The DayZ Mod Has An Untouchable Legacy
This is for people who want to reminisce on one of gamings greatest experiences.
Survival games will never be the same
The reason behind survival games looking and playing the way they do today comes down to a few iconic and influential games that laid some pretty solid foundations. In my mind there are three games most responsible for the trends in survival games today. These are the DayZ Mod, Legacy Rust and Minecraft. All three of these games popularised their own unique mechanics. The DayZ Mod was responsible for the influx of zombie survival games, Legacy Rust introduced people to the wonders of base building and Minecraft focused on creative building and community creations. While the survival genre has been iterated on time and time again, the king, in my humble opinion, was and remains the DayZ Mod.
Identity struggles
For a mod, DayZ had a great overall concept and decent execution and for a game that was released over a decade ago, its objective design has aged surprisingly well in the face of survival trends today. All credit goes to Dean “Rocket” Hall for masterminding one of the most important games of all time and forever shifting a massive part of the video game industry. This objectively fantastic design manifests itself mostly in the DayZ Mod’s persistence towards simplicity. Simplicity is where we started with the aforementioned games; simple ideas, simple execution, simple problems and simple solutions. Overtime, with the continuous development of the survival genre, we’ve lost that simplicity, the simplicity that makes games like the DayZ Mod accessible, the simplicity that allows you to enjoy what the game has to offer without being slowly drowned to death by frustrating or annoying mechanics that have been shoved into the game in the name of “realism”. In this pursuit of realistic mechanics, instead of captivating the player, you’ve instead inundated them with tasks, challenges and ideas that either delay or completely halt them from experiencing the game at its absolute best. At this point it should be pretty obvious that I’m directly comparing the mod and the standalone game. Whereas the mod was quite simple, the Standalone is much more complex, leaning further into realism than its predecessor.
I passionately prefer the simplistic approach, simply because I’m actually able to experience the game at its best as often as possible. Though I do want to clarify before I make any enemies that complexity isn’t a bad thing and its implementation within the Standalone will encapsulate the experience some players are looking for. Bohemia Interactive set out to make a hardcore survival game and they’ve succeeded, you can not deny that. However, for DayZ as a game and if the leaked Microsoft court documents are correct about a DayZ 2, then DayZ as a franchise, I feel like it’s going to be much better off simplifying gameplay as a means to focus on what made the mod incredibly special, player interaction and high stakes PvP. This is what DayZ has always been about to me. Back before Overpoch was a thing, before traders and safe zones, you actually had things to lose. High stakes PvP was high stakes because you had investment in your character but traders, starting kits, easy loot and AI missions completely remove any risk involved with playing DayZ. When you can just go to a safe zone and buy another gun then there’s no reason to care about your life or what you’ve accomplished. We ended the DayZ Mod’s reign in this Overpoch era so why do you think the standalone was such a disappointment when it was released into early access? People were just coming off high-octane mods like Overpoch where the actual survival experience almost didn’t exist. It was all about PvP, AI missions, traders and militarised vehicles. Then the Standalone dropped and people had to worry about all these menial mechanics that it’s no wonder people went straight back to the mod. Not only was the simplicity gone with the Standalone but PvP had to be put on the back-burner. Luckily, at the time the DayZ Standalone was released, members of the community were still hard at work iterating on the mod, creating new maps and experiences to compensate for the Standalone’s lacklustre release.
The DayZ Mod and most of its iterations remain the most pure, immersive and invigorating gaming experiences I’ve ever had. If you loved the DayZ Mod, if you’ve never played the DayZ Mod or if you play DayZ now but weren’t around for the mod, let’s go on a journey of appreciation, sprinkling in some game design talk and comparison to spice things up.
Simplicity at its finest
As mentioned previously, the Standalone elaborated on the survival mechanics established in the mod and even added entirely new systems designed around challenging the player and providing a level of immersion not entirely established in the survival genre before. The details in player to player interaction and player to environment interaction are sometimes astonishing and I will always give Bohemia credit for the work they’ve done and while it fits in the current DayZ context, I don’t think it at all fits in the context of what made the DayZ Mod incredible to begin with.
The player status and medical systems present in the mod were not at all complex and the problems that arose with your character’s health had very simple solutions. Broken leg? Morphine. Screen shaking? Painkillers. Need blood? Blood bag. In later iterations you could even administer blood to yourself. That said, the DayZ Mod didn’t shy away from punishing mechanics. If you broke your leg during combat or out in the wild, morphine was a necessity and if you didn’t have any… good luck. The reason I love the entire health system from the mod is because it was so simple, never did I have to mess around in my bag or take a detour from my plans. When I made a mistake I paid the consequences and wasn’t pulled out of the experience. The intricate detail of the current DayZ experience always feels like it’s there to take you out of the game, distract you with all these requirements or headaches and delay you from getting to the good parts. This was never really an issue in the mod and that’s because the systems you needed to navigate were easy to understand. Everything from the medical system, loot spawns, zombie AI and weapons down to the operation of vehicles and how to fix them; it was all like riding a bike. All these systems were easily navigable and served their purposes well. The DayZ Mod also had some unintentionally fantastic quality of life mechanics, mostly down to the ArmA 2 framework it was supported by. Things like not having to load magazines individually, instead, they came with all their ammo because that’s how ArmA 2 does it. ArmA 2 gave everyone unlimited stamina and having unlimited stamina in the mod is what made exploration so effective. I never had to worry about running out of stamina which allowed me to focus on the good parts. This was what the mod excelled at, whether through intentional design or inherent mechanics within the ArmA engine, the mod constantly allowed you to go out and experience everything it had to offer without slowing you down and I truly believe this approach is what made it so easy to get lost in the DayZ Mod.
The most pure and rewarding progression
Oarynce you’ve scavenged your way through coastal buildings or maybe been lucky enough to spawn at one of the bigger coastal cities, it’s finally time to head inland where the higher quality loot spawns. Experienced players of the DayZ Mod will have routes they generally like to take with deer stands and castles all acting as pit stops on the way to what was most likely Stary Sobor. The allure of moving inland was the promise of more loot not entirely available on the coast, like getting a lucky DMR in a deer stand or finding an upgrade to your shotgun lying in one of the military tents at Stary. The feeling of getting a rarer weapon or finding a GPS, night vision goggles or a rangefinder is one of pure elation. This is a positive feedback loop; player moves inland, player risks death, player finds upgrades. Simple to understand yet effective. You make the trek north just to risk life and limb running into multiple sniper’s scopes to duck into the North West Airfield barracks hoping for a reward. And, the great thing about the mod is that you get to keep that reward for the entirety of that character’s life with no strings attached. This is why I categorically despise the durability system in the DayZ Standalone. Now to be fair, I hate durability in most games, I think it cheapens the stakes and is more frustrating than anything, it’s like a ticking time-bomb in the back of your mind. In the DayZ Standalone context it’s not necessarily there to discourage PvP but it certainly does that. Shooting your weapon ruins its durability, shooting other players to get their loot unfortunately then damages their loot. I can not tell you how much I loathe this system. It is the antithesis of how the mod handled it. There is no durability in the mod, when you earn that reward, you get to keep it. No upkeep, no maintenance you earned it. You took the chance to run into a high loot area so you get to keep this reward for your efforts. You took down that player you spent 30 minutes slowly stalking, so here, have an upgrade to your weapon. This is how I like it. I understand its implementation in the Standalone but it just feels wrong. It feels wrong to have such a bittersweet feeling when rewarded for your actions. The macro concept behind DayZ’s looting system is perfect and I just can’t help but think giving items a durability only taints it. The way the mod handled progression remains one of the simplest and most effective methods I’ve seen in gaming. Placing the best loot deeper inland forces players to go on journies, it forces players to engage with every aspect of the game. Chernarus wasn’t designed around this concept but it carried out the progression system like an absolute champion despite that fact. I could spend hours talking about how much I love the ideas behind risk and reward in all versions of DayZ.
Community iteration was the backbone of the Mod’s success
The DayZ community remains one of the most committed I’ve seen and this strength is what kept the mod alive all those years, even after the standalone was released into early access. It felt like every single month there was a new map or new version of the DayZ mod coming out. It was truly a magical time. Weapons, maps, mechanics, vehicles, enemies, weather effects and a whole lot more were introduced through these new maps and mods. Constant community iteration was core to the lifespan of the DayZ Mod. I could talk for hours about each of these iterations because so many of them did an incredible job at taking what made the vanilla DayZ experience great and building upon it. Very rarely, if ever, did you see mods come along that looked to alter the core gameplay so much that it ruined it. Rummaging through a list of mods that came out for DayZ took me on a trip down memory lane, reigniting memories that had been dormant for years of the adventures these versions took me and my friends on. The feeling of hopping into a new adventure was one of the most enticing I’ve felt. I remember my first time on Namalsk, my first time on Panthera, my first time playing Breaking Point, all awesome moments that I’ll remember for just how captivated I was. In fact, community iteration is exactly what’s helping maintain the DayZ Standalone today. As you can guess, I’m not the biggest fan of the direction the DayZ Standalone has been taken in and the abundance of modded community servers is testament that a large group of people feel the same way. Thankfully there are people out there who remember the mod and what it was like and are happy to pump up the loot and give players unlimited stamina. Without the community, without new maps and mods constantly coming out for DayZ, it wouldn’t be dead, but it definitely wouldn’t be as healthy as it is today.
Comradery
Now is probably a good time to mention just how important the DayZ Mod was to my social life. Scarcely does a game come along that offers to introduce you to new people and solidify friendships. DayZ is an experience as much as it is a game and when you ventured into the mod with friends, there was no way you weren’t coming out the other side with a stronger bond. Some of my best friends are exactly that, best friends, because of the time we spent succeeding and the time we spent struggling in the DayZ Mod. Many of you will have had similar experiences to me, if not with the DayZ Mod, then with other games that fostered relationships in ways we will never forget. I’m thankful to the DayZ Mod for many, many reasons but this is by far the most important. It’s crazy how a simple modification to a military simulator can have such a profound effect on peoples’ lives, I even teared up a little bit thinking back while writing this.
The most exhilerating PvP in any video game
In both forms of DayZ, you start your story on the coast, quickly looting scraps from the larger cities or towns on the coast with the ultimate goal of heading inland when the timing is right. From the moment you spawn and start to accumulate resources, you’re raising the value of your life. But with each piece of gear you pick up and with each minute that passes, the stakes are risen. Your attachment to not only the gear you’ve acquired but also the time you’ve spent on that life is why player versus player combat is as exhilarating as it is in DayZ, it’s why no single game has even come close to the feeling that DayZ can provide when everything is on the line. Escape From Tarkov comes close to a different type of nervousness during PvP but with Tarkov there’s a safety net. The combat anxiety in Tarkov is more akin to competitive play, it’s the type of feeling you get during an intense clutch scenario in your favourite competitive game. DayZ on the other hand provides an amalgamation of emotions you can not experience in any other game and I will stand by that statement. Your gear is on the line, the time you’ve spent accumulating that gear is on the line, your character’s future is on the line and where DayZ separates itself from its competitors is that your story is also on the line. The people you’ve met, the struggles you’ve been through or the things you’ve seen. All of that is what you are fighting for when put up against another player in a fight for your life.
One of the greatest things about combat in both versions of DayZ is where it occurs. The North West Airfield is an iconic survival game location, owing to it being a PvP playground and where the highest tier loot resided in the DayZ Mod. However, my favourite encounters with other players always played out in fields or treelines. This is where true experience and ingenuity come into play and I thrived in these scenarios. Using all of my experience and a couple really solid rules I had made for myself to overcome even the most difficult of fights. One I distinctly remember occurred just outside Green Mountain in the surrounding treelines. A friend of mine and I found ourselves outnumbered by 3 or 4 guys patrolling the treeline I was in at the time. Somewhere along the way my friend ended up getting killed by them and so it was left to me, alone. One by one they moved down the treeline, closer and closer to me, trying to finish me off. But the same order they arrived on my screen, is the same order I took them out. Running in and out of trees, pushing forwards and backwards, remaining silent or going gung-ho, finally they were all dead and I could scoop up my hard earned rewards and save my friends gear. I remember this moment being significant in my development as a player because I was so supremely confident in my ability to win the fight despite being clearly outnumbered. This remains a moment I look back on with extreme fondness as I truly believe it changed how I perceive taking fights with other players in any competitive shooter. Confidence and experience are king.
A tangible effect on how I play other games
The way I played the DayZ Mod is now exactly the way I play other third-person shooters or similar games to this day. The rules of engagement built over thousands of hours of playing the mod have been transferred to every other game that’s even remotely similar or that requires similar strategy. When I start playing a new survival game, it’s instinctual to play exactly like I did back then, take the same approaches, view combat the same way, prioritise positioning the same way and more. Treelines will forever be safe havens for me to use as highways from one destination to another, open spaces are a no go and alt-looking while running is permanently ingrained in my brain as a habit. These are tangible effects but the impact of the mod wasn’t just physical, it was emotional. It might sound cheesy but playing the DayZ Mod teaches you the value of storytelling. It teaches you to value the little things, take pride in your accomplishments and savour the good moments. Because of these lessons it’s hard for me to enter into similar games without the lust for a great journey with some emotionality involved. Even when I was playing Legacy Rust I would attach myself to a specific base and use that to gauge the journey I was on. The mod’s effect on my approach to video games is incomprehensible but undoubtedly important. If The Day Before is exactly what they’re marketing it to be then you can guarantee I will approach it the same way; embarking on fantastic adventures and playing it exactly the way I did the DayZ Mod.
I can rave all I want but it’s impossible to praise every aspect
I wanted to make this to articulate the impact of the DayZ Mod but while writing I discovered it would be impossible to do just that. Despite the Mod’s simplicity, its many iterations and millions of players means that while I experienced it one way, someone else experienced it another. I have a friend who was much more interested in Overpoch and full on PvP rather than the journey of survival. While I might do my best to invalidate that interest by spouting about how “No! You just love ArmA and not DayZ! DayZ is different!” or whatever bullshit I come up with. What he loved was still DayZ, it was just a different version and he looks back on that as fondly as I do with what I loved about the mod.
DayZ’s impact is unfathomable and without it I would not be the same person I am today and the gaming landscape as we know it would not look like it does, especially in the survival genre.
The biggest takeaway from this trip down memory lane for me personally is the effectiveness of simplicity. Studios today are trying their absolute hardest to push graphical fidelity further, deepen mechanics across the board and complicate design elements for no reason when one of the best approaches for engagement is simplicity. I believe there is a huge opportunity for a hardcore survival game with smooth, clean, simple mechanics to come out and dominate. If you can successfully modernise the concept of the DayZ Mod for a new audience, keeping its key principles and ideas then I think you could easily set the gaming world on fire once more.
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