ARMA II Day Z Mod

[Morreion]

DayZ Mod official site

DayZ (Wikipedia)

DayZ is a multiplayer open world survival horror video game mod for the 2009 computer game ARMA II and its 2010 expansion pack, ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead. It has been widely praised in the game media for its innovative design elements, with Kotaku and Eurogamer describing it as possibly one of the best zombie games ever made, and PCGamer saying it was one of the most important things to happen to PC Gaming in 2012. The mod was responsible for putting the three year old game into the top seller charts on Steam for over seven weeks, spending much of this time as the top selling game, and is responsible for over 300,000 unit sales within two months of its release. Designer Dean Hall stated in an interview with VG247 that a standalone game will be out in 2012.

DayZ Wiki

The Secret Behind the Success of DayZ, the Most Interesting PC “Game” of 2012 (Kotaku)

While DayZ's terrifying appeal is built on keeping things to a relative minimum - an irony given the complexity of ArmA II itself - that doesn't mean the mod is going to simply stay at "man vs zombies vs other men" level. Hall is committed to adding new and more immersive features to DayZ as he and the community see fit.

Stockholm Syndrome: How Six Men Kidnapped Me in DayZ (Games.On.Net)

I do not die. My character stumbles to her feet as my assailants apply bandages to my wounds. I had lost 90% of my blood though, so the world was a flickering, black-and-white haze. They continue talking to me, with more clarity.

One voice in particular belongs to a leader of sorts, called Gare, and he explains my situation to me.“You are now our slave. If you follow instructions, you’ll stay alive. If not, we will shoot you.”

DayZ Impressions (Keen & Graev)

What I love about DayZ is the feeling I get when I play. I love the concept of survival, working against the odds, and how dynamic my experience is every time I play. Despite being the same world, nothing is ever the same day to day or server to server. There’s a constant on-the-edge-of-my-seat feeling because I never know when some sniper is going to kill me, or when a player may be hiding around a corner.

DayZ presents a decent realism. Eating and drinking dynamics add pressure to do more than shoot stuff with guns. Ammunition restricts how aggressive you are with your firearms. Sound and visibility make you care about what type of surface you’re on or whether or not you crouch or prone through areas. There’s a level of depth to DayZ that immerses the player quickly. It’s not perfect, but it works.

Where DayZ suffers greatly is the engine. Arma 2 sucks. The engine sucks. The polish sucks.

Adventure Log: Coughing in DayZ, Diverse games week (Keen & Graev)

While roaming I killed several players. I wonder if they knew me as the coughing bandit. I could tell they heard my coughing because they’d use voice coms talking to each other: “What was that coughing sound?” *bang bang* and I loot them up.

I finally found some antibiotics, cured my plague, and had one of the greatest arsenals I’ve ever had in DayZ: MP5 SD, Uzi, M16A2, alice pack, tons of food, meds, and ammo. No more than 30 seconds after I administered my cure I was sniped dead in one shot. Such is the way of DayZ.

DayZ surpasses one million unique players (Massively)

Less than a month ago, Arma II mod DayZ surpassed the 500,000-player mark. As of this morning, over one million of you have tried the game since its inception earlier this year. According to the counter on the mod's official website, players have killed over 22.5 million zombies and accumulated nearly 1,220 years of total play time since the game went live.

[Rakul]

Dramatic videos... even just watching! heh

[Regolyth]

Awesome. I still need to give this a try.

[Morreion]

Amazing how sandboxes give you a different feeling than the usual game, isn't it?

[dortmunder]

I found some loaded up tents with all sorts of awesome stuff last night.

So I guarded them until a couple friends could get on and come loot them as well.

Now we all have Night Vision Goggles, Sniper rifles etc.

We'll probably die before we get to make good use of them, though. D:

[Regolyth]

Aug 7, 2012 16:26:37 GMT -5 dortmunder said:

Now we all have Night Vision Goggles, Sniper rifles etc.

That's awesome.

Aug 7, 2012 16:26:37 GMT -5 dortmunder said:

We'll probably die before we get to make good use of them, though. D:

Isn't that the way it always goes. LOL

[Loendal]

I've been suckered in by a friend of mine on DayZ as well. We haven't had a chance to play together yet, but I've been doing recon / learning curve testing for us. You're absolutely right it's got a steep learning curve. I'm still fiddling over how to take someone's pack when I happen upon a corpse!

I've been randomly sniped twice, both times after finally finding something worth finding. It would seem people camp churches and corpses specifically to take out scavengers like myself. I've found lots of ammo lying around in various places, but never found a gun; and one time I came upon a corpse that looked like a corpse, but I could have sworn it had a green player dot on it on the HUD, I was riddled with bullets and then died shortly thereafter.

I spend a good hour or so dodging zombies, trying to find gear of any worth and then I get sniffed out by buggers. Now I'm being chased by a pack of 10 zombies at once; it took something like 15 minutes to ditch them. After a bit of time with this, I can eventually get back to sneaking about and lying down in the grass, crawling along on my belly, closing doors to keep the slavering undead away, etc etc. I start getting thirsty, to the point of a flashing red jug. In the course of scavenging for water / drink I finally find a can of Pepsi to solve it (Took me a good 45 minutes to find this elusive can). Then I'm crouch walking through a field to head towards another point that might give me some food or a weapon of some kind. 2 seconds later, a sniper shoots me dead in one shot..... I'm trying to keep a good outlook on this, and not get frustrated or annoyed but that's frickin' irritating!

Is a Zombie survival game or a dodge the snipers game? It's not that I'm not having fun sneaking about and playing cat and mouse with the Zombies; the atmosphere is awesome. There's the occasional odd habit of zombies clipping and coming through closed doors or walls sometimes or those very helpful white dots on the HUD showing movement not always being there (Could be a server option or something I suppose) but it's frustrating as hell to spend an hour and a half or more struggling to survive and explore only to be shot dead in less time then it takes to pick up an empty can off the ground and lose everything and start over again (Complete with it's tediously long loading / spawning process)

I'm enjoying it, but it seems awful frustrating at the same time.

[Morreion]

I like the idea behind the game very much- now if there was a mechanism to make snipers less all-powerful. Maybe you should have a 50/50 chance to catch a glint of light off of the snipers scope or some other decent chance of getting some kind of warning. Maybe it ought to be hard to shoot people from a long distance- after all, in real life it takes some training and good equipment to do this. Maybe the average rifle is not aligned perfectly for sniping and snipers should be less accurate.

[Regolyth]

I agree with Gack's (I almost called you Morreion, hehe...) approach to snipers. It almost seems weird that all people want to do it snipe other survivors. Perhaps if they put more emphasis on making a group, or town, and less on killing your fellow man, there would be less people sniping. But your description of what you did, Loendal, sounds fun.