Private/Public HIVES, Playing/Testing and Your Clan

[[email protected] 101]

I think it's an interesting topic for discussion because I've seen how the hacking, connection issues, artifact glitches, failure of tents and vehicles to save has effected the active player base of a many established clans, and throughout the complaints I'm reminded this an alpha mod for a great game that was never without it's issues.

I play Cobalt, KSP and a bunch of other games in their early stages of development and always try to assume the role of supportive tester rather than self-entitled consumer.

I've never forced my self to play through really glitchy builds beyond finding and reporting the bugs I'd found. But being part of an active clan, and being in contact with several other active clans, I know we've felt pressured to play through whatever state the mod has been in.

This mod gained explosive momentum and I haven't seen so many groups spring up so fast in an alpha FPS in my experience. You can make the argument that this being an unstable build it may be too early to create serious clans, bases etc, but I think most people as Rocket has said see factions as an integral part of this games future.

The problem then is keeping clans together and having players want to remain active. This is easy when the the 'fun parts' of the mod are working, when they're creating camps, scavenging for vehicle parts and fighting legitimate battles. But when the fragility of the mod shows it's face and sticks around, it can be a lot harder to keep the voluntary testers wanting to log in on their time off.

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So that said, I was watching DevilDogGamer a few days ago and he spoke on how his clan were going to move over to a private HIVE because they had become frustrated with the hacking situation.

I agree with the majority of what he says "..cant even ban hackers that are ruining the test".

It's a good choice of words, and while I feel uncomfortable with the idea that we hacking the mod (which is which is essentially what your doing in running a server not connected to the public HIVE), making our fun paramount, failing to share information with BI and just utilizing Rocket and BIs efforts is properly supportive of DayZ.

Maybe it's more important that people want to play and that the community continue to want to support even if that means running private HIVEs before they are fully condoned or supported.

If it means positive word of mouth and a sustained player base is it actually more befit than harm.

What's your clans take on this, are you running a private HIVE already or thinking of moving to one?

Do you think Devil Dogs approach is selfish or unsupported of DayZs progress.

[Never 237]

This tester/player base has always been more focused on their themselves rather than the mod i fear.

Mainly because it seems a lot of people joined with 'awesome zombie pvp game' in mind when the mindset should be 'interesting but broken test mod'. The Dev team hasn't helped the situation either by not carrying out standard Alpha stuff like resets on major patches etc.

I think it may have got to the point where the testerplayers that understood the process have been a little shocked by the amateur way Rockets progressed his mod. These are the people with the knowhow, but seeming the test process has become stagnant, they have thought 'fuck it' and made the changes that don't seem to be coming.

Now that would suck, but we are in an odd position atm with DayZmod.

The way i see it, Rocket hasn't given us anything worth testing for a while. And the stuff he has added has been broken, but then not fixed. Simply put, i think the players with a testers mentality have had enough of vital issues being ignored while the head dev fantasies about adding K-9 units onto a buggy engine that most likely will have issues about it. Add in the fantasy excuse of 'oh we can't fix that til standalone' and basically we've had enough. Some of the 'unfixable' issues have been sorted by the community on these private servers.

We've hit a split.

The 'hardcore' want a mil-sim based zombie game.

Rocket wants a multi-platform moneymaker. (it seems. quite possibly not the case, but all the talk of consoledayz and poorly thought through final content is seemingly alienating the first group.)

The more 'Casual' gamer just wants a stable game, they don't really care who provides it.

[SumoS 168]

In the past I have been very against private HIVE servers. I still think it is a selfish option to take away all the hard work from the devs, but I can empathize with a lot of people that are doing it. If there is no longer an incentive to test then what else is there to do? If they are making the standalone alongside, using the mod as a test bed for their ideas then they need to give players a reason to come back and test. I am not suggesting rewards. Merely bringing back the enjoyment in the gameplay.

There are many games that have gone through development stages that looked completely screwed, due to bugs/ exploiters etc, but these had some element of enjoyment to them. This made players satisfied that they were working toward a goal. Turning the pile of mismatched features and buggy situations into a polished experience.

The current state of the mod is still in the buggy alpha stage but I think somewhere between the lines the fun factor has ebbed away. We have the same features and rules. The same bugs, but now these are starting to out-weigh the satisfaction of playing whilst also providing feedback.

I can certainly see why they need to test for everything. The more they test the better the standalone will be. The game was made famous for making your own stories but players have been frustrated and are now taking to private HIVEs so they can make better stories that are not affected negatively by hackers and hotfix screw ups.

With a mod based on scripts, it is inevitable that stuff will be copied and stolen. The fact that there are now less people testing for the good of the mod and more people playing the game on their own terms is certainly a daunting task for the development team to try turn around. I hope they do. The game to come from this test bed has lots of potential but if they add too much whilst ignoring the issues that were created then the level of testers will continue to drop off.

Overall, I am looking at all the options objectively. I want to help this mod go on to great things but I still need a reason to offer a service by supplying a server. Hypothetically, wouldn't it be a better service if I offered what people wanted? That question is what is troubling me.

[SillySil 295]

To do something people need to get something out of it. Either it's fun to test something or it's not fun but really wanna help or you get paid. No one is paying me to test this. At the start I wanted to help and gave my detailed feedback and it pretty much ended in "it's alpha", "codfag", "stop complaining", etc, and I don't really "believe" in the dev team anymore, since they can't even temporarily remove the dead soldiers while they fix the artifacts but instead babble something about dogs. So the only thing that keeps me playing is having fun. But I find it very hard to have fun on public hive. Hacking just makes playing almost impossible. On the private hive you have admins that ban cheaters in a matter of seconds and anti-script scripts running so they even get autobanned. That's why I play on private hive.

[[email protected] 101]

Exactly, I couldn't really agree more or have put it better myself.

.."I want to help this mod go on to great things but I still need a reason to offer a service by supplying a server. Hypothetically, wouldn't it be a better service if I offered what people wanted? That question is what is troubling me."

This is the conflict because "To do something people need to get something out of it." and at the moment that is leaning more towards frustration with a test of patients.

I still support this mod and the standalone and would even go as far as to say Rocket should always do what he feels is best before putting anyone elses priorities first.

But if private HIVES aren't supported soon and as the communication between we as voluntary testers and they as devs gradually becomes less frequent as the volume of players and posts become overwhelming, I can see myself putting the health of my clan before the productivity of the mod.

I genuinly feel like this testing faze benefits from the contribution of organised factions like ours and I hope Rocket makes an effort to support the communities and individuals forking out hundreds of pounds a month to provide services without which this mod would suffer.

Edited August 21, 2012 by Criminal

[Yshido 34]

Right now a private hive is the way to go.