Isn't alpha the time for big changes?

[entux 0]

so i've been playing 1.7.1.5 for a while with some pals and had fun until we reached a point where zeds were basically no threat any more. all that's left to do now, is to shoot other players in the face. while i like the notion of being able to do full on pvp, i'm rather disullusioned with the actual premise of the mod itself. 1.7.2 was just cosmetic imho. i'm actually quite irritated that there aren't any big changes going on to make the mod live up to it's potential. isn't this mod all about survival against zombies? isn't the pvp just a side element to be used only because there's no other way out of a dire situation? i think of dayz as a coop game rather than free for all pvp.

in my idea 3 major things would need to be implemented to reach some kind of tangible goal in this respect. i don't know anything about how hard it is to implement those and i'm well aware that there might be quite some obstacles due to how amra 2 is built:

1. server hopping, disconnecting to avoid death or get out of a dire situation. i know there's a massive thread about that,

2. zeds need to pose a real threat and need to be drawn to players. kind of like a gravitational pull. the more players, the more zeds. currently you can't die easily after you found some basic gear and hide in the woods,

3. time of day. it needs to be locked and set by the master server. for that to be fair, there needs to be a faster day/night cycle. at least 4 times faster. i get that, this is a design decision, but i think it doesn't work out as the devs planned, or does it?

these three points are quite a major undertaking and i guess at least 1. and 2. are actively worked on to some extend, but i've no idea in what general direction this mod is headed. i can only say, that i'd rather have dayz as a very difficult and fun coop experience with pvp elements, which are passively discuraged by how HARD it should be NOT to working together, than the current pvp kill fest. personally i have no interest in that kind of game and there's already billions of them to choose from. especially arma 2 comes to mind. i think you should be heavily penalized if you want to be a bandit, not encouraged.

Having said that I was wondering, why are there only small incremental steps in the patches? i thought the fine tuning is something for late beta. is it, that those things are hard to implement with the current engine or are my expectaions wrong to begin with?

Edited July 13, 2012 by eNTi

[BoomBoom (DayZ) 4]

It's going to be in "Alpha" for a looong time. It gives an excuse to work slow and make bad patches.

Limitation this, limitation that. Stop working on this one then and get going on the standalone. Revert Day-Z to patch 1.7.1.5 where for the most part things were good. Tweak the Zeds after and leave it at that by releasing 1.7.1.6. Then stop messing with things other than easy stuff like adding weapons.

Edited July 13, 2012 by BoomBoom

[Justice357 12]

I'd like the locked day and night thing and speeding it up. It's cool the way it is now and all but I think most people just hop servers at night unless they have NV goggles and want to try hunting people.

[minionman 2]

Hold up, its not for excuses! Rocket is trying to get DayZ done, dont forget DayZ is techincally free unless you are retarded and buy ArmA only for DayZ, but just remember that Rocket is not recieving money from all the downloads so dont say to make work slow and to make bad patches.

[jason_h44@hotmail.com 313]

Hold up, its not for excuses! Rocket is trying to get DayZ done, dont forget DayZ is techincally free unless you are retarded and buy ArmA only for DayZ, but just remember that Rocket is not recieving money from all the downloads so dont say to make work slow and to make bad patches.

So true, There not getting a penny for all there work (yet) ;) so try not to say anything bad about the devs, this all takes time!

They have real jobs/lives and are doing this in there free time, hence taking longer for patches/fixes.

it will be the same for awhile when/if (which i hope it does:) dayz goes standalone, albeit alot smoother from more experience with the engine etc...

And i will be one of the first to pay rocket and team for there hard work!

Keep it up guys

[Theweirdone 29]

Lol people comparing a dude that doesn't get money to companies that have shittons of funding.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Theweirdone

[VeNoM56k 158]

Hold up, its not for excuses! Rocket is trying to get DayZ done, dont forget DayZ is techincally free unless you are retarded and buy ArmA only for DayZ, but just remember that Rocket is not recieving money from all the downloads so dont say to make work slow and to make bad patches.

I dont think it is retarded buying ArmA only for DayZ. I did and i do not regret it one bit, its an experience i havent gotten from a game ever. If anything it shows how good DayZ is and will motivate Rocket and crew to continue working on the game knowing people are interested. Just look at the steam top seller list, even with the summer sale going on its still number 2.

[Aeoneth 163]

Yes an Alpha would be the best time to make major changes. But that is really at rockets discretion, It's like that one signature on here (can't remember whose it is)

It's rockets game, as such he is allowed to do whatever he wants with it. We are merely along for the ride, but he is the driver. And you never annoy the driver.

[orb917@hotmail.com 117]

isn't this mod all about survival against zombies? isn't the pvp just a side element to be used only because there's no other way out of a dire situation? i think of dayz as a coop game rather than free for all pvp.

i think you may have that reversed from the initial intentions. could change though, who knows.

relevant quote:

greatest threat comes from the breakdown of society and from other people, not zombies:

http://dayzmod.com/f...__80#entry67314

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Lol people comparing a dude that doesn't get money to companies that have shittons of funding.

Yes. As we all know companies are well known for giving away money without a pre-existing contractual obligation to do so.

That's why I always hang out around Citigroup and Goldman Sachs HQ. They come out on the sidewalk every couple hours and toss me $100's.

You ridiculous goober.

[Electrolyte 4]

Usually true Alpha is a dangerous stage to be making big changes, at least in terms of adding new content. If anything it should be about making the hard but necessary changes that often create the most headaches so that when beta rolls around the bug fixing, balance, and feature tweaks (if there are to be any) have a meaningful impact to the quality of the mod/game. DayZ being a mod gives the developer certain liberties in calling it Alpha/Beta/etc. as he/she pleases, and there's really no reason not to exercise them. As far as I can tell, DayZ is still in proof of concept phase.

The frustrating part for many I think is that Rocket has stated that his focus is on the mechanics, but the exploits run so deep they have made intended mechanics of the mod indiscernible to the point of inducing apathy. People don't care if DayZ is supposed to be about survival or DM, they just continue to run around killing everything or griefing to get their money's worth out of the Arma purchase before moving on. Rocket's hope was that the community would rally together to test the mod to its furthest extents, which has gone well for the most part, but the unprecedented and I'm sure overwhelming popularity of DayZ combined with the assumed limited dev support of an Eastern Euro studio known for low budget military sims has put the brakes on quick iteration.

[sixbarns 217]

The hardest thing about going solo is getting morphine. Once you have a few of those you can pretty much do what you want, with a few exceptions, and live for days and days in dayz. The exceptions, if you want to camp around Cherno and Elektro like a moron or if you want to hunt other players. If you enjoy exploring, surviving, finding stuff, or killing zombies then gtf away from the coast. It's that simple. There is nothing in Cherno and Elektro that you can't find elsewhere. Only the lazy, the stupid, and the bandits go there.

Again, leave the coast if you don't want to get killed for a bandage.

Edit: I'm all for big changes. It just seems like a lot of the community (on the forum at least) want the bugs fixed first. Big changes require a lot of work as well and any change is going to cause a shitstorm on the forums. Look at all the people crying about how hard the easier zombies are.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Super67_

[Electrolyte 4]

The hardest thing about going solo is getting morphine. Once you have a few of those you can pretty much do what you want, with a few exceptions, and live for days and days in dayz. The exceptions, if you want to camp around Cherno and Elektro like a moron or if you want to hunt other players. If you enjoy exploring, surviving, finding stuff, or killing zombies then gtf away from the coast. It's that simple. There is nothing in Cherno and Elektro that you can't find elsewhere. Only the lazy, the stupid, and the bandits go there.

Again, leave the coast if you don't want to get killed for a bandage.

Edit: I'm all for big changes. It just seems like a lot of the community (on the forum at least) want the bugs fixed first. Big changes require a lot of work as well and any change is going to cause a shitstorm on the forums. Look at all the people crying about how hard the easier zombies are.

I agree with most of your points with the exception of your comments about visiting Cherno/Elektro. Don't get me wrong, going solo into those cities is generally a death sentence if you don't know what you are doing. I often go as a bandit killer though, so many tears...

[HalloweeNGT 23]

It's going to be in "Alpha" for a looong time. It gives an excuse to work slow and make bad patches.

Limitation this, limitation that. Stop working on this one then and get going on the standalone. Revert Day-Z to patch 1.7.1.5 where for the most part things were good. Tweak the Zeds after and leave it at that by releasing 1.7.1.6. Then stop messing with things other than easy stuff like adding weapons.

Sure, they want to make bad patches on purpose to just make you have a baddest gameplay experience.

Surex2, things were so good at 1.7.1.5, I was loving to just log in and see that I was on a forest 100km far from the civilization and condemned to die.

They wont ever go standalone, they are barely fixing simple bugs, guess if they have to do theyr own game starting up from 0%

Edited July 13, 2012 by HalloweeNGT

[BoomBoom (DayZ) 4]

Hold up, its not for excuses! Rocket is trying to get DayZ done, dont forget DayZ is techincally free unless you are retarded and buy ArmA only for DayZ, but just remember that Rocket is not recieving money from all the downloads so dont say to make work slow and to make bad patches.

Looks like 90% of the players are retarded.

[maxxenbraxxen 67]

tl:dr entire thread except 1st post, dont care if someone mentioned this allready

about point 3

Day night cycle can not be changed easly, and without some "dangerous programming" so that wont happend

Also, current cycle is fine

[entux 0]

i fail to understand why 75% of replies are actually just the same circle jerk over and over, where on is complaining about rocket and someone else jumps to his defense. i did not intend this thread as judgment on rockets motives, but rather to undestand them better and to give my feetback as to what would this game make it great and live up to its premise. i thought the main focus of this mod should be survivial against overwhelming odds of zeds. once you figure out the basics of the game, it's just another frag fest. i think this would be remedied by making the game hard to solo. even for seasoned players. at its current stage, the mod doesn't offer a whole lot of challenge unless you are stupid or seriously bored. of course this is because of it's alpha status... at least i tend to say that to myself. looking at another zombie survival game - minecraft - the game's motivation didn't change after its release. they added tons of content, still, it's far from being a challenge. atm dayz' only challenge are other players and there's simply too many games that do that better, especially since dayz is not balanced in any respect. it's just griefers all over the place and that's hardly a good alpha/beta testing ground unless rocket wants to build the game around the elment of griefing. i think it's clear that this is not the case.

regarding my initial point 3: arma 2 is clearly getting it's datetime from the system. adding a multiplier to that number is something i could probably HACK into the existing code. this is not difficult at all... for the arma devs. adding a "int_timemultiplier" setting should be something very easy unless you really really fucked up your core code. this SHOULD be as easy as changing one line of code, if it was done right from the start... which of course i can't say.

Edited July 14, 2012 by eNTi

[sixbarns 217]

I agree with most of your points with the exception of your comments about visiting Cherno/Elektro. Don't get me wrong, going solo into those cities is generally a death sentence if you don't know what you are doing. I often go as a bandit killer though, so many tears...

That depends on the skill level. Definitely don't go if you're new to the game and haven't seen anything else. Running down the streets of Cherno or Elektro without a weapon or clue is not going to be fun. If you have some skill and you've learned the ropes, have at it. Or more simply, if you haven't figured out crawling down the middle of the street is a bad idea, don't go to Cherno or Elektro. It's the new guys I'm worried about. It must be extremely frustrating to repeatedly accidentally end up in these bandit dens. The real game is outside these cities.

[Blindingsun 233]

I dont think it is retarded buying ArmA only for DayZ. I did and i do not regret it one bit, its an experience i havent gotten from a game ever. If anything it shows how good DayZ is and will motivate Rocket and crew to continue working on the game knowing people are interested. Just look at the steam top seller list, even with the summer sale going on its still number 2.

See that guy on your Sig pic? Misha collins? i've had him in my car. I've also got one of his Random Acts T-shirts that he gave me :P

[VeNoM56k 158]

See that guy on your Sig pic? Misha collins? i've had him in my car. I've also got one of his Random Acts T-shirts that he gave me :P

Thats cool. Misha rules. :P

[s.taylor.75@gmail.com 23]

This kind of thinking is what leads to the same old watered down games, then everybody is scratching their heads going why is there nothing exciting to play? Perfect example is Ultima Online. At launch it was so innovative, but a vocal majority got their way and basically made player killing impossible. That leads to more and more nerfs till the game is basically the same as every other one out there. The game doesn't have to be for everybody. That's ok, it'd be nice to have a developer that sticks to his guns. I think Rocket and his team are the ones to do it though. Carebears can leave now.