Day Z Update Probably The Cruelest Yet?
Having taken over a week's break from playing Day Z - too much else to play! - I'm yearning to go back and examine the changes wrought by the 1.7.1 update, which makes some of the boldest changes to the mod so far. Let's take a look...
The biggest change? Taking away the starting weapon. Yes, you don't even get the lowly Makarov pistol in your starting inventory. The tradeoff is that you do get a Flashlight, so at least you might be able to see your enemies before they kill you in the dark.
And they're more likely to kill you, too. Zombies can no longer see through walls, but they can see further and hit harder, so you are more likely than ever to be horrible mauled by the undead. This seems like it will be the most controversial change. It's always been possible to pick up a new weapon pretty quickly, but that this update now makes it harder to crawl past zombies to get to the stuff you need, which is causing a lot of forum grumbling.
However, there's also now an option for melee combat. Previously there was no option for this, and despite being able to pick up a knife and a hatchet, they were only good for chopping trees and gutting animals respectively. Now the hatchet can be used offensively, and there's also a crowbar for Gordon-like zombie-fending.
Rocket has also added five seconds of persistence for characters in the world on logging out. Which means people who quit the moment they encountered a hostile are still likely to die. Still no fix for this sort of behaviour, however.
Right, yeah, fuck this blogging lark, I'm going back in...
