Darth Mopp

(I already posted this on the steam forum with mixed results, and thought here might be a better place for it after all.) I played DayZ vanilla for a while now and I generally enjoy it and didn't feel the need for any mods until now. Only recently, after the 1.08 patch, I decided to finally try building my own base. I heard that It was super easy to break into a base before that update, but sadly I have to say its still pretty easy after it. Instead of sawing through a lock and/or breaking a wall within minutes, after 1.08 it now takes like 20-60 min (wow, that's like sooo much longer for a determined base raider) of hammering or spamming grenades and gunfire onto the lower paneling and frame of one (!) fence wall or gate. I even read that you can destroy a fence wall by punching it with your bare fists for like 1h20min! No damage or bleeding to the attacker. WTF?!? Also, barbed wire can just be dismounted from the outside with pliers and then stolen and used again. Whats the point then? The small changes of the update are a tiny step in the right direction, but its still sooo easy for any random raiders to breaking into, loot and dismantle my base (which of course they did, multiple times while I was offline), that took me hours and days of searching for nails and tools, logging trees and cutting wood and building and upgrading fences and gates. This is totally unbalanced. Why should anyone bother to build a base? But I like building bases! I'm sure, that I am not the only person who is frustrated by this. On the official server I play right now, I encountered at least 3 raided and abandoned bases (s. screenshots below) this weekend. I bet their builders are really frustrated right now. I looked through the server browser, but most community servers are so full of mods. Traders, AirDrops, BaseBuilding+, Loot+, Weapons+, Helicopters, Rocketlaunchers, NoStamina, Map, Chose Spawn Location, SafeZones, Drugs, Money, ToxicZones/Radiation, ... I don't want any of that! I think most of these Mods make survival too easy. They destroy this great feeling of desolation an having a hard time surviving that DayZ vanilla has and turn it into some random Action-Shooter. No thanks. But from the community servers with no mods, I could find only 2 with BaseDamageOFF. And they are not very populated (between 0-1 to sometimes 8 players during last months server history). Also, having completly indestructible bases seems like overkill from the opposite side. Is there no middle ground where bases are relativly secure, but if someone puts like hours and lots of tools, bullets and granades into it he might break in? Maybe make dismantling harder /impossible? Base raiding really needs to change for DayZ vanilla and therefore the official servers, cause that's where most players are that don't play mods. Let us fortify the fence walls somehow, make fist attackers bleed and loose health, increase the damage to tools used for destroying fences, make grenades an gunfire less effective or give us a way to protect the walls from it, make barbed wire hard to remove, by adding bleeding chance and fast demolition of pliers, also make the wire ruined after removal from the outside. It wouldn't be so hard to change things...

Exactly. I mean sure you could argue, that DayZ wants to be as "realistic" or authentic as possible and those thin wood panel fences should break easily. But then give us sturdier material for base-building! Why not palisede walls made from thick whole tree trunks? Or let us further fortify the available fences and make em more damage resistant. If it stays like this anyone who tried building a base will sooner or later be fucked over by raiders and then nobody will build bases anymore. So whats the point of having this system when noone can have fun with it or even bothers to use it?

That's a necessary, albeit tiny first step into making base building an actual option to consider. Still, more needs to happen, since the discrepancy between time and ressources spend on building it vs. breaking into it is still too lopsided to bother doing it.

There was a Halloween event? O_o

So I decided to try it one last time with a really really well hidden small base. I went to the edge of the map deep in the woods and created just the first floor of a watchtower (to have a roof as protection agatinst rain, and also to just be able to walk up the stairs and jump out instead of heaving to open the combination lock and gate during which time, the base is vurnerable). It was hiddenb between three thick trees and I covered every side with camouflage net. It remained undetected for at least a week which was nice. But ultimatly someone came across it when I was logged off (of course) and just built a watchtower roof with stairs just beside mine, and simply walked up and jumped into my small building to rob everything inside and dismantle some of the crates and stairs, the roof and stairs and one wall: (I'm standing on the roof of the watchtower the raider built (without walls) looking down into the remains of my own watchwower in the back)

What is duping?

You can of course create makeshift ladders to climb on and then jump over fences by parking a car under it, setting up a tent, or pile up some barrels (maybe other things can be used too, like wire mesh barriers). But having a working car, finding a tent and finding and transporting barrels is not exactly easy and rather time consuming. My base and the other raided bases I came across were clearly not entered by this method or some glitch. You can see if different fence/gate parts (upper/lower paneling/frame) where damaged by pointing your aim dot at them and looking at the color of the then displayed indicator (same colors as the item status colors in your inventory). Also the raiders clearly used firearms (and possibly grenades), since I had wooden crates and barrels inside a shed inside my fence walls, that was closed with a second locked gate, and the crates where almost all destroyed, their content spread on the floor, and the barrels where damaged. I guess there are generally two possibilities or philosophies when choosing a base location. Either you make it as hard as possible to find it, by going somewhere away from roads and towns, deep in a thick forest. That base will be hard to find, and the raider needs to bring all the necessary stuff across longer distances. But, IF it is found, it is more easy to destroy and more rewarding, because there are no walls of preexisting buildings you can use, so all walls must be build by you, which means more time, material and tool attrition and more things a raider can dismantle and steal. The other option, which I chose for my first base, is to find some preexisting building (that should best still be a a bit of the road and harder to find) and use its walls and other structues, so that you have to build fewer fences (the simplest would be a shed, where you only need to build one fence-gate and lock it). This has the advantage of having to build fewer things and therefore losing fewer material and work when it is destroyed and/or dismantled, but of course the probability of you base beeing discovered is higher. Guarding a base 24/7 should not be a consideration imho. Most people have a life outside DayZ and they should not be punished for that. Also if we speak about authenticity or "realism", which DayZ strives to achieve as best as it can, consider this: Yes, in real life destroying a wooden wall like the fence in DayZ should not be a major problem, but would we then actually build such feable things? Or would we rather create palisades of thick logs fortified by stones or other durable materials?. Also, IF the DayZ scenario was real, the owner of such a base would live there the whole day, whenever he/she is not on a scavenging trip. That person would sleep inside that base and hear it if a raider was shooting, hammering or throwing grenades at his walls. So there should be some kind of protection (e.g. higher defence/health values for fences, or even indestructability, like I thing it is the case in RUST) for a player's base during the time he/she is logged off.