I'm looking for Proponents and Opponents of the DAYZ mod.

[s3mp3rfi 10]

My DayZ story:

I've probably played DayZ for about 10 or so. At first it was interesting and scary, scavanging while trying to avoid zombies and bandits. After the first few hours and collecting a decent kit scavanging became unnecessary. Additionally I found the zombies to be easy, even after the "like... there are lots now" update.

I decided I would go around to random buildings to kill zombies and the rare bandit. This amused me for a little longer.

I then found some friends to play with, which was okay at first. Except that they literally would play all day long and usually be on the other side of Chern by the time I came back online. This, plus the frequent beach resets caused me to grow tired of running across a barren map (zombies don't count, they're not a threat) just to regroup with my friends.

The second to last time I played I ran all the way from the northeast airfield to the northwest to regroup with my friends in Zeleno, it was late and I was tired of holding W so I logged off outside the airfield.

The last time I played, I entered the airfield, killed two or three bandits and a bunch of zombies, exchanged my AK for an M4A3 and left heading further northeast in search of animals. Before leaving the forest north of the airfield I logged off. I have not been on since.

Q:Can you tell me WHY DayZ is your favorite mod for ArmA2, and what is the thing that makes this mod so Awesome.

A: DayZ is my favorite mod for two reasons.

1. because it has convinced BIS to provide even more support for ArmA2 through beta patches. These patches solve a lot of long standing problems and drastically improve playability in "the real game" (+ACE +ACRE). Something that ACE2 seemingly failed to do :(

2. Because it has brought a huge influx of new players to the community and so far I've seen a few who converting to ArmA2+ACE+ACRE when they get bored

Q:Can you elaborate WHY you dont like the DayZ mod for ArmA2 ? ( im not searching for Zombie-shooter haters )

A: It's mostly a walking simulator and I was ultimately discouraged by the lack of a real goal. Simply put: it's boring and a timesink.

Edited June 18, 2012 by s3mp3rfi

[Binkowski 26]

BIS has always supported us through Beta Patches long before DayZ. Mainly since Operation Arrowhead was released there has been a steady stream of Beta Patches with good fixes being released.

Edited June 18, 2012 by Binkowski

[Tonci87 163]

Well you have to admit that they suddenly stoped a month? before dayZ came up. But with the success of dayZ they immediatel started to continue releasing them.

[MavericK96 0]

BIS has always supported us through Beta Patches long before DayZ. Mainly since Operation Arrowhead was released there has been a steady stream of Beta Patches with good fixes being released.

Well you have to admit that they suddenly stoped a month? before dayZ came up. But with the success of dayZ they immediatel started to continue releasing them.

Yeah, there was definitely a correlation there. It had been like a month or so since the last beta, and now we are back to getting new ones (with primarily-DayZ-helping fixes, if you pay attention, and even the devs have said as much in some of the beta threads) almost bi-weekly.

[Craig_VG 20]

Well, I think I should give my $.02

Rocket and I exchanged a few emails before the first release. What he told me stunned me. I had wanted the experience he was creating for quite some time, but he completed it with the genius idea of a global database.

At the time Dynamic Zombie Sandbox was number one for Zombie servers, and I knew that reign was over right away. But when he did release it, I was stunned even more. I follow social channels quite regularly like Jerry, and I have been keeping track of the #dayz hashtag ever since. It is quite impressive how fast it spread, and how much has changed in the last few months.

Zombies always have been popular in ArmA, especially since Arrowhead was released. Charon's Undead mod was quite popular, but it was flawed in MP.

Now lets meander along to the Top COOP missions for Arrowhead:

http://www.armaholic.com/list.php?c=arma2_oa_files_scenarios_mpmissions&s=count&w=desc

The top three are Zombie Missions. Chernarus Apocalypse one and three and Dynamic Zombie Sandbox. All three of those missions have at least some of the aspects of DayZ. Celery's focus on telling a story, while mine focuses on replayability, parameters, and being able to use any island without having to port. DayZ hit the nail on the head with perrsistance.

DayZ took advantage of a market that was there, but hadn't been properly exploited, and has since grown into a mainia that can not be bad for ArmA. ArmA will stay ArmA. I didn't join this community for Zombies, and neither did many other people. We are hear for realistic military ccombat, and so is BIS. Rocket may branch off, but we will push forward to ArmA 3. Now with DayZ putting ArmA 2 into the Limelight, we should have much more sales for ArmA 3, and BI deserves that!

@Jerry You said social channels are a big part of this. I agree. Heck I even found this thread via your google+ post. Also, thanks for this thread, it was nice to read through it.

I can't think of any concrete cons to DayZ. I find it hard to read the "I hope they put dayZ on this!" youtube comments about ArmA3, but I just need to get over it. I even think the cry baby cheater (vitality) was a bad thing. It was quite entertaining (I do not think cheating is a good thing).

That was longer than expected. :D

Long live ArmA.

[-Coulum- 35]

Yeah, there was definitely a correlation there. It had been like a month or so since the last beta, and now we are back to getting new ones (with primarily-DayZ-helping fixes, if you pay attention, and even the devs have said as much in some of the beta threads) almost bi-weekly.

Yep definitely some relationship between the two. What I wonder is: are we getting more betas because theres more money from DayZ allowing BIS to put more man hours in...

Or are these betas coming in order to send a clear message to the DayZ folk that Arma is being supported on a regular basis, and so more and more DayZ players will be attracted to it.

Or maybe its a mix of both.

[Nicholas 5]

I think it's because they were so busy working on ArmA III that they had little time for beta patches. Once DayZ brought in more money, they had the money to work more on ArmA II.

[Lorca 10]

Yep definitely some relationship between the two. What I wonder is: are we getting more betas because theres more money from DayZ allowing BIS to put more man hours in...

Or are these betas coming in order to send a clear message to the DayZ folk that Arma is being supported on a regular basis, and so more and more DayZ players will be attracted to it.

Or maybe its a mix of both.

Well, in business it's ideal and efficient to kill two birds with one stone. If BIS is doing this, I applaud them. That's how you run a business. I've been in other game forums and fans are lucky there if they get a patch every 3-4 months. BIS is one of the few devs that do care for their fans if you compare them to other companies and that's partly due because of their small company status.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Lorca

[becubed 24]

I think it's because they were so busy working on ArmA III that they had little time for beta patches. Once DayZ brought in more money, they had the money to work more on ArmA II.

Likewise, I just thought that it was the run up to E3.

[DonMigel 10]

Proponent:

I have been playing operation flashpoint ( mostly cti and coop ) for over roughly 8 years now. Started playing with a 32 mb video card and 700 mghz processor and am still playing it weekly today on my beast that I had to get for arma 2 and 3.

I really adore the old days with the tournaments, mixed clan coop events etc. Needless to say when it started to die out, I started to look forward to more of that stuff when arma was announced.

First of I found the new ArmA community somewhat appalling. It was a mix between new age gamers and realism fans. I thought myself to be a realism gamer but seeing how easy it is to kill with a little game know how or getting superior gear in arma and arma2, I can say I'm more of a hardcore gamer where it's hard to kill and harder to survive compared to hard to survive but easy to kill. Because hardcore business leads to communication and tactics, tension buildup, team building for clans and actual feeling to test that skill against other teams. With the all the old clans dead and faceless players I was surprised to see things like IC-ArmA(later known as charlie-foxtrot?) arise on occasion and happy to see old school player like madben ( aka benny ) to pickup his tools and make warfare somewhat playable with warfare be. However the community was either not communicating, reluctant to install mods, failing to do teamwork or so interested in realism that any form of interesting combat was gone, none these things were gonna last. The game was simply not exiting. Sometimes fun, a little nostalgic and realistic, yes, but not thrilling. After while I just disappeared more and more on the background like many of the other veterans, until I saw 5 dayz servers. Visited ya olde forum and saw a post on what it was by a clanmate who's name I couldn't even recognize.

Things started to roll from then, my first death was a sniper shot after inspecting a dead body in the open field. I thought damn...I should have... That's the sensation that was missing. Even in warfare be whetever you move tactically or just rush it you are randomly gonna die by something that you couldn't have anticipated. And if you play coop you can just keep distance and shoot from afar. Now I had to take chances and knew when I was taking em just like back in the old days so suddenly there was something exiting again. Wasn't long before team speak starting pouring back with retired players, flashpoint legends and guys from others servers and games. This week I traveled to 3 other teamspeak servers and talked to different groups of people playing the same thing. Suddenly it feels like I am playing something alive and big, compared to the years of playing something small and dying :D. And even the new guys from other games are pushing themselves to communicate in order to get those beta patches and mods installed, not that I care that much where a player comes from, because you all feel like aliens to me and everyone is an alien to someone before you get to know em.

I was about to give up hope for bis, not going to buy arma3 to waist my time playing a vague echo of the past glory and seeing another community die out already after first 6 months, so this came as a suprise to me.

Even should the experience of "wow" end at certain point and dayz die out leaving behind a giant crater in the community, at least this more positive event could have been experienced.

Edited June 19, 2012 by DonMigel

[MavericK96 0]

I think it's fairly obvious that DayZ is not merely a deathmatch game :) and it's unfair to dismiss it as such.

Never mind, not my place here to change opinions in this thread :)

I missed your post the first time, but yeah, I know it's not "merely a deathmatch game". My point was that a lot of people play it as such.

I guess it is "different" in that there is some paranoia whenever you meet a new player, but really 90% of the time it seems like people will just try to shoot you rather than risk it.

[Harzach 2517]

I think that DayZ is good for Arma and BIS. The only real "con" is the influx of new players who do not understand Arma in general, but even that is of minimal concern, as they won't generally be involving themselves with the core game.

[Bouben 3]

After reading through a couple of pages in this thread here is my opinion:

I for one couldn't care less if DayZ players are ignoring/overshadowing Arma's milsim aspects. There is absolutely no point in being bothered by it. I take the DayZ community as a completely separated one as if OFP/Arma have never existed.

Let them play what they want to play.

If they don't want to discover Arma as a great millitary experience then it is the same thing as I have absolutely no interest in playing any zombie game and I believe that DayZ community couldn't care less about my needs and opinions too.

Some of the Half-Life 2 owners got the game exclusively for the Gary's mod, so...

In the end it means only pros for BIS and all of their customers.

PS: And I don't think the public servers are much of a concern or a relevant argument when most of the milsim fanatics here play only on private servers.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Bouben
PS, "costumers" :-)))

[MavericK96 0]

After reading through a couple of pages in this thread here is my opinion:

I for one couldn't care less if DayZ players are ignoring/overshadowing Arma's milsim aspects. There is absolutely no point in being bothered by it. I take the DayZ community as a completely separated one as if OFP/Arma have never existed.

Let them play what they want to play.

If they don't want to discover Arma as a great millitary experience then it is the same thing as I have absolutely no interest in playing any zombie game and I believe that DayZ community couldn't care less about my needs and opinions too.

Some of the Half-Life 2 owners got the game exclusively for the Gary's mod, so...

In the end it means only pros for BIS and all of their costumers.

PS: And I don't think the public servers are much of a concern or a relevant argument when most of the milsim fanatics here play only on private servers.

I think the primary concern (in my eyes, anyway) is that development may shift ever so slightly toward DayZ rather than maintaining pure focus on ArmA 2 OA/ArmA 3.

Has that happened yet? No (though many beta patches have been somewhat tailored for DayZ, it benefits everyone with MP fixes). Will it happen? Probably not, but maybe. I tend to trust BIS so I'm not super worried about it, but I can see how some would be.

[Bouben 3]

I think the primary concern (in my eyes, anyway) is that development may shift ever so slightly toward DayZ rather than maintaining pure focus on ArmA 2 OA/ArmA 3.

Has that happened yet? No (though many beta patches have been somewhat tailored for DayZ, it benefits everyone with MP fixes). Will it happen? Probably not, but maybe. I tend to trust BIS so I'm not super worried about it, but I can see how some would be.

I believe if DayZ is a good oportunity for BIS they will, with increased income, dedicate a separated dev team for it.

[MavericK96 0]

Yeah, that would make sense. Honestly it seems like the mod might just become a stand-alone game at some point down the road.

[Binkowski 26]

Yeah, that would make sense. Honestly it seems like the mod might just become a stand-alone game at some point down the road.

Personally, this is what I would like to see for a multitude of different reasons.

[Phantom Six 25]

While browsing through the BIS forums again, I guess I can add another pro to DayZ (maybe some may call this a con):

Laughing as I look through a closed thread about some cheater raging that he got banned by Battleye and then opens a new thread as the previous thread gets closed.

[Simon C 0]

Pros:

It brings in a large amount of money for BIS, who can put that money into ArmA 3 or other future ventures.

It accelerates development of beta patches, apparently.

Cons:

It overshadows ArmA. Reputable gaming news sites report on Day Z and seem to completely ignore the base game. Although, this may not be a bad thing: It could keep the less than desirable sort away.

It brings a lot of teamkillers and griefers who don't understand that the way you behave in Day Z and the way you behave in ACE/ACRE or PR or even Vanilla scenarios is NOT the same. Acting like you would in Day Z is a non-Day Z server is just going to upset a lot of people, and I feel that the people coming from Day Z won't understand this without incidents occurring.

The server browser is FULL of the Day Z servers. It makes it far harder to find an actual game to join, although BIS could use this as an excuse to work on the server browser. Look at Team Fortress 2's browser, it has favourites, friends lists, etc. Very convenient.

Personally, I don't enjoy playing Day Z. It desyncs far too much, the loading screens take all day to get past and I've only ever been able to connect to a server with my friends once. Every other time I tried, at least one of us got a 'could not connect' error due to either lag or odd server mods.

I also think that it's just the next Minecraft. It's a fad (possibly a long one like Minecraft was) but it won't last forever. Players will eventually get bored and move onto the next big thing. We've just got to weather this storm and see if it brings us anything good.

[metalcraze 290]

Yeah it will be great if DayZ will be a standalone game.

For many reasons, from small like cleaning up server browser which is spammed by DayZ servers and DayZ question spam on ArmA3 presentations to DayZ actually bringing a worse kind of players to ArmA. Harsh but true.

I have nothing against DayZ, I like it very much myself but the separation into a new game will be great for both ArmA and DayZ.

[-Coulum- 35]

I wonder though, if Dayz were to be released as a standalone game and continue to outperform/sell basic arma would it not suck resources out of arma. I mean I highly doubt BI would take all the money they got from Dayz and invest it into arma. I would think that the more money a game makes, the more investment it will receive. A standalone DayZ would still benefit arma, but unless the 2 game were very interchangable (ie an improvement in one is easily ported over to the other) I think a mod version of Dayz would help arma far more in terms of development/advancement.

[OldFossil 0]

Hi,

in my opinion this mod can only be a positive thing for ArmAII future developements. It could provide a better system to manage situations like the medical ones and others related to other faces of the game (the top enhancement could involve a better interaction of the players with buildings and the possibility to use other kind of weapons like blades or clubs).

If BIS decides to make of DayZ mod a new product, I'd be willing to buy it. In this event maybe further developed features of the game could not be shared with ArmAII brand products, unless the DayZ feature will be offered as an ArmAII expansion such as Reinforcements for example.

[metalcraze 290]

continue to outperform/sell basic arma

Are you sure it does to begin with?

[zyklone 1]

The thing is DayZ is not really hurting non-DayZ Arma gameplay.

Rather there seems to be a small increase in the amount of non-dayz players.

[dunnobe 10]

Releasing it as a DLC is to me the smartest thing they could do. I don't see any point in releasing it as a new 'Iron Front: Liberation 1944' to put it that way.

I'm sure many of these DayZ newcomers will buy ArmA3 even when DayZ for ArmA3 is not out yet. Just make them get hooked to the basic game and the other mods first and release DayZ afterwards with a new island, weapons etc.

I made a ticket for the server list being flooded with DayZ servers, it annoys me as well:

https://dev-heaven.net/issues/34222

Vote it up if you like this idea.