Circumventing Permadeath

[Fonebook 126]

The way I see it tents, bases, stashes, and any other gear hoarding device which persists through death makes permadeath worthless. If players have a place to stash away gear, then the game becomes about collecting and hoarding gear. It reduces the risk loss from death. I am all for having these types of things, but having them persist through death goes against the entire idea behind permadeath.

 

DayZ is about player interactions, intense situations, and the emotions that go with them. When you have a hidey-hole to put things in it softens the blow of death and encourages players not to have concern for their lives. If said hidey-hole was deleted upon death it would likely lead to people having a more realistic concern for their lives. Sure if the guys gear is damaged you might not want to shoot for the loot. The simple fact is that most people don't shoot for the loot, they do it for the thrill. If chasing that thrill put your entire pile of gear at risk, people might think twice. Or at least get their more cautious friends to hold onto things for them.

 

What do you think?

[applejaxc 2500]

Rather than deleted, locked to the player would be a nicer system; if I track someone halfway across the map without being seen and shoot him in the back, I bloody well expect to be able to loot his tent.

 

That method is defeated by those TS cheaters though; another squadmate could transfer dead-Joe's items to another tent, so when dead-Joe becomes alive-Joe again he can loot the 2nd tent for more gear.

[Statik (DayZ) 2695]

I just don't feel this is something you can fairly patch. When I stockpile gear, I don't plan to use it all that life, I plan to save it for when I need it (i.e. large firefights, gear friends, etc). My vote goes to just keep it the way it is.

[Wolfensteinsaurus 2252]

Its fine the normal way, with a bigger map in the SA, people will find it harder to go and get their stuff back.

[Korsbaek 1778]

Okay.

 

I have now wandered through the forest for weeks, following him like a shadow. The time has come. I take my rifle, shoot once, and he falls dead.

 

 

BUT WHAT THE FUCK! HIS TENT DISAPPEARED! FUCK THIS GAME!

[Wayze 549]

Tents are ok in my opinion. But undestroyable, unlockable houses are an absolute nono. This is why I hate origins. The people can just build their house and from that moment there is nothing to worry about. They can concentrate 100% on pvp.

[Cap'n (DayZ) 1827]

When I move to Utes, I place all my tents on treasure island. No one will bother to swim to utes, much less treasure island. Pretty soon, I will be ruler of Utes. So we hide all our tents on treasure island, and stay away from mainland. Because the mainland is full of savages(I'll be kind of pissed if Rocket decides to remove Utes and treasure island).

[callsignBravo (DayZ) 323]

sounds alright i think that would be a punch in the gut to serial bandits. maybe it destroys the tent and dumps the stuff on the ground so at restart it goes away.

[broguenz 333]

<less than two days after death anyway..

It's nice to have a stash but I agree we're not cats, or bots in possession of memory chips that enable us to reboot with all prior knowledge and attributes (as great as that would be IRL)  Authentic game play to me = If you die its back to zip, nada , fka'll maybe it would give more value to your 'life'

 

An improvement to the current way, I think, would be If the player is alive the tent is there's, if they're not its any ones to pack up or whatever.
If the player made it back they could re-claim ownership.

Edited September 8, 2013 by RogueNZ

[Fonebook 126]

Thanks for all the responses. I have had long discussions with a few of my fellow players about this, and it does seem it would be harsh to have someone's tent disappear the moment after death. I am honestly not sure what the best way to handle it is. In the current state of the mod, however, it seems there is a large emphasis on stockpiling gear, at least after you overcome the initial shock of learning to survive. Then again my experience has been that the moment you get a giant stash it is found. The tents are a small beef, but the idea of expanded base building capabilities really troubles me. I think the concept of permadeath, or at least severe in-game consequences for death, is one of the best things this mod has going for it.

 

What would you think about having a tent limit?

[StrangeOrange 15]

Tents disappearing upon death? First of all, what would be the logical reason for that, I mean in a real-world sense. I know the game has a lot of things that don't work like they do in the real world, but wouldn't you expect tents to just stay where they are if their owners die? If tents disappear upon death that would make them absolutely useless. Who ever sets down a tent with the intent to only come back to it during that life?

 

I mean if you make this argument for tents you might as well make the same argument for vehicles. After all, people will just get vehicles and hoard them, and everyone knows that vehicles are just tents on wheels (or with rotor blades). Are you tired of people repairing and hoarding vehicles? Then just make it so the vehicle blows up if the person dies.

 

Anyways, what this all boils down to is the disapproval you have of the hoarding playstyle. But it's the same with people disapproving of banditry (even frivolous bandit purely for the sake of killing). It's just something that is allowed because of the very open allotment of playstyles and the sandbox genre, and it's something you're going to have to deal with. If someone wants to hoard then you let them hoard. I play as a trader on my local server (DayZ Vanilla, not Origins or whatever mods have those stupid frilly "trading posts") and hoarding is merely just part of the job.

 

That being said, there are still considerable risks. Someone can find your tent and loot it, someone can find your tent and camp it, waiting for you to get back, someone can find the tent and wait for you to put something more valuable in it and store that, people can destroy your tent and all your items, etc. These risks prompt action and strategic thinking on the part of the person setting up the tent that separates those that deserve the tent from those that don't. It prompts one to intelligently consider good tent placement, be alert and vigilant when traveling to or accessing the tent, and always have a contingency plan in case the tent is compromised. There's more to think of here than you think.

 

That being said, having houses or whatever where you can just store all your items and lock them away so that no one else can get them is just lame. Super, super lame.

 

EDIT: Also, I say NO to a tent limit. I deserve to set up every single tent that I find, and there is no reason I should be limited to only setting up a certain amount of tents. The only thing that should limit tents is the number of good hiding places, not some arbitrary rule on tents because some people don't like hoarders.

Edited September 8, 2013 by StrangeOrange

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

Whenever these discussions come up, I always have the same response.

If you don't approve of the way someone else plays the game, don't play that way.

 

 

Whether it's going to a stash-tent or going to collect gear off your own corpse, it's a matter of choice in how you approach the game.

 

Personally, on respawn, even when I've got a tent full of gear (collected mostly just for something to do), by the time I go anywhere near my camp, I'll already be well geared up.

That's how I choose to play, because I find starting with nothing and working my way up to be enjoyable.

It really makes no difference whether a player you meet has geared up conventionally or by "circumventing permadeath".

 

I think tents, vehicles and any future "bases" should exist independently of players.

Meaning nothing should be linked to a player or "owned" by a player. They're just neutral objects in the world with no per-player limits, or unnatural, gamey on-death repercussions.

[Fonebook 126]

StrangeOrange, I enjoy and respect your opinion. I like setting up tents and keeping stuff in them as well. My only fear is that it will expand into bases, which Rocket and other aficionados have mentioned. I can handle whatever decisions they lay on us, I just had to stop and make the point that having tents, bases, and as you pointed out even cars survive your death, runs counter to the idea of permadeath. I am NOT against the hoarding playstyle, I am worried about the incongruency of these things being passed from life to life and giving players a good reason to not fear their death.

 

Hoarding should be limited to the length of your life, in my opinion.

 

I have never been a fan of MMOs because they stack the deck towards the players who have the most time, not necessarily the most skill. Permadeath undoes this somewhat, though I feel having a stash of gear you can run back to takes DayZ a little closer to those other MMOs which I cannot stand.

 

I think the key to having this game create the intense situations that makes it different than others is having players value their lives. The cheap price of death currently has lead the mod to all sorts of dark places, in my opinion.

[Fonebook 126]

They're just neutral objects in the world with no per-player limits, or unnatural, gamey on-death repercussions.

 

There is no reason a player could not continue to hoard. I understand a tent limit might be "gamey." But is being able to remember where your stuff is after reincarnation not "gamey?" This is not an argument against a playstyle, I understand it would impact a playstyle. This is more an argument for players being concerned about dying.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

See, I always thought of relying entirely on gear to give any sense of worth to a life as a bit...unsettling.

You know? Giving the wrong impression.

 

For some reason, folks seem very opposed to skill-systems. Maybe it's just the terminology that they don't like, but that's beside the point.

Education and improving your abilities is a far more lifelike way to suggest "value" and "meaning" in individuals and their experiences/life.

It's something that can be shared, but can't be taken forcefully. And something you can't take with you when you die, or store away for later.

[Fonebook 126]

I would not be opposed to a moderate skill system, as long as it is reset upon death. I prefer the game to be about the skill you bring to the controls, not in game buffs. I miss the old days of Battlefield 1942 when every player was essentially the same soldier and your performance on the battlefield was more based on skill (and familiarity with the game and maps, truthfully) than any sort of artificial buff to your character. However in DayZ some sort of "I have lived for a long time" buff would actually be a good way to make players concerned about staying alive. So as much as I hate the idea of skill systems, if it makes players want to avoid death in a more realistic way I could put my qualms aside.

 

They can make the game more difficult, they can implement gear damage, but unless they find a way to make players REALLY not want to die DayZ will continue to be a spruced up deathmatch. I need to make it clear that I support banditry and killing for pleasure, not necessarily my style but as it is now the game leans more towards encouraging banditry when in theory it should be more neutral. At least in my opinion.

 

But what do I know?

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

I can understand why it's thought of it as a "buff". 

Preconceptions go a long way towards how well anything can be received. And it's a shame.

 

Driving, flying and shooting are reliant on player abilities and that's the way it should stay.

The learning and improvement should only apply to activities in which the player has no control (beyond selecting the action and waiting for the animation to play out). Practical skills which can be reasonably well simulated don't need "skills" attached to them.

 

The biggest issue is determining the scale of improvement over time and the degrees by which skills would increase.

 

In any case, I'm getting off-topic.

There's no telling for certain, but theoretically, if it increases the disparity between veterans and beachlanders, it adds value to life.

All I really want to see is player's lives' worth being measured in more than just their easily reclaimable possessions. (left-wing alert)

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Rather than deleted, locked to the player would be a nicer system; if I track someone halfway across the map without being seen and shoot him in the back, I bloody well expect to be able to loot his tent.

 

That method is defeated by those TS cheaters though; another squadmate could transfer dead-Joe's items to another tent, so when dead-Joe becomes alive-Joe again he can loot the 2nd tent for more gear.

I'd like to see the tent or stash vanish completely but remain stored in the hive to be used as a random object to be spawned to a server at some later time. Like you said, we'd just find a way around that. This way we'd still find tents in the world but their loot would be different nearly every time.

I giggled at "TS cheaters" though. Not much anyone can do about third party communication at this point.

Okay.

 

I have now wandered through the forest for weeks, following him like a shadow. The time has come. I take my rifle, shoot once, and he falls dead.

 

 

BUT WHAT THE FUCK! HIS TENT DISAPPEARED! FUCK THIS GAME!

It doesn't need to be immediate and it would be pretty easy to tell if a player is within proximity to a tent so it wouldn't immediately despawn.

Edited September 9, 2013 by SausageKingofChicago

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

derp

Edited September 9, 2013 by SausageKingofChicago

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

The way group-camps work would go pretty much completely out the window with a mechanic like that. And risking hindrance to any 3rd party just seems like the wrong way to go IMHO.

 

For bodies, however, a player-detection would be a good idea.

I brought this up on another topic (can't find it ATM)..

When you die and respawn, your body should remain, as normal, unless you approach the point where you died. When you get within a certain range, say ~500m, the body would be removed.

 

Team-members (if they are around and alive) would be looting you regardless, as would ANY other player, so what they do is largely irrelevant.

The main factor is you'll be unable to restock and simply pick up where you left off. 

[broguenz 333]

I mean if you make this argument for tents you might as well make the same argument for vehicles. After all, people will just get vehicles and hoard them, and everyone knows that vehicles are just tents on wheels (or with rotor blades). Are you tired of people repairing and hoarding vehicles? Then just make it so the vehicle blows up if the person dies.

 

Anyways, what this all boils down to is the disapproval you have of the hoarding playstyle. But it's the same with people disapproving of banditry (even frivolous bandit purely for the sake of killing). It's just something that is allowed because of the very open allotment of playstyles and the sandbox genre, and it's something you're going to have to deal with. If someone wants to hoard then you let them hoard. I play as a trader on my local server (DayZ Vanilla, not Origins or whatever mods have those stupid frilly "trading posts") and hoarding is merely just part of the job.

 

EDIT: Also, I say NO to a tent limit. I deserve to set up every single tent that I find, and there is no reason I should be limited to only setting up a certain amount of tents. The only thing that should limit tents is the number of good hiding places, not some arbitrary rule on tents because some people don't like hoarders.

 

Fair enough. Also fair that I should be able to dismantle your camp and use your tents myself don't you think? Just as I can steal a vehicle.

Edited September 9, 2013 by RogueNZ

[applejaxc 2500]

It doesn't need to be immediate and it would be pretty easy to tell if a player is within proximity to a tent so it wouldn't immediately despawn.

 

But that wasn't in the OP, was it? Thusly are we concerned about a "Fuck you, you get no loot" scenario.

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

But that wasn't in the OP, was it? Thusly are we concerned about a "Fuck you, you get no loot" scenario.

So let's not discuss the issue and hold fast strictly to the ideas that OP proposed? Ok. If that's the case, I think you guys have ripped on him well enough.

[DemonGroover 8836]

This has always been an issue to me but i don't really think there is a solution.

 

If you kill someone you kind of expect to be able to loot them and their camp, if the camp disappeared on their death then it doesn't reward me if i stalked them until i found their camp.

 

Like others have said it may just come down to play style.  I try never to run back to my dead body and i very rarely set up a camp.

 

I just can't be bothered when i actually find the initial gearing up/scavenging part of DayZ the most enjoyable moments of the game.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

I think it's one of those cases where trying to fix it would just break something else.

 

That's why adding something to draw focus away from the problem would work better in my view.

Maybe sometimes just covering over the cracks actually is the best solution. :P