FlimFlamm

The poll result is pretty curious ain't it? It must be flawed, I agree, but why? Perhaps people who tend to come to the dev forum tend to be the sort of people who like 1pp better than 3pp, for whatever reason. Something about what makes people tend to want to come to the dev DayZ forum also tends makes people interested in 1pp????? Perhaps we're all a bunch of lying hypocrites :D

Thanks for the input and the support! I'm quite glad that a good number of people found this thread interesting/informative, it took me quite awhile to compose my thoughts on the subject and I reckon it was worth the time! I'm currently trying to come up with a way of formalizing and defining the overall system that is DayZ by listing all of it's major parts and paramaters. By separating out parts and paramaters I hope to gain a clearer picture of exactly how game-play is impacted by individual parts/paramaters and their various combinations/interactions. Up until this point I have really only needed to talk about certain aspects of the system rather than try to try and appraise or define the entire specific DayZ, and it is proving much more complicated then the general analysis that complexity science has so far inspiried me. (where the philosophical theory of emergence and complexity then needs to be actually applied in practice to specific systems in order to transition into bona fide science). I'm thinking that once I have come up with a satisfactory assay I'm going to take all the good things from this thread and another dealing with a related topic and compose a massive thread in the suggestion section that will likely be the forum equivalent of a nuclear bomb :D. P.S "I got two bogies in the prig, horn the squad and twirl the cage!"

In one of my recent posts (a few posts up) I describe this as "sadism" and conclude that we all must accept it as a natural element of diverse player personalities. The majority of KOSing does not seem to stem from sadism though, and so we can get a lot done by addressing the remaining causes.

My current character has 20k calories packed neatly and tightly into his folds. If he could tell you how he feels about things he would tell you how delicious, diverse and nutritious his diet is, he would literally be a happy camper. He has not seen death other than the zombies and he has handled himself well. 4k calories is all that it takes to get you to light green energized status. Not many people realize it but you can continue to consume food and reach up to 20k calories (5 times as much as it takes to get you to light green from starving). The result is that if need be my character could go without food for five times as long as the sucker next to me who figured since he had energy he didn't need to actually eat anything (that poor skinny bastard). I think about my calories every-time my life is in danger, and if I was to die, my precious calories would be a huge loss. I often brag about my calories... I've been thinking about some kind of morale system for awhile, and having a player in peak physical condition and mental health could potentially be a very interesting mechanic that could be very simulatable. The game currently sort of simulates fat stores with the extra 16k of calories we can hold, but it could be so much more. The devs need to call it feature and have some way of showing players when they reach max calorie status in order to show it off.

The Dayz meaning of life... A bit of a conundrum... The meaning of life, and the value of life can be two separate things.The meaning of life is a very subjective thing; unless god is around to provide objectivity, we each discover what life means to us. The DayZ meaning of life would be no different. In the mod the DayZ meaning of life for me was the joy of flying and the sense of pride that comes from comradery and successful long term survival. For some players it will be about getting the most long range head-shots, or racking up the most kills. Since DayZ is unscripted the meaning of the DayZ lives that we live are up to us to discover. Value of life however can be additional can(s) of worms. Often times the meaning we assign to our own lives makes life worth living; It makes us value our own life. The reasons why we value the lives of others can be something completely unrelated to why we value our own life. Almost ironically in regards to the dilemma of trying to reduce the occurrence of KOSing, the meaning of DayZ life for some players is the KOS'ing of all other life at all times. Players who value their own lives but not the lives of others tend to be the ones to KOS out of fear, or boredom, or sadism. Getting players to value their own lives isn't necessarily the issue, but rather getting people to value the lives of others. Value for ones own life can lead to conflict avoidance out of self preservation, but it can also lead to aggression, depending on the strategy of the individual who greatly values their own life. Increasing the value to ones own life in this case can be a double edged sword. A notable exception to to the strategy of offence as a viable form of defence (resulting from valuing ones own life) can be destroyed through a greater penchant for mutual destruction. Imagine if the only weapon in the game of DayZ was a knife: players would pretty much be guaranteed to get their pretty faces sliced up real bad regardless of whether or not the emerge victorious. The likely result of that system would be that players engage in group based knife warfare where players form phalanxes of swinging knives in order to dominate individuals and other groups. The game would be terrible (or would it?) but at least KOSing would be almost totally addressed :D. Mutually assured destruction as a source of stability is unlikely to be much of an incentive to reduce KOSing between individuals but once group play becomes common place it is certainly important to try and preserve relations with other groups because war between them will mean overall net losses on both sides. There is a natural spectrum of deviance between the way humans feel about and behave towards one another in the real world, and as a result the motivations which can cause or prevent murder can be numerous and likewise varied. This is I think what makes the issue of KOSing hard to understand and as a result such a heated and controversial topic. There are numerous reason why people KOS: Boredom, Fear, Paranoia, Greed, and Sadism to name a few. Boredom is something that only additional features can really address, and luckily this happens to be a significant cause of current KOSing. Fear and Paranoia and Greed (which stem from the fact that generally people do value their own lives) seem quite difficult causes for KOS to address. When players look through the eyes of their character and see a stranger, what do they see? A potential friend? A potential ally? A likely annoying nincompoop? A walking meat kebab? A walking loot cache? A potential enemy who must be killed at any cost? The next victim in your endless series of senseless murders and short lived characters? Different players with different personalities are naturally diverse and some of them KOS. As I have tried to argue, addressing the "problem" of KOSing as a whole involves dealing with each and very possible cause for it. Now that I feel I've rambled enough about the complexity of the issue, here is my attempt at a useful conclusion: Boredom - Fear/paranoia - Greed Sadism Results of source poll, the specificity of the questions could use some improvement but it got the job done. TL;DR: read what is bold and in red

BULL HORNS CONFIRMED!!!! http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/226196-chris-torchia-on-twitter-for-all-you-blowhards-soon-you-can-blow-harder-so-much-pun-dayz-trello-update-httpstcojfkxswq43y-httptco/#entry2278167

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/226203-peter-nespesny-on-twitter-hriki-daedriclion-thedeluxe4-ctorchia-break-71-taser-and-tranquilizer-darts-are-ready-model-wise-but-still-needs/#entry2278310 IT'S HAPPENING!!!!!

the ongoing issue with walkie talkies is that their range is useless and operating them is an ultimate chore for a payoff that everyone needs access to; communication! radios could indeed become one of the best items...

I wonder what kind of spices would go well with pickled bandit meat... Afterall if we're going to go to all the trouble of pickling and preserving our food we might as well put in a bit more effort to make it taste yummy! I've been thinking more and more about a morale system and what might make it interesting, and well prepared food as a comfort item and morale booster seems as one of the standout concepts. Pickled bandit meat should keep you alive, but you're probably not going to look forward to it after the end of a long day of heroism.

Modularity/customization and adaptability give rise to all sorts of new time consuming tasks. That the barrel can have so many different functions makes it perfect to adapt to multiple playstyles. Once basebuilding and vehicle modularity come into existence then we are going to see the most endless time sinks that the history of DayZ has ever seen. If the DayZ devs want to create endless emergent content then customizable and adaptable items and features are the way to get it. The way barrels will become an integral part of vehicle maintenance and food/liquid storage should prove quite interesting. Raiders won;t be able to cart everything off unless they have an entire V3S for the barrels of fuel and food. And nobody is quite sure what that barrel of red-ish liquid is...

THE LIMERICK MASTER-RACE CANNOT BE HELD BACK!

I can see that you're not much a fan my mind ran free, so-sorry it's bland but complexity you see, cannot be compressed easily. Long it may seem but tis not a flimflam!

I think there could be a lot of communiity related information that could prove useful as a starting point for players to become organized. Establishing a potential neutral zone or a trading zone, or strict pvp zones could be a good way to get the ball rolling on player interaction, but I'm a firm believer that until we have means of meeting new people over the air waves it's going to remain as difficult as it is. I don't think that killing in DayZ is a bad thing, it's just that the prevalence of killing absolutely everyone you see as soon as you see them is a trend that people seem to get tired of pretty quickly. It can in and of itself lead to other emergent trends, but these resulting trends tend to involve very little player driven interaction, which is what we require for the formation of larger communities that can actually have an impact on greater chernarus.

Semi-colons, when not used half-assed manner, are awesome! (I entertain myself too much I think) I was thinking about GPS the other day but they should be quite rare. To have possession of a touch screen two way satellite GPS and radio would be amazing. I too really want versatile in-game communication that doesn't wreck the immersive experience, but if we add in such awesome gadgets then they would probably wind up being too rare. Perhaps a compromise could be a buffed up walkie talkie, with range dependent on altitude. Maybe it could be a hand crank version so that you could recharge it internally rather than needing a battery. It's semi realistic but leaves the door open for better communication apparatus while making communication accessible. Some other interesting forms of communication could be bull horns, which players will find all sorts of wonderful uses for. Drums, whistles, trumpet like horns, potentially made from things like bull horns which can be used for long range signaling or just music making! If radios get added in then there should be default channels. A public channel, and aircraft default channel, and perhaps some sort of military default channel. Players could set their own frequencies for various purposes but the idea of public channels will give players the ability to congregate off the bat in the communication network.

Have you ever seen Stargate SG1? I would probably give up my first born if someone made a legit stargate mod with a bunch of alien world destinations :| Edit: Oh no... I can't stop thinking about it... it's zombie pack mules all over again!!!

I think people in general want to cooperate, it's just so hard and risky to do so. Aside from there currently being no adequate long term objectives for players to cooperate on and work toward, the fragility of what we have after we spend a few weeks on a single life is what makes us so fearful of losing it. We have no safe way to store loot long term which means when we get killed we lose everything. We have no way to communicate and to at least try and meet or negotiate with one another. I'm sure that if we communicated enough we would realize cooperation is more lucrative than competition. If we had a sense of community and communication we could band together against KOSers, and if people could safely store loot then they might not feel the need to constantly KOS. Regarding tents: They are not safe because they get found quite easily. They are horribly buggy and currently aren't even persistent, hence nobody uses them. We are pretty much similar in features to the vanilla DayZ mod, it's only natural to conclude that all trends in player behavior will converge toward KOSing in the current standalone build just as in the mod.

In a game called Space Station 13, sometimes other players will require you fill out formal paperwork (which is of their own creation). When you apply a pen to paper you can write on it, and if you write [sign] on the paper then the signature of your characters name will appear on the paper, which nobody can duplicate. It could also be interesting if players could use candles to seal and perhaps stamp written documents and correspondance. There's not much basic in game need for it but who knows, maybe a need will evolve! When it comes to certain cities developing reputations as trading cities, that would be completely awesome, but I think in order for that kind of complexity to be stable all kinds of basic parts and para-maters need to already be in place. In the section about "How to promote emergent game-play", I wrote about how communication between groups on an individual server could foster a reactive network which reinforces peace and stability between them. Only with adequate communication are these various groups going to be able to come to the necessary agreements to cooperate and set up rudimentary protections when they go to market. Getting the word out about the market is also important to attract business, and with attraction comes danger, and so I think these kinds of emergent marketplaces can only emerge under the protection of relatively super-powerful groups who have the resources and man-power to do so. A really interesting crew calling themselves the burnaya river trading company operates these trading zones but can only afford to do it rarely and on announced dates. They make the location random and then release the location when everything is set up and have greeters and defenders and such. Even with all their precaution, things tend to get very crazy and dangerous. They have some awesome videos about their experiences! http://burnayariver.com/ Repair (and construction) is something that I dream about everynight. Not just for items and bases, but also for vehicles. Modularity is such a powerful tool for driving adaptation and emergent strategies. I could go on forever about crafting, so I'll hold my tongue for now on it and rant in a future post. Regarding cooking, I've been thinking about it for quite a long time. Morale is a mechanic that could potentially somehow be implemented. Morale is a very real thing that real humans need to deal with, and especially in the context of a horror game, morale is a very relevant aspect of life that we ought to try and simulate. I'm not exactly sure how the morale mechanic should work, but I know that if you eat a masterfully prepared meal with the freshest and best ingredients, with nothing burned and no weird combinations of food like spaghetti and pumpkin soup, then your character should feel incredibly awesome as a result. He or she has been running around eating mostly raw canned goods or venison, or worse, for god knows how long, and so the comfort of eating a delicious warm full meal cannot be underestimated. (whether it gives you longer lasting stamina, or recovery from injury or illness, I'm not sure) The potential result of this kind of mechanic is that groups look for good cooks to join them. Novice cooks will pair the wrong ingredients and cook them imperfectly. At marketplaces, if they ever emerge, food vendors could make a killing! I would like to have the ability to cook a stew, and be required to add ingredients at the right time depending on how long they each take to cook. If the ingredients I use compliment one another well (onions and beef, for example), then the meal should be more comforting and morale boosting. Some people might not realize it but many cooks put love sweat and tears into preparing their meals to perfection. Give us a steep learning curve and a reason to learn it like morale boosting or a reputation as the best cook in chernarus!

I plan on writing a bit more on the ramifications of loot safety mechanics for the exact reason that you mentioned: If you feel like you aren't going to lose absolutely everything you've worked for for many days or weeks, then you won't feel obliged to kill everyone that you see out of fear. The dev's are actually currently working on some sort of concealable loot stash that can be built in a primitive way, and when it comes it's going to drastically alter the average DayZ experience. People are going to be looking for groups because of their new-found ability to amass lots of loot in a safe manner. Without base-building to make them geographically static and centralized there's no real telling how these new groups will behave, but they will certainly emerge :D (i speculate that groups are goung to focus on hoarding military gear and are going to go around doing squad style aggressive play). Personally I am going to retreat into the forest. If players could build some sort of barricade that could be effective at keeping other players out, then the game would be impacted even more drastically. We will see sneaky groups of players looking for clever spots to hide their hordes with hidden loot stashes, but If we could go for the fortification/defense option over the hidden and camouflaged option then almost the entire map becomes a viable living place with many more play0styles available.

I was thinking the same things. I have some additional radio features in mind that I think could make for a spectacular experience. - Hand crankable emergency CB radio should be a starting item, and it should be clip-able onto the pants of players, so it doesn't eat up an inventory slot. (reasoning behind this is that the devs might wind up caving and adding a global, immersion breaking, chat. this is a way to preserve it at 0 player expense) - The the range of broadcast should depends on altitude and/or line of sight. the higher you are the better a signal you will get, just like in real life. At the top of the tower on green mountain, perhaps the whole map is reachable, at sea level, perhaps only a few kilometers. - There should be a default public channel, but there also needs to be alternate channels that people can switch to. This will provide a place to meet others and the additional channels can serve as semi-private introductory and communication channels ad hoc. - players with bases can loot and set up an actual table top CB radio, in addition to perhaps setting up a small lootable antenna for it to give it maximum range. -Scanners (rare) could be findable, and when used could scan and cycle through all the radio channels, looking for activity. Once it finds activity it tells you the frequency and allows you to listen in. -headsets should be available that can be connected to a radio and worn under hats and attached to helmets. This makes it so you can hear your radio without other people, and zombies, around you hearing it. Not sure if this should be standard, common, or rare. In a real world zombie apocalypse I think CB radio would become the number one method of communication. The setbacks of CB radio are range issues if there is not a large enough network of radios to bounce off of, and the fact that anyone can listen to you. I think having around a 4 or 5 km emergency radio on the coast would be sufficient along with the ability to increase the range by gaining altitude and to have advanced radio setups like small antennas, scanners, and tabletop CB radio sets for bases to deck themselves out with. When players are on the coast the public channel of their radio should be turned on by default and through it new spawns can hear voice and text chat. In order to communicate back they might need to climb a large hill, depending on how far away the source of the broadcast is. One interesting emergent aspect of game-play that could result from this is that players need to turn their radios off when they are near zombies, or else they might be attracted to the noise. another interesting feature is that it's not only your microphone voice that will be sent over the radio, it will also be the sounds of nature, guns, and zombies. Imagine hearing someone cry out for help amidst zombie groans and gunshots, then suddenly go silent. That is a real horror game. :D Some military vehicles could be outfitted with radios as well, like the V3S. Aircraft pilots just love radios because they can talk to each other when they encounter one another! I'm mainly interested in giving loner players a new way to meet people and a way for the community to begin to network with itself, but there's no telling what crazy nonsense radios could lead to. It might be that on some servers clans jam every frequency because their military operations are too clandestine! Just imagine what information you might hear while listening and scanning through the channels... Maybe you're being chased and you get cornered. It might be a long shot but why not call out your location over the public radio and plead for assistance? At least you can spoil the location of your enemies. Or maybe you can negotiate with them? Nope, it's too late. They just flash banged you and took your guns and radio away! Now nobody will find out about the terrible things they are about to do to you :(

I would like to see a basic test map, with spawns for each and every item that is in the game. This map can serve as a testing ground for weapons and vehicles and other such functions. It should have a target range, an airstrip, a mountain, basically one or more of everything. If we can get a-hold of this kind of map in beta then bug testing becomes incredibly easy! Also players can learn to be effective through practice!

Silly Tatanko! How could you not recall such epic news? http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/225481-hermit-playstyle-enchancement/?p=2269500

Heh, thanks but I'm just doing it in my spare time. I've been mulling over the concepts for a few weeks and once I got started the DayZ and scientific passions came together to produce this twisted love child of a post :)

Even if just part of this post is read, especially the part regarding how to promote emergence, then I'll be happy. I am hoping there are more people like you and myself who find this sort of thing interesting and I think we could generate some awesome ideas if we can think about DayZ issues in an organized way. Regarding walkie talkies, I understand that actual friends and clans will always use team-speak, but walkie-talkies, and CB radios can fill a much more important role; communication between non-friends. One of the major issues preventing random player interaction is that there is really no safe way to communicate. If we all had useful and working radios then we could try and contact people as a way for random players to interact and meet in a non-threatening manner. Once players build trust and become friends I fully expect them to use team-speak but the value is still there by giving a kind of in game team-speak for all the local players to actually interact and meet one another. When players can communicate over an open radio channel, a network is formed; players can be warned of hostile zones, community events can occur quite easily, recruitment can take place more frequently, and a great number of other potential functions. It would be pretty interesting to rob someone over the radio by describing them and their location and shooting a warning shot past their head. They wouldn't know where you are and have no choice to drop their gear and leave :) Mainly a cb radio or a longer range and more easy to use walkie talkie should be made available as a way for players to interact and to network with one another in various ways.

I came to realize that I mis-worded the title of this post. It should have been : Multi-Person Mechanics to encourage COOPERATIONI realized that how to actually encourage the kind of things this thread was getting at is a much larger can of worms. So I made a new thread about it and am linking it here because it has several caveats regarding the emergent trend of KOS'ing. http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/226172-emergence-in-dayz-what-is-it-is-it-good-kosing/?p=2277928

Personally I love difficulty. My idea of player progression is becoming better at the game because of knowledge and skill, not arbitrary skill points.