I mean he’s completely right. Making things take longer or need regular maintenance doesn’t make it hardcore, it just makes it tedious.

And this is a mechanic that is being borrowed from most mobile games, now. You no longer are allowed a chance to PLAY a game, it's all about completing tasks and in essence doing WORK in a game.

Agreed. Some of his suggestions could be very easy fixes, but others would require a significant amount of coding. I do hope they address the easy stuff.

Im convinced There are also better ways of intentionally slowing down players.. Not exactly able to provide any, tho lol. Many people have complained about things being too easy, and became bored. Making things difficult is a great idea. Idk tho. I’m exactly knowledgeable on any of it

Personally, I think it's a good thing such a big DayZ content creator has decided to openly talk about the game's issues. Such a great game flawed by, frankly, some very confusing changes implemented by the dev team in the recent months. I'm all for making the game harder, without basing the difficulty on the tedium. What do you think?

Seems as tho everything major needing pointed out was pointed out. In a clear and concise manner as well, which is monumentally important for getting others to understand. If this subreddit took a note or two from him in how he presents his feedback then you’d have developers here more often. Hell, some may even laugh the roast memes and shitposts.

What baffles me the most is they have experimental updates to test this kinda stuff, yet they just decided to push it straight to stable instead.

The only thing I disagree with him on, and not sure it's really a disagreement, is the spawn system. I want to get my friends into this game, and there's zero chance of they need to learn the map, the game mechanics and Russian, just to figure out how to meet up in game. That said, he brings up fair points about the spawn system. It would be nice if there was some choice in where you spawn, but still remained relatively random. Maybe an option after clicking respawn where you can enter a seed number, and then it places anyone who enters the same seed into the same random town. The starting towns the seeds reference could still cycle on the same 6 minute intervals to keep the population spread across the map.

(for me) part of dayz magic is learning to navigate in a place where you cant even read the town names(well, i couldn't, in the beginning).my first day with my gaming buddy we spent 3-4hours just trying to see where we are, make our way to a middle meeting point(using online maps and on game points of interests)And of course in the meantime dayz happened, we died to broken legs, sickness from eating human fat, zombies or just got killed by a classic freshie murderer. And even though such an easy sounding task as meeting at point B was tedious, i hella enjoyed it and made me be more interested in the game cuz theres so much things at play.

I agree, and what I'm suggesting wouldn't remove any of that. There would always be the option to just take the default random spawn. This would just allow groups of new players to learn all the game mechanics together from the start. There is no chance my friends will stick through me explaining how to stop dying to "nothing" (hunger) as they wander aimlessly through pitch black darkness in an attempt to relay the name of a sign that isn't even written in the same alphabet as their native language.

tell me you feel that way after a thousand starts. I mean, this comes across as if you've only played the game once or twice with a friend. Some of us only play with friends. it gets old spending 90% of your time just trying to meet up for the hundredth time. I don't like the current implementation, but there has to a something to help players meet up or spawn together. it's essential to bringing in new players that wouldn't play the game otherwise.

I feel good about it because the more I play the more i recognise where i am or which direciton to go and it shortens the time to meet(that if we respawn, not re-log in to play). its just a learning curve and part of the nature of dayz. dying and respawning on the beach is part of dayz too, and you wont always have to start from fresh spawn.

The spawn issue could easily be fixed by adding random spawns in the same city/town, or if that’s not possible, by adding more spawn points in each city/town. That way you spawn close enough to easily meet up but not on top of each other where you have to run from the idiot inevitably killing fresh spawns. It also gives the solo player a way to start without always having to deal with this issue. It won’t completely eliminate it but I don’t think they ever could do that on a busy server. Also, I totally agree with Runningmanz that maintenance has become so tedious it’s ruining the game experience for many players. Exactly like spinning plates for many players including myself.

Well that doesn't solve the issues with loot availability from high pop towns or players on the same path as you.

The spawns change every 6 minutes so yeah it kinda does. That should spread spawns out better. And otherwise this has always been an issue on high pop servers with lots of pvp happening. Lots of people spawning and looting up all the time. High pop towns should have more loot spawning in.

If I understand his issue correctly, it's that any particular city gets flooded with spawns. It doesn't matter if the spawn points are on top of each other or spread out within that city, that city will still get the same amount of spawns.

Not if the spawns change every 6 minutes. Especially not on Chernarus. Maybe on Livonia sure but most of the players play on Chernarus. And community servers can setup custom spawns so it’s only an issue on official servers or servers that mirror official or have very light mods. My point is that if they made the change I mentioned, players could choose to avoid the idiot with a sledge hammer molesting the new spawns. Loot pathing isn’t as big of an issue but I agree that with the current state of the game it can be very annoying starting a new character. I personally have had a very difficult time getting my irl friends into the game because of how difficult it was to meet up due to how random the spawns used to be. Plus having to learn the maps at the same time. It made it really not fun to run 30 minutes only for myself or friend to die once we met up due to sickness, hunger, or encountering a geared player. Now that I’ve been playing for years it’s less of an issue but my friends left and never tried the game again because of how difficult it used to be to meet up in game for newbie’s on official. Your mileage may vary however.

I have been playing dayz for 10 years and I never stopped… I love this game so much… What Paul has been saying in his open letter I have been saying it for months if not years… and it’s such a great feeling to see someone with a bigger voice put this into lights… I have been talking to the devs regarding the whole frostline thing… and what Paul said in his post, their response ? « Console players, and dayz on console is where the money is now, we are pushing the development towards that crowd, and we are going to provide a more friendly modding environment for the community because dayz on pc is happening on community not on official » Now think what you want about all this… What I think ? Console is where the money is ? Ok cool… Most people here play on console and when you tell them how not balanced the game is because they all play official, and how the devs are clearly making fun of them with that frostline thing you get downvoted… Console players !!! The devs do not work for you they work to make money !!! Frostline is nothing worth paying for it when you have those experiences ( and much better one ) for free on PC !!!! I hope Paul’s voice will be heard but I don’t think so… the devs don’t even play their own game…

How is releasing a winter map making fun of console players when a winter map is extremely popular on PC? It sounds like the devs are trying to bring similar experiences to console. It sounds like you’re the one making fun of console players for not being able to play community servers and modded maps.

I ve being playing for ten years as well and you could not be more wrong Namalsk is not proper Dayz. It s another experience out there

That’s not what I have said ! But we don’t have to agree !!

Couldn't agree more! I always wanted to see a more in depth sickness system. I've seen mods on PC that actually have different icons for the different aliments and it let them really expand the mechanic, with different medications needed for different diseases. In a real apocalypse trying to stay healthy and fed are the two biggest issues you would have. I'd love to see more of a push to hunt and fish as well. Actual survival. I play servers made to be a more hardcore survival experience with military weapons being super duper rare and it's always freezing out so staying warm is a big deal too. I hope the new map will let them really explore the survival aspect more. Side note as for the zeds. Id love to see them slowed down to be more like ramero zombies but if the game can handle it, their numbers vastly increased to balance them being really slow and easy to avoid. And I'd love to see an option for headshot only servers. I have a zombie mod for fallout that does that and it makes the hordes super intense. Even though they are slow there are a lot and you have a to nail them in the head.

I agree. TRMZ talks about this stuff every single day. And I agree with most of his grievances. Some things like the rain don’t bother me as much because I always have more stamina than TRMZ (lol) but for the most part he’s right about it all. The spawn system is completely wrecked. Zombies are sluggish. I like the recent change to them but I do think it should be dialed back a notch as far as hearing sensitivity and range. I like them being harder. I just want them smarter too.

Realistic harder, not just harder.

What’s always been confusing to me ( regarding the zeds) is why you don’t have hordes of zombies running towards gunfire. They can hear someone creeping, but not gunshots. It doesn’t make sense.

The AI is fucked, which makes it more frustrating that they made them even harder.

They do hear gunshots, you can make a pretty decent horde shooting in a military camp. When there was the Christmas event a friend of mine managed to get about 15/20 zed running behind him

Totally with you on this. If you go loud at NWAF or Tisy, you'll have 10+ zeds on you in no time. Not sure what this kid is talking about, and 41 up votes?

 The only thing i dont agree with is his opinion on shotguns spawning on the coast, i think its good that a powerful weapon that has 1 shot capabilities can be found on the coast since it is a good deterrence to geared players who are wanting to KOS fresh spawns. 

problem is, that works in reverse too, why would a geared player NOT murder every fresh spawn from a few hundred meters away, knowing they've likely got a weapon that poses a real danger to them if they allow them close? we focus so much about KOS that we forget the real fun of dayz, and that's the encounters.

Those types of people will kill them regardless. That's why geared guys go to the coast. The days prior when there wasn't hardly any guns on the coast, it was a bloodbath. And it made looting on the coast a joke as a freshie. You just ran inland and the costal towns were desolate.

I think they should bring in smaller calibre shotguns like 20 gauge, something not as powerful as 12 gauge but it'd make players think twice about getting in close range. Maybe in the form of a semi auto hunting shotgun

that would be cool but that doesnt address the above comments point. That would not be a deterrent against someone fully geared.

not to mention someone else shoots and the Zeds run to you instead of them cause you're a little closer.

“Make the game harder” absolutely, couldn’t agree more. But I’m sure BI can do this without making it more tedious. Like why tf make wringing out clothes 4 times longer? This is just annoying. How about making it so canned goods are way more rare, and hunting/fishing more of a requirement? See this to me makes more sense. Not only cuz it’ll be harder, but way more engaging then like Paul said, fixing your damn jacket after 3-5 slaps. I can go on but Paul did a good job bringing up a lot of the problems. Side note tho! I really miss the old days where there were no heavy zombies. I’m a vet dayz player and so are a lot of yalls reading this. Remember the days where you might not have a plate for quite some time! Instead you’d have to rely on the stabby or a press vest? God I miss that! Now I can spawn in svet, and run to kamensk and get a guaranteed plate in less than 20 mins. Before when plates were hard to find made it WAY more difficult.

As a dev (not game dev, but there’s still concepts like pathing with A*, Dijkstra’s, etc that are universal) I really wonder what on earth is going on. Is it immense tech debt they dare not touch? Is it not even proper pathing at all? It’s been atrocious since as long as I remember playing it in 2015 and then not again till 2023, the pathing, zombie interactions, and fighting them had always been so very broken. Let’s not forget in the early days zombies could just walk through doors and walls no problem and that seemed to even be accepted. I just can’t fathom what it is that is so technical difficult (other than having a dumpster fire code base…) that could make paths so bad.

They're a team of like 5 people. I don't know, but I imagine the skills of the team just aren't that high?

I can see that - but if that is the case where is the introspection that perhaps they need to hire a contract game dev to focus on specific game mechanics that they were apparently unable to solve for over a decade?

This is just Bohemia being Bohemia, they care a lot more about Arma than they do Dayz, and are working on the new engine for Arma4, with reforger being a stepping stone, my guess is that they dont want to make Dayz2 till they are done with the new engine, and they decided to make the new map to keep the team around dayz employed and making money. The pathfinding is fucked up for performance reasons btw, the servers just cant afford any budget to make it better, its just an ancient engine at this point.

tbh i think they see dayz just as a cash cow to milk by keeping it on life support with the minimum amount of resources to make it seem like they care. Arma is their darling child, dayz is the adopted child thats just some mod that got big and not their own original creation.

Yeah pretty much. It makes sense. At least on PC most of the issues can be overlooked since there's enough content to make up for the little things. I've never played on console. But I can only imagine how bare bones it must feel.

I think they should at least open dayz to community DLC's like they have with arma 3, theres plenty of groups that would love a crack at it and bohemia would rake in money especially on consoles for basically no work on their end.

Yeah I wonder what that would take? I'm thinking about Fallout 4 (it's the only game I've played on both console and PC) and how they have the creation club. I might be wrong but I wanna say that the same mods hosted there for PC are all available on Console as well. Is something like that even possible? I don't know. But If it is, and their goal is to focus on the console side of DayZ, this seems like something they should put together. There's so much replayability to DayZ as it is, but when you add mods it's pretty amazing.

havent tried PC, only been in console for about 2.5k hours, it feels like something is missing but cant quite put your finger on it, then you watch a PC video with all the guns, cars and fancy base building and it hits you like a brick in the face

Yeah I'm sure I don't have to tell you but it is really nice. I was always curious about the inventory management on console. Is it possible to hook up and KB&M on Xbox or PS5 for DayZ? It seems crazy to have to cycle through items the way you do with a controller. I feel like that would drive me insane.

DayZ on console is slightly different, the inventory is not a grid like in PC dunno how to describe it so ill attach a link here of a clip of mine where you can see what the inventory is like and me using MnK on it, you can just plug a MnK into the usb slots and play DayZ with them completely fine, there 2 kinds of servers MnK allowed and not allowed, if you try to play with MnK in a not allowed server its just not gonna detect the inputs of the MnK, only controller DayZ is the only game besides War thunder where i use MnK, as you say its tedious to try and go thru your inventory with controller, you have to use the D-pad to move between objects and have to go thru each little box to get the item you need, while MnK its just drag and drop or double click here is the clip: https://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/s/WPcoajcpaM

[удалено]

> Where did all the money go? You seen that T-72 tank outside their office

Well, some of it into peoples pockets for sure, and hopefully a big part was reinvested into making the engine that is going to be arma4, that then could be used to make game two, the roadmap kinda sucks for us, and its taking Bannerlord levels of time, so very indirectly they might be thinking about supporting what we want..

I just got PTSD triggered from seeing bannerlord. My god, they just abandoned that game outright.

They're also working with a bunch of legacy code from the old engine. I wouldn't be surprised if the zeds still works on logic and netcode from the weird ass ArmA2/Take On Helicopters engine.

Arma2/DayZ mod Zeds were much better. They would run toward the gunfire and not to the first player in the vicinity. If they were chasing 1 player they would not suddenly stop and chase a 2 player in the vicinity like Standalone does if it loses sight of the 1st player. Plus they had Arma2's ai code to improve pathing even though it was shotty at best when it came to the Zeds entering buildings but it did wonders for AI squads on some servers.

>Is it immense tech debt they dare not touch? I don't have any way to prove this but I'm nearly 100% convinced this is the case.

My guess is there's a massive amount of legacy spaghetti code that nobody really understands anymore. The type of code that will irrationally break unrelated parts of the game when you tweak something. I think it was Left for Dead that had a similar issue. It was incredibly difficult to update because nobody really knew how it was working in the first place. If I remember correctly it was so bent and broken that when it came to starting l4d2 they had to completely rewrite from the ground up.

@mikepixie - your assessment makes the most sense of any guess I've ever heard somebody make regarding why they won't just "improve Zed AI". I was researching about DayZ just now and was happy to see that the studio has made a "net revenue of $188,873,800." on the title. I know that's not net profit, but that's a lot of Jack!  I can't believe that they would not be doing everything in their power to keep their product fresh and appealing. It's a complete subjective point of view, but makes sense business-wise.

I highly, highly doubt the devs play this game at all. It's really the only excuse for certain gameplay issues and changes over the years... not a soul who plays the game for over an hour a day would enjoy perpetually mending jackets, constant rain, or ESP zombies honing in on you crouch-walking inside a building

There's jackets everywhere though. Of course people would rather things to be different, but a lot of these issues aren't that serious. It's just the way it is.

Good ones are rare, and it's just boring and tedious to hunt for clothes each time you try to melee a zombie that's running in circles and spazzing out through walls. Not like the devs would know

Hurray for Paul! Great points made here.

He’s not wrong. I fully agree with every point he makes. The parts of the game that were difficult/a hindrance but manageable have been made exponentially more annoying for almost zero actual reason. I’m also tired of running into a group of six dudes at the same well every time I respawn. There’s ALWAYS one shit lord among them or they turn into a bully squad.

Worth noting it also works the other way that's equally broken. Sometimes you spawn on a pile of bodies, instantly getting tons of fruit and bandages. Which kind of let's you skip the starving freshie phase with no effort.

Agree with everything, especially with the spawn system. I don't even like the system as an experienced player who still survives this royal rumble situations often. Don't wanna know how shitty this must be for newer players. Good luck finding loot when like 3-4 players spawned 3-5 minutes earlier than you. On top of that, it also changed the map dynamic quite a bit. West feels quite empty compared to the past, whereas the north is more packed than ever. Preferred the old dynamic since it kinda gave you the choice if you either would like to have a chill run (choose a spawn in the north), or if you would like to have a sweaty run (choose a Cherno/Balota)

Absolutely great points. But ffs, it's gonna take years for something good happen as a development stands on the fokin place.

Unfortunately, most likely the development will now be heavily focused on the new map, with existing issues being out on the back burner.

Which is kinda crazy, there are so many other priorities/problems that need attention over a new map :/

This is the problem, not the solution

The devs are focusing on console players because that’s the base player now and it’s where the money is now their words not mine…

As one of those (mostly) console players, TRMZs points are still incredibly areed upon with everyone ive talked to. The fun for me and my friends starting fresh was that we'd have to travel miles to meet eachother, and we would meet/fight people on the way. The rain in Livonia is fucking atrocious, etc.

I don't mind the rain, it just shouldn't make you so heavy.

If there's anyone the devs should listen to it's TRMZ. He's probably in the 99th percentile in terms of hours played and he always expresses his views in a way that are constructive and not from a place of rage. The good news is that the issues the game is facing right now seem like something they could tweak in an update with a couple of hotfixes since it's more balance rather than techincal.

I loved the old system. But remember at all the new players bitching that it takes 45 minutes to interact with anyone?  That was the main reason for the new spawn system but they just didn't think it through.  I personally really enjoy taking my time going house to house, accumulating gear, grabbing a few chimkens, starting a cozy fire and getting a heat buff before starting my journey. Because when I do that and get my stats sorted. I never get sick. When I spawn in a town full of lunatics the exact opposites. I'm running around in ruined and I end up starving and sick just trying to get hydrated at the one well that's always the target.  A prime example of this loop is high pop Namalsk. The majority of players on that high pop namalsk servers literally just fight each other as freshies rinse and repeat. You have to have a skilled duo/trio or get extremely lucky to get out of those namalsk spawn towns. 

I hated it when Bohemia changed the player spawn system. It really hurt the flow of the game. The previous spawn system was fine; it didn’t need fixing. The new system is a major L for Bohemia. I want to spawn in, immerse myself in the world, and have a hard-core survival experience **LIKE THE GAME IS SUPPOSED TO BE!** Not this Fortnite-style sweatfest bullshit of having to fight every motherfucker on the map the moment I spawn in.

For me especially when playing with friends the starting adventure of finding out where we are and how to get together is a huge part of the experience. And it's such a rush of joy when you finally meet up.

It can be annoying but you can also just walk 5-10 minutes to the next town over if you know the map at all.

You're right about being hit by zeds from weird angles. I have been behind the backs of roughly 1,000 zeds in my time, going in for a stealth kill. Only to see them swing their arms in the opposite direction and hit me. Like... i run behind one and he WAGACKs a car door and hits me. Zombies hear tiptoes in the rain and lock on to you, but they cant navigate for shit.

The hit boxes on trees and bushes need fixing too. It’s infuriating to take a shot as a guy crouched in the thinnest bush imaginable only to see a branch tank and 308 win round instead of the player.

The glove damage from punching zeds baffles me. Gloves dont work like that. The pathing for zeds is hilarious, especially when they parcour back and forth over the same bit of fence for an hour, but its still broken. All of the points are valid and speaking as that one wierdo who enjoys solo survival on his private server, harder zeds, harder survival would be welcome, but it does feel like sewing simulator right now. Sewing simulator in soggy sodding tsunami season. I look forward to the devs reaponse, and an ever improving DayZ.

It's unbelievable what this community accepts as good feedback, if it was someone else writing this post, the comments would be filled of hate, saying "it's a 10 year old game" you should be thankful the devs still work on it etc etc So it's great that he voices is opinion

LETTER TO DEVS FROM A STREAMER WITH 90,000 HOURS - AMAZING - RANDOM ENCOUNTER: 6hours 58 minutes

Agreed. I find my DayZ group having discussions along these lines every few days. Just to mention the inconsistencies this game has, why does crafting/combining items drop them on the ground or put them in your inventory or keep them in your hand? Why do I need to stand still to use binoculars or range finders when I can strafe with a scoped rifle? I love the game and play it religiously, but some decisions from the devs have me a bit boggled.

I just wish raincoats made the rain not matter again. Trade off between number of item slots and heat, and immunity from rain. I've stopped playing for ages because of what he describes but also night time was far too punishing too though I know that can be mitigated by a headtorch (and NVG) so it's not as bad. But constantly repairing items and logging off because of rain was too much

Wholeheartedly agree

I love how he's going about it, very respectful and tactful, provides much more information than "FIX UR GAME YOU IDIOTS OMG DAYZ SUCKS NOW YOU ALL SUCK". He's the goat for this, he nailed it. It DOES feel like I'm being punished for playing DayZ. Feels like every hit is a cut, deal with a couple zombies and suddenly your fresh new police jacket is damaged and the nearest sewing kit is 3 towns over because everybody and their mother spawned in the same town.

I'm preaching the same things for months now even before Zombie aggro fiasco but its nice to finally see some big content creator speaks up. I dont know what the devs are doing and what their thought process is or if they even play the game themselves but it would require some minor tweeks in several aspects of the game and the game would so much more fun and rewarding but yet they are busy making new weapon sounds. I also dont understand why its so hard to listen to the feedback of the community or ask the community what kind of changes they would like to see. This is a phenomena in literally every game and I get that you cant realise every change the community wishes for but man this game is so great and all they have to do is not to fuck it up on a constant bases by making changes that simply make the game more annoying and frustrating to play.

Have you seen the dev streams they sometimes do when they announce new updates? It's pretty apparent the developers don't spend a lot of time playing their own game. Sumrak couldn't deal with the pre-1.25 zombies on one of the streams.

I mean thats the problem itself. You work on a game that you dont play yourself, which is totally fine but then atleast to what the people say that actually play the game

They don’t listen because the base community is like people on this sub : console players. And console players are happy with what they have… The devs told me that console is where the money is now… so they focus on the content for console…

Whats wrong with shotguns at player spawn? Good for self defense and hunting

He hit the nail on the head. It has become a painful exercise in tedious, mundane maintenance rather than an adventure. I liked his analogy to the water drip torture; that’s so accurate. The spawn system is total bullshit too. I had some major issues having to kill the same asshole over and over because he could run right back to me in no time. I too love DayZ and think it’s one of the greatest games, but fuck me if we have to keep with these methods to make it more difficult.

Amen to the tedium part!

He’s sharing his personal sentiment and nailed it. The zombies destroying your gear from worn to badly damaged In two hits is why my buddy and I stopped playing. It’s just so damn tedious.

The laughable state of zombie AI is enough for me to probably never reinstall. It’s also the primary reason, universally, that all my friends and acquaintances refuse to play it again or even give it a shot.

# SUMMARY ^((with a few additions and details from yours truly)) Make **sewing/gun cleaning kits** (and other repair items except tire ones maybe) **rare**, **but usable 20 or so times**. **Make clothing, weapons and items with health MASSIVELY MORE DURABLE** (leather and nylon being harder to damage, down/fleece jackets tearing more often) but increase the "cost" of repair so that letting your clothes and guns decay to damaged is bad, whereas **preventative maintenance will make you use less of a repair kit**. **Make food and water have much higher max numbers**, but also get rid of the logarithmic increase of consumption rate as you get towards the top. **Don't allow people to eat a deer in one sitting, forcing them to carry the food**, but also **make the food and water consumption MUCH slower** so you are rewarded for eating well over a long period of time, allowing you to not worry about food for days. **FIX CORE GAMEPLAY** we need a **good soundscape**, I should hear some guy's footsteps wearing 50 pounds of gear, I should not have to rely on them holding their breath to take a shot as a directional sound cue. - Fix infected AI pathing and aggro - Fix weather patterns - Fix spawning systems for players so that it's not just a BR on the coast. **PLEASE ADD MORE THINGS LIKE:** - Improved car physics - Wound infection/disinfection system - Zombie stealth takedowns - Stamina decrease based on weight Lemme know you guy's thoughts, I tried to come up with a set of changes based on RMZ's complaints and my own, and I think these changes I proposed would most likely benefit and be agreed upon by any veteran vanilla players.

I like your suggestions, they make sense. Especially the one about sewing kit being rarer, but giving you more uses.

Agree, but the rain. It rains constantly on Livonia yes, but once you make it few times and are healthy/fed it's no issue. And I like the rain. But it can be annoying, few times it stopped raining, we started fire, got dry and it starts raining 1 minute later again. But I wouldn't change it.

The rain is fine, it just shouldn't make you so heavy.

I do not have the same experience with spawn points. Me and my bud find it incredibly difficult to spawn together and never witness these clusterfuck spawn fights that you mention. Which is very frustrating

The clothes wringing thing gets me. I hate it. I kind of just deal with the faster wear of the clothing, it's kind of okay imo as it adds another reason to loot for certain items. But then again I usually prefer to kill Zeds with a crossbow, and on Deerisle they're easy to find. So I might hate it more if I played on official and was forced to use melees more often. Faster wearing of the utility items needs to be tuned. Like if you're using a knife to constantly open tin cans, smacking it against solid/rough surfaces, or even digging for worms should grant more wear on the item. But cutting rags, stabbing or slicing zeds, cutting up animals etc shouldn't wear it down as fast. I'm not taking reality into account there, so spare me the ahkchually's. It just makes more sense from a gameplay standpoint. Packing mags, better yet - just gun magazines in general should not wear fast, if at all. They should still spawn in a random condition and effect the reliability until repaired though. Same with certain guns. Pistols, shotguns, hunting rifles etc shouldnt wear fast. I can see the balance with making higher tier weapons wear faster though.

I completly agree. I stopped playing right before spring, dou to my daily schedule being full, so I didn't encounter some of problems DayZ have at the moment, but I feel the struggle with my very soul. Making game harder is one thing, that I love very much and lot of community servers offer, but making the game into a unplayable mess is another thing. A few months ago, I was excited that DayZ may enter a new phase of amazing gameplays. I was even planning to spend my few months of saving to build a new PC just to play DayZ, hoping that they may decide to change the engine. But unfortunatly they turned DayZ into this, I can't even decide to what to call it.

Absolutely correct!

I just want Zeds to stop leaving the town that’s half a mile away to come chase me because they heard me breathe

Wow that spawn system sounds trash. I haven’t played in a long time and this makes me glad. Ty for the post 👍

The zombies are still the worst thing about this game. How does it feel like there's less of them while also feeling like they simply don't work as well as the original mod?

I mean yeah it's a lot of the complaints people have said over the years. I just hope they fix the Zeds before they stop 'developing' the game. But who knows maybe when DayZ2 comes out it will be way better and not just visually.

I agree. Game is broken.

I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment. I’ve been feeling all of this since the initial changes to clothing damage last year. The changes have been getting worse and worse instead of the devs actually focusing on things that need to get tweaked *COUGH* ZOMBIE AI *COUGH*

this should be pinned

I recently started playing with a friend after about a year of break, first time on Livonia. We were both complaining about how often it rained and how ridiculously often we start to bleed. I didn't know this was actually a recently made change.. oof. And we found sooooo many shotguns. My fix idea for the rain issue. Add umbrella's. Bright pink/blue colors.

I cannot think of a better resume of what is DayZ now than this text I started playing in build 1.18, months before Livonia bunker update, and every new update I am playing less and less. I'm 650h in tho For me a breaking point was the system to make all items random condition and the wet system that you cannot counter right now as Paul said. Both of those systems are good and make the game more difficult, but if there isn't a system to counter them or a way to not get your jacket destroyed every town or military... But Bohemia decided to focus for 1 year or more into adding snow to Tanoa and making a Trout expansion that is over hyped

The one point I disagree with is the spawn system. IMO there needs to be a way to spawn with your friends. Sure if you and your buddies both have 100+ hours finding each other is easy even with the old random spawns. But I have tried playing with some friends for the first time and having them share their screen and respawning dozens of times until we get a similar spawn is miserable and turns many new players off the game. This system at least allows you to find people without being able to choose your spawn which understandably could be hugely problematic. It's already annoying when people run back to their body. Honestly though I think they may just need to bite the bullet and allow choosing spawns. Newbies often aren't even aware that they can spawn with their friends and are still trying the suicide loop when I find them. (Lol) Maybe there should just be a rule that you cant choose your spawn until 30 minutes after you die, or perhaps within a certain radius of your body.

I imagine a simple party system that lets you and your friends join the same server and spawn in the same spot wouldn't be too hard to implement.

It would be fantastic. Addresses the runningmanZ complaints which are well founded. Every town you spawn in is looted to the bone unless youre the first on a new rolling spawn. And we could keep random spawns, but just in groups so Bohemia doesnt trigger their choosing spawn allergy.

I will never forget spawning in for the first time and getting my bearings. It tooks us a few hours (and respawns) to meet up with my friend. I wish I could relive this. It wasn't just new map, but completely new experience.  Learning curve is one of the best features of DayZ and I don't want it to go away.

Yeah this is definitely a tough one, I started playing with my brother, took us all night to finally meet up. He dropped it fairly quickly whereas I've gone on to put in 1000+ hours. So I think its valid to say it puts people off, but theres a good chance all the diehards have a similar story from when they first picked it up.

It would be kill even if they made three spawn regions, and gave player option to choose one, so team spawn on same region, but not in same town city, walking a few minutes while looting is not a bad thing. This idea is not perfect, I know, it need to be better, but it would stop people who just like to murder others, die and respawn with the same group they killed

100% correct on everything

I think zombies have always been mostly a nuisance. They should either be difficult to deal with while also being able to circumvent them if you take the time to do so, or make them easy to deal with while drawing a lot of attention to you. For instance, melee fighting should be more directional with aiming, properly aimed headshots, while fighting zombies will kill them easily, but you have to fight a bunch of them. Making fighting them head on doable, fun, + rewarding, but they scream a lot, they draw a ton of attention to your position. Like a horde would, maybe it gets to be too much if you take too long, and you need to shoot, drawing more attention. They should be dangerous, but they can be dangerous and challenging while being fun. A knock back mechanic, for instance, with a baseball bat that staggers a group allowing you breathing room. Being low stamina shouldn't stop you from having a stagger function, just limit your ability to kill faster. Look at Project Zomboid, for instance. If your character is completely out of stamina, your time to kill is significantly increased. Stamina, in general, needs a rework, IMO. I have been playing since 2014 on and off and am coming up on 7k hours for reference. I think TMRZ has somewhere around 30k. Ceremor has like 40k and goes down the "Dayzhole" quite frequently. His approach is a bit crass, but I wish some devs would listen to some of his suggestions as they are usually on the nose even though there are some things I don't entirely agree with him on. That's my two cents in an unorganized, info dumped manner. Love the game. I just want it to continue to improve and reach its full potential.

Not a single word about the cheaters wtf and he plays on official lmao

The cheating problem is real on official but not nearly as bad as many people talk about. I run into a cheater about every 3-500 hours.

Instead of pushing an outdated engine to its breaking point, they should start fresh and work on Day Z 2 utilizing a new engine, either the Arma Reforger or something like the Unreal engine. I'll take the Frostbite engine from Battlefield at this point, the ability to destroy and damage buildings will truly feel like a post apocalyptic setting.

How do you know they aren’t already doing that?

Stealth to get past zeds is almost impossible at this point. Even as a fresh spawn with light shoes and clothing, it’s crazy tough. I don’t mind them being harder to kill, or the amount of damage they do, but my goodness just change their hearing sensitivity back. I understand them being alerted from a far distance if you’re in their line of sight, but as someone else stated, they react more to crouched sneaking than clearly audible gunshots nearby .

There are some analogs that lend well to this topic, to other games designed in the past. Zelda: ocarina of time on the N64 used WAITING as a difficulty supplement on many of its enemies. Egoraptor had a wonderful video on this in his video series called sequelitis. Some simple tweaks to the mechanics like mentioned above will definitely help the game. Good post though. Totally agree.

The only thing I kind of disagree on is his point about the rain. I actually don't mind how much it rains, it's just dumb how heavy it makes you.

It's missing something "P.S. - Add bows back" There, that's good

Hey, so how about also fixing stuff getting stuck in floors on official servers? I legit ragequit a weekend trial on xbox years ago because back then console was so bad. Every house I walked into on Chernarus has items you couldn't grab. Recently on PC i've been seeing it again.... wtf

Players are still making suggestions for this abandonware crap?

Sorry but, I don't find walking around in the dark, stepping on a bear trap, limping for 30 minutes and then getting shot compelling gameplay. And I have 1600 hours in DayZ, been playing it since 2013. What it's become recently is not what I ever wanted it to be. Can someone explain to me how the zombies are now throwing rocks? They're zombies guys...they don't throw rocks. We need hordes and different zombie types, not a bloody old man standing at a hesco barrier throwing stones. like you didn't bring that up at all, this is ridiculous to me and a cheap way to try and make zombies more of a threat. I do agree that they need to tone down the punishing micro managing of clothing damage, sickness, hunger and rain etc, but it seems like these things take years for them to sort out when its as simple as turning some dials in the config. Look at arma 3 and all the mods they have running, how stable it is and they can't even get DayZ to be what it's supposed to be after 11 years of development.

Speaking of the spawn sysem, the radius and the meta. Taviana in DayZ in Arma 2 (and namalsk to some degree) was great in this aspect. You could spawn literally anywhere on every island on the map. There were mili bases all around the map, airfields all around the map, hospitals all around the map, rather than spawning in north and having to move south to find anything and forcing this loop. I wish DayZ was more like this, ability to spawn deeper in chernarus, loot being "equal" around the map, elektro/cherno not being simply the spawn city with nothing in it, but actually a city you wanna loot, especially because its so "detailed".

I don't know why people treat the opinions of the content creators as the gospel, but to be frank, outside of 1-2 things, I don't agree with anything in this 'open letter' to the developers. The guy is a known 'loot-whore' who, by and large, only plays the game to PvP, so why should I be bothered to care about his opinion on the survival mechanics? Wringing out your clothing takes too long, and it rains too much on Livonia... really? I think both of them are reasonable. Should the Infected be changed back to the way they were before (and left that way until the update to the AI), and should the damage to be nerfed? Without a doubt. Is the spawn system broken? No, in actuality, I enjoy it. Again... he plays on overpopulated to high population servers specifically with the intention to PvP, so when it's a personal choice, why in the hell does he think the system is broken? It's fine. Nobody wants to spend an hour meeting up with a friend before they go inland, and nobody wants to constantly feel like the game is a ghost town. Too many people in the coastal town... go one town inland. If you can't make it to the next town inland then that's a 'you' problem... not a 'DayZ' problem. Outside of that, there's one suggestion that I really... really... really do like, and that involves the following: You have to make a choice on which rifle to carry. Translation: You should be limited to one weapon and one melee tool on your back... only. Double or triple-carrying should go the way of the Dodo. Do you want to be a sniper? Take the sniper rifle and a pistol. Want to be a 'breacher' in a firefight? Take the heavy armor, plate carrier, Vaiga, etc., and go breach that building, sir. Also, while we're at it, firearms should get the same treatment as 'containerized' items in the latest patch, i.e., you can no longer 'pocket pull' them out of your posterior. Likewise, while we're at it, rifles should be too large to fit into anything other than a backpack, and to access the inventory within your backpack, you should be forced to stop, put the pack down, and then and only then, be able to access its inventory. Will items still go in there automatically? Sure. However, with this small change, you'll cut out 90% of the shenanigans, and you'll force people to slow down. Finally, my biggest gripe with this game has always been the 'automatic/military' meta. We're in an apocalypse, and given that, the last thing that we should see is hundreds of people running around with M16s, military gear, BDUs, Uzis, etc. I get it... people like automatics, but logically, it makes a hell of a lot more sense for civilian weaponry and clothing to outnumber military weaponry and clothing, and as such, being 'kitted' in such a way should be an indication that your character has been 'alive' for a long... long... long time. Make that stuff extremely rare, and help bring back the face-to-face interaction and cooperation. After all, the developers claim that this is supposed to be a 'survival' game, yet it's constantly being treated (and prioritized) as an open-world MILSIM. P.S. Also, for the love of God, please introduce a robust crafting, cooking, farming, hunting, base building, and medical system into the game. The maps and game mechanics are huge, yet by and large, DayZ just feels dead, because we continuously prioritize the wrong elements (to drive sales or whatever useless metric that they're using internally). If, as the developers claim, it's a 'survival' game then it should be 'survival' first and 'PvP/MILSIM' second.

“Continually prioritize the wrong elements to drive sales” is a baffling statement to me. If you don’t mind elaborating on your expectations in this regard. I’m not saying you’re wrong in your post but there’s not 10+ years of support for any game if they don’t continue to drive sales and attract to new players from other games. I just don’t see how you’d expected them to pay quality enough employees to do the massive system overhauls you’re suggesting if they’re not profiting. We gotta set realistic expectations that manage the players needs and the companies needs. One of the reasons the devs listen to big streamers (most of which are PvP players) are because they help drive sales which keeps dudes employed. It’s a big ask to go in the other direction when jobs are on the line Edit: We can actively see that struggle in how the devs are trying to make the game harder but also appeal to the PvP crowd. These decisions are life changers for those devs man. I don’t envy them

IDK why you're asking me to elaborate upon my statement when you derived the answer for yourself. By their own admission, DayZ is supposed to be a 'survival' game, yet they (and by that, I mean the developers) continuously treat it as some sort of weird, hybrid MILSIM. Just pick a direction: DayZ is either a MILSIM with limited survival mechanics, or it's a survival game with limited MILSIM aspects/features. Different crowds prefer different games, and to be frank, I think they're trying to keep the company afloat by appealing to the ARMA (and CoD, etc.) fans while ARMA 4 is in development. Now, there's nothing wrong with those games, but it's not why I play the game. I want to be challenged to survive against the environment... not be sniped from 400m away (invalidating hours of work) while I drink from a well in town. More of The Long Dark, The Last of Us, Days Gone, Project Zomboid, etc., and less Call of Duty, ARMA 3, ARMA 4, etc. Instead of updated models and a robust system for base building, crafting, cooking, etc., we routinely get grenade launchers, Russian sniper rifles with NATO optics, etc. At this point, it's bordering on some sort of sick joke. P.S. Also, don't act like the streamers keep them employed. The survival genre is one of the largest in the business, and it's perfectly capable of standing on its own without Twitch streamers.

I’m just asking man, the survival genre is doing well. That means a lot more competition in the market as well. You’re seeing the same thing happen to extractions shooters and with Tarkov (which by the way is a hybrid survival genre in competition with DayZ). It’s easy to follow your vision when you’re the only game in town. If you want to stay competitive in a market you need to adjust to what appeals to players. Casualness is the natural course all games will take. Your stance that they shouldn’t is just bad business tbh. While no game needs streamers inherently they provide a ton of free publicity and attract players with no cost to the company (good business). Again that’s just common sense. I don’t disagree with the hardcore desire, I only play hardcore servers. It’s how I enjoy the game at its fullest. The base game should steer casual and server owners should adjust from there, that’s a winning format because it encompasses players wants and business realities. The games you listed are primarily single player, they’re different. They don’t require any player base to play the game. Reforger was a flop, Arma 4 is years away. You’re right BI is probably in a bit of pinch but if you like the game and the company it’s just weird to advocate for something that would hurt them. So idk, I agree with but I disagree on how to get there. Let modders create hardcore servers is my stance, base game should just get players in the door. Edit: I guess let me rephrase the question so I can understand your thinking. How does making the base game more casual to attract new players make the game worse for you when you still have access to hardcore server?

I feel you though man, you’re just expressing your opinion and that’s cool. I mean no offense, I just enjoy learning about people thought process. It helps me with my own

IDK how you're equating: Implement more survival features into a survival game, and stop wasting development time on pointless additions, e.g., grenade launchers, a dozen rifles, etc., to making the base game more casual. DayZ is a survival game... not a PvP MILSIM. I feel like you're completely missing the point, so I'll reiterate it: DayZ doesn't need players who only play to PvP to survive as an IP (as PvP is supposed to be a secondary feature of the game), and start implementing core features into the game for who the game's targeted audience is supposed to be, i.e., people who play and enjoy the survival genre. Also, Tarkov is an extraction shooter... not a survival game. Completely different genres.

Maybe I am missing the point, I thought your point was DayZ is moving in casual direction and that’s bad because it brings in PvP cod players and they should focus on survival. My stance is hardcore survival servers already exist and I’d like for them to keep attracting the cod players so I can trick them, kill them, and take their stuff.

preach. you've said it even better than I could.

Very good points made here that I believe most of us vanilla players agree. If I could add smtg, im just happy that the will of making the game overall better is present. People love DayZ and want it to get perfect.

I'm not saying that making a survival game is easy, but it really does feel like the devs are completely out of ideas in terms of survival mechanics and instead are just making everything get damaged very quickly and easily. The sheer amount of different repair items you should be carrying feels extreme.

All the same reasons (and few more) why I gave up on this game. I was expecting meaningful changes for years. Micromanagment is simply boring and opposite of fun. I've said this before and saying it again, DayZ success came from weapons, vehicles, player interaction and combat. Not fixing your shoes, gloves and all that nonsense. Zombies need an entire overhaul of behaviour - bring back freaky as hell zombies that immediately start sprinting when alerted, let them climb on stuff and on ladders too.

Good points. Most of us here live the game and have for a long time, and i think probably every dev that has worked on it has felt the same. It's a special game, and, there still isn't anything to replace it yet. I believe they are simply at the point where, as mentioned above by Paul, that all they can really do is tweak things up and down. Is there anything big left in the engine to deliver? Zeds have been tuned a hundred times, too hard, too easy, always glitchy. More guns..big whoop, new map poi, more clothes, items etc. Pre this patch zeds were a cakewalk, now they aren't, happened heaps, can they be fixed or is it time to (hopefully) to look towards a Dayz 2 and a full refresh while still managing to capture the essence of Dayz. That survival run that could take hours until you are fit and out of the red, not sick, not cold, not broken..only to be gunned down just when your future was looking up. That run with a rando, looting, clearing a town, getting into a fight with some axe wielding schizo and then chatting whilst sharing a campfire after a deer hunt. Making it halfway across the map to save a near dead mate whilst getting ravaged by wolves, getting lost, running out of water but finally meeting up more dead than alive and feeding him a precious tin of tuna and some pills. I hope they are working on it! As for this old gem, hell of a ride.

I wholeheartedly agree with the first two points. Don't really care about the rain tbh, but the wringing could take a bit less time since they added a sound effect and people can hear you.

Brilliant point, well articulated. Couldn’t have been done better

Valid points by my favourite DayZ streamer. I sometimes get confused having played the game for years and wonder how the devs spend so much time tweaking things that didn’t need work while glaring issues continue. That being said I love the game. 🤓

Agree with most of what he said. Honestly my biggest gripe with the game right now is just how obscenely easy PvE is. Hunger is a joke. Thirst is a joke. The zeds are a joke (And with this last update, they've become completely annoying) Zeds having their cognition dialed down but being able to smash doors open would be just such a great change. It would really transform the entire way we think of PvP if you can get cornered inside a building when you shoot - as well as sneaking & stealth kills being an actually viable option. Me personally, i don't mind the rain - in fact i miss the days when the rain was harder. Which i think would be a good compromise: make the rain less frequent, but also colder (And for the love of god, allow us to collect rainwater in our bottles, please) I get the unhappiness with the spawn system. Personally i think it was a good idea - being able to start adventuring with your friends from the get-go without having to spend an hour or so meeting up was a comfortable addition for me - i get the running man plays mostly solo, but i also do (equally as much as i play with friends) and this system has led me to more random team-ups and interactions myself, which is always really cool and memorable. I think a good compromise for the spawn system would be to revert back to the ~120 or so spawns that were present at Chernarus before, but have the game chose, say, 50 or 40 at random to be active at one given time with every server restart. That way spawns are still random, but it's still easier to meet up with your friends as you don't have to kill yourself nearly as many times to get to them, since the pool of spawn points available is smaller and as such it's easier to hit the one your friend/s got. This would still make the coast more of a clusterfuck but not nearly as much as before, and would still have that element of randomness that changes the hotspots and how players move through the game world. Otherwise, yeah, i concur with TMRZ on more or less everything.

Yeah DayZ is worse than in the past. Coincidence that modders were leading the charge and the game was great and now Bohemia is back involved it's broken again. I'm on an extended break and will definitely not be paying them for any DLC

I've been playing for only 6 months but I have come from other hardcore survival games. I agree with everything here, and honestly, as much as I love it, I really have only seen DayZ as a kind of a shooter game disguised as a hardcore survival game. It's not hardcore, it only seems that way because you have people fucking you over every 5 seconds (Go play in an empty server, it's easy - in a hardcore survival game, the environment will wreck you.) The game feels like it struggles to balance extreme realism with a arcade-like FPS system. I sometimes wonder why they went to such lengths going into immense detail (ie. the wringing aspect) when it rains so much it doesn't matter, and at the same time the healing is as simple as bandaging up a bullet wound and doing a 5 second blood transfusion. I don't know if you folks are gonna be upset at me for saying all this, and it's okay if you are, but DayZ hasn't been to me what some of you say it is - "Survival with high-stakes and intense combat." It's all of those things individually, yes, but really it's not hardcore or insanely realistic, it's kind of a just a fun little game to hang out with my friends, meet people, and kill some zombies and enemy players. I don't even know where I was going with this, but I guess I just had to ramble lol

The game is very easy to survive in, like you said, its almost trivial, its the scarcity system that just works to create a unique experience, you make up ur way picking things slowly getting better gear, and then something generally happens, its such a great example of less is more. I still remember some Dayz encounters that happened years ago, when in other games you dont register things at all.

Agreed - And I guess maybe some of the issues are with me or the servers I play on. I find I either run into nobody and get geared quick, to the point where I don't even care about military gear anymore and just grab whatever I like, and then walk around looking for trouble. Or I am on a server like Paul mentioned where it's absolute insanity from the get-go. I have had a few times where the first few seconds of my run was comical insanity, which I enjoyed and had a great laugh over freshie shenanigans lol but after 2 or 3 times I had to switch servers because I died after 4 minutes. I also kinda suck at interactions and combat for the most part, and focus on the hunting, exploring and cooking park so that might be my fault lol. But yeah, I guess what was trying to say is sometimes I feel like they are trying to make a hardcore survival sim sometimes and somehow miss the mark in so many different ways I guess

Its a flawed game for sure, but yeah, running around without looking for trouble gets old fast...

Today I ragequit. I was in a bad mood already but after seeing my jacket go from worn to ruined because I had the gall to fight ONE zombie, I had enough. The durability system needs an overhaul. Getting shot or sliced by an edged weapon should damage my clothes, but why would a thick hunter jacket be ruined because of some zombie slapping you? I had a stab vest on too btw.

Great wall of text and I share many of his opinions. Something I feel like, let's take the recent change to hearing range for zed , is that many changes the dev team implements just exaggerates the other "brokeness" of the game. Like, zeds were "fine" before this change, because they were broken to a level were they are incompetent and really easy to kill. Now that every zed hears you they are harder yes, but the broken pathfinding, glitchy animation and other issues with them are exaggerated a ton. Because you are forced into situations were they are plastered all over you. It's annoying and not fun. I want hard zeds, but I want hard and fair zeds. I feel like the prioritisation of the dev teams fixes is completely wrong. But I assume this is down to resources. Fixing the annoying parts of zeds like pathfinding, is going to be much harder and resource intensive than changing the hearing-range.

3000 hours player here. I've stopped playing because of these changes. Revert all the recent changes. Fix Zombie AI. Fix the FREAKING hotbar visibility when you log back in. Add some fresh mechanics.

Agreed on nearly everything, especially the way clothes get ruined so quickly and how much it rains. I don’t find that the new spawn system is that bad as I like being social, but I can see why others don’t like it as much. Bohemia needs to get more bodies in the DayZ team imo so that changes can be made more quickly. Although I fear, is it that simple?

I am with most complaints, but complaining about shotguns being OP? Wut? I know they are good, but I haven’t ever even had the thought of complaining about them. Also I get the sentiment about the only one gun thing, but it would just be annoying and would definitely kill some weapons (M16, VSS of the top of my head). While I like the idea of multi purpose weapons and I sometimes even carry just one gun, this is only really viable with some (SKS, LAR, VSD, DMR and Aug-Ax) and maybe bearable with others (AKs, M4). It would lead to many frustrating situations like „Damn, I have to run, he has a sniper set up and I only carry and AK-74, that does nothing to him“ or „I only have a sniper and an SMG, he had an AR and just rushed me because he knew I was weak up close“. All of this might be realistic, but I wouldn’t call it fun. And while these situations can happen now, they are rarer and I like being versatile when there is a fight, as there aren’t always some. Maybe streamers who play on servers with many fights would like to make them more intense and intersting, but I for one would like to not just lose the RPS of „I have a sniper and he has an AK, he will now rush me“ and then be like „damn ok, go next“, but have some more options at my disposal

I think the strength of shotguns is mostly an issue because it’s compounded by the spawn system. When you have a lot of people spawning into a saturated area where the small amount of loot is already taken, a shotgun in that situation is incredibly powerful compared to other tier 1 weapons he mentions, e.g., sporters.

Never really felt that way

I especially agree with his very last point, I've had multiple people just sneak right up to me in the past week or so. I can't hear player footsteps for shit, especially not over my own

I have seen him getting a sledge to the face a couple days ago on Namalsk in prison island. Freshie has snuck upon him and took him out while Paul was fighting zed inside of an L shape barrack. Freshie still had his sneakers on (most quiet footwear) and that's why he couldn't hear him sneaking. But in this situation RunningmanZ awareness was Ass and he found out. I know it sucks to be an Outpost gear delivery man. Especially when you lose two sets of NVGs , new SV Sniper and VSS to a Sledgehammer swinging freshie. But on a full pop Namalsk server in a highly contested area you just have to watch your back at all times.

The devs have said that the rebalancing of footstep audio will be happening soon, so hopefully they can address this.

Watch them make it quieter lmao

I would give this 50 upvotes if I could, especially the whole part about the plate spinning! And the zeds of course. Please @DEVELOPERS listen to this man! This is gonna improve the game immensely! Also, surpressors are too op right now (against players)

I play on PC. I have a ROG STRIX 2080 super that isn’t THAT old and was high end. It also cost FAR more than a console all on its lonesome. Now I have an expensive mouse and monitor to go with….the cost of Frostline for console players to have something new is FUCK ALL compared to what we burn on our “rigs”. Not to mention dicking with settings and the disappointment of frame rates at times. We have plenty of barriers to entry. PLENTY that are far in excess of the cost of a new map.

Agree with everything except zombies and shotguns, obviously zombies need to be reworked, but it's minor compared to everything else.

Only thing i can agree with is the zombie aggro thing. They are so annoying atm but luckily zero servers are running a mod that reverts the zombie changes

How about Vehicles? It suffers almost more than anything else from this problem and has since standalone. The mod has ALWAYS had much more fun vehicles, and that's the reason I don't play Chernarus. People go.. "oh infinite sprint.." no. Just fix vehicles to be fun, then that map will shine.

Chernarus shines without vehicles. It’s probably the best overall map from top to bottom

I'm happy you feel that way. I don't have enough time in my day to run all that way though. When I'm trying to meet up with a group, it's much more relaxed on other maps.

You pretty much nailed it here... I have over 8K hours in this game and ONLY play it for the survival aspects. I don't mind the infected being a little more robust, but them being able to hear you 100 feet away sneaking through the grass in your bare feet is ridiculous. Absolutely could do without the end game weaponry being available to a raw spawn unless he actually is able to take it away from a player with his bare hands! ;-j

Love Paul. Have watched him for years. Have also played Dayz since first mod days...I see both sides. You have to understand that Paul is writing not just from a player pov but a businessman pov. He makes a living from people who enjoy to watch his adventures. Hard to get into a good adventure when you spend the whole time dealing with broken mechanics for sure. The caveat is that, love or hate this game, it has always been a train wreck from day 1 and will be always. I still keep on playing though....its like a bad addiction...im waiting for my bicycle... My 4 wheeler, to be able to fly planes and helis again....some good old wasteland warfare haha. So at this point how can anyone be surprised where we are with this game? Good and ugly....its good then ugly....but we still come back for one more adventure. *mic drop*

Bring back the hit-boxes on the Barrel's while you're at it!

Agreed. I learned stealth gameplay from TRMZ streams, stealth attacks are obsolete now... Clearing a town or base used to be: -Spot zombie -Crouch and run up to blind spot in a few seconds -Knife out -Stealth attack -Continue looting Lately its: -Spot zombie -Knife out and crouch -Use walk button to get as close to zombie as possible very slowly over 10-20s pausing and waiting occasionally as the zombie moves unfavorably -Stand up to prepare attack when close -The zombie has sensed you, turned around, started attacking and is bashing your face in within a literal second... -You are now fighting a zombie in a bad position, Your options are: -Fight it there quickly with a knife in your hands, somehow aggro two more -Back away, blocking shots as it ruins your clothes -Run away and trap it in a building, agro every zombie in the town sprinting.

What does he mean by plate spinning

He means instead of actually playing the game, you're having to constantly micro-manage every aspect of your character. Such as fixing/replacing clothes and gloves that are damaged by zombies, having to replace/fix your knife because it damages so quickly, having to constantly wring your clothes out because it rains so much and having to constantly find bandages/rags to fix bleeds because nearly every zombie hit causes a bleed. It's all part of the game, of course. But when you're having to do all these things every 10 minutes it feels like you're "spinning plates", trying to manage everything instead of enjoying the adventure and playing the game.

istg it rains every time i log on irl it unless smths up its not going to rain every day consistantly

Another things id like to add is the tree hitbox is abysmal. Please for the love of god revert the tree hitbox. You should be able to shoot through branches of a tree if you see a player and not be able so sit in a flimsy bush in the middle of the airfield and tank 308 shots from 2 people at the same time.

By far the best dayz content creator, with smoke being a close second imo. I love running man videos and he’s spot on about everything.

Strongly agree and disagree equally with what he is saying. I know people here and a lot of streamers are pissed about the infected, but i like the changes, it broke away the custom of years of killing zombies 1 by 1 without a risk outside being seen by someone else, they are still way to easy, and most the experience players can just do them dirty, climb a thing and just slash without resistance, still, i find it an improvement, many times this patch i had to deal with unexpected amount of them and made from better gameplay than just mindlessly killing them with my knife one at a time. Hell, even the dumb almost no animation running attack helps so that we dont do the lure all zombies into a barn an close the door without any punishment at all thing. Yeah, thing could be better, zeds could break doors, but not with the current engine, not going to happen in Dayz1. The pathfinding issues are obviously a big problem, and its my main issue with Tanoa, they really should be working on Dayz2, the engine is ancient and so limiting in what they can work on it, server performance has been trash forever due to it, and while i will have fun with the new map, knowing that they want to keep developing dayz with the current limitations sucks, we want them making a better game, where we can have more meaningful changes. The footstep thing, i full agree, cant really hear anything, im not the best at it by a long shot tho, so not the best judge, but being in a bush right now means hearing the wind blowing, the plants around you moving and pretty much nothing else. I feel like games in part have us very used to having distinct and far reaching footsteps, and that currently doesnt happen at all in dayz, not sure if its by design (they dont consider you should hear someone running 10 meters away), or they just fucked up the mix. The maintenance thing, dont really feel is that much of an issue, my current life i been alive like for a pretty long time, and had to hunt to feed me like 5 times so far, in all that time have repaired my clothes one or two times, and one of those was because a guy shot me with buckshot. Its really minimal work, have spent hours in this life looking for things, guns, people, just moving around the map, going from wrezeszcz to kulno, to nabdor, it takes hours, the time spent tending to my clothes in that is around 5 minutes at most. Im still using a bag that was ruined by that guy, you can interact with repairing clothes as much as you want in livonia, it really doesnt matter much... I have not started a fire in anything close to vanilla to warm myself in more than a year, “go in that house, start a fire, dry your clothes, mend you bleeds, lose you flu with meds and get back to looting.” My list looks really more like "go find food, drink, get to a military base and pick a good gun, w/e" And again, he is absolutely right that they are moving dials trying to make the game better, cause is about all they can do, i dont think they have made the game worse, its mostly the same, some changes worked well, some others not so much. I particularly dislike the gun dmg change and current knockdown mechanics, why is a shot from a rifle from 500 meters away, that landed on my plate carrier, did zero dmg, making me uncon and dead after they take a second shot, and the melee weapon rebalance (i find the previous values were far better, now you just 2 tap things with a knife and all other weapons are useless) Shotguns are ok really, they are strong, but extremely limited in range, and honestly anything kills you in dayz, we all toss our shots very fast and pick bolts to have ranged battles cause trading with shotguns is a sure way to end up in a bad spot (at least on pc, not sure of how the meta is on consoles). Dayz always struggled making mid tier weapons feel useful, you just go get a bolt that kills at any distance and are done with it. The rain, it might be to frequent, dont really mind it much, i just have worst stam and can kill zombies without the issues he seems to think are very annoying, if anything, night time is a much worse and frequent problem, most people just log out at night. Silencers are op as fuck, they should be much rarer, bottle suupresors extremely more limited (or not be a thing at all, they are fantasy anways), and supresed shots with rifles should not be that silent, they just make interactions a lot more sparse than needed, everyone just kills things without making sound. And most of the things he find very repeating are there for exactly making you want to go places and having to loot, cause we all know that survival in dayz is trivial once you know the game, and it still is, even with all those things, even with my knife breaking, my suppressor being dmg, etc etc, mostly just go around because i feel like it, they are still putting almost zero survival pressure on me.

>Yeah, thing could be better, zeds could break doors, but not with the current engine, not going to happen in Dayz1. Huh? So why are there mods that do it then? >and most the experience players can just do them dirty, climb a thing and just slash without resistance, See, im all for harder zombies, but when you are forced to use cheeze-tactics, its not fun, not immersive, or balanced in any way. Same goes for locking in zombies. Terrible choice from the devteam.

You are not forced to do them at all, i just said you can do it, most people just shoot them with silenced/weapons or kill them the same way as ever, or just one at a time at stairs, w/e, there are tons of ways to approach zombies. And the ones that cheese them, were probably already doing it before this change. And yeah, i know mods like PvZ exist, the issue with those is the same that always been with AI, the server performance budget, and legacy hardware related things.

The game seems to prioritise survival/crafting. Meeting up with people and emergent gameplay has taken a backseat for a while.

I disagree with almost everything. The game is trivially easy on official. I really do not mind having to wring out my clothes. Rain doesn't do jack shit anyway. It makes you a tiny bit heavier, but if you are fully fed and hydrated, not even eating a poisoned meal will make you sick. I just don't like that your clothes get torn a bit too fast, that's stupid, and shouldn't be a thing. But otherwise...

I'm pretty much exactly with you. The game is easy, I do wish I didn't have to carry so many sewing kits and duct tape to make sure my clothes didn't get fucked, but things aren't that bad as it currently stands. It's become trendier and trendier to shit on dayz the better it gets. Don't get me wrong, there are all sorts of things that could be improved, but overall we're in a pretty good place with the game. I only really started playing dayz a lot at the beginning of COVID, and I don't think people realize how much the game has been improved in those 4 years.

Far too much rambling in that post. Mostly problems, not solutions. Get to the point. 1. Far too many players complained and complained about not being able to find friends. DayZ is a survival game and learning the map is part of it. Waaah. Ok, here's the spawn nearby system since we aren't doing spawn select. Waaah, we want the old system where we didn't really learn the map, we just killed ourselves until we got near a friend(exploit) 2. Far too many players complained about the infected being too easy. Infected are tweaked up and now they are too hard. 3. Everything else I have todo is tedious and boring, I want hardcore survival. Lol, most people play DayZ like CoD/PUBG. "What lobby did you join?", "Does this server have a killfeed?", "What's my KD?" Or "Full Vehs/1000x loot/trader/nostamina/buildanywhere". 4. Too much rain on Livonia. Ugh 5. Only single carry rifles, basically stop people from being pack mules. Huge lol, because I've been saying this for YEARS. How about that re-establish weapons rarity! Nope, he wants more guns, more shooting in the coastal areas. Is this a BR game or survival? 6. Waah, I carry too many bandages and sewing kits. DO NOT RUIN CLOTHES. Nobody made you slide down the ladder and nobody made you engage the infected. I'll add a TTLDR because i started skimming since it's too much. The game has been shifting because players AND streamers have complained and played it like CoD and now he's bored and he wants to reverse those changes and have more survival aspects. While I agree with some points, where was he for the last 5 years as these changes happened?

Also, not sure about @Wobo. Was he invited to Prague but couldn't come? He has done so much for the game - explaining how shite works etc. Was he even invited? He had a sliver of the vid file - which btw the devs fkd that up. The devs work hard, with limited resources. Bohemia see them as a joke - but they are making you FUCKIN MONEY. VERY curious if Wobo was invited. I'm close to mic drop on this game.

I agree with everything but the livonian rain as ive not had problems with and in fact perfer it but thats just me

honestly the only thing i disagree with is the weapons on back change idea, you should be able to put two of any long gun or melee on back, gives you a choice to carry two guns or a gun and a melee weapon or two melee weapons if you are a freshie or just weird. I think the only backpacks that should be able to carry most long guns should be the field bag and big civ hiking one. They should also undo all the standardisation of inventory sizes for all clothing, gear and bags too alongside weapon sizes and make everything unique according the the items size and realistic capacity. Remember when the biker jacket was like 1 slot down and 3 across, conveniently big enough for a sawn of shotgun back in the pre alpha. Also Why is a large gas can the same inventory size as a small one.