Hordes of Infected...Finally!

[gannon46 788]

has anyone tested a suppressor to see if it aggros any zeds just curious i figure they are rare if anyone does get to test one post plz.

[Ultimoses 110]

I think they "toned down" the aggressive pathfinding of the Zeds because they increased the numbers again (and increased spawn rates in larger cities) so regardless of why they do it , yes ultimoose is right, soon we will have the badass zombies in exp that are on stable ... Can't wait for the zombies to be the #1 reason for fear in this game (alongside humans , those two are #1 together at all times in an apocalypse IMO).

 

I wouldn't necessarily say that they increased the numbers of the zombies to be honest. I think they just changed the "infected distribution". As an example of what I mean: Where there were 10 zombies in Msta before the update, and 30 in Elektro, there are now 4 z's in Msta and 36 in Elektro. They lowered the number of infected in low interest areas (villages for the most part) and added those to high interest areas (big cities, military bases). At least that's my theory based on this quote from the latest status report: "Redistribution of existing infected spawns to high population areas."

[BadAsh (DayZ) 1513]

has anyone tested a suppressor to see if it aggros any zeds just curious i figure they are rare if anyone does get to test one post plz.

I found a suppressor for my AK74 in exp, but when I fired it still let out a highly noticeable "bang" sound. Anyway zombies were behaving oddly (I havent played after the small update last night), either not aggroing or aggroing but never moving or aggroing but moving extremely slow, so it was impossible to tell at that time what kind of impact the gun sound (suppressor or not) had on zombies.

[Schweinsteiger 107]

I wouldn't necessarily say that they increased the numbers of the zombies to be honest. I think they just changed the "infected distribution". As an example of what I mean: Where there were 10 zombies in Msta before the update, and 30 in Elektro, there are now 4 z's in Msta and 36 in Elektro. They lowered the number of infected in low interest areas (villages for the most part) and added those to high interest areas (big cities, military bases). At least that's my theory based on this quote from the latest status report: "Redistribution of existing infected spawns to high population areas."

They added a few more zeds (like 200 more or so) but you're right, they redistributed what was already there plus a couple of hundred more. Seems like there are more zeds everywhere, so I think the new ones that were added were placed in some of the small towns to increse numbers. Some zeds were taken away from areas people didn't frequent also.

[stinkenheim 249]

Last I had heard ()from Hicks in a stream a few weeks ago) was that suppressors only worked on players not on the AI, so they would make your shots less likely to be heard by someone else but the zeds wouldn't tell the difference between a suppressed and an unsuppressed gun

[Deathlove 2280]

Found some zeds roaming around one of the campgrounds. It was actually pretty damn cool cause i didn't think anything would be around there.

[Bororm 1156]

I hate to break it to you, but $90 million is not that much. Not for game development that requires this level of polish and especially not for any MMO. Microsoft spent $90 million dollars on a Halo MMO and then they cancelled it. Skyrim cost $85 million and it didn't have a single scrap of multiplayer. It still took them 4 years to do it and they had tons of people working for them that had worked on previous entries in the series. 

 

 

To be fair like 50% of the money on those large budget games is for marketing, which DayZ hardly entertains.  There's a lot of factors that go into it, and obviously the dayz team isn't receiving, let alone spending, the entirety of their sales on development but it's not really a good comparison.

[SniperV (DayZ) 43]

 

Zombie spawns increased from 1100 to 1240.

[kumando 199]

Too bat they are on rollerblades, they are completly harmless this way...

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

To be fair like 50% of the money on those large budget games is for marketing, which DayZ hardly entertains.  There's a lot of factors that go into it, and obviously the dayz team isn't receiving, let alone spending, the entirety of their sales on development but it's not really a good comparison.

 

Oh, I didn't see where Microsoft marketed their cancelled $90 million Halo MMO. If you could point me to the trailers and such, I'd be more than happy to modify my position.

[Bororm 1156]

Oh, I didn't see where Microsoft marketed their cancelled $90 million Halo MMO. If you could point me to the trailers and such, I'd be more than happy to modify my position.

 

Show me evidence that they spent that entire budget on development.  A budget isn't the same as money actually spent.  Saying they had a 90 million dollar budget means they intended to spend that much, not that they actually did.

 

Look up pretty much every big budget game ever and realize what half that money is going to, it's marketing.  It makes sense too when you realize how shitty all the games are and wonder why they cost exponentially more than better games 10-15 years ago.

Edited May 12, 2015 by Bororm

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

Show me evidence that they spent that entire budget on development.  A budget isn't the same as money actually spent.  Saying they had a 90 million dollar budget means they intended to spend that much, not that they actually did.

 

Look up pretty much every big budget game ever and realize what half that money is going to, it's marketing.  It makes sense too when you realize how shitty all the games are and wonder why they cost exponentially more than better games 10-15 years ago.

 

So because I can't prove the inverse, you must be right? What else would they have spent the money on if not development? The game wasn't advertised at all and it never got to release. You are saying "50%" and "half". Where are you getting that number from?

 

At any rate, you cherry picked the only part of what I said that could possibly be open to interpretation and not really given any concrete reasons for why what I said was unfair. You say that publishers spend half of their budget on marketing, but not only do I doubt that this is always the case, but I doubt that you would even know. I have never seen an itemized budget from a publisher. Hell, most of them won't even say how many copies they sold or how much money they made unless they have to in an earnings call. Disagree? How many copies of Destiny or the latest CoD were sold? How about BF4? The best you will get is a best guess from a 3rd party and as you can see here, many call into question the accuracy of even the top 3rd party sales tracker, VGChartz. We only know what the publisher in question admits to the press and generally that doesn't go much farther than day one sales and the total budget.

 

Furthermore, why exactly would Bohemia be advertising DayZ now? Last I heard, they were still advising people not to buy it. How often do you see a bombardment of advertisements for a game that still has at least around 2 years left in development? How do you know that they haven't set aside a portion of sales for advertising leading up to full release? 

[Bororm 1156]

So because I can't prove the inverse, you must be right? What else would they have spent the money on if not development? The game wasn't advertised at all and it never got to release. You are saying "50%" and "half". Where are you getting that number from?

 

At any rate, you cherry picked the only part of what I said that could possibly be open to interpretation and not really given any concrete reasons for why what I said was unfair. You say that publishers spend half of their budget on marketing, but not only do I doubt that this is always the case, but I doubt that you would even know. I have never seen an itemized budget from a publisher. Hell, most of them won't even say how many copies they sold or how much money they made unless they have to in an earnings call. Disagree? How many copies of Destiny or the latest CoD were sold? How about BF4? The best you will get is a best guess from a 3rd party and as you can see here, many call into question the accuracy of even the top 3rd party sales tracker, VGChartz. We only know what the publisher in question admits to the press and generally that doesn't go much farther than day one sales and the total budget.

 

Furthermore, why exactly would Bohemia be advertising DayZ now? Last I heard, they were still advising people not to buy it. How often do you see a bombardment of advertisements for a game that still has at least around 2 years left in development? How do you know that they haven't set aside a portion of sales for advertising leading up to full release? 

 

I don't know why you are getting defensive about it.  Do a quick google search on game budgets, you'll see marketing is a large chunk of it.  It surprised me when I learned it too, but it makes sense.

 

 

 

Furthermore, why exactly would Bohemia be advertising DayZ now? Last I heard, they were still advising people not to buy it. How often do you see a bombardment of advertisements for a game that still has at least around 2 years left in development? How do you know that they haven't set aside a portion of sales for advertising leading up to full release?

I don't understand what point you're trying to make here.  That just furthers my own, if it turns out to be true, that a portion of their budget is going to eventually go to advertisement not development.

 

 

You are right that companies usually don't like to share their numbers, even the figures you gave are likely estimates.  Here are some more estimates: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Most_expensive_video_games

 

The halo game you mentioned was cancelled, so unless you can show me evidence that 90 million dollars was actually spent on it, because the term "budget" does not mean money spent, then I don't see how that's meaningful.

 

You are the one who brought up the topic, I am just pointing out a flaw in the comparison.  It is also up to you to prove that the entirety of the budget in the games you mentioned went to development since that was the argument and they are your examples.

 

Any way, we are way off topic now but here's some articles you can check out, obviously you can do your own further research.

http://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

A quote from the above

 

In 2009, EA executive Rich Hilleman indicated in a speech that his company "now typically spends two or three times as much on marketing and advertising as it does on developing a game."

http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/05/06/the-economics-of-game-publishing

 

 

The costs of doing all this is extremely high and it's quite common for a game's marketing budget to equal or even double the actual cost of making the game. 

Edited May 12, 2015 by Bororm

[harteman 155]

Too bat they are on rollerblades, they are completly harmless this way...

It is more about them catching you slipping now.  Before it was either outrun them, or kill them on the spot.  Now you can go around looting with them still coming at you, you just have to be careful not to get yourself in a corner, or you will be tore up.  Really, I like slow shambling groups of zombies more.  They just need to add a few quicker ones to the mix, so that the quicker ones can buy time for the slow ones to overwhelm you.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

I don't understand what point you're trying to make here.  That just furthers my own, if it turns out to be true, that a portion of their budget is going to eventually go to advertisement not development.

 

I'm not arguing that a portion of the budget does not go to marketing. At all.

 

I mentioned that the Halo: MMO and Skyrim both had budgets of about the same amount as what the person I replied to estimated was spent by consumers on DayZ. The point I was trying to make is that even if every single penny of that money went directly to Bohemia and DayZ's budget (which is definitely not true), it still wouldn't be a colossal amount as far as game development is concerned. I found it to be relevant because that person was particularly hung up on the dollar amount.

 

So you tried to tell me that since Skyrim and other modern games spend half of their budget on marketing and Bohemia has not begun any marketing campaign, the comparison is unfair. My counterpoint was that games are not generally advertised until they near release. So even if Bohemia was to spend half of their budget on marketing (which seems to something you believe most publishers do, but Bohemia definitely will not), we wouldn't even know about it yet since the game is still so early in development. So what I'm basically saying is that you can't say that it isn't a fair comparison because no one outside of Bohemia has any idea how much they plan to spend on marketing. You made an assumption and then, based on that, said the comparison was no good. Do you see what I'm getting at here?

 

My next point was not that you are wrong about marketing being important and a large chunk of the budget, but that assuming half in all cases seems to be a bit of a stretch on your part. I will definitely concede the fact that Activision and EA probably do spend a ton on marketing which is why you can't go to any page that could possibly even be of interest to a gamer around the release of the latest CoD or BF game without seeing an ad. Activision even goes way out of their way to make extremely expensive live action trailers involving high profile celebrities. 

 

With that said, I cannot prove exactly how much Microsoft or Bethesda spent on the respective titles I happened to bring up. With the case of the Halo MMO, the sources I used made it seem as if the initial $90 million had already been spent and that MS had to choose whether or not they wanted to continue to fund it. 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/halo-mmorpg-had-90-million-budget-pre-cancellation/1100-6257799/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/12/halo-mmo-had-90-million-budget-canceled-as-microsoft-eyed-cas/

 

It also spent 3 years in development. Most decent games spend around 4-5 in development. I find it very likely that a large percentage of that budget was spent if not the whole thing considering the fact that MMOs are quite expensive to develop (which I though was a relevant example since DayZ is an MMO), but after rereading these articles carefully, the language is not specific enough to be able to clearly make such a distinction.

 

Even though I can't prove how much they did spend, you also can't prove that Bohemia will not spend a good chunk of money on marketing for their game either. So, in order to convince me that my comparison is invalid, you have to explain why it is that you think all developers/publishers spend half of their budget on marketing, but Bohemia absolutely will not spend that kind of money closer to release for DayZ.

 

Moving forward, I'm sorry if I came off as being rude. I reread what I wrote and I was pretty tired when I wrote it. I did not intend to come off as such an ass, and for that I apologize.