I doubt this thing moved from the top sellers spot even during this steam sale
Mortal Kombat knocked it out of #1 for a day or so and then it shot back up to #1.
It's not that I don't get the appeal in either case. It's that the appeal would be relatively short lived in each case because goal less games for me wear out pretty easy. The same issue for me exists in something like GTA Online. Fucking around in an open world is fun for a period but after a while I would just burn out on the experience. At least something like GTA Online has structured game event playlists to provide some direction and context and order. (although the implementation there is terrible imo)
The closest I've ever come to liking something akin to this experience would be Test Drive Unlimited but at least that experience was consistently a racing game that lent itself more to the concept.
An open world zombie experience where people band together to survive sounds really cool. I imagine it playing out something like State of Decay but when I watch Day Z it never looks like State of Decay. It instead looks like a fps set in an open world in a free for all. The community and survival aspects interest me a lot more than just shooting random people in the face for their loot.
edit: Which is not to say there is anything wrong with Day Z in its current format for a lot of people which sales and fan interest indicate. Just for me I want something else.
Nailed it, I expected:
DayZ is a really hard game to pitch someone. You either fall in love with it instantly or you can't stand it. I think one of the biggest misconceptions about DayZ is that it's a zombie game. It isn't. It is a survival game that happens to have zombies in it. The zombies make getting items relatively difficult and can make a fight with other survivors harder, but they aren't the main issue. They're minor deterrents in a game that's about surviving what everyone else may throw your way. Eventually, it'll be about territory control and large-scale battles. Think of it like the battle of the prison in The Walking Dead.
Which really, is the biggest shame. If the Zombie AI was fixed and zombies were an actual threat... maybe the game would have a slightly different dynamic from "FPS in a huge map with 'zombies' included." But it doesn't.
And like Stoney says, that doesn't mean it's a terrible game. Obviously it isn't because there's a community forming around that aspect.
But for me, the potential to have people working together to survive a bigger threat (zombies) in addition to a real threat (themselves and others) would be so much better than it is now. If I wanted to shoot people in the Arma 2 engine, I could... just... boot up Arma 2 and load a server and do that right now in a custom mission, you know?
I'm kinda hoping that as the game evolves (since I bought into the stand-alone despite having the mod...) it reaches that potential to where it becomes more than that in regards to the zombies and actually
surviving against dangerous enemies of zombies AND human players, but as it is right now? Zombies are just a nuisance to mostly avoid unless they suddenly flick their hyper-active switch on and attempt to attack you. Otherwise shoot the other human players before they shoot you.