DayZ - Console worth it?

It is a free to play game. Unless you're willing to invest a bit into microtransactions expect to have a pretty shitty time getting destroyed by those who do.

Seems like it's getting a lot better though. I've been meaning to setup a private server to start playing on to get used to the mechanics again

I play on PS5.

The last hotfix...I think it was 1.49 or 1.51 maybe?...created a terrible problem driving vehicles. The game will randomly freeze anywhere from a few seconds to upwards of 5 minutes, resulting in crashing the vehicle, destroying it and sometimes killing you. My understanding is they changed something with how objects and zeds are rendered/spawned in and it's causing massive hard freezes traveling quickly. I've even froze a couple times while sprinting in Vybor (big town, lots of zeds and buildings). When I unfroze, I was unconscious from zeds smacking me while I was frozen helpless.

Everything else is really great. Just either don't use vehicles or drive them painfully slow and get killed by other players as you cruise at 15 kph. On foot, stop a bit before going into a big town or city and let the game spawn stuff in, then go loot.

ETA: problem also exists on XBox, but not sure it's as bad.

It has a steep and punishing learning curve. If you're not dying a lot, you're doing it wrong

Spawn in, get to nearby coastal town, find food, water, melee weapon, gun if you're lucky, earm clothing and get inland as quickly as possible. Learning the map is huge. Izurvive map app is a great resource for getting around and finding loot.

Easier said than done. If someone is on PlayStation, hit me up and I'll help ya. I switch between community and offical servers. GT is OutlawNfl

I have been playing on PS5.

Used to play a lot on PC but my rig just needs an upgrading. A guy I used to play the game with sold a GPU from under my feet. He was a real dick and a terrible dayz player…so probably for the best.

He once made a terrible call out in the NW Airfield and it caused me to run off a building and die in what was going to be my crowing Dayz moment. Instead he posted the clip to YouTube and now I look like a fool.

Anyways. I could go on for dayz about stories of this fool but It’s like a bat signal to him. He would just come in the thread and drop a single laughing smile face and then roll out.

Anyways…back to playing on the PS5.

Not bad. Been trying to kill off my character for like a week now and this fricker won’t die. Cross an open airfield..don’t care. Eat dog food..don’t care. Run through towns beating zombies to death with a bat…don’t care.

Controller looting isn’t thaaaatttt bad. Fire fights…different story. I suspect anyone playing on PC will have a significant advantage.

It really depends on the server and what you want out of it. That's what I enjoy about it. DayZ can be anything.

On official servers, it's almost always going to be a solo grind experience unless you already have a friend going in. If it's a pretty populated server, you're going to die over and over. Loot is more scarce and if you do manage to get semi-geared, someone's going to kill you and you're back to square one. This kind of play style is for the it's-the-journey-not-the-destination crowd. You cannot play with gear fear because you will play too passively and it'll get boring.

I jumped in an official the other day, got lucky with some decent gear and got to Dolina on my way to Gorka. A dude ran in front of me in the woods, didn't see me. I squat behind a tree and watched. He was putting stuff in his hidden stash. I called out as his buddy arrived with "friendly friendly". We chatted. One dude was from Jacksonville, seemed nice. Other wasn't talkative. I offered to move on and go my own way. I could have capped them both, but didn't. As we said goodbye, his buddy started shooting me. Knocked me uncon. When I woke, the Florida dude was yelling "why? why?" and i was like "really, man?" Shot me again and I'm on the coast, 3 hours of work toast all because I tried being friendly.

But I loved it happened. That's how it goes. Got a funny story of semi-betrayal and a lesson learned. I found them yesterday and sniped the ahole with a mosin. Surrendered to the FL dude who apologized for his pal killing me. I said no prob, suicicded so he could take my loot and started over. He knew his friend deserved a trip to the coast.

Community servers come in all flavors. Some are strictly PVE only...good to get used to mechanics of the game. Some are a combination of PVP/E with extra loot, vehicles, less harsh weather, more/less zombies, emphasis on base building, etc. Just gotta find what you're looking for.

My advice: join populated servers. Yep, you'll die a lot. You'll also learn more much faster than jerking around an empty server for weeks. I'd rather die 100 times than stay alive for 2 weeks on a dead, easy-mode server.

I'm on PS, otherwise you could join me and my buds. We play all styles of servers.

Yeah, in the search bar of the community tab, type in Discord. All community servers with a discord link will pop up. Join their discord and talk to the people there. Find out if it's to your liking. Might have to search a while to find one you're comfortable with, but it's the best way to find a more talkative group that might be willing to team with you.

ETA - The good community servers usually have a description of gameplay right in their title like "JZ 24/7 PVP 10XLOOT WEEKEND RAIDS" Their detailed rules and game mechanics wilk be on their discord.

Official is 99.9% solo kill-on-sight unless you get very lucky.