DayZ, a zombie mod for ArmA2 - Now standalone on Steam Early Access

[Steve]

I wish they'd completely randomize the item spawn locations, you quickly learn where certain items can spawn so everytime you respawn it's almost always the same routine of checking those spawn buildings and ignoring everything else. They should also greatly reduce the spawn chance of rifle type weapons, the game would be much more interesting if most people relied on melee and only a VERY few had firearms with very limited ammo, I guess the rampant server hopping is part of the issue.

 

[CSM]

I am actually amazed that so many people still aren't disillusioned with this game. A year and a half for bicycle helmets?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Maybe because it's, you know, an alpha version.

Sent from my PC using Firefox

The standalone is really in too shit a state to be worth playing over the mod at this point, tbh. Considering they didn't have to write the engine from scratch, I'm amazed at just how little they've accomplished in over a year. Apparently they spent a lot of time working on the back-end, but considering core parts of their back-end such as loot and zombie spawns, physics and collision are not working properly yet it makes you wonder exactly how much time was spent working and how much time was spent trying to determine whose cumshots fly the furthest.

But that's what they actually did, they redesigned the whole "back end" to make it run a lot more like an MMO instead of client-side.

I don't understand how people here think designing games takes only a year.

And "writing engines from scrap" doesn't really happen all that much in game development:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games

 

[Jick Magger]

Been playing the early access with a few friends, and I'll definitely admit there's still alot of work to be done.

Even then, the game's got as much to offer as the mod does. My group of friends and I basically did everything worth doing by having a map, being organized, and knowing where we're going. Barely six hours in and we were all decked out in military equipment and weapons. All we really had left to do was fuck around with locals. Most we found were disorganized, in groups of two at best, and didn't know what the fuck to do when they had about five guys with automatic rifles yelling at them. Most of the time we just left them handcuffed and a bit frazzled for shits and giggles, but we quickly realized there wasn't much else to actually do beyond raid the numberous copy-pasted potatoland settlements to find cans of sardines.

 

[Zewp]

The more I see of the SA, the more I get the idea BIS likely pressured the DayZ team to release this on Early Access asap just to see some kind of return on their investment. The game is just too hideously incomplete for me to believe Rocket actually thought releasing it now would be a good idea.

There's a lot of potential, but this thing is at least another 6 months away from being in a properly playable state.

Also, they seriously need to implement some form of private database for servers. I know the public hive makes it easier to troubleshoot issues, but the public hive is a fuckup. At the very least, let every server that forms part of the public hive store it's character data separately.

 

[theSavant]

Still not finished? How often has it been delayed now. I wonder if WarZ (or now called: "Infestation") meanwhile developed better than this.

Edit: case closed, a short footage from november shows it still sux. I guess "7 days to die" remains one of the better zombie survival simulations.

 

[Darklife]

I am actually amazed that so many people still aren't disillusioned with this game. A year and a half for bicycle helmets?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

Maybe because it's, you know, an alpha version.

Sent from my PC using Firefox

Crap, forgot to take that annoying sig out of Tapatalk.

Anyways, if it indeed is no different than the mod, it definitely shouldn't start off at 20 bucks. They already made a fortune on Arma 2 and Arrowhead thanks to the rage two years ago. Hell I'ld buy it again, but 24 euros seems a steep price to revisit the same shit again.

 

[Zewp]

The price is a pretty big dick move, yeah. Rocket originally said he wanted to release it for less than $20, but BIS probably saw the rampant popularity of the mod and told Rocket to shove it.

 

[Surf Solar]

Just had my first heated situation. Thanks to SoupNazi 's orientation tips, I could find my way to the actual airbase I was looking for. I approached it from a pretty wide flank from the woods with more cover, instead of running through the city to reach it. Can never be too safe I guess. I approached the barracks and the first thing I found was a still bleeding body with quite a lot of equipment scattered around. I knew what this meant and closed all doors first, then tried to bluff over direct chat with my microphone "I can see you, you just murdered that chick over here, come down" since I suspected he was looting the the stashes upstairs. No response, but I was right, he came down sprinting the stairs, saw that the doors were closed and logged out immedieately. lolwat. I was quite thankful afterwards, since I only had one single bullet in my nagant and I am not sure if I could have hit him, was pretty quick. I took some loot, shiny new backpack with more place finally, a head torch (more of that soon), much needed food and drinks. Also finally a proper tac-vest. It's not all just dress up, I found a green one allowing me to blend in better with the enviroment and it has more place to store items in too. I took all I could get and legged it to the woods. Equipping the new shinies there, watching from a far if the guy logs back. Nothing. Eventually I started a second loot run, during the night. I found more nice stuff, stanag mags and finally an M4. I was pretty happy and forgot to deactivate my head torch, lighting up the barracks. Retarded fault of mine, as soon I heard the crack of a shot barely missing my head. Almost shat myself, realized I have no idea where the shot came from (from outside) so I had no chance fighting back in the middle of the dark. I ran in a bush to hide, then from tree to tree finally in the woods. Whew. Survived 3 days already, lets see how far I will come.

Main menu/pose :D

Loving those "double mags", first game I see stuff like this.

Sorry for long post, sounds probably boring to you, but it was some thrilling minutes for me. Game has a lot of potential if it can provide me with more situations like this!

 

[Zewp]

That's one thing I love about the game. It really has the potential to get your blood pumping, because every time you encounter another player you get thrown into a situation where it's not only your immediate survival that's at stake, but possibly hours of progress as well. The only problem with both the game and mod in their current state is that there is really little reason to leave someone you encounter alive, which is why whenever you encounter someone else they're likely to simply open fire on you.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Cool little story. Shame that your character doesn't remain on the world for a minute or so after you log off, that would discourage pussy tactics like disconnecting when cornered and coming back after an hour.

 

[Surf Solar]

Cool little story. Shame that your character doesn't remain on the world for a minute or so after you log off, that would discourage pussy tactics like disconnecting when cornered and coming back after an hour.

People also do "server hoppings". You are on one server, go to location XY. Look if there is loot. If there is none in the desired building, you log off the session and go into another server. You will spawn at the same location, but with a different state of the gameworld and perhaps find something more. Lame. My brother and his friend also got the game after todays session they watched me doing what I described above, and we definitely won't do shit like this.

If everything goes well, I want to try not to shoot everyone on sight, only the ones with raised weapons, especially firearms. Ocassionally you can still do shit like one of your mates putting the rifle on some poor guys head, while the other one in your group handcuffs the guy and the third member of your group forcefeeds some rotten kiwis to the poor sucker till he vomits and falls over. I have even seen some shit like a gang of well armed bandits chasing some newbie group. They killed two of the three guys in the group, left the last alive and "forced" the last surviving guy to now be their packmule in exchange for sparing his life. He played along and it was quite awesome, haha. This was especially creepy since I barely heard the bandits voices over my headphones as I took some safety distance to the situation and one guy sounded like a fucking psychopath over his microphone. Awesome. :D

 

[Surf Solar]

I have been further playing the game and have lots of fun. Game also instantly becomes better when you have friends playing with you (captain obvious reporting in). Since I died to a stupid server hopper last time (I don't really mind dying, collecting stuff anew is fun) we freshly spawned. And ofcourse, I spawned as a nigrette again, and he as my male counterpart. We decided to troll a bit and ran into towns, only equipped with knifes where we knew players would be and yelled annoying guttural voices all the time through our microphones so others can hear it. I saw 3 peopel running away in fear of our machete rape squad. I later saw a guy who just scavenged a building, my friend warned me that we have a visitor before. I automatically assumed he was hostile (have to get that habit out of my head), ran directly towards him and started knifing, while he did his "Hey guys =)" handwave. Little did I know that we played on a "PvE only!" server and he didn't even defend himself. Serves him right to play under such a stupid rule (luckily it isn't enforced). So we got ourselves some nice starting gear and better clothes.

We dicked around a bit more and got our hands on some military gear. Yay! I really like that M4 and the shooting mechanics inherited from ARMA. I logged off and my friend kept exploring the map a bit. Today I received a message "bro please help me, I am sitting on green mountain at its antenna and am almost dead, I need some saline packs and antiobitca asap!". So I went on a mission to loot the nearest cities hospital, got rid of a few zombies, saw another guy, fully equipped, simply running away ( oO ) and found the needed items. I am now on my way on the hiking trip to my buddy to heal him. Good fun.

 

[Darklife]

What the hell was he doing on Green Mountain? There's nothing there at all, or has this changed in the standalone?

 

[Zewp]

There's a small military base there now.

 

[Surf Solar]

He went hiking and saw the bigass tower at the horizon, yeah. And surprisingly, the military base was completely unlooted. Just no medicine there.

 

[WhiteGuts]

Servants of the Dark Lord

 

[Direwolf]

That's creepy as fuck.

 

[Surf Solar]

Haha! I thought I was the first one using my guitar pedals to pitch down my voice with the microphone and adding delay/distortion to my voice ingame whenever I want. We chased some people just by "attacking" them with my voice and driving them nuts. They even surrendered, just like the guy in the video, without us ever showing a weapon in our hands. :D The "baddies" in that video show a much superior wit when it comes to answering the questions of the guy though. :D

If someone did that to me, especially when I play alone and wear headphones and its dark in the game, I would have probably shit my pants. Same as I heard some guy heavily breathing just behind me the other day. He would get louder and louder, eventually fucking scream into the microphone while chasing me with an axe. What the fuck!

 

[Surf Solar]

Yesterday I did a scavenging run on a night server with my friend (made a lot of new friends over this game, its amazing, btw). As it was pitch black and the game has no name tags, I mistakenly shot a stranger who was sneaky nearby. A friend of him shot me, my friend shot him but died to a wound the other guy did to him (he was low on blood). Classical mexican standoff.

Then I went alone to a nearby army base. Resupplied myself, casually chatted with my brother over headset. Then suddenly a gunshot that was as loud as a fucking a-bomb almost ripped my ears. Even my brother heard it and got a jump of it over my headphones oO. I tried to talk to the guy, but he pinned me down. Waited it out instead of just switching server, tried to pin down the location the shot came from, but he disappeared.

I then, just some minutes ago logged back. Girlfriend asked if I play the game again, I said casually "ya I hear someone talking here" - 10 seconds later, I am dead. Apparently I spawned right into a gang fight, since I heard a lot of shots afterwards, heavy breathing and it eventually died down. Awesome game.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...sales_A_shots_fired_moment_for_publishers.php

In your opinion is this a "no way back" moment for game development? Is this a fundamental change and is the traditional model of making/releasing games effectively dead? (Maybe not for all audiences, but still!)
DH: I think if I was a publisher coming back from holidays, the success we made on a modest budget with no marketing must be a stinging blow and a very worrying sign.

Prior to our alpha release success, I think it was easy to write the DayZ experience off as a kind of anomaly. It was possible to think that this would not fully translate to the retail game, that the hype had gone, and that it would be business as usual. But I think 1 million sales in a month in such a specific market, at Christmas, with no marketing... that's got to be a "shots fired" moment for game publishers. If you take a look on Steam right now, I see DayZ on number 1 and Rust on number 2. That's not a slap in the face to the traditional publishing model -- it's a baseball bat at full swing.

I know for me, it says to me that I really can make the games I dreamed of a reality. People want these kinds of games and I don't need to convince traditional publishers the customer wants them. I just have to convince the customers. This was a watershed moment for me, but I can't say how others will receive it.

 

[Indranys]

Prior to our alpha release success, I think it was easy to write the DayZ experience off as a kind of anomaly. It was possible to think that this would not fully translate to the retail game, that the hype had gone, and that it would be business as usual. But I think 1 million sales in a month in such a specific market, at Christmas, with no marketing... that's got to be a "shots fired" moment for game publishers. If you take a look on Steam right now, I see DayZ on number 1 and Rust on number 2. That's not a slap in the face to the traditional publishing model -- it's a baseball bat at full swing.

I know for me, it says to me that I really can make the games I dreamed of a reality. People want these kinds of games and I don't need to convince traditional publishers the customer wants them. I just have to convince the customers. This was a watershed moment for me, but I can't say how others will receive it.

Wow, your previous ArmA DayZ mod is teh marketing pal, that's why the people know you're making standalone game in the first place.
And you're on STEAM EARLY ACCESS FFS!!1 That's the best marketing you can get for an indie bro.
No marketing my ass.
Safe your tears for the post release rage when the buyers spam your forum with hate threats and tell your child what a steaming pile of buggy shit your game is.

Spoiler

Damn what's this shit that I'm drinking man.

 

[Darklife]

Has anybody here played Rust? I haven't personally had the chance, but it sounds like it's leaps and bound beyond what DayZ is or will be.

 

[AngryEddy]

Has anybody here played Rust? I haven't personally had the chance, but it sounds like it's leaps and bound beyond what DayZ is or will be.

Yup. I enjoy it more than DayZ currently.

 

[CSM]

Wow, your previous ArmA DayZ mod is teh marketing pal, that's why the people know you're making standalone game in the first place.
And you're on STEAM EARLY ACCESS FFS!!1 That's the best marketing you can get for an indie bro.
No marketing my ass.
Safe your tears for the post release rage when the buyers spam your forum with hate threats and tell your child what a steaming pile of buggy shit your game is.

Spoiler

Damn what's this shit that I'm drinking man.

Angry much?

 

[Zewp]

Has anybody here played Rust? I haven't personally had the chance, but it sounds like it's leaps and bound beyond what DayZ is or will be.

It's fun as a team-based competitive multiplayer game, but DayZ offers more diversity in playstyle. In Rust if you're trying to play solo you're in for a very bad time.