 2]

Okay first off a little pedantry: it's not the zombies we're interested in' date=' it's the post-apocalyptic survival scenario.

Secondly: the whole reason Day Z exists is to prove that what's needed in aforementioned game genre is the hardcore simulation of Arma. Your underlying point that "Day Z has changed Arma" is actually laughable ironic - it's the other way around: Arma has changed the survival genre, Arma has given Rocket an engine to prove his point: gamers like persistence, realism and realistic consequences.

[/quote']

+1 to this.

To the OP: Your concern is "since a bunch more people were drawn in by DayZ, now Arma 2 has more noobs in it. Since Arma 2 has more noobs in it, Arma 3 will have more noobs in it. Since Arma 3 will have more noobs in it, the developers will make it into CoD Arma."

That is about the most bass-ackwards logic I've ever seen. DayZ drew in a ton of numbers because it's a Hardcore zombie survival sim. Why would the developers of Arma look at a hardcore sim mod that generated a ton of buzz for them and say to themselves, "We should make our next game be an arcady shooter!"

Take that exact same logic and do the vice versa and see why it doesn't make sense. After CoD4 blew up in popularity, the developers response was -obviously- to make more CoD, not to suddenly turn the game into a hardcore sim.

A larger playerbase will always lead to more noobs (the bad noobs, not the new player newbs) because the larger your playerbase is the more you get the edges of the bellcurve. However, the idea that a product that sold well because of what it was would suddenly do a 180 in it's design is a fallacy.

I can only think of one recent example of a company doing so, which would be the red faction Guerrilla/Armageddon games. Look at how that turned out for them. Guerrilla was well regarded and sold well. Armageddon turned the game into a gears clone, and it did so poorly that it killed the franchise. (the devs have publicly said that it's poor performance means there won't be another red faction until enough time has passed for them to reboot again)

I know that your opening post started with saying that you didn't want to be an elitist, but everything else you've posted does have a pretty solid elitist bent.

[qbert 4]

I was on some random insurgency ACE server a few nights back, it had 30 players at one point, working cooperatively, using comms like chat to organize strikes on fallujah, and it was just an all around positive experience. I think that DayZ may have this audience, and may even make more money for BI then Arma itself did, but at the end of the day, Arma is a niche title, and always will be.

If I could take a guess, knowing how the developers at BI have been reacting to questions about the future of the franchise, I think the Arma series will continue being Mil-Sim. We may see a DayZ game released, using the new engines tech perhaps, but that's WAYYY down the road. This is still an Alpha version of a mod, not a complete mod.

Also Arma 3 is far enough into developement now that we can probably assume the game has taken shape.

[Steve McAwesome 6]

I bought arma for dayZ but im now completely addicted to arma proper, ACE mod is installed and my DayZ group are constantly creating our own ridiculous missions and testing them out every night in addition to our dayZ sessions. There is no way DayZ has had any kind of negative effect on the arma community, other than offering servers that aren't locked or result in being kicked by eltists as soon as you join.