The Hidden Horde - Housing Tips - Immersion Loot/map Interest - Chernarussians?

[dickflip 15]

This post is going to be a long one, for these ideas and thoughts literally popped into my head all at once about 5 minutes ago. Check that, upon finishing the post, it was about 4 hours ago. Just quickly scroll down the post to make sure you don't just want a tl;dr.

Anyway, this post is going to cover 4 things;

- The Hidden Horde >> A compromise that will satisfy the players who don't like large amounts of zombies, and those that do.

- Tips for Housing implementation >> What I feel should and shouldn't be to create the best compromise for players on the fence.

- More immersive loot system >> To spread out loot more and stop what I like to call "The Triangle Apexes effect".

- Chernarus Lives On >> An island encampment off the coast that houses the remaining surviving citizens, government and military of Chernarus (for metagame PvE).

THE HIDDEN HORDE

Sounds kinda spooky doesn't it? Well it is, so you better be scared.

I'm atm on the fence about zombies. While the game isn't fully optimised yet and still in Alpha, it's hard to tell what the final product for the pathing/AI of zambies will be like.

Right now, they can be troublesome due to them still walking through walls and floors, but they become absolutely useless when you're out in the open or in the middle of the street. However, the idea I have for when these issues are fixed is thus.

I've always seen that there aren't many zombies walking around right now, and my gamer side tells me, "Mate, when the fuck are these pricks going to make this game interesting?" But then my Role-playing side kicks in and says, "What if all the zombies are actually just in hiding? Lurking in the shadows, hunched in massive groups inside those inaccessible buildings?"

That's when the movie I am Legend popped into my mind (fuck me that was an alright/okay movie), and I think about those zombies and how sensitive they were to sound but how big of lurkers they were.

It occurred to me that some of the zombies may have a horde mentality, while some don't, and the ones in plain sight are just being used by their counterparts. It lead me to think of the original DayZ where if you attracted zombie attention and held it, you would literally have an unlimited spawning zombie horde that would stop once you managed to drop the aggro.

So, when you attract the aggro of a zombie it starts a percentage chance counter for the Hidden Horde. This works the same way to original DayZ zombie aggro spawns, except it's on a timer.

• When you gain the aggro of a single zombie, the HH spawn chance goes up to 4%. This then increases by multiples of 4, depending on how many other zombies you manage to aggro.
• The occurrence calculation should run within 3 seconds of an aggro'd zombie being killed.
• If an aggro'd zombie is killed through silent means, that percentage multiple is cut by 75%.
• Killing a zombie with a non-silent weapon while they are not aggro'd to you, but while within a range that would have otherwise aggro'd them if they were not killed, the multiple is cut by 50%.
• If an aggro'd zombie is left to chase the player for more than 15 seconds, it will add an extra percentage multiple, then another multiple every 15 second interval after until killed. After every minute of not having aggro, the percentage lowers a multiple. An example situation will play out below.

>> you run into a town, aggro 1 zombie >> HH increase to 4%.

>> You kill that zombie (with gun) >> HH still at 4% >> Aggro two more zombies, kill them with gun >> HH increases to 8%, then to 12%

>> Don't aggro a zombie for a minute >> HH decreases to 8% >> Aggro 2 zombies, Kill one zombie with axe, leave another to chase you for over 15 seconds >> HH increase to 9%, then to 13%

>> Aggro 3 zombies >> HH to 17%, then 21%, then 25% >> Shoot all 3 zombies >> Calculation cycles and Hidden Horde is alerted. Get the fuck outta town or hunker down and fight it out.

A group of ghoul-like wails will resonate around the city to alert the player that the Horde is on its way. The Horde will spawn zombies for 1 whole minute. Approximately 75 zombies should be spawned throughout the period the HH is active, more or less is up for player base decision. You can try to out run the Horde, but Aggro for them does not decrease in that 1 minute spawn time. You will have to run out of the city limits and keep out of their reach for that whole minute before their taste for your flesh begins to diminish.

The amount of zombies alive at a given time during the hidden horde should be up to Developer discretion. However, one thing to note should be the amount of zombies in towns needing to be increased slightly. Otherwise people will just be able to axe all the zombies and never have to deal with alerting the horde.

Aggro from zombies should work like threat does in an MMO. Noise generated from weapons is relative to the DPS output of an MMO player in generating threat. The more noise generated by a player, the more aggro that is placed on him. The threat on him then dissipates within a radius of about 30 metres or so.

Say for example you have 3 players, one with an LMG about 20 metres away from the another with an AR, and a sniper up on the hill about 400-500 metres away. While the LMG and Sniper both produce a similar sound signature that's louder than the AR, since the Sniper is further away, of course, he doesn't generate any aggro. If both the LMG and AR are firing at the same time, the aggro percentages will be balanced in favor of the man with the larger calibre weapon. However, if the Sniper replaces the man with the LMG and is only firing a shot every 5 or so seconds, while the AR guy is firing almost continuously, the AR will therefore generate more aggro.

This will also put a new spin on firefight engagements in cities and towns, as the player who makes noise first, draws HH aggro first.

HOUSING TIPS (and related)

While I and others are unsure of how the devs will actually tackle player housing, I feel there needs to be a few things noted to get it right and to make it enjoyable. It's been said that rocket wants to do underground housing. This is okay as long as the housing isn't instanced. I don't want to have my head blown off during a loading screen from some guy finding my house's entrance and camping it.

For if housing isn't underground, there's this;

Playing DayZ Origins was probably the greatest time I ever had playing DayZ. PvP and the Raiding of Sector B in that mod were the greatest aspects of the game, and one of the other key elements was the setup of housing and the subsequent implementation of the fortress.

While many people do prefer Epoch due to its trading and modular house system, my clan mates and I could never seem to get into it. Every day after having been asleep overnight, foreigners would come into our server and break into our houses, simply by ramming them with vehicles or shooting at them a bunch of times. It takes a lot of work to make many of the modular house pieces, and to wake up overnight and see half of the walls missing from having some dickheads be sneaky fuckers just breaks immersion to another degree. I was happy with the maintenance side of house parts, and would be happy to have them be destroyed due to lack of care as that would've been a lapse of care on my part. But allowing them to be destroyed by other people is a highly frustrating mechanic.

I've also heard stories about people fixing/buying/stealing helicopters just to kamikaze into people's bases, and completely destroying them. This is a no no. It may seem like a waste of a good chopper, but you'd be surprised at what DayZ players do sometimes.

Origins housing, while slightly bugged, was safe, solid and still hard to build by oneself. It looked cool, stored your gear and gave you a place to rest and restore health. You could horde enough gear to fix up a chopper, gear yourself up with military loot, then fly yourself over to Sector B for some higher end goodies. That's if you survived the onslaught of deadly precise AI. I want this in game again, but I'll propose this idea later in this post.

People didn't like the fact that houses couldn't be broken into or destroyed, but people assaulted you enough while you were around your house that it made you not want them to be destructible. Plus, it would just make the randoms who log on after hours actually have an advantage.

I like the idea of modular housing and that should definitely be a thing. I've thought of an idea that can allow both indestructible buildings and modular housing.

Players can craft two types of building modules;

• Home - anything to make your home / that can be attached to your home. A foundation marker must first be placed before any home modules can be placed. This marker will not allow a house to extend beyond a 20mx20mx20m (or other designated 3 dimensional area) boundary. Foundation/floor modules must be lain before any walls / furniture / objects can be erected on the floor. Any house modules within this marked boundary are indestructible. Any player houses cannot be built within 50 metres of the edge of the boundary without placing a Community plot (to be discussed). While home modules are indestructible and do not take damage, they will degrade, and will need to be maintained in order to stop them from failing, and in the case of walls / roofs, exposing the inside of the house and allowing enemy players to gain entry without having to catch you unawares with your door unlocked.
• Compound - Easier to build, easier to erect and easier to maintain than Home modules. These parts can only be built within a certain distance (to be decided) from the boundary of one's foundation marker. These usually consist of corrugated iron fences, sandbag walls, concrete slab walls, large wooden log / plank walls and scaffolding that can have raised platforms attached. This allows a player to have a little extra protection when they either build, or finish building their Home. It's an extra bit of gathering on top of constructing Home modules, however they can be destroyed by other players and zombies. Their resistance to attacks depends on the material they are constructed of, and as they degrade from damage, they have a higher chance of being penetrated by enemy gunfire, until they completely break and collapse.

Housing markers should not be able to be placed in towns. A minimum of 150 metres from a town. Players being able to block off entire buildings / loot spawns to other players, while realistic, is incredibly unfair.

Another aspect of player housing I wanted to add is Community plots. These are flags / banners that have a large boundary area known as a Commune that extends depending on how many players are registered to that plot. When and if BE decides to add xml's to DayZ, if at all, a commune's xml icon will be displayed on the banner. It's a system to allow groups to recognise each other, build large seamless complexes with each other, and have their gated community grow as it gains members. The banner must be crafted, and then placed. Once placed, the placer of the banner (whom I'd like to call Warlord because it's very kind of Guerrilla rebel terminology) scroll wheels on the banner and selects add player to commune from the drop down. He then goes to the player wanting to be added to the community, scroll wheels on them and selects Add to commune. This then allows that player to begin building inside the plot boundary, and allows them to access community chests. A community chest is a storage container that a Warlord categorises as such (i.e. sort of like a guild bank). A community chest is the only chest unable to be cracked. Warlords also have the ability to assign other players with minor Warlord powers, like being able to add people to the commune.

Any player that stumbles upon a Commune, if they are able to approach the Community banner, can see a list of the players registered to that commune.

While it seems this caters more to a group based environment, it can also be used by Heros to create medical outposts, bambi shelters and bandit prisons, and can be used as a secondary storage area.

Many people also felt that Origins catered way too much to PvP/group-oriented gameplay, as it promoted clans and clan warfare. As with my previously stated idea, I do not see this as a problem, for during our time playing Origins we hardly ever went after lone players unless they went out of their way to attack us first. Most of the time we were too busy gathering gear or being ganked by / ganking the other groups.

There are those that still may see clans as the bane of lone players so I propose a server listing filter. Server owners, depending on what form of gameplay they want in their server can list their server as either Group-based, or regular. Clans or groups, if they don't have their own server, usually have to go through the whole process of trying out servers and their atmospheres before actually finding one with other consistent grouped players. Having a simple server filter will ease this, and allow lone players who don't particularly like being hunted by large groups find an appropriate server.

I don't expect everyone to obey this though, it's just there for people who want a preference for their play style / atmosphere.

LOOT SWITCH UP

This seems like a very minor point to many but it kind of does get one wondering. Why is all the loot in places you expect it to be? Yes, not all of the loot from houses has actually been taken. But most of it has. Someone brought this up in a recent suggestion post that was about making Chernarus more authentic for a bit of immersion. I feel that randomly chucking an assault rifle on some dead bodies around a burnt out military vehicle is fine.

Seriously, think about it for a second. Did every Chernarussian just magically turn into zombies simultaneously at the beginning of the outbreak? Is that the reason why all the loot is still so precisely placed in the world?

Wouldn't the Chernarussian military have been sent in to try and contain the outbreak? Where are all their dead bodies? Why aren't all the armaments and gear off fallen soldiers in circulation? We should be seeing a lot more military blockades, military vehicle wreckages and mass deaths. Sure you can argue its still Alpha, it's just something to consider to give it that extra authenticism.

An another thing, can we expect to see actual Chernarussian weaponry. We all know locales in Chernarus are based off of real locations in Czechoslovakia, so what about the Czech military issued weaponry? Are we going to see the Sa-58 variants or the Cz 550 again? I know devs have mentioned some things about not wanting to make the game too militarised but at least put in some actual Czech issue weaponry.

With the whole keeping Chernarus interesting point, there's also this problem I'd like to dicuss;

THE TRIANGLE APEXES EFFECT

While this is a picture of ARMA 2 chernarus, it still provides the same example.

Each circle represents the areas of highest player activity. Why? For those who are a bit slow, let me explain. The south bubble represents the two loveable cities of Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk. Major spawn points, with a military loot spawn in each of them. Elektro has two firestations, Cherno has one but just down the road is the Balota airstrip, which is also a miltary spawn.

To the Northeast is Berezino. While normal loot heavy, its military spawn has been taken away, yet just Northwest about 2 km over the hill is Kraznostav aipstrip, which has military loot.

Then, the famous Northwest Airstrip where everyone goes to die, now has 2 sets of military spawns.

What's in between those three hotpoints? Nothing. Zip. Zero. Shit all.

There's hardly any interest to anywhere else on the map, and it's the reason why I don't like Chernarus. There's only one reason to go anywhere in DayZ and it's military loot, but since it's been monopolised to three corners of the map, it's the only place anybody goes. You have all this beautiful unused space smack bam in the middle of the map and you've lured everyone into using the coast or the Western border.

I commend you for putting in the Pavlovo, Zelenogorsk and Kabanino military spawns for a bit of variety but all it's done is make people go from Cherno, down the west coast and up through Zelenogorsk to get to the NW airfield.The only time people ever venture into towns is on a B-line to a military spawn or the coastline

All the players complaining about KoS are being killed in these high traffic areas. You can help reduce bambi on bambi slaughter by reducing that traffic and dispersing it through the centre of the map. I'm sick and tired of having almost nowhere to go except one of these three places. I want options man! Freedom of Choice and all that shit!!

Make more military bases - I'd say put one in black forest NE of Guglovo, it could be hidden inside the forest and under tree cover and it could be like a secret military base that civvies aren't supposed to know about or some shit. Put another one at Grozovoy Pass, like it's there as a security checkpoint for Border crossers.

Make more skyscraper cities! Put one along the Northern border where you've stuck that massive highway that spans the whole entire length of the map. Nobody has any need to go farther north than the airfields because there's nothing there! (Also that massive highway that's actually a 2 lane road, plz turn it into a proper 4 lane highway with a large median strip and everything, it'll be awesome to drag race on once vehicles get here).

Another POI to venture into, that I would deem pretty cool is an Observatory on one of the mountains at the Northern Border. Like it's sitting there, clinging to the edge of the mountainside, and as you leave the treeline the spans that highway road, you look to the North and think, "Woah, awwwwwwesooooome!"

Also, when vehicles and housing become a thing, I would suggest some more quarries. The one in Solnichny, probably going to become a deathmatch zone.

CHERNARUSSIANS WILL LIVE ON!!

I stated before that one of my favourite aspects of DayZ origins was the military AI and Raiding Sector B (The stronghold that housed all the rich peeps who could afford a private military army).

Many people are against adding similar NPC's. I'm all for adding them. It provides an extra bit of metagame, it's great immersion and provides an extra bit of intense suspense and thrill. Here's how and why, with RP background!;

So far there's no given backstory as to why the outbreak happened, or what happened to all the Chernarussian citizens once the apocalypse began. Now, there's a crashed cargo ship off the coast at Rify, north of Berezino lumber mill right?

My Theory: The governing body of Chernarus decides that their military efforts against the zombie plague are futile, and decide to abandon the country. However, even though it is the same situation in neighbouring coutries, government officials are skeptic, and believe that their-not-so-friendly-nor-diplomatic neighbours would rather take advantage of the country, than assist each other.

The government is divided, and with members crossing the floor on the issue of not abandoning the homeland, the country seems sure to fall into chaos, anarchy, then be wiped off the face of the Earth.

However, it came to light of an old oil refinery off the mid-east coast of Chernarus. It was a large complex, high-walled and secured in a compund situated on a natural island. It was used to process and refine the oil shipped in from the oil rigs offshore, before being transported to Chernogorsk or Berezino docks.

Acquiring 3 large cargo ships, the military stages an exfiltration of all possible civilians. A single trip with each ship was all that was needed to ferry the citizens from the lumber mill docks to the island. The military also successfully uses them to ferry supplies, materials and the remainder of their armaments across. Once finally finished evacuating the country, one ship is drained of its fuel and left to drift out to sea, while the other two are used for salvage and housing. Miraculously, the sea currents and a heavy storm bring the abandoned freighter back to land, breaking it upon the rocky shore of Rify.

That's the reasoning for the shipwreck. Now for the raids and AI flyovers.

Just over 6 months later, a navy patrol radios that a small fishing boat full of Chernarussian citizens has been taken into custody. The navy is given orders to escort them to the refinery. Investigations proved them all to be true Chernarussians, some of them even holding onto passports and other forms of identification.

Over the next few months, the navy encounters pirate attacks while on patrol, that start off as irregular and slowly become more constant and aggressive. Turns out, the Chernarussians that had provided identification during the prior investigations were all bandits, using a home made radio system to broadcast to their colleagues when navy patrols left the refinery, to try and steal military gear and equipment. The rats were found and executed.

However, government officials believed it was their bordering European neighbours using pirate and guerilla tactics as cover to attempt to disrupt their security measures or cause enough damage that would reduce their defensive capabilities. As such, the military was ordered to perform flyovers of Chernarus and gun down any non-infected human being, in order to deter and disrupt the enemy's military advances.

So this gives reason for bandits and heroes alike to fly over, raid the settlement for gear (bandits reasoning) and to deter the military gun runs (hero reasoning).

What about navy patrols? They are almost always out on patrols so they won't be able to shooty your chopper down for flying over there.

What about AA defenses? There are minimal, but they are avoidable by flying low as they are situated inside the high compound wall.

I got pretty tired writing all this down so my writing probably starts off neat and thoughtful, but by the end it's like blergh. Anyway, just comment. It's only ideas and thoughts. I got pretty heated while writing the stuff under the Chernarus picture because I seriously think this map needs a HUUUUUGE overhaul.

Edited January 30, 2014 by dickflip

[cywehner1234 582]

TL;DR

Topic that I didn't understand, Zombies wouldn't just spawn and chace you.. Sounds lame. I don't understand your percentages either. How can you have 4% of a zombie...

[dickflip 15]

TL;DR

Topic that I didn't understand, Zombies wouldn't just spawn and chace you.. Sounds lame. I don't understand your percentages either. How can you have 4% of a zombie...

 

4% chance of the horde being called out. The idea is for people who like zombie hordes, and those that don't. Those that don't like zombie hordes will have an added risk for loot searching cities.

[zhrike 264]

I think you have some interesting ideas, and I like most of them. That said:

 

There's hardly any interest to anywhere else on the map ... (aside from your bubbles)

For both Arma 2 Chernarus and Chernarus+ I strongly disagree.

1: You omitted Stary entirely. If applicable to the mod, you cannot leave that out. It was a hotly contested area.

2: If applicable to Chernarus+, you cannot simply gloss over the new military bases. They are heavily-trafficked (or were until the loot was nerfed in the last patch), and will be again. Zelenogorsk, all of the military camps, and Svetloyarsk are all very busy areas.

3: Military loot spawns in places other than military bases. It spawns more often there, yes, but you can avoid all of them, and both airfields and still come out equipped, healthy, full, and deadly.

4: With the number of enterable buildings now in Chernarus+, there are many areas of interest all over the map.

5: Chernarus+ has already been overhauled, and it continues. There are so many places up north that are placeholders for, not just towns and buildings, but in some cases large towns and buildings. I think the idea is, and has been all along, to try to spread people out along the map. Svetloyarsk is a great example.

6: We have data from the mod in terms of where players were actually going:

I believe that a current activity map from Chernarus+ would be more spread than this one, and the blooms would be in some new places.

Make more military bases

Disagree. There are enough. Level out the loot, make military items more rare (as they ought to be), and concentrate on more civilian weapons. Yes, some of them will have military grade weapons, but they'd be rare. The military camps would be cleaned out and empty immediately. Meanwhile people would have gun safes in their homes with hunting rifles, shotguns, etc.

And swords. Someone, somewhere would have to have some swords. How about a little museum with some awesome antiquated melee weapons? Battle Axe FTW!

Don't mean to be too critical, I really do like a lot of the ideas.

[dickflip 15]

 ^ All of this yeah except the already implemented military bases. They're all hogging the western side of the map. Sure reduce the loot spawn rates but still implement other military bases. Otherwise the traffic will still be incredibly high in those specific areas and there will be no new interest.

 

 

I commend you for putting in the Pavlovo, Zelenogorsk and Kabanino military spawns for a bit of variety but all it's done is make people go from Cherno, down the west coast and up through Zelenogorsk to get to the NW airfield.

 

Also, Svetloyarsk only has traffic as it's new and people are discovering it. Sure it may have a few more visitors when housing comes out and people place their houses up near it. But right now, it's just another coastal town.

 

 Enterable houses don't attract people to towns. It's just a form of creating more loot placements per spawn. Sure if the house designs were different in every town, then the enterable buildings would attract customers. But buildings are copy-pasted all over the shop, so it's just investigating the same layout but in a different valley.

 

 Thanks for the feedback though. And don't worry about being critical on the internet. Everyone's a dick on here anyway. And I don't think anything but what I'm asking for is going to change my opinion on Chernarus.

[thedogfoodyayho 295]

Svetloyarsk has several unique buldings. I'm hoping every new town has its own unique buildings, and maybe a few added to old towns. 

(Just an FYI, a prison model exists)

 

Theres also a large city street layout behind NEAF. By the several smaller streets around it, i think its going to have Apartments. Its about the size of Elektro, maybe bigger.

 

But yeah, rn everybody who actually goes inland goes straight for NW and makes stops at towns only for a can of food. Then they all end up wearing the exact same clothing, backpacks and weapons. More stuff in the center, like the old Stary mil camp, or a new, First-aid UN camp, a small hospital-type building, ect, would encourage exploration.

But who knows, maybe the stary tents are coming back?