Ceremor

**Settle in, there are many words coming, retweet from Marek one of the owners of Bohemia (makers of Arma and DayZ), where he talks about Sakhal and it's price in relation to it being review bombed currently.** I think its hard to justify value when it's such a personal thing. Personally I owe DayZ and the people behind the game everything, your game changed my life and I will be forever grateful. However just to add some thoughts about DayZ. The DayZ community feels like the unloved step child to Bohemia at times behind the "real kid" Arma, and it doesn't feel like the DayZ devs fault at all. If anything it feels like Bohemia's. Fans of it see countless DLCs for Arma over the last 10 years, they see years in front updates about Arma 4 and it's future release, they also saw Arma Reforger. DayZ fans went through years of playing on the old engine, we were the guniea pigs for enfusion and it seems like Arma gets to see the end result better and earlier. DayZ during those test years was not in a good place. For maybe 1 to 1.5 years there was no game update around 0.62 time and when the new engine came the game had no features (no scopes for any gun at one time, no SKS in the game when it went 1.0 which was criminal). The game was in alpha for years and years, then had a beta period of about 6 weeks before going full release. The game launched at 1.0 before it was ready and was missing lots of content, likely so it could be sold on Playstation. I'm sure this was the right business decision for the game, but for the people already playing it, it felt like a like in the teeth. There has been bugs with hand state and desync forever, though they have improved some they are still there, the zombie AI is really not good for "the zombie game," in the early 2023 roadmap working on Zombie AI was a priority and it has never happened, the official launcher for the game can take 10mins to find the server you are looking for if it isn't in your favourites, the official servers have serious issues with cheaters and unlike when DayZ had a large team of devs there is no peak and trough with this. Years ago there would be loads of cheaters, the game devs would find away to close them down and so there would be a time with no cheats, then the cheaters would write new ones and the cheats would be back, then the devs would close them down again. Now it seems there are no waves, just a trickle of hackers, in a game like DayZ it only takes one per server to ruin it for all. The official servers you mention providing can be almost impossible to play at times and the community who pay to host servers on your game are keeping it alive more than the official servers are. I tried to play Livonia official the other day and the highest pop server at the time on the planet was 31 players, it was nearly 2pm UK time on a Monday. The community servers hold more of the games players than official servers do. DayZ sold more units than Arma3, it has seemingly been more popular on platforms like Twitch and I'm guessing YT than Arma for years and years. Yet we don't hear very much about the future of the game beyond a DLC map that some think was too much money. DayZ does feel a little unloved in comparison. Arma 3 came out a few months before DayZ Standalone in the same year. We've seen years of progress towards Arma 4, there is an official launch year, it was revealed with great pomp and ceremony not long ago. We have seen nothing of DayZ beyond Sakhal and maybe that disappoints a lot of the DayZ community? It feels like the guniea pigs for enfusion have to sit on the sidelines waiting for our turn to hear about when we will see the same as the Arma fans are going to get and those updates aren't coming. DayZ 2 isn't confirmed and Sakhal launched at a price considerably more than Arma Reforger did, that wasn't just a map, it was a new map, a load of new tech in the engine, better graphics, lots of vehicles and all sorts of other features as well as the promise of Arma 4 down the line and it cost less than Sakhal on launch. It feels like Bohemia doesn't take DayZ as seriously to us "outsiders" who just love the game. I know the Devs at DayZ work crazily hard, I know they are very talented. But it does feel like there hasn't been enough of them at times, especially when the game went 1.0 and it felt like things were being wound down. It feels like the crazy work put in by modders and map makers, the community hosting servers and offering safer places to play the game, and maybe a few streamers and YTers creating content helped keep the game alive at least to a similar level to that of how DayZ itself has progressed as a game in the last 4 years. It looked like DayZ was going to die when it went 1.0, it felt like the 1.0 release was rushed, the popularity in the game increasing was a surprise to Bohemia and so a skeleton crew was kept on to keep the game chugging along with some updates. Those game updates have really helped the game, but so have a lot of the mods and maps made by the community. The people working at DayZ are doing great work. I am really grateful for all of their efforts and I owe your company a huge debt. But the DayZ community has done a lot to keep DayZ alive (I really don't mean me here, I've done fook all!). The DayZ devs are really passionate about delivering the best they can. But it feels like they could deliver more if DayZ was more of a focus for Bohemia. Once again, we hear all this stuff about Arma 4. Maybe some of the review bombing is because for DayZ, a game which has outsold Arma3 and been more popular as entertainment on Twitch etc, we hear nothing and it came out the same year as Arma 3??? Why is that? Arma Reforger was a commitment to Arma 4 from Bohemia. The DayZ community got a new map and no future in comparison at this time beyond "we are thinking about the next 10 years of DayZ at Bohemia." We don't have our future laid out as diehard fans of DayZ. Maybe the profits from Sakhal will be poured in to Arma 4? Maybe you don't want to talk about DayZ's future because it could hurt sales of Arma 4. That makes sense I guess. But that does mean a large proportion of the people playing your games right now are feeling a little left out of the future while the game not being played so much (Arma) hears all about the future title they have coming soon. People were ok with Reforger because they knew it was leading to Arma4, they gave it time to grow and breath. I think most people would be much more ok with Sakhal if we knew DayZ had a mapped out future too. TLDR Maybe give DayZ a little more love and make it feel more part of the family. Right now it feels like we are getting kicked out of the house for Arma 3's baby brother. Maybe give some hope to removing the cheating for at least a while on official servers, that has been happening for a long time. It's the community moderating the cheaters out of their servers that help to keep this game alive along with the DayZ devs themselves, the modders and map creators and the lots of others too. Much love to all the people working on DayZ. You do a great job! None of the above means that I think DayZ deserves to get review bombed. DayZ is my favourite game of all time, and that was before I even started a YT channel. <3