***Dayz: Stand Alone Thread***

Associate
Joined
23 Nov 2013
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2,358
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Manchester
i think the sad thing is without just going over all the disapointment of what we all actually wanted the game to be it wont ever be as good as the mod.by the time it is something else will be out or it will be old hat.

tbh if you look what we did and how long ago it was in the mod.its already over.

there are better engines now and possibities and maps but no one can seem to pull off basically a walking dead style game with base building that works and 60 plus players and ZOMBIES !

id like someone to do it on avalanche 3.0 engine for just cause.maps are huge mp beta is just starting it looks great and in jc2 mp they managed to get upto 6000 people on a server.so it can be done and with huge numbers.just wish some one competent could bring it to life.

A total conversion mod for jc3 would be awesome
 
Soldato
Joined
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South West
I've now sunk 260 hours + into this game in 3 months and for all its faults, for me, there is no other game quite like it. Yes I've ‘rubberbanded’ off small ledges and died to hyperthermia when my status was bugged, yes I have had regular game/server crashes galore and experienced continued desync during any sort of PvP and of course bouncing vehicles after hitting players, but in spite of these issues something keeps me coming back.

For me, the biggest part of the draw is the absolute unknown as to what sort of encounter(s) I will have with each character and that they can come at any moment. I could have one evening where I literally run through typically ‘hot’ PvP zone and don’t see a soul, others I can just spawn in to the coast and suddenly find myself in the middle of a 6+ player battle and end up very geared in 10 minutes!

Two classic examples of the experience that no other game I have played would have given me:

1) I was playing on a first person server and came to this small town where this guy holds me up with a silenced pistol, communicates to me to say to put my hands up, after me pressing what later turned out to be the wave button (F1 rather than F2 – I was in a first person server so couldn’t see my character), I was shot and killed. Very salty I respawned on the coast and decided to take my frustration out on the first person I met… the first person I met was actually friendly, we chatted, ended up heading in the same direction and have since added each other on Steam and have met up almost daily for the past month and get on really well. We have also started to create DayZ content for YouTube.

2) Spawned in as a fresh spawn and suddenly met two people who tried to hold me up, until one was convinced I was a certain popular UK DayZ streamer and, thinking I was TRMZ making a video (which coincidently I was making a video), he proceeded to suck up to me and in spite my continued denials I was the presumed individual, it only served to reinforce his view. Anyway, the friend I mentioned above, and I were able to convince them to give their guns to us and when one got bored and tried to punch us we lit them up. Utterly hilarious.

The draw for me is the constant risk that at any moment a player or players might come along and hold up or kill my character, thereby losing the loot I'd taken 2 minutes or 2 days to gather. For some it would be hugely frustrating (initially it was for me) but what it does is forces a kind of interaction with people and I have made genuine IRL friends through the game from completely random encounters.

Development of this has been slow but when you think, this game was based on the same engine as Arma but from the start it was planned to move to a completely new engine, which has meant developing two games side by side (in effect). With 0.61 came the enfusion sound engine which has changed things enormously, as well as changes to lighting effects but now the 0.62 is nearing experimental the devs have fully migrated the game over to the new engine, which means development will be far far far quicker than before.

Perhaps they would have been better to have created the engine before releasing the game to Alpha but remember, the whole resin d'etre of this game is to not only develop a new sandbox engine but to allow modding, which as we all know, does wonders for selling copies of the game!

If anyone is interested in the game, perhaps grabbing a cheap copy in the next Steam sale would be a good idea but for me, having spent hours in Arma III in various guises, I haven't played it since buying DayZ.
 
Soldato
Joined
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Herts, UK
I've now sunk 260 hours + into this game in 3 months and for all its faults, for me, there is no other game quite like it.

While I can understand what you are saying, and I am sure I have played enough hours to make the initial price worthwhile, there just isn't enough point to the game to keep me coming back, so haven't loaded it in a few months. The idea of just pure survival isn't really a reason to continue playing.

What they really need to do is develop a point to the game, something like having a zombie hoard spawn somewhere so that everyone on the map will congregate to fight for or team-up to gain something (loot or vehicle or something) by taking out the hoard.
This was one of the good things about Arma2:Overpoch, the random mission spawns brought people together for a reason, rather than purely KoS random sightings.
 
Soldato
Joined
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Not every game will appeal to everyone. Arma is a different animal to DayZ now and I would expect after the game goes to Beta and modding starts, you will find someone developing an Arma 3 killer for sure as visually (even without the new graphic engine) the game is stunning.


I do understand why people struggle with the point of the game and of course it does lack this ‘end game’ driving force but in a way, that’s what makes it realistic; if you found yourself in the position of being hungry and thirsty with nothing but a rag and a flare in the middle of a foreign land with infected, wolves, the environment and even other players, all stacked up against you – surely finding a way to survive is drive enough until other factors are introduced?


Then there is looting (which I find incredibly relaxing, weirdly), negotiating the 225 km2 map with various tactics needed to approach key points. There is talk about introducing a class ranking system for things like hunting etc. For me, one motivation would be hours survived as although the end point for most is to gear up with full military kit in the north west and find PvP but the freedom the game brings has led me to try and survive from just food found on zombies and fishing (no apples), get to the north west with nothing more than a chambered pistol and bow and arrow, do a complete lap of the map, discover loot routes based on spawn point – for me the options are endless which is what I like.


I don’t have much time to game these days so looting a town for ½ hour and then log off can be entertaining in itself but more often than not I enjoy being a fresh spawn and see what interactions I can have on the coast.


All this one has to continually remember that t is an Alpha (yes it's become a bit of a standing joke) but for me, I came to the game well into 0.60 so it has been a very different experience for me than most that have played it with later 0.5x patches.


Base building is due to come in, as well as more vehicles (push bikes and motorbikes) as well as planes and helicopters, with the likelihood of boats coming as well.


The sheer scale and development of the Chenarus map as well, sets the game aside from others. It’s nearly 3x the size of GTA5 map for starters!


The interaction of the game is such that this alone would keep me coming back and is something that I have never found (or even wanted) from another game. Miscreated is a different animal and nowhere near as good. Arma 2 mods are obviously the closest but even with the updated Arma III, I simply struggle with the issues that Bohemia refuse to fix (hitbox and so on). With all it’s faults, DayZ SA has so much potential, I just hope real progress can now be made since hitting the recent engine milestone
 
Associate
Joined
23 Nov 2013
Posts
2,358
Location
Manchester
Not every game will appeal to everyone. Arma is a different animal to DayZ now and I would expect after the game goes to Beta and modding starts, you will find someone developing an Arma 3 killer for sure as visually (even without the new graphic engine) the game is stunning.


I do understand why people struggle with the point of the game and of course it does lack this ‘end game’ driving force but in a way, that’s what makes it realistic; if you found yourself in the position of being hungry and thirsty with nothing but a rag and a flare in the middle of a foreign land with infected, wolves, the environment and even other players, all stacked up against you – surely finding a way to survive is drive enough until other factors are introduced?


Then there is looting (which I find incredibly relaxing, weirdly), negotiating the 225 km2 map with various tactics needed to approach key points. There is talk about introducing a class ranking system for things like hunting etc. For me, one motivation would be hours survived as although the end point for most is to gear up with full military kit in the north west and find PvP but the freedom the game brings has led me to try and survive from just food found on zombies and fishing (no apples), get to the north west with nothing more than a chambered pistol and bow and arrow, do a complete lap of the map, discover loot routes based on spawn point – for me the options are endless which is what I like.


I don’t have much time to game these days so looting a town for ½ hour and then log off can be entertaining in itself but more often than not I enjoy being a fresh spawn and see what interactions I can have on the coast.


All this one has to continually remember that t is an Alpha (yes it's become a bit of a standing joke) but for me, I came to the game well into 0.60 so it has been a very different experience for me than most that have played it with later 0.5x patches.


Base building is due to come in, as well as more vehicles (push bikes and motorbikes) as well as planes and helicopters, with the likelihood of boats coming as well.


The sheer scale and development of the Chenarus map as well, sets the game aside from others. It’s nearly 3x the size of GTA5 map for starters!


The interaction of the game is such that this alone would keep me coming back and is something that I have never found (or even wanted) from another game. Miscreated is a different animal and nowhere near as good. Arma 2 mods are obviously the closest but even with the updated Arma III, I simply struggle with the issues that Bohemia refuse to fix (hitbox and so on). With all it’s faults, DayZ SA has so much potential, I just hope real progress can now be made since hitting the recent engine milestone
I remember being this enthusiastic about the game, and defending it countless times on forums. But that was 2 years ago, its been a painful development cycle, with months and months between updates. I like the survival direction it's taking and moving away from the team death match esq Arma 2 Dayz/3mods. But I remain sceptical, I also think Miscreated will be better
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
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25,741
I bought this, well, it must be two or three years ago as pre-access. It was awful. bugs everywhere, Zombies walking through walls, you'd die of hunger before you'd die of thirst etc. I know it was Alpha ta the time, from what I've heard it hasn't even launched yet and is still riddled with bugs?

Just checked, Boxing day 2013 I bought this. And it's STILL in Alpha? I get that there isn't a huge team working on it but THREE YEARS is laughable.
 
Associate
Joined
26 Nov 2004
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980
Location
Carshalton, Surrey
I very much doubt i will every fire this up again, was very excited when it was first announced picked it up as soon as it was up for EA, within the first 6 months i was disappointed at the lack of real progress with in a year i was totally fed up and just dropped it. I just see it as a massive money grab by the devs cashing in on the mods success. I'm sure its leaps and bounds better than it was in the first year but then they are knocking on 3 years now so it should be.
 
Associate
Joined
1 May 2007
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1,810
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Manchester. UK
Yeah for the whole time i kept trying dayz they barely had any zombies as they crashed the servers or something like that, they would also clip through walls or through the floor. devs just ignored it and carried on making new hats.

so have they got large mobs of zombies now? are they actually a threat?
 
Soldato
Joined
10 Mar 2009
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4,473
Location
South West
Zombies are more of a threat, yes. Particularly with the fact that every town and city has some element of infected presence, the more players there are in the area, the more infected there are. Also the risk now is in firing non-suppressed weapons causes infected to agro and in no time you could well have 3,4 or 10 chasing after you; it causes players to think more before engaging in PvP, also it’s a great way to spot players when scoping out a town. The issue with infected is that they are using the new animation controller but the new player controller hasn’t come in yet (0.63) so issues arise when higher ping servers give rise to dsync. Generally they are not an issue.

Edited to add - wolves were added in 0.61 and ARE a real threat. These tend to spawn Novo/northern highway right across to Zelenogorsk on west and most of the time you will be alerted to their presence by a howl (pretty eery) and you have about 10-20 seconds to change direction and possibly avoid them agro'ing on you. If they have spawned in the area you can suddenly find yourself in the midst of a pursuit or even stumble across zombies getting attacked by them which is a great way to lose some/all by running near infected.
They hunt in packs and contrary to popular belief, there is no 'alpha male' so you may have to take out one and the pack dissipates or 3-4. Packs can consist of 2 or 3 dogs to even joining packs and 10+ can give chase. You need 2-3 9mm rounds per dog or 1-2 shotgun rounds to kill each dog but they are persistent and have personally seen them give chase across areas of the map for 20 minutes and even sitting in a house with doors shut, they will not despawn. Bears are due to be added in at some point which I think will be more of a western/central spawn (forest areas).

The bigger issue at the moment is the occasional random game crashes, probably once every 3 hours or so. Frustrating but I tend to only play for an hour or two at one time.

If someone hasn’t played the game since 0.59 then I would definitely recommend getting into it again. The gripe many have is often down to the comparison between the mod and standalone – until standalone is in beta, only then will the game be able to be modded and I believe it will see a big influx of players again.

Remember, this is most likely going to form the basis for the next Arma game - they are building an entirely new engine, yet splicing it to the old engine as it is being built, no mean feat! Most engine development takes 3-5 years.

Saying that, probably the mistake was to bring the game out first before creating new engine... something they realised they had to do once they'd started the project. I’m not defending them but explaining why it's been as big a buggy mess at times.

The game, overall isn't too bad at the moment. Personally I would take the cars out as they are just stupid but appreciate they have very few people playing experimental so harder to test. I’ve put in hundreds of hours into the game over the past few months, I have very little time to game but something keeps drawing me back to it and I really cannot wait to see what the modding community comes up with!
 
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