Day Z: a realistic open-world zombie mod for Arma 2 with PvP and persistent death

Well for everyone's information, here's the fastest way to transfer everything in your current backpack into a new (empty) backpack that you find:

1. Look at the pack you want to pick up and select 'Open <bag>'
2. Click on your bag in the gear menu and open it
3. Transfer everything from yours to the new one
4. Close the gear menu, and then use the 'Take <bag>' option
 
The bandit skin is being removed in the next update. Rather, you will no longer change skin based on your humanity level.

Skins will now be findable like loot, and you can 'wear' ones you find.
This sounds neat. Does it use a slot or is it just a context menu option or something? Do you keep them when you die?
 
Why would something you're wearing use a slot? Unless you mean wearing one thing and holding a different one in your inventory, which I really doubt will be implemented since it isn't very practical.

No idea if they're kept after death.
 
I really can't wait for the new skin system.

It really sucks when people assume I'm a cold-blooded murderer just because I had to kill some non-bandits in self-defense when they opened fire on me. :[
 
That (disconnecting because getting shot at) is nearly as dumb as this vid I saw on YouTube named "Quick loot" or something like that, some prick went to the church in Cherno, then just disconnected, changed server, looted and rinsed repeated, eventually he had a ton of goodies.

The whole point of the game is to deal with what you do and what is done to you without trying to 'exploit' the system to get a massive upper hand by 'breaking' the game.

I can't say I approve of the whole murdering innocents though, but I see that you were very hungry, so I am going to tell myself that you were just doing it for food.

Speaking of trying to 'exploit' the system, when I was playing on SE1 earlier today some pricks were leaving their corpses all over the coast because they kept suiciding as soon as they spawned to get better spawn locations (closer to eachother.)

I can't help but feel that there should be a 1 hour limit on respawning to prevent such bullshit. Sure, it's not fun to not be able to play for a whole hour if you die, but I wouldn't mind some further punishment for death in that form. Especially not if it is to discourage people trying to exploit design flaws in the system.
 
I saw some guy on the road and shot him because it was pitch dark and there was no way I was going to risk impeding my progress to cherno.

Wondered why my humanity didn't go down. Realized my bandit kill counter went up.

Haha.
 
It's funny though, I have trusted a bunch of people with my life so far in the game, random people. Not a single one has betrayed me, not even people I shot at first out of fear and then explained I thought they were hostile.

And earlier tonight, I ended up getting swarmed by 10 zombies in the dark near the northwestern airport, managed to toss a flare, shoot them and finally run into the forest to bandage myself and cry as I repeatedly fainted (Blood was down to roughly 400). After some whimpering in the Side Channel, a person announced they were close to the airport and asked if I wanted some cooked meat to regain my health. I agreed, guy showed up, gave me three pieces of meat and then we hunted a bit together to build up our reserves. That was around 30 minutes ago and he had to go now so I decided to take a break for the night as well.

This game has single-handedly restored my faith in the possibility for people to do good and trust each other!
 
There are a few things pissing me off about the player base in general right now, but they are fixable things.

For one, there are so few servers that disable third person, when it is the cheapest and most unrealistic advantage to give a player in the game. Crosshairs I can live with, since they're not even fully accurate, but there are so many situations where third person just gives you so much advantage that makes no sense. There are even servers that disable nametags and crosshairs, but keep third person. What the hell?
I just don't get why so many people praise this game for its realism and hardcoreness, but nobody actually wants to play realistically. The few servers that do have those things disabled have such low player counts late at night, while the other US servers are thriving.

The other thing which is more directly about the player base instead of server ops is the disconnecters and exploiters. Supposedly the item duping and hacking is going to be fixed in the next patch, but I don't have much high hope. And I don't see how he's going to prevent people from disconnecting in dangerous situations without taking extreme measures that are going to make everyone cry. But I just don't understand, why do these people play this game? It's finally a zombie game that is hardcore and unforgiving, and they ****ING TURN IT INTO A GAME THAT IS NOT THAT AT ALL, IT'S LIKE WHAT THE **** GOD DAMNIT

In other news!


UPDATE : 21 MAY 2012
Affected addons:
* dayz_code 1.5.8
* dayz_equip 1.2.4
* dayz_sfx 1.1.2
* dayz 1.2.5
* dayz_weapons 1.1.2

Developer's Note:

* TO INTERACT WITH MOST ITEMS: YOU NOW NEED TO OPEN GEAR MENU (G) THEN RIGHT CLICK ON THE ITEM! SUCH AS BANDAGING AND EATING AND SHIT

* This is a pretty major update. I don't really know what affect the new sickness and temperature system will have on player behavior especially with antibiotics being so scarce.
* It is the genesis of an idea, so please remember this might cause havoc. You need to be careful.
* To light a fire, you need matches and wood in your inventory. Place more wood in the inventory of a fireplace to keep the fire going.
* A fire that does not have wood in it will go out when you try to light it.
* You can tell you have an infection, because your character will start coughing. The infection causes you to loose blood down to a minimum of 6000. This leaves you with reduced blood until you take antibiotics.

Changelog:
* [NEW] Server cleanup system replaced with a more agressive one
* [NEW] Inventory Interaction system (right-click on items in gear screen to bring up interactions)
* [NEW] Temperature System now implemented (effects are limited)
* [NEW] Chance of catching an infection the lower your temperature
* [NEW] Chance of catching an infection from already infected players
* [NEW] Water can be filled in ponds, all water pumps, wells, but not the sea
* [NEW] Forced disconnection saving for abort and alt+F4
* [NEW] Zombie's will investigate player deaths
* [NEW] Adrenaline rush from panicing causes greately increased hunger for a while
* [NEW] Bandaging Sound when bandaging yourself/someone
* [NEW] Coughing sound when you have an infection
* [NEW] Camera Shake when temperature drops extremely low
* [NEW] PROTIP: Use Global Chat/VOIP in populated areas
* [NEW] Fire requires wood to keep burning
* [NEW] Various Loot spawn balancing changes
* [FIXED] Should not be pellets for the Winny
* [FIXED] Whinny is way to powerful and quiet (mmmm your tears will be delicious)
* [FIXED] Helicopter loot despawning too fast
* [FIXED?] Too many zombies for the Carebears to be able to play
* [FIXED] Fog is way too thick
* [FIXED] Climbing a ladder with a pistol will cause you to fall
* [FIXED] Zombies not attracted to Flares and Chemlights
* [FIXED] Panic noises going apeshit all the time
* [FIXED] Zombie spotted alert far too quiet (increased slightly)


Certainly a lot of interesting changes, I'm excited.

US download mirror is getting nailed right now, SW mirror works okay: http://cdn.armafiles.info/
 
About finished patching. This should be interesting. Infection is going to suck considering how rare antibiotics supposedly are.
 
Don't get infected!

Also me and Viper are going to play, on any populated non third person server we can find.
 
About name tags, I'd like to see it handled by not seeing names (by default), until you and the other individual sit down close to each other for maybe ten seconds to simulate the exchanging of names/introductions to each other.

I do feel name tags (between those that have exchanged their names in the game) serve a purpose to compensate for the fact that in the game you can't all that easily recognize someone through things like body form, body language and such things. That might just be me though.
 
Temp just makes it kind of annoying to play at night if you can't find any matches or wood.
 
I've also begun to find fuel barrels on fire in populated areas, but I am not sure if this is new or I just haven't noticed it before.

Also, just lost my latest character which had map, compass, clock, hunting knife, matches, tons of cooked meat and wood to three bandits because I was a stupid mother****er and failed to notice I had been stalked through the wilderness after leaving Berezino. I gotta say I love the fact that there were three of them, always prefer getting owned by people working together as a team, makes for more interesting battles.
 
It's funny though, I have trusted a bunch of people with my life so far in the game, random people. Not a single one has betrayed me, not even people I shot at first out of fear and then explained I thought they were hostile.
:arms: sounds like the game needs more EVE players.

There are a few things pissing me off about the player base in general right now, but they are fixable things.

For one, there are so few servers that disable third person, when it is the cheapest and most unrealistic advantage to give a player in the game. Crosshairs I can live with, since they're not even fully accurate, but there are so many situations where third person just gives you so much advantage that makes no sense. There are even servers that disable nametags and crosshairs, but keepthird person. What the hell?
I just don't get why so many people praise this game for its realism and hardcoreness, but nobody actually wants to play realistically. The few servers that do have those things disabled have such low player counts late at night, while the other US servers are thriving.
Dunno, maybe it's to do with some non-realistic behaviour of the mod itself? Someone mentioned zombies suddenly spawning right behind their character, guess 3rd person would help there.
 
Someone mentioned zombies suddenly spawning right behind their character, guess 3rd person would help there.
Um? The point of my post was that third person is too helpful. It removes many of the realistic challenges that belong in an immersive game. Crawling in tall grass? No problem! You can see everything! Screen shaking from pain? No problem! Hear an enemy on the other side of that wall? No problem!

If a zombie or player sneaks up behind you, the whole ****ing point is that they snuck up on you or surprised you. Why would you want to be able to see something you wouldn't be able to ****ing see.
 
Um? The point of my post was that third person is too helpful. It removes many of the realistic challenges that belong in an immersive game. Crawling in tall grass? No problem! You can see everything! Screen shaking from pain? No problem! Hear an enemy on the other side of that wall? No problem!

If a zombie or player sneaks up behind you, the whole ****ing point is that they snuck up on you or surprised you. Why would you want to be able to see something you wouldn't be able to ****ing see.

So the game spawning a zombie behind you = it sneaking up behind you?
 
It's interesting that you think "a zombie might spawn behind you" is some kind of justification to have 3rd person.

So interesting it hurts my brain.
 
It is some kind of justification, just not a very good one. People sometimes *gasp* see things differently from you however. People often do things for dumb reasons. You apparently couldn't think of even a single dumb reason.
 
Hey, take your conversation to PMs if you're going to insult each other. If you want to discuss the game, and the balance issues it may or may not have, feel free to continue posting constructively in this thread
 
It's interesting that you think "a zombie might spawn behind you" is some kind of justification to have 3rd person.

So interesting it hurts my brain.

I think what he's trying to say is that if a zombie is just going to randomly spawn behind you, that's not very realistic (or fair, for that matter). Therefore, some servers have third person enable as some sort of counter against that unfairness.

That's how I see it.
 
I think what he's trying to say is that if a zombie is just going to randomly spawn behind you, that's not very realistic (or fair, for that matter). Therefore, some servers have third person enable as some sort of counter against that unfairness.

That's how I see it.
Whether or not people are using it for that reason isn't even relevant, because it gives you all those unrealistic advantages that I listed no matter what. Zombies aren't even supposed to spawn too close to you, and in my experience I've never had one do that. Even if they did, I certainly wouldn't be relying on third person to see the 3 feet of space behind my character. Have you seen what third person looks like? It's certainly enough to give you the advantages I listed, but not very much to see a zombie unless he's literally close enough to touch you, in which case it's too late to even consider it an advantage.

It just seems really silly to me to state this as a reason to use it when there are so many bad things about it. I know people use it because it's convenient. Same reason people use crosshairs on crosshair servers and nametags and kill messages. But like I said before, I think the priorities are way out of wack. Crosshairs don't really give you too much of an advantage, at least not an unrealistic one. I mean even without crosshairs it's easy to see where the center of your screen is. The third person just skews the immersion and realism so much for me that I can't understand how people tolerate the fact that other players can see behind walls, through tall grass, around corners, etc.
 
Wait, is your problem players using 3rd person or server admins not disabling it?
 
Well I mean, that's like asking if my problem would be server admins adding a button to every player's screen that spammed silly noises or if my problem was the players using it.

I'm talking about the motive behind it, either from the admin's choice of enabling it or the player's own justification for using it and not feeling that it's unfair or impedes immersion.

Like, I can ask you, does the ability to see the rare chance of a zombie spawning behind you really outweigh all the cons that I listed? Are you really okay with players hidden in tall grass, a bush, behind a wall, around a corner, seeing you when there is no logical reason they should?

If you ask me, the rare chance of a zombie popping up behind you only adds to the excitement of the game. Not to mention, you can look behind you easily enough with the alt key. I imagine that much of this new player base don't even use the alt key, since they're not used to that kind of thing in a game. That's actually what I believe is the reason so many people are using third person, they don't really "get" the point of a game focused on immersion. And I'm not trying to insult anyone there, but it's a fact.
 
Well I mean, that's like asking if my problem would be server admins adding a button to every player's screen that spammed silly noises or if my problem was the players using it.

No, there's clearly a difference in motives between the two.
For example server admins might a) want to add some unrealism to compensate for unrealistic spawning while also b) trying to attract more players to their server if more prefer 3rd-person on than off. Players might also share the first motive but once playing on a server with 3rd-person enabled might choose to use it to level the playing field against those other players who already do.

Sounds to me like your beef should really be with Bohemia (and the mod makers if they are able to perma-disable it independently) for allowing 3rd person perspective in a game which otherwise focusses on immersion. Seems like a bad decision on their part.
 
Just played for a while with Garg, was a fun session, even the parts where he was fainting from blood loss and I was frantically trying to find a hospital (on the upside I now know where to find a shitload of medical supplies in Cherno). Seems like the patch might have done a number on people's performance though, my framerate was at least halved and a bunch of people in the server were complaining about it too. Or maybe it was just that server? If that's possible somehow.
 
Hmm, framerate issues? I didn't notice any difference in performance. Though I haven't played since yesterday.

Eejit, it's just my opinion that the "adding some unrealism to compensate for the spawning unrealism" is like, way way over compensation.
And of course I'm aware that server admins add it because people want it, and people use it because they don't want to be at a disadvantage.. But you can see how that's a vicious cycle. Hence my rage.
But I'm glad you helped me figure out who my beef should be with :p
I actually do hope Rocket forces first person globally.
 
But I'm glad you helped me figure out who my beef should be with :p
I actually do hope Rocket forces first person globally.

My work here is done. But no need for thanks, villager, doing good is its own reward.
*rides off into the sunset*
 
But I'm glad you helped me figure out who my beef should be with
Ding ding ding.

Vegeta's problem isn't necessarily the community (although they are generally full of alt-f4ing lamers), but the way Rocket treats the mod. To get access to the host files, you have to write Rocket a scientific report/gushing essay/loving fanfic that proves you'll have a popular server that's worth his bandwidth. Fair enough. But Rocket himself calls new players "carebears" and has been progressively making balance changes that make the mod almost unfathomably unforgiving. He's intentionally set up a PvP environment/system where killing people and then lonewolfing for hours is a much safer and more viable alternative to engaging the zombies.

But then he lets said servers play on whatever difficulty with whatever stupid in-mission features in his difficult/immersive/PvP mod. Some servers have a nametag system where you can spot someone 800m away just by panning your crosshair across a nearby MOUNTAIN and you'll spot anyone who's there. This actually makes the game laughably easy for me and Veg. We hit up Stary on a "veteran" server (i.e. it had... um... easymode armor off? some arbitrary setting that made it "veteran") and managed to kill 9 people in about an hour. Nametagging people from a distance gave us the benefit of knowing who we were seeing, and based on names we pieced together from the chat log how many friends that person was moving with (blabbering noobs, again only in existence because of a sidechat system that should have been removed weeks ago), so we'd just wait until we spotted them all to engage.

It's not that it's particularly bad as a PvP gamemode, it just defeats the purpose of the zombies. Zombies are so strong now you have almost no choice but to attack people, and joining easy servers (due to lack of hardmode servers) only makes it easier.

Wait, nevermind. This is The Zombie Survival Game We've Been Waiting All Our Lives For™, not just a mod on a milsim engine. Stop bitching, viper. Stop treating it like Arma.
 
I've been playing regularly with a group of a couple dudes (there's four of us give or take one most of the time) and our playtime is basically find a car and then find a helicopter and then try to get the helicopter up and running. Earlier today we had a GAZ (Offroad jeep with tons of seating) and stumbled across a helicopter in the very northern border of the map and were scouring the map for a main rotor assembly when some guys in NVGs with silenced rifles and all kinds of other rare nonsense fired on us and killed two of our four people.
 
So is this too much of a bitch to bother installing if you have it on Steam?
 
So is this too much of a bitch to bother installing if you have it on Steam?

Not at all. Install both ARMA 2 + OA. Put the mod in the @DAYZ folder as usual. Create a shortcut to the OA exe (either in steam or in the folder, it doesn't matter which) and add these extensions.

"C:\WHEREVER\Steam\steamapps\common\arma 2 operation arrowhead\ArmA2OA.exe" -window -noSplash -noFilePatching -showScriptErrors "-mod=C:\WHEREVER\Steam\SteamApps\Common\ArmA 2;Expansion;@DAYZ"

You only really need the -mod section, but the rest speeds up your launch time. The mod is pretty tiny, so I suggest re-downloading it every time there is a new version, to avoid curious bugs that can appear.
---
I know everyone has plenty of stories to tell about this game, but I will throw mine in..

I was running along that high road to the north of Elektrogorsk (the one that overlooks the power station) after picking up the attention of a large group of zombies. I only had a partial Makarov magazine left, and figured it was a good time to respawn anyway. But then a few moments later, several loud cracks took out all the zombies behind me, I looked in the direction of the large chimney down below but I couldn't see the shooter. I figured maybe they were aiming at me instead, but a few moments later, someone shouted in chat that they had saved my life.

The attack had left me on about 7500 blood (not too bad) so I went looking for supplies. I happened across a barn just outside of Elektrogorsk surrounded by 6-7 zombies. Low on ammo I decided to sneak in quietly, which is pretty tense when you are sliding along on your belly and one starts shambling his way in your direction.

I got inside the barn and went up the steps (its one of those barns with two sets of stairs on either side) and find some ammo and food up there. The zombies outside have now come quite close to the walls, so the sound of them was quite loud at this point, so I lookup and across from me on the other platform there is a bandit looking straight at me.

My instinct is to just shoot first and ask questions later, but I suddenly realise that if I fire my gun, it will alert every zombie outside and I will be left facing 7 enemies with less than 5 Makarov bullets. Luckily the bandit seemed to have the same thought, and he agreed to give me a blood pack, in return for water and some directions.
--
I think what fascinates me most about the game is how grey the sides are. Its not a simple case of Survivors Vs Bandits, its individual people and personalities existing in a gameworld that is constantly finding ways to kill them.

The EX-Stalker developers want to make a F2P multiplayer game in the spirit of Stalker. Well if you ask me, they should be looking at DayZ, as its already a bloody good representation of STALKER society in multiplayer. /GUSH
 
Aaah I'm hitting that fence where I've finally learned how everything works and it only makes the flaws that much more glaring to the point where I wonder why they aren't fixed yet and it makes it a bother to play.

Also made me realize how boring the zombies are because there's no way to shake them, they can open doors, climb ladders, clip through most anything just to kill me, so while I've had really tense showdowns I've also had straight bullshit moments regarding them. I think they need the most work, really. Minecraft syndrome. He keeps adding features without fixing old ones.

They should be slower and more numerable rather than faster and buggy.

Maybe I'll keep playing Tera until he's worked on it more.
 
So me and badhat found a car that needed full repairing in some town, so we began looking for parts. We headed west to hit a few barns/stables, and as we were entering one I spotted a group of 3 guys, 2 bandit one survivor. Definitely not a friendly group. We hid in the trees nearby while they looted, and then they started coming our way. As they passed, they were like 3 feet from where we were prone under some pines. After they passed one of them turned around, and I thought for sure they were going to spot us, so I started opening fire. I had an enfield and badhat had a winchester, and we managed to take them all out with only badhat sustaining injuries. I think confusion was our main advantage, since we basically were in their midst and I saw one of them running around and looking at me like he had no idea if I was one of them or not.

Took one of the guy's coyote backpack as well as his DMR (with like 10 mags, **** yeah)

Great times.

Acepilotf14, what flaws are you referring to besides the zombies? I really don't mind that zombies can chase you forever. It just makes the game more challenging, to have to make sure you always have ammo, or else be very careful not to get spotted. If you could always outrun zombies, it'd be too easy. You'd never have to shoot any.
 
Well besides the basic issues which is true for everything Arma, and I hate to say there should be some end goal since it is essentially a multiplayer roguelike- but some overarching finality that's overly difficult to find and even harder to complete that yields some kind of accomplishment. It could be done really badly which is why it probably shouldn't be attempted at all.

I don't mean outrunning- I mean the fact that if you aggro a bunch there's really no way to escape them without dying or shooting them all, which doesn't help when stealth mechanics are spotty at best and I can't hide since they can just open the doors no problem. Plus every time I fire a rifle and watch all the zombies aggro at me, they run like a black man evading the police. Ridiculously fast.

More items I suppose(which will come with development time!) since every game seems to boil down to find map/compass/watch/matches/wood/weapon/nvg/gps, etc, and then once you've found them your best bet is to just hunt people or explore. Exploring would be great too if there were more things to find, which will also come with development time-

I guess what I'm saying is that the atmosphere is here, the gameplay is here, the formula is here, now they need to polish it, improve it, and add a layer of fluffyness over it to make things more intriguing, which is what alpha/beta time is for.

A subtle plotline would be best. Scraps of documents detailing things that happened, more background plot in the environment since right now it's just a sandbox and I don't know about you but at some point I stopped playing in the sandbox and went on to something different after I got bored of kicking everyone's sandcastles down and then getting mauled by zombies.
 
I'm a dumbass. I should probably be quiet about this, but I find it amusing so I'll share. :p

I just realised that your inventory =/= your backpack. The realisation came when I found a better backpack and didn't see a difference in the number of available slots in my inventory. That's when I clicked "open backpack" and found out that you can put stuff in there and it's a sort of separate inventory. :facepalm:

I should have came to that conclusion that a few days ago, when I was playing with Ren and we exchanged items - he told me how to put stuff in the backpack so that he could retrieve them from it, but I thought they still technically stayed in my inventory and putting stuff in the backpack was just a way to make them available to other players.

I could've carried so much more loot on me for all this time!


BTW, it seems that items tend to disappear after the latest patch. I exchanged my Makarov for a revolver, but then found out the revolver has no ammo, so I wanted to switch back, but the pistol was gone. Later I wanted to see if I can put a Winchester into my backpack, and the rifle disappeared along with all the ammo for it (a shitload). Also some stuff that I had in my backpack was gone as well.
 
Well besides the basic issues which is true for everything Arma, and I hate to say there should be some end goal since it is essentially a multiplayer roguelike- but some overarching finality that's overly difficult to find and even harder to complete that yields some kind of accomplishment. It could be done really badly which is why it probably shouldn't be attempted at all.

I don't mean outrunning- I mean the fact that if you aggro a bunch there's really no way to escape them without dying or shooting them all, which doesn't help when stealth mechanics are spotty at best and I can't hide since they can just open the doors no problem. Plus every time I fire a rifle and watch all the zombies aggro at me, they run like a black man evading the police. Ridiculously fast.

More items I suppose(which will come with development time!) since every game seems to boil down to find map/compass/watch/matches/wood/weapon/nvg/gps, etc, and then once you've found them your best bet is to just hunt people or explore. Exploring would be great too if there were more things to find, which will also come with development time-

I guess what I'm saying is that the atmosphere is here, the gameplay is here, the formula is here, now they need to polish it, improve it, and add a layer of fluffyness over it to make things more intriguing, which is what alpha/beta time is for.

A subtle plotline would be best. Scraps of documents detailing things that happened, more background plot in the environment since right now it's just a sandbox and I don't know about you but at some point I stopped playing in the sandbox and went on to something different after I got bored of kicking everyone's sandcastles down and then getting mauled by zombies.
Well I guess you get bored more easily than I do, or don't appreciate the gameplay enough. Or maybe you don't play with us on mumble enough.

An end goal is not what the game should have. You make your own end goal(s). Have you even found a car and repaired it? How about a helicopter? The only 'magic' that has died for me a little since I started playing is realizing that only certain types of buildings can spawn certain types of loot, and that the location of those buildings is never going to change. But this is something that can be changed eventually, so that there is some randomization there, and that even a non military building has a rare chance of spawning military loot. Porting this mission to Lingor would be really really fun, since it would be an entirely fresh new map to learn.

The fact that the game is getting new features more than weekly is enough to keep me entertained while I play. After I reach a nice set of gear there's plenty of player hunting to do which never gets old, and when I eventually die it's refreshing to start all over again. I can't find myself getting too bored with this formula, especially with new updates always coming.

So yeah, hate to say it but maybe the game isn't quite for you.
 
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