
Unfinished, unfair and brutally difficult - danso
http://www.polygon.com/2014/1/2/5264192/dayz-early-access-lessons
======
Goronmon
_DayZ, on the other hand, does almost nothing to teach you how the game is
played, much less "won."_

That's because, with the internet, you can easily look up tons of information
on how to play the game as well as getting tips from other players on optimal
strategies when you start out. Games are no longer played in nearly as much of
a vacuum as they used to be.

 _If you encounter a group of survivors that is better equipped, you are
likely to die._

Unfortunately, the more common response to these situations is for the player
to immediately log out and switch to a different server (your character
persists across any DayZ servers). You can also do funky things like scope out
a player, switch servers to place yourself in a better position to fight them
and switch back to the original server.

I'm not really complaining as much as explaining the current situation that
people are running into, since the game really is still fairly early in
development.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Rust, a Dayz-like game from the makers of Garry's Mod, largely fixes the
issue. When a player suddenly logs out, their body collapses to the ground
unconscious and can still be killed and looted.

Your job as a survivor is to build a shelter safe enough that your body can
'sleep'

~~~
timje1
Is Rust the game where most of the players stand around as naked (male)
cavemen? It's rare to come across a game that shoots so hard for realism just
to land right in the middle of absurdity.

~~~
ChikkaChiChi
Yes, they are blurred out though.

To be honest, it's a fairly good benchmark for whether or not you should be
concerned with someone. If they are running across the field with a rock in
their hands, chances are is that you don't have to worry about them shooting
you in the face.

...Most of the time.

------
wtracy
Supposedly, the reason there are so few successful FOSS games is that no one
wants to play a half-finished game, offer feedback (or patches) and come back
and play the next revision. Is this changing?

On a different note, I've been intrigued by the idea of an MMORPG with a
mechanic that coerces players into acting in-character. I think DayZ just
pulled this off. You can be the desprate survivor just trying to hang on, you
can be the thug monopolizing precious resources, or you can be the dangerous,
unpredictable psycho, and all these possibilities feel perfectly in-character.
There's no grinding, leveling up, or amulets of +2 charisma.

I suspect that right there is the real reason for this particular game's
success.

~~~
overgard
I think the problem with FOSS games tends to be that they get started for the
wrong reasons. Like, most of them spawn from "it'd be neat to make a game like
X" and "I believe in FOSS". That's fine, but when you get into the gritty
details of making a game, it's /really fricking hard/. To actually finish
something takes an enormous amount of passion and dedication. And people that
put in that level of passion and dedication usually don't just want to give
away their work for free after that much struggle.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that FOSS people lack passion or anything
like that, it's just that for your average non-game FOSS project you usually
start by scratching a small itch, and then if it other people like your itch-
scratcher, momentum grows. Or if nobody likes it, you abandon it with minimal
time lost. A game takes a lot more upfront investment before you have anything
to show.

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dreamdu5t
Everyone is looking at it wrong.

It's not about the game anymore. It's about the online community surrounding
it. Games today are social networks. It's not about the game-play anymore.
It's about the mods, the chatting, the culture, community, etc.

If you see Minecraft as a game like Sonic is a game you are blind.

~~~
null_ptr
That's an interesting point of view. Do you think single player games may
still be able to attain success in the current landscape?

~~~
potatolicious
Check out the massive communities built around strategy games like
Civilization - I think SP games are doing well.

That said, IMO the social and community aspects are just icing on the cake. A
game gains no traction unless it's a good _game_ first. The community that
grows around it are an accelerant for future growth, but will not exist at all
if it weren't for a solid game underneath.

~~~
xentronium
> Check out the massive communities built around strategy games like
> Civilization - I think SP games are doing well.

Civilization V is _very_ entertaining for FFA multiplayer (although public
games are unplayable because of leavers).

------
teddyh
> […] the game consists of trolling and ganking. Players have very little
> reason to trust each other, and many reasons to kill each other.

> […]

> […] make your own fun, and that’s often at the expense of the other players,
> or perhaps due to their actions towards you. It’s a playground for the
> perverse.

As _entertaining_ as this game very well might be, I think I’ll pass on
putting myself through what sounds like a collection of potentially traumatic
and dehumanizing experiences. I think I’d be a worse person for playing it.

~~~
tricolon
That's part of why I gave up on EVE Online—I felt that to make any sort of
progress towards having fun, I would have to be a terrible person.

~~~
chii
> That's part of why I gave up on EVE Online

i have observed that certain types of personalities cannot take EVE Online's
(or in this case, DayZ's) play style. I personally find EVE and dayz to be
refreshingly interesting, amidst all the crap themepark MMO games out there.
It's fun because you have real risks when play - a loss means something. The
game feels real.

~~~
tricolon
Oh believe me, I was incredibly interested in EVE Online and am equally
interested in DayZ. As you said, it "feels real"—that's pretty rare in games
and that's why it can be fun. Unfortunately, the consequences of realism can
be unfair (what else should we expect?).

------
rmrfrmrf
Since giving up cable, twitch.tv has more or less become my HGTV -- somewhat
enjoyable, minimal attention requirement; decent background noise to help keep
me from going insane.

I cannot for the life of me, though, understand the appeal of Day Z. Perhaps
I've had the misfortune of only seeing the "slow" parts, but, from what I've
seen, it's a lot of running around in large environments and then... hiding
out? sometimes? Then there are zombies? I really don't get it. I tend to fall
in love with niche market games, but this one doesn't do it for me.

~~~
btmorex
So, I had a long response written out, but I decided it didn't really get to
heart of the matter. Here's the short response:

Every time you start a new character, it takes a while -- at least a couple
hours -- to get to a comfortable level of survivability (by that I mean: food,
water, equipment, weapons). Even once well equipped, it's incredibly easy to
die. So, when you're scrounging around for some food or poking around a
military base for better weapons and you hear a gun shot, the adrenaline rush
is like nothing else. The two hours you spent gearing up could literally be
wiped out in an instant by sniper that you never even saw on some hill side.

Even better, everyone else is in the same situation as you no matter how long
they've been playing, which leads to some really intense/scary/funny
encounters in game.

~~~
brazzy
So the question that determines whether someone will enjoy the game overall
is: does that intense adrenaline rush outweigh having to go through all that
bootstrap grinding again? I strongly suspect that the answer for me is "no",
at least on the long run.

------
overgard
I enjoyed this article, but I think one thing I would dispute is that this is
a modern phenomenon.

Think back to the 90s real quick. You know what was really the first
unbelievably successful unfinished game? Counter Strike.

I think the commonality that all these unfinished games have are this: 1)
Inherently multiplayer 2) Players are the "creators" of content. When I say
content I don't necessarily mean assets, I mean situations or gameplay
experiences.

If you have those two things, releasing early sort of makes sense, because
your audience will give you a lot more valuable feedback then if you just
dropped it on them as a finished thing, and you can get some buzz going
without raising expectations too high.

~~~
timje1
The inverse of this could be developers patching out quirks that enable
emergent gameplay contrary to the direction they wish the gameplay to go in.

So rocket jumping has become a feature of many FPS games, whereas in
counterstrike they patched out strafe jumping.

------
RBerenguel
I have not checked the game, only this Polygon article, but the premise sounds
a lot like a (washed down!) Dwarf Fortress. Specially the unfair part. You'll
realise how unfair DF's adventurer mode is the day you pick your first mission
to kill a scrawny beast only to find yourself brutally killed by a pack of
capybarss.

Toady (the developer of DF) is preparing a big update to adventurer mode, by
the way.

~~~
timje1
I feel like there's a big difference between the unfairness inflicted on you
by a Random Number Generator, and the unfairness inflicted on you by being
hounded through the streets by a gang of other players.

The two games share the same medium but are very different in nature.

~~~
RBerenguel
DF is not as deeply random as other roguelikes (or roguelike-likes,) in that
most creatures follow patterns, goals and "do their own." With the next update
there will even be a "background" on everything (wars between villages,
gossiping, refugees from distances, spreading of stories, yes I'm looking
forward to it)

Of course, the unfairness as you say is different anyway, an AI should not
feel unfair... But at some point you realise it actually _is_. Nothing in DF
is specifically there to kill you, but won't bother to let you live if you
cross its way.

------
daemonk
I have no problem with the difficulty of the game or the realism it tries to
provide. However, it seems like these type of games almost always promotes
trolling and ganking. The main reason is because there really are no
consequence for these actions.

It ends up being almost like a gambling game where you hope you gather a lot
of resources and can get the jump on someone else before you die. I am sure
there is entertainment value in this type of gameplay, but it's disingenuous
to dress it up as some kind of realistic horror survival game.

~~~
kenrikm
There actually is a consequence, if you kill a player on sight you ruin a lot
of the gear you would hope to steal from them. It's actually better to rob
them while they are alive and you never know if they will pull out a revolver
and pop a cap in you.

