DayZ Ecology System

[Retriever 12]

I suggest servers have a basic ecological system. The system is based on a concept that in real life certain territory can feed certain amount of living beings (survivors in our case).

As we heard, servers will approximately host 150 players and the food (edible loot) balancing will be based on this amount.

What I suggest is to make 50 players a starting point for food balancing. Food means not only the lootable food, but hunted animals too, such as deer and fish etc. Medical supplies can also be added to this system.

The actual mechanics are as follows. For this illustration we will call any food or edible animals - beans :) Just for simplicity. Let’s say, just for example, we have 1000 cans of beans on the server.

Player joins the server and picks up beans. A new can of beans is resupplied in a few hours (subject to balance).

So if we have 50 players on the server the food amount is almost enough for them. Of course there is a risk of someone taking more than he needs for storage, but it’s a temporary effect because of loot respawn. In a certain time server replenishes the loot for another day.

This system gives following advantages. Servers will not be experiencing high load and will always have slots to join. If some group of players decides to raid the server or organize a market event, they just need to take food with them. Big clans will send their stalkers to collect food for their own servers or home bases, making them a good target for competitors.

The disadvantage is that the server capacity won’t be used in full and there must be more of them.

P.s. Another idea for fishing. Let’s say we have 100 fishes on the server. 50 of them is in the sea. Big lakes hold 10 fishes each. If someone fished out all 10 fishes in one lake - others must wait for fish to respawn. Same for the sea. 50 fishes are for anyone fishing at sea, not one person. You can attract fish and fasten the respawn by feeding fish. 

Edited September 11, 2013 by Retriever
Made readable

[spinager 152]

made no sense to me. :p

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

I got it but i would go for a more flexible system where resources are farmed out of existence through regular "overuse".

 

Fishes in your pond example would never come back until the player population moved to a different area for a while.

[Korsbaek 1778]

Isn't this how it already is? I go to a supermarket, pick up a can of beans, go back 15 mins later, and pick up a new one.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Isn't this how it already is? I go to a supermarket, pick up a can of beans, go back 15 mins later, and pick up a new one.

Not if you follow what i'm suggesting tho.

[wisper 61]

Food should be relatively scarce, but not in an extent that u constantly look for it because then it would simply be tedious. In an Arma3 wasteland they forgot to put in food/water alltogether and we had to hide our equipment, die, respawn, go get it back...

Also, scarcity should be random. Otherwise we will have both campers and scheduled, organized raids that would deplete the entire map..

[Karmaterror 982]

Not if you follow what i'm suggesting tho.

 

Do you mean that if say beans are looted repeatedly (serverwide) then the chance for them to spawn is reduced a bit. same with guns if there are a lot of ak74's found then less will spawn?

 

I agree with this idea tho, if im on the same wavelength its basicaly capping/slowwing the spawn of certain items. Thus making the players swap server to find what they need. it would make for a higher player turnover on lowwer ranked servers as people try to find richer spawning grounds. Only downside i can see is it might hurt private hive servers a lil. They could have a diffrent system (values wise) though.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

The idea is that the game would output a statistical "heat map" of each areas of the game and how players loot them, so the places universally looted have their looting chance degrade progressively while the least used spots would inherit the excess.

 

That "lonely cabin deep in debug forest that no path lead to" would be full of interesting objects, while the most obvious spots such as supermarkets would be picked clean. Until players change their habits and the loot system react and rebalance.

 

The idea is to make places everyone go look like they have been picked clean, as they would be in a real scenario. You would have to keep moving and trying to find places that are less visited and are not heavily "farmed" by others. Wether it's natural resources or "loot".

 

 

@Karma, this would not be server per server, it would be global to the hive, if a place is picked clean, it would be picked clean on ANY server. (I'm against private hives btw), the idea isn't to get players to change server; but to get them out of their comfort zone (cherno -> stary ->  NWAF) by forcing them to move around for loot and not cycle the same sector over and over.

[DZR_Mikhail 2424]

The topic starter is not good at English, so he asked me to translate it and now asks to comment a bit.

 

The core idea is about global amount of resources and it's global spawn (let's say once in a day) and it's limit to fulfill the need of LESS players than server has at the moment. This will make resource locations a "heatmap" as stated above. Resources will be distributed equally, but in the end of it's spawn cycle the most inhabited areas will be empty and players will be driven to explore other locations.

 

It will also influence the "loot farming" in both ways. Noone will be able to loot farm a server where there are very small amount of players, because server will tune the global resource spawn to fulfil even less players. You come to empty server and it's empty of loot too. If players get there and inhabit it for some time the loot will grow more. If server is heavily inhabited loot farming will be difficult as well, because there will be more risk of aggressive encounter.

 

So the price of loot will grow and players who succeed in good farming inspite of it all can even ship the aqcuired goods to other servers in some way.

 

Let's compare present state.

 

Now every location has it's own spawn cycle and a short period of time for it. So you loot out a village and in an hour at most you come back looting it again. All other locations have the same. So it's locationwide, while author suggests it being serverwide and much longer time cycle.

 

Let's face it. DayZ is not about gathering resources, it's about the lack of resources in a critical situation and how you deal with it, how you survive this. Everyone is feeling ok with zombies, but they are making impediments to happy life of a player. Why we like it then? Because it's a challenge. Is loot or resources a chellenge now? NO. It's a matter of time only.

 

That's why author ties it all up around FOOD. Look at the global DayZ stats. How many people die of starvation or dehydration? I know it's not publicly available, but I bet almost nobody dies compared to suicide, PVP and zombie attack death rates. Is it interesting to play a game which comforts you or which challenges you? I choose the second (while common sense is preserved).

 

Feel free to ask or discuss my points, I'll redirect them to the topic starter. He is very worried that people understand him wrong.

 

Thanks for the attention.

[mr_chabowski@live.co.uk 2416]

Simulating the increased scarcity of food and resources in areas which have been raided more often would go a long way towards making the world feel as though it's actually being lived in. Not just a "game-map"

where you wait for things to respawn.

 

I think it'd also be a really good way of encouraging a "migration" of sorts, from time to time. Making player hot-spots undesirable for long-term stays.

[enforcer1975 1111]

The idea is that the game would output a statistical "heat map" of each areas of the game and how players loot them, so the places universally looted have their looting chance degrade progressively while the least used spots would inherit the excess.

 

That "lonely cabin deep in debug forest that no path lead to" would be full of interesting objects, while the most obvious spots such as supermarkets would be picked clean. Until players change their habits and the loot system react and rebalance.

 

The idea is to make places everyone go look like they have been picked clean, as they would be in a real scenario. You would have to keep moving and trying to find places that are less visited and are not heavily "farmed" by others. Wether it's natural resources or "loot".

 

 

@Karma, this would not be server per server, it would be global to the hive, if a place is picked clean, it would be picked clean on ANY server. (I'm against private hives btw), the idea isn't to get players to change server; but to get them out of their comfort zone (cherno -> stary ->  NWAF) by forcing them to move around for loot and not cycle the same sector over and over.

 

That is a good idea to spread players out a bit more and not just have them go after their habbits like spawn > elektro/cherno > stary y airfield or spawn > zeleno > vybor > airfield > stary

 

That would actively counter the Cherno/Elektro sniping problem as well as having KoSers camp the routes and places which players would be frequenting because they would be all ove the place.

 

But i would still like it if they limited server hopping to a certain amount like having server 1-10 on hive 1 and 11-20 on hive 2 to give players a chance and not make themselves have to hop to find food or to have more control with loot spawning because i'm convinced the loot system will be either broken from the start or will be broken after some updates and then we have the same problem of overabundance again. Kind of like a closed environment system to limit a possible "contamination".