State of DayZ

[galdis 10]

To whom it concerns,

The entire moderation team is disrespectful to the community that pays it so much reverence. The moderators are all so sensitive to any sort of criticism that they remove any shred of it which is completely counter-intuitive to producing a working alpha. Whenever anyone rightly calls the moderation or development team out on their bad calls, their laziness, or their abuse, it is completely snuffed out. The moderation team refuses to follow its own rules which shows how childish their conceptions of virtue, justice, and fairness are. They love to enforce rules and will their power however they see fit on the forums but do nothing when their game is being ruined by hackers and abusive admins and players.

I understand that some people are abusive in how they present their arguments but removing it, or removing any thread pre-emptively for fear of escalation, only makes you look foolish. Instead of calmly rebuking these people and letting their stupidity explain itself, you fall down to their level of handling situations with ugly, brute force. It's sad enough that anyone who points out issues with the mod that have not been fixed for months is immediately shut down in that most condescending and illogical catchphrase so lovingly engendered in the naive fanbase by the development team to avoid their shortcomings: "It's an alpha, so deal with it".

I give Rocket credit for creating something great, but he clearly lacks the constitution and resolve to change his ways and do it properly. His responses to criticism consist of "give me a break," "it's an alpha," or "you're banned" without ever acknowledging the legitimacy of the criticism. The fact that he allows the current moderation team to run wild while his development team does absolutely nothing is not a good sign for the future of this mod and its standalone release.

To make things even more embarrassing, what bugs and glitches Rocket has, for months, failed to fix have been solved by several isolated modders. These hash-tag groups remove most of or all the bugs and glitches that Rocket ignores, creates, or exacerbates with the new builds. Most of these issues are so easily fixed in the code that it boggles the mind as to why the team has not been able to remedy these problems in the first place. One can only interpret this as incompetence.

I am fairly certain this thread will be moved, locked, and/or deleted altogether with some condescending and irrelevant remark by the moderation team or the ridiculous fanbase. However, I still have hope for DayZ and that is why I am posting, even if I have no faith in the current team.

Edited August 22, 2012 by galdis

[darknight558 41]

You do realise that they are still people right? Just because they make a successful mod doesn't mean they have to change who they are. They still have emotion. If you feel that the game would be better off with EA drones that's your call. But I believe they should stay the way they are. Gamers who can only take so much shit before they just close the problem off entirely.

The Anti-Bandits Steam Group:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/TAB-DayZ

[Snake956 1]

At least, you know ive read the message.

ive never had a bad experience with any of the staff member (well, i didnt had time), but moderating a forum is really hard and coding is too.

Remember that this is a mod, and the conceptors also have a life, and cannot spend 24 hours per day each day to work on it. Also, making a mod is kinda hard, because there are some things you cannot edit and make it like you want, because of the original code and the game engine.

[galdis 10]

If they don't care enough about perfecting their project then why should we care about the project at all? If they are not willing to put all their effort into such a massive undertaking, how can we trust they will produce a viable product? And saying it's too hard because of code limitations is hardly an excuse - modders have been breaking those limitations for years.

I am not saying they don't have emotions. On the contrary, I am saying they are far too emotional, particularly when it comes to criticism and forum moderation.

I would be far less critical if they responded to criticism with tangible fixes rather than pointless verbal responses.

Edited August 22, 2012 by galdis

[shadow_moses 50]

HA Ha ha ha ha ha

[spammy@live.de 19]

To make things even more embarrassing, what bugs and glitches Rocket has, for months, failed to fix have been solved by several isolated modders. These hash-tag groups remove most of or all the bugs and glitches that Rocket ignores, creates, or exacerbates with the new builds. Most of these issues are so easily fixed in the code that it boggles the mind as to why the team has not been able to remedy these problems in the first place. One can only interpret this as incompetence.

Post links to those fixes. Do you mean the Lingor island team?

Just interested. I had a look at the code myself and "most of those issues" are not easiy fixed at all... In fact, trying to fix them at the mod level would be a waste of time.

[hatfieldcw 184]

Oh, man, I love a good whinge as much as the next guy, but demanding perfection doesn't constitute constructive criticism. These people owe you nothing, and your attitude demonstrates your failure to understand that. They're allowed to do a bad job, to disappoint and anger you, and to produce a shoddy product. You don't get to pass judgement on their character just because you've got a boner for what you hope the project could someday become.

I can't count the number of times I've been crushed when my expectations weren't met. I remember the early write-ups on how Mission: Impossible was going to rock crotches on the N64, and I bought that turd the first chance I got. Sucked. Made me die a little inside. I remember being late to classes as I read up on all the things Bungie was going to put into Halo, the Mac-only persistent world strategy game they'd been working on for years, with revolutionary new physics, a vast, open world and constant background simulation of thousands of units and resources. How about Starcraft: Ghost? Is Wavinator still making the perfect video game? I'd kickstart his ass to the moon and back if I got a chance, but I think he's gotten married and raised some kids and gotten a nine to five job since his first visionary posts on GameDev, so that opus is likely gathering dust somewhere. The Dwarf Fortress update blog is like watching a progress bar go from 5% to 6% over the course of a year, but I have dreams about what 100% could look like.

Your emotional investment matters to the developers, but not very much. They like to hear that people are excited about their project, and they appreciate useful, concise feedback from the community, but this kind of hateful whining does not achieve anything. The best you can hope for would be for someone to give you a little negative attention. Is that what you're after? You want people to look at you, even if it's just a momentary scowl of distaste? Well, you've got it, kid. Congratulations.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

The moderation team are separate from the development team. If you don't like how the forum's are run then that's a separate issue from disapproving of the development process. Most posts that I see get locked or removed is simply because there are already many posts discussing the points raised. The fact that the people posting the threads seem unable to use the search function means that they are creating a pointless thread rather than contributing to an existing one discussing the points already raised.

Some of the major bugs that persist will remain a problem until the standalone because of the issues with the Arma engine. The same issue goes for hacking. I'm not sure what mods your referring to that have dealt with these issues because you seem to have omitted them from your post. Is it that these mods run on private servers? If so, there's your answer. Many of the issues faced by the DayZ team stem from trying to allow players to have persistent characters across multiple servers, something Arma was never created to allow, it's another issue that can only really be dealt with when they have access to the engine and more.

Rocket has recently spoken openly in interviews about the problems with the mod (hackers/bugs ect.). He has always been honest about his intentions and communicated openly with the "fanbase", which your part of BTW. If you can't be bothered to read the many articles or watch the many Q&A sessions given on the topics you've raised then that's up to you. Maybe you'd prefer the comforting corporate bollocks usually spouted by the major labels during the development process.

Maybe you should just take a break from the game for a bit, come back in a couple of months and then see what you make of the progress. Better still, if your not happy then just wait for the release of the standalone, problem solved.

[galdis 10]

Beez and Fraggle, you both make perfectly valid points, but consider that I took a whole month off from the game. When I came back, the same bugs and glitches were there and the public servers became unplayable. Telling me to "hope for the best" is not very reassuring. I know he is open about the issues and is far more humble than many other developers. Hell, I wouldn't even say he is close to "the worst". However I don't feel like I have seen any progress on this mod since I started playing three months ago and that is where my frustration stems from. I also completely disagree with one of your points, Beez: developers should care a lot about the investment of their fans. A game is meant to be played and enjoyed. It is not perfection I want, it is results.

Engine limitations is valid to a point and it is true that DayZ became a much larger phenomenon than anyone anticipated. I don't think Rocket is doing wrong by developing a separate engine, but this is often said as a mindless response to any criticism.

I cannot fully explain the "mods" because I myself don't fully understand it (oh, the irony), but the other player who admins with me on my private server managed to tweak the code in a way that fixed many of the issues with the recent build - namely, issues with artifacting, vehicle and tent saving as well as object persistence. He essentially read up on how the code works and made the SQL rely on other files to save. It is a decidedly bare-bones workaround, but I can confirm that it works, and he did it in about a week. Most of that week was spent learning the code and testing the fix - the actual "fixing" only took about 3 hours. I believe he already posted about this on the forums but it went completely ignored.

Furthermore, I have no idea why you guys think I support EA or "comforting corporate bollocks" because I never said that in any of my posts nor did I mean to imply it. If I had to choose between Rocket or some slag at EA, Activision, or Ubisoft, I would take Rocket any day.

Edited August 22, 2012 by galdis

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

The tweaks your friend managed to implement were on a private server. My point still stands.

Also, a couple of months really isn't a very long time when you consider that many of the big budget games nowadays take years to complete. I don't mean to play the Alpha card (I know you hate it) but it really is a relevant response to some of your criticisms. Alpha testing phases aren't usually open to the public, maybe now we know why.

I mentioned the "corporate bollocks" because I prefer the open approach used by Rocket. I do think they could communicate better on the forums sometimes but some of his more flipant responses to criticism was when this was a very small mod running on a few servers. I'd rather they spend their time working on the game than answering the endless drivel spewed across these forums by people that don't understand what it is they're even playing (I'm not including you in that BTW). Rocket spends hours reading the forum's but if he was to get involved in the debates on here he'd have no time to do anything else. The last thread he made about a hotfix had to be locked in the end after he spent hours answering irrelevant questions and responding to trolls and whiners.

Anyway. The Alpha has done it's job. A standalone is on the way. When that is released and we have paid for it then we will be in a position to complain if bugs, hackers and so on are not dealt with.

[galdis 10]

The tweaks your friend managed to implement were on a private server. My point still stands.

Also, a couple of months really isn't a very long time when you consider that many of the big budget games nowadays take years to complete. I don't mean to play the Alpha card (I know you hate it) but it really is a relevant response to some of your criticisms. Alpha testing phases aren't usually open to the public, maybe now we know why.

I mentioned the "corporate bollocks" because I prefer the open approach used by Rocket. I do think they could communicate better on the forums sometimes but some of his more flipant responses to criticism was when this was a very small mod running on a few servers. I'd rather they spend their time working on the game than answering the endless drivel spewed across these forums by people that don't understand what it is they're even playing (I'm not including you in that BTW). Rocket spends hours reading the forum's but if he was to get involved in the debates on here he'd have no time to do anything else. The last thread he made about a hotfix had to be locked in the end after he spent hours answering irrelevant questions and responding to trolls and whiners.

Anyway. The Alpha has done it's job. A standalone is on the way. When that is released and we have paid for it then we will be in a position to complain if bugs, hackers and so on are not dealt with.

Fair points. We can only hope.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Yay, let's hug. Or not.

[Flam625 8]

If they don't care enough about perfecting their project then why should we care about the project at all? If they are not willing to put all their effort into such a massive undertaking, how can we trust they will produce a viable product? And saying it's too hard because of code limitations is hardly an excuse - modders have been breaking those limitations for years.

I am not saying they don't have emotions. On the contrary, I am saying they are far too emotional, particularly when it comes to criticism and forum moderation.

I would be far less critical if they responded to criticism with tangible fixes rather than pointless verbal responses.

They cant drop every motherfucking thing to fix what you call top priority, they are trying to work on a FUCKING engine so give them a vreak and give them time, BE PAITENT and you will see that the game will turnout to be fucking awesome so dont be a prick.

[Quaby 93]

If they don't care enough about perfecting their project then why should we care about the project at all? If they are not willing to put all their effort into such a massive undertaking, how can we trust they will produce a viable product? And saying it's too hard because of code limitations is hardly an excuse - modders have been breaking those limitations for years.

I am not saying they don't have emotions. On the contrary, I am saying they are far too emotional, particularly when it comes to criticism and forum moderation.

I would be far less critical if they responded to criticism with tangible fixes rather than pointless verbal responses.

Dude, they have lives. They shouldn't have to sit under a lamp for twelve hours a day just to perfect things on a mod. Hell, the standalone is coming out in a few months, so I am sure they are pretty busy. If I made a free mod, I wouldn't be very happy if a whole group of people said, "OMG IT HAZ BUGZ FIX DEM PLZZZZ YEW R RUINING DIS MAWD!" Dayz is free, they are not making any money on this, so why should they pour huge amounts of effort into it? Nobody paid for this mod. You paid for arma 2 CO. DayZ is a nice little perk. Sure, they could stand to clean up a few things, but be patient. This is not their occupation, it is a side project. Give them time and your support, and it will be the beautiful game we all hope it will become.

[spammy@live.de 19]

This is not their occupation, it is a side project. Give them time and your support, and it will be the beautiful game we all hope it will become.

Uhm... they work for BI and DayZ made MILLIONS for BI. The standalone will double that. Yet, it will be run by ~5 devs. Other companies got 50-200 people / 10-30 devs working on a game for years. Do the math. It will be stuck in alpha FOREVER.

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Uhm... they work for BI and DayZ made MILLIONS for BI. The standalone will double that. Yet, it will be run by ~5 devs. Other companies got 50-200 people / 10-30 devs working on a game for years. Do the math. It will be stuck in alpha FOREVER.

Yup, that's a winning mathematical formula. Can you look over my accounts for me?