POLL: How happy are you with the buildings and map?

[ColonelBurton 145]

After playing for over 600 hours and now having had some contact with the mod, I have to say I am somewhat bored by the map of Chernarous.

 

I wonder how other people feel about it?

 

Often, when I'm out doing my everyday chores, I think to myself "Why doesn't Chernarous have anything like a large supermarket instead of just the "mom-and-pop corner stores"?

 

There are basically two really unique structures (not counting the radio tower at Green Mountain) that are worth exploring at all, Novo's large town hall building with its' roughly 14 stories, and the shipwreck at Rify.

 

Yeah, they say Chernarous is poor, but for me that seems a bit like an excuse to have nothing but little wooden huts and all the remnants of the Arma2 age in the game instead of developing new stuff.

 

If you've played games like Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Rust, Metro 2033 and all the CoD and MoH games, you're used to (admittedly sometimes very linear but still) well done three-dimensional maps with a lot of variety and ambience.

 

DayZ has some really nice ambience effects, like the weather, fireplaces, sunlight, night and all that stuff, but in my opinion Chernarous is a little bit boring.

 

So to the poll questions:

Question no. 1: How happy are you in general with the map layout (NOT INCLUDING individual buildings), so the roads, hills, countryside, rocks, coasts, and please also consider overall SIZE of the map here too

Question no. 2: How happy are you with the buildings and the variety?

Question no. 3: How do you like these specific ideas for a new building? If you have a whole new idea, please post below.

[Rags! 1966]

Exploring an old nuclear silo reminiscent of the Cold Wars days would be too cool for school. 

[stinkenheim 249]

Iirc they were going to finish adding in all the new towns and then go back to some of the older ones and alter them and give them some unique buildings... Can't remember where I saw it

[zippit 62]

IMO, They should re-scale all the buildings, to make them all in uniform, some doors you can't even fit through/look too big (Small house doors/Pub doors)

[FrostyKush 44]

just a video I saw a long time ago that seemed relevant here, keep in mind this is compared using the arma 2 version of cherno ported to arma 3. There have been a ton of changes in the SA as you already know. With that being said I to remember them mentioning going through all the existing areas and touching them up as well as adding new models and variations of the buildings so they aren't so repetitive. Also with the new renderer I would imagine we will see a pretty big change in the way tree cover looks and the pure number of assets able to be used in an area. A lot of visual and map related changes are probably dependent on them seeing what type of real world performance gains they see and what they are able to gain from clientside optimizations. And of course all those awesome DX11 features like *fingers crossed* tessellation (seriously picture the current cities with tessellation http://eu.evga.com/articles/00561/images/tessellation.jpg) plus we should see a large increase of visual things like flora, denser forests, and they mentioned some time ago pending on how the renderer works out fog effects on the ground. Then there is always what modding will allow on the map editor side of things like making cities and villages more overgrown/abandoned, adding cities and various areas, as well as custom buildings like were made for the dayz mod giving even more variety. Of course a lot of this is dependent on how the renderer works out and client optimizations after the renderer is implemented so heres to hoping that works out well. All in all though after having a few thousand hours on A2 Cherno between dayz mod, arma 2 modding, and server development, and a few hundred hours on the standalone map I do like that the map in the standalone can still look unfamiliar to me in places because of the subtle changes in landscape and the higher resolution of the satellite map they used as well as the new areas. I am extremely excited to see what is done in the future and the new renderer in general and truly hope it works out well but ultimately only time will tell. P.S. sorry for the novel Edited January 4, 2015 by FrostyKush

[hekp 223]

There's still some buildings ingame we cannot enter. Maybe it would be more cost efficient for devs to just make them look demolished, ruined, decayed. Might be easier than making the inside of a house that was basicly made in arma2 with no purpose to be able to enter it.Im no dev but i take it the outside surface is the easy part. I guess thats whats going on the whole time, thats why some buildings are too low - they were never meant to be enter-able.

 

i would love more burnt to the ground villages and houses. By more i dont just mean new complete burnt down locations, also a few more demolished buildings in already existing cities and towns.i find some of the Northern towns way too full on loot anyways. by the time you reach them, there's hardly anything you dont t have.

For instance, as much as the new parts of NW map look great, there is absolutely nothing to take there. Once u reach NW corner, you're probably fully geared up with at least one of the assault rifles.

That being said, i was rather dissapointed by finding so many piano and other "better than normal" loot civ buildings where noone actualy needs anything anymore.

At least the whole setup of buildings location was a bit different so it didnt look that familiar.

 

I would love more variety. allot more. we could have those "alpine" cottages only on higher elevated settlements just like you dont get to see a fire station in every town.

Way too many brick and piano houses. I would love it if they made a 2nd or even 3rd variation of it.

 

 

i gave my vote for nuclear silo - just because i can imagine it as an awesome location to explore. coastal bunker - cause every coast in europe has or had one. Shopping centre - chernaus could use wallmart. New prison will be added, there were youtube presentations of it & it looks great.

I dont like the highway intersection with underpasses simply cause in every fps sandbox game i played so far, those were the most OP locations. couple of snipers to cover each other, keep on high ground, 3pp and GG. With added explosives this would be even worse. I wouldnt enjoy if the game had only a few viable locations everyone would always go to.

 

 

tldr: map is awesome, more varieties when it comes to buildings. A random facade colour would do for starters.

Edited January 4, 2015 by halp

[Pyongo Bongo 174]

I wish Chernarus had the same ambience as Namalsk, Namalsk was so creepy and dark (Namalsk was my favorite map in the times of the mod <3).

I really liked the old bunkers and run down buildings, the super-cold climate even made it creepier!

[pillock 850]

I voted for the prison complex, because I believe that's in the works anyway; I also voted for the sports stadium and the coastal pillbox. I don't think the other suggestions in the list are appropriate for the general environment/setting of Chernarus, frankly (especially an upper-middle class enclave in a former Communist country!) and I would be actively against their inclusion.

 

Overall, I think the map is good. More variety is always good, but I'd most like to see the focus placed on a greater opening up of and expansion of access to existing buildings - doors that are not real doors really get on my nerves! I also think things like usable cupboards/fridges (in the works, to some extent, I think?) will add a lot to the atmosphere, making the buildings feel less bland.

[Avant-Garde 229]

I don't mind the repetition, really. What bothers me is the proportion of interiors, looks like we in fucking dollhouses sometimes

[Freshmen 28]

Two words: Golf resort

 

 

also: Shopping Centre + Zombies = Win

Edited January 4, 2015 by Freshmen

[ColonelBurton 145]

I don't think the other suggestions in the list are appropriate for the general environment/setting of Chernarus, frankly (especially an upper-middle class enclave in a former Communist country!) and I would be actively against their inclusion.

 

No problem. I was just brainstorming and ran out of ideas =o)

 

EDIT:

 

 

IMO, They should re-scale all the buildings, to make them all in uniform, some doors you can't even fit through/look too big (Small house doors/Pub doors)

 

Yes I agree. Somehow, everything is a bit too small. Take for example the cargo trains. Can you imagine those being passenger cars and having like 4 seats and an aisle? Something with the scale is off.

Edited January 4, 2015 by ColonelBurton

[call him Steve 46]

This game has the BEST map ever, but yes the buildings need some more options. Like when I first started this game I searched every one of them because I didn't know what was were. But now I know by looking at them if its worth the loot inside to stop and simply changing the loot spots isn't enough. Different villages should have different styles/colors, there should not be both the  "red" and "green" houses in every town right next to one another.

[Avant-Garde 229]

 

 

Yes I agree. Somehow, everything is a bit too small. Take for example the cargo trains. Can you imagine those being passenger cars and having like 4 seats and an aisle? Something with the scale is off.

The bigger imersion breaker for me, after the blood effect lol

[krazypenguin 174]

I voted "it's pretty good.." for questions 1 and 2.  With just over 100 hours I'm still fairly new so there's still a lot of places for me to go and things to see.  But there's always room for improvement, or at least change, to keep things fresh and interesting for the old timers.

 

That said, there's also the question of priorities - how much effort do these sort of changes take, and how would they fit into the roadmap of what the Devs are working toward?

 

I like the idea of each town (or at least the biggest ones) having a unique building or feature and my favourite suggestion, purely from a fun gameplay point of view, would be for a sewer system under one of them.  I think a pitch black tunnel system full of the infected would be awesome.  Though I'm not sure how you would get players down there, other than to kill zombies, since there should be little to no loot of worth in a sewer system...right?

[john5220 15]

No I am NOT.

 

I am the type who loves Islands etc stuff near the Coast like Far Cry. I think DayZ has potential but the devs at Bohemia are stuck in the whole post soviet zone and its not in a good way like STALKER.

[scriptfactory 620]

The devs at BIS are wasting manpower, in my opinion. They need to forget about Chernarus+ and create a procedural map generator. Focus on making interesting and dynamic buildings/structures and let computers take care of the map making. Get rid of the crappy stick trees, bushes and rocks and license SpeedTree tech.

 

It isn't 1998 anymore.

[john5220 15]

OP's poll is a bit useless why would he put

 

It is pretty good, but some improvement wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

Its obvious the few die hard DayZ supporters are going to click that. This poll does NOT represent what majority of the players in this community fell about DayZ

 

The general complaint is DayZ runs bad on good systems, buildings are very very poor and repetitive, there is absolutely 0 variety of any sort. It feels lifeless it feels like a MOD. This does NOT feel like a game that warrants over $50 USD

 

I have no idea what Bohemia is planning but they have to be joking if they feel DayZ is worth the current asking price of $35 let alone $50 everything is so repetitive and boring I cannot stand to run and find yet another rotten wodden house with nothing in it. People want a modern setting.....

 

DayZ would have been better if they made it in Ukraine or Crimea

 

Notice the closer you get to Moscow, Russia in real life, the more developed everything becomes?

Edited January 4, 2015 by John5220

[john5220 15]

Two words: Golf resort

 

 

also: Shopping Centre + Zombies = Win

 

Agree FULLY!!!

 

Dead Island has some amazing ideas, the problem with Dead Island is it lacks the gameplay of DayZ

DayZ is bland boring and ugly at many points.

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

I like Chernarus. It's a small, sleep, Eastern republic. But I see suggestions like this, and it annoys me. Why would you rape the nice map we have with all this nonsense? Huge cities and tired novelties have been done to death in the genre. Why can't we just keep the rural republic we have?

[john5220 15]

^ because rural places don't have much of anything to offer really.

 

its not like you are suggesting a old western american setting here. A rural post soviet place is not the same as what you would expect from how the west won.

 

this isn't America where rural actually is pretty nice and has huge variety.

[surf_polar 110]

I cringe everytime when I read suggestions like huge shopping malls, golf courses etc or when people complain about the soviet feel and aesthetic, when this is exactly what the devs are going for and many people love for exactly this reason, because its not just another generic american suburb.

[B4GEL 175]

No amount of additions to the map will make if feel like it did when you first started, the only thing you can do if you find Chernarus boring is wait for mod support.

None of the location options in the poll suit the map very well in my opinion (execpt the prison obviously). I think there's already enough enough points of interest, if they add many more the map will lose too much of the empty wilderness that makes it great. If you look at the area the terrain is based on there's nowhere near the amount of towns and villages so it's pretty unrealistically built up already. 

There could definitely be a bigger variety of houses, but once the old towns down south are redone I'll be pretty happy with the map. 

[ankiltareum 4]

I feel like there is too many buildings and towns in chernarus. It will soon look like tokyo megapolis where the city never end for 30 kms long.

[wooly-back-jack 294]

I'd like to see a couple of maps with separate hives sometime in the future (I realise it would be some time off)

[gannon46 788]

i have no issues with the map as of now i figurew everything is subject to change later. i do wish they would add more easter eggs like the abandoned camps i find here and there. i wish they would also add the infected camps that spawn randomly on dayz mod i've only found one and they are creepy and cool as hell and usually have some pretty cool gear. i know you guys hate epoch well most do but i'd like to see a dayz sa version of mass graves that randomly spawn as well. as for buildings i'm not sure i would not want anything that ruins the soviet era vibe and just wouldn't fit in as well as a building that just becomes too populated or becomes too much of a magnet for players i like the fact that the new stuff up north has seemed to actually make NWAF viable for PVP encounters as well as the north and south. hell i've even started to see folks on the west side of the map which for me is rare. now if we can get the amount of players on a one time raised man we are in for a treat. sorry for wall of text and if i got off topic a little my heads a little fuzzy today.