Tag: H1Z1

[Video] H1Z1 Outland First Impressions


Today’s video comes to us from H1Z1 on PS4, where Daybreak Game Company recently launched a new map. I take a dive in (literally) and see what it’s all about.

[Column] I Came Back To Call Daybreak A Dead Husk


Hey folks,

You may have heard comments down the grapevine that MMO Fallout is planning on a comeback of sorts, but right now I’d like to pick up the mantle to talk about how Daybreak Game Company is a dead company with a bare bones, barely functioning development team. They just don’t care anymore folks. How do I know they don’t care? Whoever wrote the patch notes couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the spell check and left numerous obvious errors in the final publication.

So what brings me back briefly from my vacation early to talk about a game that I specifically said that I would never talk about again? The launch of Season 4, or the last season that I expect Daybreak will launch for H1Z1. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room to really get you excited for what Daybreak has to offer this season: The company has gone and slashed the price of the season pass by 50% over last season. That’s right, for around the cost of a two cheeseburger value meal (#9) at your local McDonald’s, you can feel disappointed and ripped off.

That’s a joke, folks, McDonald’s value meals are far less disappointing.

And what do you get for your money? Jack-freaking-squat. Season 3 annoyed me into quitting H1Z1 because the challenges were stupid and mostly broken, as was free for all, but ultimately I stuck around to complete the season pass because it didn’t take long and there were a hell of a lot of cosmetics to be unlocked. By comparison, Season 4 offers one outfit split up over the course of the season as well as accompanying AK-47, M17, and crossbow skins to match. Eleven items total. The rest of the pass are coins (2,600 total) and experience boosts. Enough coins to buy one and a half rare skins.

  • Scrub M17 (Level 1)
  • Scrub Jacket (Level 1)
  • Scrub Skirt (Level 18)
  • Scrub Pants (Level 40)
  • Scrub Backpack (Level 55)
  • Scrub Offroader (Level 60)
  • Scrub Shoes (Level 65)
  • Scrub Armor (Level 80)
  • Scrub Crossbow (Level 90)
  • Scrub AK-47 (Level 100)
  • Scrub Watch (Level 100)

Eleven bleeding items total. Stamp missions have been completely removed from the game, as have daily login rewards. You do now have the privilege of occasionally finding locked chests that you can pay a discount in order to unlock (ala Team Fortress 2) and you’re in luck because there are now six rotating arcade modes.

Six rotating arcade modes for a game that can barely get people into its standard modes. I played a few rounds of arcade mode on launch day and found that Daybreak can just about break 40/100 players at peak hours on a week night. The arcade modes are all based around ideas that probably took a good half hour to program into the game, such as headshot damage only, faster run speed, ATVs only, and pistols/explosives only. And this update was delayed by a week! And the season only runs for 36 days this time around for reasons I can’t honestly comprehend.

As far as game updates go, H1Z1 Season 4 is the That 70’s Show Season 8 of video games. Topher Grace is gone and so is Ashton Kutcher. Instead we get Randy, a guy so hated by the audience that he doesn’t even show up on the cover of the season DVD set. At this point, I can only assume that Daybreak is in need of a big success like say DC Universe Online becoming a smash hit on the Switch, and by smash hit I of course mean the game releasing and making a lot of money as opposed to just getting a lot of people to download, notice that the game has major performance problems, and uninstalling before investing anything in the title.

Now it’s time to go back into my hole and read legal documents. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.

Diaries From H1Z1: I Walked 100 Levels, And I Won’t Walk 100 More


I promise this is my last piece about H1Z1 for a while, because I officially quit.

Last week I reached the promised land, the deluxe apartment in the sky if you will. I hit level 100 on the H1Z1 battle pass. That’s right, praise me for accomplishing in roughly two months what most of you likely finished by the end of week three. Gaze upon my mediocrity and be amazed for all the wrong reasons. I won’t be coming back.

I could go on for hours about how absolutely incompetent the H1Z1 team is, but I think anyone reading this wouldn’t be too surprised that the same company that has fumbled the ball so many times with H1Z1 and its other projects would do it again. For more information on my gripes, please refer to my last rant. In the time since I wrote that article a few weeks back, H1Z1 has not improved. In fact, it has managed to continue degrading. The shotgun is so stupidly overpowered that it can one-shot someone at full health wearing armor, while the crossbow was severely buffed with an EMP explosion that will knock out cars for an extended amount of time, do a lot of damage, and basically ruin your enjoyment of the game.

Last time around I complained a lot about challenges. Week 8 challenges sound like someone at Daybreak saw all of the complaints about the challenges being stupid and decided to ratchet it up to 11 just to spite the players. We have;

  • Place in the top 10 while having 10 first aid kits in your inventory in fives
  • Go to the hospital in map grid B7 and get 7 kills
  • Destroy 20 camping tents
  • Get 10 kills with the RPG-7, grenades, crossbow, or air strike signals
  • Parachute into Cranberry

Nothing says fun like ridiculously convoluted “challenges.”

These top Week 7 having only two depraved challenges being two kills within the orchard in map grid J2 within a single match and getting to the transmission tower at the top of Spence Hills while specifically driving a pickup truck. Parachuting into Cranberry is a lot harder when you have no control over where you start and the game has still refused to drop you in that area after all this time. Getting 7 kills in the hospital in B7 is difficult enough as it is, assuming that (1) B7 isn’t part of the area immediately or shortly thereafter covered by fog and (2) you can even find people in there. I’ll add in a (3) for good measure, that the game doesn’t bug out and actually tracks the kills.

The same goes for getting 10 kills with the explosive weapons, it wouldn’t be on the list were it not for Daybreak’s shoddy programming meaning the challenge is basically broken. Going back to prior challenges has shown multiple that by all means I should have achieved by now that are either not properly tracking or just flat out broken. Daily challenges similarly seem to be riddled with bugs and many of them can’t be completed. The game for some reason absolutely abhors recognizing the player performing emotes, I noticed it has started handing out ridiculous daily challenges like “destroy 99 chairs within Cranberry” which is just fantastic and isn’t a tedious chore.

And it seems like the population in H1Z1 is dying fast as the ratio of full games to not full games during what should be relatively peak hours is declining. I played a few fives matches on Saturday afternoon this past weekend where the game couldn’t grab more than 70 players before the match began. Played a few free for all matches that same day that weren’t even half-full (some were as low as 11 people). H1Z1 hasn’t hosted an arcade mode in a loooooong time. Lag in matches seems to be getting worse as the game goes on, as I have seen numerous rounds where I die because the person is literally teleporting around the screen and can’t be shot. It’s like playing old Quake on dial-up. Had this been on the PC, I’d suspect foul play. Since it’s on the Playstation 4, I’m fairly certain it is the game. Obviously these are all anecdotal and from my own perspective.

So I am officially washing my hands of H1Z1, and will start posting Diaries From articles for games that I am actually enjoying playing.

Daybreak Laid Off More People


Daybreak Game Company may be currently best known for their string of layoffs, and it appears that the pendulum is coming around again for another swipe.

The folks over at Massively OP noticed that multiple developers on the PC version of H1Z1, known lovingly as Z1 Battle Royale, are no longer with Daybreak and NantG. This includes Z1’s lead game designer who posted about the layoffs just a few hours ago. Massively OP was able to confirm via Twitter that Z1’s combat designer was also laid off, as well as the community representative.

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The move comes not even a week after NantG posted an announcement on its Twitter account that they are in planning mode and “discussing many things.”

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Neither the Daybreak Game Company or NantG Mobile have made an official statement. Perhaps ironically, Z1 Battle Royale has experienced a notable increase in players following a massive decline over the past year.

Source: MassivelyOP

 

Diaries From H1Z1: How Does It Get Continually Worse?


I want to talk about H1Z1 on the Playstation 4.

H1Z1 has become the Battle Royale of choice for me, partially because I have invested enough time and money ($20) into the game that I’d rather not start anew on another BR title and partially because I like the simplistic gameplay. I don’t have the reaction time to build and play Fortnite at a decent level and PUBG is a bit too much of a broken mess most of the time to keep my attention while Realm Royale’s player base was crashing hard. Plus my character looks like a total badass.

That said, I have to hand it to Daybreak for instituting the battle pass into H1Z1, because if it weren’t for the fact that I can log in a couple of times a week and churn out some decent ranks, I would have stopped playing out of frustration a long time ago.

It could be because the stamp missions in H1Z1 are broken beyond recognition. It only took five times entering and reentering the training grounds before the game recognized me picking up an AR weapon for the achievement, and after the third time I picked one up in solos for it to register that mission completed. While writing this article I spent the fifth match in which I used the “wave bye” emote three times during a match without it registering completion. What the game did register is me surviving to place in the top 15 in Fives which we didn’t (we placed in the top 20), me driving an ARV 1000 meters in any BR mode (I didn’t), placing in the top 15 without using bandages or first aid kits (I had used numerous), and one achievement I had actually accomplished in reviving a teammate and one for finishing three fives matches.

Free for all, to put it bluntly, sucks on ice. The Battle Royale engine that Daybreak has put together is clearly not built to house this many people in this close proximity on the Playstation 4. I play with the Playstation 4 Pro which is connected to an ethernet and sits within arm’s reach of my router, on a Verizon FiOS line running to the tune of 150mbps. I’m not humble bragging about my internet speed, I’m just pointing out the kind of connection I’m working with. At many times, H1Z1 Free for All gets such bad lag that the original Everquest has less character rubberbanding by comparison. There’s nothing that says engaging gameplay quite like pumping a full clip from an automatic weapon into someone at close range and having none of the shots register, only for the game to recognize that you actually died five seconds ago from a guy who was probably killed before he pulled the trigger.

And because the zone is so small and seemingly randomly placed, the spawn points are absolute trash. You’ll find yourself getting thrown into the wide open valley only to be immediately popped by the group of snipers that were already aiming in your direction. If not an open valley, you’ll be lucky to minimize the number of times that players will spawn in right in front of you, only to gun you down while still in an immune phase, or twenty feet behind you only to do the same. Get a good spot? Think again, because the random spawn system loaded you up with the worst weapons possible and screw you.

This of course assumes that the game properly loads itself while spawning you into the world, and doesn’t let you die while the loading screen is still up. This also assumes that the game grants you any immunity and doesn’t just let someone with a high powered sniper pop you in the head the second the loading screen does disappear. This assumes that the loading screen appears and doesn’t just leave you hanging as a spectator. This assumes that the game responds to your pressing X to respawn and doesn’t just ignore your controller. This assumes it doesn’t crash to the console dashboard. This assumes that it lets you bring your weapon out.

It’s incredible how the further H1Z1 gets away from launch, the more it seems to degrade in quality. Some stamp missions are broken, some weekly missions are broken, Free for All is broken, experience boosts seem to be broken, the master coins you get after completing the battle pass are (for some) broken.

Daybreak Announces H1Z1 Season 3: Beyond Royale


Daybreak Game Company today announced the third season of H1Z1 on Playstation 4. Dubbed Beyond Royale, the free expansion introduces a number of new features as well as a new 100-tier battle pass and various improvements to the quality of life for players.

Among the highlights, a new free for all deathmatch mode will pit 50 players against one another in a tight combat zone with respawning and a rotating arsenal of weaponry. The first player to 25 kills before the timer runs out wins. Joining the FFA deathmatch mode is a new leaderboard system that introduces ranks for singles, duos, groups, and tracks kills, matches played, and other statistics.

Season 3 battle pass features 100 levels and over 200 rewards, offering three tiers for free, paid, and PS+ members. Battle pass players will enjoy attendance rewards, additional challenges, and more this coming season.

Source: Daybreak Game Company press release.

Daybreak Game Company Hit With More Layoffs


Daybreak Game Company has decided to round out 2018 by laying off more employees, marking the second round for 2018 and one of many over the past few years. In a statement to Gamasutra, the developer referred to the layoffs as “optimizing our structure” to ensure continued success in the years to come. While Daybreak has not confirmed exact numbers, former head honcho John Smedley posted on Twitter that upwards of 70 people are now without jobs. Smedley has since deleted his tweet.

“We are optimizing our structure to ensure we best position ourselves for continued success in the years to come. This effort has required us to make some changes within the organization and we are doing everything we can to support those impacted in this difficult time. As we look to improve efficiencies and realign resources, we remain focused on supporting our existing games and development of our future titles.”

Ex-Daybreak employees have seen the usual outpouring of support that follows layoffs of this size, with open job offers from other developers oddly enough including NantG Mobile, the company headed by Jace Hall who MMO Fallout readers will recall is currently partnered with Daybreak and actively developing Z1 Battle Royale on PC.

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Source: Gamasutra

Daybreak: Just Kidding, We’re Working On Keeping Just Survive Online


Just Survive is shutting down this year, except it isn’t.

H1Z1 savior Jace Hall this week announced in a Twitch livestream that the less popular half of H1Z1 (or whatever it’s calling itself these days), otherwise known as Just Survive, will not be shutting down in October as originally planned. Last month we learned that Daybreak Game Company had received a sizable investment from NantG and that the PC version would be renamed Z1 Battle Royale and have its development taken over by a joint venture between Daybreak and NantG Mobile lead by Jace Hall himself.

At the time, Hall noted that NantG was unable to negotiate the transfer of Just Survive. Evidently that situation has changed since the original comment. Jace Hall noted in the livestream that discussions are still underway on the exact details of how Just Survive will continue, but it looks like it will become a mode within H1Z1.

“What that means is Just Survive will continue and our intention is to put it into a maintenance mode for a moment but then we want to work with the community over time and figure out the right way to re-integrate Just Survive as a mode inside of Z1. There’ll be a survival mode, you’ll see Just Survive.”

(Source: Twitch)

Daybreak To Transfer Development of H1Z1 PC To NantG Mobile, Be Renamed (Again!)


As part of today’s announcement that Daybreak Game Company has received a notable investment, the H1Z1 team has announced that the PC version of H1Z1 will be transferred over to the team at NantG Mobile lead by Jace Hall, Chairman of Twin Galaxies. As part of this changeover, H1Z1’s PC version will be renamed Z1 Battle Royale at some point in the future.

“Daybreak still maintains and controls design direction and publishing for H1Z1 on other platforms, and therefore it is likely that over time there will start to be significant differences between what Daybreak does with its versions as compared to what we are doing with ours. Having multiple versions, that are significantly different — with the same name is confusing, so eventually we’ll be formally renaming H1Z1 PC. I wanted to clarify this now so that the community isn’t surprised by this later.”
-Jace Hall

Today’s announcement also revealed that mobile versions of H1Z1 and Everquest are in the works.

(Source: H1Z1)

Just Defunct: Daybreak To Shut Down Early Access Just Survive


Daybreak Game Company has announced that Just Survive, formerly known as H1Z1, is to sunset on October 24 after three years of early access. In the announcement, Daybreak noted “we are no longer in a position to fulfill its greatness and the current population of the game makes it untenable to maintain.”

Just Survive was part of our first Early Access project, and we learned a great deal during its development. As with any open world game, the greatest stories came from our passionate players. From the incredibly skilled base builders to the free-ranging gangs, and all of the players named variations of “ImFriendly” and “PleaseDontShootMe”, we hope everyone had amazing adventures across Pleasant Valley and Badwater Canyon.

Originally launched into early access in January 2015, Just Survive released as H1Z1 before being split off into two products and renamed H1Z1: Just Survive and ultimately dropping the H1Z1 moniker altogether. All in-game purchases for Just Survive have been disabled.

In May, Daybreak thanked players for their continued support while laying out plans for the future of the title.

(Source: Daybreak)