Idea's for Replay Value and Human Interactions

[davidcastle 19]

- Preface -

A lot of these ideas come from other forum posts but have my little flavor in them. Some come from other games or even other mods of THIS game. Some are out of my head. I take no credit for any ideas that may have originated from others. I just want to provide great ideas that I might be able to one day enjoy. Sorry for my bad typing. I just want to get the ideas out as they are in my head now rather than spend forever as a grammar nazi.

- Trading Posts -

//The Posts

The ability for players to create a "trading post". What this would entail would be players having to gather a supplies and find the right "survival tools ei. toolbox ect." to be able to build prefrab buildings such as you can in the normal Arma 2 missions. Once specific groups of buildings are build AIs would flock to these buildings (like in terarria). These AIs would all have different options.

AI ideas

- General Tradesman - sells beans and food stuffs and flares ect.

- Scraper - sells stuff to fix cars and most tools

- Arms - guns and ammo

- Doctor - medical supplies. maybe he can also blood transfuse you (if you got a blood bag in your inv)

- Villager (can be given "jobs")

These NPCS would once every hour cycle some items sellable to keep things fresh. Also they could sell things that have been sold to them. SELL YOU SAY? is this currency or trading. Well lets cover this later. For now just concept.

Let's talk the villager. Maybe the villager would be able to be given certain "jobs". For example you might be able to give a villager guard duty. After he is turned guard maybe he can then be scroll wheeled and given your main slot weapon. This way you can arm guards vs bandit snipers. The key here is that guards only fire when fires upon first by players but shoot zeds on sight. Bandit snipers are still my biggest worry for AI type settlements but that may be able to be adjusted with type of buildings made (make walls?) how many real players are near there and how many guards (ie. 5 cz guards, one dies, other 4 engage).

Also we must remember we DO have to allow trading posts to be killable, we don't want them 100% bandit proof or else you would eventually have TONS of these everywhere.

Another thing we might be able to turn a villager into is a farmer or cattle herder. Maybe the same way the game tells if your in a "forest area" we can set Locations on the farmland (i'm not sure how editing works but if its like the SC2 engine where you set locations for triggers) so that the farmland can be used. Farmers would be able to tend the crops and bring back produce to a location where it can be grabbed. Cattle herders would wander around a fully fenced off area and cattle would spawn every few minutes or so as long as there was food available for them in the storage area.

Players themselves could go grab the corn or whatever and eat it or take it with them but that would only heal the 200, waiting a longer time for cattle to eat those corns and grow allow them to be killed for the precious 800 blood steaks.

Now what about the persistence difficulty of the post other than guards? Would the npcs just stay there and everything keeps growing or maybe do they have to EAT? maybe there is a main warehouse that they will go to grab food from and eat and if they get to "starving" they just walk off and despawn. This means that players (or other npcs) have to keep the warehouse building stocked. This also means that players have to kinda work together and set rules on how much you can take ect. so someone doesn't rob the thing blind.

Also maybe the NPCS and amount of NPCS will vary based on how big the town is? Maybe you have to gather certain ammounts of supplies to "UPGRADE" the townhall to the next level which gets more npcs PLUS upgrades the item cycling and type of items of current NPCS. Mind you this is a shanty town, not full fledged city.

As for more ideas on npcs and buildings in this prefrab town, there are many, I just wanted the basic concept for town down. what are some of YOUR ideas for this??

//The bandits and the Sheriffs

SO BANDITS. The big elephant in the corner. I'll get straight to the point.

Say someone starts killing a ton of people and you want them dead right? Maybe the game will have the ability to have a "BOUNTY" boards in prefrab towns (or normal, i'll enter about this in a sec) that show the names of certain players (are these players selected by the game itself where players with 5 plus life kills are thrown? is it humanity based? you decide? or my suggestion?) are selected by players so have a bounty on their head. The player setting the bounty would deposit some items in an untouchable storage slot which then sit until the player with the bounty is killed. Maybe these boards sync with main server so you can be on a board on any server and it would just cross reference the global bounties with those on your server to only show those on your server. This way that player can't escape justice anywhere. To post a bounty you can't have negative humanity ALSO to TAKE a bounty you can't have negative humanity either. This would start pushing some players who want rewards (set by other players and not the game mind you) to try and be good decent players and hunt down the bads.

I always thought that people wanting to "PUNISH" bandits was dumb. You punish people they get angry. You reward people they get happy. Reward those who do right and just leave those who do wrong alone. I myself will probably keep being a bandit because the joy of ending lives is fun enough. Anddddd I will be hunted.

Oh and add tracking options and dogs =). soooo

//Tracking

I personally thing that lately on even full servers there have not been enough player interactions. Everyone is now exploring the north the north east the west the south the east, everywhere. People are leaving the coast, BUT people avoid each other like the plague. If we add the 2 suggestions above maybe we will have people work together again, BUTTT, what about finding others for the purpose of killing.. whether its hunting bandits or hunting survivors? TRACKING. first off, add dogs. and do it how you want rocket. Other than that here is an idea. Maybe say each time you eat food drink a soda ect you character will actually leave (i hope this doesnt hurt the servers or players client side on data and lagging people) small little pieces of their meal on the ground or a used soda can. When someone comes by, they might be able to (for 20minutes or so until the stuff disapears) scroll click it to see how long ago the meal was consumed. Also when you study bodies maybe it shows how LONG ago they were killed. Another idea is maybe every 500 meters of walking you guys leaves a footprint which can be scroll wheeled. you can then see how long ago someone was there through scroll wheel. to stop server from getting bogged, maybe prints last 1 hour max and also if you pay attention maybe you can scroll wheel cover your foot prints. would make traveling more annoying so you wouldnt ALWAYS do it, but while being traveled maybe you would.

HERE IS what dogs would do. They would have the ability to be scroll wheeled and show options of all the "trackable" spots within 100m or whatever distance. As you "TRAIN" you dog more maybe they can eventually actually TAKE you to those points. and once you get max dog training maybe they can actually "TRACK" specific players. To track specific players maybe your dog first has to find 10 track spots created by that player through foot prints or food. Maybe every 15th bullet drops a trackable casing too?

//Current Towns and Taking them over

Using this guys power grid ideas

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=6791&highlight=power+grid

be able to power towns using this would rock. Once towns are "powered" maybe the lights turn on and the next step would be clearing all the zeds out. Once all the zeds are cleared they would stop spawning in that town as long as the power grid was up. Loot would of course stop spawning BUT you would now enter a scenario similar to prefrab towns. NPCS would move in. The difference between these towns and shanty towns are one main things. A) for example if you take over chern a HUGE town, chern would immedietly start offering benefits of a shanty town that size... which pretty much would NEVER happen. so chern would be an ultimate prize for coop players. Also they would provide lights too. Also maybe NPCS only available in certain towns and (heres the awesome) maybe certain towns offer town specific benefits. For example maybe chern will offer a hospital that will offer better benefits than a doctor in other towns... say maybe free medical help or blood transfusions without you having a blood bag (maybe you get a limit per time on how many). ect ect. Maybe if two towns are taken over along a railroad you can scroll wheel at a rail station and teleport to the next town? Also maybe alot of these coastal towns can have villagers become FISHERMen since they are not near food sources. This way they can fish to keep the town alive.

Anywho just some fun ideas.

//So now more ways to persist, what about stuff to do?

-Wandering zombie hordes. I know zeds are client side when your near things, but maybe if it doesnt lag server too much? or a client side way to do this? but wandering hordes of like 50 zeds. Maybe they usually have 1 or 2 REALLY good loot items so sometimes people might actually want to engage them.

-Bears. Sounds dumb but rlly... BEARS. and maybe wolf packs.

-Wandering bandit gang NPCS

-Slightly rare bandit gangs that hold areas in towns and spawn in the place of zeds? set script so if a bandit gang spawns all zed wont spawn within 200 so that way it isnt a 3 way fight.

-C130 crashes? the same way helo crashes have uber gun loot c130 crashes have uber vehicle loot? not MBT's persay but maybe Hummers with mounted guns that can be fixed? Also SOME mil spawn weapons (id say keep the ubers to helos though).

-at spawn on server have a "TREASURE STASH" of loot spawn that will only respawn on server restart or a few hours after its looted. This treasure stash is hidden in one of 100 random spawn areas for it and with it will spawn maybe only 5 maps findable in cities that will mark on a map(oif you own one) the APROXX 500m location of the stash

//Radios.

If you find a radio you can side chat. if not you can only direct. you turn your radio off and it mutes side chat.

//Currency

Ok I am not sure how I feel about this myself. But maybe some currency. YOu can ONLY get this currency by selling items to a specific trader in towns. This trader only regenerates currency over over time so he can only buy so many items until he runs out of currency. To make sure that PLAYERS set item values, maybe each gun is worth the same in HIS eyes. Once you get this currency, you are able to buy services and products from other NPCS. IF you dont have currency to buy a product you have to "put up for trade" certain items that have a value to that NPCS (all guns same) and trade him twice the value of the service to get the service or item. To make sure that this REALLY is a post apocalyptic world, make sure the value of services is high enough that you without currency you really DO have to give up a bundle get a service or product.

Also maybe spawning off zeds (so you'll want to kill zeds) everyonce in a while are VOUCHER coins that can be traded for a free service (heal, train ride or free item)

Anywho what are YOUR ideas to build upon these? please add.