I first heard about DayZ over three years ago when it was still just a mod of ARMA 2 from Bohemia Interactive. Created by Dean Hall who, after the popularity of the mod skyrocketed causing an increase in sells of ARMA 2, joined Bohemia Interactive as the project lead of a standalone version of the mod. Supposedly, work on the mod version has been continued by the community, though I’m not sure how much the two versions differ at this point.
I’ll be perfectly honest with you. I know very little about DayZ at this point. I have not been following the development of the standalone version. I was interested in the game back when I first heard about it, but didn’t want to buy ARMA 2 just to play a mod, so I waited for the standalone to become available. After seeing the price of $30 (it’s now at $35) slapped on it, I was immediately turned off on the idea. There just wasn’t enough to the game to justify the price in my eyes, especially after having just been burned on other certain alpha releases like Cube World.
From the outside looking in, DayZ has a lot of problems. It always has from what I’ve seen, and quite possibly will continue to have them. DayZ is suppose to be a zombie survival game, but every time I’m every watched someone on Twitch play it, there was nary a zombie to be found. Just last night, I was watching a popular streamer play it for a little over an hour (I had to do SOME research after all), and guess how many zombies I saw: *spoiler alert* One, only one zombie. It certainly seems like the only real challenge to your survival in DayZ continues to be other players, just like it has always been. It really shouldn’t even be a zombie game; just a competitive shooter with survival elements.
Aside from design flaws, DayZ continues to be riddled with bugs and other technical issues that, from what I’ve seen, have existed since its mod form. Terrible optimization is first and foremost on the list. The game had always suffered from below average frame rates, but when watching last night, it looked as though the game’s average FPS was actually lower that the last time I watched someone play it. The streamer in question has a fairly beefy machine and was getting drops in FPS down to the low teens, with (to my understanding) all the settings on low. I understand that the game is still in alpha and that major bugs will exist, but the game should at least be playable if you’re going to release it early.
One of the major issues I have with any early access title nowadays is how the development of the game seems to crawl along at a snail’s pace, and DayZ is no exception. The standalone version was announced in the latter part of 2012, where the plan was to have it ready before the end of the year. Obviously, this didn’t happen, because it was decided that the game engine would be rebuilt. The alpha was released on Steam Early Access in December 2013 with a discounted price to reflect its stage of development. Though, if $30 is what they consider discounted, I wonder if they plan to charge $50-60 upon full release (whenever that may be). To make the rate of slow development worse, 25 people were supposedly added to the development team in March of 2014.
Apparently, it was said in November of 2014 that the game would be released sometime in 2016. Needless to say, I have my doubts. Based on what I saw yesterday, the game is still a mess, and certainly doesn’t look like it’s improved any over the last 2 years. They will either have to step it up to get it completed, or just rush it out the door, problems and all. While the game has supposed sold more than 3 million copies (as of January 2015, not sure what it’s at now), which is more than many fully released games sell at all, it doesn’t seem like the money is being well spent.
I know I’m probably being rather tough on the game for someone that’s never played it, but sometimes an outside perspective is useful. I’m sure many people like to play the game in its current state, but I for one will continue to pass on it. There’s other zombie survival sandbox games out there, like 7 Days to Die, for instance. It’s still in alpha itself, but is making notable progress with each major update. Of course, it suffers from poor performance at times as well, but that’s a discussion for another day.
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