Keep it Hard....... a thoughtful request.

[jimgun 64]

+1 and I never +1 anything as I'm nearly 40 years old and it feels like saying "wassup dawg?" or something.

 

If anything harder please. I'm running with a few guys, and food/zombies/other players have not been a problem so far. :)

[Noctiluxx 48]

Jim, I'm over 30.. 

Wassup!

[ThirdSinger 36]

Rocket needs to find the balance that Demon's Souls found. The game needs to be unrelentingly difficult (but possible), while at the same time making you feel awesome (Whether by finding good stuff, or going 'holy shit I can't believe I just did that'). Otherwise the game becomes the mod, where everyone gets bored and goes to private hive deathmatch servers, or the game becomes running/eating simulator 2015.

 

I have faith that he can do it, but I think Rocket's going to find out it's a long and grueling road.

[Noctiluxx 48]

I;ve not played Demon souls (its on my list, but someone decided to release the stand alone).  But from what ive read, its hit the hardcore difficulty on the head.

[Guest]

god i hope rocket reads this , the best post since SA release.

[Noctiluxx 48]

god i hope rocket reads this , the best post since SA release.

Woah. thanks man!

I too hope he reads.. I'm a huge fan of the game, and have a lot of respect for what they've already accomplished.

[James MacDonald 14]

Before I begin, please note, I'm very aware that this is an Alpha build, and there will be a multitude of changes along the way.  This is mostly just an opinion piece, with logical reasoning (as far as I'm concerned)

 

DAYZ is currently shaping up to be my Dream Game.  It has all the elements I'm looking for.  Vast open world, risk/reward, exploration, immersion, deep player interaction and almost unlimited variables.  I've never played the mod, and probably never will.  I have however been following this games development for a year solid, and I can honestly say, I'm so far impressed, and very content with it's direction.  I do however have one very large fear.  I fear the development of this game will face a very vocal 'majority'  (Majority in quotes simply because it likely isn't the true majority, just the loudest and most vocal part of the population) that could steer the game in to something I'll eventually grow tired of, or worse, dislike.

 

The good news is, I'm not talking about player interaction, or the Kill on Sight mentality (directly at least).  I believe that if the game is developed to maintain the struggle of survival as a top priority, that player interaction will become the best it could ever be.  Unpredictable, risky, rewarding, and better yet, different every single time.

 

Struggling to survive, to me, is the most important thing to get right in this game.  There's already a boat-load of talk about 'I can't find this, or I can't find that', 'Theres too much of this, or not enough of that' and 'Where do I find an M4?'.  To me, I'm glad people are having a hard time.  I'm glad your character is starving, thirsty, lost in the dark, without a weapon, bullets, proper clothing and feeling steps away from death.  Because so is my character.  So when we run into each other in a town or in the woods, we've both have a lot to think about.  Are we going to be nice, or ruthless? Are we going to pretend we don't see each other, only then to have me tail you to see what you're up to?  Do I have a gun on me? do you?  Can we work together, or 'work together' aka, you'll kill me as soon as you get the chance?  Either way, if we're forced to struggle, and nothing is a lock (theres always a gun in the military base, or plenty of food in Cherno), then our decisions become that much more important.  Loot becomes that much more rewarding when found, and therefore, death becomes that much more painful to accept, and risk requires that much more calculation.  As far as preventing a KoS mentality, I think the direction is correct, and further development (if required or possible) would be great in regards to the damage of equipment (perhaps blood on clothing could attract more Zombies for example? as well as the general noise of killing someone)

 

Am I suggesting that this should become a 'running simulator' grind with little reward, no, far from it. (again I know balance and tweeks are coming, and a lot of items will be made available for testing purposes).  I'm suggesting that the balance of loot reflects a more natural scenario.  One where smaller, more resilient items like clothing, footwear, backpacks, kitchen utensils, tools etc. are vastly more available (with a good balance of 'terrible' items and fewer 'great' ones) then civilian weapons (small handguns, hunting rifles/shotguns... perhaps some BB guns and machetes etc.).  Good quality fresh food should be very difficult to find (obviously) and canned or slightly spoiled, should maintain its current spawn rate.  Military grad anything should be very difficult to find (assuming they would likely want to use it in a survival situation, and would have probably taken it with them)  And should be spread 100% randomly across the map.

 

I still think there should be a few 'Jackpot' moments when looting, which is always a great and rewarding feeling.  However, limiting these again would likely improve the PvP interaction, as trading and working together will greatly help put the pieces together for your missing pistol parts.

 

Last but not least, I want to talk about the 4th evil in this game (in no particular order: 1. zombies 2. food/water/health 3. other players)  The environment.  Almost everyone that works a 9-5 is loosing their minds right now with real-time day/night cycles.  I'm personally on the fence, I love the fact that there's forced nightime play, however, I'd also really like to see the daylight.  And i think there is a benefit to making both something every player gets to experience (although I'm not 100% sure how to pull it off).  Going with my main theme (surviving should be difficult), having to learn how to play and act in both day and night will allow players a great deal of freedom in choice.  I find it easier to loot during the day, as you can clearly see much better, however, its much harder to avoid player interaction (if that's your plan), where as the night allows me to travel great distances and easily avoid other players (especially those that run around with flashlights on).  Again, in terms of survival, we should all have to suffer through the negatives of both day and night, not one or the other.

 

 

TL:DR ??

I really just never want this game to be easy, I never want their to be a very simple formula for 'go here, get food, go there get guns, all set' .  I grew up playing nintendo and atari originally.  90% of those games were 'throw your controller at the wall' hard, but man did it feel good when you got it right, and I miss that.  Too many games are far too forgiving, far to friendly, and might as well hand out participation ribbons 15 minutes in.  I've never been in a similar situation in real life, but I can only imagine that survival, when you and everyone else have literally nothing, would be a cold-hearted, nail biting B*tch.  And every advance, should feel like an achievement, and not some bullshit 'pop-up in the corner of the screen and heres a trophy for finding 10 different items' kind of achievement.  And I hope that the Development team can see through the 'majority' that are looking to quickly get their guns, scopes and buckets of bullets.

 

Thanks for your time.

To begin with I'd like to give you some beans.

I agree with what you're saying, too many games are dumbed down and way to easy. Spawn in, walk here, 10 min later full gear. This causes a lot of people to turn to the cod style gameplay, as death has no severe repercussions and honestly its not much else to do after such a short period of time.

Personally I don't like to go hunt players, or play cod style. Its not why I bought this game, then I would go play cod or bf. I much rather prefer the survival aspect of the game, even if that means looking for food when I already have a years worth of it in my pack.

I'm not at all saying PvP should not be a part of the game, and I really do enjoy the occasional firefight with other survivors. The game just wouldn't be the same without.

The problem here is the scale of which it is at, at the moment.

Going player hunting just to kill people for no other reason then to ruin their fun is a douche move, which I don't agree with at all.

However, killing a player due to fear, needing their loot, self defense and so on I'm fine with (Personally I only kill in self defense).

There are way to many people just killing to kill, leaving all loot behind, be it on the ground or on the corpse.

This game should in no way be dumbed down or made easy, it will ruin it for everyone apart from the cod kids.

The harder the mod is, the more fun it is, less KoS (it'll never stop completely, and you gotta accept that), more attention to the survival aspect of the game (coop or solo), and so on.

The thing I really would want to see happen, is the reduction of high end military grade weapons. For pretty much the same reasons as you stated. They'd likely would have taken most of them with them as they left, but most importantly everyone wouldn't be walking around looking like they'd just stepped out of a gun shop with their assault rifles and their desert eagles in full body armor. It should be more focused on more civilian style weaponry such as small firearms, hunting rifles etc.

As for the timezone part, I like the real-time day/night cycle and don't think it should ever be changed. I hated 24/7 daylight servers which was pretty much the only thing out there for private servers in the mod.

They should simply add the time of day in the server browser, stating if its night or day and you could choose accordingly. You should be able to find a server with relatively low ping which have day or night regardless of what time it is at your location. Maybe you would have to go 20 ping higher than usual, but that shouldn't be a problem.

I'm sure a lot of you like 24/7 daylight and I've got no problems with that, the problem was when every private server started having 24/7 daylight. Not being able to see it in the name of the server, or in the browser itself made it a horrible effort trying to find a server with the real-time time cycle. Which is one of the many reason I quit playing the mod a while back.

[James MacDonald 14]

I'm all for it being hard. But if I had to eat a can of spaghettios every 1.5km in a marathon, to stay satisfied/healthy, I'd probably go unconscious from that.  Realism < Realistic

You do know how the food/drink system works right?

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/154794-read-this-the-truth-on-the-hungerthirst-issue/

 

[LeeEverett 15]

I feel like players should be able to poison water sources, rendering them completely useless. You could drag a dead body or a zombie into the pond after you've used it to stop other players from doing so.

 

Honestly though, I feel like the only thing holding the game back in terms of difficulty is the lack of zombies.

[James MacDonald 14]

It's about finding that balance between "difficult and rewarding" and "tedious and irritating", because it can be a fine line. The devs have always been pretty good about this, with a few exceptions (the availability of loot in the mod). That and the discourse on making the game difficult but not tedious is an active one, being discussed with the food/drink frequency. I think the rarity of food/drink is good, but the eating/drinking system is a bit tedious and annoying.

 

 

I agree, however, I feel that the current food system is just a bit too vague.. it took a while for people to figure out that their new spawns do infact start out quite hungy and thristy.  making it so that you end up consuming almost everything you eat right off the bat.

 

 

I haven't played enough (and I don;t have a mic) to tell if its too easy right now, but I know I won't mind even more of a challange..within reason.

 

 

  I would like to see food and water be rarer but would also like to extend the time that eating/drinking satisfies your character.  Stopping every 1 - 2 minutes to eat and drink is annoying at best.   

 

  I would also like to see a "consume all" option so that if you're really hungry/thirsty you can consume the whole container instead of standing there eating over and over again.  Stopping to do the eat/drink animation six times only to have your character begin whining about being hungry again in 30 seconds makes me want to kick a puppy.  

 

  Also not a huge fan of having 3 barracks at the Balota airfield. Too easy to gear up.

Check this out, the food/drink system isn't that complicated. It just seems that way at first.

http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/154794-read-this-the-truth-on-the-hungerthirst-issue/

[Noctiluxx 48]

After reading the forums like the link you posted. I've learnt that the food system isn't bad. Just Mia understood.

Last night I had a fresh spawn alive and well for over 2 hours on a fairly well looted server with no issues. Just needed to learn to eat and drink more at the beginning instead of storing food for later