Knowledge: The Ultimate Weapon.

[Rudette 435]

Everyone should know basic improvised skills, but In post apocalyptic settings a commonalty that you see in media is that people with knowledge and trade skills are coveted. They are highly useful finite resources in their own right. A doctor might even be taken into a group forcefully.  This would amplify some of those standoff situations, giving you another quality to bargain with! Going into Zed infested towns to attain pre-outbreak knowledge would serve as a cornerstone for community building amongst groups of players.  For example:  

What if characters couldn’t innately test and draw blood for blood bags? Imagine that your character found a medical journal of some sort in a lootable hospitable. You learned this rare and valuable skill, but then you’re held up by bandits!  You plea with them not to shoot--- that you know how to draw blood and it could prove useful!  Rather than lying face down in the dirt while your backpack is being looted, you are instead still walking on two feet, all be it indoctrinated into their group.

When the crafting system is elaborated on a bit more and animals are brought into the fold a book on skinning animals might prove useful to someone trying to make a living in the woods as it might provide better quality hides for gear crafting. Perhaps there could be the addition of gunshops in some of the smaller towns—but since they are so easily accessible, the loot table would represent that they were probably sacked during the early stages of the outbreak. For most players the contents would be, for the most part, useless.  For players who had attained a book on how to craft and recycle ammunition the bullet casings they scrounge there could prove useful.

These books could be elaborated on with every major update to the game. For every new type of system, there could be basic skills that everyone innately knows and advanced skill sets to learn from rare and valueble book loot.

Edited January 30, 2014 by Rudette

[AsHawkins 96]

This is really good! I have really high hopes that they implement a way to grow food, farming would be such a fun asset to DayZ, and if they add Radiation Zones, let it affect the ability to grow crops or not. But to be able to protect your stuff while waiting for it to mature would be a lot of fun. Or really frustrating.

[burkino_026@yahoo.com 14]

i like this too.

 

Skills are suggested by many, and hated by so many others.

But a simple skille system sounds plausible given the fact you're basically moving a character in a virtual world, who isnt a all-round specialist in every possible aspect of everything.

I'd say, a basic starting level understanding of how to do everything (let's call it "common sense") which will enable you to perform every function, or, almost all, that you can do in the finished game. But, and especially for more complicated ones, at a more extended time, and with a mediocre quality of results. (when i talk about increased completion time, i'm implying you can cancel the action and animation at any time, if you're in danger for example).

 

Learning a skill would mean getting better at something, learning how to do it the proper way. Practice will make you faster and more efficient at it.

 

So, in action, this could be:

Yes, i can fire my M4, yes i can swap magazines, yes I can put and extract bullets from my magazine, etc. But i'm really shit at cleaning the weapon and clearing jams, and it takes me forever to swap a magazine when the gun has gone dry, because i also have to cock it.

Reading a manual will enlighten your character with proper knowledge and make him/her more proficient at using the weapon.

 

Yes I can kill a rabbit. Yes I can skin it and gut it, yes i can cook it and eat it. But I make a bloody mess of it and waste a lot of meat, possibly dirtying my clothes in the process, too. And, you know, fresh rabbit blood attracts wolves... just saying...

Reading a hunter's book will give your character all the knowledge to make the entire process efficient.

 

I dont think people will moan about it being the same old RPG character building game. The skill building i mentioned is simple and straightforward and doesnt imply pumping your character with god-like level 100 skills in any way. Just going from "i make a mess" to "i do it neatly. no problema". THATS IT.

 

 

Dean. Read this topic and agree lolololol

[xRann 126]

Books have been suggested before as a source of knowledge to build character depth and value of life. An issue with this is that I already know trauma care and emergency medicine. As my character is an extension of my knowledge base and ability in the sandbox how do you determine which skills aren't "common knowledge" and must be gained?

 

Execution of the "skill books" is where most the issues arise. How do you determine what would be required? With the proper, or even most of the proper, equipment needed someone with time and veins could wing it and learn with little or no knowledge but a vague understanding of the how. Handicapping everyone who hasn't "read" the book but intimately knows the subject material is not a good idea.

[Rudette 435]

Just going from "i make a mess" to "i do it neatly. no problema". THATS IT.

 

This could be a nice approach too! The best of the both worlds? No one is excluding from doing a task, but someone with knowledge or properly experienced after repition could do it more effeciently?

[KerrSG1 113]

Is that knowledge lost at every respawn and you have to start learning it all over again?

[Roshi (DayZ) 396]

I'd love it if the systems for medicine, vehicle mechanics, hunting and dressing animals, making snares etc rewarded real-world knowledge (rather than your character possessing the knowledge).

[crimsonbzd 247]

Everyone should know basic improvised skills, but In post apocalyptic settings a commonalty that you see in media is that people with knowledge and trade skills are coveted. They are highly useful finite resources in their own right. A doctor might even be taken into a group forcefully.  This would amplify some of those standoff situations, giving you another quality to bargain with! Going into Zed infested towns to attain pre-outbreak knowledge would serve as a cornerstone for community building amongst groups of players.  For example:  

What if characters couldn’t innately test and draw blood for blood bags? Imagine that your character found a medical journal of some sort in a lootable hospitable. You learned this rare and valuable skill, but then you’re held up by bandits!  You plea with them not to shoot--- that you know how to draw blood and it could prove useful!  Rather than lying face down in the dirt while your backpack is being looted, you are instead still walking on two feet, all be it indoctrinated into their group.

When the crafting system is elaborated on a bit more and animals are brought into the fold a book on skinning animals might prove useful to someone trying to make a living in the woods as it might provide better quality hides for gear crafting. Perhaps there could be the addition of gunshops in some of the smaller towns—but since they are so easily accessible, the loot table would represent that they were probably sacked during the early stages of the outbreak. For most players the contents would be, for the most part, useless.  For players who had attained a book on how to craft and recycle ammunition the bullet casings they scrounge there could prove useful.

These books could be elaborated on with every major update to the game. For every new type of system, there could be basic skills that everyone innately knows and advanced skill sets to learn from rare and valueble book loot.

 

While the details need to be tweaked, I am in full support of this.

I would personally like to see it as a system were newspawns start out being forced to play like the mod. A weak, fumbly melee, along with poor gun skills and poor rudementary hunting skills (when that's implemented of course)

 

But then you must find books around the game to collect these "upgrades".

 

Speaking of it in a game sense, it sounds very out of place for DayZ, however the type of survivor that washes up on the coast every spawn is not really identified. How much training do you have, etc? 

 

Collect the books, learn to cook better, shoot better, melee better, block, etc.

[Survivor_Sabre 23]

It would be absolutely amazing, but there are a lot of problems with it also. For example, why would the bandit not just shoot the medically aware player and just take the book for themselves? No player would leave something that valuable behind.

A learning curve by repetition would be fairer. As they say, practice makes perfect.  :)

[Rudette 435]

It might come off as too "gamey" for DayZ, but what if the skill-related books were consumables?
Or in the scenario that they are not consumables, perhaps you only have a % chance at comprehending the knowledge you find?
Another alternative is that learning could instead be done with experience/repitition.

The implementation of skills/knowledge feature of course would have to be done very thoughtfully, or it wouldn't fit the unforgiving ambiance shared by DayZ's other mechanics. 

Edited January 30, 2014 by Rudette

[Martmital 436]

Skill sets don't sit well with me... and radiation zones? Please no!

[KerrSG1 113]

The problem with radiation zones is there are no 'rad pills'  That's very "Fallout"  If you suffer from radiation sickness, the only chance you really have is a full marrow and blood transplant, and that's not in the worst cases.  It'd be a wasting death with no real chance of recovery.

[Rudette 435]

I'm not too keen on the idea of radiation zones myself! That said, other looking dead sexy, a practical use for gas masks would be cool.

Maybe tear gas or something down the road?

Edited January 31, 2014 by Rudette

[yessaul robinovich 42]

how about a skill book for marksmanship that makes you auto-aim better.

 

 

 

your ideas on 'skills' for other things like medicine or crafting are pretty much that preposterous. 

[Rudette 435]

your ideas on 'skills' for other things like medicine or crafting are pretty much that preposterous. 

Why is that? Elabroate please!

I think tradeskills and what have you would make for more drama and human dynamic. I mean. What do really need to take people hostage for and force-feed them other than holding them up for their stuff? Wouldn't it be cool actually take prisoners for prolonged amounts of time for various different reasons---reasons that transcend the usual torture?

The blood drawing of course, was just an example. I wouldn't propose actually taking away any basic skills from people, but perhaps implementing advanced mechanics that require those special skills as mentioned. Or to simplify it further, skills that just make you more effecient at something everyone can do.

 

Edited January 31, 2014 by Rudette

[xRann 126]

The mod and SA are both meta and immersive, I just don't see a implementation that wouldn't hinder actual knowledge and ability with game knowledge and ability. And that's not even getting into ones ability to teach and pass a skillset or tradecraft.

[Rudette 435]

Ah! I see where you're coming from. However, I still see the potential in a skill system!

Edited January 31, 2014 by Rudette

[yessaul robinovich 42]

gunplay is a skill belonging not to the character, but to the player. a capable marksman benefits in the game by way of his skill at marksmanship, not his 'character's skill' - good example of an abstracted marksmanship skill would be in something like fallout or wasteland, where your accuracy is either entirely dependent upon some metric of a character or significantly influenced by it. This is a pretty common device that games use to abstract knowledge or complex gameplay mechanics. for example, why implement a fully-fledged medical system that would be a lot of work and require someone actually familiar with practicing medicine in the real world when you can tie results of using medical items/interactions to a %-based 'skill' metric or something like that.

 

You can use that sort of a system to abstract/bypass a lot of things - medicine, crafting, gathering resources, navigation and situational awareness. but, as it stands right now, marksmanship and gunplay are controlled by the player's skill, not an abstracted value of their character's ability. And if what you propose was to be implemented into dayz, marksmanship would be pretty much the measure of a player's skill, further making dayz an FPS with light RPG elements. DAYZ is not billed as such - it promotes itself as a survival simulator, and generally emphasizes the skills a player brings to bear rather than a 'character' - you're not role-playing another entity so much as behaving instinctively in a setting designed to immerse you, the player. And what would make  great deal more sense, what truly separates dayZ from a lot of the things out there and things it has influenced since would be more complex gameplay mechanics/systems that allow more and more of player's real-life abilities to be tapped into.

 

Give you one pretty basic example: DAYZ takes place in russia. The street signs are in russian. This is a language I'm fluent in and can easily tell where I am without having had to consult a map outside of the game. This is also a player skill, not something my character has read in some kind of a book. Its a clear advantage that i receive the same way someone trained in the army to use the mil-dot system effectively can range a target or someone who knows how to read the stars can find their way north. 

 

More of these things need to be integrated, starting from a robust medical system that takes under advisement recommendations of players we have in the medical field.There definitely need to be ways to identify yourself in-game as a particular type of specialist in order to immediately and visually communicate that to other people, but in terms of actually having the skills to be a doctor, Roshi has created some pretty good mockups of basic medical systems and how they could work in the game. The same goes for crafting and resources. Basic knowledge of various kinds of plants and berries could help someone learn how to pick the ones that aren't going to poison them, and which ones have better nutrition. The same goes for construction, barricading buildings and repairing vehicles.. these things all need complex gameplay mechanics solutions that will take a long time to properly design and implement

 

but THAT is what dayz is about. not abstracted skill % or 'characters'. plenty of other games do that. but this game aims to do something else entirely.. 

[Rudette 435]

Ah. I See. That puts things into a new prospective for me. I will have to contemplate this.

Thank you for taking the time to lay it all out for me. ^-^