[Megathread] The War Z

[Treeskee]

Thanks for the key Waaldo, I got to play for a little bit and get a feel for the game.

Some observations:
I am too nice for this game. My first instinct is always to never shoot strangers until they shoot first, which of course means I'm dead a lot.
The game looks best through a flashlight at night but only noobs use them because they are bullet magnets.
Spawning with nothing means there is a sharp difficulty curve for those who recently died. Your only defense against zombies is running away which is surprisingly ineffective sometimes.
Once you do manage to scrounge a melee weapon, zombies become no threat if you confront them one at a time.
I'll spawn in the wilderness and have to walk 30-45 minutes to reach a town only to die without ever seeing my killer. Jokes on them though, they wasted a bullet. All I wasted was a lot of time...

Suggestions:
Give players a means to confront zombies 1 on 1 after they have spawned or make melee weapons much more common.
Increase zombie difficulty (greater numbers and smarter ai) so players are encouraged to work cooperatively.
Create party option with a private party chat.
When players are killed by a survivor let them know who killed them.
Faster movement or vehicles to speed up travel.
Remove the death timer, it is a pointless annoyance.
If killed by a zombie give the player the option of playing as one, perhaps with special abilities like a call that attracts other zombies or something similar to the abilities that they have in Left4Dead.

Since this is a sandbox game, it seems to me you should be able to throw out the typical ai behaviors of enemies to create some unique gameplay with the zombies. Get rid of leashes, if I run away from a zombie and lose him let him wander in that new location. Let zombies communicate, congregate and wander around together. Wandering zombie hordes that the player needs to take special care to avoid would be an interesting hazard.

I agree with most of these! Although right now you do see the name of whoever killed you and they said some/most maps will end up having vehicles. Though especially in this game I'd suggest playing with friends as much as possible. I'm normally with one or two and I love it.

Now that Black Ops 2 is out also hopefully some of the mindless PKing dies off.

[nbm02ss]

Now that Black Ops 2 is out also hopefully some of the mindless PKing dies off.

That'll never go away, especially for those players out there, like me, who mainly play the game to hunt other players. As long as I have a gun with at least one bullet it in and I see someone who has something I want, I'm gonna try to put that bullet in their head. But, I played it for a bit over the weekend and it's not my thing, so at least you'll have one less player to worry about killing you for your granola bars.

[philefluxx]

I agree with you, but right now there's plenty of incentive to kill every player you see & no reason to team up.

Well in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, the incentive is strength in numbers. There is no incentive in DayZ, yet I am part of a clan and we do everything as a group simply because its much safer when you have people to watch your back. Plus these games really have a major social aspect to them and that is where a lot of the fun comes from. Its like hanging out with your buddies in a virtual Zombie Apoc world where things unexpectedly happen. I think that is where the community truly divides between games like DayZ/WarZ and games like CoD/BF. These games are not about fragging and highest kills, they are about longest days survived, best inventory, most fortified camps, best tactical strategies. Its extremely hard to achieve these things solo where as in other FPS games lone wolf trigger happy ranger can come out on top.

[Waaldo]

Good news, everyone!

In the spirit of continued communication, I wanted to update everyone on whats going on over here at Hammerpoint Interactive.

Clans are kickin' in the pipeline now, and moving along at a pretty good clip. We're planning on a sizable patch for Thanksgiving, including a rather large content update (official announcement later this week).

Also, some other tidbits I figured you'd be pleased to note:

- We're more than aware of the server debate. While I can't say specifically what we're deciding to do in terms of private vs. public servers, we won't be locking players to private servers with separate Global Inventories. Additionally, the idea we're moving with now is that for testing purposes there is no change in loot from private to public, just so we can see the ramifications. If we do reduce loot at the start it would just be reducing military spawns, which ultimately won't matter as we're adding
- More civilian weapons! .22 caliber rifles, etc - I brought this up in our meeting today and Sergey gave us the thumbs up, and art is already discussing the best to include.
- Also, brace yourselves, TPS crosshairs are coming...
- as are fists for melee....
- and a fix for the duping item issue!


All in all we're looking at some very positive changes in the near future.

Other items I brought up for discussion: Regular vs. Hardcore mode. The plan right now is that Hardcore means your character dies forever - you can hang on to him/her for trophy purposes/leaderboards, but otherwise once dead is always dead.

Also, the foul language filter for chat option is coming, along with the name filter.

Oh, and we're also discussing a proper trade system to help stimulate the economy. As soon as I've got some more info there I'll pass it along!

So, stay tuned for an announcement this week regarding next weeks patch, and I'll see you in game!

EDIT: I forgot to mention another female character was just completed and added in, so she'll go out with the next patch.

This is 2 days old but it wasn't posted here so I figured I would in case some of you didn't see it yet.
More Civilian weapons, and a way to defend yourself when you first spawn in with nothing! I can't wait for next Thursday.

[Zoator]

Uhm, sounds interesting the part of "We're planning on a sizable patch for Thanksgiving, including a rather large content update (official announcement later this week)." let's see what they show us! :3

As always, thx for the post Waaldo ^^

[Waaldo]

Hasn't been too much new info recently but here is an interview with Sergey:


The quality of the audio isn't the best, and with Sergey's accent some of the stuff is hard to hear so I didn't even listen to the whole thing. But one of the things I did hear was that they are definitely going to add vehicles! Also, Kewk said that there will be a big patch before thanks giving!

It also appears that one of their forum mods got hacked and the hacker went on a forum-deleting spree so a lot of the threads are gone! Anyone who was online(forums only) had their accounts banned and the reason being "This company is only looking to steal your money. In 6 months they plan on abandoning development," but one of the mods said they are working on a roll back.

[draykorinee]

They should hire someone for PR would help with these kind of videos, I cant listen to broken pigeon english for more than 5 minutes, im sure you'd do it for a small fee waaldo?

When I went back the other day I found it frustrating tht zombies arent tied to each other, you can see a horde of zombies and just body pull each one individually, I want to see 'zombie talk' so if one spots you he calls out and there is a domino effect where each zombie calls out so you get swamped by 10-15 instead of picking them off 1 at a time.

[Treeskee]

I've got a question about the Attachment UI for weapons I'm assuming 2 is for under the barrel items, but what is 3 for? lol

[Waaldo]

They should hire someone for PR would help with these kind of videos, I cant listen to broken pigeon english for more than 5 minutes, im sure you'd do it for a small fee waaldo?

When I went back the other day I found it frustrating tht zombies arent tied to each other, you can see a horde of zombies and just body pull each one individually, I want to see 'zombie talk' so if one spots you he calls out and there is a domino effect where each zombie calls out so you get swamped by 10-15 instead of picking them off 1 at a time.

What's with the personal attacks? Did you not see what I said?

The quality of the audio isn't the best, and with Sergey's accent some of the stuff is hard to hear so I didn't even listen to the whole thing.

And I agree, that could be cool. But they did say they are going to be adding more zombies so it hopefully should make it a lot harder to pull 1 at a time.

[draykorinee]

What's with the personal attacks? Did you not see what I said?

And I agree, that could be cool. But they did say they are going to be adding more zombies so it hopefully should make it a lot harder to pull 1 at a time.

Who did i personally attack :s we both agree sergeI is hard to understand so I said why don't they hire someone for pr. You lost me with this one.

I'm sure with time zombies will have more depth to there ai still early no in development.

[Treeskee]

So excited for more civilian weapons instead hopefully fire fights will last a bit longer and less getting killed in 1 shot from snipers who can't aim for jack. Really hope the military grade weapons become a lot rarer with this update and the civilian style ones become what you see everywhere. Also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let friends lists be done with this patch and maybe even that last corner of the map? :3

[philefluxx]

When I went back the other day I found it frustrating tht zombies arent tied to each other, you can see a horde of zombies and just body pull each one individually, I want to see 'zombie talk' so if one spots you he calls out and there is a domino effect where each zombie calls out so you get swamped by 10-15 instead of picking them off 1 at a time.

Haha sounds like you have been watching Romero's Land of the Dead

But I agree that you should not be able to pull a zombie outta a pack. But they dont need to talk persay, I mean if one aggros it should at least cause the others to turn their attention on why one of the pack is moving outside of the horde.

[Treeskee]

We'll be ready to patch next Tuesday, 11/27.

We made this decision based on how long it's going to take to thoroughly test the build, review and fix bugs, and launch safely. We don't want to rush it out the door and break the game over a (US) holiday weekend.

What's coming in this patch:

1. Clans!
2. 2 new female characters
3. Colorado is now fully opened up
4. Bug fixes - duping, HTML use in chat, assorted smaller bugs
5. Barricades are done
6. Foul language filter (chat/names)

Latest patch update... Not nearly as much as there should be considering how long it's been, but better than nothing.

Other little tidbits they've stated also...

As base release, Foundation Release will include map with all areas unlocked and spawn points, loot, etc tweaked based on feedback we got over last month. We're adding features like a Clans, GC shop ( until now you weren't able to buy GC), adding tons of new small features requested by community.

And sadly I can't find the quote right now, but they've stated they'll be adding more civilian weapons (IE. 22 caliber rifles, etc) and making their spawns more common over military weapons.

[Lyriok]

I'm happy to have more of the map to explore and I prefer the patches coming slowly in turn it means they had more development time and no crazy glitches such as on Alpha release jumping on a mountain side propelled you 40 ft into the air.

Clans is great assuming on release it shows where clan members are, makes playing with friends alot easier.

Also they have confirmed vehicles to be added in at a later date, give me a moment to find a source.

It appears the thread was deleted from the mod that got hacked but I can give you this.



Still looking for a more solid source.

And sadly I can't find the quote right now, but they've stated they'll be adding more civilian weapons (IE. 22 caliber rifles, etc) and making their spawns more common over military weapons.

I can vouch for you on this, I recall seeing it stated also.

[Waaldo]

Latest patch update... Not nearly as much as there should be considering how long it's been, but better than nothing.

Other little tidbits they've stated also...



And sadly I can't find the quote right now, but they've stated they'll be adding more civilian weapons (IE. 22 caliber rifles, etc) and making their spawns more common over military weapons.

Yeah I was hoping for a bigger patch. They aren't even releasing it till next Tuesday. I'm still excited for it though!
I wounder what they mean by "Barricades are done," maybe they just mean they are finished designing them?

I posted the quote about the civilian weapons a couple of posts above yours, so you got it right.

[Treeskee]

Yeah was really hoping Friends lists would have at least been done before then lol, was looking to get some people from MMO-C or something before the wipe comes in and terrorize some towns in hopes of finding nice loot!

[Lyriok]

Think I ran into the worst bandit ever last night, me and two friends were walking into clearview with brand new characters me and "Bob" meet up while "Bobby" spawned alone as we enter clearview "Bobby" is killed me and "Bob" decide to look around to try defend ourselves managed to find two sets of body armor and m16's.

30 minutes go past since "Bobby" died and he's almost back at clearview then we hear more gun shots and search for him 10 minutes later I hear the zombies growling as if they're chasing someone so I jump over the fence at the firestation and spot 2 zombies running around the corner so I hide behind a van and watch that corner in 3rd person, the bandit was shooting zombies and got himself trapped in a corner by zombies making revenge very easy, used 3rd person to get a view of him and snuck up on him. Was a fun night.

Got two M16's with a clip attachment holding 100 bullets per round

I'm fine with bandits and pvp being in game but if someone has a small backpack and no melee weapon why kill them? I only kill people after spying on them or if they look in my direction with a gun out.

[Zoator]

because there is always that type of people who enjoy killing everything that moves, just to feel satisfied. Curiously, they are, normally, the 1º to cry and rage when they are killed/camped, which is quite funny xd

[Treeskee]

because there is always that type of people who enjoy killing everything that moves, just to feel satisfied. Curiously, they are, normally, the 1º to cry and rage when they are killed/camped, which is quite funny xd

Yeah and unless the drastically overhaul the current state of zombies in the game that really wont change.

[daitheflu]

Does anyone have a trial key they are willing to part with?