First impressions

[Fable 0]

Hi,

I started playing DayZ a few days ago; here is some notes on it; I might elaborate later.

So far:

• too hard with extremely sewere consequences. One small mistake and you loose hours of accumulate rewards.
  
• Very rarely any feeling of triumph (at all)
  
• Really unprecise controls
  
• ....with extremely severe consequences - which is fine if the in-game possiblities match the challenges. They don't:
  
• unrealistic in a bad way - why can't I use a hunting knife or my bare fists to fight zombies? have they grown fangs when they became zombie?
  
• lack of melee-weapons: I'm sitting at a laptop now: used right I can kill people with it. Why can't I beat the zombies with 2x4? branches? the big hatchets in the chopping blocks? every household has a kitchen; what about the butchers knife in there?
  
• Bad affordance: you can't see which houses you can loot and which you can.
  
• Controls are very different from other shooters (Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Battlefield) and way to complicated for this game. Shave them down.
  
• How come a whole colonne of dead soldier doesn't have any weapons on them? did the zombies take them? seriously?
  
• Extremely little chance of escaping zombies once you are detected - essentially: detected = dead.
  
• Really really annoying with the grey screen when you are hurt.
  

In conclusion so far: this is a buggy game for masochists - although it has a lot of promise.

(...and people with a full life besides games won't have the time to play this to the level where it becomes rewarding. This is as hardcore as they come).

BTW: I'm a gamejournalist and gamedesigner with a master's degree in digital design. I'm writing this to figure out what should be changed for DayZ to be better.

/Anders

[Disgraced 1123]

Journalist, but not much of a researcher, eh?

That's too bad.

You're misinterpreting a lot, restating what has become the obvious for those in the know, and most likely wasting your time.

You don't understand what the mod is for, where it's going or it's value.

Perhaps you should just stick to reviewing big company AAA titles.

[Dankine 377]

it's meant to be hard, surviving is triumph, it isn't another shooter, controls are grand (learn them), you can easily see which houses are lootable (see through windows or not), extremely high chance of evading zombies when you aggro them (get outta los, go through buildings).

agreed about melee, but that really is the only point you have.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Dankine

[crushed293213 8]

BTW: I'm a gamejournalist and gamedesigner with a master's degree in digital design. I'm writing this to figure out what should be changed for DayZ to be better.

No we dont want DayZ to become your average shitty Xbox360 casual game

[qual 0]

the fact you havent worked out that zombies post no threat whatsoever means you havent made the first hurdle into understanding it,

[sambody 44]

The mod DayZ and Arma II are one of their kind (Mostly because they are simulators, not fast fps shooters or whatever)

Also its an alpha.

You don't hit people with melee weapons in military simulators, don't you? Was hard enough for rocket and other developers to make the current melee weapons.

PS: You can suggest for changes if you so want, there is a place for that in the forums.

Edited July 27, 2012 by sambody

[Fable 0]

Journalist, but not much of a researcher, eh?

That's too bad.

You're misinterpreting a lot, restating what has become the obvious for those in the know, and most likely wasting your time.

You don't understand what the mod is for, where it's going or it's value.

Perhaps you should just stick to reviewing big company AAA titles.

From your own signature:

"The first rule of Chernarus: DO NOT get attached to your gear.

You will lose it to server errors, bugs, zombies, other players, hackers, werewolves, aliens, mystics, sasquatch, LGBT insensitivity and unforeseen sinkholes. You will NOT KEEP YOUR GEAR LONG. Face it".

Like I said: a game for masochists.

Games can be hard without being unfair. Part of the fun in games is that they challenge us. But the balance between what I can do it the game (my interactive tools) and the challenges I have to overcome are very scewed here. I understand that it is a mod and doesn't have a million dollar budget behind it; I'm just looking at ways where a little dev effort would make a huge difference.

I usually review indiegames; I don't look at AAA titles.

A:

Edited July 27, 2012 by Fable

[googz 3]

Yea mate, this is clearly not a genre you understand at all or a type of gameplay you enjoy. I assume you read a bit about it before playing it so not sure why you bothered at all. For myself (and loads of others out there) the patient, deliberate and gritty nature of the gameplay is exhilarating - the triumphs comes from looting great gear, grouping up with other players, surviving PvP and PvE encounters to name a few!

Many of the points you have put down as negatives are all positives for the people that play and enjoy this game.

[Swineflew 480]

You're either lying or terrible at your job.

I'm not trying to be mean, but you're the problem with the current gaming industry.

[S3V3N 1402]

As a game designer, gamejournalist and fellow writer you should learn not to judge things on first impression; at least not Dayz.My first impressions were pretty horrible, because I encountered some hackers the first rounds I played, and I thought the game was more about trying to team up than going solo and on the hunt.

It is actually very easy to lose zombies, they pose the smallest thread in the game. They reset pathfinding indoors and when they are close to bushes/trees. Also climbing across fences and changing direction repeatedly works for me. You just have to dare to lie down and become invisible again at the right moment. Those are some heartbeat seconds sometimes, when you observe if the zombie is still following you.

That being said, Rocket wrote that there was a bug concerning zombie hearing and it will be fixed in the next version. Don't expect it to become easier, but at least you won't have the occasional random zombie come running at you from a mile away.

You can't use the flashlight or hunting knife to attack zombies, because it would be pointless. Survive for a number of consecutive days and you will learn a lot about yourself and your attention span. I learned some things playing this game that never surface in any other game. If you daydream in Dayz you are dead. If you don't plan, you are dead or will be in a forest at night without light, map or compass. There are some really tough nuts regarding the game, but the core of it is stable and works to great extend.

You can't blame it for using the Real virtuality Engine (I think that's the name). It is build with that engine and the controls are already much less clumsy then they were in Arma. Now Arma 3 is coming out and it will finally have physics and probably a much better handling. So expect that for the final product and get used to what is available now.

If you had played (more) vanilla Arma II you would know exactly which buildings you can enter and which not. I can spot them from half a mile away and know what is worth looting. Also don't forget the toilet houses can be opened ^^

Melee weapons are the crowbar and the axe. I use the axe to kill animals quietly and the crowbar to break hospital windows. I don't use melee weapons, unless I have to (and I never have to, because there are plenty of guns + crossbow)

[Disgraced 1123]

From your own signature:

"The first rule of Chernarus: DO NOT get attached to your gear.

You will lose it to server errors, bugs, zombies, other players, hackers, werewolves, aliens, mystics, sasquatch, LGBT insensitivity and unforeseen sinkholes. You will NOT KEEP YOUR GEAR LONG. Face it".

Like I said: a game for masochists.

A:

Don't feel bad, mate. You're just from the new school, I think.

Aside from the "alpha experience" which I won't get into, the game IS challenging.

It's not about being cinematic, or cut scenes or movies where you press "a" at the right time six times in a row and feel like a badass.

It's challenging. There's a learning curve. It can certainly be successfully played. It's not for masochists. It's for those who enjoy overcoming a challenge. I'm not here to be entertained. But being a game journalist, you've no doubt seen articles about this is of the game industry.

Sure, I have my games that I play just for fun, to be entertained, to get the pellet when I hit the right switch and move on to the next... Whatever....

This is different. It's the modern version of what games used to be.

Get some depth. Go play some old console games, or early computer games. You'll see what I mean.

[Momiji 46]

Too hard with extremely sewere consequences. One small mistake and you loose hours of accumulate rewards.

- Life is hard, this is a zombie mod for a military simulator, realism is a big part to an extent in how the game treats you, it is an anti-game, it is meant to draw out emotional reactions good and bad.

Very rarely any feeling of triumph (at all)

-You've never been in a firefight, not knowing where you opponent is for a period of time and trying to locate him before he locates you? Looting the airfield without being shot?

Play on high pop servers and go to hot zones, that's as much triumph as you can get, you make your own goals and accomplish them in this mod.

Really unprecise controls

- This is not Day Z's fault, this is Arma 2's system and they are easy to get used to after awhile, this isn't much of a problem, just lack of experience.

....with extremely severe consequences - which is fine if the in-game possiblities match the challenges. They don't:

- The in-game possibilities match the realistic challenge, going into a town for food in a real Day-Z wouldn't be to great on the risk v reward scale but you have to to survive, that's what DayZ is, Survival.

unrealistic in a bad way - why can't I use a hunting knife or my bare fists to fight zombies? have they grown fangs when they became zombie?

- Because that is not a part of Arma 2, The Hatchet and Crowbar took enough to get into the game as weapons, this is as good as it gets, besides fighting a zombie fist to fist wouldn't be a very realistic idea, unless you lack common sense.

lack of melee-weapons: I'm sitting at a laptop now: used right I can kill people with it. Why can't I beat the zombies with 2x4? branches? the big hatchets in the chopping blocks? every household has a kitchen; what about the butchers knife in there?

- Because that is the game, you can find a hatchet or crowbar, or a gun, they are pretty easy to come across, you expect to much from a mod that has given us so much.

Bad affordance: you can't see which houses you can loot and which you can.

- The windows of lootable buildings are see through-able, unlootable aren't, play for awhile and you will learn the skins of the lootable buildings and know straight away.

Controls are very different from other shooters (Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Battlefield) and way to complicated for this game. Shave them down.

- Again, not a shooter, Arma 2 is a Military Simulator, Day Z a mod for it, this is not going to have 8 buttons and a simple control scheme, it has a lot more player controls for the character, a lot more tools and other things. Learn the controls it's not to taxing.

How come a whole colonne of dead soldier doesn't have any weapons on them? did the zombies take them? seriously?

- What would the chances be of another group of survivors finding the same dead platoon? Take it as it comes, you'd be complaining it is to easy and boring to find loot in abundance if these were lootable.

Extremely little chance of escaping zombies once you are detected - essentially: detected = dead.

- Read up on the zombie escape tips, zig-zag through a forest, run through a building with two doors, make them walk down a steep hill, run to a dock, run them into another person etc.

Really really annoying with the grey screen when you are hurt.

- Blood Loss blurs vision, be happy you can survive with only a quarter of your blood left, also don't the shooter you mentioned have visual pain effects, CoD certainly fills your screen with blood. The color fade isn't that drastic, you can still see just fine.

All of these are just stupid complaints i have to say, research the mod and the game it's for next time, before you start complaining.

[phnordarossa 15]

He probably is just a troll. Ignoring that the game is in Alpha state and moaning about losing your stuff due to bugs?

Come on people, I thought you were smarter.

To be straight, just let's wait for his article that pops up in next weeks that discusses the above points in the same way and you're clear about it. But it won't change anything dudes.

[01da 218]

2/10 For the effort.

[Talon2000uk 30]

Hi,

I started playing DayZ a few days ago; here is some notes on it; I might elaborate later.

So far:

• too hard with extremely sewere consequences. One small mistake and you loose hours of accumulate rewards. /snip
  

BTW: I'm a gamejournalist and gamedesigner with a master's degree in digital design. I'm writing this to figure out what should be changed for DayZ to be better.

:D

Edited July 27, 2012 by Talon2000uk

[yorkie065 78]

Let me just start by.....HA!! HA HA!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!! AAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHAHAHHAHAHAAA HAAAA!! no!

1.GOOD!! Too many shooters these days are easy. Something thats realistic (and if you did you research, would know that the Arma 2 engine is used as a military simulator) and punishing in the form of firearms is a nice change. It makes you think about your positioning, whether you should fire or not and how visible you are to other players. Im glad, thats theres something where I can be shot down in just a couple of hits. It's makes death even more punishing, and if you learn from it, more rewarding when it happens less often.

2. Clearly haven't found any good loot yet. Get to end game, the feeling of finding and owning an M107 or AS50, with night vis. range finders, compass, map, gps, hatchet, matches and a hunting knife with water bottles is a damn good one.

3. Something different. whilst they're not the best controls, they do take some getting used to. And coming from games like BF3, and playing DayZ for a couple of months and going back to BF3, I wish that it had more controls similar to Arma. It feels too empty and simple.

4. It knocks bad habits out of you...surely thats a good thing? If you can't learn from dying over and over, then perhaps you should take a completely different approach or stop altogether.

5. Agree with you! Hunting knife would be good to use as a melee weapon, and also using fists to push back zombies or push them over. But I do also like the vulnerability of not having any weapons and being chased.

6. See 5.

7. You can. Buildings with windows that are see-through are loot-able, the rest aren't. You soon start to learn which you can and which you can't and from that, you'll start planning and making decisions as to whether small villages are worth going in to loot.

8. Controls are fine, they do what you need them to do. Just a case of learning them over time, and they fit the game. Remember this isn't no ordinary game, it needs to be able to simulate virtually every scenario and action a man would do on a battlefield.

9. Think less about general logic, and more about reward schedules. Would be too easy to gear up if zombies carried the odd weapon on them. Hell it's even easy now. I can gear myself up to mid-tier and head up north with a good chance of surviving in 20-30mins.

10. Plenty of ways to escape from zombies, comes from trial and error, paying attention to forums with tips and tricks, youtube videos and experience in game. If anything, it's too easy to loose zombies.

11. Hasn't really bothered me, and it adds a nice effect and a sense of relief when you do get yourself healed back up to full health.

You may well be a game designer and journalist, but from what you've said, my guess is that you've probably played for no more than 50 hours and haven't seeked any outside knowledge of how to play from others or videos. The game is punishing, and harsh, which is what really appeals to me as it's something different from virtually any game that i've played. It's great to see a game that doesn't hold your hand and show you the way through, as it's not a game trying to appeal to the masses. Arma has a very niche community, it's just expanding due to the income of players coming to DayZ. This game is designed to be different, not your everyday zombie game.

Also, just to add before you completely disregard my opinion, im a level designer, also with a degree in computer games design which covered virtually every aspect of game development. The game doesn't need to be changed to be better, it just needs stuff adding to it which Rocket and his team are doing. It's in Alpha, we've got a long way to go! Just sit tight and ride with it.

[ParaB 114]

You're either lying or terrible at your job.

I'm not trying to be mean, but you're the problem with the current gaming industry.

Harsh, but true.

[Mortus 17]

Hard to believe you are any sort of journalist, given all of the spelling and grammatical errors in your post.

[Talon2000uk 30]

Let me just start by.....HA!! HA HA!!! HAHAHAHAHAH!! AAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHHHHAHAHHAHAHAAA HAAAA!! no!

Snip

Excellent Response Yorkie, You have far more patients with the OP than I I'm afraid. I think it's a sad stae of gaming where a lot of gamers expect everything handed to them on a plate, I come form the old school where when you got a game like Baldurs Gate it came with a 400 page manual.

I'm wondering if Day Z is a hit more with the older gamer than with younger ones because we older gamers miss that in depth steep learning curve game play that modern games don't support. Hmm I feel a poll coming on.

[Tatakt 50]

i hope this dude leaves DayZ and the forums and never comes back, he is obviously either try hard trolling or plain retarded and new to the internet.

[Fable 0]

:D

Skal vi skrive på dansk istedet for? ;)

A.

Edited July 27, 2012 by Fable

[googz 3]

So far:

• too hard with extremely sewere consequences. One small mistake and you loose hours of accumulate rewards. (This is what makes the game exhilarating - BTW if you give the game some time and once you learn the area it is very quick to get yourself geared again after dying - I have only been playing for a few days) Look at an online map if you dont have one in game - google is your friend...use it
  
• Very rarely any feeling of triumph (at all) (Ummm try playing with a group of players - there are loads of clans/people looking for groups - great gear to be had etc)
  
• Really unprecise controls (Dont know how you came to this conclusion, they are not the tightest in the world but they actually compliment the world of dayz)
  
• ....with extremely severe consequences - which is fine if the in-game possiblities match the challenges. They don't:
  
• unrealistic in a bad way - why can't I use a hunting knife or my bare fists to fight zombies? have they grown fangs when they became zombie? (the knife is there only for skinning animals hence the name hunting knife there are axes and crowbars for melee - anyway its really not that difficult to find a weapon within 10-20 minutes of spawning)
  
• lack of melee-weapons: I'm sitting at a laptop now: used right I can kill people with it. Why can't I beat the zombies with 2x4? branches? the big hatchets in the chopping blocks? every household has a kitchen; what about the butchers knife in there? (from a so called programmer you should know that you are not going to get such granularity from any game never mind a mod - as a positive there are loads to interact with in dayz and loads of items you can collect and use)
  
• Bad affordance: you can't see which houses you can loot and which you can. (well my friend its clear at this stage you have not given the game much time because within a couple of days of playing you will know what to look for when looting buildings - this is just a lesson you learn from playing)
  
• Controls are very different from other shooters (Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Battlefield) and way to complicated for this game. Shave them down. (yes they are - most people like that)
  
• How come a whole colonne of dead soldier doesn't have any weapons on them? did the zombies take them? seriously? (well they are just props - considering the size of the world and the innumerate number of places and things you can loot Im sure you can forgive not being able to loot dead AI soldiers.)
  
• Extremely little chance of escaping zombies once you are detected - essentially: detected = dead.(again you didn't even try - there are a good few techniques you learn on your own or by just doing a bit of reading)
  
• Really really annoying with the grey screen when you are hurt. (yea don't get that badly hurt and even so dying, getting injured etc. is part of the experience, I reiterate group up with a few people via the forum here)
  
• You just really havent given this game anytime at all - if you are not a patient player then dont bother because when spawning patience is an absolute must to get a little geared.
  

[Tweakie 199]

• too hard with extremely sewere consequences. One small mistake and you loose hours of accumulate rewards.
  

Funny, I think it is abit too easy, although I remember my first 3-4 lives, God I was bad.

• Very rarely any feeling of triumph (at all)
  

Huh, I guess you have never turned the table on somebody who shot first. Never found NVGs, haven't set up a base with vehicles. Instead of “+100 headshot points” you actually have to work for it and do something worth noting.

• Really unprecise controls
  

?? Lack of auto-aim? Or bad wording? The controls are pretty precise, you press D, you move right, you move the mouse...your aim moves. Everything Is just normal

• ....with extremely severe consequences - which is fine if the in-game possiblities match the challenges. They don't:
  
• unrealistic in a bad way - why can't I use a hunting knife or my bare fists to fight zombies? have they grown fangs when they became zombie?
  
• lack of melee-weapons: I'm sitting at a laptop now: used right I can kill people with it. Why can't I beat the zombies with 2x4? branches? the big hatchets in the chopping blocks? every household has a kitchen; what about the butchers knife in there?
  

Because Soldiers prefer using a 2x4 over a M4.......This is due to being a Mod in alpha on a milsim engine and something you can expect to be fixed in a standlone. So far a Axe and Crowbar has been hacked in. More than enough. (Do your research)

• Bad affordance: you can't see which houses you can loot and which you can.
  

Again, learn the difference between DayZ the Mod and Arma the game...This is a limit of Arma (do your research)

• Controls are very different from other shooters (Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Battlefield) and way to complicated for this game. Shave them down.
  

Learn to open your controls settings, and set up to your liking?? or are you are a console gamer?

• How come a whole colonne of dead soldier doesn't have any weapons on them? did the zombies take them? seriously?
  

Fair point, and one that has been made 15 times before.

• Extremely little chance of escaping zombies once you are detected - essentially: detected = dead.
  

Trololo, losing zombies is extremely easy, run through buildings...run up hills, run up on rocks...run through a fucking pine tree...Easy peasy, learn the mechanics before you bitch, please.

• Really really annoying with the grey screen when you are hurt.
  

And this is because: in a proper version, you will not have a debug monitor or little icons to tell you if you are hurt...it is all done with ingame cues

In conclusion: You are a newbie, who don't know the engine nor the mod. If you had actually taken the time to research or play it

[picasso-09@hotmail.com 3]

LSL Property Services plc

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Generated on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:59:46 +0100. This (MOD) is fantastic in every aspect and can only get better. it does have its downsides but they will get fixed.i can only assume you were brought up being breast fed untill u were ten if you think this game isnt rewarding??!!! rewarding is when you have a alice pack full of medical supplies and ammo that you have scavenged and stealthed around for ,for hours only to be caught in a gun fight with 2 bandits being shot at and suriving it all only to loot the goods and find some rewarding things for yourself before you set off on an adventure across the maps with countless amounts of real life happenings along the way. I dont really like gaming but this title has me HOOKED!!!

[yorkie065 78]

Excellent Response Yorkie, You have far more patients with the OP than I I'm afraid. I think it's a sad stae of gaming where a lot of gamers expect everything handed to them on a plate, I come form the old school where when you got a game like Baldurs Gate it came with a 400 page manual.

I'm wondering if Day Z is a hit more with the older gamer than with younger ones because we older gamers miss that in depth steep learning curve game play that modern games don't support. Hmm I feel a poll coming on.

^This

Im only 21, but I do miss the days of sitting down in a single player game, retrying 1 level over and over and over again to beat it. The market is saturated with games that are designed to force the player to play the game the way the designers envisioned it. Cutscene here, cutscene there, QTE here to make sure the player does what the designer imagined them doing, rather than having the freedom of choice and going about completing an objective in unique ways to improve their own experience, and enjoy it the way they want to. And as a level designer, currently working on a game that has these things about, it infuriates me to no end that people think that this is the right way to design games.

The success of DayZ has come largely from the fact that it's sat on the opposite end of the scale. It's different. It's harsh. It makes you work for the best gear in the game. You want the best shit? You gotta run around high populated loot spots for 30mins, to then run another 20mins across open fields with nothing to get to a place that is even more dangerous than the first. You get that done, your in for a fucking treat!! I love it! It's what makes me play this every night of the week. Sure you get bored after a while as theres no real end game. What should you do? Go looking for a firefight, try and get yourself killed and start all over again.

DayZ throws you in the deep end of the pool with no rubber bands. If you can't learn to swim quickly, you'll drown and struggle. If you pick yourself up and float, boy are you in for a wicked roller coaster ride. If you drown over and over again, try something new and different to previously. Expand your mind, try new things. Don't be focused around what the designers supposedly WANT you to do. It's your game, do what the fuck you want with it!!!! ..........other than hack! don't do that :P

Edited July 27, 2012 by Yorkie065