nic0

sorry i snipped a bit out of your quote... i think you're absolutely right, that popularity doesn't necessarily mean a good/better game but...and it's a huge "but"...this doesn't apply to online games. online games live and die by their players commitment and engagement with the game. and by their numbers. this is true for MMOs like WoW, which is so filled with NPCs and other content that you can basically play it solo. because playing it solo just feels empty and dead, and especially so when you need to group or want to PvP. this is true even more so for competitive games, like battlefield or CS, where the content is mostly created by the interactions of players fighting each other. and this is true 10000% percent for dayz wherein, as rocket states even in this thread, the game is completely open, and without rules or story, and where the players make their own story. the more niche dayz is, the fewer players and servers there are, the lower the server populations, the worse this game will be. that's simply to state a fact. so we need balance. the game has to be find a sweetspot between featuring fun gameplay, and hardcore gameplay, and attracting enough dedicated players who find the game *fun*, to keep the spirit of this thing fully alive. rocket may not be interested in money, or sales just for the sake of it, but he *must* surely be interested in making this game as popular as it possibly can be, because that's the main thing that will keep the game what it is - a large, diverse, and dedicated player community.

@OP i'd disagree. this is meant to be a *game* - it's meant to be fun! people forget that in their rush for the hardcore, but the game, any game, is supposed to be fun. adding mechanics to a game that add realism at the expense of fun is perverse in the extreme. you can't pop health packs and potions as you run, instantly gaining health - you have to stop and eat, and it's almost impossible to keep enough food on your person to recover fully from very low health, so there's balance here. it's not totally hardcore, but it's already making things fairly difficult. i think the game is "hard" enough. it's not meant, i hope, to be a total simulation. the meat of the game is running around a large space, with realistic-ish weapons, being chased by zombies and trying to avoid conflicts with other survivors. it's not about balancing your diet and micro-managing health - at least, that's not something that i'd find fun!

@rocket i hear what you say about not being a breadhead. i think that's honourable, and i believe you too. but i think the OP wasn't really worrying about your financial health - to me, the point of the post, about ensuring as many people as possible buy this game, is because more customers means a better game. doesn't it? surely if the game is popular, that means more players on the servers, and this game (to me) is all about the players. as you say, it's an openworld game - the players, and their interactions, create the narrative. surely it follows that more players=better game. i don't think anyone's suggesting dumbing the game down for the sake of popularity, but i think there's a genuine concern that if too many are leaving the game, or becoming disillusioned, then that could impact on the final product - not because the game you build will be worse, but because the game is simply going to be better with more players. personally, i'm still happy to play as it is. but in a couple more months i think the constant loss of my best kit to hackers will likely have me either running around with nothing more than a can of beans and the first rifle i find, or logging out for good until standalone rolls by. that's not a complaint - i've had more than my money's worth from arma by playing dayz already!

thanks for all the comments. i think some folks lost the main point of my post - probably my fault for not making it clearer. i'm suggesting ditching the high-end, super-rare gear not because i think it shouldn't be there, but because the rarity of these items affects players who (legitimately) acquire them. you have to work super hard to get them, so when you do you tend to become super-cautious. you engage less. and i realised this when i was killed, back down to an AK i found at balota, got into a firefight and had the best 10 minutes of gameplay on dayz as i'd had in about 3 weeks. i love the spread of kit that's in the game right now, i just don't like the fact that having the rarer stuff makes me, and others, super-scared of dying. that's part of the mechanic, but it's also the reason most people then stay on low-pop servers, and combat log or alt-f4 at the drop of a hat. i honestly don't believe we can have a balance of gameplay styles without making some of the rare stuff easier to find. NVGs being as common as, say, FN-FALs would make a difference to the amount of people on night-time servers for example. that would improve the overall experience of everyone. make things hard to find, but never super-rare. let people hoard equipment safely that they're not going to use all the time. i know that *you* are superbadass and never die, or don't care when you die because you have the time to spend two weeks checking crashed helis to find your rare kit again. but most other people don't - and those are the people *you* should want to be playing against, so you can kill them with your sniper/NVGs/DMR/rare kit without them combat logging or simply not being there (and on a low-pop server).

tell me your thoughts... having played the game for about a month, i've noticed the following about having high-end loot - it ruins my game and make things a lot less fun. it's not just me. we hear a lot (a LOT) about combat logging, alt-f4 and so on. people logout at the slightest provocation rather than die. why? because they don't want to lose their high-end loot. and why would they want to lose it? it's such a pain in the arse to get it all back, and such an effort to get it in the first place. now, part of the draw of the game was always, for me, the feeling you get of excitement while simply running through an open field - the terror of suddenly being killed and losing everything in one go. it grounds you in the game. but, and this is important, it also makes you play like an asshole most of the time. low-pop servers, staying out of towns. avoiding conflict. alt-f4. i know this isn't everyone - some of you play "properly", happy to lose your gillie, AS50, NVGs, all that stuff, and happy to now have to spend the next few weeks searching for it all again (and, of course, you don't have a friend who can resupply you - it's all down to you, right?). well - i admire your commitment. but most people, and hence the bitter complaints about combat logging, don't play that way. i don't play that way. i get easily spooked as soon as my gear gets good, and my enjoyment suffers as a result. i stay away from towns, never fire a shot for fear of being heard, never engage a tango. i realised this yesterday when someone blew my head off (in the middle of nowhere, near-empty server, kinda suspicious but what-the-hell) and i lost my DMR, AS50, gillie, the lot. i felt like giving up. then i logged back in, found an AK at balota, had someone try and kill me; and instead of running, or logging, i engaged and had the best 10 minutes of play in dayz i've had in about 2 weeks. it was a revelation. nothing to lose, everything to play for, incredible gaming. i even killed the guy, except he combat logged because he had good gear! having the high-end loot adds the fear and panic into the game, but it kills the gameplay. not for all - not for you, maybe, but it kills it for enough people to make combat-logging and hacking endemic and that, overall, kills the entire game. i say we should make the high-end loot much easier to find, or remove it entirely. give people choice, but don't have things that are so rare as to change your level of engagement with the game. or make it possible for you to save things that you can keep beyond death. combat logging will be a thing of the past, and the towns and cities will be reinvigorated again.

really interesting story. two points. one - which of the two of you enjoyed that exchange more? you, with your low-end kit, with nothing to lose, or that idiot who couldn't even handle his high-end gear? it's obvious the answer is you. two - do you think that guy earned that gear? it sounds like he had no clue. he was in a piss-poor sniping position, couldn't shoot straight. probably made the classic mistake of using a sniper scope too close (less than 150m) and not aiming below the crosshairs. i bet he got his stuff from a duped tent, and logged simply because he didn't want to bother trudging across the map to get another loadup from his tent. i don't think he would have been that crap if he'd really got it legit. i think you actually made my point - it's more fun when you have gear you're not afraid of using. if the tables were turned, and you had the good gear that you'd earned the hard way, would you have risked it all just to kill some newb?

i guess my point is that the choice is taken away from you, little by little, as you acquire better loot. you become, naturally, more cautious. it's not really a choice. and, even if it is a choice that you can make (and, if you can, then more power to you my friend), but it's not a choice that the *majority* of other players make, and that in turn will affect your game as they disappear to the forests, to the low-pop servers, and alt-f4 as soon as they see or hear you.

a really interesting post, thank you. you say you found what you need, but did you really *need* that stuff? does anyone need an AS50 to kill players? do you need NVGs? you can't use them with the AS50 anyway, and there are less likely to be players around in pitch black anyway (any other time, you can basically see without them). you're using your gear to kill players at a campsite. i have to assume they're going back there to regear at tents that dupe kit. in many ways, this is a broken mechanic, as you're relying on players coming back to the same place in order to fullfill your playstyle, but would they keep going to the same place if their gear wasn't being duped there? and why do they come back only to be sniped by you? how long will that last? is that really a positive playstyle? it sounds fun, but how long will that fun last even if they don't find and kill you? it took you two weeks to get gear that allows you to play in a very specific way. and you could probably do the same thing with much lower-end kit. if you watch PvP dayz vids, you notice that almost all the really successful ones use fairly bog-standard gear. they rely on the element of surprise, and the fact that they don't give a shit about losing their gear.

i agree with your post, but my concern is that "bad luck" is easier, much easier, to engage with when you have less of a slog to get all your "rare" kit back. and engaging and embracing bad luck is part of what makes the game fun. i know there has to be a balance - you have to lose something to death otherwise it's meaningless. but this isn't balanced right now. like i said, i am having the most fun right now, with one mid-range gun i found in my first 5 minutes of play. the last few hours have been the best i've played - no rare kit, just one gun and some beans. i'm engaging players and taking risks and enjoying myself.

i'd love rare items to be an incentive and a long-term objective, but losing everything at death mitigates that. remember that the main question you ask yourself when leaving the relative safety of the forest to loot a building or a town is, "is there any sort of chance that anything in there that will offset the risk of losing my existing kit?". if the answer is "no" then you stay in the forest and move on. but when that even applies to crashed helis, when it applies to a dead player's body, then you've lost something. you never leave the safety of the forest, or stop your finger hovering over alt-f4, or whatever you need to do. it's boring!

a good question. there *is* no endgame content now. if the endgame is getting a gillie or an AS50 or NVGs, what do you do now? logout and go play battlefield? my concern is that acquiring this loot *does* end your game to a certain extent, in that it alters your gameplay and your level of engagement. you might try sniping with your AS50 for a while, but actually you can do that just as effectively with most other weapons if you choose a good spot. and it's not a very positive play-style. dayz doen't need an endgame. you've got just as much chance of survival with a can of beans and an AK as you do with a full pack, NVGs, gillie, AS50 and so on - but, when you have those cool things, you don't have as much fun as you do when you're bouncing around cherno with your AK, looking for matches!

if you do it legit, and on your own, then getting high-end loot is *not* easy. you need to run around constantly to find crashed helis, and even then all you're likely to find are fn-fals and other interesting but redundant weapons. to do this with any hope of consistent success, you'd need to play low-pop servers where your risks are mitigated. finding a gillie or an as50 or NVGs takes a lot of time or a lot of luck (luck which you have no guarantee of repeating after you're killed and have to do it all again). i'm suggesting that getting to a basic and interesting level of kit should be made easier, and that (unless you can save it someplace semi-safely) hard/very hard to find and overpowered gear should be removed. another example - if NVGs were more common, we'd all play on nigh-time servers more often. who bothers to do this, other than those with NVGs or those who know the map backwards and want to gearup safely?

no. that would make things worse - overall, players would be even less likely to engage or put themselves at risk. my issue is with the lack of incentive to put yourself at risk, and to engage with combat, to engage fully with the game and to relax (a bit) and have FUN!. i woud rather we make combat logging unnecessary and pointless, rather than simply prevent it. alt-f4 is a symptom, it's not the actual problem.

yes, although it seems to me that the game could descent into something ugly if there's too easy access to loot, or if the map encourages a frag-fest. there needs to be a balance between encouraging combat and engagement (which is FUN! - this is meant to be a game!) and pure survival, but i feel that in the default map, with the default loot-tables, there isn't. survival means hiding in the woods, never firing a shot, combat logging, which isn't fun (it *could* be fun, but not without many more in-game mechanics to make it fun - build a lasting camp, hunt (properly) for food, live in a cave/tree, better camo).

agree up to a point. but making ammo hard to find will discourage combat engagement. i enjoy the combat, and i want to have more excuses to engage with it. right now i never fire a shot unless i absolutely have to - i don't even kill zeds for fear of drawing a player. i want to draw players! i want to engage! making ammo hard to find will exacerbate that, i feel.

1. yes, deffo. but how do you avoid getting attached to it when it's so hard to replace, or virtually irreplaceable? 2. i agree when it comes to as50s. they add nothing. and having one doesn't make you a better player, or give you any more chance of survival. i've been killed more times with an as50 in my hand than with any other weapon. they're rare, that's all. and they allow you to one-shot-kill a chopper, making vehicles largely redundant too. we're in alpha here, so it's fine, but there is a serious and appalling lack of balance in the game at the moment.