carcer

If you're going to run numbers I recommend you do some more in-depth analysis - you want to see stuff like what the average survival time for a player's Xth character is, what the survival time of characters dying ONLY in the last week, two weeks, whatever is, how many characters the average player has had, how many characters the average active player (i.e. actually played in the last week or two) has gone through, and so on and so forth. When you just have a global historical average it will be very difficult to extract meaningful information from this; when you can look at a bunch of figures and see that "average survival time significantly increases by a player's 5th character" and "the majority of active players are now on at least their 5th character" then that'll give you some clear insight. I was going to suggest that the time went up significantly on the basis that people stopped doing the repeated respawn to get a good starting spot after dying, but it's pointed out that very very short survival times weren't counted; so, barring that the stats are calculated wrong and you only THINK you've discounted those but are actually still including them, my money is on the average competency of the player base rising after the initial huge popularity wave has abated, so there's no longer such a massive influx of complete newbies and most of the ones who just couldn't hack it have given up and moved on already.

Well YOU might find attachment in making decisions that you can change on a whim' date=' but a decision that I can't change is something that will always be more important to me then something I can go, "Well I can just change it later if I dont' like it." As for the prejudice thing. So wanting a player to play as the gender they associate with is prejudiced? If you honestly believe that please see my previous statement about you and your insistence on bringing it up. No but I am honestly telling you that a decision that can be changed at any time will never hold as much weight to me as a decision that cannot be. I can respect that, but whether or not it's removed later technically it has reinforced the stated goal. We're sitting here having a rather in depth discussion about this feature are we not? Haha So because some users have come in here and made prejudiced statements, Rocket is prejudice for having put in a system where you can only choose your gender once(which we now know was just a limitation he met)? That's still not sound logic. I think the key point here is that it's not something that can be changed at ANY time. You only get the choice once per character, and you have to die if you want to change it. From your perspective, assuming you have spent time on a character and do not wish to die and lose your stuff, that's a fixed point; you can't change it without fucking up or giving up, neither of which we assume you intend to do. From mine, getting to make the choice makes me feel more invested in the character because I have been given greater grounds to define them within, and so I care more about what happens to that character. Regarding our neverending prejudice debate, well, rocket told someone who asked if it could be not-permanent choice to go back to WoW and then encouraged others to stick to their own gender, so I don't think my interpretation was entirely a random stab in the dark (but I do concede I was less charitable than I ought to have been because I saw his comments in the context of some of the other more definitely questionable things said by other posters). In fairness, I did say prejudice or misplaced optimism; of course, the secret third option that we all forgot existed, that it was just quick thing he didn't put much thought into and he has a sense of humour, turned out to win the prize today. Oh well! Such is life. At any rate I think I've said pretty much all there is to say about these things from my perspective.

Well YOU might find attachment in making decisions that you can change on a whim' date=' but a decision that I can't change is something that will always be more important to me then something I can go, "Well I can just change it later if I dont' like it." As for the prejudice thing. So wanting a player to play as the gender they associate with is prejudiced? If you honestly believe that please see my previous statement about you and your insistence on bringing it up. [/quote'] Are you honestly telling me that the choice you just had to make about whether or not to play a male or female character will make the game mean more to you for the rest of time? That you didn't just go "welp, I'm male" and settle to continuing to play a succession of male characters the same way you were already doing? For the overwhelming majority of people that decision was a meaningless no-brainer. For a small group of people the decision actually detracts from the experience instead of making it more meaningful, for the reasons I described above; and it's not like I am suggesting that a character should be able to change gender on the fly, like you can do with faces. You'd still have to DIE. That's not "on a whim". If you've spent a while with that character and grown attached to them, isn't feeling like playing a character of a different gender but knowing you'll lose your progress and your stuff more of this bullshit "anti-game hard choice" than not caring because you know you can never change it anyway? Look at it this way - the single decision will, for most people, be a meaningless no-brainer once, for a handful (which apparently you are part of) be a legitimately engaging hard choice once, and for the rest be a hard choice that just makes them care less for the rest of the game. The other option, choosing the gender of each character when they are created, is again meaningless to most, another useless flippy thing for your handful and for the rest something which will make them care more about each character. The hard choices should be in the playing of the game, not the setting it up; they should not be arbitrary but emergent. I can understand your argument but I feel it is wrong and the decision as it stands only detracts from the stated goal of the game, not reinforces it. I explained why there's prejudice in it. You can keep ignoring that explanation if you want but it doesn't change the fact that it's there or that there certainly have been many prejudiced things said people in this thread; do you want me to just say sexism, instead? Transphobia? Misogyny? Is your problem specifically with the word, "prejudice", which has some alternative meaning to you where it does not encompass those things? Getting all antsy about men pretending to be women is prejudice, and it needs to be challenged. I am not trying to shock you but make people think, myself.

Well Rocket is always welcome to jump in and say I'm completely wrong as this is just my interpretation from his posts' date=' most specifically the one about the greatest movie he's ever seen. He doesn't give a shit about your fun or your enjoyment. What he cares about are evoking emotions from you. Forcing you to question the norms that you're force fed every day. He wants people to really stop and reevaluate things about gaming in general and themselves. Here's a quote So he's imposing a choice on you that normally you don't even give a second thought because you can switch willy nilly. Certainly sounds within his gameplan doesn't it? And please stop trying to push that prejudice bullshit. It comes off as you not being able to come up with reasons to back yourself up so you're pushing for shock value or what have you with it and it's pathetic. And I've repeatedly stated that I think the game will be more effectively able to evoke emotions in many of the players if they're given a little more control at the start of the game to define the character they're going to play. If you are more invested in the character then you will care more about what happens to them. I understand that this makes no fucking sense to you because you are not the sort of person for whom this would be a thing, but then having that toggle makes no goddamn difference to you, so why do you argue so strongly that it should not exist? YOU may not give gender a second thought. When I make characters I think about the character. I do not choose things at random for shits and giggles. Locking in those choices does not make me think more deeply and make the game better, it makes every character I will ever play be the same and that is boring and it makes me not care about what happens to the character. It makes the game less effective at rocket's stated goal of getting me to feel some emotion. Regarding the prejudice thing, the point is that a lot of people are against the idea of even having the female characters at all because they don't like the idea of men playing as women. There is prejudice in that, either gender-shaming men for being "girly" or transphobia about "men who want to be women", or in some cases simple sexism alleging that women don't have what it takes to survive the zombie apocalypse or implications you ought to be able to have sex with them for there to be a point. Rocket said you should stick to playing as your own gender, and I feel that is a stance which is wrong and has its roots in that prejudice if not a misplaced hope about how the players will behave.

I didn't say any of those things in the post you are responding to. I clearly stated that what you said it fine' date=' but the devs chose a different route, with a purpose. Please, don't pull the bs prejudice card here. It's just... so off. I could tell you lots of things, about my real life that would probably defuse your obvious picture of me as some kind of stuck-in-the-50s redneck or whatever. Trust me, I've deal with more gender issues that you do, on a daily basis. PLease get off your high horse about gender switched players. Guess what?? THEY CAN PLAY A FEMALE IF MALE OR A MALE IF FEMALE. THAT"S ALREADY POSSIBLE. This is not about ANY of that. It's about people trying to reason the dev team on THIS game out of a decision by citing what OTHER games did or would do. That's a useless argument, here. L [/quote'] What I said was that the only reasons I could see for making the decision that they did were either prejudice or hopelessly misplaced optimism. I explained why I thought it was a bad idea and why the alternative was better. In one breath you agree with what I have said and in the other you tell me that it's not, in fact, the case, because this is DayZ. You cannot have this both ways. I have no impression that you're a throwback redneck and, not personally knowing you, I do wish you the best in life but I have no interest in how many gender issues you apparently deal with. Since you don't know me either I'm not sure how you can assert you deal with it more than I do, but that's not really relevant to the argument. At this point all I know about you is that you support a decision I feel is flawed for reasons that I feel are flawed, and I make no assumptions about why or how you arrived at that reasoning, nor any ad hominem attacks on your character. Yes, it is possible for men to play female characters and vice versa. However, they're permanently locked to one gender and rocket is on record, in this very thread, telling people that they should choose their character gender to match their own, albeit in far cruder terms. I think it is fair to say that is discouraging people from playing characters that are not of the same gender as they are; that's not a pedantic, weaselly interpretation of his words. I didn't cite any other games in my argument. You suggested they want the players to identify with their characters and I explained why I do not think that the choice prevents players identifying with their characters and why, in fact, having the choice would allow some to invest more heavily in their characters. Throughout my posting I've made no argument that rocket should do Thing X because Game Y did it that way, or because Game Z has plans to do it. I have argued from the basic reasons of why I think certain things are a good or bad idea, with no relation to how they've been implemented or executed elsewhere. I'm thinking, and talking, about DayZ. Not any other games.

I think most of the people like you that blather on about gameplay and what Rocket should do totally misunderstand the concept of "anti-game". He is not making a game at all. Or at least something that is not like any game that is currently popular with the masses. He is not here to cater to what you desire' date=' but he is here to make you want the things you don't desire. The one-time gender choice is perfectly "anti-game". The only problem I see is that some IRL women might have gotten bugged out of the choice. Something I see being rectified. Think outside of the... [/quote'] Would you support rocket if he decided that when you first made a character you had to choose whether you had an M9 or a G17 as your sidearm and you would be stuck with that weapon for the rest of time? Would you support him if you had to choose whether your movement speed was run or walk, with all the advantages and disadvantages associated, permanently for all characters? Would you support rocket if your maximum health was randomly determined for your account and fixed forever for all your characters, so that some people would be juggernaughts and some unlucky few made of thin paper? For a start, such decisions make no sense in the context of the world, but you could easily dream up some plausible decisions - such as, for instance, choosing whether to be a fast-but-light character with reduced carrying capacity but improved speed or a heavy-duty character who can carry more but moves slower - but forcing you to stick with that forever, never giving the option to try the other, would not be good design. It would be terrible design. If you're trying to say that rocket's objective is to design something that is terrible, then it is his prerogative to do so, and I'd predict that as he steadily makes the game more terrible less and less people will actually want to play it; but I don't believe that's what he set out to do. I believe that rocket wants to make a game that is fun but harsh, addictive but challenging as hell; an anti-game in the sense that it eschews the usual notions of a learning curve and balanced gameplay to throw you right into the thick of things and forces you to deal with it or die, without holding your hand and walking you through your first time with baby steps. I do not believe that he wants to make an anti-game in the sense that he wants to make something nobody would enjoy playing. If he does, then, well, that's a terrible idea, and this is me saying so, and I'll play the game for as long as it's entertaining and give up when it no longer is. But I reject your idea that this is not a game. It is a game. It is described as a game and played like a game; the purpose is for people to play it. It is not a game with stereotypical mainstream appeal, because it deliberately rejects some things that would normally be considered good game design in order to create a very different experience. That still does not make it a good idea to reject ALL things considered good design, and rocket doesn't; he still optimises his code and fixes bugs, tries to ensure that what we have is something we can actually play. Then again we return to the question of why I don't have a model my own appearance and have the gameplay adjusted based on my own personal attributes when I "create a character" to play this game, why I don't only get one go at it, and why everyone runs around as pretty much gung-ho arse-kicking motherfuckers when, in all likelihood, they'd crap themselves and die fast in an actual zombie apocalypse. We're not playing ourselves. Nobody is ever going to really be playing themselves in this game. There is nothing you can do to it to make killing have the same impact it ought to, to make death something as feared as it should be, to make people react as they really would to this threat and still have a game that anyone will actually want to play. At the end of the day, the very way that it is presented is that you get a character, you try and do as well as you can, and when that character dies you get a new one; the character is not you.

And.... The dev team knows all of this and still made the decision to do it their way. Maybe they want the players to identify with their onscreen character and push people away from the gender switched aspects of role playing.... L So you're basically saying "Yes' date=' the decision is rooted in prejudice or a completely unachievable goal, shut up they know what they're doing?" In the latter case they clearly don't know what they're doing and in the former they're being wilfully prejudiced, in which case they deserve to be complained at most vociferously. I also have issues with your assertion that people cannot identify with those of a different gender. I don't know about you, but my ability for empathy is not restricted to other men; there are plenty of cultural difference in how we perceive men and women in society which colour our development and how we think of each other, but they do not take away my ability to identify with a character who is much like myself simply because they have a different set of genitals. Also, the idea that "gender-switched aspects of roleplaying" are something that must be avoided is again rooted in prejudice. I don't see a good reason to try and stop people doing that, and people who have problems with it should get over it. If I'm not playing "in character" I don't care what the genders of the other characters in the game are and if I am being in-character then I do not care what the genders of the other players playing the game are. If someone you're interacting with is genuinely trying to mislead you about their actual IRL gender then they're being duplicitious, but that's not an issue with the game, it's an issue with the person and probably one you shouldn't get too worked up over. When I play female characters in games, I am never trying to make anyone think that I, the player, am female, and I always make sure to clarify if there appears to be confusion. If anything, I feel that giving players more freedom in defining their character will cause them to become more heavily invested in the character, not less; you will always feel more deeply about the choices you actually got to make than the choices that were made for you. Players who do not care about their character, only themselves, are not going to be affected by whether or not their choice of gender is fixed permanently or malleable-per-character; it is only a negative thing for people who [b']do care about character in a more detailed way. It is a decision which only hurts the game; it does not enhance the experience in any way for anyone, only limit it for some of us.

Incorrect. It's rocket's anti-game. I suggest you read up on what he's trying to do. When rocket described it as an anti-game he was talking about the lack of balance and the challenge (unless my interpretation was horribly flawed somehow). No' date=' DayZ isn't supposed to be a "balanced game"; it's supposed to be difficult and unforgiving and harsh. I understand that and I think it's cool. I'm not asking for a game where the zombies arbitrarily scale to my character level, and I'm perfectly happy with a world where I will probably die frequently and frustratingly because some arsehole wants my beans or I just didn't find enough ammo; it makes managing to survive all the more rewarding an accomplishment. Those aren't things that I'm contending and they're what the whole anti-game thing is about. What I am challenging is the idea that people should be prevented from, y'know, roleplaying. Being yourself isn't roleplaying. If a man wants to play a female character or a woman wants to play a male character for one life, that shouldn't be a problem; they shouldn't be discouraged from doing so, they shouldn't be denied that opportunity based on an arbitrary binary choice they get to make once. That's not difficulty or challenge, or a "hard choice", as some people have said; it's just a "fuck you". A hard choice is deciding whether or not to take the extra magazine or the extra food, knowing you're possibly choosing between starving to death or being eaten by zombies, and that's something that affects you for all of one character, one life. Being forced to make a choice which denies you the option to do something differently in the game for the rest of time is not a hard choice in the spirit of the game; it's just a completely arbitrary one. It is bad design, even when you accept the idea that the gameplay should be harsh and unbalanced. The very fact that the choice is not even something which makes a gameplay difference (or at least, once it's all implemented fully and working, [b']shouldn't make a difference) is what makes the lock even more perplexing, because it cannot be a decision that was rooted in consideration of gameplay or difficulty. Rocket is already trying to move away from a system where appearance was dictated by earlier actions and give the players more customisability in how they look; it seems a massive step backwards from this to then introduce a new system even more rigid than the one he just discarded. The only reasons I can see for it are rooted in prejudice or the misguided notion that DayZ will become a world where the characters of the players ARE the players and behave exactly as the players really would in their situation, and that's simply never going to even be close to a reality. There must be something about sleep deprivation that just inspires me to yak on endlessly, it seems.

Not aimed at any one particular person, but regarding male/female selection: If the devs were not open to the criticisms and suggestions of players there would be no point to half this site. If an individual believes they are doing something wrong and puts that idea forward in a civilised manner, "fuck you it's rocket's mod he can do what he wants" is not a valid counter-argument, and you're a terrible person for thinking it is. Rocket could implement a vengeful god that flies around the map killing people at random if he really wanted to and we couldn't stop him, but I'm pretty sure most people here would happily say that's a really bad idea and he shouldn't do it. If the stance really is that you are expected to play your own sex/gender/whatever ingame then why is it not also a requirement that you take photos of yourself and create a custom skin for your face to use in game, submit a detailed report on how much you can bench to calculate how many items you're allowed to carry before you collapse and present evidence of your IRL marksmanship skills to determine how accurate your shots are? Why is it not the case that death really is permanent and you only get one character, ever, per CD-key? Answer: It's a goddamn roleplaying game. You create a character and play a role, and that character may die and you create a new one. The point of RPGs is NOT to be forced to be yourself; if rocket thinks that doing so is a good game design then he's wrong. Mandating that all an individual's characters must be the same sex is ridiculous and stating that players should only play characters of their own sex is likewise absurd. It's an arbitrary restriction for which there is no good reason, only irrational and unfounded prejudice against "men who want/pretend to be women" (whether homophobia, transphobia, or simple sexism). It's illuminating how much people are freaking out about the idea of men playing women but nobody, bar nobody, seems to give a single damn about the idea of women playing as men. As implemented this is a mechanic I disagree strongly with and feel ought to be changed to a choice upon the creation of a new character. It's also evidence of a view which needs to be challenged. Rocket's mod it may be, but as long as it's being publically distributed I'm free to say he's doing it wrong, and as long as he's soliciting feedback I'll say that to his own face/forum. I went into this thread expecting a lot of sexism and I'm sorry to say I was not disappointed. EDIT: Mercilessly eliminated a wayward apostrophe.