The Dayz Dichotomy.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

One of the debates in another thread has crystallised my thoughts on what could be a fundamental problem in Dayz.

The game is at complete odds with itself. It's essentially two different games. And I think this is where the friction on this forum is rooted.

On one had you have a survival game, you start alone and vulnerable, full of fear , uncertainty. You die often but then finally break through that barrier and escape into the wilds. If you are lucky or skill full you survive. If you die , it s anew start , a new beginning. It can be incredibly immersive, stressful, frustrating, rewarding. Either way it's an emotional experience.

On the other hand you have a clan, you are on TS, you have a camp, you are tooled up. If you die your mates pick you up in a car give you your gear back and welcome you with open arms, not as a new survivor but as their friend reincarnated. this game is fun, its a great laugh. Other people you encounter though are a threat nothing more and are dealt with harshly.

These seem to me to be two different games. The game mechanics punish both of these play styles with one hand and reward them with the other. The direction of the game is torn between the two.

The forum highlights these differences, you have people calling for teamplay: factions, trading, spawn on friends, safe zones.

And on the other side those clamouring for it to be more hardcore and less friendly.

Is there a way to reconcile the differences inherent in the game and make everyone happy ?

Or should Dayz focus on one side of this divide ?

[Skint (DayZ) 138]

Actually, by all you accounts, DayZ has succeeded in it's aim.

It's a post apocalyptic survival simulator and it seems to closely mirror what you would expect to happen to people in that situation (there are real world examples of this). People are left to there own devices to play it how they want, there is no objective, reward, goal, meaning to it except that of staying alive. If people choose to be in a clan; go lone-wolf; snipe for fun; hunt players; find best gear; then so be it. Almost everything is permitted because the world has no law, the only restraint is our personal morals and principles.

I don't think you can divide it into just two categories as it can actually provide a wide variety of options, such is the nature of a sandbox.

And it would certainly be impossible to please all of the people all of the time.

[Cheekorobbins 1]

I do like both games though, I think part of the fear of being a solo survivor is knowing there are these organised and established groups out there. You can run around and be an idiot on the coast, but once you've found a few essential items and head inland you're entering a different game.

I do like the sessions where I've been on as a group, but I've been the one in the back of the car not getting out at stops and hanging back in the bushes whilst my friends do the looting.

I also love the solo environment, when there's no teamspeak chatter from your friends to break the tension, when all the loot you find is yours and you can travel unnoticed in the trees.

These are things I think will be brought together once the meta game or story/event elements are brought in. A reason for the groups to need the lone newbie survivors and the newbies to need the groups.

[GodOfGrain 191]

I think you are right with this.

But the positive thing is: These two playing stiles do not effect each other negatively.

You could argue that organized clans have a big advantage over normal players. Would be kinda true for other games. But the game is not competitive in this sense. For the normal survivor organized groups add another layer to the gameplay. They make hotzones in the north very dangerous, are the reason for me not visiting Devils Castle by now (have to do it at some point of time ;) ) and you can always encounter a well-equiped group of 5 peopleof hostile intentions.

And even for teams; dying in DayZ is a hard punishment.

Many players in a team will get attached to their character, even if they get their equipment back. They also have to run 1 hour straight north, possibly more with the latest patch (no weapons at start etc.).

It is possibly less rewarding playing experience if you know you ll get your gear back. But that can remain an individual decision I think. Does not hurt the player experience of normal survivors.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

"And even for teams; dying in DayZ is a hard punishment.

Many players in a team will get attached to their character, even if they get their equipment back. They also have to run 1 hour straight north, possibly more with the latest patch (no weapons at start etc.)."

This isn't the crux of the debate but we just go and pick them up in a car, takes 10 minutes.

What I'm really talking about is the whole dynamic of the game. Of course its a sandbox and of course everyone plays differently. That's great.

I'm just pointing out that the game tears us in two different directions. And in it's own ways it punishes both of those directions with it's mechanics.

Maybe you are right that never the twain shall meet. and they don't affect each other but that doesn't change the fact that there are two (roughly speaking) different things going on here. To make the game better for either of these groups means possibly detracting from the enjoyment of the others ? So how do you make the right design decisions in the future ?

Look at the forum posts if you don't believe there are rifts in the game design! Look how it has torn the community!

[duddbudda 33]

DayZ should not actively seek to help or hinder either camp, so long as the experience is organic

In both cases it is

calls for design enforced factions: join a faction, they exist and they'll take you

calls for design enforsed safe zones: it's safe when you're surrounded by friendlies - make some friends and learn how to be safe

calls for AI military presence: those teams of gankers you hate so much? they fill this role

calls for trade: then trade - if it's feasible you'll quickly find yourself in possession of sufficient gear to employ an army of NVG wearing bad mother fuckers

re: rifts in the design tearing the community

there aren't any

there are rifts in the community tearing the design

the problem? the politely self contained members of modern society are getting the whupping a real apocalypse would visit on them and hating it: 'CoD ganker kiddies' cried about in every other post here are ususally tribes looking out for themselves. I'm part of a tribe with an average age of 30something - we're civilised and employed and we kill most everyone we meet because murder eliminates threats and earns our NVGs.

DayZ's design facillitates natural social shapes. DayZ promotes tribalism and punishes hermitism in the same ways and for the same reasons that evoloution promoted tribalistic social monkeys to rulers of the planet. There are thousands of survivors in DayZ who refuse to recognise that fact.

@GodOfGrain

there's no more to Devil's Castle than Rog. if you want to visit then do it, tribes like mine ignore it

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

Sandy im not suggesting anything different. What im saying is that the core of Dayz is a conflicted creature.

You are a survivor with one life and you lose it all when you die.

But you are given tasks that require more than one life to achieve.

You only have one life but you are given tents to store you gear in to collect it after you die.

The game design specifically disables global chat but has people using teamspeak to magically communicate.

It seems like in some ways Dayz doesn't know what it wants to be?

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

It seems like in some ways Dayz doesn't know what it wants to be?

It must be so frustrating for you to look at every blank piece of paper and not already know what's going to be written on it some day. Stay away from stationary or art supply stores; you're liable to stroke.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

Lol can always rely on you Zed.

"It must be so frustrating for you to look at every blank piece of paper and not already know what's going to be written on it some day. Stay away from stationary or art supply stores; you're liable to stroke."

However to try and make your analogy make sense, if a blank piece of paper had two opposing ideas written on it. You could discuss them and decide if one was better, or if you could reconcile the two.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Maybe you misunderstand me. Or I you. In any case, I'm not saying the paper is blank because it hasn't been written on yet I'm saying rocket is purposefully leaving the paper blank and giving players the tools to write on it themselves.

Each individual player gets to decide what DayZ is to them. I had this same debate with someone about people who use web maps and loot tables. If you want to play the game as a virtual cartographer - learning every nook and cranny of the game by sight and heart - then go do that. The fact that I am not interested in doing that and instead use online maps and loot sheets to determine my route is really irrelevant. The game has no singular goal so the paths we take don't have to somehow be synchronized via the "greater vision" of the game. We don't even necessarily have the same goals. Our paths may never intersect at all - and if they do, well your Winny is as good as mine.

Playing as a team has many benefits if your goal is to achieve the sorts of things that teams are better at achieving. Maybe gathering the best equipment in the game and repairing vehicles isn't really what you're into at the moment. It really doesn't matter. You're not competing against the people who are for the same thing. You're just sharing a space and both making each other's experience more interesting for it.

As long as rocket stays true to his vision of providing not rules and restrictions and predetermined goals and instead simply provides freedom, mechanics and tools and allows players to craft the game as THEY see fit for their own individual subjective experiences, he will have succeeded. As soon as he starts saying "This is the one sacrosanct way to play the game and all others are verbotten henceforth" then the game starts to fail in my opinion.

This is precisely why calls for artificial restrictions on PvP are met with such derision here. The fact that, if people so choose, their goal in the game can be to find and murder me adds dramatic value to whatever goals I may set for myself. No matter what I do or how I play, I have to consider that not everyone has the same goals and motivations as me because the game doesn't force them to in any arbitrary way with a silly set of "rewards" and "slaps on the wrist" when players behave in ways accordant or discordant with the will of the machine.

[Kolchak (DayZ) 5]

Honestly, even though it's one of it's greatest strengths, the lack of stated purpose this mod has is going to become a real problem very soon, a house divided cannot stand. Like I said in another thread, this thing has exploded, it has more members than some fully fledged MMOs and it's in alpha. There is a market here, and I guarantee you the bigger publishers and developers have seen it. If the designers don't do something to flesh it out into a full game, something they can trademark, market to gamers, and (most importantly) protect, someone with a bigger budget and massive team is going to come in and do it before them. They're going to steal this idea and they're going to do it with an engine they custom built just for it. That fact alone is going to make their product demonstrably better in most ways. It's going to be a full game, it's going to have a story/progression arc, it's going to have a full hud, it's going to have PVP and PVE servers, skills/skill trees, more persistence. It's going to be everything the "anti-game" gamers here hate, and it's going to sell like crazy. It's going to leech the masses of typical gamers that made this so popular off of this mod, players who will pay for a better experience. Right now BI has Rocket working on this full time, but only because it's so popular and it's consequently making them money. It won't take much of the community disappearing before BI decides it's not cost effective to keep one of their coders working on this full time when he could be working on something that guarantees them a profit. If that happens, this mod will die, and that game will flourish, they'll branch off into sequels and DLC until the public is sick of it and then they'll discard it, and this amazing concept will be just another dead IP. The direction of this mod/game needs to be decided by the dev team, and relatively soon, otherwise, someone else is going to decide it for them.

[duddbudda 33]

you are given tasks that require more than one life to achieve

what on earth are you talking about

[Riska 0]

Honestly' date=' even though it's one of it's greatest strengths, the lack of stated purpose this mod has is going to become a real problem very soon, a house divided cannot stand. There is a market here, and I guarantee you the bigger publishers and developers have seen it. If the designers don't do something to flesh it out into a full game, something they can trademark, market to gamers, and (most importantly) protect, someone with a bigger budget and massive team is going to come in and do it before them. They're going to steal this idea and they're going to do it with an engine they custom built just for it. That fact alone is going to make their product demonstrably better in most ways. It's going to be a full game, it's going to have a story/progression arc, it's going to have a full hud, it's going to have PVP and PVE servers, skills/skill trees, more persistence. It's going to be everything the "anti-game" gamers here hate, and it's going to sell like crazy. It's going to leech the masses of typical gamers that made this so popular off of this mod, players who will pay for a better experience.

[/quote']

The direction has already been decided, it's the same direction that Minecraft and Eve Online have - here's the tools, now go and make your own story. If bits of lore are added in the future then great, but they enhance the experience not define it. If another developer makes a good game based on this concept then great, the more the merrier. Competition promotes better quality products, so we as gamers will be the winners no matter what happens.

Honestly though? I don't want any of that stuff. I don't want a massive hud, I'm sick of skill trees and I don't want PvE only servers. I know there are other people who don't want those things either, so we'll be playing the game that best fulfils our desires. Just as I'm sure those who do want those things will make a similar decision. I know what your saying, that BI will lose customers because of this, but that's inevitable, that's the way the industry works. A products is only relevant until another, better product comes along. You can't please everybody all of the time, nor should you attempt to do so.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

"(Today 01:36 PM)Strategos Wrote: you are given tasks that require more than one life to achieve

what on earth are you talking about"

Ok let me expand on that.

You have the ability to team, up make camps and horde vehicles.

So you can make a permanent base and team up with people and engage in creative tasks that will probably require multiple deaths + groups of people to achieve.

The game is encouraging team play and persistence via its mechanics on one hand. But giving you perma death etc on the other hand.

[DryGulch 32]

Ah the early stages of a sandbox in alpha, there's not enough content (yet) for some people so the only answer is to post walls of text on the forum. Which is fine, and it shows the level of investment some of you have already, at this early stage.

However, be careful to not get carried away waxing lyrical about the scope of a mod in alpha or even just a mod for that matter. You might end up punching a potato and wishing it was vodka.

[Soren. 0]

"(Today 01:36 PM)Strategos Wrote: you are given tasks that require more than one life to achieve

what on earth are you talking about"

Ok let me expand on that.

You have the ability to team' date=' up make camps and horde vehicles.

So you can make a permanent base and team up with people and engage in creative tasks that will probably require multiple deaths + groups of people to achieve.

The game is encouraging team play and persistence via its mechanics on one hand. But giving you perma death etc on the other hand.

[/quote']

This post, in my opinion, is absolutely incorrect. Those aren't the goals of THE game. Those are the goals of YOUR game, or HIS game, or HER game.

Day Z is a sandbox. I have a team that I horde vehicles and guns with.

On the same vein, when they are gone, I hunt, I explore and I trade and heal people.

This game can be whatever you want it to be, but don't project your desires on the rest of us. Because we all want something different, it seems. The mechanics are working fine, they are providing both players of different camps to get the most out of their Day Z experience.

I am not trying to be derisive, please understand. I just think that you are trying to define something that needs no definition. The players define this game according to their own actions, thoughts and intentions.

[Azurak 1]

Maybe you misunderstand me. Or I you. In any case' date=' I'm not saying the paper is blank because it hasn't been written on [i']yet I'm saying rocket is purposefully leaving the paper blank and giving players the tools to write on it themselves.

Each individual player gets to decide what DayZ is to them. I had this same debate with someone about people who use web maps and loot tables. If you want to play the game as a virtual cartographer - learning every nook and cranny of the game by sight and heart - then go do that. The fact that I am not interested in doing that and instead use online maps and loot sheets to determine my route is really irrelevant. The game has no singular goal so the paths we take don't have to somehow be synchronized via the "greater vision" of the game. We don't even necessarily have the same goals. Our paths may never intersect at all - and if they do, well your Winny is as good as mine.

Playing as a team has many benefits if your goal is to achieve the sorts of things that teams are better at achieving. Maybe gathering the best equipment in the game and repairing vehicles isn't really what you're into at the moment. It really doesn't matter. You're not competing against the people who are for the same thing. You're just sharing a space and both making each other's experience more interesting for it.

As long as rocket stays true to his vision of providing not rules and restrictions and predetermined goals and instead simply provides freedom, mechanics and tools and allows players to craft the game as THEY see fit for their own individual subjective experiences, he will have succeeded. As soon as he starts saying "This is the one sacrosanct way to play the game and all others are verbotten henceforth" then the game starts to fail in my opinion.

This is precisely why calls for artificial restrictions on PvP are met with such derision here. The fact that, if people so choose, their goal in the game can be to find and murder me adds dramatic value to whatever goals I may set for myself. No matter what I do or how I play, I have to consider that not everyone has the same goals and motivations as me because the game doesn't force them to in any arbitrary way with a silly set of "rewards" and "slaps on the wrist" when players behave in ways accordant or discordant with the will of the machine.

******************THIS*********************

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

Your missing the point.

"This post, in my opinion, is absolutely incorrect. Those aren't the goals of THE game. Those are the goals of YOUR game,"

Those are goals that have been put in the game.

You dont have to do them but the fact is that they are there for us to do. Repair a helicopter, place tents, save vehicles where you have made your camp.

Those are game mechanics that allow you to do something. Therefore X percentage of players are going to want to do that. Some wont as you say but that's not the point.

You have perma death, but a tent allows you to store your goods for two days after you die. Your saved vehicle will be there waiting for you full of equipment after you die and come back.

So the game mechanics encourage activities that take place over more than one life. At complete odds with the single life / perma death mechanic.

I'm not trying to get you to do anything or project my desires , I'm discussing what i see as a contradiction inherent in the games mechanics.

There's no point in Quoting ZedsDead either as usual he is way off the mark.

[drayson 158]

Think about it...you show up on a coast alone and it's all fear and stress. You meet up with half a dozen friends who have your back and pool resources and suddenly it isn't quite so stressful or dangerous as you have a support group. This seems fairly realistic to me (reincarnation not withstanding lol).

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

It's going to be a full game' date=' it's going to have a story/progression arc, it's going to have a full hud, it's going to have PVP and PVE servers, skills/skill trees, more persistence[/quote']

Okay? Then it won't be DayZ anymore and people who like DayZ because it doesn't have all of that unecessary shit won't go play it. They will keep playing DayZ. That's... kind of the whole point here isn't it?

rocket has already said he's not doing this to get rich. You're talking about the path to a mainstream, AAA title. That's not his path. Someone may take that path, but the product they create will not resemble DayZ; it will just be another Left 4 Dead or Dead Island which, while respectable and fun in their own right, are not DayZ and are not what the fans of DayZ are after. They came to DayZ because those games offer all the wonderful and horribly restrictive features you mention above and DayZ offers freedom from them.

You can go play "Zombie WoW" when it comes out if that's your thing. I'll stick with DayZ.

[Soren. 0]

Your missing the point.

"This post' date=' in my opinion, is absolutely incorrect. Those aren't the goals of THE game. Those are the goals of YOUR game[/font'],"

Those are goals that have been put in the game.

You dont have to do them but the fact is that they are there for us to do. Repair a helicopter, place tents, save vehicles where you have made your camp.

Those are game mechanics that allow you to do something. In that way it is a goal that is in the game. Therefore X percentage of players are going to want to do that. Some wont as you point out but that's not the point.

You have perma death, but a tent allows you to store your goods for two days after you die. Your saved vehicle will be there waiting for you full of equipment after you die and come back.

So the game mechanics encourage activities that take place over more than one life. At complete odds with the single life / perma death mechanic.

I'm not trying to get you to do anything or project my desires , I'm discussing what i see as a contradiction inherent in the games mechanics.

Hm... You made your original point more clear with this post, and I'm glad I understand what you are saying now. But I think part of the majesty that is Day Z, is that those two points, (Persistence and Perma Death) are supposed to be at odds with each other. No matter how many men are in your squad, or what your own personal cache is like, a death still hurts.

In fact, I think you are right in that they are in complete odds with each other(At least in this specific instance). But I feel they are made that way by design. To make reaching your own goals and achievements that much more rewarding and to make each passing moment that much more intense.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

Hehe phew, maybe I should rewrite the original post :)

Don't get me wrong I love the stress that losing everything provides, and on the flip side I really love trying to build camps with my "clan" mates.

I just wonder if Dayz is tearing itself apart because of the split in the community the main drives in the game creates.

This forum aint a happy place these days!

I guess I wanted to look at the underlying drives within the game, you see so many arguments about specific details , specific features that always seem to be at odds with each other.

[Soren. 0]

I see now where I went wrong. I almost completely skipped over a good portion of your OP. Or, at least, placed it in the back of my mind in order to refute a point that you had made. It is in my nature to do so, I apologize.

Now, I will answer the original question asked.

Is there a way to reconcile the differences inherent in the game and make everyone happy ?

Or should Dayz focus on one side of this divide ?

DayZ, in my humble opinion, should favor no side. It should hold no hands, and it should never interfere. This mod is doing a great job of that so far. (With the exception of a few bugs) it is completely out of my way. I make the game how I want to play it, and when I mess up the punishments are severe.

The forum is a nasty place to be, I agree. I have been lurking here for quite a while, and people here are quite harsh. xD Still... it is the community that makes this place so volatile. The same community that makes this game so volatile, and I wouldn't want it any other way.

EDIT: Redundancy.

[Jolmer 0]

Those game modes compliment eachother. The groups of people make the game more immersive for the other players.

[Rensvind 0]

Hehe phew' date=' maybe I should rewrite the original post :)

Don't get me wrong I love the stress that losing everything provides, and on the flip side I really love trying to build camps with my "clan" mates.

I just wonder if Dayz is tearing itself apart because of the split in the community the main drives in the game creates.

This forum aint a happy place these days!

[/quote']

Awww man look what you have done! Starting a opinion based discussion by stating facts. Shame on you, shame! :P At least the profanity hasn't started flying.

The more people a game can cater to, the better (By most standards today). You can say wow this and that, but wow is probably the game most game developers wish they made. Sad? True? I think so.

If the game will be too "hardcore", only the people that can see the PSO-1 picture when they close their eyes, will play it.