The "End Game" does not belong in DayZ

[RooBurger 285]

Video commentary about how the concepts of end game and levelling aren't appropriate in DayZ. Was posted on Reddit yesterday and had a big response.

 

Edited November 15, 2013 by RooBurger

[applejaxc 2500]

You know... a summary of the video would be nice too...

[RooBurger 285]

You know... a summary of the video would be nice too...

 

The title itself kind of sums up the video, added a short summary anyway.

[Inception. 9443]

There will always be something considered "end-game". The only way DayZ cannot have end-game is for DayZ not to exist. 

[mercules 1290]

There will always be something considered "end-game". The only way DayZ cannot have end-game is for DayZ not to exist. 

 

"End Game" is a player created concept. You are correct in that there will always be one because there will always be those players that believe that all games have/need "end game" or they are without purpose. Games do not need "end game".

[Inception. 9443]

"End Game" is a player created concept. You are correct in that there will always be one because there will always be those players that believe that all games have/need "end game" or they are without purpose. Games do not need "end game".

 

No, a game needn't have "end game" in order for it to be successful/enjoyable. 

[RooBurger 285]

Yes, it's a player created concept. If you get a couple of items and now think, "OK, I'm geared, guess I've reached the end game. There's nothing to do!" then you're simply imposing it on yourself. Gearing up means the game has just started. Now go find some trouble.

[mercules 1290]

Yes, it's a player created concept. If you get a couple of items and now think, "OK, I'm geared, guess I've reached the end game. There's nothing to do!" then you're simply imposing it on yourself. Gearing up means the game has just started. Now go find some trouble.

 

While I agree with you to some degree I also must disagree with you and the video. In the video there are no safe zones in Epoch so yet another person who doesn't understand the mod trying to explain what is wrong with the mod. There is no "end game" to DayZ, at the same time there is a point you reach where you did accomplish all your mini-goals and you go, "What next?" For a lot of players that becomes "Lets find some trouble." AKA PVP. This is all fine and good except for the fact that you will have about half the population set up with the stuff they want for PVP at any given time. So the other half is still trying to meet all their little goals. 

After a few months of play people start skipping the little goals because whether they are ready or not, PVP is coming to find them. Not just, "Oh, there is another guy with an assualt rifle, he might be dangerous so I'd better watch him and prepare to shoot him if it looks bad." Not just, "Hmmm... he has a nice backpack. I think I'll shoot him" No, the PVP people end up getting to is, "Guy spawned... shoot him." and "LOL! he has a pistol and not even a backpack yet. Look at him being chased by zombies. *bam*!" So more and more people forget to care about the survival aspect of the game even more than, "I got a base." does. 

I don't agree with the safes in Epoch. I think they go too far. On the other extreme are Vanilla tents which are easily found and impossible to secure so you might as well not count on anything being in them ever. There is no, "I can stockpile a bit of food and protect it so I don't have to run over there and loot food every time I get hungry." Or "I have found a bunch of ammo but no gun that uses it, I guess I'll store it till I find a gun that can." which would be reasonable ideas in the setting. 

Reasonably you would not only hide your stash, but leave a guard on it so a couple of you could make a supply run and reasonably come back to find your camp intact, but DayZ doesn't model that in any reasonable way. That is where Origins and Epoch come into it. If Epoch took out the safes it would be about right. You can "secure" things but they can never be 100% secure, just more difficult to access. Even better would be for your tents and such to log out with you. So while logged in your tents are vulnerable but while logged out they are not there. That means if you decided to simply scavenge close to camp you could reasonably protect your supplies with tripwires and beartraps. Or you could log in as a small group, leave a guy behind to watch over it and have some others go scavenge just like what would happen in RL. 

But wait, tents are locked to characters. What about when one dies? Well, then the tent is permanently there. Anyone can loot it. So now you will have to find a different tent and set that up somewhere else to store things. 

Why do these things? Why have "base building"? 

Because it adds one more check box to the, "what now?" list. Not an endgame, but another pastime and goal for people to work on. Some will ignore it anyway and just grab the best gun they can find and shoot someone. Others will embrace it and start finding materials to do it with. We don't want an endgame but we do want a more dynamic and open game with more to do besides find a good gun and shoot someone. Right now that is about all there is in DayZ.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Mercules

[RooBurger 285]

While I agree with you to some degree I also must disagree with you and the video. In the video there are no safe zones in Epoch so yet another person who doesn't understand the mod trying to explain what is wrong with the mod. There is no "end game" to DayZ, at the same time there is a point you reach where you did accomplish all your mini-goals and you go, "What next?" For a lot of players that becomes "Lets find some trouble." AKA PVP. This is all fine and good except for the fact that you will have about half the population set up with the stuff they want for PVP at any given time. So the other half is still trying to meet all their little goals.

Every Epoch server I've played on has safe zones. Are you saying that "standard" Epoch has no safe zones? Is that something created by server admin?

Whether or not this is part of the mod, it doesn't change the fact that they exist.

 

After a few months of play people start skipping the little goals because whether they are ready or not, PVP is coming to find them. Not just, "Oh, there is another guy with an assualt rifle, he might be dangerous so I'd better watch him and prepare to shoot him if it looks bad." Not just, "Hmmm... he has a nice backpack. I think I'll shoot him" No, the PVP people end up getting to is, "Guy spawned... shoot him." and "LOL! he has a pistol and not even a backpack yet. Look at him being chased by zombies. *bam*!" So more and more people forget to care about the survival aspect of the game even more than, "I got a base." does.

One of my favourite things to do is hunt spawn killers. It creates and ecosystem where I can become the next level up on the food chain.

You don't have to go "hunting" either. Just set yourself a mission. Go into a town to look for a water bottle, for example. You'll probably end up in a situation where you have to think fast, problem solve on your feet, perhaps even negotiate with someone. probably die and have to start looting again.

At the moment you have to create your own objectives because the way servers are run, it means there is no scarcity. The things you need are plentiful. If you pretend they aren't, you have many things to do. Shame it has to be that way, but it's the shitty state of the mod at the moment.

Nothing wrong with base building and the video doesn't say there is.

Edited November 16, 2013 by RooBurger

[bensticles 75]

I think DayZero is the only mod that keeps that old feeling of DayZ. I can't play overwatch, or epoch.

[broguenz 333]

It's a pretty well known theory that those who feel the need to achieve 'end game' are the ones who feel they have let themselves down in life.

 

WoW is a classic case, players feel better about themselves wearing best in slot at max level, everything optimised, astride their rare mounts and sporting a hard to acquire title.

 

and everyone else is just a casual scrub

 

don't miss that shit at all

[hogscraper 328]

It's a pretty well known theory that those who feel the need to achieve 'end game' are the ones who feel they have let themselves down in life.

 

WoW is a classic case, players feel better about themselves wearing best in slot at max level, everything optimised, astride their rare mounts and sporting a hard to acquire title.

 

and everyone else is just a casual scrub

 

don't miss that shit at all

Its a pretty well known theory that people who are generally happy in life celebrate another person's success or happiness instead of hating on them. I have never heard of your pretty well known theory but have to question how a normal thinking person would make the jump in logic you are claiming as obvious. People have different levels of interest in things and people with the most interest in a thing are the people that will want to get as far as possible in it. Are you saying that only people who feel let down in their lives have high interest in video games? I've read that Robin Williams is hard core into WoW. You seem to be implying that 'life' somehow exists completely separate from gaming when I'm 100% certain that someone who considers themselves a gamer would disagree. A guy I work with has spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars working on a 40'x40' model train and city. I doubt anyone would think he is disappointed with his life just because he has spent a tremendous amount of time on a hobby he enjoys. 

I only tried out WoW for a short time and can say that there are assholes in that game that look down on people who aren't as good as them, but there are also people like that at the gun range I go to. There are people like that pretty much everywhere. You really just come across as a hater lumping them all together under a heading that doesn't even make sense. 

[broguenz 333]

Its a pretty well known theory that people who are generally happy in life celebrate another person's success or happiness instead of hating on them. I have never heard of your pretty well known theory but have to question how a normal thinking person would make the jump in logic you are claiming as obvious. People have different levels of interest in things and people with the most interest in a thing are the people that will want to get as far as possible in it. Are you saying that only people who feel let down in their lives have high interest in video games? I've read that Robin Williams is hard core into WoW. You seem to be implying that 'life' somehow exists completely separate from gaming when I'm 100% certain that someone who considers themselves a gamer would disagree. A guy I work with has spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars working on a 40'x40' model train and city. I doubt anyone would think he is disappointed with his life just because he has spent a tremendous amount of time on a hobby he enjoys. 

I only tried out WoW for a short time and can say that there are assholes in that game that look down on people who aren't as good as them, but there are also people like that at the gun range I go to. There are people like that pretty much everywhere. You really just come across as a hater lumping them all together under a heading that doesn't even make sense. 

 

Ok, so I forgot to use the word 'some' in my paragraph somewhere and well known to a degree that its been discussed by more than myself on a dayz forum.

It's been in the media, especially around the time a few were playing more WoW than actually living life.

Losing jobs, ending relationships and one guy dropping dead at a net cafe after a WoW fest

Yes its just generalising psycho babble and (some of) that is just theory.

 

The point was that WoW provided them with a sense of achievement/ success that they didn't get in real aspects of their lives. 

Intelligent yet dropped out of high school. Worked hard but never progressed in their careers.

Good at sport but never pushed themselves to the top level.

Started making a model train city but abandoned it.

Those people, who when they go up a level or max out, fill that subconscious void of them feeling worthless / an under achiever.

 

Not a hater no, but success in a game isn't real success, level 100 isn't a real achievement. killing the top raid boss isn't winning.

 

Anyway, I took a thread off topic-ish

 

again

 

Sorry

 

 

 

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

This is a very eloquent summation of the core concept of this game. This is why item perma-storage and a global trade system is a very bad idea in DayZ.

Edited November 16, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[hogscraper 328]

Dayz, including Epoch servers, already has everything he claimed he thought the game should have. The problem being that isn't recognizing the fact that everything you get out of Dayz is internal to yourself. There will always be something more to achieve until there isn't. At that point you have reached endgame if that's how YOU gauge your progress. To me, even on servers with all that other junk, the point was always to create my own missions and try to survive. Hunting down a sniper with just a pistol. Choosing some item at random and running through Elektro trying to survive while finding that item. It doesn't matter if I spawned fully geared or found someone's base and looted it I would still find something interesting to do that has nothing to do with gear. The problem isn't that there is too much gear and stuff in epoch its that people find that the only interesting thing in the game. If more people than not are only finding enjoyment from gearing up and killing other people its either a problem with the player not having an imagination or a problem with the game itself not giving them something to do. You would have this problem whether the best gun is an AS50 or an enfield. If that's all there is to do, that's all there is people will be doing.

 

As for safes, I would like to see something like that added to the game, but very limited. Instead of being 12 blocks wide and 5 blocks tall, let them be only two blocks wide. That way you could safely store food or antibiotics, ammo and things that are small in there and lock it so it can't be looted. If you die, the lock breaks and anyone can open it or delete them from the game altogether. That seems like the only tradeoff between the realism of someone being able to lock up valuables and the game breaking ability of people being able to negate the losses usually incurred from death.