Northern Chernarus :)

[semipr0 402]

So I've been doing my usual long ranging in the north of Chernarus and I have to say I am very jazzed by what I'm seeing.

 

Starting from the furthest south that matters;

 

1.) The broken Rifty Tanker is a great new addition replacing the beached fishing ship from the mod, I'm also very impressed by the tidal swamp redesign of that area, the design team really really did themselves proud redeveloping that little area and making it seem a lot more real.

 

2.) Guba Bay is now apparently going to be a shipping town at the very least (totally makes sense, I added something very similar but far more limited in my server pbo for my DayZ mod server), I really like that addition because it makes complete sense. Obviously its hardly finished yet but it already looks quite good.

 

3.) I count predeveloped space for at least two more cities in the far north, and around 8 - 10 villages and an undetermined amount of small military outposts, this is rather fantastic news in and of itself and I can't wait to see their additions.

 

Now with that said...there are a few problems that I don't quite get.

 

1.) Western Chernarus has been substantially redeveloped with multiple military and industrial placements that were not there in the mod...this is more or less fine unless we consider the next couple of points.

 

2. The Central corridor of Chernarus between Chernogorosk and Elektrovodosk...going all the way north has an extremely low loot value or comparatively no loot value in comparison to the Western north corridor. This could be easily addressed with minor military emplacements at logical points...you all know Chernarus as well as anyone so I don't need to tell you where to put them (and no I'm not saying re-arm Stary).

 

3. The South-East approach in Chernarus is nearly worthless at this time with a serious lack of need for industrial loot spawns. Everything from Skalisty to Berezino is more or less virtually worthless because everything there can be gotten with better access to other loot types in other parts of the map.

 

4. Perhaps the most concerning element here is with the substantial redevelopment of the northern part of Chernarus, it kind of makes one wonder where players will eventually be able to bunker down at given as a lot of the old open and less traveled places are going to see a lot more foot traffic, I'm going to simply assume, for now, that there are plans to ensure that what is going to be implemented in that area is going to be a system in of which the culling of available open space to add content will not hamper the players ability to settle down somewhere and "survive" there.

 

Some suggestions for adjustment:

 

1. Central north corridor needs some distributed small military checkpoints and/or crashed military vechicles with medium value mil loot. There is plenty of residential up through this central area and a fair amount of industrial as well so its not really all that bad other than the inability to at least get survival level weaponry (I understand this may change as more residential level weaponry is introduced but its still something of a balance issue).

 

2. Skalisty is, and always has been, other than for what modders did with it, an underdeveloped shame. But the Tulga/Three Valleys/Msta/Staroye/Rog area is one of the biggest underdeveloped shames of the entire Chernarus map. I'm not saying slap a city into the middle of it but it could definitely use some heavy deerstand love once deerstands actually have anything in them.

 

3. Eastern Factory....this should have a firehouse at the very least. If not a small military outpost...it was a large industrial center after all, you'd think it would at least be in someones best interests to make sure it didn't catch on fire.

 

4. Berezino...this is a huge naval/industrial center. Yet it has absolutely zero military presence and again, not even a firestation, a city with enough people in it to need at least two grocery stores (technically it needs three given its total land area and industrial workforce, but thats another debate)...you'd think there would at least be one firestation. And there is absolutely no reason that naval/shipping center shouldn't have some level of military presence at it I mean seriously that naval yard is gigantic (in game scale terms at least), the fact that there was apparently no one but the occasional random security guard guarding it all is kinda not believable. Its kind of funny that the large industrial building was added to this town...when it already had about 40 or so individual industrial spawns of various value, but no one on the design team even thought that a firestation (on some of the flattest terrain in Chernarus btw) was an essential part of this towns infrastructure.

 

5. Firestations, again are kind of a key infrastructual element, not just for cities but for collections of villages. Theres really no where in the semi-civlized world where you can find a good sized collection of small towns that doesn't have some kind of regional or county fire department that is responsible for all the little villages in the area. There should definitely be more firestations distributed all around Chernarus, not just in key cities but some of them should just be set up as midpoint stations between the various smaller towns and villages because from an infrastructual point of view these are key services that should have been in place long before things went downhill  The fact that you can count how many firestations there are on Chernarus in its entirety on one hand is a very definite infrastructual design oversight.

 

6. Police stations....kinda missing in Chernarus, would also be key infrastructual services which could provide medium grade military loot opportunities all over the map but they've just simply never been part of Chernarus at all.

 

TLDR: Map balance can be easily addressed by beefing up a few key areas with military additions and then adding some minor and logical infrastructual elements that should be out there that simply never were. But that aside the potential future of the northern part of Chernarus looks relatively promising.

Edited December 28, 2013 by semipr0

[applejaxc 2500]

I don't understand some of the concerns for areas being "Worthless"; if anything spawn rates should be dropped in cities/coastal military spawns, not more added to the so-called zones. That strikes a balance of difficulty and need to travel/explore the map, instead of Chernogorsk being a massive server-hopping fest.

[Bakercompany86 347]

I like your thinking.  Especially considering police centers.  Police stations would be a good spot to score the mid-tier loot.  You have your civilian/residential stuff, then your police gear, followed by military grade.  Not to mention that would give players more areas to search.

 

 

As it stands, every-single-military spot is camped.  I was on a server with TWO other people, and the military base I went to had someone in it.  It was one near the center of the map to, not a coastal area or NW.  Probably a server hopper, but still!  It's ridiculous.

[semipr0 402]

I don't understand some of the concerns for areas being "Worthless"; if anything spawn rates should be dropped in cities/coastal military spawns, not more added to the so-called zones. That strikes a balance of difficulty and need to travel/explore the map, instead of Chernogorsk being a massive server-hopping fest.

 

Its not really a case of "worthless" all the areas have some level of worth, its just a very definite case that the western side of Chernarus provides better access to all required survival materials than anywhere else on the map.

 

Western Chernarus going from Balota (Mil/Resi/Ind), to the military base at Pavlovo (Mil/Med/Resi/Ind) to Zelengorosk (Mil/Med/Resi/Ind), up to Green Mountain (Mil/Med), Putoshka (Resi/Ind), East Vybor Military Outpost and Vybor (Mil/Resi/Ind) and the NW Airfield (Mil/Med/Ind/Resi). And even NW of Lopatino theres the end of the northern rail system which is guaranteed to have a good mix of Resi/Ind at the very least.

 

Thats a pretty insanely high value corridor as compared to everything else on the map. Its not just about how many guns you can get and how much ammo there is its the fact that there are that many military resource on top of how prevalent food, water, medical supplies, eventually industrial parts and of course everything else you can get just about everywhere else.

 

If we were to look at this on a percentage value the western north corridor of Chernarus is at 100% capacity, it has everything. Whereas the central corridor and the eastern highway are literally operating at 30% of capacity.

 

Overall I'm not saying that adding more is the only option, I would personally have placed the East Vybor Military base at Pop Ivan, the Pavlovo Military base would have made more sense at Shakova or Dolina. Just moving these two assets alone would have distributed points of military loot that allowed the three corridors to be a little less disparate in their worth.

 

Right now Chernarus is Military heavy West/Residential heavy Central/Industrial heavy East....this kind of says...well if you want X you need to go to Y...but that just doesn't actually work when Z has everything that a survivor could want or need at all. Theres no point to traveling up the north east highway because the western route supplies everything it has and more. Same with the central corridor in comparison.

 

So if you want Chernarus to kinda be a COD server where everyones pretty much in the same area shooting each other in the face then yeah the current design supports that. (Balota...being of course the lowest hanging fruit on the tree is a horrendous example of how this is actually kinda working out here in the early alpha.) Whereas a distributed level of loot value across the entire map with a better categorical spread in each section means people kinda run into each other more naturally because they can go more or less anywhere they want and they're still going to be getting relatively equal chances at survival critical equipment.