bbilbo1

I would like to propose a new feature. This proposal is a non-intrusive, region-based environmental reaction to general player activity. I have no intent on railroading players into any specific gameplay, nor am I proposing a direct 1:1 cause/effect directed at individual's zombie spawn. This will, instead, apply an improved, dynamic, player-driven world. PROPOSAL: -Zombie spawn was region-referenced instead of the current player-zombie spawn system. -The region kept a log of all player interaction, such as PvP, bandaging, blood transfusions, trading, looting, etc. -When entering a region, the player's client would query the region's Humanity Rank on the server. -The zombie spawn for players would be proportionate to the region's logged humanity. -Zombies would NEVER go away completely (nowhere is completely safe), but would be a less in high-humanity areas. -Places prone to high-levels of murdering, stealing, and PVP would be swamped with zombie spawn. Things That Will GIVE Humanity To a Region: LARGE GAIN: Giving medical attention to another player. (to always help, or at least do no harm has been the cornerstone of medicine and society) MEDIUM GAIN: Dropping food and drink to the ground that another player consumes. (breaking bread and sharing food with others has culturally always been an indication of civility) SMALL GAIN: Fixing objects/vehicles (tool-making and realizing "the whole is more valuable that the sum of it's parts" is a human concept that gives us strength as a community unit) TINY GAIN: Killing Infected (ridding an area of the infected menace means a benefit to all) Things That Will REMOVE Humanity From a Region: LARGE LOSS: Killing another player for any reason (bandit or not; taking the life of another human being will ALWAYS remove humanity) MEDIUM LOSS: Shooting at and wounding players (to do harm to others is to cause suffering, suffering drains humanity) SMALL LOSS: Vehicle and Object destruction (To take something useful, and destroy it goes agaist our ways of survival) TINY LOSS:Looting (although justified by resource scarcity, taking something that isnt yours from a body, or someone's residence is wrong.) So, Here we have a system in which players are free to do whatever they want, as they can right now. But now, players' decicions have an actual impact! Currently, we have a static, cold world that offers nothing, no matter what we do. I'm hoping in this system, the world would offer several things: It gives objective, feasible consequences to actions. Many folks believe it is our actions that ultimately shapes the world around us. This finally gives us a feature that does exactly that! It finally will give players a visible metric to measure the community's level of game-based humanity. No more idle speculation on the forums and complaining about what other players choose to do or not do. We will esily see the work of other players. It will finally allow non-civilized areas to spawn infected. In short, If there are other people, there will be possible infected. Cities, farms, wilderness. ANYWHERE. Players are demanding a safezone? Let them make a safezone for themselves! Kill the infected, dont be assholes to each other, and eventually, with a little upkeep, maintenance, and player-run policing, you have a *relativaly* low-spawning player colony. (Until a clan of bandits show up, over-take the colony, and throw the area back into hive of lawless infected and criminals.) I'm not saying 1 player kill would spawn a swarm of zombies. Nor am I saying 1 or 2 backpacks full of bloodbags and transfusions would make the region friendly. That notion is way, WAY, too small-scale for what I had in mind. What I'm talking about here is VERY LARGE NUMBERS. How large? My idea is that it would take a community of players (one way or another) for an extended period of time to influence the region's environment positively or negatively. That means one or two players spamming an action couldn't, practically speaking, be solely responsible for influencing an entire region. In order to min/max my system on a solo, small-scale, you would ultimately need to repetitively collect incredibly massive amounts of resources. Ultimately, increasing your chances of encountering other players and taking those resources just to spam actions for ridiculously extended periods of logged-in time. In short, players won't actually see their actions influence a region on a solo-minded scale. Only in cases where there's an strong overabundance of positive or negative Humanity actions, whether that be the result of player cooperation and teamwork, or a more passive, "Everyone ends up doing 'X' in this location" activity. What would happen and what would the effects be to this system? Tell me how all this would pan out?

I've been out of town for a while, so it's been some time since I updated. It's good to see (mostly) positive reactions to this proposal. Keep the feedback coming, folks.

Um, no... Read my original post, and try again. Not at all what I'm talking about.

That's why I said "qualified" adults. I know that reaching a certain age just not instantly make someone ready to handle responsibilities. But seriously, I really hope there's a minimum age requirement to buy/run these servers.

That's an obvious mechanic meant to punish one particular play-style. Rocket is against that.

This system wouldn't "make" anything. It simply enhances the decisions that players are already free to make. You are entitled to your opinion. However, it's a bit over-reaching to say "being a Douche makes the game fun." Many folk would tend to disagree. But again, it's all opinon. Everyone individually decides what makes the game fun. "Punishment" and "reward" are terms that would insinuating players are doing the "correct" or "incorrect" things. Not so... That's not what this proposal is about. This is about enhancing the world to give consequences to all actions. That's a completely different thing from biased punishments and rewards.

Not really, As I explained in my post directly above yours.

I think I see what you're saying. And I think you bring up some excellent points. These points are the result of not being as detailed in some areas of my proposal as I should have been. Let me correct that right now: One thing I think I failed to mention in my proposal is the numbers and scale to which my proposed system would be in place. To be clear, I'm not saying 1 player kill would spawn a swarm of zombies. Nor am I saying 1 or 2 backpacks full of bloodbags and transfusions would make the region friendly. That notion is way, WAY, too small-scale for what I had in mind. What I'm talking about here is VERY LARGE NUMBERS. How large? My idea is that it would take a community of players working together (one way or another) for an extended period of time to influence the region's environment positively or negatively. That means one or two players spamming an action couldn't, practically speaking, be solely responsible for influencing an entire region. In order to min/max my system on a solo, small-scale, you would ultimately need to repetitively collect incredibly massive amounts of resources. Ultimately, increasing your chances of encountering other players and taking those resources just to spam actions for ridiculously extended periods of logged-in time. In short, players wont actually see their actions influence a region on a solo-minded scale. Only in cases where there's an strong overabundance of positive or negative Humanity actions, whether that be the result of player cooperation and teamwork, or a more passive, "Everyone ends up doing 'X' here" activity. Thanks for showing me where I need to clarify and elaborate on my proposal. Being as descriptive as possible helps me put my vision out there. EDIT: I have updated my original post to clarify this.

I came to DayZ expecting this: This game ended up being this:

inB4 Hookers and Blackjack...

Are you proposing, say, a line-of-sight rule for determining if someone can steal from your bag? I can see that making sense, then.

Rocket has said PvP and baditry are acceptable playstyles. There is no reason to put a balancing mechanic into the game that punishes a specific playstyle. Hacking is a security issue, not a gameplay issue. Irrelevant.

Thievery should be a perfectly acceptable playstyle. Any attempt to curb that seems unnecessary and doesn't fit with the "can you trust this stranger?" feel to this mod.

I see what you mean. I was wondering the same thing, myself. I do realize that the system spawns zombies only in areas where players exist to ease stress on the server. But here's ultimately where i think the same thing can be accomplished. -Players continue to be "servers" for the zombies that spawn in the area. But before that action is taken, I think the player data should query the region's humanity rank to decide how many zombies should appear. -Servers/The hive already tracks and logs (or at least should be) many, many player actions and data anyway. I don't see utilizing that data to cause more strain on servers. Of course, I could be wrong. - As you stated you worry that players going to an area simply to loot and leave would cause a unreasonable zombie spawn rate? I feel like a designated Max-Cap to spawn would make that a non-issue, if I understand your sentiment correctly. Also, it's worth mentioning that this game will constantly be optimized and streamlined. We're nowhere near a final product. At least, I hope we aren't. :-/ -I *don't* think the constant threat of the loss of hard work such as "securing" a region is outside the theme and feel of this game. do you? :-) Especially if it's all player-driven. -Tell me exactly what you mean by "spamming an area into a friendly zone?" I really don't understand how this would be done. At least not practically. Also, I would like to remind you that as I originally posted, no area would be completely safe. Thanks for your input.

I personally feel that not all PVP kills are created equally and the only true way to understand "why we kill" is to look deeper into the intent of the player's action. Prepare yourself for some hardcore armchair psychology! From a strict gameplay-only scope of intent: Killing another player because: [sURVIVAL] I'm dying due to lack of food/water/medicine/etc and they might have some: OKAY! They have something and I want it!: OKAY! They have a weapon, and/or I generally feel like they are a threat to me: OKAY! I'm trying to hide from zombies/players and this person may reveal my location to undesirables: OKAY! [COMPETITION] I'm going for a high kill/death ratio! Not really the point of this particular mod... I want to show that I have better skill at shooters than the other players. Not really the point of this particular mod... I'm bored of zombies and players are more my speed. Not really the point of this particular mod... [GREIFING] I don't care about the game... I love ruining the fun of other anonymous people over the internet, free of consequence. WTF is wrong with you?! Get help soon! NOTE: all this is just my opinion. Feel free to discuss and debate this viewpoint on gameplay. Agree? Disagree? Comment below!

Questing, and game-generated objectives are kinda "gamey." And doesn't fit Rocket's feel of the mod... But that's okay, because you don't need a quest system to actually to do that! That would be completely player-driven. Maintenence and policing are things players would opt to do if they feel like it, and want to maintain the relative peace.

Agreed. It all comes down to the fact that the only thing in this mod that is marginally fleshed-out is PvP Combat. Add more to the rest of the game, and some issues of boredom are lessened.

Okay. NOW I understand what you're talking about. First of all, we can't base gameplay systems around hackers. That's an overall security issue, not a game one. Secondly, one detail I think you missed is that my proposal logs each individual region of the map with specific humanity ranks. And honestly, this map is pretty huge and full of different regions. And it sounds like you're proposing that griefers will comb every inch of field, forest, farm,town,city and building, until they've swamped every square meter of map with zombies. On every server.... Even in the worst-case scenario where no one fought back, that's super impractical, improbable, and the griefers would get bored after the first few cities, and towns. Also, there will always be a MINIMUM and MAXIMUM rate of spawn of infected. There will never be zero, and there will never be over a certain capped spawnrate. A raiding party of bandits who ride into an area, intending to kill, loot, or generally commit acts of chaos, is a completely acceptable scenario for this mod. Besides, dicks are going to be dicks on any game with heavy PvP elements. I'm not trying to fix or alter human nature. Just enhance the player's already-existing freedom and experience.

I honestly don't feel that this proposal is "forcing" any type of gameplay, nor do I think that any freedom of play-style is being threatened. My system only enhances the world based on the already existing freedom players have in this mod. But I really would like to hear more from you, here. If you don't mind humoring me and doing a bit more typing, would you mind explaining your greifing scenario? How, in the system I'm proposing, do you grief? Please be detailed so I understand. Show me how my system is playing out in the long-run and what you would do to exploit and grief it.

And mindlessly killing on sight and cannibalism would ultimately make players no different than the infected/zombies. At this point you're trading NPC zombies for PC zombies. A focus and point worth discussing, but please, not in this topic.

And ultimately that's what I'm proposing, i guess. That a region's humanity is linked to zombie spawn. Lots of folks seem to feel that this would finally add the "dynamic, player-driven world" this mod is shooting for. I'll also quote a side-note I made earlier in this topic:

I do appreciate the feedback. Honestly I do. But, I also feel like there's nothing wrong with defending my proposal from criticism if it's warranted. I think it's a bit short-sighted to say this mod is just a plain old FPS with no other elements. Look at all the keybindings Look at the ways players move Look at how accuracy and bullets work Look at status conditions such as blood-loss, shock, broken bones, hunger, thirst, infection, exposure. Look at inventory management. This game is a SIM. And the weapon system and combat potential also can be categorized as a Tactical Sim. If players don't choose to recognize this, and instead mindlessly spray and pray at each other, that doesn't make the game less-so.

True, but that is irrelevant to the analogy being made. It's like saying an archeologist is similar to a grave robber: One's a profession, the other is a criminal. But at the end of the day, both are taking things from dead people.

It really makes perfect sense. Taking something that doesn't belong to you is and always has been classically seen as "wrong." Although looting in this post-apocalyptic world is completely justified and expected, we cant ignore that the act of stealing is still stealing. Besides, looting is measured as a TINY LOSS, an act that in of itself wont be considered a huge detriment to humanity of a region overall.

It really comes down to whether or not the game recognizes "Player A drops food to ground; Player B eats food that was dropped by Player A"