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

[onlyrazor 11]

I've seen many DayZ players who frequent Youtube (if they are idiots who comment on Youtube, then aren't they also idiots who play DayZ?, OnlyRazor) who state that they like DayZ as a zombie survival game because it's innovative, and no previous zombie game has ever done that and focused on survival.

Oh, you mentioned me. I must say, I'm flattered.

Anyway, based from what I've heard (Youtube comments aside :P), here's my conclusions:

+ The mod is a cool example of emergent gameplay

+ A different atmosphere from the general Arma gameplay

- There's very little incentive to keep playing it for a long time

- As Antoine said, zombies are a fad, and once the market gets overwhelmed, DayZ's going to lose in popularity

Also, the notion that BIS' development strategy is driven by sales from the mod is only partially true. Any company has to make its money, but it's a long stretch that the Arma series will wander from conventional military simulation towards zombies and bandits due to a phenomenon that may fade over time. There's a big player base that BIS can appeal to, and it's not the DayZ crowd. Despite what others are saying, the amount of people Arma is larger than the number DayZ did. It's nice to see the attention the series is receiving, though it is slightly worrying that its taking attention away from Arma 2 and Arma 3. You can't swing an undead fad in a Youtube comment section on Arma videos without hitting a flamewar about DayZ. Arma 2 is in-and-out-of itself a solid military simulator worthy of praise.

I don't think DayZ will ruin Arma and I don't think it'll improve it much either.

By the way, I said Youtube commenters are generally idiots, not all of them. Chalk it up to mob mentality and attention dependency.

Edited July 4, 2012 by OnlyRazor

[dmarkwick 261]

The mod is a cool example of emergent gameplay

zombies are a fad, and once the market gets overwhelmed, DayZ's going to lose in popularity

Emergent gameplay is indeed the thing :) I like hearing how imaginative players can be while still playing "within" the game's limits.

As for the zombies being a fad: well there are several reasons why zombies periodically become popular. But the main thing to remember about them is that they're not the real threat, they're only the background noise. Just like the best zombie films, the zombies are not the real monsters :) player interaction is what's actually going on here. Zombies are just the bait.

Edited July 4, 2012 by DMarkwick

[onlyrazor 11]

As for the zombies being a fad: well there are several reasons why zombies periodically become popular. But the main thing to remember about them is that they're not the real threat, they're only the background noise. Just like the best zombie films, the zombies are not the real monsters :) player interation is what's actually going on here. Zombies are just the bait.

Agreed. I read a most interesting article by somebody about why the zombie fad is undead, ie returns all the time. Maybe I can dig it up.

Edited July 4, 2012 by OnlyRazor

[dmarkwick 261]

Maybe I can dig it up.

I see what you did there ;)

[ratszo 17]

I don't see any down side.

Multiplayer PvP has finally come to the fore in the armaverse. Remember, it was only last December v1.60 netcode allowed decent PvP play for the first time.

Just months after v1.60 we have thousands of players meeting online to shoot each other --tis a beautiful thing!

The Devs have focused their efforts to fix and polish MP to the point where a final release canidate is close at hand. This is real progress.

Then there's all these 1000's of DayZ players who, know it or not, are learning arma better than any bootcamp will ever do.

Have you noticed the online members on this forum have gone up atleast a third?

Then there's the hype. The Bis crew has the pc gaming world watching just as the Arma3 alpha is being prepared. Can't buy this kind of attention.

Arma 3 is poised to be a best-seller. And it's gonna be driven by multiplayer.

[HKFlash 9]

DayZ helps ARMA II rack up more than 300.000 sales

[Freeborne 10]

I'm a long-standing OFP/Armed Assault/ARMA2 player.

I am both a Proponent and Opponent to DayZ, because the issues with DayZ are too complex for me to be sitting in only one of these camps.

• Huge success. Lots of sales of ARMA2. BIS gets more money and publicity.
  
• Thanks to DayZ, Sickboy finally learnt how to make a server browser that even 12 year olds can use. :-)
  
• BEC gets more loving attention with new features.
  
• ARMA2 clans are getting more recruits.
  
• Bugs in ARMA2 are fixed, some of which have persisted for years.
  
• ARMA2 has finally proved it can be accepted by the masses, and it had nothing to do with performance, GUI or complex installation/configuration.
  

On the other hand, Rocket wants to make DayZ a standalone game, maybe even license the engine himself. That means:

• No extra sales of ARMA2/ARMA3. BIS will get little publicity for being the one's that wrote the engine behind it.
  
• The ARMA2 modding community won't benefit as much from DayZ, as fewer things will be cross-compatible.
  
• Fewer players will cross from DayZ over to ARMA2/ARMA3. DayZ will be it's own distinct game.
  
• Bugs in DayZ will stay bugs in DayZ. It will be a different branch of the engine like A2/OA or even Iron-Front.
  

So basically everything I like about DayZ is at risk because of the one guy who basically runs the entire operation (at least in the eyes of his loving fan base). My main issues/concerns with DayZ therefore are largely with Dean Hall and his team.

The mod was just an alpha, played on one server that had a 20 slot limit. When they made the server public, the server filled up quickly and they couldn't keep up with demand. Then a few more servers went up, and word started to spread around. In weeks, the mod went viral. At this stage it was still early alpha, and nothing had been put in place to cope with this insane demand. It wasn't expected. Players and server requests were flooding in, and being backed up when they hit the tiny straw that this one person drank from. Only until recently has this gotten better in 'some' areas anyway.

For example, the Devs used a single Gmail address for weeks to process all email correspondence.

"Can I host a DayZ server puweaase"

"I got hacked on US4. HELPZ"

"Can you reset my gear"

"Can I be a moderator"

and on and on. When they complained about getting thousands of emails a day and couldn't cope with it, you had to laugh, really.

People were paying for new servers, and waiting weeks to get their IP white-listed, so they could run the mod. Can't get white-listed without an IP, can't have an IP without paying for a server...

They also had very strict requirements at the start, which went a little something like this:

"We must have full access to your server via RDP, or we ban you. We will also log in periodically and check you didn't do anything naughty. We will log-in any-time we want, make changes, install new experimental software, and disable all your software you paid for and everything you set up. We will also make lots of mistakes, and never bother to warn your players when we do restarts or change anything. Oh, and eventually we'll have all our passwords leaked and compromise your server security. After that, we'll send out an email apologizing, and telling you to look after your server yourself, but not bother to provide proper instructions on how to do this. By the way, thanks for paying for the server so we can run our mod on it, you can put your community name at the very end of the server name though".

The lack of organization and professionalism however was not evident in just one area. It was/is across the board. The updates to the mod come out as much as 4 or 5 in a single day! The definition of "testing" the code, was playing it for 3 hours on a single server with 10 players, then releasing it to hundreds of servers and thousands of players. When everything fell apart, servers crashed, players lost gear.... "well... it IS an alpha..."

As server hosts, you were expected to keep up to date with what's going on with DayZ so you can properly run your server. This became a full-time job though, as hackers spread like wildfire, and each new update added more bugs and performance issues then the previous. Proper support for DayZ hosts wasn't available due to their lack of staff/organization, so you had to visit the forums every day and find out what was happening. This was a headache in itself, as the DayZ staff (including Rocket himself) loved to post updates periodically in 200+ page threads, expecting everyone to read thousands of posts to stay updated. They seem to have a policy of never locking announcement threads too. Nothing boosts the ego like 500+ posts after your announcement with "can't wait... we wuv u rocket". This is what server hosts did when the forums weren't overloaded and we could actually access them.

The mod itself.... great.

Is it completely unique to any other ARMA2 mod? No.

Does it have just a few things that make it different though? Yes.

Could anyone else have made it? You bet.

Is Rocket replaceable? Hell yes.

Is it in the community's best interest that a mod be completely controlled by one person? Will the ARMA community cease to benefit from DayZ when it goes stand-alone? Is ARMA2, BIS, and the open-source modding community we have here getting the recognition they deserve for their input into DayZ?

At the end of the day though, I'm still a player, so whatever works best for all players is what I'll support. If that takes a heavy hand and firm controls in place (like Apple for example) then I fully endorse it. That method however is always hard to believe in, without a feeling of paranoia and that sick feeling in your stomach when you know something just doesn't sit right.

It's a shame a "mod" for ARMA2 that reached this level of success couldn't be credited to the many talented members we have in this community, and instead all goes to one person, who was mostly unknown prior to this one project. You would at least think many of them would have offered to get involved by now, and put their years of experience to good use. Takes both sides to be interested in that I guess?

Edited July 5, 2012 by Freeborne

[Karmichael 11]

Just remember Dayz is NOT the first arma Zombie Survival mode (MP missions/Mods)...Their are others before it. Just the creators probably didn't have the knowledge/resources/technology or the time to implement more features, and make it grow, get recognized by the community/abroad like dayz has.

Examples:

OFP: Nogova Virus

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Arma 1: sahrani Virus

:Rahmadi Zombie Outbreak

: Quarantine mod

ARMA 2: Celery's Apocalypse missions

: Zombie ProvingGrounds

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and many more talented mission creator...;)

Edited July 6, 2012 by Max Power
fix'd videos

[antoineflemming 14]

Is ARMA2, BIS, and the open-source modding community we have here getting the recognition they deserve for their input into DayZ?

I'm sorry, but I haven't seen many people praising ArmA2's "open-source" modding community when talking about DayZ. So far neither the modding community nor BIS has receive praise. Articles about DayZ hardly credit the game that makes DayZ possible. By and large the view is that DayZ makes ArmA good, that ArmA2 wasn't good before DayZ, and DayZ is the only thing that makes an ArmA purchase "worth it". That's what I mean when I say that DayZ overshadows ArmA. Most press coverage of DayZ hasn't brought up the fact that the mod is possible because ArmA2 is a sandbox game, that Chernarus isn't something that just came along with DayZ, that most of what makes DayZ special is that it's a mod of a realistic military sandbox game. Also, please elaborate on the input that the modding community here has put into DayZ.

Also, I don't understand why you are so critical of Rocket. Clearly he didn't expect DayZ to become as popular as it did. That explains why the handling of the mod doesn't seem "professional" or "organized" enough. You say Rocket is replaceable, but it's his mod. He's not "replaceable". It's not like this is an official BIS DLC that BIS can just remove Rocket and put someone else in charge of. You've been a longtime OFP/ArmA/ArmA2 player, you should know that. That's like saying Sickboy can be "replaced" by someone else to helm the Six Updater. No. Modding isn't a job where the originator of the mod is a CEO that can be removed by some mysterious board of community members who disapprove of the way he handles his mod.

---------- Post added at 16:47 ---------- Previous post was at 16:40 ----------

Emergent gameplay is indeed the thing :) I like hearing how imaginative players can be while still playing "within" the game's limits.

As for the zombies being a fad: well there are several reasons why zombies periodically become popular. But the main thing to remember about them is that they're not the real threat, they're only the background noise. Just like the best zombie films, the zombies are not the real monsters :) player interaction is what's actually going on here. Zombies are just the bait.

Zombies are the bait, but in all seriousness, DayZ wouldn't be popular without zombies. For most players, what it takes to bring players to DayZ is what it will take to keep them playing DayZ. In a hypothetical situation, if the DayZ team were to decide to remove zombies and just have a survival game, with maybe predatory animals instead of zombies, I bet more than half of the DayZ community would leave the game. Player interaction and a sense of mutual survival is what makes the majority of DayZ players choose DayZ over any other zombie game. In fact, I would argue that zombies are NOT the bait. That zombies are the major factor in DayZ's success and that player interaction and a focus on survival are the bait that draws zombie fans away from other zombie games and to DayZ. THAT is based on numerous DayZ comments that this is the best zombie game/mod, or that this is an innovative Zombie mod, or that DayZ is the only reason someone bought ArmA2. Yes, just like the best zombie films, there's something there, that's more than just killing zombies, that makes them stand out from other zombie films. But, make no mistake, the movies are popular because they are innovative zombie films, not because they are innovative films that just happen to include zombies.

[froggyluv 2130]

. But, make no mistake, the movies are popular because they are innovative zombie films, not because they are innovative films that just happen to include zombies.

Maybe so, tho 28 Days Later, in my opinion, is one of the 5 best movies ever made and imo, largely due to great story, characters, insane soundtrack, and tension building. Zombies are a backdrop and really an analogy to a brutal world gone mad or fanatic beyond comprehension. I don't care for Zombie movies (unlike wifey who asks to watch one every nite) but literally have watched that film 8+ times.

It seems to me that zombies best illustrate the absolute worst part of human nature to such an extreme -that of mindless hoarding and killing in cannabalistic gore -outside the bounds of reason coupled with the fact that they are potentially anywhere, that spooks us. They're also qausi-supernatural in the sense that we could easily have a post-apocolyptic world with humans acting the same but it's just not quite as unsettling as something that is basically already dead -although the latest trends are to blame a virus. Monsters and demons are just too corny to spook most of us and generally they're stories involve tedius religious exposition which can get tiresome fast.

[dmarkwick 261]

DayZ wouldn't be popular without zombies.

No zombie game would be popular without the zombies :)

[nodunit 397]

No zombie game would be popular without the zombies :)

It wouldn't, but I'm not convinced that DayZ is so popular from the zombies alone. Yes they are a geek element but if you read the stories that most people type up about their experiences, or in general, it seems that the human element is more of the big interest. There societal collapse, the uncertainty of a persons motives and trustworthyness, the scavenging and survival, and rewards you get from working as a team. Really when you take the zombie away, it's more of an Arma free for all with survival elements, and it's curious how far some people will go.

Some players, even bandits will form a group to lure stray survivors into a trap, others will rob you on the street, some people will work together for mutual benefit, some help just because they can and want to, and others remain lone wolves.. it's an Arma with but one rule, survival of the fittest..now the question lies in what is the fittest and that alone is uncertain, and running into another player can change everything for better or worse.. In a way the game is very much roll the dice because you never know where another player may be lurking or what their intentions are, and every gunshot sets you on alert, rarely is there such a thing as "friendly fire."

For example, I remember reading a story where one guy had just raided a hospital but was low on ammo, a group in a truck came to the rescue, killing the monsters and telling him to get in. Without a second thought the guy went along with his saviors, only to be driven to a secluded area whereupon they gave him the chance to either drop the medical supplies from the hospital or they would kill him and take it anyway.

Another interesting story was of a group of bandits who would group up to kill players from bushes and other natural cover, until one day they saw someone running from a group of zombies completely unarmed. With some hesitance they waited, and when the gunshot rang they instead chose to kill the monsters chasing the guy, perhaps a form of empathy..who knows. After that they decided to form a group to help players should they see them running from zombies.

[SnR 1]

DayZ has brought persistent servers and true returnable game play, surely this will expand community opportunity's. MSO.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

Big OPPONENT:

It's influencing devs in their beta patches ... yes,you can tell me that those fixes are good for the engine but they're dayz oriented and secondary from another point of view.

DayZ is a noobmagnet,warfare servers are full of guys asking how to order AI to get in a car,Teamkillings bases,people and being immature ofc.

DayZ is a big insult for BIS imo and for the MILSIM ArmA is supposed to be,and rising a big question :how come ArmA fails as a milsim,and succeeds in being a ZOMBIE game ?

I won't be surprised to see an ArmA 3 made to suit dayz's needs

BTW,the new name for newbies on warfare servers is "DayZnoob" :D

And some admins are thinking about autokicking players with dayz in their MPmissionscache folder :D

Edited July 6, 2012 by On_Sabbatical

[pathetic_berserker 4]

..........and rising a big question :how come ArmA fails at being a milsim,and succeeds in being a ZOMBIE game ?

Exactly when did ArmA fail at being a milsim game I wonder.

My opinion.. It's all good, and get over the noobs, elitism is more damaging to the ArmA community than a creative mod that highlights what a great sandbox the RV engine is.

Most hardcore ArmA players have stuck to their clan servers and aren't phazed by the DayZ stuff anyway.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Pathetic_Berserker

[celery 8]

DayZ is a big insult for BIS

That's why I always beat Rocket up first thing when I come to work. May that be a lesson to all zombie mod makers.

[On_Sabbatical 11]

I edited my post,not being a milsim but as a milsim (aftermaths from an old sentence :D)

Failing,because they sold a lot with dayz and became well known :D,it was not the case before ... if they worked on making their game perfect it would have been known for what it is supposed to be !

Besides, RPG mission were always the most played in MP on arma and not military oriented missions

Edited July 6, 2012 by On_Sabbatical

[Craig_VG 20]

That's why I always beat Rocket up first thing when I come to work. May that be a lesson to all zombie mod makers.

Lesson taken, sorry sir.

[instagoat 133]

I have no clue why people keep complaining about the mod. It´s seriously disappointing to see such bad blood in the community. I don´t recall anyone getting this upset over the lego mod or the vampire missions in OFP.

DayZ is good for the game because people may consider taking up Arma proper. People come into the thing with preconceived notions about the players that pick up the mod (Cod Kiddies, etc), and the people who come into the game notice many of the old community sitting on their porch like a bunch of grumpy old men and complain about how "Durr, dey don´t appreciates our realisms"

Stop trying to force your view of "how the game should be played" down everyones throat. Arma isn´t just about the milsim aspect, it´s also about the open, moddable engine. Everything is fair game.

Any mod is great. DayZ is too.

My two cents.

[nodunit 397]

Big OPPONENT:

It's influencing devs in their beta patches ... yes,you can tell me that those fixes are good for the engine but they're dayz oriented and secondary from another point of view.

DayZ is a noobmagnet,warfare servers are full of guys asking how to order AI to get in a car,Teamkillings bases,people and being immature ofc.

Soooo pretty much how it's always been, just more of it?

It's funny considering the general consensus in multiplayer games is to find private servers, generally it shouldn't be that way but to a degree that mindset has more or less forced this kind of separation.

If people ask how to order AI then help them, the worst thing you can do in any online or game in general is to insult the person for not knowing..yes if they played single player they'd likely know but such is not always the case and it does more harm than if people would just lend a hand and their knowledge.

At it's core I look at DayZ as indesputeable proof that allowing modding in games is a very positive thing, and that over time or hell, years after release it can rake in some serious cash, and that it doesn't take away from DLC sales.

And I thought that is one of the things we prized most about the engine, the ability to mod it to do whatever..I don't recall seeing people griping about zombies when previous mods were released, I didn't see an uproar over city life.

[max power 21]

I think most of the griping is over the popularity of the thing, the number of new players and where they are coming from, and what their expectations are. The popularity us unprecedented. I, personally, quite like the fact that we're seeing that players will play a slower paced, more methodical game if the theme is appealing. I'm hoping the rest of the industry will take notice.

DayZ is similar but not the same as other mods that came before it, and I definitely think that Rocket is due some Kudos. Success is about timing as much as it is anything else, and obviously this collection of factors at this time is extremely successful and it is giving a lot of fun to a lot of people. I think that's all we can hope for as mod makers.

[Lorca 10]

I edited my post,not being a milsim but as a milsim (aftermaths from an old sentence :D)

Failing,because they sold a lot with dayz and became well known :D,it was not the case before ... if they worked on making their game perfect it would have been known for what it is supposed to be !

Besides, RPG mission were always the most played in MP on arma and not military oriented missions

Face it, even if BIS created a perfect milsim game it wouldn't have more appeal in the market. The hard fact is that mainstream isn't interested in milsim. Unfortunately, gamers nowadays want Hollywood Rambo style action. That's why Arma2 is a "niche" game/genre.

[4 IN 1 0]

Another thing is that if you want huge 200+ battle to happen some of your "dayz oriented" fix is needed in the first place, so as far as I see it, as long as DayZ is still using RV engine as either a mod or standalone and Rocket don't jump the ship(yet), there really do not have any thing wrong with DayZ.

[dunnobe 10]

I edited my post,not being a milsim but as a milsim (aftermaths from an old sentence :D)

Failing,because they sold a lot with dayz and became well known :D,it was not the case before ... if they worked on making their game perfect it would have been known for what it is supposed to be !

Besides, RPG mission were always the most played in MP on arma and not military oriented missions

Well, I don't have any knowledge of the number of units sold before DayZ came out, but Arma 2 is 3 years old so must have sold a lot of copies in the times before DayZ. An x-amount of people who bought before DayZ stopped playing and/or went to other games for various of reasons... You cannot say it failed IMO.

Think of the rubberbanding before 1.60, that was actually gamebreaking when you look back to it...

[nodunit 397]

Right, just because a game doesn't meet the same sales as mainstream games doesn't mean it is a failure. Hell EA has canned studios that sold over 2 million copies because apparently even THAT isn't enough.