Hello and welcome everyone to the State of Survival podcast. Todays Topic is DayZ's population and how it is doing, and then we're also going to be covering DayZ's overall balance. What we think about it, is it good, is it bad, is it well balanced, does it need improvement!
DayZ Player count 2023
It was interesting to see that we had over 184,000 players on PC, 87,000 players on PlayStation and 119,000 of daily active users all in one month on October. This was literally official stats from DayZ about those numbers. Now that is an impressive feat for most video games to have that large of a player base across that many platforms. They were also able to ban over 30,000 cheaters, totaling up to 100,000 cheaters being banned. Now, the reason why I bring up cheaters is because people have been talking about there is a huge influence of cheaters on official and there is, I'm not going to say it's a large, a large amount. I don't know the numbers, but it is interesting that inside of these yearly reviews, they are what looks like working hard to try to keep the cheaters under wraps or at least the best that they can.
DayZ Vanilla Balance
Honestly, it does need work, but I don't think it needs as much work as people oftentimes complain about. I think a lot of the times when people gripe about the balance of the game, especially when it comes to survivability or even just PvP loot specifically, a lot of that has influences that kind of manipulate that number, such as base building and all the loot hoarding, or even just whenever you're playing, not knowing all the tricks and tips to survival.
DayZ Economy
From a standpoint, I have no problem with the economy. It is one of two things. For one, I get a lot of people who complain about the beachside cities not having high tier gear, and it's always in the north. But to tell you the truth, maybe it's just me, but that's what DayZ is. You know, the term Bambi and fresh spawn kind of came from that mentality, but also the fact that it doesn't stop you from being able to race inland and get some guns and high tier gear yourself.
The economy is built in such a way that from the southeast corner of the map all the way to the northwest corner of the map, it's definitely a full-fledged tier system. The most visual part along the coastline is essentially tier one with a couple of tier four and tier two mixed in. But what you folks should realize is that tier one is not that far from tier two, and that's a really interesting balance feature right there, that you don't have to run I think more than like I think two on like a kilometer in the coast to get to tier two.
DayZ Lore/Engagement
The lore and engagement in DayZ is trifle with mystery and intrigue. There is not a lot of official documentation about the lore of DayZ. DayZ's official stances make your own story. Essentially experience the game, how you wish to play it, enjoy it, how you wish to. There are plenty of theories out there and there are some snippets of lore scattered in the game files. And there are tons of videos out there trying to dissect and improve the lore of the game.
I think they brought it up in their last stream and they made a good point. They have a lot of community events. Like they just had the community event worth crossbows and the castle siege. And they thank their community for setting it up because they just simply don't have the manpower or the man hours to do things like that. If DayZ held more official events on their end, it would draw the community and the devs a little closer together and maybe even put them on the same tabs. So if everybody's on the same tab, then we can actually, you know, get the ideas to be conveyed between devs and the community a lot easier.
DayZ Combat
I wish melee combat was better. I have played so many online types of games where melee combat is clunky, but we're in 2023. There are I'm hoping there are better ways to make melee combat so much better. Don't get me wrong. I think it's way better than 0.62, but it still isn't there. I feel like I almost have no control over my character in melee combat.
I love the range combat in the game. I kind of that's one of the things I'm glad they hung on to since Arma 2 was that they wanted the guns to feel realistic. They wanted the guns to represent their condition. It's not a quick snap, you know, arcade shooter. There's some physics to it. There's some knowledge. If you know how to use the zeroing option, for example, and you know the range of your enemy, you could get some pretty accurate shots off of that.
DayZ Survival
I love the survival system. I like how there's little intricacies that you learn out of desperation. Be you know, all you really need is a hammer and then you're good to go. You can bang on some rocks, get some stones, turn them into knives. You're good to go. Get an axe. You chop down trees. Even if it's just a hand axe, you could also shave the bark to make yourself a fire starter. I really love how you can go all out primitive survival and bring it into the focus.
I still want more from survival mechanics. I still want that level of I am only surviving because I actually am prepared to survive, not because I am 100% lucky.
DayZ Base Building
Base building by itself is a not complicated procedure. It just takes your ability to know how to use it. Vanilla default placement settings do suck. However, they have been put into place to protect the central economy. You don't want people pretty much barricading and boarding up an entire town making inaccessible to loot. Because guess what? Looting is one of the core features of DayZ.
I'm not a fan of the base building, mainly because of the mentality of, just boarding up buildings. I don't think the zombies are dangerous enough because a lot of people, when they want a base build, they'll do it right in the heart of town and just board up a few doors. And they're trying to outsmart the player and they're not trying to outsmart the environment.
DayZ Live Stream 1.21
DayZ did livestream. Now, this livestream was between the guy who hosts the livestreams and I think it was a junior developer who has had his hands in development, including some effort inside of the crossbow mechanics and helping test and actually iterate. They did talk about some of the improvements they have made. You can now retrieve crossbow bolts from infected and from players when you shoot them. Daisy, trying to encourage people to use their new projectile system as much as possible, have set up their experimental servers so you spawn in the northern areas of the map and you spawn with full gear, food, bandages, a crossbow, and plenty of bolts. Furthermore, they have added in a continuous crafting action for the improvised crossbow bolts and for putting feathers on them.
DayZ Server Owner Support
As a server owner, there is some support on DayZ Wiki, but it's a lot of trial and error. Having some tools to manage the file system, easily edit the file system, would be great. An application web app would be great. More detail on what each data point does would be helpful.
DayZ Lore/Engagement Feedback
I want to see more stuff like Hannah and the Yellow King. Give us a new timeline, a new story. DayZ, you promote that make your own story is the theme of DayZ. You have almost unlimited possibilities for good stories in the survival game that literally built the survival game genre, or at least help spearheading make another cool and enticing story.
Closing Remarks
The overall point of this episode wasn't necessarily a shit on DayZ or to take it down a peg or anything else. It was simply to address the basic balancing of DayZ. And then it was our ability to offer what we thought and what we think could be improved upon DayZ. We're all here because we absolutely love and care about this game, whether it's because of the PvP, the fun situations, the RP, the base building, or just the fact that you can play with your friends on a Friday night or watch them get beat up with a person with a baseball bat right when they spawn.
Thank you for tuning in to the State of Survival podcast. We hope you enjoyed this and found it informative and engaging. We look forward to seeing you next time.
