Lots of Potential, but ...

[green_machine 179]

Lol at the use of "Actual Zombies", next you will tell us how actual unicorns run

DayZ. What does the "Z" stand for?

(I've always wondered this actually, would be nice to get an official response)

[Mitchellkillsallyall 0]

i think it stands for day zero... since its a new beginning" or whatever lol

just guessing

[DiabloSP 0]

we dont need realism, we need authenticity. more realism doesn't neccesserily mean better. dayz/arma is not considered to be a game anyways.

You've misunderstood my point. I don't want realism in a zombie mod. I just want to get rid of people that don't value their ingame-lives, that play the game using their ass rather than their brains. If nothing is done in this regard, this is gonna end up with a new name: Deathmatch with Zombies.

[peetgamer 10]

Starting gun NO.

Perma aggro stupid it was in version 1.7.1.5 alot better.

A genral chat make game more alive i would not be agains it now you have no communication with anybody thats boring and no fun after while.

Griefing is part of the game it has always being this way in free for all full loot games, but becouse lack of communication and only few players group forming will always to be minimum specially these days with most soloing.

Swimming should be brought back that gave more REALISM to the game and also fun losing zombies now suddenly the islands infront of mainland are unreachable.

Droprate of guns is way to low sometimes i see inland in farm building six hatchets or only empty cans REDICULOUS.

Last patch 1.7.2 make the game worse not better.

My 2 cents on matter.

[snig08 1]

agreed.

[lethalwalou 0]

I have to say again about the things that are really broken. Our group was looting Stary and we had already killed one guy there but then a ghillie suited sniper started to spawn in the game, shoot and disconnect immediatelly. Then he changed location and did the same thing again. Luckily he killed only one of us and we had to disconnect too, but what he did there, can be compared to cheating.

I read someone's post about not killing the new comers so they won't immediatelly hate the game. So the same night I spawned at the coast and came across a player. He didn't kill me athough I had no weapon, and I used voip to communicate with him. Eventually he gave me some food and drinks and I decided not to kill him because he said it was his first time playing. He was a nice guy trying to learn to play. There's still friendlies in the game, so don't say all of us veterans hate the noobs.

Ps. I also game him a tip, not to trust anyone and that I could've had killed him if I wanted. There's also that kind of players too. I thought he needed to know that.

Edited July 12, 2012 by lethalwalou

[GhilleGhost 13]

If anything reduce the spawn percentage of guns. In my opinion a gun should be a last resort weapon, and ammo should be MUCH more rare.

It should be like "OMG I JUST HEARD A GUN" of course in order for this to happen melee weapons need to be implemented properly and

there needs to be more of them to.

[RayPugh 146]

come back when you have 10x your current game time. you'll see... The mod was not designed to be fun and rocket mentions the fact in multiple interviews. He has never given the implementation 'fun' a second thought.

Behaviour is not moderated. If you want to go round in the bushes shouting obcenities at passers by then your welcome to do so, want to go hack a noobs leg with a crowbar and leave him for the infected then you can do that also.

chat channels are better off gone, its much more immersive not having 'any friendlies in cherno?' splashed across your screen every 5 mins or someone with caps lock on in a rage because there lack of skill just got them shot. if you want to chat with somone find a group out of game and hook with them on comms, you get much less dead'er that way...

[Miss_Nuts 9]

1) Perma-aggro. Has its place in some respects, but takes away from a lot of the fun. There should be a certain distance the zombies stop aggro, especially because they run like 28 days later rather than actual zombies. You don't even start with a knife or any sort of a weapon, so your entire goal is to find one before you can really even "play."

I actually find that losing zombles is much better now that LOS has been implented. You should have tried playing before that update when a zombie would chase you across the entire map without letting up...now THAT was just annoying, not challenging. Which is why LOS was introduced.

Now that LOS is in place, it's all about learning your surroundings, learning how to lose them quickly and without getting killed by them or other players in the process.

Sorry to say it, but 9 hours is not really enough time to put into this game before anyone can comment on changing it. You've probably only travelled 10-15% of the map, haven't really learned much in the way of the world, how to utilize your surroundings and LOS to your advantage etc. Have you played a mix of day/night servers to find out the differences? Have an accurate mental map of your favourite city for you to use to your advantage? Tested zomble LOS on both to see how you can best avoid detection within their visual/hearing parametres?

In one play of 9 hours, I hadn't even found a hatchet. Severe lack of coke (couldn't find any anywhere, and didn't want to risk aggro'ing zombles with my Lee Enfield to try and scavange one) and I ended up dying of thirst. Thirst lol! Hey, I was new and lacked lady balls at the time XD.

But on another play through, I'd managed to aquire a M1911, AK74, morphine, hatchet, matches, knife etc - everything I needed to survive - within an hour.

Same with direct communication with players - some servers you don't talk/other's dont talk to you at all. On others, teaming in up with random strangers has been a fantastic experience.

Same with Pk'ing. I've been murdered; I've murdered. Depends on the situation which will ALWAYS be different, each and every time you play. Same as looting. What weapons you find. Whether you're inundated with coke or can't find a single drop before you lose consciousness to thirst. I could go on and on, but I wont!

TL;DR - give the game multiple plays, deaths, and days spent alive, not just 9 hours.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Miss_Nuts

[morunas 0]

I definitely think starting with nearly nothing (no weapon, no food, no drink) is purely AWESOME. You know the drill is...

Many of the new players will not be "as stealthy as they need to" by nature. Cause they have been playing CS or some FPS alike. Starting with NO weapons

is a heads'up for "if a zombie or player see you you are as good as dead". That by nature will shorten the learning curve. You will learn by need rather then

by dieing and then thinking "should have been more careful/thoughtful..."

As others said you can avoid the zombies. If you have no weapon your instinct will be RUNNNN and you might not know that entering a building will slow them down

cause they cant mumble and fumble around quickly like they do on open fields but you will get it eventually. If you have a weapon you will learn that one shot in the middle

of nowhere (or inside of a building if you are good on ammo) is way smarter then shooting a zombie in the middle of a city.

I think the drop rates are awesome. If it was more common it could easily turn into a deathmatch because why would I care about surviving if by "respawning" I get lots of

goodies real quick? No. The point is you must TREASURE your loot with your life! You have to survive and be smart and be stealthy! And think on reality... would you really

expect to find weapons and ammo around the corner in every city? Dream on...

RP wise, as some said earlier, everyone can be whatever they want to be. I for instance only team up with "real friends" cause I wont (and wouldn't) trust a single soul in the game...

at least how it is now. So there I can agree with one thing which is that there should be a FEW (not many) more features that require teamplay for better results. Ideas (and not thinking

about engine limitations) could be (other then blood bags and epipens):

- be able to lift a player into a roof and alike pull a player into a roof where you stand (activity that otherwise would not be possible) this would allow for example taking shelter in places otherwise unreachable. Then the same thing from coming down from it ^^

- be able to carry a player on your back (that would be cool xD) when a friend of mine is crawling and we need to get out of some hotspot until he can take some morphine or I can go scavange for him then it would be

good if I, fully capable, could speed up the process of leaving. (I know this one would probably be impossible engine wise)

There could be more ideas... probably...

Finally regarding how zombies run I just find it weird that they zig-zag... they should run fast yes cause that is much more fun. The typical slow walking zombies are boring and dont make you go stressed. Now why the hell they zig-zag... what is this zombies with army training?

I would however think that inside buildings they should move a bit faster. I agree and like and understand the fact they go slower because their typical "fumble around" movement is held back in a building which gives a strategic advantage. But I think they go too slow. I easily kill them if I have enough ammo. Should be so that I need to stress out how fast I kill them. A weapon with slower firing rate would then be less eficient... but perhaps its ammo more common. Etc. I mean just 10-20% faster could improve the experience there BUT as a trade off make them run forward on open fields... zombies running sidewise is simply put weird and doesnt really make sense. They want flesh... they go for it. That's it.

[RayPugh 146]

For once in everybodies life, we have the chance to say..... This is not a game.

Only on a second read through did I notice this little gem!

well said sir, so many 'games' I have considered to be much more than 'just a game.' None more so than DayZ

[Recidivist (DayZ) 2]

I've now played for about 9 hours over the last two days. Definitely a steep learning curve.

I see a lot of potential in this mod/game, and I do like it; I played for 9 hours after all. However, having come from years of gaming with extremely difficult games, including MUDs like one called Carrion Fields, where people will murder you and take your hard earned equipment, I think I can offer some suggestions without in any way advocating making the game "easy" or like so many of the ridiculously stupid and boring FPS's on the market.

1) Perma-aggro. Has its place in some respects, but takes away from a lot of the fun. There should be a certain distance the zombies stop aggro, especially because they run like 28 days later rather than actual zombies. You don't even start with a knife or any sort of a weapon, so your entire goal is to find one before you can really even "play." Arguing that it's a survival simulator is a valid position, but doesn't have anything to do with fun for 90% of the population. One can spend a long time even finding a weapon, and while that's addictive in a way, it is definitely not fun.

After spawning I rarely go 30 minutes without a gun. If you break LOS the zombies will de-aggro. Start sneaking, stop sprinting.

2) Increase percentage rates on weapon drops, and bring back starting with a weapon. See above.

Weapons are already extremely common. In just 10 hours, 1 life and on my own I gathered:

2x M1911

1x Revolver

3x Makarov

2x G17

1x M4A1 CCO

1x FN-FAL NV

4x AKM

1x AKS-74

1x AKS-74 Kobra

2x Remington

2x M16M203 (+ 4 HE nades, 2 smokes, 2 flares)

1x Winchester

2x Lee Enfield

1x M24

2x M1014

2x Frag grenades

With heaps of ammo. This isn't anything special, it can be done.

The starting weapons caused a bloodbath on the coast. Fresh players would just shoot each other, take their ammo and supplies and leave. No gun means the newly-spawned occasionally band together to find things. It also stops some of the coast-camping by inlanders to get easy supplies.

3) Little communication on coms. I realize to RP we're all survivors, and we wouldn't even have access to coms, so it makes sense to be sneaking about, trying to scavenge food and water and first aid and weapons without any hope of survival or contact, but at some point, lack of any furthering of the goal of finding teammates, adds to an already semi-tedious experience for anyone not in a clan, hence the multiple topics all over the place about "Help, can I join a clan."

There is "Side" chat on some servers. Personally, I choose ones with it disabled. It's terrible and breaks all immersion. It's either "anyone in cherno?", "friendly?" or Russian spam.

4) This is not a troll point - I realize a lot of the players may be teenagers, and possibly not totally accepted in normal society due to morbid obesity. Fine. Unlikely, otherwise, that after 9 hours, the first player I even saw literally leapt from the bushes, hit me in just the right way to break my legs, and then ran off leaving me to be eaten. I have nothing on me whatsoever, nothing to scavenge. The only RP for that is that his mind snapped, which would make sense; but someone who is so calculating as to not even waste ammo is obviously a vet and not having a psychotic break. I don't care about the griefing - the MUD had plenty of that. What worries me about that sort of behavior is that this mod, which has massive potential, will go the way of difficult, nail-biting MUDs like CF...a handful of vets who hate noobs, grief them, and drive them away. That just leads to the death of the game (except after 10 years, about 20 people will play at any one time, instead of hundreds or thousands.) It makes sense that survivors would, for the most part, attempt to band together. Obviously exceptions would definitely exist, and axe wielding, blubberous 16 year olds are no exception.

It happens. Just wait till you get decent gear and run into leavers and server hoppers. The amount of times I've manaed to out-wit some bumbandit who failed an ambush just for them to disconnect as I put a round into them. They just join another server, heal, move behind your location, rejoin and shoot you in the back. So fun. I don't care about PVPers who actually accept their death and die honourably. Reaper1Actual, Word, johm and AntiMatter - fuck you, server hopping, leaving pricks.

5) Perma aggro. Again. Should be reserved for select creatures and areas, if at all. How many times does one really want to just run for the ocean or docks?

Break LOS. Again.

Edited July 12, 2012 by Recidivist

[Ssgt_Perez 35]

I had aggroed many, many zombies the other day near a church. I had no weapon, I made two loops running around the church then crouch walked. All the zombies forgot I even existed.

[wok 25]

Losing zeds aggro may not seem easy or even possible at the beggining, but there are several ways to do it.

I think people forget this project is still in Alpha, there will be probably tons of stuff that will be changed/added/removed on the prod version, so submit your suggestions to the developers.