Over the last couple years, I've periodically sent through to the team constructive feedback documents and have been really happy to see many, many of these suggestions be worked on! Broadly, a big focus on immersion, survival and atmosphere were parts of my feedback and have seen change! In the past I've written my feedback dumps in Google Docs or in a big list on Twitter, but I know this is the preferred route. Hope you're well Geez and hopefully you can pass this onto the team okay lol
Recent changes I really like:
NWAF Revamp - The 2018 NWAF was a beautiful soviet style airbase, but it wasn't a good NWAF. It had too many buildings and cover. The loot wasn't great, it was spread thin over the massive facility. PvP was rare . All of this was the opposite of the original design, which I want to discuss another time. The new design being more open and manageable to loot, but also leaning into the long range vulnerability of the airfield are much needed designs, and the nods to the original with the ruins are a lovely touch.
Visual changes - The new skies are much better looking, though I do wish it would allow for layer variations, instead of the same layers always, but it's better and appreciated. The fog changes of 1.26 are truly perfect. I've felt for a long time that the fog has been too oppressive and missed that lower altitude morning fog of 0.62, and seeing it return, and how clear the hills of highland Chernarus are again. I'm happy! And the cherry on top is the view distance options. Obviously we could already do these to our own client, but seeing them officially supported makes me super happy and it makes navigating so much fun. Being able to spot destination landmarks from much further away is awesome and was the perfect change to make for the new map.
Warmer ambient temperatures! I had really disliked how I could be dressed in jackets and beanies, and still be cold at midday, semi cloudy. Being cold despite wearing the best clothing in the game, and suffering hypothermia often if you're not, was a frustrating way to interact with the temperature system. I'm very happy to see, with Sakhal coming to be the 'cold' climate, there's good reason to make the other maps warmer. I was especially happy when I was actually yellow warm just by wearing my normal civilian outfits again, incentivised to maybe take a layer or 2 off during the day.
Smaller inventories! I know many are whining about it right now, but this was the right change. And don't be afraid to play around with the bag sizes and SHAPES again too. This feels much more inline with the looting feeling of 0.62 and I actually made very similar changes to these on my server a couple years back. Tougher choices about carrying, more meaningful upgrades, interesting inventory shapes. It's a fun part of the early game experience and I'm super happy it's here!
Quick fire appreciations: Payday masks, foxes and rabbits (very cute and wonderful to see lively wildlife like these! more would be amazing), the hot/warm/chilly/frozen food (great way to bring that feature into vanilla), crafting sounds, continuous bandaging and wringing, pushing cars, new civ clothing, improved driving (network wise but also the V3S), crossbows and re-adding other old melee items like the sword/mace/iceaxe, car horns!
I could go on, but I want to say I'm happy so much creativity and passion is still here for DayZ. We're now further from 1.0 than 1.0 is from the early access release. That's scary to think about but in the time since the rocky 1.0 and now, the game has truly transformed. Many of my opinions come from my love for both the immersive survival, but also social fun, and striking that balance. I also have returned to older versions to find what could be improved. When you play the old janky, clunky DayZ, what diamonds in the rough are found?
Group spawns. Spawn groups are great IF you’re joining a server or die at the exact same time as your friend. They also CAN lead to more interactions early, but it’s not that simple. In my experience, the group spawns have some very different outcomes. Sometimes, you spawn with 15 other freshspawns, chaos follows and loot is hard to come by, with the same people running back for 6 minutes straight fighting over scraps. Other times, you spawn at the end of a wave, and find yourself alone as everyone is already ahead and no one else spawns in the area for around an hour. I think the intention is good, but the execution needs refinement. I’d change the groups to be bigger, broader areas. 4 or 5 groups: (Cherno, Prig, West Elektro), (Elektro, Kamy, Krutoy Cap), (3Valleys, Soln, Factory), (Nizh, Bere, Khelm), (Svet, Turovo, Berezhiki). Rotate between those every 10 minutes or so. A wider range for your friends to join/die on the same group, and a wider range for people to spawn. Better distributes players across the map while still being within travel distance of friends.
The ambient music is something I was really looking forward to and I think the simple drone music fits many places. My issue is that all of the tracks have a similar feeling. I wish there was some real variation in instrument and tone. When I’ve used music for streams/videos, the drones work great for avoiding zombies and sneaking around NWAF, but when you’re in the woods cooking deer, watching a sunset, that’s when I wish there was a soft strummed guitar… When the sun is rising on the coast, an echoey piano like C418’s dry hands. The iconic industrial clanks and sweeps of the dayz mod ambient tracks. I’d love to see the artist work in less drones, and play with the soundscape of a world where humanity still wants to exist, and humans make music, even if there’s few to hear it. There’s more to this world than what the current tracks exhibit and I wish that was felt.
Fishing has not truly changed for the better. When it was first shown I believed fishing was going to become click to cast, click to reel in, I’m unsure if I was mistaken or it was this way. But as of right now, it’s still a held action. I’ve asked before for particular held actions be made toggle-optionable. I’ve got dexterity issues that at times have made me unable to play DayZ, as holding left mouse to cook food or fish would hurt. I use a foot pedal for a lot of these now, including travelling. I’ve been a long time believer in no-autowalk, and I’m not advocating for it here, but I am requesting that click to start action, click to cancel, be added as a control option. There are many people with hand issues that don’t want to hold left mouse to fish, it’s not more immersive, it’s just more strain on their hands for something that is sitting and waiting.
Items spawning more damaged does make repair kits more impactful but it’s so frequent it lends itself to hoarding of kits on sight, some people having 5 or 6 on their person, just to repair their clothes every 5 minutes. The infected wear damage change of 1.26 is nice but less spawn damage would likely make less people take every kit they find.
I wish car engine audio was less loud up close, and carried muuuch further. I’ve created my own attenuation curve for vehicles and set their range to ~300 for cars, ~400 for V3S/Humvee. Hearing cars as they approach and drive through towns is so much better. Ideally, I’d actually prefer something like firearm sounds, where a different sound is used for stages of distance. Car engines are less loud than they were in the past, but are still quite loud for passengers. Changing vehicle sounds give away their location at a distance, allowing for more ambushes and interactions, and giving their user less of an ear ache, positive changes.
I also would love to see footsteps to have an added splash during and shortly following being in the rain. Perhaps this could be a subtle change to wet shoes, or simply a global conditional when it rains. Not too loud, but a subtle additional layer to the audio for wet weather. I also miss the beep the radio’s did when turning on. It’s still there in the files, just unused since sometime after 1.0 it was taken off of the radio. It was nice!
Inventory GUI adjustments! I’ve suggested before about using the screenspace better in the inventory, as much of the space is wasted. Small inventories take up the same amount of space width-wise, so I had suggested that smaller inventory panels fit side by side. This ones a very trivial thing, but I would like to see the inventory screen better utilised its space to be as usable, readable and informative to the player as possible. I’d even be for something like the old status texts appearing above the status icons, perhaps if one of them is in a bad state, text describing what the issue is. New players opening their inventories would see their hunger labelled. Since many new players are slow to understand temperature, seeing hypothermia in the bottom right would immediately detail what the issue is in a way that isn’t in the way of the normal HUD during gameplay.
Item names that were changed that are bad. The worse offenders are Standardized and Normalized suppressors. Those are synonyms, they're confusing to learn for new players, and they sound silly. 5.56 Suppressor is an immediate improvement from Standardized, and immediately conveys its use case. Normalized could then remain as is, but I prefer Suppressor East. That alludes to the weapons that take it, and keeps it distinct from the 5.56 one.
ALICE isn’t under any trademark and is a generic descriptor. It’s used by manufacturers, militaries and merchants alike. All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment.
SMERSH is technically the name of a corporation but its nebulous if it’s a trademarked term from my look, but MOLLE is a generic term meaning Modular Lightweight Load-carring Equipment, similar to ALICE. MOLLE Vest and MOLLE Bag would be better than Assault for me.
I’m unsure of the AK debacle, since Reforger uses AK’s correctly, I have to imagine it’d be no problem for BI legal to sort the use of AK.
Hiking < Canvas, Combat < TTSKO, Patrol < Gorka, ACOG, Hunter Boots being Combat Boots in the files, and TTKSO boots being Combat Boots in the game.
Gunplay is a topic that means a lot to me as I think the current game feels much better to control, it lacks some depth and satisfaction from the old engine. On a broad level, 2 main things separate how the gunplay works now compared to 0.62. The first is weapon inertia. Long, heavy weapons we’re worse at rotating with your body. This gave another dimension however to balance weapons, ones better to control close quarters where fast swings were needed. This could easily make shorter weapons like SMGs, sawn offs, the Vikhr, controllable in close quarters. Attachments like CQB buttstock or possibly foregrips could also improve this, and give trade offs in other functions. If I were to re-add it, I’d make it affect long weapons, heavy weapons, and have certain attachments improve it at the cost of either sway or recoil, or both. And then leads into my other major difference between the two forms of gunplay. Currently you’re swaying with your gun. In the old engine, 3D scopes swayed independently of your vision, swaying around the screen. This feels minor, but I much much much preferred the old way more. It felt much less chaotic to look at, but honestly I’m not sure it’s THAT different in actual effect. I think it might be a preference? So I’d honestly consider making it an option for the players, or simply trying it internally and seeing if it’s worth it. We had a highly modified version of legacy gunplay that was far less floaty and more accurate to 0.62 and it felt AMAZING to shoot without my camera strapped to the buttstock like a gopro.
If attachments are revisited, I’d love to see things like bipods, weapon resting, foregrips, different stocks and handguards having real pros and cons. Most of all, I want more scope variety. It’s time the mosin got it’s scope mount. It’s time a NATO rail sniper scope came in for use on the DMR and SV-98. Put all of those in gas zones if balance is a worry. Make folding stocks work, shrinking the length of a weapon in the inventory when attached (or more so making other buttstocks add +1 length and reducing the weapons base length). Attachments allow the players to make each firearm their own, we all have preferences about what optics we use and what family of sights we like, so expanding that only makes what already exists in the game much more interesting. I’d prefer real improvements to the gunplay far more than one more new gun. Certain stocks and grips could slow or reduce sway randomness, others could better control vertical recoil but increase horizontal, some could be great for close quarters but make distant shooting a nightmare. These are meaningful changes that make the game deeper and more rewarding.
Official servers kicking for unstable connection far too often. Seems to be specific to official servers, either too strict ping/connection disruption settings, or the hosts are running underpowered servers. Playing community servers with more strict ping limits, I still have far fewer kicks.
I think I’ll leave this one here for now. This is a huge list, but I want to reiterate I’ve been loving the direction the game is going in and want to see it keep improving. Some of these are minor, and personal preference, and others are things I think truly need to change for the better. I think we will agree on some, some are out of scope, and some we’ll disagree and that's okay. Thanks for reading this far and I can’t wait to die on Sakhal soon :)