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DayZ. A game mod better than all MMO's i've played in the last 5 years or so.
Params7
Member UncommonPosts: 212
Basically its a mod for a military simulator, ARMA 2. Its a persistent world, with permadeath. You only start out with a can of beans, a handgun. No compass though you can find it. No radar and map but you can find compass and a piece of the map, which won't have your positions so you'll have to figure out where you are on the map.
Sounds pretty anti-casual, but it has by FAR, has the greatest potential for human interaction because you depend on each other so much. This one mod is better than the entire show of Walking Dead when it works right, though sadly its plagued by a host of server issues right now.
Trailer:
Some gameplay vids:
if you venture out alone at night and put a flare down this can easily happen to you as resources are VERY rare and people easily turn on each other.
Its build on concepts no dev today would have the guts to try, but after experiencing this game I'm convinced permadeath is the future of RPG's.
Comments
I love ARMA 2 and survival games. I think I know how I will spend many future hours. . .and hours . . and hours. Awesome
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I'm thinking about getting into it, if only to find a couple moments like this.
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It is a fantastic experience!
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/05/14/surviving-in-day-z-part-two/
And being based on an almost 3 year old game means it's only half the price of Diablol 3.
This is the future of gaming, shame every other developer on the planet is too busy filling their pockets to evolve.
I especially liked the voice chat, built on proximity, that's very cool. Looking forward to playing this...
Yeah, I read about DayZ a couple of weeks ago and downloaded it to see if it was much cop. Well, like the OP, it's the best MMO experience I've had in as long as I remember, and its not even an MMO. In fact it's one of the best gaming experiences I've had probably ever.
It's the absolute antithesis of what MMOs have become and more closely matches the potential that MMOs had 10 or more years ago. A massive open world with several cities, dozens of towns and villages and vast forests all set across a huge landscape. There's no hand-holding here, anything goes. Some players group together to survive in the safety of numbers, others camp in the loot rich cities to kill and rob those who come to find the stuff they need, others lone-wolf it around the world trusting no-one and relying completely on themselves.
You need to eat and drink, you need ammo and weapons to survive, you need equipment like maps, compasses and hunting knives to give you an edge in survival, you need road flares for the oh so dark nights. You even need medicine and blood packs to alleviate the physical effects of being hurt. In future updates you'll need to keep dry and warm in the realistically modelled weather system and environment.
You have a very limited, very realistic inventory system that means that every bit of useful equipment you find presents you with a dilemma. Do you dump that extra clip for your rifle or do you leave that can of beans behind? Do you take that assault rifle and dump your shotgun even though you've only got a single clip of rifle ammo?
There's no XP, no progression beyond the equipment you have, there's no end-game, no instances, no raids, there's no party system, no binding, no fast travel, no quests, no storyline, no designated PvP areas. And death is permanent. It is incredibly lean and extremely mean.
The only certainty in DayZ is that you *will* die. How long that takes is up to you and what you are prepared to do to survive.
And it's all about survival.
It does give me some hope for the future of MMOs though. Despite the industry churning out WoW-clone after WoW-clone and more and more players drifting away from the ridiculous state of MMO affairs, DayZ, a mod for a 2 year old specialist game, has pushed Arma II:Combines Operations to the top of Steam bestsellers chart. There's a huge appetite for open-world, free-form games which DayZ proves. Even though it's still in alpha, and even though it can take an hour or more to get on a server that doesn't bug out before you get to play, the game is absurdly popular and becomes more so every day.
Playing it shows you just how fat and weak MMOs have become.
Here is a Youtube video review.
Day Z ingame video review <<< clicky
Ahhh, the taste of full-loot, open PvP (or Co-op, or Bandit Hunting - whatever floats your boat), spawning with only basic gear on death and no carebear hand-holding... THIS is how a rewarding game should be.
I wouldn't waste my time on crap like Diablo 3 when something like this is available.
Here's an interview with Dean "Rocket" Hall, DayZ's designer, with PC Gamer.
One thing I'm really looking forward is to him getting the direct communication running properly. Once that's done he'll be turning off global chat...
Yeah... I look forward to the day it gets enough popularity for the goons and the trogglodytes to come running... and it turns in to lord of the flies...
There is a reason that no sane investor want to try this kind of thing, it is simply way to risky and way to narrow of a market.
But i wish the creator the best of luck, if nothing else to have somewhere to point all the "hardcore gamers".
This have been a good conversation
It's already Lord of the Flies in the cities, just as it's supposed to be. Of course with between 30 and 60 players per server and a map that's 225km2, it's easy to avoid the bloodbaths.
I live out in the inland forests and get most of my basic supplies from the rural villages and towns. I occasionally venture into the cities to get the more specialised stuff and every single step of the way through is tense and fraught. I love it. Loads of zombies are bad enough, but when you know there are bandits out there wanting your gear it just goes to a whole new level. So far I've died four times to bandits, two were just straight bad luck and the other two taught me important lessons - don't get greedy and never try to engage.
But you get plenty of decent players too who are all about co-operation. Tonight a guy had managed to break his legs out in the middle of nowhere. He kept asking for help on the global channel and I figured I'd go looking for him. I got there just as another guy did. He administered morphine and I gave the guy one of my own morphine sticks. The three of us then headed off to one of the smaller cities, feeling pretty safe in numbers.
And really it's not a hardcore game in the sense that its for hardcore gamers. I'm pretty casual these days, but what DayZ has made me realise is that I want to *feel* something from a game and that's what the mod does. You should read that PC Gamer article even if you've got no intention of playing DayZ because it's just interesting. Rocket, DayZ's designer, is actually a game producer who now works for Bohemia and he's got some great ideas about what many games are missing these days, and it pretty much echoes what you read on these forums on a daily basis.
And you're right, no sane investor would back something like DayZ, but given the dross they are willing to back I'm not sure if those investors are the gamer's friend. Mind you, with ARMA 2 outselling everything else on Steam off the back of DayZ, I'm not so sure that smart investors will miss the lesson it's success is teaching.
Been playing this pretty heavily non-stop for a bit now. It's true, it's a better MMO experience than all the MMO's I have played in the last few years.
It's amazingly tense at times, well most of the time.....It's just an insane gaming experience. It really feels like you are trying to survive. I love zombie games, L4D, Killing Floor, etc....but this is totally different ball game. Over the last weekend I actually made it past day 0. Unfotuantely at maybe the 26 hour mark I pressed the wrong button and fell two stories off a roof. That only broke my legs. The 25 zombies on ground level promptly chewed me up!
I hang out up North near Berezino most of the time and if you see me (Worstluck)... I am not friendly...don't take my stuff!
Reminds me of when i went through SERE school. Game like this could be pretty fun.
Looks great but why do they have to go ape-shit hardcore and do perma-death. Why is everything in MMOs so black and white? Either super casual, ThemePark, linear crap or super-hardcore FFA PvP full loot, perma death. Can't there be a middle ground?
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Permadeath really isn't that big of a deal. The average life span for players right now is around four hours. When you die, yeah you will lose some gear but that's it. You start over and respawn somewhere else. I find it fun and challenging to try get back the gear I had and try to make it back to where ever I was.
Trust me, when you die, it really isn't that big of deal. All the stuff you lost can be obtained again.
O.o this looks interesting, I must try!!!
Ahh yeah you are totally right.
That's why the game is sitting (and had been near the top for weeks now) on the top of the Steam top sellers list It's not even on sale.
http://store.steampowered.com/
Please click on top sellers and you will see, Arma 2 Combined Operations at the top. Hell the MW3 map pack never even topped it. The designer of the mod has already been hired as a game designer by the makers of the orginal game. It might be a bit too 'hardcore' for you (which it isnt', people hear permadeath and open pvp and freak out), but there is definitely a market for this game.
Well, while I agree that the concept of permadeath is great - it makes you fear for your character not as with many modern games where "suicide" is a "quick trip home" solution - I think in reality it is a bad choice:
We are living in an age where technology is not 100% reliable (will we ever?) so if a simple case of lag could mean, well, not - as we all have probably experienced - a game death (maybe with no harm, maybe with some XP lost and a body that you need to find again) but instead a permadeath...
yeah... I don't think so!
Great idea for a mod. It seems like crawling would be a vital ability to have. I assume the engine doesn't support it. I'd love to see something like this mixed with minecraft in that you could maybe build a bunker in the woods with booby traps.
I'm not sure why people chose to bash D3 in this thread but my ignore list still has room.
Amazing.
This is how TSW should have been.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
I have been waiting for this kind of survival sim/open-world zombie game forEVER.
Holy hell. I must now immediately buy ARMA II.
I'm sure if this was a stand-alone MMORPG I would even pay monthly.
Kinda of interested in this game. If I had a good outfit/guild to roll with I can see this having some serious potential. Hell I hate FFA PvP and dont even get me started on permadeath but since this isnt really an MMO I am tempted in getting it.
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holy 5hit! that's pure win!
Yeah, you can crawl and you pretty much have to on a regular basis. Not only does going prone make you harder for players and zombies to spot, but it also increases your weapon accuracy. Also, wounded zombies often end up crawling, which is creepy and scary as hell, especially when you don't see them in the long grass.
You can't build bunkers but you can build fortified encampments, complete with tents, campfires (which you need to cook meat that you get from killing and gutting wild animals) and barbed wire perimeters - if you find the right equipment and live long enough. My plan is to find an innocuous, isolated barn or house in the north and use that as a base of operations.
Of course you can crawl.