I don't know about you, but our epic posts take sooo much time to produce haha mainly sorting out all the quote markers lol
(we should do one topic at a time from now on, I've got blisters!
)
I've written 2 very different replies to this. I may still post the other one but for now...
Dead wrong lol (excuse the choice of words haha) I'd appreciate it if you weren't condescending; it's really not called for when you are having an intelligent discussion.
Again I am not being condescending. I am not talking down to you or assuming you are stupid. This is because you are not stupid. You are reasonable and eloquent with your responses and clearly a decent guy. I am not talking down to you.
My apologies for accusing you of that, and I know you don't think you are doing it (as most people don't) but you do come across that way sometimes, even if it's not your intention. I might be alone on that, but that is just my perception.
You can read whatever you like into my posts but how you get to bitter is anyone's guess. I am angry at Rocket for being suck a douche and fucking this up but I am even more angry at the people who play this mod.
As to" if you can do better": seriously? This is the level of discussion I am dealing with? Critics of a given field are rarely those who create within that field. One does not have to be an author to review books. Please don't argue stupid things.
Bitter was perhaps not the best word to describe what I was getting at. I don't praise Rocket. I just personally feel you are being openly aggressive towards someone who essentially was just doing his own thing and suddenly that just exploded in public awareness and popularity; the demand for the product and vision he is still working on outweighs his ability to develop it as quickly as players want. I just don't see it as constructive, I'll happily call Robert Kotick a douche bag because it's clearly validated; but Rocket is just trying to make his vision and it's still early days, and he is still experimenting and testing out new ideas, some will work and some wont. All I'm saying is, and I do hope you agree, you are expecting a lot from something that you admit isn't finished and just barely scraping the line between functional pre-alpha build and tech demo lol. You basically want the flying car, but are upset that the thing only floats for a few seconds then short circuits. But there is a reason this game doesn't already exist.
>> Most importantly, my comment was suppose to illustrate the fact you are critiquing the artist's sketches and models, not the finished painting. Which is why I don't appreciate the harsher terms of endearment that you use to make your points.
This is the issue. You are, in the nicest sense of the word, a fan boy. You refuse to see wrong and are blinded by the concept of this mod and by the experiences you have had. You utterly and completely believe in what you have seen and no amount of rationale or reason will ever persuade you otherwise. You have decided that you will loudly and at length both tout and support this mod, arguing aggressively with anyone who dares to raise concern or objection. You are, in no uncertain terms, smitten.
I am, contrary to your, flatly arrogant and patronising, belief, fully capable of immersing myself in a story, a situation or an experience. I do not need it to be fed to me, Hollywood style, I am quite capable of creating my own experience through interaction with something sufficiently engaging and competently done.
I'm a zombie fanboy, I wont deny that. I've been a fan of special effects and makeup effects since I was Jurassic Park as a kid (and more disturbingly watching Arnie dig out his own eye in Terminator - my parent's didn't think that showing their kid at 7 those types of movies wouldn't affect him later in life lol) and I love Nicotero and Savini's make up work. In regards to zombie literature and film's, I've always found the slow, relentless threat to be quite engaging (which is why I'm not a fan of running zombies, but understand that's what modern audiences need now to avoid the goofy/silly sentiment observation you previously made.)
But please don't get me wrong, and don't assume I'm blind to the various technical issues that have a negative effect on gameplay and immersion. Like you, I'm pretty cynical and critical of almost everything; but equally I like to experience as much as possible, good and bad. I've grown so tired of Left4Dead, found dead rising to goofy/arcadey and was thoroughly disappointed with dead island, so a few months ago when I was made aware of this mod, I was of course very excited. On my first life, I instantly had the same feelings I had when I first played the L4D demo and enjoyed the atmospherics (but once you have played the boxed maps it got old and all those feelings dispersed), but the strange thing was, they didn't go away, I was very entertained and the level of immersion I felt with the environment just appealed to me.
I was purely being patronising in a cheeky satirical way as I felt the same from you. It's not pleasant and was illustrating how it's really not necessary; when we are both just stating a preference based off either technical evidence or a subjective emotional reaction. If I can be immersed by a technically broken mod which has barely all the features the designer wants to implement, then I'm even more excited about the product when it's content completely and the technical issues are ironed out. The point we always have to get back to is that this mod as it stands at the moment, wouldn't be deemed alpha by any major testing body or publisher; the fact is, regardless of engine and functionality at the moment, the concept is sound as you have said yourself.
I would definitely agree I'm smitten over this game. It's essentially along the right direction of what I personally want out of a zombie video game. But I argue that you haven't made a point that has given rationale to change my emotional interaction with the game. You can argue that half the people who played Portal didn't actually feel like a small test subject trapped in a manic AI's wet dream of a torture chamber, and just played it as video game where they shot some holes and then completed it. Equally it can be said that half the people who play DayZ, walk around, shoot stuff and log off. It's all about your reception to the media you consume. Like how you laugh and cry at a film, you can't argue or rationalise an emotional response, WW2 films make me cry because I think about my grand dad, even when they are hilarious like Kelly's Heroes; that film shouldn't make me cry, but it does. Same is to be said about DayZ, ill feel fear, and dread, happiness and betrayal which I would never in a million years get from another title. Horror film's don't scare me, but Penumbra made me terrified to my core. Don't assume I'm blind to the technical issues, and I want the dev to keep improving and adding new stuff to his concept; like buildings you can secure and make into a safe house, the dog idea is great, maybe setting up a communications tower or something.
It's an open world, and the ideas for what you can do in it should be open, this will all come in time! I think when "fanboys" of the mod get defensive is when people suggest changes that would essentially effect the core of the game; we want it to be challenging (thus the possible appeal for it being based on an army sim atm rather than a more action orientated engine [though arma2's engine is very shit]) we want it to feel like an open world with various outcomes and possibilities; and I guess essentially we want to feel vulnerable like a human being should do; unlike the common trend of every game character being a mohawk sporting, steroid guzzling space marine with power armour and gruff voice, with a name like Dick Killington lol. I want to feel like that guy in the film who wakes up on a beach, with no idea where they are, all alone, no idea what to do, trapped, and soon realising the huge threat that faces him, and the challenges and relationships that will come from it.
I'm excited to see how it develops, but ill lose interest if it becomes a really big L4D with all the elements of survival and realism gone; and I believe that is what they are screaming about, I don't think they care about specifics, they just don't want the game to stray away from what the core USP is.
This is not competently done. From the ground up it is flawed. The engine on which it is based is renowned for its idiocy yet Rocket has decided not to fix or address any of the issues but has ploughed blindly on, strapping other nonsense on. How can I immerse myself in a world that is staggeringly inconsistent, bereft of purpose and, by and large, totally empty? We cannot interact with this world, make any difference to it, create anything, change anything or do anything meaningful. At the moment the whole experience of DayZ is getting your gear. With that done, as I have said elsewhere, it is hollow. I have guns, ammo, supplies, tools to get infinite supplies and an easy source of anything else I could possibly want.
Now here is where you argue that imagination and interaction are key. And you are right. Well, you would be right if interaction was possible. The lag in this game is like nothing I have ever seen before. Get within 20 metres of another human and everything goes to hell as the tragic, hamstrung, shambling bag of code that this creaking abortion calls an engine simply cannot cope. Zombies are reported in wildly different places as are players and equipment, movement and actions can be jogged back for minutes at a time as the server finally catches up with itself and even if you do manage to bypass lag there is a good chance that nothing you do can be saved and all will have been for nought. In essence, playing with others is a sure fire way to get you killed as you are walking through a minefield of zombies and other players and you have no idea where any of them are.
Indeed, this is so far away from done, and that's what is so exciting, the possibilities for an open world with no rules is brilliant, and probably any designers wet dream. Of course, after a few weeks of this mod as it is, with no updates and new features coming online, my level of immersion will dwindle for sure; but it's early days yet; I'm sure Rocket has got a lot of ideas for this and his only limitation I assume right now is man power, time and resources.
But this is what I mean Howard, you are attacking the guy and calling him names, but he's probably got a life, family, and as you know DayZ is going to be a big game (size wise) and there is a lot of work to do, and he can only go so fast and do so much with what he's got right now. That's all I'm saying; he's not being idiotic for following his passion and dream; so as gamers, we are not praising him like you colourfully made out, but just supporting him. It's not constructive and he's very aware of the issues he's currently dealing with.
Then there is balancing - or rather the complete lack of it. Death comes stupidly easily in this game and, thanks to the issues listed above, normally without warning as the engine has no clue what the fuck is going on. Random shit happens constantly and there is no way to learn from what happened if you have no idea what went on.
He said in an interview, he's not balancing it. Life is unfair, and a simulator needs to comply to that (otherwise a flight sim would always be set in perfect weather etc). Bullets make you bleed and die very quickly, and if you run up hills for a few hours you will need to consume energy to continue. You might spawn in safety or on the swords blade. You might stumble on bandits, you might stumble on friends. You might slip on your mouse key and shoot in a quiet city, like someone in that scenario in real life might forget to turn on the safety and accidentally shoot their gun. It takes a while to get something out of your Alice pack, because that represents how long you would physically take to get a can of food out of a full bag. Your friend might friendly fire on you in the heat of a battle, accidents happen in life, so they happen in game. Sure you can't have realism all the time, like I said morphine doesn't set bone or make a cast, but the in the context of a video game, that's ultra realism that pushes past enjoyment. And now you can get sick, so that influences your actions even more so now.
You may, as may others, argue that this is due to its alpha nature, that we have to allow for these troubles while the mod is sorted. Maybe that is true - I doubt it: BI are proving themselves more incompetent as each year passes - but even if it is, what I have just described is still the reality of the game right now. If tomorrow Rocket patches everything to perfection, removing lag, making zombies function perfectly, fixing clipping and mantling and animations and bad mechanics, it still wont change a thing. There will still be nothing to do, zombies will still have no purpose, killing others still yields no reward (you already have all the kit you need) and...there is no other "and" as there is nothing else to do.
It's alpha yes, but it's not even alpha in the sense the industry uses. Most alphas are content complete nowadays, but just buggy. Rocket has still got lots of features to implement, mechanics to add, buildings to open up. It's an open environment, the bar doesnt stop with just pvp and pve. I honestly hope he adds the ability to make a house your own, board up the windows with wood, have a store room, gun cabinet lol fire place for the dog to rest at. You know, go all Robert Neville about it! We are having this back and fourth because you want it all right away, but we shouldn't even be playing this yet; the mod is unfinished and buggy, (and no one is arguing with you that the engine is a tonne of shit and he is probably wishing some big dev approaches him with a sweet engine and a team to help), but the potential of the idea and the lack of rules and the distancing from
common video game biases is what is so attractive and appealing (I'm not saying it's the first time this has happened, just that it doesn't happen often).
Meta-gameplay will nto take you any further either:
"Let's go raid that village!"
"...why? We have gear and food. We would be risking it for nothing."
"Ok, lets go find someone to help.
"Ok then!"
Minutes pass...
"You there: friendly?"
"Sure. come over.
BANG
"Oh look a beach - how original."
Howard, you can boil down anything into it's simplest parts and have the same outcome. But what you are doing is stripping away context. I'll walk to a location on the map with some friends, and in TS we are still talking about bullshit and I'm still sat in my study; but after 20mins of nothing and suddenly we hear a distant shot, I'm sucked back in; you've got the scale of the world and the risk that MP games offer all in one. I personally don't get that in game's often, but in HL2 when I noticed G-Man flicker on a TV for a second, or be miles in the distance looking at me; I felt part of the world and sucked into the narrative. I think we would both agree that everyone absorbs media differently. But some of the natural encounters you experience in DayZ, you just couldn't script realistically in a single player controlled story, (player might miss that scripted gunshot in the distance) and some of my encounters wouldn't look out of place in a film script. A lot of the encounters I've had have not been "bang bang" "haha" "shot you in the street" "runs way", I'd bore you with the stories but like the dev said and Chaos said in an early post, it's the survivors stories that are generating the interest and the buzz. There are better games for deathmatch and zombie animation, so there is more to this than just that, otherwise people wouldn't bother to buy... eww Arma2 :S
Beyond frustration, this experience has gained you nothing. Interacting with others is dangerous anyway around and still yields nothing. You argue that people can take it further, like the dude who set up a hospital. Well lets look at that:
He set up a hospital? No, he gathered some supplies, took them to a town, got two mates to guard him then made his big announcement to chat about where he was and what he offered.
...
...
Then he stood there...
...
...?
Anyone who needed help that badly would a) not be able to get to him and b) be unlikely to trust him (sure know I wouldn't). So he will have stood there and done nothing. Not like he had other stuff to do while he waited. Snacked? Zeroed his sights? I dunno.
Well you seem to have missed the bigger picture there. If this was a real world scenario, and someone who wasn't a murderer wanted to help people in the day end of days etc; someone would do this. He setup a field hospital, and you forget that blood transfusions requires another person, thus you have a doctor. The supplies won't last so that adds gameplay as eventually they will have to leave to go resource new supplies. Imagine the tension with each patient, the distrust, maybe they get attached by bandits, maybe a survivor gets big headed and tries to take over, and then gets killed by the bodyguards... who knows?! that's what is enjoyable about the experience, the chaos theory, the chance, the roll of the dice.. maybe no one EVER turns up and he sits there alone for the rest of his life,
if it is feasible in the real world, it should be somewhat feasible in a simulator. (This is why he wont add a bladder and colon meter on the Hud some levels of realism are just silly).
Anyway, before you just return your usual volley of "WELL I LIKE IT!!!!oneone", let me say this: I want what this game claims to offer. My issue is that it does not offer it and your frothing, love-struck diatribes do nothing to appease me.
See when you negate my argument and simplify my response to just that, that's when I a) feel like you are being condescending and b) negativily reacting because you haven't got the experience you want right away.
Games need purpose or they need depth and this has neither. Were there a creator-set goal I could aim for then fine. Where there so many mechanics and layers of detail here that I could entertain myself then great.
I disagree with that statement. Games just need to be entertaining (other wise we would just deinstall or put down the control pad). Purpose and depth isn't relevant as there are MANY video games out there which have neither but are enjoyed by millions and are still brilliantly designed.
Rules in video games are important, consistency is important, but in regards to art and creativity? Rules are made to be broken and explored, otherwise we stagnate. Our common expectations as an audience
need to be tested and pushed otherwise how can we hope to progress?! You must agree to that? With all the action indie developers have been getting, especially with the mobile platform; it's all prove to the idea that sometimes, you need to do the opposite to what people expect. Good video game designer's work off biases which have formed over the history of video games; but it's an art form, dev's should experiment and be encouraged too. So far the mod DOES have objectives; sure they are not the most complicated or story driven ones, but there are things to do currently, hopefully they will add more things to interact with! (I WANT RED DEAD COUGARS IN THE WILD MUHAHAHAH) But I remember how boring Dead Island was and that had hundreds of missions and side quests; even with all that "depth" and "purpose" it still wasn't as interesting an experience as DayZ as a broken mod currently.
Anyway, before you just return your usual volley of "WELL I LIKE IT!!!!oneone", let me say this: I want what this game claims to offer. My issue is that it does not offer it and your frothing, love-struck diatribes do nothing to appease me.
Games need purpose or they need depth and this has neither. Were there a creator-set goal I could aim for then fine. Where there so many mechanics and layers of detail here that I could entertain myself then great.
But each time I start on that beach, the only decision I have is "do I kill in this life?". After that, its a perfunctory and flatly easy task to get kitted up. Just started on the beach at 9am today - by 10 am I was outside Berezno with a good handgun, a Winchester (through choice - the AKs are so badly modelled they are no use), full kit (knife, matches, map, compass, watch, wood) 5 tins of food, 3 canteens of water and enough bandages and injectors to survive anything bar a game fuckup. 99% of that hour was spent jogging across ugly countryside with a stupid HDR sun bobbing and weaving on the horizon. Once I arrived at Berezino, I sat outside the town. I had no reason to go in, I knew that half of the guys on the server were bandits and that the rest were new guys on the beach who did not trust me (rightly so). One of the main things that is missing is a way to protect yourself. You cannot stockpile anything bar what you can carry and you cannot improve your protection with armour (this may come but I dread to think how he will implement it).
Granted, there are still hundreds of features and interactions, costs and requirements left to go in. It's just a matter of time, I know it sucks it's not finished now and it's the full game we both want. But it's got so much promise.
You can stockpile stuff in tents atm; hopefully they will allow safehouses in future (like youu can find a padlock to seal up a small house and store items/pets etc in there)
What else would you like to do? Sky's the limit really. It's not the sort of game you can wedge a story into as after repeated play the story wont change and that will get dull. The openness and ambiguity of the concept that offers many options or "classes" that people can follow; be it murderer, hermit, survivor, zombie killing nutter, doctor, supplier, or arms dealer; and this will only increase with the more interaction and features that will be added over time. Point is Howard "what am I supposed to do?"; answer is simple, do what you want (it's limited atm for now) but essentially once "complete" who knows how much you will be able to do. We often get stocked up, and seeing as currently can't be bothered to setup a camp just now, we will go explore some dangerous locations or go find our noob friend who is lost etc, they are not the deepest of objectives, but it's something we find to do, and you can imagine a simple thing like that could escalate and the journey will tell a story and provide gameplay in it's own right. "What's next?" Who knows? I wait with keen anticipation.
And that is the crux of this. He has the start of something here, the very tip of an idea. What I object to, and what makes me post here, is seeing people hammer on about the perfection that is before us. You want me to BELIEVE in this world, this cronky, badly drawn world with its ludicrous physics, teleporting zombies and horrible lighting. You want me to care for my avatar, a man who shits himself like a little girl when a zombie gets too close, a man who can starve to death in under 2 hours and die of thirst in half that time. You want me to believe in systems that insist I have to carry wood to make fires but that I cannot get wood from trees and that bones can be fused together with a magic glue called morphine. You want me to believe in the finality and brutality of a world where my only punishment for dying is a long walk through familiar territory. I want to believe in this place too, in this Chernarus. I want to be fascinated by what went on here, I want to feel like a survivor or an explorer in an unknown land, filled with monsters. I want to make it matter to me, to leave my mark but every single system, every single item, every single thing in this whole game is flawed so much that I cannot take it seriously for laughing and pointing. I want to take it seriously. I want it to matter. But I cannot. Nothing I do matters. If I die, the counters go back to zero and I wait 3 minutes for the shotgun to respawn. I'm away now. I have logged my guy off, lying in the sun outside Berezno. Its likely he will stay there.
Yeah sure, I totally appreciate what you are getting at. Don't assume from what I've written that I don't object to the technical problems, graphical bugs, wobbly mechanics and the engine lacking in a lot of areas. But I guess for me it's not my focus right now, I hope those problems are addressed, and you know they will be in time. When I say it's perfect, I am referring to what you said which is the concept, and as I said above, I like the challenge, the vulnerability, because it's realistic to how a human in the context of the scenario in the game, would conform too.
You forget Howard, that you don't even get a Can Opener in this game! (fuck i hope he doesnt add that... THEY ARE RING PULL CANS! phew
) That example, just illustrates that realism has it's place in video games when it benefits the experience. Like my morphine example I made earlier. From what I gather though, your immersion is being broken by the bugs, incomplete & partial features and technical issues. From the last paragraph, I know you want the same things; let's just hope he gets more support and the mod (and all the shitty arma bugs) are resolved as soon as humanly possible.
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annarack
Stood in a forest, desperate to cook food? Well of course you can't use the trees - what kind of crazed reality would that be?
And indeed, we are just testers atm, this isn't a finished product, and like all art forms, it's experimental right now, the designer is still trying to get his whole concept across, so it's not worth getting upset about right now, bugs will be fixed, features will be added and ironed out -as long as he stick's to the main USP of this game, then it's going to be awesome. 
). All you have to do is look at the front page of the website and this will all become clear to you. 
