Apothecary tries DayZRP

Joining DayZRP was a mistake, a very bad mistake. It was a dumb moment which led me to feel obligated to play a game through blood, sweat and tears for nothing in return other than anguish. This mistake is only comparable to me requesting the chance to review Umbrella Corps.

To understand, DayZ itself is a game based from the modification for Arma 2. Whilst the standalone game is still in development, it has been met with harsh criticism and plenty of abuse due to the various bugs that seem to plague the entire game, such as vanishing bullets, weapons suddenly vanishing from your hands and zombies occasionally being unable to pathfind a way to you despite the fact you are merely waving at them from down the street. None of this is assisted by the fact that the original developer scarpered to make his own game (for those that have VR they should very much consider getting his latest game Out of Ammo, it's incredible!). The sole purpose of DayZ is to survive, nothing else, just survive. Try to avoid the mouths of the wobbly zombie AI and the scopes of the aggressive and kill hungry player base.

After hours of being the victim of the standard KOS (kill on sight) mentality of the DayZ player base, I thought that DayZRP would be a pleasant break from it all. A chance to really progress, develop a character and story without having to worry too much about getting randomly slaughtered.

Boy was I wrong.

 

Whilst it is true that I died less frequently and even managed to get my hands on assault rifles from time to time, all of it was for nothing. If you don’t have a group, you don’t survive on DayZRP. On the flip side if something goes wrong for a large group; be it a robbery, a hostage situation or even just a simple discussion about the weather; the ban hammer will crash through the sky in a mighty roar of thunder and slam onto the unsuspecting victim below who was simply minding their own business. There is only one protection against the ban-hammer, only one way you save yourself from its god-like wrath and that's by filming everything. Non-stop, just record your entire gameplay so that when someone does eventually make a ban report against you, you can protect yourself.

In the month I played on that server I went through no less than 30 travelling buddies, half of them were banned and the other half raged quit from the constant robberies that took place. Afterall, when you have the best gear, you might as well take everyone else’s as well. Whilst it was technically against the rules to 30 second rob people, that didn’t stop it from being a common occurance so despite the fact I died very infrequently it felt like I had to start from scratch almost every day, on weekends it felt like that every hour! Constant robberies and constant demands for me to put my hands up, even the occasional OOC threat that if I didn’t do what they told me to do they would get me banned.

Even if you join a group you have to watch your back, if not more. Whilst you are more unlikely to get a ban report put up against you by a random person if you join a group, other groups will occasionally actively seek to get you banned. I am aware of one situation where one of my comrades in arms had a ban report against him when he didn’t value his life by fighting back in a robbery, said robbery was staged in a such a way that he could only see the one person but the person who initiated the robbery could see multiple others surrounding my friend. Of course, he was banned in less than 24 hours which I personally found ridiculous.

Some people might argue with me on these points, saying that I am just agitated about the community and that it's my personal experience. Whilst this is true, I found my time there to be horrific and stressful, often causing me to sigh as I sat down at my computer and slam my head against the table as I booted up DayZ. You should be aware that I am not alone in that state of mind, other YouTubers who used to record their footage of DayZRP have also started to feel the same way as I have. With multiple ban reports going up against then from video footage taken straight from their YouTube video, even if it is days or sometimes weeks past the event!

DayZ is an infuriating challenge, but at least you know you can fight back if someone starts shooting at you. DayZRP is a bit more intense and when someone starts shooting at you, you don’t first work out if you will win the fight or not, you work out if you will be banned if you shoot back or not.

In short, DayZRP is a highly competitive community where people are more than willing to betray each other and set each other up to get banned, the admins are undoubtedly overwhelmed by the amount of new people that have been constantly joining in hopes of encountering their beloved YouTube stars that occasionally play on the server and whilst you may think, “Oh I am sure its just the new people that post all the ban reports against each other.” I should mention that friends of three years have posted reports against each other, I should know as I was there when one such event occurred, friendships are cast aside on a regular basis and the mentality of “Well if I can’t beat them, I can always get them banned.” is prevalent in the majority of the playerbase.

In short, whilst it sounds like a great idea DayZRP will simply result in you spending half your time checking the report section to make sure no one is attempting to get you banned and watching your hard drive slowly fill from the sheer amount of gameplay footage you keep to defend yourself against accusations.