Is anyone playing DayZ? ( "ARMA2 + Zombies"! )

Post Reply New Topic

I've been watching some Youtube videos of DayZ, which is a brilliant mod of the game ARMA 2 combined with ZOMBIES :lol by just one person, Dean Hall, ( who has also been employed by Bohemia Interactive, the producers of ARMA, since January ) ... plus the inevitable player-killer-players ... but also some unexpected and for some very moving cooperative play.

It looks pretty immersive, and intriguing/interesting. It's an open-world and sandbox "realistic" MMO which seems to be producing some new twists in game-experience, the most powerful for a lot of people being that, ( in the early days at least, when many people on there were really "scared"/disorientated etc ), some players have been building fragile/precarious but precious teams/groups with complete strangers ... who sometimes betray them, and sometimes don't.

Here's a link to the PC Gamer article which originally attracted my attention to it: "For the love of PC Gaming Download DayZ ARMA-2's Zombie Survival Mod!" :lol

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/12/for-t ... vival-mod/

Some people are calling it a "story-creator".

I haven't bought the game to play it on/with though.

Is anyone on here playing it? Has it changed for the worse since the early days back in April? Apparently players don't trust each other so much/at all anymore. ...

Here are just a couple of the ones I looked at this evening, but there's loads more, with different styles of gameplay, team, solo, aggressive, non-violent, bandit, helper, sneak/stealth, etc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u7qlxPb ... ure=relmfu
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u7qlxPbQwE&feature=relmfu[/Youtube] and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e-9C09T ... re=related
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e-9C09T-R4&feature=related[/YouTube] by one guy who tends to play in a team

... and this guy playing alone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LfA-7K ... ature=plcp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkggwRKT5gM

His latest, with comments about the increasingly dominant "shoot on sight" approach:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3em2ig7 ... ure=relmfu

( I can't seem to embed any of those, don't know why ... ? )

Last edited by ouinon on 26 May 2012, 3:09 am, edited 3 times in total.

Here's three guys hyper-excited about finding a working jeep in the game ... and worrying about how to hide it from other players

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjmWSDyHqwM
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjmWSDyHqwM[/YouTube]
Apparently the teamwork/play with strangers is increasingly rare though ... maybe because the game doesn't "reward" team play enough ... ?

But it makes me see why kinship used to be so important, before various forms of law and government were invented. What would it take for people who don't know each other to play cooperatively with each other in this game rather than shoot each other on sight, either for the gear/loot or to avoid being shot themselves?

Which reminds me of another MMO currently in beta, called "Salem", which is apparently going to have to deal with those sort of issues. Here's the link to a PC Gamer article about it:

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/naked-m ... mmo-salem/
.

PS.

I think that it's interesting that cooperative play between strangers was ( apparently ) more frequent in the early days of the game, when players were presumably either a lot less experienced *or* had a lot less helpful data to go on in-game ( there are now lots of user-guides in forums/blogs etc and people have expectations as a result however misinformed/unrealistic ) ... and when the zombies seemed far more threatening/menacing, such that almost *any* alliance with another player, however tenuous, was worth working at, worth the risk, etc.

I wonder what the optimal conditions are for the creation and maintenance of teams/cooperative work/play ... in a game like this ( and in "real life" ).
.

You forgot to mention the mod was made by one guy and this same guy works for Bohemia Interactive, the creators of Arma2

. ops ... It didn't occur to me that a game mod should be attributed just like a quote. Sorry about that. I will edit my opening post. Thanks for the reminder.

And here is a great article by Evan Lahti, at PC Gamer, of an interview with the creator of the mod, ( Dean Hall ):

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/16/day-z ... y-machine/

It's fascinating how the game-play on the mod is evolving, and how fast too, as some groups accumulate more and more good gear/loot ( weapons, food, medical equipment and other supplies ) ... example here: :lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxbrFa3 ... re=related
[YouTube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxbrFa3dPqk&feature=related[/YouTube] ... such that small "kingdoms" of uber-bandit-gangs are emerging. I'm wondering how long we'll need to wait until the first "king" appears on a server, and at what point the "little" people and/or newbies will revolt and demand a democratically elected govt and more "equitable" distribution of goods/gear! :lol

The MMO "Darkfall" appears to have followed this sort of trajectory such that game-play for newbies is increasingly frustrating, ( eg. constantly and easily being killed off by older members for their loot and/or for the combat XP ), limited etc, inducing feelings of helplessness, horrible-noobiness, etc exacerbated whenever they see the extent of the weapons, supplies, "good gear" etc owned by the older members.
.

Just happened to come across an article at Alternet about a very recent research paper/study investigating the effects of stress on pro-social behaviour; apparently high-stress situations increase people's tendency to trust and share ... this absolutely confirms what I've been saying seems to have been happening on DayZ! ie. the more confident people have been feeling, ( because of increasing numbers of game-guides, YouTube videos about it, and blogs about the map, the zombies, gameplay etc ), the more aggressive/trigger-happy, and less likely to risk teaming up, sharing, etc they become.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22593119

"The Social Dimension of Stress Reactivity: Acute Stress Increases Prosocial Behavior in Humans".

By Bernadette von Dawans B, Fischbacher U, Kirschbaum C, Fehr E, Heinrichs M.
Department of Psychology, Laboratory for Biological and Personality Psychology, University of Freiburg.

Another thing I'm noticing is how many players posting gameplay videos on Youtube declare repeatedly how pissed off they are with all the other players shooting on sight etc, or sneakily, for gear, etc, AND also that they themselves are definitely "Friendly", waving verbal "white flags" in chat etc when spy another player ... and then go on to shoot others on sight who they accuse in video or in comments afterwards, of being "bandits"/player-killers .... very often despite the other player doing nothing but lurking in cover somewhere nearby.

It is reminding me of the USA's justification for killing or wounding hundreds of women and children aswell as unidentified men, in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, on a regular/weekly basis, but stating almost every time that they were "terrorists" or "associated with" terrorists, or "aiding" terrorists", or simply "suspected of" being terrorists, as in the group of teenage sheep-herder-boys killed by drone fire for "walking in a suspicious way" and carrying what the remote-controllers of the drones believed to be guns but were bundles of firewood.

And it is NOT as simple as players feeling threatened ... the study above actually suggests that this sort of behaviour may instead or also be the result of feeling *too* safe, with all the attachment to "stuff", and habit/expectations, etc that this may engender. ... It's really weird.

I watched yet another player this weekend, ( one of the many who keep saying that they are sick of the way the game is going downhill because of jerks killing other players ), shoot another player in the back who was doing nothing but crouching in cover, pointing their gun in completely another direction, and then tell their friends on chat that they had just killed "a bandit" ... and apparently genuinely believe that they were justified in killing the unknown player ... :O ?

People are getting too "at ease" in the game! Could this be why the developer has been introducing new and increased threats, eg: many more zombies, an increased circumference of sight and sound for zombies' awareness of players, and environmental hardships like cold and associated illness etc ... plus a projected zombie " infection" process/danger. ...

Last edited by ouinon on 27 May 2012, 2:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Here is a brilliant photo-diary of a day this weekend in DayZ by Evan Lahti of PC Gamer:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/27/day-z-photo-diary/

Looks fun! :lol

Wondering whether the anti-social "shoot on sight" reactions are fed by the sort of safety created by being in/finding a group whether currently in-game with the player or simply online/in chat ... ... ... That oxytocin thing again, the sort of bonding which occurs between people while simultaneously causing one to exclude people not in that group even more aggressively.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ce-hormone ( Sorry, most of it's now behind a paywall, which it wasn't when I bookmarked it originally. Will look for another link, see if I can get the full article somewhere. )

The gist though is that although oxytocin works to bind people together it also has a "dark side" which encourages greater hostility towards people not in the "bonded group".

Edit: Not the NYT article, but an almost equally recent one from the Guardian on the same subject/same research:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... one-racism

.

I play DayZ, but thanks to the central database corrupting my character data (causing the infamous infinite 'waiting for server response' bug) I can't play until that gets resolved. I'd love to team up with people, once I can play again, though. I'm planning on getting a headset in the next week or so for playing Arma II: Operation Arrowhead (and mods) online.

Looks like a lark, and I watched a couple of the vids, and I enjoyed your analysis Ouinon. Nice to read some intelligent material related to video games.

From the outside, it looks like there aren't enough things to do, besides diddling around with your mates, collecting guns and vehicles, shooting zombies, then collecting stuff and ammo so you can keep doing it. I'm sure it's fun while it lasts though.

My BF is addicted to DayZ right now XD I think if I had it I would enjoy it a bit too much XD