[Ongoing] Watching the slow death of ArmA II: DayZ

Chris Atkins

Valued Member!
Just a quick byte that doesn't revolve around any server, scripting or mods addons, but I'm really beginning to notice the slow death of the ArmA II: DayZ mod, and with that, the lack of community that once was.

The DayZ Standalone appears to be lacking in features compared to what the original mod has come to be. Everything from Epoch to Wasteland, self-blood bags, cargo drops from C130's, loading a moto into the back of an offroad...all the great things we have here, are non-existent in standalone.

It kind of saddens me that roughly at the 2 year mark, ArmA II: DayZ' short life is coming to an end. Hopefully the ArmA III scene will bring a few great mods from DayZ back and allow for the journey to continue in an open source way until the standalone reaches a peak where it doesn't suck and allows the server owners some control.
 
/signed.... but imho the reason comes from within. Just take a honest look around and you will see that no "fresh" ideas out there. Everyone is just recycling every idea, every script again and again. Only a few people are out there who are willing to develop something new. And no... just placing another military base somewhere on a map means not developing "new" things.

Another point is, there is a lot of good stuff is out there... especially if you are looking outside opendayz. BUT most of that people are not willing to share their stuff with the community. This is what pisses me off the most. The ArmA - Community is based on give and take... but since DayZ came up, this attitude drops more and more. Everyone just takes, takes, takes.... but in case of giving something back you will find only a few people who are really willing to do this. Especially if they have something really new on their server.

Third point is... imho it is just a natural process. Everything is evolving. People are moving to other games as soon as a hype is over. So only a real core group of people will stay and keeping the game alive. This in addition to the point mentioned before and the fact that a support for DayZ-Mod from BIS is not existing anymore makes that this mod is bleeding out slowly.

Additionally ... over the time DayZ turned from a survival simulation to a shooter with survival parts. I'm sure this is a fact which was never intended by Rocket. I'm also sure that a lot of people are turned away due to exact this fact.

Just my 2 cents.....
 
So many quit helping when they realized there was money to be made.

At this point I wouldn't blame any developer if they kept there work in house like Origins. It's really sad!
 
Sorry... But the guys fromOrigins were one of the first who made money with the intellectual properties of others. At least in the beginning. And im not talking about Origins. Imho this is and was crap the whole time. With little effort you can have all of its features. I was talking about stuff like BreakingPoint for ArmA3.
 
So many quit helping when they realized there was money to be made.


I'm not in it to make money, nor have I ever asked for any type of payment. ArmA II: DayZ is just dying off...I see it through this forum...this placed used to be packed, all the time with members....now it's the same few dozen users the majority of the time.

Time to move on to newer things I suppose.
 
So many quit helping when they realized there was money to be made.

Quite the opposite. Most of the "good guys" left because everybody was stealing their work and selling it directly by claiming it as their own. And then came Overwatch, Breaking Point and other shit mods, which introduced donation perks, selling slots, bases for cash and crap like that.
DayZ as a phenomenon itself introduced a very strange community. A community where everyone can rent a server for 30$ and then sell it's "content" based on the work of Addon ans Script makers who shared their work for free.
That's why we can't have nice things.

P.S. I'm actually surprised that Pwnoz0r and the remaining staff are still hosting this forum after all the shit they wen't trough.
 
As you can see by looking at Dayz Commander the game that became the game is Epoch and arma 2 is still the king. Arma 3 interface and the cartoon 1.0.8.3 and standalone (which is about all to do in that game) is nothing.

This community can survive just like we do with a bandage and flashlight.........We still have new things coming in like on our servers we just added Recruit AI or Hire Merc options and nothing like finding new cities and bases that have been created to keep it going.

What really is the downer is things like Origins. Now I loved playing that game but it seems the guys doing it are all about money and private and whatever. The script writers out there that make things happen like Sarge, Axeman and plenty more are the core of putting out new ideas. So yes its dying because some people moved on to the lessor worlds and yes alot of noobs..........but we all were noobs once.

Its true that the Arma regular crowd looks down at the zed killers and alot of those ideas are what make this much better then it was. Overpoch another example it has alot of weapons and new cars and probably for many not the way of the original Survival mode but is popular.

So I say "A can of beans" for all the people that do share and contribute..........(oh did I say I have a donator store :) well come on I'm bleeding out with server fee costs I'm not looking for profit I'm just looking for enough money to expand servers so we have like 40 different types ....... Forget about the new graphics these are great for my old eyes and forget about the cartoon interface and expecially forget about a standalone that you can't even figure out where your stuff is and what?? no vehicles?? I do thank Rocket for his brainstorm that started all this but the mountain climb should of waited.

Grumpy Gramps
 
I was sitting on a bunch of additions I wanted to release at some point, but a few factors made me quit (publically) modding DayZ:
I did a lot of scripting behind the scenes (just helping folks out) when I was more active here and ended up stopping when I found stuff I wrote in addons that were making money for people (while I was completely broke).
Then the modding license came around, turning me away from ArmA2 scripting for a while due to some questionable wording that could be interpreted as limitations on what I could do outside of this game (this has since been resolved).
The final straw for me was when the devs decided to limit which pbos we are allowed to extract, which is a completely ridiculous (and slightly insulting) thing to do to a mod in my opinion. Sure, I get that the animations, for example, are owned by the devs, but doesn't it seem like common sense that we shouldn't repack and redistribute them?

Either way, I'm thinking about posting some of the changes I made over the last year or so to at least give something back to the community I learned so much from. From what I'm told I don't have much of the original files left in my install :D .

I'm also not bitter about any of that stuff, just seemed like the right thread/time to write about it.
Just to clarify: I completely disagree with making money from mods outside of completely optional donations. Ethical issues aside, as far as I know, the code base of any game we may mod is owned by the developers of said game, so anyone making money off mods is doing so off the backs of the developers and should probably have the developers' permission to do so.

@CommanderRetra: I wish I could donate to help out with hosting costs, but apparently being broke was not a temporary situation...
 
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