With the latest title update now behind us and a new one already in the works to fix a number of issues hindering player experiences like rubberbanding or server crashing, DayZ creator Dean "Rocket" Hall has focused his scope onto the future of the survival title, detailing in a new forum post just what you can expect in the new year.

So, what can DayZ fans expect in 2014 for the newly release early access title? Quite a number of changes it seems, though focus for early 2014 is being put on two key formulas that will make this game more thrilling: zombies and respawning loot. Rocket says the team is looking for a way to handle both that doesn't feel "scripted", and he says a new iteration of the zombie respawn process will be implemented in the near future.

We absolutely plan to have more zombies. To cope with the current total dynamic entity count of over 10000 we have had to make a great deal of optimizations. If loot is completely removed, we can easily run 4000 zombies in our debug builds. In the new year we will be optimizing the way we handle dynamic objects (such as loot) a great deal more which should give us significant savings - but the change was considered too risky to be done prior to alpha launch. If we had problems, we would have delayed the project further by months.

It won't be just zombies getting a boost in numbers, with non-ambient (read: huntable) animals beind added to the game, along with a variety of options for what to do with the resulting meat, corpses, bones, etc. after dropping your prey. These new prey will be based on a cut-down version of the zombie AI, though at the moment the team only expect roughly 300 animals on a server, with plans to extend that number in the future.

Improvements are also being planned on the crafting-side of things, with an extension on what players can gather "such as firewood, stones, etc... This will then be utilized by the existing crafting system." Additional anti-hack security will also get some attention during 2014, though Hall is confident their reliance on Valve's VAC anti-cheat system will work for the better part.

For a full run down on what you can expect in the next year of DayZ, head over to the official forum post. Let us know in the comments below how you are going with DayZ, and what kind of improvements you'd like to see for the future.