- LuciferMorningstar
- Aug 12, 2012
VIDEO GAME MODIFICATION IS TOTALLY THE SAME THING AS A FEMALE'S BODY AND CLONING SAID MODIFICATION IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS RAPE, GUYS!!!!!!!
What is H1Z1? Another Miserable Zombie Survival MMO
Yes, another zombie survival MMO like DayZ, Rust, Nether, Infestation: Survivor Stories (formerly WarZ), and a whole bunch of other titles. If you're familiar with this genre, you ought to be wondering why you should care about the latest iteration in what has honestly been a genre filled with maybe the worst development record in recent years. This is yet another entry into an already-crowded genre, it's another Early Access piece, and there's no guarantee that we'll ever get anything more than what is present at EA launch. If you have experience with other games in this genre, you know what you're getting into. If you're coming to the table with no idea what to expect, here's the rundown:
The (zombie) survival MMO genre is defined by a couple of characteristics, namely a large, post-apocalyptic open world filled with somewhere between tens and a few hundred people. Games in this genre also tend to involve some sort of hostile enemy, typically zombies. There are a smattering of other games, like Nether, that use enemies other than zombies, but at the end of the day, it's more of a difference in how the enemies are skinned than anything else. Given the open-world nature of games in this genre, there are typically no developer-defined goals, and there is definitely no "end-game." Players run around scavenging for supplies so they can kill zombies and other players, while hopefully avoiding death themselves. Each game brings some distinct features to the table, we'll discuss what Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) is promising with H1Z1 shortly.
What everyone ought to be aware of is that, if you ask me, this is the first try by a "serious" developer to make a zombie survival game. I don't know that I would characterize SOE as a AAA developer, but they're definitely several steps above indie groups and small low-budget teams. Bohemia Interactive, the folks developing DayZ, made a sh*tton of money off of DayZ, but they've since demonstrated that, as developers, they're almost totally incompetent and love using lovely engines, so maybe SOE will actually bring some quality to the genre. But probably not. Don't get me wrong, there are some reasons to be hopeful about this, and at the very least, you can probably squeeze 
worth of fun out of this by harvesting pubby tears and chilling with cool goons. Ultimately, though, there is no guarantee whatsoever that SOE will deliver a finished product that everyone will be satisfied with. Right now, H1Z1's redeeming qualities are that it isn't an (obvious) shady money-grab or some weirdo's masturbatory survival fantasty.
This is an Early Access Project (by SOE)
I've said it a bunch already, but this is an Early Access (EA) project. Are we totally clear on this? Here's what Steam has to say:
quote:
This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development.
There is also more on the Steam page, which can be found here. What really needs to be absolutely clear to anyone considering purchasing this is that, as Steam points out, you are entitled to nothing more than exactly what you get when you buy in. If this turns out to be complete garbage that is almost entirely unplayable, then that's on you. This probably won't be the case, but it's fairly likely that progress on the game will be slow and minimal. If you can't tolerate the idea that significant bugs will be present for months at a time, consider backing away while you still have a chance.
All that said, I don't think the disclaimers that anyone offers about EA projects should mean that you can't complain about bad decisions made by the developers. SOE may not be legally obligated to deliver a complete project, but they have basically promised a variety of things, and if they don't deliver, they deserve, at the very least, some angry messages or whatever.
Features
The biggest thing H1Z1 has going for it is the engine, I think. It's using SOE's proprietary Forgelight engine, which is also what they're using for Planetside 2 and Everquest. I played PS2 a few years back, and the engine seemed pretty good. It could handle hundreds, if not thousands, of people running around on a large continent, shooting each other, assaulting bases, driving vehicles, and piloting aircraft. There were some problems with rendering distances, and those may have been fixed by now, but in a survival game, it's unlikely you'll ever be so far away from targets that render distances would pose a real issue. This isn't Arma-level milsperg, so I don't think anyone should be expecting to land any 1,000 meter sniper shots. The engines other devs have used just weren't up to the task, if you ask me, and I definitely feel like Forgelight can get the job done, if SOE doesn't gently caress up all the content. And I'm sure they will, somehow.
- Mix of first- and third-person gameplay
- Day/night cycle
- Accelerated seasonal cycle that will include things like snow blanketing the ground
- Base building, either literally building your own compound or boarding up a preexisting building
- Destroying other bases
- "Heavy" emphasis on crafting, where you need to experiment to figure out how to make things like hatchets, bows, arrows, traps, and more. Expect this information to be quickly accessible once someone either figures everything out via experimentation or just datamines everything.
- Vehicles, three different varieties at EA launch. They're supposed to be rare and will need repair, but at least they don't fall through the world like they do in DayZ. Right now we've got pickup trucks, police cars, and jeeps. You need spark plugs and a battery to get one running.
- Permadeath with no global inventory
- No skills or levels
- Wildlife, and, of course, hunting. Right now there are deer, wolves, bears, and rabbits. Bears will gently caress your poo poo up.
- Server-specific rules, such as PvP servers, PvE servers, headshot-only servers, etc. Each character you create is locked to a single server. As of right now, they're capping populations at 200 per serverand you have to queue if the server you like playing on is full.
- An 8x8km map that is supposed to expand over time. Here is a fan-made map that was made based on developer screenshots, or something. If servers really do fill up, then 200 people on a 64km^2 server ends up leading to an average of about 3 people per square kilometer. Obviously this will be significantly higher in cities and other areas of interest.
- Game modes. Until very recently, no one was sure what this entailed, but recently, SOE revealed that they were working with the creator of the popular Arma 3 mod Battle Royale to bring something similar to H1Z1. In A3BR, players are airdropped into a rapidly-shrinking circle that they must stay in while searching for gear, such that they can kill all other players and end up being the last man standing. In H1Z1, it looks like the rules are basically going to be the same, but here's the catch: You have to spend "event tickets" to join one of these servers, at a rate of 1 ticket per match. These tickets are acquired by either paying $$$ for them or getting them through regular gameplay (unsure what this latter method entails). If you're in the top X% of winners of a match, your ticket is refunded. If you're bad at shooting mans, you have to pony up more money to play again. More game modes are expected, and it looks like SOE is hoping to make most of their revenue this way, since apparently cosmetics don't generate any money. That could, of course, be because SOE likes to overprice everything they make available. As of right now, it is free to play the Battle Royale mode due to bugs. You will not be charged tickets until SOE is satisfied with the system.
- There's probably other stuff I've forgotten, but I think you get the gist of things. I'll update the list here if people point out that I've forgotten something critical.
Should I Buy This?
Grimby posted:
You shouldn't buy this. Donate the $20 to charity or flush it down the toilet or something.
Eonwe posted:
I played it at SOE Liveit did not have content
John Smedley, CEO of SOE posted:
Is H1Z1 going to be better than Day Z day 1? No it won't. We'll get asked that question a lot and I wanted to be up front about it. We're not as feature rich and they have a lot of really cool stuff we just don't have yet.
Note: Smedley is full of poo poo if you ask me. He's been a PR disaster since this project was announced, and based on the list of features I just provided, H1Z1 is already leaps and bounds ahead of DayZ, which, as basically all DayZ goons will tell you, is full of hackers, has truly obnoxious survival mechanics, has a terrible update record, buggy zombies, and buggy vehicles. This isn't to say that H1Z1 is necessarily good, but it's probably going to be better than DayZ. Or at least a different kind of bad.
Quotes from goons who are probably going to buy this game:
Inzombiac posted:
Watch me buy yet another zombie survival game that I drop in a week due to it being lovely and full of MILLSPEC retards.
hitachi posted:
I am probably buying this on release because I am stupid and like to waste money.
Atheist Sunglasses posted:
Somebody tell me I shouldn't buy this. Bah! The appeal of these games is too strong on me. I am weak.
My take: Don't buy this yet. I'm going to, and a bunch of other goons are going to, and we're all retarded autists who will probably live to regret our purchases. This game WILL EVENTUALLY BE FREE TO PLAY, so unless you need the latest zombie survival MMO right now, go spend $20-$40 on literally anything else, because even burning
may end up being more fun than this. Leave your basem*nt, go to a bar, meet a nice girl or guy or something. Go put $20 in the bank, maybe by the time this stupid thing is finished you'll have accumulated enough interest to be a millionaire. Or come play with us. Your call.A few other related notes:
H1Z1 will eventually be free-to-play. If you buy now, you have two options, a $20 package and a $40 package. Both get you access to EA. For , you also get 3 event tickets (for that Battle Royale thing I mentioned), 1 launch crate Key (apparently something similar to crates in CSGO or TF2, I don't really know), and 2 crates (again, something like crates in other games I have no experience with). For , you get 25 event tickets, 3 airdrop tickets, 4 launch crate keys, 6 crates, and an "exclusive aviator hat crafting recipe." All in all, you're not really getting anything special by buying in now. If anything, SOE is just giving you a taste of the stuff they're going to try to get you to spend money on down the road. SOE claims they're focusing on cosmetics and alternate game modes as a means to generate revenue, but I have absolutely no faith that they won't do something stupid that pushes people to pay money just to play the regular game. Hopefully they make enough money off of EA launch sales to keep them happy for a while, though. I will note that they're definitely loving with you by giving you fewer crates than keys. You need one key for every crate you want to open, and keys cost money. You might have 2 crates, but you only have one key, so if you want to open your other crate, get ready to pony up some cash.
Airdrops: People can purchase airdrops, which involves a cargo plane flying overhead and dropping a crate within a certain area, that anyone can then access. The crates have a mix of cosmetic and useful items in them, and the idea is that this isn't "pay to win" because anyone can see the crate and steal what's inside, regardless of who paid for and called in the drop. Major opportunity for SOE to either gently caress the game up a bunch with this, or for goons to harvest many pubby tears by stealing poo poo they shelled out money for. Redditors have kicked up a real fuss over this, and SOE has since done some rebalancing to make it harder for an individual to call in an airdrop and claim it for himself. To date, goons have stolen at least three airdrops.
Hacking is also a concern. DayZ has consistently struggled with hackers. Part of DayZ's issue, though, is that their client-server structure is stupid, and clients have way more power than they should. However, even in other games where the server tries to handle important stuff, hacking has been prevalent, namely with regard to ESP hacks, which allow the hack user to see other players through walls and stuff. If properly designed, these hacks can be difficult to detect, since the server has to tell you, the client, where other people are, such that you can interact with them (and by interact with, I mean kill). Anticheats try to combat this, and they can be reasonably effective, but the solutions are almost always an after-the-fact thing, since you can't really punish someone for cheating until they have already done so, and by that time, the victim is already dead and has lost all their stuff. In a shooter, this isn't a huge deal since you just respawn and keep trucking. You may not even know you died to a cheater. In a survival game with permadeath, though, that poo poo is a lot more obvious, and infinitely more frustrating. Hopefully things stay under control while the $20 entry fee exists, but once this goes F2P, I fully expect poo poo to to hit the fan. SOE claims they've got a great antihack in place, as evidenced by the lack of cheaters in PS2, but as I've heard, hacking used to be an issue in PS2, and the only reason it stopped being an issue was because no one plays PS2 anymore, thus low demand for hacks. There's no way to say for sure how this will end, but I'm betting it'll be an issue at some point. Hacks are available as of 1/17/15, and SOE has since made a public statement about how they're working to address the situation. Again, no way to tell how this will ultimately end.
Finally, a warning: SOE has repeatedly hosed up their deadlines, has done a terrible PR job, and generally seems less competent than some would like. Here's a brief history of the development of the game so far. Hopefully it gives you and idea of what future development will be like.
SOE announced H1Z1 back in April, claiming it would be some sort of spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies (definitely not the case). Smedley claimed they'd have EA ready in about 4-6 weeks, and then they launched a really good PR campaign that involved lots of live streams and events. People felt pretty good about things. Then, suddnely, SOE went quiet and wouldn't talk about things like release dates or progress. Some time later, they announced that they had decided they didn't have enough content to feel good about a release, and then proceeded to attend several video game conventions, including their very own SOE Live, only to show the exact same features they'd been showing from day one, while mentioning other stuff that apparently still hasn't been implemented, and probably never will be. What really bothered me, and probably others, during this process, is that SOE kept talking about how they wanted a really open development process that fans could be involved in. However, they said they had a list of features on a whiteboard that they wanted to implemented before releasing EA, yet refused to talk about the contents of the list. The transparency talk was total bullsh*t, and that doesn't bode well for future PR. Following all this, Smedley said they were aiming for an EA date prior to 2015, which obviously didn't happen. Ultimately, January 15, 2015 is what was settled upon. What you should expect going forward, then, is long periods of silence between underwhelming patches. When I say that progress has been slow, I'm not trying to poo poo on SOE or the genre, I'm being as honest as I can. SOE has talked about a lot of features that have yet to materialize, so I don't see any reason for people to have faith in SOE's ability to deliver content in a timely manner. PS2 players can probably affirm that SOE has done a fairly poor job with PS2 as well in that regard.
System Requirements
Minimum:OS: Windows 7 64 bit (you absolutely need 64 bit)
Processor: Intel i3 Dual-Core with Hyper-Threading
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia GeForce GTX 275 series or higher
DirectX: Version 10
Network: Broadban Internet connection
Hard Drive: 20 GB available space (game is sub-10 GB at this point)
Sound Card: DirectX compatible CardRecommended:
OS: Windows 7 64 bit (seriously, you do need 64 bit)
Processor: Intel i5 Quad Core or higher / AMD Phenom II X6 or higher
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: nVidia GeForce GTX 560 or higher / AMD HD 6870 or higher
DirectX: Version 10
Network: Broadban Internet connection
Hard Drive: 20 GB available space (game is sub-10 GB at this point)
Sound Card: DirectX compatible Card
This will also eventually come to the PS4 at some point, maybe, but probably not in your lifetime.
I Want to See More Before Deciding
Here is some media from the official H1Z1 website.
Here is a developer tracker that grabs the stuff the developers post on Reddit and Twitter. This sometimes includes random Twitch streamer bullsh*t and Smedley's political opinions.
H1Z1 Reddit thing - Don't go here, it's a cesspool. Unfortunately, the developers are insisting on using it as their primary means of communicating with fans, so if you really want to "be involved in steering development (lol)," have fun with that. Otherwise, let other goons wade through it for you.
If you want to see unadulterated gameplay, please wait for the game to become available, such that goons can play it, talk about it, and maybe stream it.
I Want to Play with Other Goons
1. We're going to use the Camping the Stairs Mumble channel (CTS) for now. If we need more space or want our own Mumble, we can work that out later. For now, though, this should be more than adequate. Try not to talk incessantly about your berry picking, especially if people are trying to get poo poo done.
2. We have a Steam group! Check the second post.
3. Each character you create is locked to a single server. No server-hopping. We're on Blackout.
Resources
- gently caress-off huge map with grids and labels and stuff; use it
- Type /loc in order to get your coordinates. The only ones that matter are X and Z, Y is elevation. Following are the coordinates of points of interest (X, Z), as recorded by goons. Going to be a bit before we get enough recorded for this to be useful.
Pleasant Valley police station (literally on the front steps): (-236, -1137)
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Old thread is here.
LuciferMorningstar f*cked around with this message at 01:55 on Feb 6, 2015
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