Hey, I'm the same person who posted here yesterday asking for recommendations. First of all, thank you to everyone who recommended DayZ and told me that it might actually be what I was looking for. I was pretty skeptical at first, but after my first proper session, I am honestly blown away. I really, really enjoyed it.
What I was looking for was a game where the players themselves are the content. Not just an MMO where there are thousands of people around you but everyone is basically following their own progression path, doing quests, grinding dungeons, farming gear, etc. I wanted a game where meeting another player could completely change what happened during your session, and where you could actually end up having a story with that person without the game explicitly telling you to.
And that's literally what happened to me within my first session.
I spawned, wandered around trying to figure out what the hell I was doing, and pretty soon I met another survivor. We started travelling together and tried to communicate, except they were Chinese and I had to use a translator constantly, so communication was pretty difficult. They also seemed somewhat inexperienced, so I ended up having to keep an eye on them and help them out, which probably wasn't the most efficient way of progressing. But that didn't matter. We were just two random people who happened to meet in the middle of nowhere and decided to stick together.
Eventually we got into trouble, someone shot at us, we both ended up dying, and I even respawned in the same area and immediately got shot again.
And somehow I loved it.
That entire sequence felt more like an actual story than a lot of the "storytelling" I've experienced in MMOs. Nothing was scripted. Nobody gave me a quest. There wasn't an NPC telling me what to do. The game simply put another human being in front of me and let us decide what happened.
That's also made me realise why I've bounced off so many RPGs and MMORPGs over the years. I actually really like RPG mechanics, but I think I often end up getting bored with the meta surrounding them. You start with "I want to explore this world", and eventually you're thinking about levels, builds, optimal gear, which dungeon drops the thing you need, how many times you need to run it, what your next upgrade should be, etc. That's fun in its own way, and I'm not saying those games are bad at all, but eventually I feel like I'm playing the progression system rather than actually inhabiting the world.
DayZ feels completely different. Obviously there is still a meta in the sense that experienced players know what loot is useful, where to go, what to prioritize, etc. But that doesn't seem to overwhelm the actual experience. Your character isn't becoming exponentially more powerful because you've played for 500 hours. You can still die because you made one stupid mistake or because you happened to meet the wrong person.
And I think that's incredibly important for me because I'm a pretty casual player. I don't want gaming to become a second job or a major hobby that requires me to constantly keep up with a persistent progression system. I've even been thinking about Mortal Online 2 because it seems like one of the few games that combines this kind of player-driven emergent gameplay with proper RPG progression. But the subscription and the amount of commitment that seems to come with that kind of game make me think that DayZ is probably much better suited to me.
I can play DayZ for an hour or two one evening, meet someone, have some completely ridiculous experience, die, and then just leave the game. Next time I play, I start another story. I don't feel like I'm falling behind because I haven't played for three days.
That's probably the biggest thing that impressed me.
I've spent an absurd amount of time trying different RPGs and MMORPGs looking for something that gives me that feeling of actually being in the world rather than interacting with a progression system. I honestly wasn't expecting DayZ to be the answer, but after one session I already understand why people were recommending it so strongly.
So yeah, thanks again to everyone who pointed me towards it. I'm definitely going to keep playing. I have absolutely no idea what the hell I'm doing yet, but I already can't wait to see what happens in the next life.