I'm honestly really glad there is another option besides Day Z, it will in the end make both games better. It appears to be a Hawken/MWO thing again where on their face both games are similar but once you look into them enough they end up being very different.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Yes, I agree ultima. On the face they seem very much alike, but in practice they play differently. I tried to capture that in the OP, but on some level I also knew that the comparisons were inevitable. I didn't try and shy too much away from just saying hey, you're going to find some comfortable similarity here.
It is more arcadey. I covered this in the OP. it's mostly the weapons, it doesn't feel like a simulation, but more like a regular first person shooter.
Interface clunkiness should never be used to add tension, ever. That's bad design and bad coding. We'll have to agree to disagree on this point, but as a software development myself, I find it shameful.
They are missions, and they will be given by distress signals. The idea being to draw players to the same places to force conflict. They will be completely optional.
I disagree entirely about the tension. The wide open spaces of DayZ create zero tension when you're running between hot zones. The map is so completely open that you can go from one end to the other and quite easily see no one. After some time of that, the tension of it is completely gone. The nice thing about the small map in War Z is that you literally always expect someone to come over the next hill. It means the tension isn't confined just to the best spawn areas, but also the alleys of travel that people have to use. And lets be clear, the War Z map isn't small, it's just smaller than DayZ's.
Your second list:
I don't get this feeling at all. Maybe you're playing at an odd aspect ratio that the game has issues with?
You were probably in Boulder City before they opened the buildings last week. That area of the map was in before the buildings were done.
I can't argue with alt look, I miss it
This game was in development before anyone knew what DayZ was. In many ways, they evolved simultaneously. There is no doubt this game went on to take some of DayZ's better ideas (and why not), but the general idea of a zombie survival game was not grabbed from DayZ.
My enduring issue with DayZ will always remain that it's a mess. I was able to put up with it for a while, but it just got trying. Graphics errors if you went anywhere near a city, some of the worst hacking I'd ever seen, clunky UI that is no excuse to create 'tension' (this is the same kind of argument Brood War players used to talk down the SC2 UI, and it was just as odd to me then), map that was designed for open warfare, not a zombie survival game.
DayZ will always hold a special place in my heart for opening this genre to me, but I think War Z is going in a better direction over all for what I enjoy about it.
Have to agree with loads of this. Alt look is really the only thing I find myself missing; it was a surprisingly useful option, but again, that's an ARMA engine thing, not a DayZ thing. DayZ just happened to use it is all.
Already enjoyed this more than the my last couple of weeks I spent playing DayZ. DayZ has some great ideas and whatnot, but there's is way too much of "I'm going to make this balls hard" from the developer while there are still crippling, horrible issues in play. Fighting a design agenda and horrible bugs was just miserable for me, whereas War Z is clearly more interested in having a survival aspect where you can actually survive instead of getting brutalized as much by bugs as by anything else. Hell, the tipping point for me in DayZ was when I had my best run ever... and then died thanks to combination of better than a half-dozen different bugs and half-implemented design mechanics.
Cripes, I'm just happy that I can successfully fight zombies without them zooming through walls, KOing in me single lucky hits, breaking a limb when I have no way to fix it, hitting me from 10 feet away, causing me to unavoidably bleed to death because of the game mechanics, etc. etc.
And frankly, I wouldn't care if this was ripped straight from DayZ or not because, to me, this is a helluva lot better. There's nothing wrong with taking a good idea and running with it if the other guys have had the same glaring issues for months. Far from perfect, but so much closer to it that you can barely see DayZ from here.
Ninja Snarl P on
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited November 2012
I do not miss bleeding or leg breaking. Those go back to that simulation versus game thing, but those systems to me caused more annoyance than added to the fun in DayZ. Especially with the number of ridiculous geometry bugs there were to break your legs. I spent days of my life logged off DayZ waiting for a friend to find my broken legged body in some obscured part of the land before I bled to death because a tree root caused me to break my leg and bleed.
I can go prone in this game anywhere I want, and not risk catching some random part of my ragdoll on fence geometry that I can't even see, causing me to break legs or bleed.
-I'll agree it's a byproduct of a bad design in regards to the inventory/looting situation, but I feel that the underlying mechanic of it is a good one. It should take time to sort through a pile of stuff, and it should take time to switch out weapons/gear and perform actions. The inventory is getting an overhaul in the standalone and I'm actually concerned he may streamline it too much but we'll see what happens. Agree to disagree. :]
-In regards to missions I prefer rocket's approach as he has stated it, that he will give players the tools to create these situations. So instead of scripting in an airdrop to add an event, he'll allow players to fly the planes and drop the supplies themselves etc. Whether or not that will work out remains to be seen, but I prefer that design direction myself. I see the appeal of scripted events/quests though. Again just personal preference.
-I'll agree that DayZ lost a lot of its tension after you play the game for a bit. When you start out you really do feel like some one might shoot you at any moment, even running across the map in the middle of no where. That fades as you get used to the game and learn the quirks and realize there really isn't some one over every hill. I hardly saw anyone in WarZ as well personally. I didn't feel that tension myself. So I agree that it's been sort of lost in dayz but maybe as a byproduct I didn't feel it in war z either. It is easier to hide in DayZ though.
-Hard to explain about the trees/environment without clogging the page up with screenshots I guess. Didn't have a weird ratio or anything, the scale just seemed very off to me.
-That would explain it about the city.
-I don't actually believe the thing about it being in development before DayZ (Is there any actual evidence for it? I'm not discounting it entirely but I find it too coincidental). There's just too many obvious copy cat bits beyond the idea of both being zombie survival games. The aesthetics are verrrry similar in many regards, heck the first screenshots they posted were of guys who looked nearly identical to dayz characters down to their backpacks and baseball caps. Are backpacks and caps original ideas? of course not, but they seem to be essentially copies of the ones from DayZ/Arma. The name itself, the ear/eye gages, the helicopter crashes, airfield set ups (layout of the hangers etc). Again these are all things that yeah, they are bound to be found in a game like this but the fact that so many so closely mirror DayZ's is more that coincidence imo.
DayZ is a mess though, completely agree. I stopped playing it for a few months waiting for the standalone which will hopefully clear a lot of it up but recently gave in and started playing again. I find playing on a private hive, and perhaps a result of the recent patch, have cleared up a lot of the messiness and hackers but it is still a very incomplete game. And again I don't think War Z is bad so I don't mean to come across like that. I just find it interesting because it is so similar and I guess I'd like to hear what more people who have played both feel each does better/worse.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I vividly remember such fantastic things as getting crushed to death by doors and snapping a femur after stepping off of ledges five feet high. Seriously, when you can't keep level geometry from getting you killed in stupid ways, it's fucking moronic to leave things in like broken legs and bleeding. At that point, the dev is just working way too hard to prove how hardcore he is.
The irony is for all that pushing for a sim environment, DayZ ends up being far less interesting and realistic and far more about just being plain lucky or learning all of the things you can't do so you don't activate a fatal bug. Don't go swimming because you'll instantly drop everything, don't bleed without bandages because you will never stop bleeding, don't fall more than a couple of feet, don't run downhill, don't crawl backwards through doorways, don't put stuff on the ground if you don't want to lose it, don't try to put things that are too big in your backpack because you'll probably lose them, etc. etc. It's a helluva long list of shit I don't have to worry about with War Z because I can just play the freaking game.
Updated the OP with some more wording about the games playing different in practice, and added a section about the final pricing model of the game.
Something I ran across while delving into the forums that might be useful to highlight is that there are normal and hardcore characters. Basically normal has a lockout timer when you die but you retain your characters stats but still lose your gear and hardcore your character is gone after they die. I'm reading conflicting info on what the lockout time is, although initially they were aiming for 24 hours.
Are zombies not attracted to gunfire? In the stream you had, a few people fire shots and not one zombie seemed to have ran towards the noise.
They are supposed to yes, but I know which part you're talking about. I heard those shots, which sounded very close to me, but the zombies didn't agro. There was just a patch yesterday, so it's possible they broke zombie hearing. When I was playing a few days ago, zombies absolutely did agro if you discharged a fire arm even sort of close to them.
I vividly remember such fantastic things as getting crushed to death by doors and snapping a femur after stepping off of ledges five feet high. Seriously, when you can't keep level geometry from getting you killed in stupid ways, it's fucking moronic to leave things in like broken legs and bleeding. At that point, the dev is just working way too hard to prove how hardcore he is.
The irony is for all that pushing for a sim environment, DayZ ends up being far less interesting and realistic and far more about just being plain lucky or learning all of the things you can't do so you don't activate a fatal bug. Don't go swimming because you'll instantly drop everything, don't bleed without bandages because you will never stop bleeding, don't fall more than a couple of feet, don't run downhill, don't crawl backwards through doorways, don't put stuff on the ground if you don't want to lose it, don't try to put things that are too big in your backpack because you'll probably lose them, etc. etc. It's a helluva long list of shit I don't have to worry about with War Z because I can just play the freaking game.
The water thing is still true in War Z, except you just drown and die. It's one of my major annoyances with it right now. How does a zombie apocalypse cause us to lose our ability to swim?
Did anyone else who came from DayZ enjoy jumping around like a lunatic for a while at first? It's funny because I actually didn't even try to jump for a bit I was so used to not being able to.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
It's nice being able to jump again, that's for sure.
On the water point the city I went into looked really cool being flooded out and stuff. Was disappointed when I hit an invisible wall trying to leave but I understand part of the map wasn't opened yet and was a result of that.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Yep, that was boulder city. It was the newest area added to the game, and that's why none of the buildings were open when you got there. If you look north and west of it on the map, you'll see the area of the map that has yet to be opened. That's the invisible wall you hit.
I vividly remember such fantastic things as getting crushed to death by doors and snapping a femur after stepping off of ledges five feet high. Seriously, when you can't keep level geometry from getting you killed in stupid ways, it's fucking moronic to leave things in like broken legs and bleeding. At that point, the dev is just working way too hard to prove how hardcore he is.
The irony is for all that pushing for a sim environment, DayZ ends up being far less interesting and realistic and far more about just being plain lucky or learning all of the things you can't do so you don't activate a fatal bug. Don't go swimming because you'll instantly drop everything, don't bleed without bandages because you will never stop bleeding, don't fall more than a couple of feet, don't run downhill, don't crawl backwards through doorways, don't put stuff on the ground if you don't want to lose it, don't try to put things that are too big in your backpack because you'll probably lose them, etc. etc. It's a helluva long list of shit I don't have to worry about with War Z because I can just play the freaking game.
The water thing is still true in War Z, except you just drown and die. It's one of my major annoyances with it right now. How does a zombie apocalypse cause us to lose our ability to swim?
I tried getting in some water just to test out swimming, but it wouldn't even let me in the water. But I can actually let that slide for now, because this is an alpha and they do have to cook up their own swimming animation. I'd rather not be able to get into the water at all than have all my shit leap out of my pockets and become irretrievable.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Hmm, it used to just kill you...so that's at least a step forward, hehe.
One thing I have to say about the map is thank god it's smaller than Day Z's. Although I've never played Day Z, from what I'm hearing, the map is much larger and you can cross it without seeing anyone else at all. That really wouldn't work for me, that's for sure. On a full server, the likelyhood of encountering another survivor seems to be just right on War Z. Not too often and not to seldom. Also there is the issue with transportation. If you spawn in the north with the intention of getting to the airfield in the south, make sure you budget a good hour or two of your time just trying to make your way there. And that's with you going straight there without stopping to scavenge or running into any assholes that want to shoot you in the face for your flashlight.
Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker.
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
I like how you can confidently pass judgement like that, having never even played Day Z.
The big map was one of the greatest things for me... It gave a real edge to the survival aspect, and the fact that masses of players aren't running around a shoebox deathmatch style creates real tension. You just don't know if there's going to be a murderous bastard lurking around a corner or staring at you from those woods a mile away.
World's best janitor
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Yeah, when DayZ had only the one single map, it was neat for a bit and rapidly become hideously tedious. All the good stuff was clustered in a few spots, but crossing the map was an enormous chore. I really, really don't care about crossing a couple miles of featureless forest and farmland to get anywhere interesting; I'd much rather have a map several times denser in terms of places to go with only some expanse to cross/hide in. Turns out that the vast majority of people have a lot better things to do than spend a couple hours wandering aimlessly only to get gunned down by hackers and have their time completely wasted.
Dunno about the rest of the new DayZ maps, though; I know they've added at least a couple new ones.
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EshTending bar. FFXIV. Motorcycles.Portland, ORRegistered Userregular
Difference between Normal and Hardcore? How do we find each other?
I like how you can confidently pass judgement like that, having never even played Day Z.
The big map was one of the greatest things for me... It gave a real edge to the survival aspect, and the fact that masses of players aren't running around a shoebox deathmatch style creates real tension. You just don't know if there's going to be a murderous bastard lurking around a corner or staring at you from those woods a mile away.
I supposed I'm confidently passing judgment based on information provided by others. That being said, I have played rounds of War Z where I've encountered maybe 1 or 2 people over the course of a few hours. I guess on average I feel like encounters are just right. Other people who play Day Z tell me you can cross the map and not see anyone.
Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I like how you can confidently pass judgement like that, having never even played Day Z.
The big map was one of the greatest things for me... It gave a real edge to the survival aspect, and the fact that masses of players aren't running around a shoebox deathmatch style creates real tension. You just don't know if there's going to be a murderous bastard lurking around a corner or staring at you from those woods a mile away.
It's a good thing War Z's map isn't a murder shoe box then. It just doesn't have a bunch of completely wasted space I have to run through uneventfully to get from point of interest to point of interest.
The advantage of having a huge map like DayZ has is that encounters with other people are more rare, meaning you need to be wary of your surroundings or you might be ambushed by someone who's being more careful than you.
I can see the advantages of having a smaller map, but I wouldn't say one is objectively better than the other.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I don't see how lower frequency of encounter makes you more heightened to being jumped, versus higher frequency of encounter...but I guess everyone reacts different.
And I'm pretty clear in the OP that neither is objectively better. I personally like the smaller map better, I think the tons of wasted space in DayZ is just that...completely wasted.
Also, this game is headed up by the same guy who produced Big Rigs, so you know it's good.
Apparently he was incorrectly attributed as lead dev when all he did was license the engine to the devs who made big rigs, and all it took to dig that up was a cursory look at the wiki page for big rigs.
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FreiA French Prometheus UnboundDeadwoodRegistered Userregular
Also, this game is headed up by the same guy who produced Big Rigs, so you know it's good.
Apparently he was incorrectly attributed as lead dev when all he did was license the engine to the devs who made big rigs, and all it took to dig that up was a cursory look at the wiki page for big rigs.
oh, I Just think it's funny that people care about this sort of stuff.
Are you the magic man?
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lu tzeSweeping the monestary steps.Registered Userregular
I like how you can confidently pass judgement like that, having never even played Day Z.
The big map was one of the greatest things for me... It gave a real edge to the survival aspect, and the fact that masses of players aren't running around a shoebox deathmatch style creates real tension. You just don't know if there's going to be a murderous bastard lurking around a corner or staring at you from those woods a mile away.
It's a good thing War Z's map isn't a murder shoe box then. It just doesn't have a bunch of completely wasted space I have to run through uneventfully to get from point of interest to point of interest.
I enjoyed that part though. You call it wasted space, I call it space enough to get lost.
With a GPS it's not that great, sure. Without one though, navigation became a game in itself, and I found that an interesting challenge.
lu tze on
World's best janitor
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
Keeping an eye on this. I received a 48 hour key from a friend who's been streaming the game since the NDA was dropped and have yet to use it, but it looks a lot more solid then DayZ so far because of the dedicated team behind it. I can see the two competing for a coveted role as zombie survival sandbox benchmark, provided standalone DayZ can clean up optimization and address some of the issues brought up by others here while also highlighting it's strengths.
I like how you can confidently pass judgement like that, having never even played Day Z.
The big map was one of the greatest things for me... It gave a real edge to the survival aspect, and the fact that masses of players aren't running around a shoebox deathmatch style creates real tension. You just don't know if there's going to be a murderous bastard lurking around a corner or staring at you from those woods a mile away.
It's a good thing War Z's map isn't a murder shoe box then. It just doesn't have a bunch of completely wasted space I have to run through uneventfully to get from point of interest to point of interest.
I enjoyed that part though. You call it wasted space, I call it space enough to get lost.
With a GPS it's not that great, sure. Without one though, navigation became a game in itself, and I found that an interesting challenge.
To each their own. I agree the huge map in DayZ was fun at first, but after I had been playing it for a while, I started to feel there were disadvantages with my personal play style.
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Have to agree with loads of this. Alt look is really the only thing I find myself missing; it was a surprisingly useful option, but again, that's an ARMA engine thing, not a DayZ thing. DayZ just happened to use it is all.
Already enjoyed this more than the my last couple of weeks I spent playing DayZ. DayZ has some great ideas and whatnot, but there's is way too much of "I'm going to make this balls hard" from the developer while there are still crippling, horrible issues in play. Fighting a design agenda and horrible bugs was just miserable for me, whereas War Z is clearly more interested in having a survival aspect where you can actually survive instead of getting brutalized as much by bugs as by anything else. Hell, the tipping point for me in DayZ was when I had my best run ever... and then died thanks to combination of better than a half-dozen different bugs and half-implemented design mechanics.
Cripes, I'm just happy that I can successfully fight zombies without them zooming through walls, KOing in me single lucky hits, breaking a limb when I have no way to fix it, hitting me from 10 feet away, causing me to unavoidably bleed to death because of the game mechanics, etc. etc.
And frankly, I wouldn't care if this was ripped straight from DayZ or not because, to me, this is a helluva lot better. There's nothing wrong with taking a good idea and running with it if the other guys have had the same glaring issues for months. Far from perfect, but so much closer to it that you can barely see DayZ from here.
I can go prone in this game anywhere I want, and not risk catching some random part of my ragdoll on fence geometry that I can't even see, causing me to break legs or bleed.
-In regards to missions I prefer rocket's approach as he has stated it, that he will give players the tools to create these situations. So instead of scripting in an airdrop to add an event, he'll allow players to fly the planes and drop the supplies themselves etc. Whether or not that will work out remains to be seen, but I prefer that design direction myself. I see the appeal of scripted events/quests though. Again just personal preference.
-I'll agree that DayZ lost a lot of its tension after you play the game for a bit. When you start out you really do feel like some one might shoot you at any moment, even running across the map in the middle of no where. That fades as you get used to the game and learn the quirks and realize there really isn't some one over every hill. I hardly saw anyone in WarZ as well personally. I didn't feel that tension myself. So I agree that it's been sort of lost in dayz but maybe as a byproduct I didn't feel it in war z either. It is easier to hide in DayZ though.
-Hard to explain about the trees/environment without clogging the page up with screenshots I guess. Didn't have a weird ratio or anything, the scale just seemed very off to me.
-That would explain it about the city.
-I don't actually believe the thing about it being in development before DayZ (Is there any actual evidence for it? I'm not discounting it entirely but I find it too coincidental). There's just too many obvious copy cat bits beyond the idea of both being zombie survival games. The aesthetics are verrrry similar in many regards, heck the first screenshots they posted were of guys who looked nearly identical to dayz characters down to their backpacks and baseball caps. Are backpacks and caps original ideas? of course not, but they seem to be essentially copies of the ones from DayZ/Arma. The name itself, the ear/eye gages, the helicopter crashes, airfield set ups (layout of the hangers etc). Again these are all things that yeah, they are bound to be found in a game like this but the fact that so many so closely mirror DayZ's is more that coincidence imo.
DayZ is a mess though, completely agree. I stopped playing it for a few months waiting for the standalone which will hopefully clear a lot of it up but recently gave in and started playing again. I find playing on a private hive, and perhaps a result of the recent patch, have cleared up a lot of the messiness and hackers but it is still a very incomplete game. And again I don't think War Z is bad so I don't mean to come across like that. I just find it interesting because it is so similar and I guess I'd like to hear what more people who have played both feel each does better/worse.
The irony is for all that pushing for a sim environment, DayZ ends up being far less interesting and realistic and far more about just being plain lucky or learning all of the things you can't do so you don't activate a fatal bug. Don't go swimming because you'll instantly drop everything, don't bleed without bandages because you will never stop bleeding, don't fall more than a couple of feet, don't run downhill, don't crawl backwards through doorways, don't put stuff on the ground if you don't want to lose it, don't try to put things that are too big in your backpack because you'll probably lose them, etc. etc. It's a helluva long list of shit I don't have to worry about with War Z because I can just play the freaking game.
Something I ran across while delving into the forums that might be useful to highlight is that there are normal and hardcore characters. Basically normal has a lockout timer when you die but you retain your characters stats but still lose your gear and hardcore your character is gone after they die. I'm reading conflicting info on what the lockout time is, although initially they were aiming for 24 hours.
I also forgot how bad game forums are, ugh.
They are supposed to yes, but I know which part you're talking about. I heard those shots, which sounded very close to me, but the zombies didn't agro. There was just a patch yesterday, so it's possible they broke zombie hearing. When I was playing a few days ago, zombies absolutely did agro if you discharged a fire arm even sort of close to them.
The water thing is still true in War Z, except you just drown and die. It's one of my major annoyances with it right now. How does a zombie apocalypse cause us to lose our ability to swim?
http://thewarzcartographer.com/
I'll stick that in the OP.
I tried getting in some water just to test out swimming, but it wouldn't even let me in the water. But I can actually let that slide for now, because this is an alpha and they do have to cook up their own swimming animation. I'd rather not be able to get into the water at all than have all my shit leap out of my pockets and become irretrievable.
The big map was one of the greatest things for me... It gave a real edge to the survival aspect, and the fact that masses of players aren't running around a shoebox deathmatch style creates real tension. You just don't know if there's going to be a murderous bastard lurking around a corner or staring at you from those woods a mile away.
Dunno about the rest of the new DayZ maps, though; I know they've added at least a couple new ones.
I supposed I'm confidently passing judgment based on information provided by others. That being said, I have played rounds of War Z where I've encountered maybe 1 or 2 people over the course of a few hours. I guess on average I feel like encounters are just right. Other people who play Day Z tell me you can cross the map and not see anyone.
It's a good thing War Z's map isn't a murder shoe box then. It just doesn't have a bunch of completely wasted space I have to run through uneventfully to get from point of interest to point of interest.
I can see the advantages of having a smaller map, but I wouldn't say one is objectively better than the other.
And I'm pretty clear in the OP that neither is objectively better. I personally like the smaller map better, I think the tons of wasted space in DayZ is just that...completely wasted.
I'll take that time to get acquainted with the game then. Looks like OMSI isn't happening today.
Apparently he was incorrectly attributed as lead dev when all he did was license the engine to the devs who made big rigs, and all it took to dig that up was a cursory look at the wiki page for big rigs.
oh, I Just think it's funny that people care about this sort of stuff.
With a GPS it's not that great, sure. Without one though, navigation became a game in itself, and I found that an interesting challenge.
This looks right up my alley. Would anyone by chance have a 48 hour pass I could use to test it out on my machine? Thanks!
To each their own. I agree the huge map in DayZ was fun at first, but after I had been playing it for a while, I started to feel there were disadvantages with my personal play style.