why do people only play chernarus?

[BooQueefius]

i am a new player and i see on community and official no one plays anything really but chernarus thats what the majority of the servers are, why is this? imo as a new player i find this map too big and very boring you never have any interactions with people

[ClaymoreKyle]

Try Adventurer's Vanilla Chiemsee. Smalller map and pop but quick progression once you learn it. Been playing there a year now.

[etwas]

people play a variety of maps, official ones and community made maps. chernarus is just the most popular.

look for servers with the map namalsk for example - u will find plenty of action right from the start.

[Amogus]

Considering the fact that, up until a few months ago, Chernarus was the only free non-modded map in the game, it's no surprise that it's the most popular, and this isn't even taking into account the fact that this map has been out for over a decade and is more well-known than the others

Livonia may exist now, but with how poorly it was received, the attempt at sparking interest in the map by making it free didn't do very much at all

[Toki]

First, the way they distributed the towns in Livonia is wack and the map oddly laggy for me.
Second, Sakhai gets annoying because you're always fishing and making fires to stay alive.
Third, modded maps are made by random Joes who are not that good at designing immersive maps.

[Idaho]

My server is the Banov map. Far superior to Chernarus.

[FoolMonty]

The environment mainly. It would be the type of place I'd set up home in.
Bumping into someone is a surprise which adds atmosphere if you know your not alone o the map. I'm not excited by snow or meta quests. Livonia is nothing special.

[Strat Man]

It would be nice if it got colder in the winter and had some snow from time to time just to change things up on Chernarus. Summer months could bring heat making water very important. Heat exhaustion would be a killer. Having the weather static all the time is boring.

[geordiebroon58]

can go as far as just being the og chosen map for this game and is the iconic default choice for everyone to go for

not to mention 1 of the maps is dlc and going by previous comment the other map was also dlc it leaves modded maps only to pick from which a new player isnt going to do

nothing can go wrong with the og map the game was designed and balanced for making it the best to work with from new players and experienced players alike

then theres an issue of having to learn said maps which you wont get anywhere without knowing (especially modded ones which wont give you an easy resource map like official has)

but either way it became the games staple and remains the most popular for that reason

[Alf Tupper]

^^^^

this. Until Sakhal, Livonia was paid DLC. It was designed as a smaller map to get players into contact sooner than on Cherno; I don't think it ever really took off after the initial burst of curiosity on release. Sakhal was popular on release but I think a lot of us got tired of the cold climate issues. Still a good place to farm M14s, M16s and M4s though if you know how.

Anyway - up the Toon!

[Amogus]

Originally posted by Alf Tupper:

Sakhal was popular on release but I think a lot of us got tired of the cold climate issues

Nothing quite like spawning in and being forced to spend the first 5 minutes of your life making a fire and warming up, and they don't even try to hide it by giving you a knife that has JUST ENOUGH durability to get 2 pieces of bark and some sticks

The easiest solution is to make it so that you spawn with level 1 heat buff so that you can actually go around and do other things before having to make a fire later on. It's inevitable that you'll have to make fires in the future which is fine, but having it to where you are unable to do anything other than make a fire when you spawn is bad for player retention

[Alf Tupper]

Originally posted by Amogus:

Originally posted by Alf Tupper:

Sakhal was popular on release but I think a lot of us got tired of the cold climate issues

Nothing quite like spawning in and being forced to spend the first 5 minutes of your life making a fire and warming up, and they don't even try to hide it by giving you a knife that has JUST ENOUGH durability to get 2 pieces of bark and some sticks

The easiest solution is to make it so that you spawn with level 1 heat buff so that you can actually go around and do other things before having to make a fire later on. It's inevitable that you'll have to make fires in the future which is fine, but having it to where you are unable to do anything other than make a fire when you spawn is bad for player retention

I quite agree; that was my experience of Sakhal. I survived eventually but even when I had found the highest insulation clothing, it was still a case of lighting fires too often for my liking.

Then I remembered I could gear up on Cherno or Livonia (as I still play official servers) and then respawn in Sakhal with warm clothes, plenty of knives etc. Go farm some good weapons then go Bambi hunting.

[RoY]

people do not only play chernarus. Ive been 100% Bitterroot for the past year

[_ ⁿ⁰ ˡᵉᵍᵃᶜʸ ⁻]

the real players probably all see it the same way, DayZ is like sports.
Chernarus is a home game, the other maps are away games.

[volek]

I already played the original Chernarus for years in Arma 2 and the DayZ mod. DayZ SA's Chernarus+ was a huge improvement, played it lot as well. But at some point I got sick and tired of it, so I started playing user-made maps and never looked back. My favorites are probably Deer Isle, Banov and Lux.

Deer Isle for it's variety and exploration value, Banov because it's kinda like Chernarus but better (minus the stupid aliens but not all servers use them), Lux because it reminds me of Lingor which was one of my fav maps for Arma 2 DayZ.
I also like Namalsk but haven't played the SA version much, used to play it a lot in the A2 mod though. I have played a lot of other maps as well but most of them were too unfinished to be long-term fun or didn't have any good servers running them.

As for the vanilla maps, when Livonia became free I tried it for a few weeks but wasn't too impressed, all it did was turn around the direction you're going and add a bunch of really annoying toxic zones. At least the bunker mechanic was a neat addition.
Sakhal was a welcome change and fun at first but as others have said, it can get annoying at times when all you do is make fires every few minutes.

Chernarus is still the best vanilla map, everything is just balanced really well. Imo it is not too big, sometimes I even wished it was bigger and had some more islands other than Skalisty and the tiny prison island to explore. If they ever do a DayZ 2 and wanna bring back Chernarus for another round, I really hope they'll add more islands to the surrounding sea.

[Amogus]

Originally posted by volek:

If they ever do a DayZ 2 and wanna bring back Chernarus for another round, I really hope they'll add more islands to the surrounding sea.

I've heard some other people mention this before and I always have to ask this question: What do you think would be changed/added to justify a "sequel"?

Making a sequel to DayZ would make just as much sense as making a sequel to a game like Rust since the only true difference they could make is having the game fully use the Enfusion engine instead of the partial implementation that the game has right now. Sure, it would significantly improve gameplay performance (Play Arma Reforger and see how smooth the gameplay feels), but would it really justify buying just for that? With partial implementation, I don't see why they couldn't just finish the job with DayZ as opposed to making an entirely new game

Ark did this with Survival Ascended, but I don't agree with that decision since it is the exact same game, but on a new engine with improved visuals. It's even more ironic that Evolved still has more players than Ascended does, so clearly the demand for it wasn't there. You could say that it was a "remaster" of the original game, but I can't say that the gameplay drastically improved from Evolved to Ascended the way games like Dead Space or RE4 did