How Long Can DayZ Survivors Hold Out?

Written by: Jason Winter (@winterinformal) | June 25, 2012 6:00 am

66 Comments

Welcome to Over/Under, where you, the GAMEBREAKER fans, get to show off your prognostic powers and see if you can outguess the staff or even the people who make games themselves!

The rules are simple: We’ll offer you a quantifiable number, or perhaps a date and ask you to predict whether the answer will be over or under our stated value.

Then, when we know the answer — typically within a few weeks or months — we’ll make a post to let you know how you did!

Today’s question is:

What will be the survival time in DayZ in four weeks?

As you’re probably aware, there’s a clock on the DayZ website that shows how long the average zombie meal — I mean, player — survives. As of this writing, it’s 31 minutes.

On July 21, we’ll re-examine that clock and see how fresh the meat is. Will it go up or down? Will the zombies and bandits win or will intrepid survivors beat the odds? And will you find enough cans of beans?

The Over/Under target number for DayZ survival time is: 30 minutes:

If you think reported survival time on July 21 will be more than 30 minutes, answer OVER in a comment below.
If you think reported survival time on July 21 will be 30 minutes or less, answer UNDER in a comment below.

We’ll check back in about a month to see how you did! Assuming your brains haven’t been eaten by then…

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http://www.MasterRenny.com/ Thomas Renshaw

Over for sure
7BitBrian

Over, people who are still playing are getting better at the game and forming alliances. And we all know the player is the danger in this game, not the Zombies.
- HarmonBlues
  
  Over, 7BitBrian can crawl through towns for hours not finding weapons.
  - 7BitBrian
    
    I literally did man. Was night time on the server and I stuck through 2 full towns plus the surrounding countryside, must have ninjaed past like 8 players. not a single weapon. My guy is still running around with nothing but a flashlight lol.
    - HarmonBlues
      
      7BitBrian, professional post-apocalyptic ninja. He doesn’t even need guns and fears no one. I hope to see videos of you sneaking around killing people with a hatchet.
      - 7BitBrian
        
        Challenge accepted!
      - HarmonBlues
        
        Yay!
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ed-Bennett/705015073 Ed Bennett

Definitely over, I figure it will go up to at least 40 minutes
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=517398862 Ross Dixon

Over unless they add more features to make it even harder.
http://twitter.com/Mantose Leo P

over
Bruno Carvalho

Under – the longer people play the sooner they’ll realize where are the optimal spawn points, so they will Respawn more often util they are closer to them.
- http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr
  
  Oh, hmm, wonder how long they would have to live at an optimal spawn point, to overcome the quick kills at the poor spawn points. If you quickly died three times at poor spawn points to get a good spawn point, would you have to live 2 hours to balance it out to 30 mins?
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

Over, now that you spawn with a flashlight, the bandits will wait longer before they kill you and take your stuff.
http://twitter.com/chumppi chumppi, Riku M.

Over
http://twitter.com/coreyctom Corey

like Bruno said, if hitting respawn gets counted in that timer, those people respawning multiple times to be near a desired starting point skew the timer. If it doesn’t count, or it gets removed or addressed in some way by Rocket, and people are forced to just deal with wherever they spawned (as it should be), then I say Over.
http://twitter.com/dularr Dularr

BTW, Jason when are you going to tackle the over/under on GW2 box sales?
http://twitter.com/viion Josh Freeman

Over
http://www.facebook.com/elias.rowan Elias Rowan

Under.

I see the survival time remaining about the same or dropping because a higher population of players playing currently and in the days to come aren’t playing the game to survive. They are playing to shoot each other in the face.
Sathure

Over. 30 minutes is pretty bad.. It takes 30 mins to run to most towns in your vicinity.

You’d basically have to run in shooting into the nearest town or chuck a bunch of flares in cherno to die in 30 minutes.
http://twitter.com/SilverTaurusPL SilverTaurus

Under.
If we talk about average it will be less.. for every times someone survive a lot, there is mass of people killed very fast.. or even anyone who know how to survive will die few times fast before he gets enough gear to prolong his live.
http://twitter.com/Artamos_ Miguel Devora

$1 Bob
Blioux

Over
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz

Under: It’s a gank fest (players and zombies killing other players) and rising so the survival time will probably drop.
http://twitter.com/quickshot10101 Rick ‘Quickshot’

A LOT of players will re spawn 5-10 times just to get a decent spawn location near a major city. Im not sure but I ‘think’ this makes the average life calculation lower then it really is. Because if players are re spawning thousands of times in a few minutes just to get a good spot, thats a lot of ’10second life spans” which destroys the true average.
Kusanagi2501

Under, if ARMA 2 is on the steam summer sale
Over, if it isn’t
Also the time ends on my birthday! yay!
Hellei

Over. I do disagree about not allowing to spam respawn. If that weren’t allowed you might end up bugged if you spawn at “The Wilderness”. Plus, it would be near impossible for you to play with friends without a way of spawning near them.
- http://www.facebook.com/elias.rowan Elias Rowan
  
  …how is it impossible to play with friends if you don’t spawn near them? What you mean to say is “I’m lazy”.
  - Hellei
    
    Well, some folks only have 2-3 hrs of playtime at a time. So I’m thinking of that. Most players won’t just run to their buddies location and logout if they still have time to play. They will continue playing and wait til their buddy logs to go and meet. Anyway to make that easier is great, especially since this is a multiplayer game.
http://www.facebook.com/JMan31337 Jeremy Leggett

Well I think the biggest problem is when people play with a group and spawn across the map most people just die and respawn. So that drags the average life span down like crazy. I think they should add a penalty for respawning over and over just to get a different spawn point. Something like 1st time you have to wait 10min, 2nd time you wait 30min, and so on. If at least it might not stop them from spawning over and over it would cut down on the number of lives they use in the time period.
http://twitter.com/theafterburn Andrew Conlon

Rick ‘Quickshot’ mentioned this. People respawn multiple times when they die to get an ideal spawn location, so the average is skewed — a lot.
http://twitter.com/timelessward brian wagner

Its gonna be Over 30 Mins, people are starting to get how to play and arnt just sprinting everywhere
http://www.facebook.com/people/Brandon-Davis/100000286723150 Brandon Davis

i say over as more and more people are getting used to the game

however, i agree with Kusanagi2501
if its on a steam sale, way under…like 10 min
if not, then over
BossFi

Less – since my last few deaths have all been by exploiters and invisible hackers. Ive played alot and have noticed an increase in cheaters recently.Leaderboards only recently came online so that probably had something to do with it.
nexxe

I lasted for hours over several days, and then finally died last night by two guys in grassy camo outfits, like military people. They just shot me on sight. :/
Randall_Wolfcry

OVER
Mightywombat32

ye with steam it will be under :p
http://twitter.com/ookamiwing Phillip Rushing

Under! Kill more people!
http://profile.yahoo.com/Y3KDFES4KGY443TRGOUXCCPBCE Super Poop

UNDER – Get it done, 5hizzle!
- M_5hizzle
  
  I’ll see what I can do.
Hicks64

Under!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=514285943 Dave Sherwood

Under
RBHgamer

Over… the noobs will get better over the next month.
HappyHansel

Under. More new players coming in, plus MikeB is always right.
Kagitaar

I’ll pick over for now, just because I don’t think they can add much more to punish you without being unrealistic.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Kyle-Rogers/100000222205677 Kyle Rogers

Goin with over. I dont think it will be over by much….but i think just a bit over where it is now
http://twitter.com/WadeDMcGinnis Wade D McGinnis

Over…way over.
http://profile.yahoo.com/Z36GPOU3Q2QIQYBIDVNQAVGNGE Raul

under, while the load may be leveling off,
-the hax are just starting to hit the fan, so to speak.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1132835931 Thomas Starfan Zamudio

under- more people playing the game means more people trying to hook up with their friends so they’re going to be killing themselves and respawning to try to get a better spawn location to hook up easier
http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Weilage/100000409904552 James Weilage

Under… internet Bathsalts, nuffsaid
http://twitter.com/Iomegadrive1 Chris P

Over, Zombie A.I is getting overhauled so they can’t hear and see everything you do.
DoctorOverlord

Over.

They need to show the ratio of kills from zombies compared to kills by other players.
http://profile.yahoo.com/4PH6TG5DUFIHUFPRLYW5E6J6YY Chaz

Under B/c of the Mike B 5hizzle murder squad XD
mad.martha

Over – In a months time the “noobs” will either (a) get fed up of dying all the time and go play something else or (b) get better at the game.

I personally think (a) is the most likely outcome.

Having looked at many different DayZ streams on Twitch I find it hard to believe that many of those people will ever grasp the basic survival methods needed in this game.
On about half of them they didn’t go to prone once and ran everywhere like it was L4D or CoD – no concept of stealth at all.
These are the people who will stop playing after a short time.

Then there were the streams of the organised groups , running choppers / busses or fortifying bases. Or setting up honey traps / ambushes using real tactical methods.
These are the people who will play for longer.

Also this game has a very similar feel to STALKER – which ,again, had a lot of interest initially but quickly tailed off (due to difficulty and bugs – just like DayZ)

So yeah , OVER.

[MM]
Draclobo

I routinely last hours.. last couple of times I have been killed by snipers
http://twitter.com/CarlosM402 Carlos Martinez

gonna go with MikeB, Under
http://www.facebook.com/the.cburnett Christian Burnett

OVER
I think the players that stick around will get better, noobs that suck will leave, and survival chances will go upwards. I think we’ll start running into more player collisions in the northern part of the map, which will keep the average less than the original 4-hour benchmark.. but I haven’t had a “serious” life where I lasted less than 3-4 days other than my first few attempts.
http://www.facebook.com/oneniisama Bear Powell

Over
Krionion

Over
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003664280418 Steven B. Ellsworth

Over
Shawn Robertson

over
http://twitter.com/OhChrisis Christian

over
djsjr

Under
itsJUSTINduh

over
http://twitter.com/Hengman14 Chettra Heng

Over
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000804409885 Alexander Martin

Over
RutgersKev

over

How Long Can DayZ Survivors Hold Out?

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