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Gray Zone Warfare This one looks Interesting!

Steam:
Gray Zone Warfare Stean store



Red

To be released tomorrow!!!

I've been watching this one... looks interesting.

It sure does! It also seems to need a beefy PC, AND there will be different editions like Tarkov!

I tried to like Tarkov, the concept was great... but the massive cheat fest that continued day in and day out, and the developers cavalier attitude to it just really pi++ed me off... I haven't played it since.

Can´t say I played much of Tarkov either these past two years. What I dont´t like about Gray Zone Is that depending the the edition you buy, you will also get more or less slots In you´re Inventory, just like Tarkov does.

Did you ever jump in?

I've had my eye on this one over the past week or two. I like much of what I see but hoping for some opinions on it. Anyone playing semi-regularly?

Not sure if Tarkov is the right one for me, and I've been having fun with Road to Vostok which is similar so looking at others and I think GZW might be a good choice.

The main thing I see are complaints that all the enemies are dead, and all the loot looted by the time you get there, that there are just too many players on the map and they pick the carcass clean.

No, but check on it from time to time. I have the same concerns as you mate.

Hey Troop, how's things?

It's been on sale recently, and I nearly picked it up, but went with Incursion Red River for now. And I like it so I will probably pick up GZW at some point too. Looking for a change to how the servers are populated. I wouldn't want the re-spawn timer shortened, so there just needs to be fewer players on the map I reckon. I don't think anyone here at SimHQ is playing this or we'd have heard from them by now i reckon. If you pick it up let me know what you think please.

Hey Troop, don't know if you'll see this, but I've dropped significant time in to GZW and I must say that my fears were (mostly) unfounded. There have been times when I go somewhere and find someone had just swept through and cleaned it up. It's rare though, and frankly I don't mind if I can get in and get out with no combat. There's plenty of that, so a few easy objectives is fine with me. Any mission items are permanent so no worry they will be scooped up and you cannot complete the mission. Loot might be gone, but frankly this is a better shooter than a looter and you probably aren't missing much if another player had swept it all up. It all re-spawns in short order anyway, or just come back tomorrow.

Overall I am digging Gray Zone. Of all the shooters and extraction variants I have played over the past couple of years, this one is my favorite. Perfect pace, good for lone wolf play, emergent co-op and you move in and out of the AO on helicopters. It's cool. GZW is marked down a bit for the Steam summer sale. Good time to give it a go.

We have a catch-all extractions shooters thread and more detail in there if you are interested.

Or maybe you'll never see it haha

Most of my posts about this game have been in the catch-all extraction shooters thread, but some people will be interested in Gray Zone and not go in that thread so I'll add some comments here.

Gray Zone continues to have its hook in. I'm finding the pace of play, the overall difficulty balance and just the game in general all in really good spots. I'd pay full price for this if it was the final release state, but it's nowhere near that (I guess) as an alpha, which, as I've said before, means nothing anymore anyway. I think it's just coder's cover to not need to answer for much. It's still an alpha! they can always say. Madfinger Games has no such concerns in my view. This game feels far more polished than anything deserving the alpha label. Developers and publishers no longer have any real incentive to move the grade along, there are no drawbacks to staying in EA, or calling your game an alpha version. Hell, some games sell DLC in early access! So yeah, means little anymore.

I've dropped 150 hours already and see no signs of stopping anytime soon. I'm player level 22 which puts me in the center strata of the player base, even if it's titled to the lower side based on player count. I play Joint Operations, the PvE-only side of Gray Zone. There are up to 48 humans on the 42-square kilometer island, but in Joint Operations no player can do damage to another. They can shoot at you if they want, but nothing happens. Those 48 players are divided in to three factions, and this is a permanent choice made at the start, or until you reset your profile. Be sure to choose the same faction as your friends to play together. I have signed up for Crimson Shield International. I tend to ask myself, which faction is most closely-aligned with Freedom from the Stalker games and go with that. Mithras is like Duty, the rigid military dudes. Lamang is like the bandits. Those guys would disagree

Anyway, if anyone picks this up and goes CSI we can run in to each other, or team up.

Game play is well-suited to lone wolf play. It's going to be even better, with a friend or two, on comms. But not every game has a nice balance for solo play, and Gray Zone does. Players start a new session at the main faction base. There is no depletion of energy and hydration here. You can lounge around all you want, sifting through inventory, looking over the tasks, test firing weapons at the range, watching the air operations as your faction mates come and go on their own missions. When you are ready to deploy to the AO you click a landing zone on the map to call transport. These are MH-6 Little Birds, which fly in to pick you up. Climb aboard and it takes off, flying fast and low the entire way. At the start, a new player only has access to a couple nearby LZ's, but as you explore the map you discover new ones, which are permanently added and expand your range of operations. I love this side of the game. The helicopter system works flawlessly, and is just really cool.

Missions are reasonably varied (fetch, eliminations, recon, delivery, etc) and reward rep for vendors, XP for level and cash. Each region of the map is controlled by a different enemy faction. These enemy factions have their own vibe, including gear. So in the starter area it's street thugs with no plate, armed with crap handguns and SMGs. The next region they may have soft armor and MP5s. Next region is class III plate with AKs, and another will be even better armor, shooting green tip 5.56, which put these enemies on level with the player operator. So you can dial in your challenge level according to which regions you deploy to. Harder enemies yield better loot, so there's always that incentive to improve your lot, get better gear and ammunition, and work your way up in to the more lethal arenas.

Gear and kit are a strength of this game, and frankly nearly every extraction shooter. I've always loved customizing and personalizing weapons in shooters. If you read my posts from years back about Misery I talked about this, how personalizing it makes it mine, and I feel an attachment to that weapon. This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one in mine.

But no game I've played does customization like an extraction shooter. To be fair, Tarkov, Red River, and more, match or exceed what Gray Zone achieves. It's genre-wide really. And it's fantastic. There is no part of your weapon you cannot modify. Gas blocks, stocks, buffer tubes, muzzle brakes, receivers, sights, optics, rails, lights, lasers, magazines, foregrips, pistol grips and more. It's insane, and I get in to it. And each of these things has a direct effect on how the weapon performs. The accuracy, rate of fire, recoil, weight and more. Length equals accuracy, but makes the weapon harder to use in tight spaces, which is called ergonomics in these games. So I tend to build a variety of weapons, each dialed in to perform a specific type of mission, or more accurately , be more suited to certain environments and tactical situations. The differences are minor, but who cares. I eat this stuff up. I am always on the hunt for a new thing that could improve my MOA, lower my recoil, shorten my weapon without losing accuracy and dropping the weight.

And for how important the weapon itself is, ammunition is equally so. Hollow points, soft points, FMJ, AP and more all have their properties and matching the ammo to the target is key to ensuring lethality and success. Combined, the weapons and ammunition take these games to a different level. Probably only ARMA is in the same ballpark, of games I am aware of anyway. The shooting and shooting mechanics all feel great. And the scopes are fantastic, the devs have not gotten too cute and clever and put reflections and stuff on the scopes, and they are clear and realistic. Feels really good.

This post has gone on too long, but I am eager to share with the others here, to get the word out and that some folks here might find Gray Zone (or any extraction shooter really) might suit them. I bought the standard version in the Steam sale and within a few hours had upgraded to the supporter's edition. I knew that quickly this was a game I wanted to play.

I want to add some images, but I'll make another post as this one is long.

A look through the binoculars at a passing patrol. There are a number of different binoculars types in the game. I go with the lightest pair I can find. The icon in the upper left is showing stance and visibility distance, which changes depending on ambient light, stance and vegetation.





A look through the Specter 1-4x assault scope at a passing patrol, who have no sergeant to tell them to spread out.






MP5 with the flip sight I mentioned. It has a holo red dot with a magnifier that flips in to line with the flip of a switch.






Magnifier in place






This is the inventory screen and worth going over. On the left is my player, his gear and all the items I choose to carry in to the field. Plate carrier doubles as a tactical rig and keeps fresh mags and refill ammo close at hand. I carry three mags (one in the gun) and three stacks of refill ammunition to re-top the mags in a lull. Headgear is optional but I always wear helmet. You can go with nothing, a boonie hat, baseball cap, whatever. The stats say that my helmet has stopped six rounds so far, so it's worth it to me. There are drink and food items to keep topped off in the field with energy and hydration. Like most extraction shooters you carry a safe box (TAS), which holds items immune to loss upon death. The tactical vest, belt and pockets are accessible by your character for reloading, grenades, eating and first aid -- the things considered "at hand". Anything in your back pack is not, but the player can access it anytime. The knife is permanent and cannot be dropped. I have never used the knife for anything. In the pockets are MFAK, which stands for mini first aid kit and these hold things like bandages, splints, blood packs and tourniquets which you will need.

Primary weapon here is the L403A1 assault rifle based on the AR-15 platform and manufactured by Knights Armament Company for the British army as a replacement for the L85A2-A3 and L119A1-A2 rifles. It is chambered in 5.56 which happens to be the best cartridge in Gray Zone for overall effectiveness. This rifle is highly accurate with a very low MOA for its type, surpassing all my others like the DDM4s and M4A1s you see in my stash on the right. However I haven't found a way to mount a foregrip and I cannot match the recoil numbers of the M4s, making the L403A1 a superior semi-auto platform, but not for full auto. It's rare I select automatic so this rifle fits what I am looking for. Accurate, short, light. Using 32-round DD mags loaded with green tip AP. Total combat ammunition load therefore is 277 rounds. 180 in stacks, 96 in mags plus one in the chamber.

Tactical vest is the Recon Plate carrier which is the best combination of protection, weight and capacity that I have found. It is rated for III+, so is designed to stop standard rifle rounds, but falls short of high power, like sniper rifles and DMRs. Even with a carrier you have a lot of exposed flesh, but at least it protects your vitals frontally. So yeah, if you like firearms, and gear and ammunition, and having the ability to mix and match, customize and personalize I think you'd find something to like in a game like this. This is how I gear up, but the combinations are endless.





Some random dude that hopped on my helo. We went our separate ways after touching down at the LZ

Solid video from Meri.

She is delightful, I must say. I've watched a few of her videos. She's a fine sim racer as well.

And if she likes Gray Zone, she must have good taste

Readers might recall a recounting of a tale I told where I was shot twice and saved by a random dude calling himself Ashrack. At 5:15 in that video she gets shot and killed in nearly the same spot, as she was doing the same mission I was attempting, called In the Trenches. Dangerous place, that.

The .5 update is around the corner, but we don't know exactly when. One of the most sweeping changes is splitting PvP and PvE in to two separate characters, no cross over. The PvP crowd has gotten their panties in a bunch over this, but I think it is needed, and this is why....

As it is, players share their characters across both modes. So what happens is that PvP players level up and loot in PvE, then swap to PvP to shoot humans. They do not need to do their progression in PvP, so are not doing the tasks and missions needed for this. Gear jeopardy is softened in PvP because that player character can just return to PvE to loot up again. That has a negative effect on both modes. PvE has their loot spots constantly raided by PvP players who then use their weapons and rep in PvP mode. PvP suffers because everyone is hunting players, no one is doing any of the tasks or missions, which they did in PvE.

Cry harder, as they say. Good change.

I believe GZW is on sale at the moment. Check Steam for your price.

It is indeed, 30% off. Standard Edition is $28 in the States.

The standard edition is the entry point, but you get good gear, a professional contractor. Night vision, collimators (like red dots), plate carriers, helmets, some good weapons and full medical supplies. It's a fine way to start.

Each ascending edition offers more gear, and maybe most crucially, more stash space.

Standard gets a 10x25 stash.
Tactical is 10x35
Elite is 10x45
Supporter's Edition is 10x60

So Supporter's edition players have a stash that is more than twice as big as a standard edition player. But it's not exclusive. Any player can attain the same stash sizes, regardless of which edition he buys. You can increase stash size by player level. A level 30 player will have same stash size as Elite edition, and a level 40 as big as a Supporter's edition player.

Even so, I've dropped 225 hours and am only level 25. I would not want to have another 15 levels still to go to have the stash I have now. It's a long grind doing it that way. And then when the wipe comes you will do it again.

I bought Tactical edition in June, on sale. Played all afternoon and liked it so much I upgraded to Supporter's by supper time. The gear is a nice head start, but I should note that at this stage I use nothing that comes with it. All gear has been overtaken by better stuff. But the stash is key, for me, because I am a pack rat. The better the edition you have, the more wipe protection you'll have as well.

New update trailer has dropped, and it is looking good! I'm the only one here playing this it seems, but maybe someone will be interested.

Lots of changes. Of particular interest to many players is how the wipe would be done. They ran a poll a couple months ago asking how the base wanted it to be done. I voted for partial wipe. That is, wipe all gear and money but retain player level and vendor rep, and that's what we are going to get, so I'm happy. Vendor rep is the real grind in this game and to not need to start over is nice. Perfect decision as far as I am concerned. Looking forward to it.

Check out what is coming here. And maybe, pick it up and give it a go. It is 33% off in the Steam sale.

Gray Zone @ Steam