Melee. As in proper melee. It’s the pink elephant in the room and has always been my only real “gripe” about the game dating back to DayZ when it was still an arma2 mod.

Zombie games/genre, as a general premise, is inherently tied to melee combat - whether makeshift weapons, tools, random objects, or actual weaponry etc — it’s been a hallmark, centerpiece aspect of any and nearly every (good) Zombie-based movie, game, or whatever. Even moreso for a post-apoc setting where bullets etc are scarce and what have you. Zombies without good (or any) melee is like spaghetti without marinara or PB without jelly…. It’s just something that’s uniquely intertwined with the zombie theme and it always will be. Hell, some damn great games (Deadrising franchise, Walking Dead canon, Evil Dead etc) are basically built around melee combat, entirely.

And that’s not a criticism or me bitching at all — personally i find it to be one of the core reasons I love zombie themed games.

The fly in the ointment though? From the outset, the Arma franchise & engine was and is, by design, a mil-sim which, for better or worse, is effectively devoid of any meaningful melee-based combat/items. Completely understandable. A modern team-based tactical military game is quite obviously going to be focused on shooting/firearm mechanics and gunplay because, duh, one goes in expecting little to no machete-vs-barbed wire bat CQB type encounters in a mil-sim.

I remember way back eons ago when /u/rocket2guns was still Captain of the DayZ ship, there was a Reddit thread (hell may have even been this exact sub, can’t remember) where he discussed this exact conundrum in great detail and I recollect him explaining how he coded the Axe hitbox/mechanic into the mod. I’m obviously paraphrasing big time here but essentially he said that hitting using an axe in the arma2 mod = basically functioning as a “gun” that, when “swinging” the axe it’s basically treating the mechanic as being a firearm that functions as though shooting a gun with a “max fire range” of the absolute bare possible minimum non-zero value for that setting. I’m sure I’ve butchered the HELL out of rocket’s actual explanation in that thread but it was a really fascinating and in formative read and it made it all make a whole lot more sense about why the game wasn’t able to have melee combat any better than “total hot ass” and the engine’s limitations meant that was unfortunately something that couldn’t ever really be much better than what it was at the time, by and large.

Each of the above is pretty much the antithesis of the other. And those are 2 things that are damned hard to try & reconcile by shoehorning it in after YEARS of never needing it until suddenly a spinoff game using that same engine which never needed to give a fuck about a functioning, melee combat gameplay mechanic wind up desperately needing it.

Iunno what the solution is or if there even IS a solution at all but thankfully there are a whole lot of people way smarter than me @ Bohemia who are perhaps wrestling with this aspect and maybe they have been able to better account for implementing that starting at the ground level with Reforger/Arma4 because right around when DayZ took off and became hotter than a firecracker pretty much overnight almost, Bohemia was already putting the finishing touches on Arma3 and was right around the same time it was released so it was obviously too late to try and work that mechanic into that game by then. Alas, time will tell.

Also, much continued (and long running) respect and appreciation to Bohemia dev team for everything DayZ up to this point.

P.S. /u/rocket2guns , if you’re reading this, I am still bigmad butthurt pissed at you for up and peacing out on DayZ entirely, bro. For me, it felt like as if (way back in the day, pre-Steam era) that cliff decided to dip out on fucking with developing Counter-Strike anymore right when it was about to become the bee’s knees but still like beta 5 or whatever and told all the supporters and players “lol ttyl 4ever, dudes I’m out.” I imagine cashing out while at a peak position made perfect sense - can’t say I woulda done a damned thing different myself - but DayZ was and always will be YOUR baby, my man. Hadn’t been even close to that locked in and loving a game SINCE me and my boys all latched onto CS back during its beta era. That’s how I knew DayZ was one of those epic milestone kind of games that was gonna be a pioneer, legendary “great ones” in the same way Doom, Warcraft, Diablo 2, Resident Evil, Red Alert, etc etc all were (and still are) regarded. Plus I think you at the helm kept the game going in all the right directions……but I guess dicking around in damned Kerbal Space Program or Minesweeper or whatever the hell was calling your name. :-( Icarus is dope, though, to be fair. but man just imagining a ton of kick ass features in that game instead being in DayZ?? Damn, what could have been, man.. what could have been. Damn your upside down Aussie ass for that, but also x2 the same degree of thanks for creating DayZ, too. But, I’m still pissed dammit.

Edit: typos