Just Add Zombies
In DayZ, it's not the dead you need to worry about. It's the living.
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In DayZ, it's not the dead you need to worry about. It's the living.
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Just Add Zombies
- Thread starter MikeWehner
- Start date
I never have to ask if a guy is a threat.
Situation 1
He has a gun. You have a gun. That is when you start firing.
Situation 2
He doesn't have a gun. You have a gun. Start firing.
Situation 3
He doesn't have a gun. You don't have a gun. Run around each other in suspicion and awkwardness.
Situation 4
He has a gun. You don't have a gun. You die.
Situation 1
He has a gun. You have a gun. That is when you start firing.
Situation 2
He doesn't have a gun. You have a gun. Start firing.
Situation 3
He doesn't have a gun. You don't have a gun. Run around each other in suspicion and awkwardness.
Situation 4
He has a gun. You don't have a gun. You die.
If I'm ever gonna get DayZ, it'll be with a couple of friends so that way you'll always be at least a decent match. Also, like Terraria and Minecraft, it's like a whole new game with teammates.
DayZ harkens back to the times I remember fondly from the earlier days of gaming. Yes the physics engine is a bit glitchy from time to time, and yes it is not the most easily understood control/inventory layout, but that is what makes this all the better. Someone, or a group of people, putting this much time into making a free mod for a game that garners so many let's plays, followers, news reports and reviews gives me some hope for the industry.
Yes they are using the common thrope of the day, Zombies. Yes, they are setting it in an area that could have been ripped out of the pages of The Walking Dead or any of the movies in the Dawn of the Dead series. But to actually let you in on the fact that your true worst nightmare is the other "survivors" and to do so in such a simplistic and unassuming manner, TRUELY ORIGINAL!
Now if you will all excuse me, I have a guy exploring that building down the street and my silenced rifle is ready to liberate me some more supplies.
Yes they are using the common thrope of the day, Zombies. Yes, they are setting it in an area that could have been ripped out of the pages of The Walking Dead or any of the movies in the Dawn of the Dead series. But to actually let you in on the fact that your true worst nightmare is the other "survivors" and to do so in such a simplistic and unassuming manner, TRUELY ORIGINAL!
Now if you will all excuse me, I have a guy exploring that building down the street and my silenced rifle is ready to liberate me some more supplies.
Eh...I've heard of other people being immersed in it in this way, but after a few attempts I just didn't feel any need to go rushing back to it. Yeah, it's cool that it's unrelenting in its "difficulty" but it's just not fun trying to crawl around for the first 10 hours figuring out how everything works. Hell, I played the Arma 2 demo just to try and understand the awful controls which were still bad even afterwards. It's too clunky, the inventory system is bad, and the little to no explanation on items is excrutiating. And the environments look fantastic, but, not being allowed into most of the houses because they're just aesthetics draws me right back out of the game each time. And I still can't take the axe out of the tree stump? Seriously? -_-
Yeah, I think this article adequately describes my experiences in DayZ.
Up until I joined a nice, password-protected non-PvP server.
I set up two forts to help other survivors, and a number of hidden camps, using the surnames of certain characters from a certain popular webcomic.
My best times on DayZ were on that server. I even kept and maintained a motorcycle, doing regular runs from Stary Sobor's Ontabi Fort down to Cherno and Elektro, gathering medical and other useful supplies to place alongside the armoury for everyone at Ontabi.
And then, the regular rescue runs and taxi/courier service I ran to help others.
There is nothing quite so thrilling as riding a motorbike at full speed on DayZ. And even better if you don't have to worry about people shooting you for it.
I just wish the zombies of DayZ were the slow ones. I get enough running zombies in just about every other zombie game I play.
Up until I joined a nice, password-protected non-PvP server.
I set up two forts to help other survivors, and a number of hidden camps, using the surnames of certain characters from a certain popular webcomic.
My best times on DayZ were on that server. I even kept and maintained a motorcycle, doing regular runs from Stary Sobor's Ontabi Fort down to Cherno and Elektro, gathering medical and other useful supplies to place alongside the armoury for everyone at Ontabi.
And then, the regular rescue runs and taxi/courier service I ran to help others.
There is nothing quite so thrilling as riding a motorbike at full speed on DayZ. And even better if you don't have to worry about people shooting you for it.
I just wish the zombies of DayZ were the slow ones. I get enough running zombies in just about every other zombie game I play.
Hmmm, well to be honest I'm less than enthusiastic about this mod because there seems to be little point to it, it's simply a matter of "how long can you survive, and how much can you amass" in what amounts to a deathmatch with a bunch of active re-spawning bots which happen to be Zombies.
I suppose I can see the appeal of it, but it doesn't seem to hold a lot of long-term appeal, and what's more as someone who doesn't know many shooter players, a game like this that is going to greatly favor cooperative groups of "bros" is inherantly a turn off.
I guess it DOES simulate certain views of a Zombie Apocolypse to an extent, but without a storyline or some overreacting goal to strive towards, I just don't see the point. That's just me though. Personally I think the ideas behind "Dead Island" are going to lead the the definitive work of the genere, assuming someone decides to run with it at some point.
I suppose I can see the appeal of it, but it doesn't seem to hold a lot of long-term appeal, and what's more as someone who doesn't know many shooter players, a game like this that is going to greatly favor cooperative groups of "bros" is inherantly a turn off.
I guess it DOES simulate certain views of a Zombie Apocolypse to an extent, but without a storyline or some overreacting goal to strive towards, I just don't see the point. That's just me though. Personally I think the ideas behind "Dead Island" are going to lead the the definitive work of the genere, assuming someone decides to run with it at some point.
There's nothing else like DayZ. But it's gotten so popular now that hackers are becoming more and more common.
I've been hacked three times in the course of a weekend, all on different servers. First my friend and I get shot at relentlessly from afar by an AS50 sniper rifle, with the guy obviously not caring about wasting the rare ammo, and when we took cover in a house, both the house and us got blown to bits by artillery. Second, I spot another player not too far from me, I start running in a different direction keeping my eye on him, when suddenly all my bones break and I die instantly. And last, I was just minding my own business in the woods, when I'm suddenly teleported to a different-looking forest. A cardboard box is in front of me filled with hacker goodies, ghillie suit, AS50, night vision goggles, all of it. The thing is the place I'm in is far, far, far out in nowhere, classified as "wilderness". With no compas, or direction, I could run in either direction and die of thirst or starvation after maybe 40 minutes, each time I log in I magically got full blood levels. And I can't respawn either. Sigh.
I've pretty much given up on it for now. It's not DayZ that isn't cheat protected properly, it's ArmA 2. There's nothing Rocket can do about it. You're really scum if you hack players in a game where so much time is put into a character. It's in the same area as hacking MMO accounts in a sense.
I've been hacked three times in the course of a weekend, all on different servers. First my friend and I get shot at relentlessly from afar by an AS50 sniper rifle, with the guy obviously not caring about wasting the rare ammo, and when we took cover in a house, both the house and us got blown to bits by artillery. Second, I spot another player not too far from me, I start running in a different direction keeping my eye on him, when suddenly all my bones break and I die instantly. And last, I was just minding my own business in the woods, when I'm suddenly teleported to a different-looking forest. A cardboard box is in front of me filled with hacker goodies, ghillie suit, AS50, night vision goggles, all of it. The thing is the place I'm in is far, far, far out in nowhere, classified as "wilderness". With no compas, or direction, I could run in either direction and die of thirst or starvation after maybe 40 minutes, each time I log in I magically got full blood levels. And I can't respawn either. Sigh.
I've pretty much given up on it for now. It's not DayZ that isn't cheat protected properly, it's ArmA 2. There's nothing Rocket can do about it. You're really scum if you hack players in a game where so much time is put into a character. It's in the same area as hacking MMO accounts in a sense.
My first 2 days of DayZ was awesome. Then the script kiddies came along. My first death was the result of a giant nuclear explosion that wiped out the entire server. Second death was from a newly spawned player dupping items from the start and killing me. Well you get the idea. Shortly after I uninstalled ArmA2 and moved onto other games. It's not worth my time at this point. WarZ anyone?
DayZ is the only game that I enjoy watching videos of. Much more than having the actual experience of playing it. What breaks it for me is, I think, that - while I'm all for 'realism' - ArmA and especially that mod are a perfect example of the fallacy going on when trying to put real-life realism into games.
Having to consult a tutorial in order to know how to access my backpack is NOT realistic. That sort of counter-intuitive mess is pretty much the opposite of realism.
Having to consult a tutorial in order to know how to access my backpack is NOT realistic. That sort of counter-intuitive mess is pretty much the opposite of realism.
My experience with PVP isn't too bad. Got killed by some sniper at one point randomly and that sucked, but otherwise I rarely run into other players, although there's usually only 10-15 ppl on a server when I join. Not really interested in a full server.
I have played with my friend a couple times and we once ran into a random player. He was nice, we all teamed up and looted an air field. It was actually a crazy experience, shit went wrong and there was a massive zombie murder fest. I broke a leg and needed help. The other guy ended up dying trying to save me.
Also about health, in my current life I'm doing fairly well. At one point I was nearly dead - the whole black and white, blurry screen thing going on and the blood icon blinking. Well, 1 goat and 1 cow worth of meat later, and I was back to almost full health! Cooked meat adds 800 blood points, out of the 12000 max. A goat gives 3 meat and a cow gives 8, so those 11 meats add to 8800 blood. I could use another goat, but it's not bad.
I have played with my friend a couple times and we once ran into a random player. He was nice, we all teamed up and looted an air field. It was actually a crazy experience, shit went wrong and there was a massive zombie murder fest. I broke a leg and needed help. The other guy ended up dying trying to save me.
Also about health, in my current life I'm doing fairly well. At one point I was nearly dead - the whole black and white, blurry screen thing going on and the blood icon blinking. Well, 1 goat and 1 cow worth of meat later, and I was back to almost full health! Cooked meat adds 800 blood points, out of the 12000 max. A goat gives 3 meat and a cow gives 8, so those 11 meats add to 8800 blood. I could use another goat, but it's not bad.
Easily my Game of the Year, and it's a mod (Sad state of the industry or what?).
What I find remarkable, is that DayZ in no way does anything truly mechanically original, it's setting is a very generic industrially focused ex-Eastern Bloc country, it's a zombie game, which is the flavour du jour for popular media (Seriously, start listing to yourself all the different games, movies, books, TV shows, and even drawings that feature zombies and you'll make your head spin.) There is literally no story to bring any kind of context or meaning to the game. There is no overarching objective except "Don't Die," and there is no way to win.
Despite all of this, it has somehow struck a magic chord and combined it's unoriginal elements together into something that is wholly and entirely unique. I've been gaming for many years, and I have never played a game like this before, where something as innocuous as a single pistol shot from across town, something that would barely even merit my attention in any other shooter, puts my entire body on full red alert, my heart starts to race, and adrenaline boils in my veins as I attempt to locate the source of the shot and determine whether or not this player is a threat to be swiftly eliminated, or a friend in need.
Yatzhee definitely put it best though, DayZ is, "at best, unreasonably cruel," and that is one of the reasons I love it so much. This game does not come with training wheels, it doesn't hold your hand, and sometimes, thanks to its UI being about as ergonomic as a mouse humping a rhino, actively works against you. It throws you into the deep end of the pool and turns its back while you learn to swim, and if you fail, it drags you back out, slaps you across the face, and throws you back in.
What I find remarkable, is that DayZ in no way does anything truly mechanically original, it's setting is a very generic industrially focused ex-Eastern Bloc country, it's a zombie game, which is the flavour du jour for popular media (Seriously, start listing to yourself all the different games, movies, books, TV shows, and even drawings that feature zombies and you'll make your head spin.) There is literally no story to bring any kind of context or meaning to the game. There is no overarching objective except "Don't Die," and there is no way to win.
Despite all of this, it has somehow struck a magic chord and combined it's unoriginal elements together into something that is wholly and entirely unique. I've been gaming for many years, and I have never played a game like this before, where something as innocuous as a single pistol shot from across town, something that would barely even merit my attention in any other shooter, puts my entire body on full red alert, my heart starts to race, and adrenaline boils in my veins as I attempt to locate the source of the shot and determine whether or not this player is a threat to be swiftly eliminated, or a friend in need.
Yatzhee definitely put it best though, DayZ is, "at best, unreasonably cruel," and that is one of the reasons I love it so much. This game does not come with training wheels, it doesn't hold your hand, and sometimes, thanks to its UI being about as ergonomic as a mouse humping a rhino, actively works against you. It throws you into the deep end of the pool and turns its back while you learn to swim, and if you fail, it drags you back out, slaps you across the face, and throws you back in.
Game made with realism in mind, that in all basis shows current self destruction of Man, spawned a mod that shows an sf way of Man's self destruction.
As soon as you start killing and tricking people just to rob them, you create a short path of destruction that will end with last man standing or dying of a zombie anyway (eventually you start killing each other no matter what size the group is). On the other hand helping each other brings nothing but feeling safer and achieving higher goals (maybe even getting rid of zombies all together)...it's just a demonstration of how a lot of people can't work on long term goals because they're basically sociopaths.
As soon as you start killing and tricking people just to rob them, you create a short path of destruction that will end with last man standing or dying of a zombie anyway (eventually you start killing each other no matter what size the group is). On the other hand helping each other brings nothing but feeling safer and achieving higher goals (maybe even getting rid of zombies all together)...it's just a demonstration of how a lot of people can't work on long term goals because they're basically sociopaths.
I remember one of the first times I played. Me and two friends of mine went on a journey for Bop/Bor, a sort of castle. Now, for those of you who know the map pretty well, you'll know that Bor isn't that far from the coast. It took us 8 bloody hours to find it. Basically it started like this. I spawned at Komarovo, they picked me up in a dingy boat and we headed towards Kamenka and headed North towards Pavolva.
In the time between Komarovo and Kamenka we found 3 survivors, the first survivor joined us on. He left after he stole a Revolver with 2 mags for it. We met another survivor who decided the best way to survive was to attract a bugger ton of zombies and run towards me and another friend, who were waiting for our other friend in a house while he looted the town. Long story short we had to murder the guy, kept running in and out of the house bringing in more zombies. And the third survivor walked into the building (Has two entrances, one on either side of the building) and actually talked to us. First words "What happened to that guy?", a survivor dead on the ground, two survivors with hatchets out and a large pile of zombie corpses on the ground. "Zombies got him," my friend replies. Then I hear this screamed "HE KNOWS TOO MUCH!" Bloody smack, the survivor is dead. My friend has murdered another poor guy, one who didn't deserve it this time around.
We leave the town and head north in fear of more survivors showing up, hit Pavlovo and head East and we end up in Windy Mountain. We have somehow completely missed Bor. So now we're heading West, attract zombies and all sorts of lovely stuff. After a while we decide to give the axe to the person with the most blood, since me and my friend are now passing out every few minutes. I drop my axe, it vanishes. The game destroyed my axe. And then our friend who is navigating (Poorly) lags out and ends up about 8 minutes from us. The game at this point isn't just trying to kill us, it's actively attempting to make our experience as harrowing as possible. After another 2 hours of dicking around we finally found Bor! It was a fucking small town. A very unimportant town..
And that was my first experience in Day-Z!
tl;dr - Went of a quest for a mystical castle, spent too much time finding a small town. Also the game hates everyone. A lot.
In the time between Komarovo and Kamenka we found 3 survivors, the first survivor joined us on. He left after he stole a Revolver with 2 mags for it. We met another survivor who decided the best way to survive was to attract a bugger ton of zombies and run towards me and another friend, who were waiting for our other friend in a house while he looted the town. Long story short we had to murder the guy, kept running in and out of the house bringing in more zombies. And the third survivor walked into the building (Has two entrances, one on either side of the building) and actually talked to us. First words "What happened to that guy?", a survivor dead on the ground, two survivors with hatchets out and a large pile of zombie corpses on the ground. "Zombies got him," my friend replies. Then I hear this screamed "HE KNOWS TOO MUCH!" Bloody smack, the survivor is dead. My friend has murdered another poor guy, one who didn't deserve it this time around.
We leave the town and head north in fear of more survivors showing up, hit Pavlovo and head East and we end up in Windy Mountain. We have somehow completely missed Bor. So now we're heading West, attract zombies and all sorts of lovely stuff. After a while we decide to give the axe to the person with the most blood, since me and my friend are now passing out every few minutes. I drop my axe, it vanishes. The game destroyed my axe. And then our friend who is navigating (Poorly) lags out and ends up about 8 minutes from us. The game at this point isn't just trying to kill us, it's actively attempting to make our experience as harrowing as possible. After another 2 hours of dicking around we finally found Bor! It was a fucking small town. A very unimportant town..
And that was my first experience in Day-Z!
tl;dr - Went of a quest for a mystical castle, spent too much time finding a small town. Also the game hates everyone. A lot.
And that is why I think Day Z sucks. Even ignoring the glitches, since it is an alpha, the NPC zombies are a joke (just go prone and you will never have any issues with them, unless they teleport, ghost, or glitch into you). The real problem is the fuckwads with guns. They don't kill strategically or with any common sense. They just kill because they either see everyone else as a threat, or just "for the lulz".Warped_Ghost said:
In 4 hours played, I only ever found an axe, which I left unequipped so as to appear non-threatening. Out of 5 deaths, I was killed twice by a sniper so far away I couldn't hear the shot. One of the snipers took multiple shots at me, and wasted probably half a mag on killing an unarmed guy hiding from a horde on a roof. Both sniper kills were totally unprovoked, I'd never met the guy or threatened him in any way. I didn't even have any loot, and I doubt that either guy bothered to see if I did. The other human-related death was me in a convenience store looting some tin cans, when a retard with a shotgun came in and started shooting at me. He wasted 3 shots missing at near point blank on me, and I charged him, then realized I couldn't even punch, so I surrendered and he shot me anyhow. His shots attracted the horde and bleeding out on the ground, I got to enjoy watching him get the shit kicked out of him by some zombies. This guy was even worse than the snipers, since he not only killed me for no reason other than he could, but he got himself killed as well in his desperation to see me dead. One other time, I was scouting an area and I saw a survivor running away from two zombies, I went down to save him, and gave him my extra axe I had after killing the zombies and he used it to kill me. All I had besides the axe and some tin cans was a 4-cylinder engine block. This isn't realistic or fun. It's stupid and I'd rather play Call of Duty free for all. At least in that I get a gun to shoot back with, and I don't have to worry about glitchy zombies annoying me.
There are no friendlies in Day Z and the only teammates are real life friends or clan members. That's retarded, who in their right mind would use a high power rifle to shoot only other humans in an apocalypse? No one. This isn't realistic or fun, and is part of why I dislike Day Z.
Also this, spending 30 minutes combing through the control page to learn how to move, shoot, loot, and equip is not realistic, it's stupid. Also, having troubles navigating through doors isn't realistic either. Shitty controls to make a game challenging is not good design.purf said: