Apanthropy

Hi there. This is a long post, but I felt I needed to get my opinions out there rather than just responding in random threads over and over with what I want to say. For a long time I have been a believer in the whole "if you have a scarce amount of resources, you will encourage more trading and alliances, rather than always have everyone kill on sight". By resources I mean food, water, medical supplies, weapons, ammunition, vehicles - everything. Currently in Day Z, it is extremely easy to gear up and survive. By this I do not mean high-end military gear, which I will address shortly. What I mean is that, for any Day Z player who is even decent at the game, it only takes 20-30 minutes to find food, water, a backpack, an assortment of watches/compasses/maps/hatchets, and a pistol/shotgun/AK with enough ammo. They are set for survival, and it isn't even a struggle to stay alive. I won't even get into the zombies and how boringly easy it is to stay alive from them. I know this subject has been debated for a long time, and I just want to preface the rest of my post with three things: 1) I am in NOT advocating absolutely zero banditry or player killing. In fact I think that is a very large part of what makes this game great. All I want is to have a game with a system that gives players viable options for both killing, and not killing other players. 2) Item scripting and duping of high end military gear is another subject entirely and has nothing to do with anything in this thread (it obviously should not be in the game, though). 3) Other things would have to be implemented as well to make something like this actually work and be fun to play, I believe. Maybe even something as obscure as a rebalancing of how hunger/thirst/blood meters work in the game. Zombies being much more threatening is another big one that I think would need to be there to coincide with this, as well as adding a large variety of items in general - a lot of the time maybe useless to you during the present time, but always useful to at least someone that you might come across. Also, I could be totally wrong in all of this, but I'm not satisfied with how Day Z is currently, and I really feel that this is something that could potentially make it a more interesting game again. Onto the main point of this post. Here is a thread I was linked to by a friend on the Minecraft forums that I believe is a very good proof of concept of the idea of having fewer resources in general for players: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1212125-closed-map-experiment/ For a tl;dr, basically 30 players played on a PvP server with a closed 350x350 map for several months (only playing when all 30 could be on at the same time). They weren't allowed to leave these boundaries, and therefore the only resources in the game were also contained in these boundaries. It meant that eventually their resources would run out, and the end result was that the players formed alliances and trading corporations in order to obtain resources that they didn't have, by trading with others for what they needed. All the resources they were trading with were all, essentially, an infinite resource in a normal Minecraft map. Things such as wood, saplings, iron, diamond, sand (for windows) and even cobblestone once the wood for pickaxes began to run out. After the fallout of all of their resources, when the corporations crumbled, players STILL teamed up and formed groups for the sole purpose of keeping themselves alive from NPC enemies. It was both safety in numbers, and the ability to pool what little resources they had. Something you never see in Day Z right now, because there is such an abundance of resources. Why team up with someone you don't know when you don't receive any benefit from them whatsoever? You can get your own food, water, medical supplies, and safety (weapons+ammunition) extremely easily already. There's zero point in giving mutual help to another player through yours and his resources. The conclusions drawn in the thread were done with a separate intention from what my thread here focuses on, but the results are still beneficial for both parties. And yes, the two games are different in many ways, but similarities can definitely be drawn. I often frequent a hardcore deathban Minecraft server that has a 1 month ban if you die. While you see less killing in general than you do in Day Z because of the fact that it's simply harder to kill people in Minecraft in a lot of circumstances, you will generally find that when players have the ability to, they will kill (or grief) anyone they do not know. The only times this doesn't happen are when players have almost no resources (just like two players starting off in Day Z without a weapon and befriending each other) or when they have enough resources to where it takes a very long time to actually kill them (diamond armor, enchants, etc.. something that doesn't have a parallel in Day Z). There are definitely alliances on this server, but they are based on friendships that have formed outside of the game generally, on their forums, etc. Basically, the bottom line is, with infinite resources in a deathban server where players can do whatever they want, they will exhibit the same qualities that players do in Day Z - they kill other players. Now, the experiment that I linked is not a deathban server. However, we can still see examples of trading, teaming up, and forming large corporations/alliances that occurred EXCLUSIVELY from the lack of resources, as well as players teaming up for the exclusive benefit of staying alive and pooling resources towards the end when everything in the game was becoming scarce. Everyone playing knew that a lot of the things they took for granted were now very limited and valuable, and understood that in order to have them, they would have to cooperate with the people that already owned them through trading for a resource that they had an excess of. Without this lack of resources, basically none of this would have happened at all. You would have seen very minimal trading, and the only alliances formed would have been of people who were already friends to begin with, or who made friends with others on the server over time. No alliances, trading, or teaming up of any kind would have been formed exclusively for mutual benefit, rather they would have all been formed out of friendship and nothing in the actual game. Therefore, I believe that, while from a different game, this can be a very good example of why having much more limited resources in Day Z could potentially be a good thing. Not only would it make the game more difficult in general (something a lot of people desperately want), but it would at the very least ENCOURAGE player interaction beyond simply killing each other. Because maybe you can kill one or two people with only 2 bullets in a pistol, no food, and maybe 1 bandage, acquiring a can of food here, or 3 bullets there. But then what happens when you find the 3rd, 4th, or 5th person? And who's to say they have what you need after you kill them, if resources are scarce? Two sets of eyes would make it easier to find food and water when it's a rarity. Two players with few resources would also be much safer if you upped the zombie difficulty as well (something that is hard to do currently, but could be possible in the standalone). People would slowly start to realize that maybe teaming up with strangers to pool their resources would, in the end, benefit both of them more greatly than the benefit they gained of just killing them without a second thought. Just food for thought on the state of Day Z currently.

This is the biggest reason why Day Z has become boring for me these days. Literally the only thing that is a threat to survival is other players. And while that should definitely be one of the biggest threats no matter what, it's currently the ONLY threat, and it makes it boring. Especially with these new maps popping up (non-Chernarus) that are basically handing you weapons, vehicles, and supplies as soon as you enter the game. It makes it very boring. It's basically Day Z: Deathmatch. If I wanted that, I'd go play Arma 2 or some other shooter. I want Day Z to be brutal to survive in, no matter if it's from players, zombies, or the environment. But right now, especially with all the new maps, it's simply another shooter that's zombie themed. It's not that fun.

It's not "should it be removed or not" that is the issue. The issue is how it's implemented. Find another way to utilize it without it being used ONLY to grief. Otherwise, just don't have it I guess.

Just because you aren't good at the game doesn't mean other people aren't either.

Yeah, like I said, a few of them could have been stolen. But a lot of them were permanently missing after logging back on in situations where it was HIGHLY unlikely that anyone could have stolen them. Not to mention I've never had a single vehicle save after logging back in later on, and I doubt that every single vehicle I've ever stashed has been stolen immediately. Plus, if someone stole the UAZ that I had found and stashed elsewhere, why would all of the gear be back in the pickup in the camp that I found originally? The only situation I can think of is that after a restart, it reset the items in each vehicle for some reason, and THEN someone found it and stole it. But it was missing after only an hour, and has been gone since then.

So first off, I feel like I'm missing something when it comes to saving vehicles to keep them through server restarts and what not. Every time I have clicked Save Vehicle on the ones I've gotten (about 6 now) it has never actually saved. It's always missing after a server restart or update. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. There were a couple that could have been stolen potentially, but I've lost vehicles even within 30 minutes of logging off, the server restarting, and coming back on, on servers that had zero players on them besides me. So what am I doing wrong? My second question is about a more specific and recent incident. I found a player camp with 2 offroad pickup trucks and 1 UAZ. Being by myself, I loaded all the things I wanted from the 2 pickups into the UAZ and left to stash it somewhere else. I had to leave for a bit, so when I found a good spot to hide it, I made sure to click Save UAZ several times before I logged out. The server restarted within the ~1 hour or so that I was gone, and when I came back, the UAZ had disappeared. I went all the way back to the 2 pickup trucks to see if they were there, and they were missing as well. Now today, the next day, when I logged back on, the UAZ is still missing, but the pickup trucks are back where I had found them, WITH all the gear that I loaded onto the UAZ the other day. So where the hell is the UAZ, why is all the gear that I put into the UAZ back in the pickup, and why can't I get my vehicles to stay put?

This is definitely one of the biggest reasons why there's so much PKing, I think. Right now, as the game is currently, I can spawn as a fresh character and survive for basically an unlimited amount of time on my own if I wanted, given there were no other players. Literally the only thing threatening the life of any decent player is other players, as nothing else is actually much of a threat.