Disscussion (hopefully an idea) about "non-regular" playing

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

The biggest problem I see in DayZ (the mod and, for now, in standalone) is the fact that you have to play the game constantly to be able to achieve something other than just gathering items. If you want to get a car, make a camp, build a fight-to-the-death ring or set up you own radio station (not really possible but i think it could be a good "endgame" idea if we're gonna have radios in standalone:)) you need to play the game continuously for a long time and on the same server, and also have a lot of people that can help you available at the same time.

For starters lets say the standalone DayZ servers will be much more stable and better organized, with (hopefully) no hacking, so you could really stick to just one server play on it for several days. You can do pretty much: find a car(broken), find parts, fix the car, make a camp, keep it hidden in the forest until the next day, then drive to the place you want to build your fight-to-the-death ring and start spreading you barbwire and so on...

All that is fairly possible if you are playing almost every day and for several hours at least. It's a small chance that someone will find you camp, steal you car, take a dump inside your ring. (don't know if that's still considered for standalone:))

But what happens if you are somewhat busy, like I am, and you can only afford to play for several hours once or maybe twice a week?

You can maybe fix a car or set up a camp, that's if you're already geared up when you start playing. But by the next time you get to play, the car is probably gone, the camp empty, or just maybe the server went down, you actually did all that for nothing. I can't imagine the disappointment if you did something even greater (something cool that we will be able to do in standalone).

Now don't get me wrong. I don't mind someone finding my camp, stealing all my stuff, blowing up my car or stuff like that. I wouldn't mind even if a guy killed me with a hatchet and took everything just because, lets say, my character got stuck in some glitch... I just hate the fact that i lost everything because i was at work, or out with a girl, or just sleeping.

Because of that for me the usual friday night playthrough goes like this: "meet with friends, get the loot, get into some crazy pvp encounter, die". I mean it's still good, I get the thrills and fun but it really feels like i'm not experiencing the whole DayZ.

Now i have some kind of half-idea as a partial solution (totally unsure yet, still have to think it through), but I would like to hear some opinions on this.

I searched a lot about this and didn't see some big fuss about it. Therefore I would like see what others think before I try to expand the idea and look stupid because i'd rather be with a girl than guarding a camp :). (although i did stood up a girl a few times so i could play DayZ:))

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

I don't really see any way around this in a persistent-server environment - any situation like that is obviously going to favour those who are able/willing to spend more time in it, and to find a way around that would at best be potentially unfair to those players who invest the hours into the game, and at worst utterly break the very nature of the game - if you want 'premium' gear like cars and camps in DayZ, you have to work damn hard for it - finding a way of giving something to person A for three hours' work what person B had to work twenty hours for is just going to cause all kinds of upset.

Above all else, DayZ is a brutally 'fair' game. The guy with 200 hours' experience and an AS50 is just as vulnerable to a hatchet in the face as the newbie wandering round Cherno for the first time. It does not and cannot start making concessions to certain groups/people, because at that point it stops becoming a world that's trying to kill you and becomes a game that's trying to help you. That's not what DayZ is about.

[dallas 5195]

The only way to compete with a no-lifer like me, is either to trivialize the content or an ingame marketplace, neither seems to be in the direction where DayZ is going. Just remember while, I'm killing you with my NVGs, stealing your shit, you can just turn off your game and continue dating hot girls.

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

Well I didn't say it would be good to start with a car or something like that. Like you said, you have to work hard to get it, that's what DayZ is. And that's why it's so good.

What i'm saying is, what's the difference between a guy who spends 24 hours in game for 1 day, and a guy who spends 24 hours in game for 1 month? the work is just as hard.

It's just the first guy who is gonna get the car faster in real life, and that's his reward for staying up all night.

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

The only way to compete with a no-lifer like me, is either to trivialize the content or an ingame marketplace, neither seems to be in the direction where DayZ is going.

Just so we're on the same page. None of that is what I'm looking for. I'm trying to think of something that would not impact the current gameplay, but still not have "is my car ok?" on the list of worries in real life.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

But that's prioritizing for you. I (and you, by the sounds of things) certainly don't want to start things down the road of bashing the guy who's able to invest large amounts of time into his gaming - that's fine, we all have our hobbies and the amount of time we feel comfortable dedicating to them varies from person to person. No judging and all that.

I have no doubts that there are people out there who regularly spend 12-15 hours a day playing this game. I'd put money on it. That guy is GOING to get your car at some point if he wants it, and if that's the level of effort he's willing to put in, then he deserves it. There's no fair way of stopping him. But as Dallas points out, that level of dedication comes at a price - while he's sat at his keyboard looting your shit, you're taking his mother out for a nice seafood dinner and not calling her back (Sorry, but it made me giggle).

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

Let me put it this way. What's the difference between a car and NVG?

In my experience. It's easier to find a car than NVG (never got one actually, only from hackers, and it felt really lame), but you can log out and have NVG when you log in 6 months later to a different server but not the car.

Also NVG is not a problem, even if it is considered "premium" loot. I could find it eventually if i cared enough for it, and I would have it untill I die no matter how rarely I play.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

The key difference for me is that goggles are something that can be put in a backpack. For the sake of a hypothetical argument, let's say when a player logs out and their character vanishes from the server, 'in character', they're just hiding themselves really well and going to sleep for however long it is until the player logs back in and they 'wake up'. Presumably, wherever that character goes, anything they're wearing or carrying will go with them.

You can't do that with a car - you can't hide a car in an attic of an abandoned house or up in a tree or something like that - the best you can do is find a nice out-of-the-way spot somewhere and hope no-one finds it, which is the way it is, and pretty much the way it should be.

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

You could hide a bike at the attic :-) i mean if a man can hide so can the bike be hidden as they are both about the same size.

Nevertheless I like the way you're thinking. Server being the one that actually dictates time. I always saw playing time to be the real time because nothing happens to the character when you're offline.

So Craig is sleeping in stary sobor for about 15 days now. :-)

I got a few ideas from this. gonna post them tomorrow when i sort them out. now the real me is gonna sleep for about 3 hours. long day of taking mothers to dinners ahead :)

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

Haha, you could probably hide a bike in an attic, although I'd pay good money to see someone trying to get it up and down the ladder! :lol:

And yeah, that's quite a power nap - imagine the breakfast you're going to need after that one!

I look forward to seeing you ideas - don't forget to not call those mothers afterwards! :P

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

I had a few ideas about this but just got another which could be the best possible solution... I'll leave it for last.

First one would be that you could for example take a vehicle or a camp to a different server, but only if you disconnect while inside the vehicle (or near a tent) or something like that. So you could only do it for one thing at a time... but i'll just stop here because it would cause chaos pretty soon. Just imagine 150 players joining a server and they are all in helicopters. So, no.

The other one would be that you would gain some "out-of-game points" by being alive longer and by gathering enough points you could get like a perk (I already hate it but lets go on) which would allow you to save a vehicle\tent\whatever with you once per life. This could actually bring some good stuff if the game would take away a great deal of those points if you die, so that would be one more reason to fear death, also it would reduce suicides. If you just died and lost half the points you had, and then spawned in kamenka you will think twice about committing suicide so you can get a better spawn.

But then again this could get pretty complicated, and would require some good mathematics and lots of testing and too much work for something, obviously, unimportant (still can't believe everyone here has all the time in the world for games :|)

The best thing I could come up with is something like this:

Some new type of server option. Lets say the server restarts every 24 hours (i think some restarts more often but that could be in between so it's not important), and every time it restarts it saves a state for that day and starts another for the next day. But the next week for a first day it loads the state that was first saved and goes like that in circles. (ok read that line again later, it's probably too confusing right now)

So basically you join on monday, play for 24 hours, server restarts and all is gone, no vehicles, no camps, nothing. But you if you joint the next monday it would continue where it was before.

Now that doesn't mean you would only have to play once a week, in between you can go to regular server, gather loot or things like that, or maybe you join the friday server and do some other stuff there, but when monday comes you continue where you were (your stuff on the server, not the character. you could have died on friday and spawned in kamenka:)).

Players who have less free time can plan in advance when they will play and can cancel seafood dinners with mothers of the players who have free time (or maybe just not call them:)).

Or if you skip you monday server it would not be a big deal if you hid you stuff well, if someone can find it in 24 hours he deserves it.

Other great things come out from this..

Lets say two clans find themselves on the same sunday server, and they get into a fight... no matter how it ends they will be on the same server every time, and after a few encounters they could actually start a war which could go on forever and the server can become famous (like, "don't go to DE 871 on fridays or you'll be caught in a crossfire!") or maybe a third clan wants to get there and try to reason with them (yeah right :)).

Also imagine a guy running a radio station at green mountain every wednesday. If he's cool you could roam chernarus with some great music coming from your radio or if he is boring you could go there and shoot him (which could all be heard on the radios of every player).

It would be much easier to organize events. Remember the Last Church of Elektrozavodsk? now ti could be organized much better. prepare everything saturday night (some decorations or whatever we would be able to do in standalone ...not satchel charges:)) and then spend a week building a hype on the internet and everyone will know when and where to come and you would not get there just to see that the church is destroyed.

All in all it would force the people to be creative and think of a new "endgame" ideas.

Now I said 24 hours periods so it would be easier to follow but it could be any time period for that restarts whatever turns out best. Or maybe have a 5 restarts for five working days and one 48 hour server for weekend. this could be expanded even more (same server on tuesday and thursday or something like that, lets say admins could set that).

I could only think of one "negative outcome"(which imo is not really negative) and that is Mr.Dallas here can keep his loot on a tuesday server and roam regular servers every day killing people and still keeping his loot safe where no one can get it, but the thing is, not even Mr.Dallas himself can get there before tuesday, so i guess these cancel each other out :).

I actually think that this would be technically possible even in a mod. Never ran a server but if it can restart and have everything where it was it must have saved that state somewhere, it just needs to store 7 different states. Or maybe a server like that already exists and we just didn't figured it works like that :D

And whether this gets implemented or completely ignored by developers you have to admit it's a legit solution for this particular problem. :)

also I would like to hear some pros and cons if you think of any

[thejarofflies@gmail.com 12]

Just want to say that this idea came from Target Practice's post that suggested that the server is the one that dictates time, so Target Practice you have my beans :)

because of that I thought instead of adding some new options for the players, just add one to the server.