falconne

There's a fk*ng server? When did they add that feature?

Regarding the bandit risk and the death penalty being the same, well the penalty isn't harsh enough to discourage banditry. Maybe once the duping and hacking is fixed it might be different. Even so, it's nowhere near a simulation of the real life risks... very few people will want to risk being tortured and no one can respawn and try again if it all goes wrong. Regarding sniping bandits in a limited resource environment... well it's not limited resource though is it. It seems 99% of the world population is suddenly dead or infected, and civilization has stopped in its tracks, so infact there's huge amounts of resources available, just lying where people left them. This is like when the black plague wiped out 40% of Europe's population... all of a sudden there were huge surpluses in food and wealth. In a DayZ scenario, the only limited resource is people. As an individual you face greater danger being alone and your ability to harvest all those resources will be limited. Larger groups will be able to gather far more resources per capita if they work together. The natural human instincts that will prevail in these circumstances is greed and power, not mass murder. There will be conflicts among individuals for the leadership positions in these larger groups - that's where the violence will be. The people in the top of the hierarchy will want to expand their power and the way to do that is to have more people in their clan. Killing for resources in this scenario simply doesn't make sense because you're not fighting over scarce resources... you actually need people to help gather the plentiful resources. Even inter-clan wars will be over who gets to lead a united, even bigger clan, not about eliminating the other clan. Whether it can be simulated in a game where people only have limited time to play each night is another matter however. But when you look at it logically, the current situation in the game makes no sense - you have all these resources available and a hostile environment... and everyone just ends up shooting each other.

No I was just speculating. I would have thought that, even if the game is very P2P instead of server controlled, all actions the players are taking should be logged by the server. So if someone teleports or spawns in a weapon, the server should be logging it, making it easy to find and ban them. However the engine probably doesn't log the actions... seems like a design oversight, but it's the only explanation. If someone teleports next to me or spawns a hacked gun next to me, I can see them (or pick up the gun). That means this information is passed from his client to mine, bypassing the server. Otherwise the server would be able to log that happening and ban the guy soon after. I wonder if it's very hard for them to do a fix that would force all P2P data to be replicated to the server for logging too.

Actually this is more likely to cause admins to be flooded with reports along the lines of: "SniperDude killed me... I'm pretty sure he's hacker! Ban him!". What I don't understand is, if the servers are logging everything that goes on and that data is being analysed periodically, people using hacks like teleportation and scripted in weapons, etc should be almost non existent. They would do it once, then a log analysis a few hours later should detect it and ban them. Yet these hackers still exist in force.

So you use known bugs and server hopping and claim the game is too easy? And you want the base game to be remodelled and rebalanced... in such a way that would force everyone to use the bugs and exploits to survive? What... what?

Although the current oversupply of equipment is probably due to duplication and hacking, once those problems are fixed I think the most annoying exploit would be people jumping on low pop servers to farm high value loot with very little risk. How about if the chance of loot spawning is scaled down depending on how many players are on the server, especially military and other high value loot. I don't mean reducing anything to zero, just scaling it down so that even though your PvP risk goes down, survival is harder due to the scarcity of resources. That would keep the difficulty balanced on all servers and reduce the temptation to farm high value loot on a low pop server.

You still miss the point... it's not about punishing low pop players, it's about closing an exploit. I didn't say players on low pop servers are farming, I said farming players target low pop servers. I'm referring to those who purposefully hop onto low pop servers along with their friends to grab loot then hop back on high pop servers to PvP. You're not one of them and you probably never see them, they don't stay there. They just want to grab loot without the effort and go ruin he game for people struggling on high pop servers. You won't be affected by this, there will still be more than enough guns for you all around the map, because there are less people competing for them. What it will do is make is less attractive for the PvP crowd to raid the high value military bases on your server... and you get the added bonus that you won't find roving bands of bandits trying to gear up on your favourite play zones. The only way this would be bad for you is if you're specifically playing on low pop servers to make it easy to raid the NWAF barracks, etc. In which case, that's an unfair exploit anyway. Right now it's not that big a deal because the dup bugs and hacks are providing the PvP crowd with limitless weapons. Once those are fixed (probably only in the standalone), you'll find that the quiet servers you're used to become battlegrounds like the others, as those gangs try to find easy targets to farm their loot. I expect that people who regularly play on low pop servers are looking for a more strategic survival game, instead of a high firepower action game, so they aren't going to care if the chance of rocket launchers appearing in the NWAF goes down a bit. Yeah but the high pop servers have 10 people at each, most of whom are in hills sniping, instead of trying to loot and get out quick.

Just because you've learned the game doesn't mean the difficulty should evolve with you, if that happens very few new people will try it out and you'll be left with mostly only those who played the alpha who aren't bored yet buying the standalone. The key is to scale the difficulty, with new sandbox features, so that experienced players have newer, more dangerous things to aim for (such as fancier equipment that is only found in areas of the map infested with larger zombie concentrations and dangerous animals) and more grandiose goals to pursue (e.g. fortification and base building). As for you, you could either take a break from playing till more stuff is added, or do something more dangerous like hunting bandits and helping out new players. There's no point "just surviving".

You aren't getting the point I'm trying to make. It's not about forcing people to play on high pop servers, it's about eliminating the weapon farming from low pop ones. What people are doing are going to the airfield, etc on a low pop server and grabbing the best stuff with no risk. If you're on a low pop server you don't need as many weapons... it stands to reason... there are less players so there's less demand for them. They wouldn't get more loot on a 60+ server... there's more people on that server so there will be less loot per person (when you take into account risk).

It's not a punishment... playing on low pop servers is too easy. The game was originally balanced for 50 or so players, so there's far too much loot available when there's only 10-15 players on the map. This would keep the game challenging no matter the player count.

A player who lives mainly on beans should have a small chance of alerting zombies with accidental flatulence while crawling on his belly

Well it's not like food is hard to come by now even on a full server... but when I say "scale", I mean that on a high pop server your chance of finding food is lower than on a low pop server, for obvious reasons. This would level the playing field... the game should be just as hard on low pop as it is on a full server. Also it would force you to visit the high density cities more often on a low pop server, increasing the risk of running into one of the other players.

I can't understand how so many people can be oblivious to sarcasm

Yes, survival becomes trivial once you learn how to play. The problem is, if you make the environment threatening enough for experienced players, then new players would find it so hard they wouldn't get into the game. There needs to be some way of scaling the difficulty so that experienced players and that's quite difficult without resorting to the crappy RPG idea of the world levelling with you. Perhaps something like some areas of the map have the kind of environment that exists now, where it's challenging for a new player but still something they can master... but these areas don't have any of the coolest loot and you can't do many of the cool stuff that gets added in the future. To do the cooler stuff you have to go deeper into the map where the environment is much more threatening (dangerous animals, less food sources, even diseases, etc) and the other players you encounter are more experienced (so more of a threat). With that you don't need safe zones, but you still make it such that if you want to get the best loot you have to take more risks than the inexperienced players... once you go to that effort you're unlikely to wander back and kill newbs for nothing. You'll be taking on people who are able to match you in experience and equipment.

Even when more features are added to the game that won't reduce banditry. People say that the only reason players become bandits is because you run out of things to do after a few days of play. I don't think that's true... I think at the point it stops being fun most people will simply stop playing and wait for new stuff to be added (that's what I'm doing). The players who resort to banditry obviously enjoy the griefing playstyle and there are so many right now because in the current state of the game, there are no repercussions to being a bandit. Permadeath is not a deterrent since getting back to where you started doesn't take much time once you learn the game. So simply adding more stuff to do won't help, the concentration of bandits will keep increasing to the point that new players are discouraged from continuing the game. There needs to be effective ways to counter bandits. It should be a playstyle that is allowed for sure, but it should be something that only the most experienced players would be willing to risk.. and they should be risking a lot... then at least you can say being a successful bandit is actually a status symbol.

Except that banditry is a low risk activity, which doesn't reflect reality. It's low risk because it doesn't take long to gear back up if you do die. Also it's pure griefing right now, because it's unlikely the less experienced players you kill have anything you want. As it is, the game will descend into KoS deathmatch.

Well I agree that foraging is a sensible feature to add to a survival game, but I think it has to be added in a way that enriches gameplay. Simply having it as a "Russian Roulette" style gamble where it's completely random whether you live or die is not that great for gameplay. There's no skill involved. It will become something that is part of the routine after a fresh spawn... simply head to the forest, try some berries; if you found the good stuff, then great, continue with the game with that advantage. If you get sick, keep trying till you die and then respawn and go try again. Every other survival technique in the game requires skill and practice, which is why they are fun to learn. There's always luck involved, but you learn to take controlled risks and the better you get at the techniques the better your chances will be. That's why I was suggesting something along the lines of your character "learning" from books or other players about what's safe to eat. There's skill and risk involved in finding the information at least... although admittedly it's no different than the skill involved in finding weapons and ammo, so it needs more depth to make it something special and not just a rehash of existing features in a new light.

Well that's not a high enough simulation though, because dying is no big deal... it doesn't take long to get back to where you were. In reality you only have one life, which is what will cause most people in such a situation to organize together for safety and efficiency; it's instinct. Therefore the life of a bandit would involve very high risk for a small reward: they can't take on the large organized communes, so they would have to try and ambush individuals who are out foraging. If they do that then the communes would track them down and kill them, after torture. I agree that after getting to a certain level of capability you simply run out of things to do, so a minority will just resort to griefing other players. But I think the mod is limited by the capabilities of the ARMA engine, so it can't really add all those other higher level features. Nor can it fix the duplication bugs and hacking that are the source of all the easy to access high level gear. That's why I was saying only the standalone can really fix it without punishing bandits.

Deleting double post

A lot of folks in this thread should hit the supermarket in Cherno... I hear there's a sarcasm meter that spawns there sometimes

I'd disagree with that. If you went off into the wilderness and started eating random berries you'll eventually end up violently ill, possibly dead. You don't want a mechanic where a newly spawned player thinks "I just spawned, so I have nothing to lose, I'll try some berries.... oh that killed me... never mind, respawn, try some more berries... oh this one worked! Great, now this character will have an advantage for the the rest of its life!". Then it just becomes a dice roll every player takes with any fresh spawn until they have a good result to continue with.

Rocket wants the game to be a psychological experiment, but it currently doesn't have enough elements to simulate the high risk of choosing a life of banditry, even in a post apocalyptic world. You can be a senseless killer... if you get killed, no problem, respawn, find more guns and repeat. Until the standalone is released with features that allow for more community and fortification building and generally simulating the rebuilding of civilization, features that actually makes banditry difficult, there needs to be something in place to prevent the game descending into a PvP deathmatch. There's plenty of other games out there to satisfy the trigger happy FPS crowd.

Perhaps they should add a feature that you can't eat any food unless you find a knife and fork first

Well the main thing is that if you add foraging, you're going to need to add an "ability" for survivors to distinguish between good fruits and harmful ones. The graphic models should be generic, so players can't just learn what's what by looking at it. Instead their character would need to "learn" how to do it. And doing so by experimenting is not realistic... if you did that in real life you'd be dead. The only way to know what you can and cannot eat in the wilderness is to have someone teach you or read it in a book, hence the game would have to have such a mechanic too. That's why I was talking about learning from books.