Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[fenrif]

I just bought this today. Couldn't resist the urge to hammer zombies in the face. Anyone else playing it?

So far it seems decent, especially for an alpha that was a crashtastic mess a couple of days ago. If they keep up the pace with these patches and improvements it looks set to be pretty awesome.

[kilakan]

I got it yesterday as well, and it is freaking awesome and the open pvp makes it kinda terrifying cause you can really use other people's help but half of them will jsut shoot on sight.

[x2yzh9]

Yep, I pre-ordered. I can't wait for the new patch that's supposed to come next week, on that note, do any of you have teamspeak? I'd love to play with a couple of bay12ers, and I'm sure I could get a room setup in the teamspeak I frequent.

[kilakan]

yeah I have teamspeak, and would love to play if we get a time set up.

[fenrif]

I don't but I'm sure it can't be that hard to install.

[x2yzh9]

Ok guys, I'll PM you all the teamspeak servers info, and just hop in whenever you feel like it. Hopefully we can get more people and just have it where you hop in and play whenever you feel like it .

[Neonivek]

Alignments

Dang it Alignments out of EVERY game that you would have made sense in... you make your way here?

I could understand a reputation system that tells people if you were a peice of scum who kills people left and right... but alignment?

Dang it Fable you ruin everything!

[fenrif]

Alignments

Dang it Alignments out of EVERY game that you would have made sense in... you make your way here?

I could understand a reputation system that tells people if you were a peice of scum who kills people left and right... but alignment?

Dang it Fable you ruin everything!

I'm pretty sure the alignments are bandit and not bandit?

[Shadowscales]

Played the alpha for a bit. Don't have time at the moment to give a detailed gameplay overview but my overall opinion of it is low.

This is due to the bias of DayZ. People call the ARMA II engine clunky but apparently this is worse.
No broken legs and no (or extremely rare) bleeding.
Bandages, DX Bandages, Painkillers and Anti-biotics of instant health. Same with the rare medkits (full health restored).
Guns and ammo SEEM to be rarer than DayZ, but when they spawn they're usually something OP like a .308 scoped bolt action sniper rifle complete with desert camo in a supermarket.
The reason they seem rare is likely due to the agonizingly slow movement speed coupled with a small fatigue bar.

Zombies:
Let's see, they kill you at a speed that makes it simply annoying and stealth is once again (as with all movement in this game) agonizingly slow. Using melee on a single zombie doesn't allow it to attack due to stumbling animations and makes single zeds easy to dispatch.

The game's immersion level is offset by annoying "shock" music which is both forced upon you with no way to turn it off and annoying. The sound effects in general are okay (footsteps are terrible though) and gun sounds seem solid. Many meshes seem inconsistent with actual equipment variants such as the ALICE pack (Or in this case, ALICE Rucksack) looking like a standard backpack and STANAG mags being strangely shaped.

Animations is where the game fails the most. In ARMA II/DayZ animations have a feel to them, they are solid and feel as if your character and all around it are part of this physical world. Higher quality sound effects may be a reasonable factor in this but it seems The War Z's animations just feel fake and walking feels like sliding across the ground rather than stepping.

In the end I'd call the game itself mediocre and estimate it will stay that way, a word of advice is to skip the steep pricing of this and wait for DayZ Standalone either next month or December for $15.

Please ignore any horrible spelling/grammar/inconsistency-related problems with this post as I am tired.
If I check this thread tommorow I'd be happy to answer questions.

Edit: I forgot to mention the UI, in my opinion it is worse than that of ARMA II/DayZ, requiring more time to both pick up items and move the mouse across it's full screen inventory. The inventory system is quite unrealistic with ALL items only taking one slot including the largest of guns. Items are not stored in backpacks and the "Global Inventory" System is very exploitable, but more recently slightly  balanced by only being able to use it in "safe zones" (full of bandits).
The community are also often spawn killers and the game can quickly turn into flashlight/anyotherweapon deathmatch at any moment.

[fenrif]

Played the alpha for a bit. Don't have time at the moment to give a detailed gameplay overview but my overall opinion of it is low.

This is due to the bias of DayZ. People call the ARMA II engine clunky but apparently this is worse.
No broken legs and no (or extremely rare) bleeding.
Bandages, DX Bandages, Painkillers and Anti-biotics of instant health. Same with the rare medkits (full health restored).
Guns and ammo SEEM to be rarer than DayZ, but when they spawn they're usually something OP like a .308 scoped bolt action sniper rifle complete with desert camo in a supermarket.
The reason they seem rare is likely due to the agonizingly slow movement speed coupled with a small fatigue bar.

Zombies:
Let's see, they kill you at a speed that makes it simply annoying and stealth is once again (as with all movement in this game) agonizingly slow. Using melee on a single zombie doesn't allow it to attack due to stumbling animations and makes single zeds easy to dispatch.

The game's immersion level is offset by annoying "shock" music which is both forced upon you with no way to turn it off and annoying. The sound effects in general are okay (footsteps are terrible though) and gun sounds seem solid. Many meshes seem inconsistent with actual equipment variants such as the ALICE pack (Or in this case, ALICE Rucksack) looking like a standard backpack and STANAG mags being strangely shaped.

Animations is where the game fails the most. In ARMA II/DayZ animations have a feel to them, they are solid and feel as if your character and all around it are part of this physical world. Higher quality sound effects may be a reasonable factor in this but it seems The War Z's animations just feel fake and walking feels like sliding across the ground rather than stepping.

In the end I'd call the game itself mediocre and estimate it will stay that way, a word of advice is to skip the steep pricing of this and wait for DayZ Standalone either next month or December for $15.

Please ignore any horrible spelling/grammar/inconsistency-related problems with this post as I am tired.
If I check this thread tommorow I'd be happy to answer questions.

Edit: I forgot to mention the UI, in my opinion it is worse than that of ARMA II/DayZ, requiring more time to both pick up items and move the mouse across it's full screen inventory. The inventory system is quite unrealistic with ALL items only taking one slot including the largest of guns. Items are not stored in backpacks and the "Global Inventory" System is very exploitable, but more recently slightly  balanced by only being able to use it in "safe zones" (full of bandits).
The community are also often spawn killers and the game can quickly turn into flashlight/anyotherweapon deathmatch at any moment.

I'm of the exact opposite opinion. I prefer this way more than DayZ, mostly because of the design desicions Rocket favours (players must hate this game, many changes designed solely to make people not want to play it, etc). But also because this is designed to be a more actioney/arcadey type of game, rather than a hardcore simulation. Both are good, but a hardcore sim combined with Rockets design philosophy is just a pain in the ass to me. Also It's easier to forgive things like medkits healing you in an actioney game than it is to forgive not eating a can of beans every hour causing massive bleeding in a military sim. Or eating those beans somehow refilling your blood.

Some of the things you complain about are pretty much the same as in DayZ. The movement being slow, and the stealth being slow especially are really similar to DayZ. The difference is that in The War Z the map is actually designed around the game, and not just the best they could find of an allready present selection. Every town has ways for you to ditch the zombies by clambering over a fence, or getting behind some cover. Picking up items and the inventory system especially are way simpler and easy to use than the ARMA2 engine. You just hold E while looking at something and it takes like 5 seconds to pick it up, contrast with ARMA which is open your inventory, navigate the unintuitive menus, hope you don't destroy the item by putting it into something with not enough slots, etc.

Complaining about the community compared to the DayZ community is kind of baffling to me. People in DayZ were just as ruthless. Remember when Rocket made newbies completely defenseless to help protect them from being spawnkilled on the beach? Then people just got killed on the beach anyway? Also at the moment theres less than half the map available to players, so it's a lot of people competeing over a small areas worth of loot. Double also that there are a lot of systems planned to act as disincentives to rampant playerkilling, but obviously at this stage in development they aren't implimented yet. Player-offered bounties and safe-zone armed guards not liking bandits seem specifically designed to counter this.

Also a lot of your problems with the game, like weapon spawn rates in particular, owe to the fact that it's an alpha. DayZ's loot system for example went through more than a few changes over the course of its alpha too. The devs have been actively working on managing the loot system over the course of the alpha (which is running up on 7 days now? I think it started on the 15th) 

[head]

Anyone feeling generous and have a spare key(guest?)

[fenrif]

The guest keys don't work untill the 31st, I might have one spare, I'll post in this thread closer to then when I find out.

[x2yzh9]

Alright, fenrif and kilakan, hop on the teamspeak tonight at 7:00 CST to play the game if you can. Otherwise we'll just have to work something out for tomorrow I guess.

[Shadowscales]

Sorry about that community thing fenris, it's just that in Australia we get quite a few more friendlies.
Many shoot on sight but if you play on private hives it's like the good old days where you got a nice balance.
These days I mostly play on private hives. The movement in The War Z is definately slower, with prone crawling being at half the speed of DayZ's at best. The running seems to be around 2/3 of DayZ's 18km/h running but the tiny fatigue bar is what makes that a real problem.

The map is not going to be anywhere near as large as chernarus as even with the slow running speed it does not take long to travel one side to the other. With these calculations considering the map in the alpha is aproximately 30% of the final size (apparently) the map will be about the size of Cyrodiil (41 sq km.) With DayZ's map both being more detailed and larger DayZ wins on the map.

Yes, I agree both games are worth getting, but DayZ feels like it's a lot more polished despite it's engine not being designed for what it's doing.

I can see less emergent gameplay in The War Z than DayZ which is the main reason I prefer DayZ, the lack of voip may slightly influence this but the main reason is the lack of tents, the map being unsuited to hiding things, thin forests, tiny "cities", too risky to bother helping people (also waste of ammo).

When I play DayZ and I help someone and they appreciate it, well. I've made a friend, the game makes it feel nearly like I'm talking to the real person face-to-face and the stories I create makes every death worth it.
It's just DayZ feels like an immersive survival game while The War Z feels like a fps MMO.

[fenrif]

They've talked about a second map they're working on at the moment that's much larger than the Colorado one, which should solve a lot of the problems with it. The current map not being as detailed is I guess a matter of opinion. The War Z's map is very obviously designed specifically for this game. Lots of obstacles to scramble over in the right places, also more enterable buildings than Chernarus, which is always a plus. Combined with the ability to build barricades and the like makes for some pretty interesting possibilities. When I play the map has much less underbrush and the like than in DayZ, but I have the settings on low. But I can see your point there. Personally I'll take interesting cities and towns over interesting forests, since nearly all the action takes place there anyway (I'd be made up with a massive city-only map. Countryside is for losers ).

You can also I think run private servers with passwords on in the full version. Can't remember where I read that though. Which definatly mirrors the DayZ development, as when I last played running a server not on the hive was either not allowed or heavily frowned upon by Rocket. Even so I've only had the game for a few days, but allready I've had quite a few impromptu team ups.

They've said they're working on VOIP too.

Tents are good, but so are player-run missions, and strongholds, and weapon mods, and all the other things that aren't in the extremely early alpha that's out at the moment. Also When I was playing tents would get wiped in updates, which made them a lot less worthwhile. Especially when Rocket wiped all tents because people were making tent cities and he didn't like that.

I think you've hit the nail on the head though. DayZ definatly feels more polished, because it is. It's a much older engine and a much older game in of itself. DayZ was in alpha for months (is it still in alpha? I've stopped following it). The War Z has been in alpha for days. A lot of the problems you have with it stem from it being just over a week old. Even things like the playerbase in dayz are only better because you don't really interact with most of it. The War Z definatly has promise, yes it's more "arcadey" for lack of a better word. But not every game in the genre needs to be the same as DayZ, because we have DayZ for that. The War Z is doing it's own thing within the genre DayZ created, and with nearly all the core features of the game not yet in it it seems like it has a lot of promise to me. I guess we'll just have to disagree on this.

Alright, fenrif and kilakan, hop on the teamspeak tonight at 7:00 CST to play the game if you can. Otherwise we'll just have to work something out for tomorrow I guess.

I just got in, and checking the time it looks like I missed it, I should be in around then tommorow though.