Tents should disappear on death.

[jamieledgeway@hotmail.co.uk 216]

When players have a lot of gear stashed their guard invariably drops which increases the risk of getting killed... when they do they return to the tent to gear up. This shouldn't happen. Guard shouldn't be dropped for this reason, just like knowing how many players are online when your in a server.

So what about making it so that a player who has died cannot access his old tent, or dead body.

Edited May 5, 2013 by thehet

[shadowjack 254]

The ease of aquisition hurts the "survival" aspect. As it stands, even those who do not horde can get fully geared given a few hours.

Agree 100% that Is a big part of the problem. Even with limited loot spawns hoarding will happen over time.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

I agree the tent system needs revision, but I'd give tents less storage capacity rather than have ghosts steal your stuff and build forcefields around your previous incarnation's tent. (Basically what is being suggested)

Any unnatural restrictions, even if they lend themselves well to the unforgiving, brutal nature of DayZ, go against the authentic basis of most of it's features.

Honestly, why all the complaining about it? I'm guessing it's a PvP thing (I don't understand the attraction).

If you kill another survivor, and they go an rearm, you still have all your stuff, and anything they had on them.

All that's happened is, they've skipped the majority of gameplay. (or prepared beforehand, in which case they DID scavenge all their gear, just earlier on)

Skipping the beginnings, by going to a tent to rearm, is only hurting your own experience.

When we get dogs in SA, they should have no problem tracking a player all the way back to their stash. Then there's no need for all the crying. If you have a problem, just do something about it.

[Ken Bean 175]

The ease of aquisition hurts the "survival" aspect.

On the other hand aquisition is a major part of the survival aspect. Wouldn't you try to collect as much useful gear as possible in order to survive?

I think everyone would do so. But would you kill another human just to get his shiny gun? Probably not.

Lets take the example you gave:

Hypothetical. You are at your camp. Tents at your base. Lots of gear. I find you. I shoot you. POOF all the tents vanish. I get nothing.

Which just means, that gear would be a thousand times more worth to you than my life.

That's the problem the mod has, people are eager fo gear.

If I die and all my tents and gear would vanish the same time, would it still be worth a kill?

--> The more you reduce the loot on a server, the rarer it gets, the higher it's value.

And in return, the lower the value of someones life gets.

In my opinion, would reducing the gear just lead to more farming and more kills.

Its like reducing food in a habitat, just makes things more competitive in the very first place. Then it wouldn't stop people from hoarding.

Edited May 5, 2013 by Ken Bean

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

I don't think the existing system is that great but I'm not convinced having them removed on death will change player behaviour much. You can already fit everything you need on your person so I wonder what purpose a tent would serve if it's removed on death, why would I continue to use them at all? I think a lot of people would just stop using them and I really enjoyed spending hours up North looking for tents, the amount of gear you can horde does get a bit silly though.

Upside:

Tents would still be useful for loot farming, if you're into that sort of thing.

Any pals you have that don't play every day would become priceless as you could store gear/parts in their tents.

Most legit players would become more cautious.

Downside:

keybuyingdouches would have tents full of gear

Servers refusing to update. ( always dies off a month or so anyway )

More assholes would come out of the woodwork knowing hardwork would be destroyed with a simple hack.

Middleside:

Coastal pvp would spike but so would hot spot locations. (very oldschool feeling though)

Angry forum posts. (yay)

Still being useful for being a dick and blocking off access to areas. (the new barbed wire)

It would be an interesting experiment.

edit: tent limits and removal at server restart could be easily bypassed by having friends and a spare tent in a tent.

Edited May 5, 2013 by SausageKingofChicago

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

I'd like to doublepost and throw out some stuff for conversation sake.

I sort of feel like weapon degradation and light instancing would solve this. Weapon degradation is easy enough. You die, and whatever stash you have in your tent "ages" a bit and at the very least a good cleaning would be required to get a gun up to spec. Likely, you would need to replace a bit here or there to get that as50 (:D) up and gunning. At worst, you'd find some guns that you could scavenge some parts from. This would be slightly better than running back to a stash of perfect condition weapons in a tent. Perhaps the number of deaths since placing the weapons in the tent would impact their overall condition?

Silly-ish, sort of, but definitely a little better than what we have.

I'm, again, still a hardcore fan of the idea that once you die you're kicked off to another instance/server where all your previous stash is long lost. Other players in the previous instance/server could "find" your tent of goodies but you're more of less a new character without access to that stash. Mind you, the instanced server hive I imagine is far fucking down the road from what we have now and likely insane anyway. I'd like to see a heavily instanced server structure where you really feel alone, even in a 150 player server. Don't ask. Let's just say the can of beans you're hunting for will come at some sort of cost.

[hatfieldcw 184]

Multiplayer's the problem here. Also people are too clever. Like others have said, a tent that I and my buddy both use would be a shame to lose if the guy who pitched it died. Thinking realistically, if two hobos share a campsite they might have their shared possessions stored there. Hobo A shouldn't lose his bindle just because Hobo B got the chills and got 'em bad.

I just ranted forever on the base building thread about the offensive nature of persistent inventory. I hate that I can die and respawn and re-equip at my body immediately. What's worse, any measure against it will be beaten by clever people and multiplayer, unless it's so draconian that it hurts everyone unduly.

If I had my druthers, I'd reimagine DayZ as being totally anonymous. Take out the player names (or replace them with randomly generated names are character spawn), take out all communication except pre-recorded macros and gestures and emotes, and make us play entirely in the world, entirely with strangers. Every death and logout should result in a ban from that game session until everyone you've ever met there is dead or logged out. You'd never be able to get back together with your posse, you'd never be able to share skype or TS info and go to another server together, you'd never be able to bring your EvE corporation into the game as a unit. All organic, all direct, all raw social experiment, like that Endless Forest thing, but with zombies and rifles.

Hell, I'd like to see a procedurally generated map, so you can't even bring your knowledge of where the good guns are.

[brzator47@gmail.com 524]

The system is good as it is IMO. There will be 150 players per server in SA and more interesting places to visit meaning players will be spread out more and will be more likely to spot and steal yout stuff. Tents are already pretty unsafe in my experience, they will be even more unsafe in SA.

[shadowjack 254]

I agree the tent system needs revision, but I'd give tents less storage capacity rather than have ghosts steal your stuff and build forcefields around your previous incarnation's tent. (Basically what is being suggested)

Any unnatural restrictions, even if they lend themselves well to the unforgiving, brutal nature of DayZ, go against the authentic basis of most of it's features.

My point is, it isnt YOUR stuff. It is the dead guys stuff so how would you know where it is if not for some "unnatural" past life knowledge?

You could make an authentic case either way. My fear is there will come a time, just as in the mod where survival will no longer be an issue. As soon as the "other Z" implimented the global inventory it ceased to be anything remotely resembling a survial type game. Storage that follows from life to life is just a lesser form of the same.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

My point is, it isnt YOUR stuff. It is the dead guys stuff so how would you know where it is if not for some "unnatural" past life knowledge?

The same could be said for all knowledge of the game world, if you think about it.

It's essentially a circular argument.

As I said before, it only hurts your own experience if you choose to regear at your tent as opposed to scavenging anew.

Let me put it this way. If you encounter another player, you fight, you win. What difference does it make to you what the other guy does beyond that point? They're no longer a direct influence on your game (for the time being).

If you encounter this player again, and they've rearmed, it's no different to crossing paths with an entirely different geared-up player.

[shadowjack 254]

The same could be said for all knowledge of the game world, if you think about it.

It's essentially a circular argument.

As I said before, it only hurts your own experience if you choose to regear at your tent as opposed to scavenging anew.

Let me put it this way. If you encounter another player, you fight, you win. What difference does it make to you what the other guy does beyond that point? They're no longer a direct influence on your game (for the time being).

If you encounter this player again, and they've rearmed, it's no different to crossing paths with an entirely different geared-up player.

True, it is circular. I hate when that happens. Sadly there is not a one size fits all answer. I don't have time for a long winded answer and will be away for the next 6 days so i will leave it that for me the upside trumps the down. I love and would embrace the ideas of SausageKingofChicago and Beez above.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

As Sausageking pointed out, item degradation can provide a semi-solution.

I reckon gamey, silly features being used to bolster the authenticity of others is going to become a necessary evil.

What it boils down to is; which is more ridiculous? Perma death with retained knowledge, OR a persistent sandbox-world where objects and structures disappear/become inaccessible.

Being that no matter what, it's still a game, I can overlook the fact that players know things that their characters shouldn't.

It's not ideal, but I'd still prefer that tents/barricades/bases etc (and whatever comes in future DayZ) exist independently of the status of their "owner". (with a despawn timer, starting from the latest interaction)

I understand that some folks will use this "tent advantage" to the extreme, but to be honest, when I'm playing, I don't tend to concern myself too much with other player's methods or how they choose to play the game.

Another example.

In Super Mario Bros. on the NES, you can "warp-zone" from world 1-2 to world 4-1, then from 4-2 to 8-1, bypassing ~90% of the game.

I choose not to. :thumbsup:

[Ken Bean 175]

If you make the gear inacessible for the person who died only, there always will be a way to circumvent it with a second character, who will save the stuff for you.

As for the tents, if there's a guy who does nothing than pitching tents ready for the use of others, but doesn't play himself, he would just provide save tents. The advantage would be still there (even if he would pitch just one single tent) and I bet, that's exactly what clans and hoarders will be doing. The only one who has disadvantages, is the average player, who doesn't use such mechanism.

So because unfainess will be there anyway, I'd either suggest to not to make items inaccessible for certain player or if so, then do it for everyone.

I'm done with the game the moment I realize that I'm just the idiotic sheep that makes all the work for others, only to see them building imperiums with my stuff, circumventing all the restrictions I have, while I'm thrown back to stone age each time, needing 6 months to find some nice gear.

Edit

The survival aspect of the game is made up by having equal chances.

Every advantage pushes the survival aspect beyond absurdum. A point that has been proven by cheater several times.

With the system in place, basically everyone has the chance to build up a storage for equipment.

If you change it in a way so that a group would have way better chances building up a storage pool because of using middleman for pitching their tents, then you either force everyone to do so or you just introduced a mechanics which took away the equal chances, crating an quite powerful advantage.

This will just tip the balance in favour of clans and scravengers.

Edit

Yes, afterlife-knowledge might be odd, but in regards of equal chances, everyone who plays the game has afterlife-knowledge.

As long as the player behind the avatar (real life self) is not thrown into an entirely new environment each time he dies, you won't ever change the fact that he does remember things.

Edit

I'm, again, still a hardcore fan of the idea that once you die you're kicked off to another instance/server where all your previous stash is long lost. Other players in the previous instance/server could "find" your tent of goodies but you're more of less a new character without access to that stash. Mind you, the instanced server hive I imagine is far fucking down the road from what we have now and likely insane anyway. I'd like to see a heavily instanced server structure where you really feel alone, even in a 150 player server. Don't ask. Let's just say the can of beans you're hunting for will come at some sort of cost.

Instanced server is a good idea. But joining a game with friends, making friends ingame and staying in contact, having clans and so on would no longer be possible. I'm not saying I would be sad if clans would disappear, but it would change things, maybe in a good way. Would be best if you make it its own topic for debate, if it not already exists.

Edited May 6, 2013 by Ken Bean

[m.cab 83]

[...]Having past life knowledge does more harm than good in my opinion.[...]

It seems like this Topic has come to a philosophical point and a very basic question:

Where is the line between a "hardcore survival game" and a "game"?

Dont get me wrong, i totaly agree with what you say Shadowjack but now you have to put a lot more things in question:

-Where is the sense of a ingame map while 98% of people use an interactive third party lootmap?

-Where is the sense of directcommunitcation 80meters in game when i can talk to my friend via Teamspeak over one kilometer to assault the enemy?

-Why is there static loot spawn so that everybody know where to get them snipers?

etc etc

If you want to go really "hardcore" you will have to reroll the entire map everytime you die because you always carry that pastlife knowledge with you! ;)

As i said it is very complicated to find that certain point and its clearly what made dayz VERY special compared to other games. The point where your game experience (played hours) and your "past life" knowledge give you an advantage comes very late compared to other games.

People are too clever. People will ALWAYS find a way to abuse some kind of mechanics or even add theyre own (hacking). No matter how complicated the forumula for something is, at some point, somebody will crack it...

And now i tell you the really nice thing about this problem: There is a solution! It is called dynamic! And the Devolopers are aware of that. For example they will add random loot spawn so "loot elektro, take a break at stary and go for NWAF" will have an end. :)

The more static things you rip out of the game and the more dynamic you add the more "replayability" the game will get. Cheers!

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Instanced server is a good idea. But joining a game with friends, making friends ingame and staying in contact, having clans and so on would no longer be possible. I'm not saying I would be sad if clans would disappear, but it would change things, maybe in a good way. Would be best if you make it its own topic for debate, if it not already exists.

I'd be happy with a heavily instanced server difficulty setting. I like rolling with my team but large organized groups, no matter how fun, make the game very easy and turn it all into a massive deathmatch. The most fun I've had was with the early random encounters with strangers.

Having a team makes the shoot on sight decision way too easy imo. We're less likely to bring a random into a group because we know the damage they could do. More than likely, some loner is shot because he was nothing more than an obstacle or potential target practice. Not having a group and having to rely on a random to survive a harsher environment (tougher zombies etc) seems a bit more interesting to me than getting picked up again and again at the coast or running directly to my stash so I can camp some hot spot.

There's still plenty of room for what we have now if it was just a setting or flavor of DayZ. It's just getting a tad boring and predictable to me. I'm sure there's other solutions to the core issues though. I just want the game world to feel more threatening and harder to survive.

[Ken Bean 175]

I wonder if we ever see a game like this which is as huge as the real world, of cause perfectly and kickass detailed modelled after it, with random loot and random spawns. So if you would die in Austria, you respawn in India. Problem solved, you have no clue where you are, but it's still the same world. You run into the next truck stop to find a map for that country... Yep, it might be slightly unrealistic but fun to find a heli.

May just be a little difficult to develop such a title. Didn't google just hire a game designer? :D

Edited May 6, 2013 by Ken Bean

[Mullraugh 1151]

This suggestion doesn't make any sense to me.

Say I go camping and pitch a tent. I go hiking and fall off a waterfall and die. Does the tent and my gear magically vanish? No, because it's real life. As far as everyone knows, the devs will be making the game as realistic as possible.

This is my opinion, I have nothing against yours.

[m.cab 83]

I wonder if we ever see a game like this which is as huge as the real world, of cause perfectly and kickass detailed modelled after it, with random loot and random spawns. So if you would die in Austria, you respawn in India. Problem solved, you have no clue where you are, but it's still the same world. You run into the next truck stop to find a map for that country... Yep, it might be slightly unrealistic but fun to find a heli.

May just be a little difficult to develop such a title. Didn't google just hire a game designer? :D

It's possible that someday somebody will offer you a red or a blue pill in order to play this kind of game...choose wise! :D

[HazZarD87 166]

It seems like this Topic has come to a philosophical point and a very basic question:

Where is the line between a "hardcore survival game" and a "game"?

Dont get me wrong, i totaly agree with what you say Shadowjack but now you have to put a lot more things in question:

-Where is the sense of a ingame map while 98% of people use an interactive third party lootmap?

-Where is the sense of directcommunitcation 80meters in game when i can talk to my friend via Teamspeak over one kilometer to assault the enemy?

-Why is there static loot spawn so that everybody know where to get them snipers?

etc etc

If you want to go really "hardcore" you will have to reroll the entire map everytime you die because you always carry that pastlife knowledge with you! ;)

As i said it is very complicated to find that certain point and its clearly what made dayz VERY special compared to other games. The point where your game experience (played hours) and your "past life" knowledge give you an advantage comes very late compared to other games.

People are too clever. People will ALWAYS find a way to abuse some kind of mechanics or even add theyre own (hacking). No matter how complicated the forumula for something is, at some point, somebody will crack it...

And now i tell you the really nice thing about this problem: There is a solution! It is called dynamic! And the Devolopers are aware of that. For example they will add random loot spawn so "loot elektro, take a break at stary and go for NWAF" will have an end. :)

The more static things you rip out of the game and the more dynamic you add the more "replayability" the game will get. Cheers!

Quite so. Ofcourse it still makes sense that you would find military grade weapons in places like a military airfield so those things will always be a hot-spot in one way or another. On the other hand it wouldn't be completely unlikely to find yourself a semi-automatic 7.62mm rifle along with a crapload of ammo and emergency rations in a regular family home, depending what part of the world you find yourself. I think that with the devs reworking chernarus and making every building, wreck and what have you a possible source of loot, a lot of the hotspotting elektro-stary-nwaf routine will be wiped out anyway.

I allready see this in action in the GiZ clan server I play on. Theyve added a few supermarkets and schools to towns (without making them look out of place, high praise for that) so those places on the map you used to just blindly walk past are starting to see more traffic. Run ins between players become both more rare and more random as a result. The second thing I like are AI flown choppers coming in place of the helo crash sites, they fly around till at some point they crash. You may find it like any other crashsite in a normal server, but maybe you see it go down. Who else did? is it safe to go over? Could you ambush someone that saw it go down aswell and comes to investigate. All these "what if's" are what makes dayZ great for me.

On the central question whether or not meta-play should be counteracted I can be brief: no. Simply because it cannot be done without disproportionatly impacting the overall experience. Some may see the first "I have no clue where the heck I am and must scrounge to survive" part as the true "survival" aspect but that depends on your definition of survival. So I have a tent or whole camp with a crew, if I die I hobble back there to get more stuffs. Yes it's meta gaming but what off it? We are in a post-apocalyptic setting and you can expect people to eventually carve something out of that. You can only live bear grylls style for so long. People will start to set up more permanent means of living. We aren't out in the boonies trying to survive untill we can catch a ride back to the civilized world, we find ourselves in all that is left of the civilized world. Camps, and later in the SA "bases" or whatever you want to call them reflect people's endavours to re-establish themselves by whatever means are available.

TL:DR: I'll just go with rocket on this one, there will always be meta gaming anyway so just live with it.

Edited to demolish some wall of text bits ^_^

Edited May 6, 2013 by HazZarD87

[Murtagy 0]

The main reason of making camps will be destroyed. Bad idea. Why players can't just find somebody else's stuff like in real?

[mat9813004 8]

I think removing tents on player death would be too cruel and also unrealistic, perhaps players should have the ability to remove tents themselves. An idea also would be to leave messages in tents, such as on a clip board so that the player can potentially leave messages for each other (probably abusive but such is the medium).

[mat9813004 8]

Perhaps tents could be destroyed by the roving zombie packs, making the protection of settlements a priority...

[Ken Bean 175]

Looks like I lost 5 tents today. Two server I used to play on went down. Good thing is, it's not the first time this happened, so I was kind of prepared. I just imagine a twister ate them. :D

Edit: Nope, are back. Huh.

Anyway, having too many tents clearly is not an issue for me, atm.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Ken Bean

[DontTrustPubs 17]

I would make tents more rare

Limit one per player at any given time

Despawn after 24 hours of death. regardless of interaction

Give players the ability to destroy tents with melee weapons, etc.

Edited May 8, 2013 by DontTrustPubs

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

Limiting their availability would be a decent way to slightly reduce the hoarding possibilities, while drastically increasing the value of a tent.

Adding a limit of one per player would be truly daft in a supposedly authentic setting.

IRL, you're not going to go; "I wish I could set up this second tent, but the tent-gods won't let me".

As much as possible should make real-world sense.

Instead of (or as well as) destruction of tents, any player should be able to empty and pack up any tent they come across.

If they're rare, I'd expect folk to steal them when the opportunity presents itself. Again, basing features and abilities on reality.