ShaddnArakh

TL;DR: towards the end of the post. Why single shard? DayZ has persistent characters, so it has to have a persistent world. Single shard solves most problems like server-hopping, disconnecting to prevent death and other types of abuse and cheating. The problem is, an endless Skyrim-like territory will require endless server capacity, so we need to apply the 'multiple separate solar systems' idea from EVE Online to DayZ in an authentic manner. Islands: a solution to horizontal load balancing DayZ has to be set on a cluster of islands. Each island is supported by its own server instance. When the character travels from one island to another, he moves between instances, yet all characters persist on a single server simultaneously. You cannot see one island from another. To get to another island, you have to swim 1 km into the open sea in the direction of the destination island. Then you’ll be prompted to confirm that you are willing to leave your current island and enter the destination island. After a loading delay, you will appear 800m out in the open sea next to your destination island. You will approach the shore as usual by swimming. The resulting drop in body temperature will depend on what gear you have (fins, wetsuit etc). By using a boat or a helicopter, you can travel to islands that are located much farther and more importantly carry more items. Much like normal travel, you’d have to fly 1 km out into the sea, select destination and spawn next to it a few seconds later. Depending on the implied travel distance, an adequate amount of fuel is consumed by your vehicle, which is a big restriction on round-the-world travel given the scarcity of vehicles and fuel in the world. It’s a cold new day All new players are spawned on the shore (let’s say they are survivors from a sunken refugee transport running away from infested mainland) and have to make their way inland to survive. To avoid spawn camping, players are spawned across multiple islands a certain distance away from anyone who spent more than 1 hour in-game. Example: rough perimeter of Limnos is over 100 km, so that is a lot of secluded space for people to be washed ashore. ‘Lawful good’ players may police the coastline to search for newbies and repel griefers. ‘Chaotic evil’ griefers may do the exact opposite. It’s a hardcore dog-eat-dog world out there. No safe landing zones, PVP anywhere. Something to die for Hunger, thirst, cold and scarcity of medicine, fuel and ammo dominate the post-apocalyptic landscape. Single players will have to look for supplies and fight off the infected and animals. Of course, at some point they will accumulate good gear and start looking for more things to do. Carpool lane While it is entirely possible to be a lone wolf (good or evil), it is much easier to survive as a group. An organised group can do more like find enough spare parts to fix a boat and find enough fuel to travel to another island (and slaughter everyone there). Joining a team will expose players to a whole new layer of gameplay: using vehicles, raiding enemy camps, protecting own camps, clearing towns of infested, securing buildings etc. Also, ammo, fuel, water, medicine should not spawn close to each other, so it should be economically justified to form a group, split to scavenge, then regroup and exchange the findings as compared to raiding a single location altogether (power should not be in numbers alone). Goodnight, sleepy head Logging off is an equivalent of sleeping. Players who fall asleep must realise that they are vulnerable when asleep. Normally, sleeping players disappear in 30 seconds. Players, who shot a gun within past 5 minutes, will disappear in 5 minutes after logoff. Wounded/bleeding/shocked players will disappear within 10 minutes. Finders keepers Backpacks and player stuff disappear with players. Stuff placed in tents/vehicles/lockers will stay in-game. Stuff placed anywhere else will be destroyed during daily server maintenance. Tents have no locks, so stuff can be stolen by anyone. Vehicles have no boot locks so stuff can be stolen from them but they do have ignition locks, so vehicles cannot be stolen. Lockers, you guessed it, have locks. To access a locker or to start a vehicle, you need the unique key (it’s 21st century, you can’t hotwire a modern car or military chopper). The key can be picked from the (dead body of the) owner. If a key hasn’t been used for too long, it’ll despawn and spawn in the corresponding lock, granting free access to the locker/vehicle to whoever finds it first. Buildings work like huge lockers and can store vehicles and stuff. But players need to fortify the buildings before they can be locked securely, which requires gathering a lot of scrap metal, wood and other supplies. Only organised groups can afford creating and maintaining (yes, they degrade and decay over time) secure buildings. Karma police There is no karma, no bandits, no friendlies, nothing of sorts. The only way to identify a person is their unique player name. You can 'tag' people you see on a scale from 'friendlies' to 'enemies' and share these records within your group. Access to strategic information on who is roughly who in your region is huge incentive for group play. Conclusion I think it is beneficial for everyone to start thinking in the direction of a stand-alone game, because Rocket said there will be one. The community should start discussing possible game design choices (single shard? trainable skills? character specialisation?) as early as possible. TL;DR 1. DayZ standalone should be played on a single huge server like EVE Online (the most hardcore space survival sandbox simulation of all MMO games). 2. To avoid building the biggest data center in the world, players will exist over a cluster of islands, each island supported by a single server. Travel between islands requires resources. 3. End-game is geared towards group play. ... 99. Discuss.

Standalone means "does not need Arma2 installed", therefore it can get rid of nasty Arma2-related bugs. The gameplay right now seems to be exactly the same, that is "one map, central hive, multiple servers, multiple players per server".

Dam! That's a good idea. Okay, puns aside, bad idea, this is not an irrigation simulator.

The permadeath and efficiency of modern firearms against human bodies effectively prevent blobs.

xXI Mr Two IXx & Strategos, you have my beans. I suggested something similar (EVE-like DayZ linked severs). If anything of sorts gets implemented in DayZ, I'm ready to pay subscription to keep servers running. Your idea has a little drawback that breaks immersion: - if two people are standing near the edge of neighbouring maps, they are literally a couple of meters apart in the 'game world', but they cannot see or shoot each other. It is nicely worked around in EVE (gates) or my proposal (islands that are some distance apart). Imagine chasing someone to the edge of a map just to see him disappear like that. Very disappointing.

I probably didn't make this clear enough although some posters picked up on that just fine. When travelling, you do not spawn in a single point. You spawn anywhere on the coast depending on your departing position. That's tens of kilometers of coastline. You cannot realistically camp tens of kilometres of coastline. Recon and look-ahead scouts would eliminate any chance of you still running into someone on the coast, in case you're that worried (e.g. if you're transporting valuables). That's another reason for teamplay. Another reason to get bigger vehicles to travel.Much like in EVE, travel requires speedy or sturdy vehicle, team of friends, certain skill, patience and balls, lots of balls.

Hey isn't is cool that Rocket confirmed that EVE Online type of single-shard hardcore univese is 'holy grail'? Yay! :)

HOW does this encourage less killing? Your reasoning skills are nil.

Listen to this: (.22 cal M4 supressed, you cannot hear it AT ALL), there's plenty of videos out there that show that a number of guns can be supressed. Not hi-cal of course.

Great idea!

It has been suggested 1 000 000 000 times. I counted. And it can be done, yes. The timeout should be longer for those players who recently fired a weapon or were wounded by a firearm.

Take a holiday. Really. Then return and build a proper stand-alone Arma3-based DayZ 2.0. Or secure a multimillion deal with a publisher and build a single-shard MMO, which would dwarf EVE Online (concept: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/43984-solution-to-horizontal-load-balancing-and-more/) Or keep investing your time and effort into an outdated engine that you cannot even change. Anyways, do take a holiday, we need you :)

Well then imagine that someone wants to shoot you and think, whether you want to walk out the door and stand there looking around like an idiot.

The concept is described here: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/43984-solution-to-horizontal-load-balancing-and-more/

OMG. How many times (in RL) have you expected to be shot at when leaving your house? On-topic: undead labs on CE3 looks awesome. Yes please.

Okay, now let me clear up a few points (most info gathered from Rocket's interviews). 1. There is no "this company". DayZ is developed privately by Rocket and a small team. They are sort-of-sponsored by BIS (who got at least 500,000 sales for Arma2 and a lot of preorders for Arma3) in the form of paid wages while they are not working on DayZ. BIS has no rights to DayZ. 2. Going single-shard-huge-world-with-islands is an awesome direction, which almost nobody tried before. It requires huge resources and definitely won't be done within a year. It's bigger than that but we waited for some games for years. And it's definitely bigger than BIS can handle. The best BIS can hope for is that Rocket decides to stick to current gameplay idea (zillion of servers with hive server), licences Arma3 engine for it and publishes it with BIS. 3. EA and Blizzard never cared about making a single-shard MMO, because they are focused on maximising profits. Their games are designed in such a way so that they don't require a single persistent world, because making little elves grind their way to lvl 80 is maximising profits. They are not looking for a revolution. We're still allowed to dream. There are already dayz-inspired MMOs in the making (google world war z) but they sound kind of sucky at this point. Rocket's vision is amazingly hardcore, I love that and I'd like it to achieve the pinnacle of today's gaming technology rather than becoming another awesome game.

How old are you, Mr. Network Engineer? Do they teach to read at the Network Engineer School?I am talking about a standalone game, built on a suitable engine and running on a suitable hardware. I'm not expecting this game concept to run as "DayZ 1.8 still-alpha mod to three-years-old game". I am not expecting it to work on the current DayZ server setup.

Oh my god. Why didn't ANYONE think of this before? I think you should phone Rocket immediately.

1. Who said anything about Arma2 engine? I'm talking about DayZ standalone, based on any other proper current engine (from UE4 & CE3 to Arma 3). 2. I'm not. Q4 2013 would be awesome.

EVE Online has over 400,000 active subscribers. Daily peak number is about 45,000 players on a single server (record number of simultaneous logged users is 54,446). They all play on a single server, which is split into solar systems (DayZ: islands). 5,000 players in the same system (island) at once is a tolerable amount for their hardware. And these players are not just sitting there, thousands of players are actively maneuvering withing each other's sight and shooting at each other with pretty complex ballistics. I understand it's pretty amazing and hard to believe, so I will relieve you of your first-born-naming promise. P.S. Here's a bit about their server setup: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tranquility

There should be milling and turning machines for players to find, fix and use. They should be used to fix, maintain or upgrade equipment (rifles, vehicles etc). To drive a jeep, you need to find and fix one. To fix a jeep, you need to collect a lot of metal and spares. Some spares can be found, some can be created using milling machines, turning machines and other similar equipment. To use a turning machine, you need to find it and fix it first. For that, you also need to look for spares or produce them. You would also want to move the drilling machine to a safe location close to your camp, but you'd need some sort of transport. A jeep maybe? ;)

Do you avoid all your problems like that? Would you suggest playing in single-player mode, "me vs zombies", maybe? Griefing and banditism are a problem, it should be dealt with by providing player more things to do, more goals to reach, more mechanics to play with, etc. Right now, after you find some decent gear, you have nothing to do, except for messing with newbies.

Thank you for your feedback. You have good points there. Unique islands If hand-crafting islands requires too much development power, they can be randomized to an extent - coastline shape, forest patches, terrain, buildings, etc. can be generated randomly with some pre-moderation and finishing touches applied by level designers. It's okay if nearby islands look similar. But the islands that are further apart should be more discernible, so it makes travel interesting. Mountainy/flat, sand/grass/forest, deserted or with more buildings, different spawn rates for loot etc. Karma police Yes, you are right, baffling. I was thinking along the lines of EVE Online, which uses a "standing" system, where you can "flag" anyone on a scale from -10 (red) to +10 (blue) and share this information with your mates. This is an in-game private reputation system, which helps to: - mark known friendlies and neutrals (and not kill them on sight) - mark known enemies, bandits, idiots etc. (and avoid them / kill them on sight) Having access to this information is one of the primary reasons to join a group. Setting up buildings The bad thing about barbed wire is the "dog in the manger" situation. People seal off buildings that they don't use. If the barbed wire was scarce and had to be maintained to be effective, people would only protect buildings that they use. The grand reason for people being dicks (barbed wire, sniping newbies etc.) is that there is nothing to do once you get a decent rifle. You can only run around and mess with people. There are pirates in EVE Online, too, but they are small in numbers. Being a griefer demands skill and resources (unlike DayZ today), so it's a respectable career path.

Read the upcoming 1.7.2.4 patch notes. It's been dealt with in there.