Retention Dropping

[ken@thekab.com 37]

1. Vehicles are broken.
   
2. Tents are broken.
   
3. Graphics are broken.
   
4. Multiple forms of duping are rampant.
   
5. Hackers killing or teleporting entire servers is inevitable every time there's a decent population on one.
   

It's damn close to 'unplayable' and we've seen essentially zero progress from the DayZ staff for about a month. Did get a nice update that made it more difficult to catch cheating and hacking though.

Can't imagine why people aren't playing.

[Zombie Jesus 723]

I believe it is partly due to all three factors, some are just flat out bored with the game, some people who might have bought Arma II for Dayz will wait for standalone, and in my group hackers are the reason many have not played. I play with 7 people and this week I have been the only one willing to play. I even found a fully functional helicopter and three people online said the same thing, awesome but you will die from a hacker within thirty minutes so I am going to sit this out. I have decent luck with the scum of the Earth script kiddies and have managed to get out of some situations, but the game is starting to suck due to these morons. Why play a game where it can take a week to get fully geared (high level is how I role) just to be ax murdered by some child in a jason mask with God mode on (most recent death). I have not been killed legit in over a month now, but I have still died three times. I hang out on night servers and low population servers and still run into these idiots, I love this game but the cancer is spreading and I might have to hang it up until a fix is made.

This is on top of dupers, combat loggers, and ghosters. Man this game is broken but for some reason I still love playing it.

[Vendayn 7]

I would play, but the graphic artifacts make it unplayable.

Go anywhere with military zombies (even deer stands)...major artifact bug. So that cuts out more than half the gameplay.

Go to cherno...bugged

Go to elektro...bugged

Randomly go somewhere in the wilderness, if it has barbed wire or dead bodies...bugged

So I haven't logged on for a month now. I noticed player activity went WAY down when that bug was introduced. And the bug has never been fixed, for a month.

[svenbreakfast 231]

I manage to avoid hackers by being very selective with the servers I'll connect to.

Hackers aside, if I wasn't a patient person there is no way I could play at the moment. The tent bug, the respawn on the beach bug, the necessity of restarting every time I encounter barbed wire or camo tents...there is just so many frustrating elements going on at the same time right now.

I keep it in perspective that this is an alpha, and the bugs are being worked on. If I was somebody who was told that DayZ was an awesome "game" and realized that the game was an alpha in every regard other than its popularity I'd chill out too.

I'm on the fence as to how much longer I'll be able to cope with the inconvenience of playing. This is largely due to the fact that though I love the alpha, I'm a little weary of testing. The knowledge that soon I'll be able to play DayZ as a real game does influence this.

[Zombie Jesus 723]

Blomquist, which tent bug, the duping or the disappearing tents? My graphical bugs have gotten much better since the latest patch, they still happen but not nearly as much as they used to and I actually drove the whole length of the NWAF zombie punting last night without a single bug (although hackers had definitely been there as evidenced by the 6 burning Huey's on the ground). Like you said I have patience with bugs, it is an alpha, but the hacker issue is really starting to get old. I guess at his point I am a survivor since I am forced to play on low population night servers and have been unable to see anyone in the last three plus days.

I logged onto a server I used to frequent with 30 players and within minutes start seeing frequent deaths, then surprise surprise her comes the Halloween song and some God Mode script kiddie running at me from the tree line with a hatchet and a jason mask. I hate combat logging, but at this point I refuse to be killed by these idiots and when it is obvious that they are not legit players what else can you do (especially when you hit them with 10 to 15 rounds of a M240, that would kill a group of 7).

[ZlobaRUS54 441]

Right now the game balance, that special reward/danger balance that Rocket initially captured is broken. You go to a low population server there is no danger, go to a full server, there is no reward as you progress will be arbitrarily interrupted by hackers or alternatively find a duped tent with everything you'd normally have to work weeks for already in it. In addition there are very few tools to create end game content, and whatever rudimentary tools like tents we used to have are broken atm.

Edited August 16, 2012 by ZlobaRUS54

[Zombie Jesus 723]

Right now the game balance, that special reward/danger balance that Rocket initially captured is broken. You go to a low population server there is no danger, go to a full server, there is no reward as you progress will be arbitrarily interrupted by hackers or alternatively find a duped tent with everything you'd normally have to work weeks for already in it. In addition there are very few tools to create end game content, and whatever rudimentary tools like tents we used to have are broken atm.

This right here is exactly what I was trying to say in my rambling posts earlier. There is way more than one thing wrong with the game and that is what is driving people away. A few of these issues (not scripters) are acceptable in an alpha, but when you add all of these issues on top of the huge script kiddie issue you will have quite a few players who just do not see the point in playing at all. I was an effective bandit at one point, now I resemble some hopeless care bear wandering the map in search of loot and easy zombie kills because going on a populated server means death by scripter.

[svenbreakfast 231]

The tent bug I was referring to is the not saving after server restart one. I haven't had a tent disappear. Since the patch I have to restart any time I approach any type of military location.

These are some thoughtful comments, and I do think a lot of reasonable players are dealing with a testing process that is significantly less fun than it was two weeks or so ago. It's not so much the individual bugs as the confluence of them all right now makes enjoying play-testing a big challenge. It has to be enjoyable to keep people doing it.

[Entaro (DayZ) 33]

Creativity is one thing. Having tools to be creative with would be a whole different story. Obvoiusly this game struck gold on its proof of concept and fundamentals. But it needs content and/or tools for players to create content.

And I'm not even playing on Hive. I'm on a private server with probably near 100 vehicles in various states of ownership, disrepair or respawn. I think on Hive there is 11 vehicles per server with a respawn timer of like 7 days or something insane. Hive is boring as hell right now. Even the private server isn't that different, you just have more toys to play with.

Ultimately the game needs more content.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Entaro

[Zombie Jesus 723]

The tent bug I was referring to is the not saving after server restart one. I haven't had a tent disappear. Since the patch I have to restart any time I approach any type of military location.

These are some thoughtful comments, and I do think a lot of reasonable players are dealing with a testing process that is significantly less fun than it was two weeks or so ago. It's not so much the individual bugs as the confluence of them all right now makes enjoying play-testing a big challenge. It has to be enjoyable to keep people doing it.

I lost two tents on a server then on the next restart the tents were back minus gear. For a player who never dupes I was a little annoyed but I do follow the first rule of Dayz and was over it fairly quickly. Maybe I am lucky with the graphics issue since my computer is somewhat new with good hardware, but I get how the game would be hard to play with those glitches. People get mad when I ask this so realize I am honestly just checking to see if you know how to use the flush command. If not hold left shift and press - on the number pad and then type flush and press enter. The screen will go black for a second and if it does not work the first time sometimes it takes another. If you already know and it does not help sorry for making someone read the tip for the hundredth time (I had good luck with this fix when I had the graphics bug but I know many others were not so lucky).

[Joe_Blow 11]

Bumping this as I have updated the information on the first post.

Also me and my friends have personally moved on to playing Private Hives and Lingor island as they offer more security and new environments.

Edited August 28, 2012 by Joe_Blow

[sostronk 334]

Around 20,000 players stopped playing when they were globally banned by battleeye.

For me fixing the Graphical glitch would open up alot more content of the game to me. I can't loot any military spawn :(

Edited August 28, 2012 by sostronk

[Joe_Blow 11]

Around 20,000 players stopped playing when they were globally banned by battleeye.

For me fixing the Graphical glitch would open up alot more content of the game to me. I can't loot any military spawn :(

Don't know the exact number; however this may be the cause of the recent decline.

Do you think the people who were unfairly banned would come back to play after this issue is resolved, or will this leave a bad taste in their mouths?

[sostronk 334]

There were over 12,000 legit bans in the first major ban wave. Now with all the script restriction and bypassers being dealt with I wouldn't be surprised if it was close to 30k bans. Just saying 20k as no doubt some would have bought new keys. Would be interested to hear what BI has on their tally.

I think of the players who were incorrectly banned, no doubt many would leave as it probably would have been the final straw in the game with all the other problems that go with it. I quite possibly would have left.

Edited August 28, 2012 by sostronk

[enforcer1975 1111]

For me fixing the Graphical glitch would open up alot more content of the game to me. I can't loot any military spawn :(

Maybe that's their way of making military weapons rare...? That must be it...you can't get there you get a non military weapon...problem solved.

[BlindProphet 34]

Dude, he's just fucking bringing it up for discussion.

I love how you go on to tell him to "relax" and "lighten up" when your post is 100x more inflammatory and emotional than his.

You're the one that needs to lighten the fuck up.

I'm a huge supporter of this mod, fully aware of what it means to be Alpha, very calm about the state of things, patient with the dev team, etc. but even I am concerned about a drop from 220k daily players to 150k in such a short period of time. That's a ~30% drop, not 2% and Alpha or not it shows a waning interest and I think it's probably not a bad idea to discuss why it's happening like mature adults, eh?

Fewer players means less word of mouth which is critical for a game that probably won't have a huge advertising budget. There's nothing insulting in pointing this out and asking what can be done about it.

Jesus.

I think some of it has to do with the issues we've had recently (tents, graphical glitches, scripters). Schools also been gearing up. Vacations just before school.

But I think another overlooked but important factor is private servers. Being that they're seemingly becoming more and more popular especially with the loosening of restrictions on talking about them I think more players have shifted that way. Heck the group I play with which had 25 or so players and those of us still playing moved to a private hive to avoid the issues we were having on the public ones. And one of the guys running it fixed tents and vehicles ontop of things and is working on more fixes and tweaks.

Our servers still growing, and I miss some of the higher pop stuff, but so far we've had two scripters, both of which were caught and dealt with swiftly, we've got working tents and vehicles, we've got our own little faction war with people claiming territory, a guy working on trying to fix some of the bugs...I mean? The only incentive I've got to get on the public servers is the really high pop ones and even then they're typically targets so why bother?

And then you've got Lingor island...which is its own beast. So I think with those things becoming more popular people, plus the other factors, people are moving away from the public hive...

[ironman Tetsuo 181]

I think the devs would actually prefer a much smaller player base for the mod. Something much more manageble for them would help to keep the project on track especially if they didn't have to deal wih a million people creating a million tents filled with a million AS50s that kept breaking the database...

[JamesR 74]

School started across the US during that time period.

[Joe_Blow 11]

School started across the US during that time period.

I think the school argument is moot. This number has been declining for months now and if the shools starting affected the turn out then we would see an increase on the weekends. However that is not the case over the weekend the umbers were at 134,000 tops.