DayZ Status Report - 29 July 2015

Evening survivors, 

For this week's Status Report, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be informing us on what the team has been working on for the upcoming update on Stable branch. In this regard he'll go over subjects such as the loot distribution and persistence. 

Contents This Week

• Development Board Spotlight 
• Dev Update/Hicks 
• Community Video: I'M HUNTING

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com] 

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors! 

The team has been crunching away on our last blockers for stable release, as well as working on values for loot distribution. Tomorrow morning we should see our (hopeful) final experimental release hit Steam, which will be tested over the weekend. Assuming we notice no new issues, we're hoping to hit stable branch on Monday or Tuesday next week. 

The only issue we currently see as a blocker on experimental (0.58.128852) is visually represented as "floating loot" currently caused by an issue with items that have been "swapped" by players. (Most commonly seen as loot floating above deer stands, police stations, etc). As mentioned above, tomorrow should see an experimental push that will see this resolved - and this build will be tested over the weekend to see its viability for Stable Branch. 



While this fix has been underway, we've been dialing in the balance for non perishable food, firearms, and military loot. Currently, the highest quantity and priority in the economy is given to non perishable food goods. (Tuna, Beans, Rice, etc). With civilian pistols being the most common firearm, followed by civilian rifles such as the trumpet, blaze, IZH43 Shotgun, and so on. Military loot is distributed across all military points across the map, mostly of which are up in the Northern areas. Military grade firearms are relatively rare, and there is no guarantee that visiting the military bases will yield you the weapon you want. With most items on a 30 minute timer (without being "refreshed" by being manipulated by players) - getting fully kitted up as a "military" player with all the gear you want could take some time. 

Super Rare items (M4A1, Steyr Aug, SVD, and so on) that spawn on dynamic events operate on an even rarer chance. Dynamic events have a varied pool of potential items that can spawn, with only 3 active helicopter wrecks at any given time - and an approximate 4 hour clean up, continued hunting will be required to find that super rare weapon or item you are seeking. 
Please keep in mind, we are now fully able to update quantities and rarity without requiring an update - so if we should see issues with loot concentration, or quantity once .58 hits stable branch, we will be able to address this rapidly. 


Fortunately, players can now create camps and store their supplies and weapons at them during their treks across Chernarus. Different containers / objects have different lifetimes. Currently, they operate as follows: 

- Medium Tent (Pitched): 45 Days 
- Military Tent (Pitched): 45 Days 
- Car Tent (Pitched): 45 Days 
- Barrels: 45 Days 
- Ammo Boxes: 45 Days 
- Protector Cases: 45 Days 
- Backpacks (All types): 3 Days 

Current functionality on experimental does not allow for refreshing the lifetime of an object without picking it up, so tents and barrels were set to a lifetime that will cover the time to .59 + some safety room in case of .59 stable blockers. Once .59 is pushed to stable, we will support the refresh of a base objects lifetime via interacting with it (moving, placing, picking up any item inside it) - which will operate as follows: 

- Medium Tent (Pitched): 7 Days 
- Military Tent (Pitched): 7 Days 
- Car Tent (Pitched): 7 Days 
- Barrels: 7 Days 
- Ammo Boxes: 7 Days 
- Protector Cases: 7 Days 
- Backpacks (All types): 3 Days 

This system will also allow for the refreshing of advanced basebuilding objects, once they are implemented. 
Speaking of advanced base building - I'll be speaking at RTX 2015 in Austin, Texas on Saturday, August 8th at 5:30 PM to discuss a recap of things covered at E3 2015, what we'd like to do with advanced base building, what soft skills means exactly, and show the new vehicles coming in 0.59. For those unable to make it, we'll be providing the presentation + audio in the Status Report following the event (Wednesday, August 12th). 

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer 

Community Video: I'M HUNTING

Hey survivors, 

While looking for some videos of players doing some hunting and fishing while living the hermit lifestyle in Chernarus, I came across a video simply called "I'M HUNTING". I could see in the description that it was probably not exactly what I was looking for, but I decided to give it a go just the same. Sure enough, the content didn't disappoint. In the video we get to see a glimpse of the unjust killing of a freshspawn and the subsequent hunt and sweet, sweet revenge towards the end. 

The video was brought to us by the following content creator: Musse Plays 

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery[forums.dayzgame.com] section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look. 

Header image credit: Jack Smith 

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

Source : http://steamcommunity.com/games/221100/announcements/detail/101680812176197368