Balancing DayZ SA series Part 1: shifting from pvp to survival

[alanford 13]

Part 1 of the Balancing DayZ standalone discussion series. I encourage to post your opinions and ideas here. The more posts the more chances any of the devs hear us.

In part 1 of the series we will talk about the banditism and pvp in dayz. I am basing the OP around the data we know about dayZ standalone. Which includes a bigger map and bigger cities. I'll point out some of things I thought off and add other good ideas provided by people in this topic. Many of the changes are small balance changes which could also be included in dayz mod. But some are big changes, which would require actualy developing time.

This has been largely discussed so far, and I've alreay made a topic about this. You can read it here. I'll just borrow the intro from there:

So, we all know that banditism is rampant in DayZ and that the nm.1 cause for death is death by sniper and other players. This severely limits the survivalism aspect of the game.

In the previous thread I claimed a good fix for the banditism problem would be making survival harder. I was wrong. The solution is sadly not that simple. Indeed, a real solution doesn't exist. Players will always enjoy the thrill of the kill. Which is fine. In real world there would also be killers. So why not dayz? And I've been thinking about this a lot, and I still dont think I have any good ideas how to deal with this, still, here are a few:

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-I said that surviving should be harder, which was wrong. Infact what should have been the idea was: getting super geared should be hard. Normal weapons should be more commons, (small arms, maybe shotguns) but military grade gear should be rare as girl gamers.

-Raiding military targets should be very hard and should require groups of people. Add military zombies with body armour that would instakill you if you went at them alone with just a small gun.

So now suddently there are no more 1000 dmr and m24 and AM rifle snipers on the hills praying on bambis.

-Another thing, make military ammo spawn rarer.

This wouldn't so much help with the pvp, because now people would kill other people for ammo, but it would definitely make the bambi killer bandits think twice before spraying a whole clip on a bambi. It's more a quality of life improvement for new spawned players.

A fun remark: with the new zombie system you could wait outside of military bases, waiting for a group to clean it and than go in and take the remains, if you wanted to.

-On the other hand however, civilian guns should be more abundant. Small guns should be found inside houses, shutguns in bars, stores, gas stations. Hunting rifles should also be a bit more common I suppose.

-A big thing! Add police stations.

It's the most organic and natural thing to add. Police stations exist in real world yet not in dayz for some reason.

Police stations should be gold mines of medium grade gun and equipment spawns. Body armors, better shotguns, some ar-15, revolvers, guns, smoke grenades.

They would remove focus from just firestations and barracks for loot, and add much needed alternative spawn points. Adding different spawn points would eliminate choke points for getting gear. (For example just yesterday I saw in elektro firestation 30 bodies. I SHIT YOU NOT! 30 bodies!!)

Also, as a fun thing: add prisoner zombies, just for the lulz.

-And A thing I have covered in the traversing dayz part of the series, and will cover in loot part of the series, adding alternative places to get geared would also server to ease the stress on the cities, because survivors wouldn't need to enter them.

-Add rewards for being kind. Maybe something like Finding a way for the game to determine when a player is stuck (swarmed by zombies and stuck in a house, maybe add a checkpoint on entry, exit to house and determine whether the player can get to that point or whatever) and than if someone helps the stranded player he gets rewarded.

I will add more things as I think of them, because like I said, balancing the pvp and survival part of dayz is not an easy thing, and I'm sure you will have some good ideas as well. I highly suggest reading my other thread because people had some nice ideas there.

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Part 1 of the series:

-you are here-

Part 2 of the series:

traversing the DayZ world

Part 3 of the series:

loot mechanics

Part 4 of the series:

balancing the zombies

Part 5 of the series:

endgame

Part 6 of the series:

random stuff

Edited March 22, 2013 by izver

[dayz247 59]

-Add rewards for being kind. Maybe something like Finding a way for the game to determine when a player is stuck (swarmed by zombies and stuck in a house, maybe add a checkpoint on entry, exit to house and determine whether the player can get to that point or whatever) and than if someone helps the stranded player he gets rewarded.

What kind of rewards? What kind of reward would really happen in a situation like this?

Perhaps it would be better to stick with "the player getting saved should reward you, maybe some beans?"

To many artificial incentives in the game is going to take away from what this game is.

A big thing! Add police stations.

It's the most organic and natural thing to add. Police stations exist in real world yet not in dayz for some reason.

Police stations should be gold mines of medium grade gun and equipment spawns. Body armors, better shotguns, some ar-15, revolvers, guns, smoke grenades.

They would remove focus from just firestations and barracks for loot, and add much needed alternative spawn points. Adding different spawn points would eliminate choke points for getting gear. (For example just yesterday I saw in elektro firestation 30 bodies. I SHIT YOU NOT! 30 bodies!!)

Also, as a fun thing: add prisoner zombies, just for the lulz.

firestations shouldnt give the loot they give now. Exactly how many firestations in the world are actually going to have guns in them? Not many (especially not the kind of guns you see in this game).

I agree on the police stations, should be police stations spawning the loot that firestations spawn now. Maybe firestations could spawn some sort of big truck, some cloths, axes, some medical stuff, and maybe some food stuffs.

Edited March 22, 2013 by dayz247

[alanford 13]

What kind of rewards? What kind of reward would really happen in a situation like this?

Perhaps it would be better to stick with "the player getting saved should reward you, maybe some beans?"

To many artificial incentives in the game is going to take away from what this game is.

Saving a player right now is like as not going to get you shot when he wakes up. I know that giving some computer rewards is taking away from the game, but you must appreceate the fact that it is still a game. People are anonymous and killing the player who just saved you is nothing to them. Just another stranger behind his computer. It happened to me many times.

Let me tell you a story about a huey I once had:

Me and my friend found a huey. We were repairing it for an hour and finaly took off. We loot heli crash sites and airfields all day. We get a really nice loot stash. DMRs, m107, m24's l85's, ghillie suits, rangefinders you name it. After about 9h we decide to call it quits. He logs off and I go stash a heli, when flying over kamenka some kids start yelling help pick me up. I decide ok they are just kids and do a sweet landing to pick them up. They shoot me in the head. And that's how the story ends.

Edited March 22, 2013 by izver

[thesodesa 99]

The main reason people aren't focusing on survival is because the survival mechanisms haven't been put into place yet, and because guns and ammunition are very readily available. The mod in it's current state is just another FPS, which is why I'm waiting for the standalone to come out so I can throw the non-existent contents of my bank account at it.

[trichome (DayZ) 198]

The main reason people aren't focusing on survival is because the survival mechanisms haven't been put into place yet, and because guns and ammunition are very readily available. The mod in it's current state is just another FPS, which is why I'm waiting for the standalone to come out so I can throw the non-existent contents of my bank account at it.

And why do you think people will change for the SA??

They won't they will still try and kill you by any means they can. Just because guns and loot will be initially rarer don't mean jack, it will just take people longer to get weapons but the end result will be the same once they get tooled up they will then hunt players. Just because its the SA is not going to change that one bit. I'm not going to stop hunting other players cause its' the SA on the contrarary I'll be hunting players more than ever cause you know loot will be much harder to find and why not just kill another player and take his :thumbsup:

[Mos1ey 6301]

Let me tell you a story about a huey I once had:

Me and my friend found a huey. We were repairing it for an hour and finaly took off. We loot heli crash sites and airfields all day. We get a really nice loot stash. DMRs, m107, m24's l85's, ghillie suits, rangefinders you name it. After about 9h we decide to call it quits. He logs off and I go stash a heli, when flying over kamenka some kids start yelling help pick me up. I decide ok they are just kids and do a sweet landing to pick them up. They shoot me in the head. And that's how the story ends.

You can't blame your naivety on the game. xD

I'd probably shoot you for a working heli and I'm friendly 95% of the time.

[Dancing.Russian.Man 1631]

"Normal weapons should be more commons, (small arms, maybe shotguns) but military grade gear should be rare as girl gamers."

A little irked by that statement, but alright. I'll take it.

"Add military zombies with body armour that would instakill you if you went at them alone with just a small gun."

No. At most, make them more durable against bullets to where they have said armor. Wearing heavy clothing doesn't make you hit heavier.

"Police stations exist in real world yet not in dayz for some reason."

Actually there are a couple. One in Berezino, for example. They have two doors on opposite sides as well as a little roofed parking spot on the side.

Edit;

"The more posts the more chances any of the devs hear us."

Rocket keeps regulating these forums a lot more than your usual game developer. (Although he's more active on Reddit) And even then, the forum mods can forward certain threads and ideas if they find it necessary. As far as I know.

Edited March 22, 2013 by Dancing.Russian.Man

[thesodesa 99]

And why do you think people will change for the SA??

They won't they will still try and kill you by any means they can. Just because guns and loot will be initially rarer don't mean jack, it will just take people longer to get weapons but the end result will be the same once they get tooled up they will then hunt players. Just because its the SA is not going to change that one bit. I'm not going to stop hunting other players cause its' the SA on the contrarary I'll be hunting players more than ever cause you know loot will be much harder to find and why not just kill another player and take his :thumbsup:

Are you 100% sure nothing will change? From you comment, because you used the word 'hunt', I'm deducing that you are the type of player that currently hunts players partly because it's fun. I'm not one of those players, and there are others like me, who are mainly interested in learning about practical disease prevention and society management in the final product.

I'm still advocating the idea, that the amount of guns should be reduced to the point, where not everybody has access to one. Not because I think it will reduce PvP, I just don't find it very authentic, that you would large amounts of guns in a country that doesn't have a large scale military in place to defend itself, and whose economy isn't entirely based on agriculture and hunting, not to mention the fact that eventually the ammunition for the 'real guns' would completely run out in a DayZ like scenario. This is why I'm more interested in playing around with makeshift weaponry than factory-made, standardised weapons.

I'm sure there will be plenty of PvP servers where the players will not focus on the type of role playing that I'm interested in, but then again you won't find me on those servers.

Edited March 22, 2013 by TheSodesa