I was perusing the net today, while I attempt to fight off a horrible cold that has every part of me aching, and I came across this article about the Day Z creator Dean Hall saying “I hope I implement alot of bad ideas. So that then, we know they are bad. Then we can remove them and move on. If we stick to safe idea’s, this isn’t going to become a great game”.
I wholeheartedly support this model of developing and I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in believing that it is a good way to go. In the past you’ve probably seen me implement several iterations of a feature, just to throw it out. Chest sizes come to mind. This was an incredibly controversial change for quite a while, but for a time it fit the idea that I had for inventory management in TFC. Eventually the Size/Weight system was dreamed up which ended up completely changing how I saw this aspect of the gameplay.
The initial chest nerf definitely helped to further the rest of the mod by allowing for a group conversation and mass testing of something that may never have otherwise been tried, and ultimately gave birth to a new system that is in my biased opinion far superior to vanilla even if its not entirely perfect.
So next time I add something that ends up being controversial, instead of perhaps straight up quitting TFC, take a step back and consider that we strive to give the best experience possible, that we DO listen to criticism and that we DO learn from our mistakes even if it takes time to find a solution.
Edit: Since it has become something of a repeated falsity in the comments let me clarify. The War Z is the game that ripped off the Arma 2 mod, Day Z. Some of the commentors seem to be under the impression that the reverse is true, and this could not be further from the truth. Please direct your hate elsewhere. Dean Hall deserves a lot of credit for the work he’s done.
Agreed that you absolutely need to take chances here. With a game as changable as MineCraft and a small loyal fanbase I think the situation is prime for some new and interesting directions. For example, I see a lot of implied hate for the prospector pick yet I believe it is one of those mechanics that many of us love. (Myself included). I also love the slow start of TFM, every challenge seems to have a reward but it’s not the 10 minute Vanilla survival experience of Wood-Coal-Iron and then a sudden switch to Creative mode.
Great mod, please feel free to change anything except your philosophy.
From a players perspective and bearing in mind that Mojang is meant to be a business, I think vanilla Minecraft’s ‘job’ is to supply a stable base platform that enables the modding community to take risks in terms of the gameplay. Total conversion mods, like TFC, show different perspectives of how Minecraft could have been and how it still could be.
I hope the best of Bioxx’s work can be incorporated into vanilla, for instance camp fires make more sense than furnaces, then these could be built on within the modding community.
And little posts like these keep everybody’s minds ticking over and with that being said it’s over to suggestions to see if an idea I’ve just had has been suggested before.
Thanks for your hard work and enjoy Christmas if that’s your thing.
>alot
i whole heartedly agree with your statement however i would like to caution you about using this particular game developer as a role model. steam has recently removed that particular game from its store due to a number of complaints and is offering refunds.
this particular developer worked on the game that got the lowest gamespot score ever. the game is called bigrigs.
that being said i LOVE your mod and wouldnt want anyone to be discouraged from playing because of a careless statement
You’re talking about The War Z, just so you know that is a different game and isn’t affiliated with Dean Hall at all. In fact it’s a blatant ripoff of his ideas and hard work in DayZ. Just Saying. Also the Big Rigs thing is The War Z developer, not Dean Hall. Don’t mix the two up.
“ripping-off” isn’t the problem, plenty of great games are built off of ideas from other games. The fact that it was released on steam charging 15 dollars for a game that’s about as glitchy and ugly as an alpha mod for ARMA 2 if not more, add on the fact that they have the audacity to put micro-transactions in a survival game, just makes WarZ a rip-off, as in its looking to rip off your money.
Booyah! Love it. Do whatever the heck you want to do; do the insane! You’ll hear if people don’t like it, and you’ll definitely hear if they love it. This is the kind of thinking that indie devs thrive on and make a living off of. Keep doing your thing on a great mod, Bioxx.
I would like to say ‘Fuck you’ just for mentioning DayZ.
You mean the guy who stole so much content from a different game, claimed to be working on it for decades while he’d only worked on it for 2 months total with his ‘team’?
give me a fucking break.
Day Z is the game content was stolen from, War Z is the game that did the stealing and was removed from steam.
WTF is with all the people that keep bad mouthing DayZ? DayZ are the good guys in the situation, always have been. The War Z is the game that stole from DayZ.
Bioxx, I have never once said “man, they’ve gone too far now”
In fact, I think you need to push back against anyone who does, you’ve proven it’s possible to make a game fun with features I heard people complaining would break Minecraft previously.
And even still do to this day.
Keep doing what you’re doing, and listen to us as little as possible and it’ll work out for the best!
Let me know when/if the dirt thing is reversed and I’ll happily come back and test. The amount of sheer hours it took to terraform something made the game totally unplayable for me and my playstyle.
Welcome to a real survival mode! If you would like to do something the easy way feel free to switch your gamemode to creative, as that is what creative mode is for but if you feel that you want to actually try to survive and play the amazing adventure of a game we already have, do so! And you want to be weak about it, feel free to leave but please don’t bitch on our website.
Oh, and have a merry holiday season!
You know, I did enjoy the community here when I was here, but this was the one thing that put me off.
Any time someone protested about ANYTHING, it was always, “Don’t like it? Don’t play.”
It’s a real bad attitude to have, especially when you want to be nasty AND hide behind an anon. Thanks for reminding me why I quit playing with others. Then quit altogether because playing alone is no fun and quite frankly, what server owner is going to give a person creative to fix the dirt? No one.
I’ve already posted my feelings about this on the forums. I LIKE a challenge, but I do feel that not every damn thing under the sun needs to be difficult. There’s a fine like between challenge and tediousness for everyone.
But the problem is everyone doesn’t have a problem, those of us who find these things enhance the game are rightfully upset when people suggest “your game is wrong, fix it”
It’s not, it works just fine, it isn’t for you and that’s OK, but it isn’t broken and in need of repair.
I NEVER said any of that nonsense. I never said, “Hey this is broke, fix it.”
I said, “If this is reverted. Give me a call.” I stated why. That is all. It’s not a complaint, simply a statement that it was a change that I couldn’t overcome.
I enjoy this mod. I would not have come back to comment if I hated it.
Good post, though I think you’ve also got to be careful that you don’t interpret features as ‘bad’ just because the playerbase thinks they’re too hard. I don’t know the particulars of your chest changes (since it sounds like you got rid of them?) but more difficult/restrictive inventory would be GREAT for this game, it would just piss a lot of people off because they’re used to storing a cubic kilometer pocket dimension inside themselves for their inventory and chests. Make it so you can only carry a couple of large tools like rl, make it so a two cubic meter chest can only carry two cubic meters of gear, make it so that you can’t carry around more than one cubic meter block of world materials at one time, and none at all in your inventory, all of these things would be FANTASTIC for gameplay, making it even slower, requiring more cooperation, adding more strategy/planning necessity to base design, but it would absolutely piss off most of the minecraft playerbase. Still, I think most once they get used to features that introduce a new level of difficulty will come to appreciate them when they realize how much more satisfying are creations that don’t just fall into your lap.
And a big lol to all the people talking about DayZ being the ripoff, though honestly I think they’re just mixing up the names. I haven’t played it because my computer sucks donkey balls, but I’ve watched thousands of hours of let’s plays it seems like, and it’s a fantastic looking mod. And WarZ, on the other hand, looks absolutely craptastic, like a poorly thought out mod itself, and a mod of a decade old b-grade shooter at that.
To throw my two cents in, I’ll agree with Bioxx that DayZ is an awesome concept that’s going to end up being an amazing game, no matter how long that ends up taking. The War Z, however, was a blatant ripoff of DayZ that made a lot of falsified claims, suckered a lot of people into buying it, and then fleeced as many people for cash as it possibly could until Steam yanked it from the shelves and their copyright was revoked (which the lead developer still denies) due to an infringement claim from Paramount.
DayZ is still in alpha. Yes, it’s buggy as hell, but it’s free, and it’s nowhere near done. The devs fully admit to this, and strive forward to clear up the bugs, add new content, remove the content that ends up being hated by the community they’re developing for, and eventually publish probably one of the most awesome zombie survival games of all time. The War Z lied about how long they’d been in development, chose a similar name to confuse the audience, and then promptly ripped them off with a game that was so unfinished calling it an alpha would be a compliment.
Don’t confuse the two, and don’t hate on DayZ. There’s a huge difference between a mod for a game that’s still in development and going through growing pains, and a flat-out copycat cashgrab.