FrigginTommyNoble

I never played the mod, so I don't have that experience to compare SA with. As a relative "outsider," I feel like BI is on the right track. I want a rich array of post-apocalyptic concerns to manage. I want a hardcore experience that doesn't hold my hand. I want social interactions that are sometimes hilarious, sometimes fulfilling, sometimes gut-wrenching, etc. Feedback is essential in this stage, to help guide BI in making the game we're expecting. I expect the survival elements of the game to keep growing in depth and importance. Having an updated UI and a HUD as described in dev posts will go a long way to making these systems fit in a more fluid and visceral way. Thing is, I see a fair bit of foot-stomping in this thread (moreso in others). It seems many people just can't relate to the reality of making a game, or any bit of working software for that matter. After 13 years of programming I'm still blown away by how seemingly simple features take much longer and are much more complex and subtle than I originally imagined, even in my own area of expertise. It's one thing to get your code "most of the way there." But the devil's in the details, and the last 20% takes 80% of the time. The first time I made a prototype in Unity (DayZ clone), I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly I could get something that looked kind of like a game. Then reality set in. The reality is, it takes metric poop-tons of hacking, de-hacking, fiddling, and straight-up brow-beating to go from "ridiculous but almost game-like" to "sort of what I was thinking about but still way off." The solution to this inherent complexity can only be approached through iteration. Iteration has a tendency to gib schedules in the face. This is the way of the alpha. BI is iterating, and they're doing it on a grand stage. This is a harrowing experience, for both BI and us. Sometimes they have to back-track. Sometimes they have to pull zeds for a minute because it's the lesser of evils. Sometimes a build blows our minds. Sometimes heinous bugs make to to stable. It's all a part of the flow. I forgot what we were originally talking about but those are words I just said.

This is something I wasn't able to glean from persistance/storage discussions.. If you loot an item, and then store it in a barrel, is that item removed from the "economy," and thus will respawn elsewhere on that server? Or will it remain in the CLE table, effectively decrementing the total number of available items in spawn locations on that server?

Amazing Sufjan Stevens song about that place. Quite an adequate substitute for the very obvious and somewhat troubling lack of a weekly status report....

Yes! This is exactly what I'm getting at. I hesitate to get into specifics, because DayZ veterans tend to disparage any kind of "in-game" mechanics that might be overly "gamey." I don't mean that as a knock, I just know specifics tend to get shot down, sometimes (imo) unfairly. Also, I don't presume to know more about game design than the devs, so it's most important to let them know the kind of experience I want, without necessarily trying to dictate the implementation. Agree with this as well. Although The Long Dark is a bit too brutal for multiplayer, in that game you're constantly managing survival. Those systems are a bit too simple too, just a constant linear drain of food and water. But the way TLD inform's you about your status, little vocalizations (the voice acting is really subtle and great), limping when you sprain an ankle. Your remaining calories show temporarily on the screen every 500 calories. That's the kind of stuff that makes survival drive your actions.

I just think we need more depth and granularity, and a better notification system. The way the game plays now, survival elements quickly become afterthoughts. The first 20 mins, when you're gathering the basics, that's when you feel survival pressure. After that, the survival elements are completely ignored until you start getting these nagging UI messages. I'm hungry. I want some food. I need to eat something. Every 20 seconds or so. That feels broken. In reality, your needs are visceral. You don't go from stuffed to super-hungry without noticing. I'm not asking for some kind of HUD, or anything. But I expect the game to naturally and fluidly connect you to your character's state, and have your general health be an ever-present concern.. Health could be a really deep mechanic. Suddenly, for no reason, "I don' feel very good." Or, "my stomach hurts." Then you would have to go through a process of discovering why you're not feeling good. You should be able to make home-remedies out of household items or plants. Not just "get water and hunger super-green and wait." Food could be more deep. I like the idea of needing more than just raw calories of any type. I'd like to have to balance carbs, protein, and fats, and find or grow food rich in vitamins, electrolytes, etc. If not, you can get sick or dehydrated, or you won't be able to run as fast/far.

I agree. I just don't understand why only gorka, raincoat, or firefighter gear gives you weather godmode, and every other article of clothing is completely worthless in the rain. I get "completely drenched" after 20 seconds of drizzle in full ttsko. Is the absorbency system just not implemented, or fully broken? Then I'd like to hear that from the devs. If absorbency is actually working, can someone set the config for other clothing to a value higher than 0?

Here's my main question: Are the "heat retention" and "water resistance" parameters configurable per piece of clothing? If I were writing the clothing system, I would have an AbstractClothing class. This would provide the blueprint for how clothing works at the highest level. I would make different clothing types which inherit and/or override that functionality, and take arguments that would live in a config file (that could be changed quickly and easily for tuning). Basically: AbstractJacket implements AbstractClothing Ex: in the config: hikingJacket.properties.absorption = 0.1 hikingJacket.properties.heatRetention = 25 hikingJacket.properties.itemSlots = 4 hikingJacket.properties.<other props> ... in the item class: hikingJacket = new AbstractJacket(hikingJacket.properties) AbstractJacket delegates its values to AbstractClothing, which contains the common, shared implementation for how clothing properties are calculated, aggregated, and hooked into the game systems. This way, it would be utterly trivial to tune each clothing type by simply changing a line of config. Also, if there needed to be broad, sweeping changes in how jackets work, you would only only have to make it in one place (AbstractJacket). If there were big changes needed for how clothing works in general, you would only make that in one place (AbstractClothing). I have to believe BI knows this, and has done something similar. After all, this is a very basic OO design concept. So my real question is, how hard could it possibly be to simply tune the values of different clothing types, unless every clothing type has its implementation hand-cranked somehow, and any changes would break stuff? If it's easy, why doesn't a dev take 5 minutes and do it? There may be excellent answers to these questions, so if you have any ideas, please let me know, I'm genuinely curious.

Mainly, I just think it will be a really fun and engaging goal to work towards. Flying around the map, seeing players running, heli crash sites, hordes of zombies, or even just the beauty of Chernarus. I just got done with an all-day epic run to find a V3S, build it/fuel it, and drive around. I had to run like 2/3 of the map before I finally found one, but I was fully torqued the whole time with anticipation. And I got that big dopamine shot when I finally fired the thing up and drove it. That's the kind of epic experience that makes sandbox games worth all the mundane bits like running, finding food, healing your sprained ankle cause you donked it off a big rock, etc. You need a long-lasting, repeatable carrot on a stick to keep logging in and risking your life, and this would be a big one. Other plusses: It will make the aerial vehicle spawn locations an "area of interest" that will draw players to it. The map needs more "hot" areas to drive player interaction.The danger of crashing will make it harder for people with "end game" loot to stay alive. Once you're geared, the only risk right now is other players (or bugs), and we need more sources of death than just PvP.Things I DO NOT want to see: Gunships: Strafing runs would be too brutal. There's absolutely no way to avoid a good gunner + good pilot, and with perma-death, that will just make people combat log the second they hear a flying vehicle.Aerial battles (see above). I mean, we're not playing Battlefield 1942 here.Too easy to get the plane/chopper running: There should be a lot of parts needed to get the vehicle running. Some rare, some common. This will make that carrot on a stick more engaging. It can also potentially create battles if certain parts only spawn in certain areas. The game needs more tactical areas of interest and choke points.Too easy to fly: If flying is too easy/forgiving, it won't have enough risk, and will just make looting the server uber ezmode.Too hard to fly: This is a tough one. They can't be too easy to fly, but if they're too hard, no one will do it bc of perma death. Risk/Reward has to be tightly balanced.Only one flying vehicle per server: There should be multiple plane/choppers, so that if you spot one, you won't be like, whelp, there goes the plane on this server, guess I'll head to another one.

Whenever I drive by a building that looks like a DayZ building (or Miscreated building, bc their graphics are so damn realistic), I mentally leave my body/car, and want to run up to that building and loot it.

You're absolutely right. The point I think some of the hardcore survivalist types miss is that survival is the exact opposite of fun. It' sucks ass. Every day. All day. That's not actually what we want to simulate in a survival game, as you point out. I'm actually prototyping a DayZ clone in Unity, just for fun/learning. I implemented a system where, when you shoot, you have a high base chance of missing, because it's HARD to hit your target IRL. If you shoot at a person, you have an even higher chance of missing, because IRL, shooting at human-sized animals pumps you full of adrenaline, drives your heart rate up, tenses your muscles, and generally makes your aim less reliable. Well, the code was kick-ass. It all worked. Math was solid. Aaaaaand it was frustrating as F***. It wasn't fun, it wasn't rewarding, there was literally no upside. Even when you hit your target on the first shot, you knew it was largely luck, and totally decoupled from skill. So, my point is, it's easy for us survivalist types to nit-pick the lack of realism, or think we want more realism, but ultimately this game needs to be a fun and rewarding experience. That comes first. Realism needs to serve the game's enjoyment, not vice versa.

Absolutely agree. LMAO @ fart sound. I lost a fully kitted UMP to this, I was red hot.

I agree with you, that we shouldn't constantly be starving, or freezing. I think the survival element needs just the opposite. The fact that we go from well fed/hydrated to "I need a drink" in like 10 minutes is the problem. The survival elements are so basic, and really severe. I want survival to be a more subtle thing, and I don't think it should just cause death so quickly. It should affect how fast I run, how well I aim, how far I can see into the distance, etc.. but in small, subtle ways. I'm just kind of spitballing here, but does that make sense?

This means certain servers will have either native (OS-level) network monitoring tools, or (more likely) special DayZ server code instrumented with extra debugging and logging around the network modules. This will allow them to gather detailed data that will help reveal root cause of network/netcode issues, such as de-sync, disconnects, latency/lag, frame loss, etc. With that data, the devs can (hopefully) map those issues back to code that BI has control over, and can thus fix. There are many reasons not to do this on every server, but two I can think of off the bat are: 1. they don't need every server to do detailed monitoring (it's a metric poop ton of data to parse through, process, and analyze). 2. extra debugging instrumentation often negatively affects performance, so they would only put it on beefcake servers that can handle it, or low-pop servers that won't have 50 players sending asstons of events per second. Whatever minimizes the performance hit to the end user.

I strongly agree. What feels so bolt-on about the survival aspects of this game is the fact that your health, hunger, and thirst are things that the game actually encourages you to forget about, both in the way status is presented in the UI, and the (lack of) effects it has on your character. You can still sprint just fine with a sprained ankle. And you rarely/never sprain your ankle. Players just drink and eat until everything is super-green and they can stop being annoyed by the nagging UI messages. Then they just set about actually "playing the game" (searching for loot). You spot-on nailed what I meant in a previous post, when I said the survival features need to become core mechanics fundamental to the game engine itself. Right now, hunger/thirst/health/injury/illness feel shoe-horned into a PvP engine (which they are), and aren't compelling, or core to gameplay. They're annoyance mechanics to be swatted away like flies. Instead of expecting to be super green at all times, I think we should always be managing some kind of problem core to basic survival. Whether it's open wounds, hunger, upset stomach, shelter from the elements, whatever.. If the gameplay was structured such that we expected to be under constant survival pressure, then it would really help drive interesting choices, made out of necessity, not just boredom and/or greed/hoarding. I think making the player states more granular will help with this. If we know our states are constantly changing by very small amounts, and had some way of sensing that in-game (rather than just casually noticing status whenever we open our inventory to check if loot's in the vicinity), it would work wonders. I'm not very encouraged by just how excited Hicks is about helicopters, and how there's little/no info about any of the survival mechanics of the new engine. I'm getting a sense of where the devs' passions lie, both in what they're saying, and in what they're not saying. It doesn't seem like building an engaging survival experience is very high on their list. Now, I could be dead wrong, and I hope I am. If anyone has info/evidence to the contrary, please feel free to share that with me. I mean, helicopters seem cool... but if I wanted to hide in defilade from helicopter strafing runs, I'd play Arma, BF, or suchlike.

IDK, there are tons of bugs in almost all the "survival" mechanics right now, imo. The way temperature is managed is buggy, and it's not known where the root cause is. Mainly the issue is external heat sources don't heat you up fast enough, if at all. Plus the UI messaging is flaky. This is most obvious in the "everything's fine, doop de doo, HYPOTHERMIA, DEAD" issues. I've gotten cold enough to be shaking, sat next to 3 fires for 30 mins, and still was shaking. No status messages in UI. I've read confirmed issues that even fully cooked meat gets you sick. I get "completely drenched" in 10 seconds if I set foot outside during a minor drizzle, ttkso or not. I've gotten "itchy wounds" from drinking out of a canteen. So yeah, I feel your pain man. The survival game is not strong with this build. I have to say, it's pretty evident to me that BI does not put enough focus on QA. They clearly have a metric s*** ton of use cases, and it's really obvious they're not testing them for regressions between builds, given how many critical issues just waltz right on through to production. I know alphapologists will say "they're not fixing bugs in alpha, that's what beta is for," but I'm here to say that's a real bad plan, UNLESS they think all these bugs will disappear when the engine is swapped out (which is a fair assessment, but not one I've heard made explicitly by BI). If the defects persist though, they're gonna get to beta with an insurmountable defect backlog, and a bunch of burnt out devs who won't want to fix them. Take it from moi, I've been there.