Please stop with anti-sandbox suggestions!

[-AoXo- 24]

There are a lot of annoying arguments on here, particularly the elitist arguments that start, end and are based on "lol carebears feed me your tears". Saying stupid stuff like that only serves to invalidate your argument.

One of the major things about this mod that bugs me, aside from the bugs and glitches, is that people want to make it "harder" without even considering what "hard" means. Many of these suggestions are artificial difficulty and loaded with hyperbole.

Oh, you want to be shot by a survivor with a thousand-yard stare? That's cool, but have you SEEN the facial expressions of the models in this game?

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17pd6gkibphaxjpg/original.jpg

Ignoring the context of that image, isn't his death stare just soooooo riveting? omg he is so scary and intimidating and it feels like I am really there! That's hyperbole. It seems as if a lot of people are falling for imagination, in which case you might as well not have the map, or the zombies, or anything else there stimulating your senses because you're writing a story that doesn't exist. You'd be better off not playing at all and keeping this story in your head.

Adding thousands of zombies so that "no where" is safe defeats the purpose of "survival". It's not a horde mode. It's an "open world" - open world sandbox, like so many of you have been proclaiming, suggests I have choices. It suggests I can "create my own story" and if my story is riddled with zeds and crawling through the grass where I don't get any down time that's not going to be a story worth writing because it has, in a very real sense, already been written for me.

I can choose to play it safe and very boringly slow, or I can choose to be reckless and die every five minutes. That doesn't make the game hard. It just makes it boring.

Difficulty is good, just not when it's artificial and cheap and makes for a boring experience, which seems to be what most of these anti-"carebear" suggestions are.

Stuff like cars or powerstations COULD require lots of players. Imagine if cars or power stations needed "stock piles" of resources, as in 50 scrap metal, 30 jerry cans etc so that it might take several different groups of people working together at different times to complete these goals. It may have an RPG/MMO tone to it but it is all about creating a world where players make a difference by working together on purpose or incidently.

The only reason I don't like the banditry is because it's a much easier game to play if you're out for blood. If you're trying to play as a survivor you risk wasting your life on trusting other survivors - if you don't trust them you lose the group mentality, or you risk becoming a pre-emptive bandit. Again, it's not about making the game easier, it's about putting in some behind-the-scenes stats that represent and simulate real-world actions. As much as you'd like to think everyone would become a murderer in this situation many more would be willing to help others and work together to survive. You simply don't get that in this game because guilt, compassion and humanity simply can't exist when lives have no meaning - and, if they had meaning, then bandits would just be an even bigger threat and get a bigger thrill from it.

It's not something that works, imo.

Edit: I didn't even really get to the crux of my response which was that artificial difficulty does not make a game "more" sandboxy. As has been said a sandbox needs tools to build stuff, otherwise it is just an empty arena. If you have a foot ball field and tell people to pretend they are in a war, looking at it objectively it is just a bunch of people running around in clear sight of each other going "pew pew pew!" and diving to the ground. But put in some boxes, crates, barrels and give them paintball guns and you've suddenly made your sandbox worthwhile. Right now DayZ is an empty football field with some players unwilling to see its potential because they fear adding props to it will make it "easy".

[septuscap 42]

' pid='120755' dateline='1339899324']

Edit: I didn't even really get to the crux of my response which was that artificial difficulty does not make a game "more" sandboxy. As has been said a sandbox needs tools to build stuff' date=' otherwise it is just an empty arena. If you have a foot ball field and tell people to pretend they are in a war, looking at it objectively it is just a bunch of people running around in clear sight of each other going "pew pew pew!" and diving to the ground. But put in some boxes, crates, barrels and give them paintball guns and you've suddenly made your sandbox worthwhile. Right now DayZ is an empty football field with some players unwilling to see its potential because they fear adding props to it will make it "easy".

[/quote']

Frankly I think this is bullshit. What you have here are organized clans and groups (simulating gangs in a post apocalyptic world) who are doing really cool things already.

And then you have a bunch of crybabies who complain there are no safe cities but don't join a group of people trying to MAKE one; who complain about the bandit:survivor ratio but don't make a roleplay/pve steam group that would allow you to saturate any given server with survivors. It's really a joke how little survivors have done to work with the sandbox they've been given. But on par with PvE'ers in any other game really -- do nothing and cry that the game should be tailored to your playstyle.

"Bandits" are waging wars with other gangs in a post-apocalyptic zombie-ridden world (I've played with a # of clans already, and fought many other groups), and in our movie you're just some two-bit, one-line actor on the side of a road with beans on him. Guess what that means.

[Virfortis 111]

It's really a joke how little survivors have done to work with the sandbox they've been given.

Because they can't, because the game won't LET them. An open world where the rules are forced on you is not a sandbox, and here the rules of no interaction and everyone is a bandit are pretty well forced on you. It's not a sandbox if you have to go outside the game to find people to talk to, then it's just a persistent arena.

[septuscap 42]

Because they can't' date=' because the game won't LET them. An open world where the rules are forced on you is not a sandbox, and here the rules of no interaction and everyone is a bandit are pretty well forced on you. It's not a sandbox if you have to go outside the game to find people to talk to, then it's just a persistent arena.

[/quote']

Are you fucking stupid? Almost *everyone* who plays any game nowadays relies on VOIP of some kind. OH NO I GUESS THERE'S NO SANDBOX GAME IN THE ENTIRE WORLD NOW.

You're just (a) too fucking lazy to make a steam group, (b) too anti-social and no one actually wants to game with you, © want the game to punish PvP & enact your revenge FOR you b/c you can't kill bandits yourself, and/or (d) want to armchair dev.

It really is that simple. Go make a steam group of RP'ers, PvE'ers, etc. Find an empty server and fill it up. Play out your RP fantasies. Maybe even do like CHKilroy and make some overarching goals, split into groups or start everyone solo, whatever.

Edit: There is literally a steam group of Day Z players trying to create a trading post/city in DayZ. I don't see you signing up for that group. You're a worthless shit, end of story.

[catgut 3]

Remember, kids, being a survivor is just as easy as being a bandit, so long as you create a Steam group with a large population, organize server raids so you can fill up with as many of your people as possible, coordinate extensively with other players out of game, and make sure only to join servers that don't have any bandits on them. That's definitely just as easy as shooting everyone you see and living large off their beans, because SeptusCap said so. And if you don't, you're fucking stupid and fucking lazy and anti-social and terrible and an armchair developer and a worthless shit.

Gee, I wonder why some people think this game has a terrible community. I can't imagine why.

[vesmo 21]

I'm going to say what so many others here have said: make the "end game" interesting by upping the survival difficulty throughout the game. Food is harder to come by than it is right now. Cooked meat spoils over a period of about ~a day (or even faster, seeing as the metabolism of the survivors isn't realistic either as they can die of starvation/thirst faster than is realistic). Canned food lasts forever, but this means going into towns to search for it, hence giving reasons for highly geared players to raid stores etc. Add hordes/wandering zombies etc. that have been suggested to make survival even harder. Just generally make it A LOT tougher to just stay alive.

[Failbait 60]

OP is great. Thanks.

[Steve McAwesome 6]

DayZ isn't supposed to be fun. Haha I guess somebody should have told rocket that cause even in alpha it's the most addicting, compelling and overall 'fun ' mod I've ever played. I guess horror movies aren't supposed to be 'fun' either. I suppose it depends on your definition of fun though. I don't think I'd be playing any game if it wasn't fun

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

PVP in DayZ is fun. Why do people have to be so philosophical about it? It's not as if there's anything to build, except for more things that can be used for pvp.

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I keep seeing various suggestions popping up like safe zones' date=' traders, leveling and so on.

For our sake, this is an OPEN WORLD SANDBOX ZOMBIE SURVIVAL!

The community has already proven time and time again that this is not a Zombie Survival game. In its current form, it's a zombie themed Free-For-All. Survival is infinitely easy and zombies pose absolutely no threat, they are merely a catalyst towards you giving away your position, and you can easily DC the moment you have a 5 second break. There's not even a SANDBOX because all you do is shoot each other. Sandbox implies more than one inevitable outcome.

Zombies will never be a threat because they are AI, which can be figured out, and too many zombies will hog the server. It's up to pvp to make the game hard.

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Do you know who Dr. Wasteland is?

He made his own story' date=' he didn't need a Dev to build it for him.

[/quote']

Exactly.

I'm reminded of a story of 2 little girls with dolls. One girl proudly points out that her new high tech doll can speak 50 different phrases -even in Spanish! The other girl, with a very plain doll, responded "well, my doll can say anything I want her to say."

People today want their games to make their fun for them because they don't have any imagination and take things too literally.

[Dreamseller 0]

Because they can't' date=' because the game won't LET them. An open world where the rules are forced on you is not a sandbox, and here the rules of no interaction and everyone is a bandit are pretty well forced on you. It's not a sandbox if you have to go outside the game to find people to talk to, then it's just a persistent arena.

[/quote']

Are you fucking stupid? Almost *everyone* who plays any game nowadays relies on VOIP of some kind. OH NO I GUESS THERE'S NO SANDBOX GAME IN THE ENTIRE WORLD NOW.

You're just (a) too fucking lazy to make a steam group, (b) too anti-social and no one actually wants to game with you, © want the game to punish PvP & enact your revenge FOR you b/c you can't kill bandits yourself, and/or (d) want to armchair dev.

It really is that simple. Go make a steam group of RP'ers, PvE'ers, etc. Find an empty server and fill it up. Play out your RP fantasies. Maybe even do like CHKilroy and make some overarching goals, split into groups or start everyone solo, whatever.

Edit: There is literally a steam group of Day Z players trying to create a trading post/city in DayZ. I don't see you signing up for that group. You're a worthless shit, end of story.

Remove the swearing and you have my opinion also. I couldn't find many players in-game, so I jumped out of game, onto TS3 and within 5 minutes, I've got a solid group of 6 players and another group of 5 which are both building camps on servers. This game is good, but what makes it great is the meta game. Much like Eve online.