World too big for own good?

[DeadManDan 23]

I do wish zombies would spawn outa the ground and eat people who travel off the edge of the map but that's more of a boundary topic and not density. Or maybe a tornado if they're in a vehicle but meh.

I hear the sniper scopes never get lowered in cherno if you're looking for others to set their sights on you.

[sixbarns 217]

A map about 25-30% bigger would feel about right.

[RazakelApollyon 1]

I think the world is too small actually. I feel like everything is about a half hour hike away which isnt bad. Making a world about the size of say, the capital wasteland from Fallout would be amazing.

[mail@borisk.biz 28]

I think the map is way to big for the ammount of players that are playing. Even with servers with 100s of players the only active place is the airfield and the two big towns.

I think it could be better with a denser map.

i think the world can be bigger than now and you can go back and play call of duty

[deepfried 95]

I think the map is way to big for the ammount of players that are playing. Even with servers with 100s of players the only active place is the airfield and the two big towns.

I think it could be better with a denser map.

No, if anything it need to be much bigger, I think to support the game beyond a few weeks play it needs to be at least 4x the size.

You forget that when you've been everywhere, have or have had camps in each area of the map, and have a clan with several vehicles... the map suddenly seems very small indeed.

[slyder73 94]

Both sides are correct here. It really depends on what type of game you want to play. Personally I love encountering people often.

You should have smaller servers and larger servers.

how awesome would it be to have 50 people in a small area like cherno or electro. getting food without getting shot is a real challenge.

Some people like it some people don't

This is the point. BOTH gameplay styles are available. THose who like to be in smaller areas with more players to encounter can go to the major towns. THose who want to survive and build up more slowly to a self suficient position can avoid the major towns and airfields. The "map" isn't just a map like other games have, the so called map is a massive piece of territory several hundred square km. Whatever game style you like, play it.

No need to exclude a style that you don't use.

[Blindingsun 233]

map needs to be 4 times bigger =D

[Bishdark 4]

I think the map is way to big for the ammount of players that are playing. Even with servers with 100s of players the only active place is the airfield and the two big towns.

I think it could be better with a denser map.

Not at all, this isnt a map changing fps, this is an open world fps that borders on mmo. This isnt about combat with players, or with zeds, its about survival. To do that you need equipment, to do that you must travel to far and not so exotic places to find such things. Sometimes you will enter a few apartments and you have all you need to hunt and cook game, othertimes, such as my current game, you will have an m4a3 cco, 20 clips, food, drink, a few bandages, but no means to start a fire or meds (friend has some though).

You see, I wont say go back to cod, as bf3 is better anyway, but if you want combat, stick to the cities, go off, get a weapon, enter Cherno and kill players in the bean wars, many do it, which is why when I spawn, I dont go near those areas.

Oh, back to the point of the thread. So the map size, in essence, could even be too small. Yes with a little investigating towns it can take hours to get from A to B, but that is the point, the journey is to me more fun than the getting shot at by some dick sniper in a bush in the middle of no where. Get out there and see the world good sir. Mind the zeds though.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Bishdark

[Chimaera 68]

I think the map is way to big for the ammount of players that are playing. Even with servers with 100s of players the only active place is the airfield and the two big towns.

I would say the other way, we need a map probably 4 times the size of the current one, makes the exploration so much better.

[Kthot 1]

the perfect map for me would be an island 4 times the size of the current one, but with more diversity ( snow covered mountains, wastelands, plains and so on) diversity in towns also (small villages, capital, huge industrial harbors...) with most buildings enterable .....>> sry i jizzed a little

[ZlobaRUS54 441]

I think the map is way to big for the ammount of players that are playing. Even with servers with 100s of players the only active place is the airfield and the two big towns.

I think it could be better with a denser map.

I think both the world and the number of players is just al right. The sandbox/mod allows survivors to create the kind of rpg experience they want. Wanna roleplay Mogadishu /Sarajevo? Welcome to the two big cities. Or roleplay a lone wolf survivor then head north, but still have to watch you back as encounters in the wilderness still happen.

[Sticker704 121]

It's not that the world isn't the right size for you, it's that you're not the right size for the world :)

[heretic (DayZ) 76]

Decreasing the map size to pander to the whims of a CoD PvP FFA FPS DM KoS numpty would be a definite step backwards in my opinion. It would make DayZ just another shooter... Yawn! The huge (in game terms) environment is one of the things that helps DayZ (& ARMA2) stand out from the crowd.

Bigger Maps. Different Maps. This is where I would like to see DayZ headed. Not down the road to conformist mediocrity.

OP. Bad Idea. Maybe you are better suited to a different game!

Edited July 15, 2012 by heretic

[hutton08 4]

then map is way to small

we need BIGGER much much BIGGER

[agonythy 3]

Try to hide a tent or a vehicle and you will see how small this map actually is^^

[athrins 39]

The world is too small. I'm not only scared of getting shot at while lighting a camp fire; if I take longer than absolutely necessary to cook my meat, I WILL get shot at if it's a little dark out and there's around 50 players on the server.

I like the atmosphere the front-page trailer is giving. Lighting up a camp fire for an hour or so at your camp shouldn't be 80% certain death - the risk should be around 5-10% of someone spotting you, and the risk of getting shot at in that case in a realistic sense would probably be very low in itself as well. IRL, survivors would be more scarce and more packed into groups.

I personally play as a lonewolf, but IRL, that would lower my chances of survival drastically. I'd be ok with this being the case in DayZ, too.

Two things needed for better immersion is a larger, more dynamic world and more horror elements. Psychological traumas, social needs causing depression and paranoia and for the world to be more... terrifying. Maybe it's just that I have played too much, though :( I want the feeling back that I had when I was a noob and tried to handle the zeds. Scared shitless most of the time.

Also, I loved the chill running down my spine when reading the first few pages in the "I found a radio" thread and listening to creepy distress signals on YT in the background. I want these things happening in-game. Making me face go pale and chills running down my spine when I find an old note from some relevant now-dead scientists or some mysterious lore-piece.

Sorry, went a bit OT.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Athrins

[resident_leeonheart@yahoo.com 32]

I think the map is way to big for the ammount of players that are playing. Even with servers with 100s of players the only active place is the airfield and the two big towns.

I think it could be better with a denser map.

I bump across other players often in the dense forest. If you think the map is small, Try starting a campfire at night in a filled game and check out how many players head towards it.

[BTT` 15]

I also think the map is just fine, it just feels right. Wanna meet people? Go to the hot spots. Wanna avoid them? Plan your route through the woods. And meeting someone in the wild... yeah it's rare, but all the more thrilling imho.

Oh yes, the rareness of meeting someone outside the few major hotspots makes for very thrilling and tense moments. I have been playing for over a month and my heart still thumps every time I see someone not on TS with me. I play for these moments. My mind has me on edge all the time thinking there is someone over the next hill, behind the next bush...Someone farts to loud on TS and I jump. lol

I only wish for cities to be MUCH larger so that players can actually get lost within them.

But overall, its fine.

You should join our TS sometime. We have plenty of people who get lost in cherno, electro and Berezino. Yes they are fairly newer to the game but the time it takes to learn your way around the bigger towns on the map seems about right to me.

Try to hide a tent or a vehicle and you will see how small this map actually is^^

Amen!!

I bump across other players often in the dense forest. If you think the map is small, Try starting a campfire at night in a filled game and check out how many players head towards it.

Or try gassing up at a little out of the way gas station. ( like the one North of Polana and east of Gorka) Bound to run into others wanting to do the same. Intense fights in the woods around this out of the way gas station happen more then I want when all I want is some gas! To me this is the kinda PvP that adds to the immersion. Seems realistic that people will be fighting over and killing for the right to have gas for the very rare vehicles that work after the zombie apocalypse. Not to mention the gaining of another ride if you win the fire fight!

[Gruelius 16]

Also story time

running back to base in the middle of the night (northern part of map) (W holding macro on) i see something that looks like a pig move funny but not really, as i stop and go prone it fires at me, i start shooting m16a2 rounds into it while my mate with the dmr has a look, i pretty much spam the whole clipp in that area (prone, so can only see shrub). Relocate behind a tree and crouch, go 3rd (on the server so may aswell use it) see him not moving so i pulled out the 1911 zigzagged to his body and executed him hahaha

was epic but really wtf. we only saw each other when we were maybe 10m apart.

Edited July 15, 2012 by Gruelius

[ArrThePirate 13]

I think the OP is just not used to playing Arma2. The map is too small I think.

For DayZ it works great, and it is a realistic setting.

Man, Rocket said that the engine was designed or can support a map DOUBLE the size of Chernarus. I could only say 'fuck YES'

It takes a few hours to go from one side of the map to the other and once you play for a few weeks you know almost every place in there and I think one of the things that makes the game so exciting is the actual feel of being a survivor, alone in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by monsters (both zombies and bandits :P) So I would say, and I hope, that the map is actually getting bigger in the future.

Im not gonna say HURRR, GO BAK TO X or Y, but it's true that a smaller map would make things battlefield/cod style and everybody will shoot anybody.

Edited July 15, 2012 by ArrThePirate

[sunnz 24]

Running around everywhere does make you think the world is massive, but once you get a vehicle and just drive it you realise how small it really feels, then when you try to hide your vehicle...

[MalleusX 9]

The map is more or less perfect size for 100 players. With more than 100 players it would be too crowded and with 50 or less player interaction away from the coast is few and far between.

[S.I.S.S. 0]

I have to agree with the majority of this forum. The map size is too small. Again, I would agree that there should be a greater number in buildings that one can enter. I don't believe, however, that the size of the towns are inappropriate. With the small size of the map, it makes perfect sense to have small towns with limited supplies, this creates the need to move on. It would hardly be challenging if you spawned, found a town with everything you needed and sat in the woods the rest of the time. As of now, if you find a drink and no food, you have to move on. If you find a gun, but no hatchet, again, move on. This keeps you moving through the environment and increases immersion.

IF the map size were smaller, I think the game would do poorly because lets be honest, if this game turned into straight FPS who would prefer the physics and models of Dayz over say BF3?

I think that the density of the loot also serves to keep you moving, thus, it's just fine.

There's nothing more boring than jumping into a game and having nearly everything you need, or being so achievable that it throws main game theory out the window.

[resident_leeonheart@yahoo.com 32]

It takes a few hours to go from one side of the map to the other and once you play for a few weeks you know almost every place in there

Go too far off map and you will come across endless desert and invisible sea. :)

Edited July 15, 2012 by leeo38

[takfar@gmail.com 24]

I want a bigger world. Let me travel to the other maps, or even include player maps. Rocket said the servers can handle more players per map. Double the map area, double the players. The bigger the world, the greater the immersion.

Agreed. Double would be awesome (and when I say double, I really mean quadruple area, as in: double the height and double the width of the map). It wouldn't need twice as many towns: You could just keep as many as there are now, but double the size of towns (even the "large" cherno and elektro are pitifully small, relative to real cities), and also double the space between them. This way, it would feel more real, vehicles would be more important, cities could have more personality, and you could flesh out the wilderness (hostile animals, foraging, etc).

Map is small, need more places to camp out at...

This is even more crucial. Imagine a 50-player server. If one in every two players has a tent, that's 25 tents that have to be hidden. But of course, a server's playerbase is not just the ones that are currently connected, as the time players access change a lot. Each server might have 200, 300 regulars. How do you hide 100 camps in a map this size?

I think player interaction is just right, at the moment. If you want to keep away from others, you can. If you want trouble, you can find it. So double the size of the map (quadruple area) could house double, or up to four times as many, players. 200 players on a 900km² map? Yes, please.

Edited July 15, 2012 by takfar