OldDogmeat

Hello all, I'd firstly like to thank Haleks for creating this single player DayZ-like experience for the Arma3 engine. I spent many many hours, weeks, months in fact, playing DaiZy on Arma2 and have some of my best gaming memories from this time (Single Player is my thing as I don't want to deal with other players being plebs as tends to happen on DayZ) . I would like to give something back in the form of a paypal donation but aren't comfortable with being presented the French Paypal site when I hit the donate button Haleks. (I don't speak any French for starters) Can you pm me your paypal email address so I can donate please. So, beyond this here's my experience of Ravage so far in the shape of some, hopefully, constructive criticism in how you could make the game feel more enjoyable for people like myself who perhaps arent the best shot but who enjoy sneaking around and out-smarting the zeds., APOLOGIES if this comes over as whinging due to my own personal expectations and perhaps my inability to shoot properly at moving targets :) I know there'll be some people here who think the game is already well balanced or even too easy but for me the difficulty and therefore lack of progress in investigating the world for me is killing the experience a little.. I'm aware its a 'survival' game and I don't mind dying in it but I'd like to feel I had a good run and died fairly. With that said.. The start of the game is now becoming too predictable with the very same Rook Pistol and 2 clips of ammo followed by the patrol that shows up shortly thereafter.DaiZy Had you start with virtually nothing to defend yourself with or eat and if you happened upon a hatchet and a tin of beans in a nearby building then you had a chance.. if not then you maybe succumbed to starvation or became a Zeds dinner.. it felt fair and honest. The Super Human, X-Ray Visioned, Linford Christie Zeds Beyond surviving the firefight with the patrol, the game then feels like a countdown to impending death for me, probably in part due to the fact I'm not that great at shooting and tend to go very quickly through the ammo I scavenge from the patrol at the start.. a lot of which tends to be wasted on zombies because they seem wayyyy to hard to avoid compared to DaiZy where they seemed to have poor eyesight and hearing by comparison. I'd love to see a return to the more lumbering and poor sighted Zeds which would give me the chance to survive for longer and to give meaning to going prone and staying still at times. Some of the most memorable moments of DaiZy were spent laying under a bush with a few Zeds but feet away, unaware of my presence as they mumble and stumble past. By comparison, DaiZy felt like a fight for survival initially, but once tooled up and exercising caution, I could survive for quite some time by playing the game stealthily. Unfortunately stealth in Ravage seems to mean simply staying at least 100 yards away from any Zed to be sure they wont detect me, but this in general means avoiding buildings. It seems impossible to be able to sneak in, grab loot and sneak away again and with the lack of melee weapons this means that ammo gets spent on Zeds often without anything to show for it. Building variety on Altis, seems really limited compared to Chernarus and loot variety seems to be very stingy with a very high chance of getting either empty tin cans or light sticks but almost never food or drink. A large number of my deaths have been due to lack of food\drink or radiation. I'm guessing there's no fix for the buildings and this is just what BI created for Altis but the loot could be varied more perhaps. I also really miss the hatchet.. it was a great weapon for dealing with the Zeds combined with their slowing when entering a building (all very much a game-play mechanic and one to be properly exploited by the player) but it meant you had a last chance whereas in Ravage, without a gun and ammo you are pretty much dead as the Zeds will chase relentlessly across the map and once you have a train behind you and no ammo you tend to resign to death. A typical Chernarus scenario for me would be to scout a building and overwatch to wait an opportunity to sneak past the Zeds, get inside the building where there was a feeling of semi-safety from the zeds but not the npc bandits, loot whilst dealing with any zeds that came in, then get out and lose the zeds in bushes etc.. None of these tactics seem possible in Ravage mainly due to the X-Ray 200 metre hearing\vision of the zeds and their ability to run inside buildings as well as run across the map after you without tiring or losing interest. The zeds seem super human and not the bumbling incapacitated yet deadly when they corner you, creatures of lore. One easy fix that I would like to see as an option somewhere would be to limit the Zeds to the walking\bumbling variety only as you did on the DiaZy mod; people can then choose their level of challenge. Radiation Another gripe (sorry I'm not really griping but just wish these things were options if at all possible so that rubbish players like myself can get more enjoyment from Ravage) is the Radiation.. the silent killer.. and oh I have died many times now due to this and find it annoying because I'm struggling as-is with the Zeds and npc's. Would it be possible to have a switch to turn this off? again, for the less hardcore player who feels they already have enough to deal with. Food and drink Or lack of.. The loot for food and drink seems really low. DaiZy also had Zeds drop loot like food and drink which was a great gameplay mechanic because it gave you a reason at times to kill them rather than avoid. Please make food\drink more available. Zed Loot As the above point, give the zeds random loot; It gave a reason to kill them at times other than to prevent having your face eaten off. I realise that others have maybe already mentioned the above points which for me are all balancing issues and I appreciate that some people will disagree, I'm therefor suggesting these tweaks could be rolled in as options to be toggled by the player in some way to allow a tailored experience. Thanks again Haleks and keep up the brilliant work.. If at some point you get the chance to put this on Steam as a payed mod then I'm sure people will buy it and support you.