You don’t get an XP bonus if you are outnumbered on your continent because the bonus is applied based on the server populations and not broken down further for the continents.  So there is less incentive t play when you have less than 15% population on a continent.

To make matter worse further players from your faction will be unable to join you to help because the continent is full. It makes n sense to me why it is possible to overflow a faction population by more than your third and not allow your enemies to enter. Why design it like that? Nobody wants a zerg where a whole faction rushes a continent.

While I am at it, we need more continents; 3 isn’t enough and its too easy to spread population over the three.  I am sure with further development work we will see more but it makes me yearn for the 6 we had in PS1.

Incoming search terms:

• planetside 2 server population
• planetside 2 population balance
• planetside 2 faction population

We have players that play on all NA timezones and some overseas players and a few late-nighters.  We have run DayZ official servers in the past and have members who run private DayZ servers as well.  If this sounds like something that you would be interested in, check out www.worldsendgaming.com and hop into our Teamspeak server (connection info on the forums) and check us out Steam and XFire .

Trahaearn (AKA [WEG] Stryc9)

Here is a link to the Tumblr: http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/

I read the older posts and picked up on a couple of things.

• The engine: Looks like it won’t be based on Arma3, which I figured, looks like its not being based on the Virtual Reality Engine 3 that Arma is built on top of either…

“The standalone engine we are using is a branch of Take on Helicopters, which itself is a branch of ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead.”

So where as it will no longer be a mod of the ArmA 2 engine it will still be based on that branch – who knows how much of the glitchy ArmA-ness we have come to grow and love will be present in the standalone game. For me, the quality that these developers has put out in the past has been suspect so I would expect more of the same.

• The images look nicer, and I will be very glad to have more enter-able buildings.

• That’s it? House pictures of a bit better quality? This got brought up on Reddit and Rocket answered thusly:

“It’s not all, but I only like to show things that are very near finished – rather than concept-type stuff that gets people all excited when many things change… Obviously this is just content, so the programmers and other artists have been working on other things.”

• As someone who has been a developer in the past, and currently manages large software projects this really jumped out at me as a big red flag when I read the Tumblr:

“Most of the planning has to be done as it goes, with much of the project simply reacting to things that have happened. This is not a good way to start a development project.”

Umm… no shit? The inmates are running the asylum here folks; when BI decided that DayZ was going to get resources and funding and be a ‘real thing’ they should have t thrown in a Product Manager to hold the reins. This is what happens when you let developers manage their own large projects as inexperienced project/product managers. This isn’t encouraging news in the least – either BI isn’t devoting the time and resources that this game requires or they don’t have a clue what it actually needs to succeed.

I am still excited for the DayZ standalone game, and I really hope that it is successful.  I hope that the team can iron out these bumps in the road and make a great release.

The WarZ is a post apocalyptic, zombie zurvival MMO.  Servers will host a number of players and many zombies.  Gameplay will be a mixture of PvZ (player vs Zombie) and PvP (Player vs Player).

Map:

The first map available on release is Colorado.  Colorado is 160-170 square kilometres of terrain, or was at one point.  A recent dev interview stated that some areas of Colorado are getting larger as development continues.  Future maps will be larger and should be available by summer next year.

More info (and images!):
http://forums.thewar…-War-Z-map-size

Safe Areas:

During a recent interview it was revealed that there will be areas that are safe from zombies for players to hang out.  There will be a separate area for bandits, and bandits will not be able to enter the other area.

Strongholds:

A Stronghold is basically a small map server rental that is 3-4km square that has 1 or 2 ‘settlement’ areas that can be an area to make your group’s home base.  There are zombies on the map outside of the settlement areas.

More info:
http://forums.thewar…ns-of-dollars-!

Game Modes:

The game will have two modes: Normal and Hardcore.  The mode is selected when creating a character and cannot be changed for that character.  Servers will have both Normal and Hardcore players on them and there will be no way of telling the difference.  There will be specific Hardcore Only servers that will have special loot to reward hardcore players.  The play modes will have their own leaderboards.

In Hardcore mode upon death of the player you will lose your character because it will be deleted. In Normal mode your character will lose its backpack and the character will be unplayable for a certain period of time until it is ‘revived’.  Currently this is set to 24 hrs.

Hardcore will also have: faster xp gain, no crosshairs, some hud info is gone (ie rounds in magazine) and a slightly different skill tree.

More info:
http://forums.thewar…-gameplay-modes

Marketplace:

The developers have noted that this will not be a pay to win title, the marketplace will not introduce an unfair advantage in the game.  Guns and bigger backpacks won’t be found on the marketplace, instead food and tools will be available.  Most of the items in the marketplace will be bought with in-game currency (you will find dollars in the game).

Items that can be bought with ‘gold coins’ purchased with real money will be customizations.

More info:
http://forums.thewar…-game-Pay-4-win

Experience, Leveling and skill trees:

There are no levels.  Killing players and zombies as well as doing other things in the game will gain your character experience points.  You can spend points to purchase skills in a skill tree.  Skills will be things that make sense in real life like longer sprint or faster reload.  There will not be skills that increase gun damage or provide a bigger health pool for your character.

More info:
http://forums.thewar…es-and-Training

Incoming search terms:

• warz marketplace
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• warz normal mode
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• warz devs

I played a pile of it the last couple of days, and honestly I don’t see me having the energy to play it to showcase the classes in videos.  Planetside 1 had it’s issues and maybe since it was my first massively multiplayer game I see it differently through a nostalgic lens but Planetside 2 as it stands right now isn’t any fun at all.  I sat down at my PC today and fought with myself as to what game I should play. I wanted to get more Planetside2 Beta footage out but man is it less fun to play than GW2, DayZ, Tribes, CS, Borderlands2, Torchlight 2, etc.

I spent the majority of my day today playing on a server that had a huge population mismatch with NC having 49% of the population and the other two factions splitting the rest.  This resulted in the NC controlling the whole map other than the two protected warp areas for the remaining 2 factions.

Due to the game being largely based on ‘resources’, which is a new addition to Planetside in the second game, a population imbalance seems to perpetuate the ‘steamroll’ effect.  Resources are earned by controlling areas on the map, and resources are the currency that you use to spawn in vehicles and the bigger and better the vehicle (heavy tanks, transport/spawn point vehicles) the more the resource cost.  You can also purchase resources with in-game currency that each player earns – there are no ways to purchase resources with real money through the game (it is Free-to-Play, by the way).

So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that if you don’t hold territories due to population imbalance or just a bad day of combat that you won’t be able to get resources and will be stuck with infantry fighting against a constant flow of tanks and missile laden fighter jets.  If the other front has twice the people than you do then you can’t push back without heavy armour.

It is no fun playing for hours just getting your shit pushed in.  Eventually we started pushing back and it became a bit more bearable and eventually the map will settle out to around 33% ownership for each faction again but not through our efforts but through populations coming back in line.

That, and the lag is terrible.  I have so much footage of me being killed by sniper shots that I can see miss me on my screen.  It is also impossible to react if you are getting flanked; you try to spin around to fight back but at 12FPS it is really not possible.

EDIT: Here is just one clip of many that shows what I am talking about regarding the lag.  See the tracer that apparently kills me… it is way off to the right.  Not only that but apparently I get shot by another person that does some damage to me, but I don’t see that happening anywhere.  I purposely strafed around the tower after firing because I wanted the sniper to lose sight of me.  I guess that on his screen I was still running forward and that scenario is the one the server chose to believe.

Even at a zero dollar cost I think this game is a pass, especially when it is lined up against so many good games that are competing for my time lately.

Incoming search terms:

• Planetside 2 population
• planetside 2 population imbalance
• planetside 2 too many vehicles
• planetside 2 populated server
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• which is more resource heavy battlefield 3 or planetside 2

Please excuse my sniffles!  The forced air heat is creating some allergy havoc!

First, some history.  DayZ followers (especially if you venture into the crap-pile that is the official forums) will be quick to point out to you that DayZ is a free mod for the military simulation game ARMA2 from Bohemia Interactive.  As a mod, and not a stand alone game, DayZ is limited in what it is able to change regarding how ARMA2 works. This causes some issues with scripting that the ARMA engine is designed purposely to allow that is affecting DayZ.

It is also of note that the mod is in it’s ‘Alpha’ stage.  An Alpha is the first and least stable testing phase of a piece of software.  Usually this is not targeted at a large audience is typically for gaming titles is reserved for internal QA testing or testing by a small, select group of players.

With that out of the way, a quick word on my credentials.  I haven’t had any commercial experience with video game development.  I have developed very small games for the XBox using XNA and for Android and I made some crappy games while in university.  I do however have more than a dozen years experience in developing software for large businesses and governments – starting off as a developer and now I am filling a service/product management role.  I know more than a bit about the software development lifecycle, I have worked on countless development projects large and small and I have managed many successes and failures.

Development of the mod should cease.

My first critism of DayZ is that its development as an Alpha mod running on top of the ARMA2 game has gone way too far.  There is no reason to continue development of this version while the security and stability expected byplayers can not be provided.  If the ARMA2 engine can not stop the hackers and scripters then the development team needs to move to the standalone game as their next priority.  Stability is an issue that needs to be addressed before testing new features, otherwise players will be frustrated and stop playing and the results from testing and tweaking the game will not be realized.

I understand that Rocket and team wants to test out new features like adding dogs and testing their impact on the game.  Same can be said for the changes and decisions that Rocket has made along the way such as removing the starting weapons from newly spawned players.  These are important things to test out with the community prior to the game going out to retail.  The problem with all this tuning is that the base game is not secure and stable and it is damaging the testing of the game.  Who can test and provide feedback when your guns are being eaten by your backpack, your car isn’t saving and hackers have teleported you to the middle of the ocean? I would suggest that it is pointless testing under these circumstances.

It is obvious that if the hacking issues cannot be stopped with this game running as a mod that development resources should be instead spent on getting an Alpha build of the standalone game out as soon as possible – before people get frustrated with the community and flock to competitors like WarZ.

The large, shared hive as a feature has more caveats than it is worth.

The population of DayZ is getting smaller, and the number of servers are shrinking too.  The pool of people providing testing and the number of people willing to spend money out of their pocket to run and maintain a server to play on is dwindling as server admins and players become frustrated with the game.  In contrast the number of private hive or smaller shared hive servers is steadily growing.  A private hive has several advantages to both the player and server admin communities.

There are two huge faults with the single shared hive concept: server hopping and ‘ghosting’.  Server hopping allows people to get great gear and guns on a low populated server, move to a good sniper location and then switch to a high populated server to wreak havoc on the players.  Ghosting is a type of ‘combat logging’ where a player who is outgunned and pinned down can leave the game, join a low populated server, move to a flanking position and then relog into the original server to gun down his opponents.

Server hopping is the lesser concern but I would argue that it has a negative impact on the game and the communities of gamers that play it.  ’Ghosting’ is a game-breaking, serious concern which should have been immediately obvious to any designer when considering a single, shared hive concept.

I understand the draw to the persistent world, I get where Rocket was going with this and why he implemented it this way.  But in any group there will be assholes and exploiters and gamers often yearn for any competitive edge that they can find and if it is there a large portion of them will abuse it.  There are anecdotal statements that a good 60+% of the DayZ community is cheating.  I would wager with all the duplication exploits this number is probably at least 75%.  Competitive advantage is everything to a gamer, look at the money we are willing to spend on specialized ‘gaming’ hardware and peripherals.

Smaller hives or private hives offer so many advantages that not playing on one is a no-go for me at the moment.  The communities are tighter knit and the server admins are much more apt and quick to ban hackers from their hives.  The gear has to be gained from scratch and with the smaller number of players the high end gear takes longer to farm and eventually be duplicated on purpose or through one of the many buggy ways that duplication is possible.  Above all I find the smaller hives better because death has more consequence; if I die its not just a run to the clan camp and grab another AS50, CCO SD and all the tools and ammo that I can carry.  Very few people have nightvision googles, AS50s are scattered here and there but with the shortage of available ammo they are much more prized.  I haven’t felt the ‘pain of death’ and then the carefree post fresh-spawn existence for a very long time in DayZ and I welcome it back.

Rocket needs to hand over the reigns.

I have seen this many times in my tenure in software development: Developer creates something, it gets used more and more, turns into something great and much bigger than intended, things go haywire as users consider this a piece of important infrastructure and not just something a developer made on the side of his/her desk.  Congratulations, you were proactive and saw a need and provided something to fill the void.  But now it is bigger than you, and as a developer you may not possess the skills needed to manage such a product.  It now needs a product manager to steer the ship and make decisions and to be accountable, it is no longer your baby.

I have had this situation happen to me and its difficult to let go, but Rocket has to realize that his attachment to his creation is his biggest drawback.  You can’t effectively manage something that you are so attached to, your feelings get involved and you just can’t let things go.  I would suggest that if Bohemia Interactive wants to make something out of DayZ to give the reins to a product manager to run the show and make Rocket a lead designer reporting to the product manager.  There needs to be somebody who isn’t as invested with their feelings to make the decisions to lead the project.  If you look at the forums you will see posts (mostly not so constructive) by Rocket defending everything from design choices to Bohemia Interactive  to of all things Battle Eye.  He should really think about hiring somebody to handle PR and community management too.

Community is everything, though.

The only thing keeping my wanting to play this game is the tight knit group of adult, friendly, considerate, non-hacking people that I play with.  I would urge anyone who is looking for a place to play with like-minded individuals to head over to www.worldsendgaming.com and introduce themselves.  If you can keep the hackers at bay and play with great people who aren’t children and script kiddies this game gets a lot more palatable.  Their vanilla DayZ server is watched over by careful and considerate admins and moderators.  Small hive servers run by members of this community are breathing new life into the game for me and others.  The community is also branching out into CS:GO and Guild Wars 2 so if you are interested in any of those games come check it out.

Incoming search terms:

• is dayz worth playing
• towing script dayz

Hackers are killing DayZ and the inability of Bohemia Interactive or their chosen game monitoring crapware Battle Eye to do anything about it is exceptionally frustrating.  I understand that the Arma engine is more free and open to support what that game is typically used for, I play Arma.  But if that engine and game wasn’t a wise decision to build the DayZ mod on and go public with it then why the hell did they?  Anyway, I will save my Rocket rant for another day and link what my friends run into a couple times a night.

Gimme Gimme Games has received the following response from a Nintendo representative after prodding them a bit:

“I can confirm that you will be able to transfer your content from your Wii to the new Wii U.  Wii U owners can wirelessly transfer content such as Miis and Wiiware and Virtual Console games to their Wii U systems.  Both systems will need to be connected to the Internet and the Wii U will need an SD card to facilitate the transfer.  The process is very similar to transferring content from Nintendo 3DS or from Nintendo 3DS to Nintendo 3DS XL; which has been received positively by consumers.”

So I gather that if you want to keep any of the content that you have created or paid for on your Wii you should hold on to it and not sell it until you can pick up a Wii U after November 18th in North America.  Also, I should state that this obviously sucks and I can’t understand why your purchases and even your Miis can’t be stored on Nintendo’s end and synced to future devices – other than the fact that Nintendo obviously doesn’t get how the internet works.   Not having a central server to store information such as this really sucks.