Still thinking

[SovietDooM]

Watched a few videos, read a some stuff, still rolling it over if I'm gonna pick this up.

The AI mechanics seemed kind of cluncky, zombies getting caught up in doorways.
Inventory seem most tedious.
Justed watched a pub get kid napped, seems like a number of ass hats around.


What are folks positives and negatives of the game?


And how do the servers work and getting in the same place with a group of friends?

Oh and can you just jump in and start, pick up were you started, one continues story?

What happens when you die?

[SpecOpsScott]

Where to begin.

You start alone, with nothing but a flashlight, painkillers and a bandage.
Pay close attention to the lower right of the screen when you log in, its the only time you will see your general location, and it only lasts a few seconds.
Most of us are now familiar enough with the map to know where we are in general and can navigate pretty well without a compass or map, but we can get to pinpoint locations with a map or GPS. If a newbie joins up with us in TS, but is still on the coast, we usually form an escort party to help them gear up. We show them the ropes usually, to help them learn to manage Zeds and find the best safest areas to loot in the future should they die and an escort party is not availible. Some of us usually carry around some extra items like GPS's or NVG's that we find in tents or crash sites so we can help a new spawn at a moments notice. I was the beneficiary of this practice just the other night after getting mowed down by what appeared to be an invisible hacker. Got 90% geared with top end weapons in about 4 hours.

If you do it old school, effectively gearing up with enough items to sustain survival in the north, it takes about an hour, maybe a little less. If you go for the gusto and want military grade weapons and a Coyote back pack, it could take hours or even days. IF you know some fully stocked tents that are in a state of perpetual duping, you could be fully geared with top of the like weapons in however long it takes you to spawn and run to the tent location.

Zombies are a distraction, and are far less dangerous than the other players on the servers. You'll need to deal with them while gearing up or returning to town for meds at the very least. Technically, with a few essential items, you can survive forever in the north by hunting but trust me, its a boring existence. But back to zombies. They are better than they were a few patches ago. Zombies can appear clunky as they are drawn and controled server side until you agro them, then they switched to client side AND server side. You'll notice this when another player close to you agros and kills the Zombie before you see the animation completed, making it seem like the zed ran through your buddy then rubber banded back 20 feet and died. The larger your ping difference, the more noticeable this is.

You characters life is linear. You start with nothing, build him up with gear and weapons, survive by sneaking or killing and see how long you can make it. Set goals to make things interesting. Raid the northwest air strip on a server with 5 people on it... you are assured to see at least one of them there, or loot choppers or counter snipe. Maybe you want to take and hold one of the castles by setting up ambushes, or to make it real tough announce that you are there to guys approaching and let them know they cannot enter. You can play it as slow or as fast as you want. But, when you die, you lose it all. Sometimes you can get it back, most of the time you cant, and you start over. All your stats except "humanity" get reset.

There are still asshats, but i would say less than there was a month ago. And stuff like kidnappings and robberies just dont take place anymore since most people would just disconnect rather than play along.

[SovietDooM]

So what's the deal, what's the point of the game? You meet up with friends in TS, all hope on to a server together, and have to survive as long as you can, the zombie infection while they and other players try to kill you. What's the heading up north deal? This sounds like a WoW raiding party, it this just a survival game?

[SpecOpsScott]

So what's the deal, what's the point of the game? You meet up with friends in TS, all hope on to a server together, and have to survive as long as you can, the zombie infection while they and other players try to kill you. What's the heading up north deal? This sounds like a WoW raiding party, it this just a survival game?

A survival game is exactly what it is. There are hot spots on the map where the risk of player interaction and conflict are increased, and places where its relatively safe. There are no missions other than the ones you create yourself. There is no endgame or bosses and moving from city to city is done in real time, not instanced. Its about as far from WoW as you can get.

[Pint]

If your quick to ask 'whats the point of the game' then you won't like this as it has no point. There is no story, no one driving the narrative its a sandbox, you make your own point to the game or you sit on the beach wishing you had your 15 bucks back.

[SovietDooM]

I can dig a survival game, but there doensn't seem much point at this time if there is a stand alone being released in a few months. And I'm trying to get a feel for this before I jump in with both feet.

[Kill8ox]

I have NOT touched other games since i bought ARMA II+Arrowhead only for DayZ.
Davecraze has not slept in 3 day's because he was playing this game 24/7. It sounds boring and dull but when you got the hang of it , you are going to love it.

[Warflagon]

I loved it for the first few weeks, just running around alone trying to survive, scrounging for supplies and stashing things in tents for later use.

About the time I was able to survive for a day or two I lost interest.
I think it was mainly due to the state of the game; hackers, not many strangers on voice, server resets erasing gear stored in tents, mob clipping/warping/ attacking through walls, etc....

Love the idea, love the setting, love the freedom. I plan to go back sometime in the future when some of these things are working better, but even if I never play again I feel my got my $30 worth in those few weeks.

Edit - I have not played in a month. Maybe some of those issues have been addressed.

[SpecOpsScott]

I loved it for the first few weeks, just running around alone trying to survive, scrounging for supplies and stashing things in tents for later use.

About the time I was able to survive for a day or two I lost interest.
I think it was mainly due to the state of the game; hackers, not many strangers on voice, server resets erasing gear stored in tents, mob clipping/warping/ attacking through walls, etc....

Love the idea, love the setting, love the freedom. I plan to go back sometime in the future when some of these things are working better, but even if I never play again I feel my got my $30 worth in those few weeks.

Edit - I have not played in a month. Maybe some of those issues have been addressed.

I agree, i feel the same way yet i am strangely drawn back to the game nearly every night, at least for a little while.

Some things have been adressed. The server resets due to de syncing have all but gone away, and hackers seem to be letting off as the game ages (they are still there though, both the griefers and the aimbotting teleproters). But tents and vehicles are still royally screwed. You cant save gear in tents, and the old tents are still duping. You cant save vehicles or gear in vehicles. One night i had a bicycle, i tooled around the map for a while when a scheduled restart hit. I saved the bike and logged. When i came back in i had a motorcycle, all green and full of gas, but i could not store gear in it, anything i put in evaporated.

[Thorsen]

If your quick to ask 'whats the point of the game' then you won't like this as it has no point. There is no story, no one driving the narrative its a sandbox, you make your own point to the game or you sit on the beach wishing you had your 15 bucks back.

I take issue with the idea that DayZ is a sandbox game. Thing is; I love sandbox games. Minecraft, Wurm Online, Skyrim, Mount & Blade etc. I also love realistic/slow paced games. I was a huge fan of Project Reality for a long time.

DayZ bores the shit out of me, and I'll tell you why.

My biggest issue is there aren't any goals in DayZ.

Hold your horses, I know it's a sandbox game and you make your own goals, but what exactly are the options in this game? You either A) Run around until you die. Or B) Sit still till you die. There MUST be options in a sandbox game. You must be able to create buildings and fortifications, take land as your own, produce goods and provide services to foster an economy. You must have skills that have to be improved, you must have permanence of ownership.

How much more fun would DayZ be if your character progressed? Imagine if you had Skyrim style skills (Surgery, Marksmanship, Mountaineering, Swimming, Move Silently, Cooking, Skinning, Tanning, Weaving, Electronics, Mechanics, Gunsmithing the list could go on and on.) Suddenly dying would REALLY matter. Suddenly grouping up with a diversity of fellow players would become drastically more important. Instead of every friend being merely one more guy with a gun, each individual would now contribute to the whole in a unique and integral way.

Soon players would form communities based off individual importance. Marksmen and brawlers would protect the craftsmen and medics. Each player would feel a sense of personal satisfaction in providing for their group in a specific and important way.

Now imagine you had your group of players and (instead of randomly wandering around all the time with no real goals or objectives) you could find a good defensible spot in the hills, with a source of fresh water and plenty of game and foraging possibilities, and settle down. Imagine instead of puny tents you could chop down trees and fashion them into boards, then erect structures and walls, fences and sheds, deer stands and watchtowers.
Imagine your group had a REAL goal to work towards. A small piece of the digital world to call yours. A home for you and your friends, that YOU created, that YOU own, and that YOU must defend. Suddenly the stakes are higher, suddenly the satisfaction is increased tenfold.

See people call it a sandbox, but it's really more like a deathmatch server with a huge map and some survival elements thrown in. Sandbox implies the ability to create, to alter, to control, to affect the world in a significant and semi-permanent way. Otherwise you're just playing paintball with zombies.

To a sandbox gamer, DayZ is an utter disappointment, yet another let-down in the long list of games that have failed to "get" what a sandbox truly should be.

Thanks to Notch, we do have one game that REALLY grasped the sandbox idea. After all, what is a sandbox if not a artificial world created from little shapes of earth? Minecraft is the most successful sandbox game of all time, and it's because Notch got what makes a real sandbox so much fun. It's not fun to sit in a sandbox doing nothing until your mom calls you in for dinner. It's all about taking a big pile of shapeless sand and turning it into a castle, or town, a river, a palace, whatever your imagination can come up with. It's really all about creation.

DayZ seems to be a game with no goals, nor any ability to set goals. A game devoid of any options, or reason to exist. Playing DayZ felt like playing a paradox.

The only reason to survive in DayZ is to continue surviving, there are no long term goals to achieve.