Why DayZ is no survival game

[Wayze 549]

DayZ is a great game. I love it. In this game I am more emotionally involved than in any other game I have ever played. But there is one aspect I have to disagree with...

 

Now it may sound ridiculous, but DayZ is no survival game and it never has been.

 

What?! DayZ no survival game? But there is hunger, you can die of thirst and all that kind of stuff! It is super realistic!

 

Now hear me out, I will explain why DayZ is no survival game very soon, be patient.

 

 

Examples

 

You are Herberd, a guy who is running through the woods far, far in the north. You are hungry, you are thirsty. You survived for 200 hours, because you are a careful person. You don't have any ammunition for your weapon and your gear is mostly ruined. A friend is calling you "What's up man? I am at the coast, let's meet up!". Your friend at the coast? You would have to run hours to reach him. So you think: "What am I going to do?". Well, there is a simple solution, isn't there? You go climb up a tower and jump off the roof...

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

You are Janine, a woman who survived for 500 hours. You are a very skilled person. You know how to survive any combat situation. You use an M4 and really common gear. When you run up the stairs of a building you fall and break your right leg. The next hospital is far away, it would take you hours to limp over there.

Instead of crying for help, you go on the roof and jump down...

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

You are Mohammad, a guy who is always friendly to everyone. You survived for 1000 hours, your friendlyness is impressiv. But one thing you hate is other people telling you what to do. You walk along the coast. A group of 4 people is running straight at you. You never carry a weapon, so nobody shoots you on sight. Your are so funny that you managed everyone that engaged you to just leave you alone.

They tell you to stop. You make some jokes, but it seems they don't care about you. They tell you to drop your pants. Dropping your pants? You won't do this, you are a proud Mohammad and you would never do such a dishonorable thing. So you tell them "Go f*ck yourself", you are not kind anymore. One of the guys shoots you in the leg "DROP YOUR F*CKING PANTS AS*HOLE!", you have nothing to lose. No weapons, no gear, nothing. You simple tell them "Go on, kill me.".

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

You are Jack, you heard DayZ is a survival game. You start playing it. You find some gear, food and everything you need to survive. You run around in unpopulated areas so you don't get killed. You do that for 5 hours. Boring. Why are you doing it? There is no point is surviving. You decide to go to the coast and expirience something exciting.

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

I think you get the point. DayZ is no survival game because there is no point in surviving. If a player tries to survive at all costs, he will realise that the game is just boring. A life is simply worth nothing, the only thing there is are weapons, vehicles and houses. And as soon as you can store them, people will go maniac because they cannot lose anything if they die. A veteran character does not differ from a fresh spawn character.

 

But let us assume that there was a point in surviving.

 

 

What would happen?

 

If survival was more important than obtaining gear etc., people wouldn't run around the coast or hotspots. They would populate the whole map just to not encounter so many people. But as they do it, encounters will get more rare but also more unexpected. You are more likely to encounter a player at Shakhovka, because he will think the same as you think "I will go there because nobody is there". He wants to survive just like you, but you may encounter unwillingly.

Secondly people will act way more authentic. If I have a broken leg, I won't simply kill myself, I will do whatever I have to to survive. And if I have a 100 hours character, I may even kill my friend just to survive. These things happen in real life, but no way it would happen in DayZ. If you look at a character you spent weeks on, it may change the perspective of some players.

 

But how do we add the urge to survival, no matter what? The only way to do that, in my opinion, is adding a value to a characters life (obviously). And how to we do that? The only way is progression, meaning that the more you play a character, the more valuable he is. If I have a 100 hours character he is more valuable than a 10 hours character.

 

The most important question now is, how do we manage that? How do we add a value to a character? What would a player really care about?

 

 

Solutions?

 

Statistics:

It could show your friends how long your survived. But I don't think that would solve anything. How many people actually care about statistics, especially in a game like DayZ?

 

Appearance:

Your character could change his look the longer he survives. Not a good option in my opinion. Who cares about looking like a survivor? And more importantly, how do you want to differ a 100 hours character from a 1000 hours character?

 

Skills:

This is the only way to go in my opinion. The more you do something, the better you get in it. The more you craft things, the more chance you have to craft prestine things. The more you treat wounds, the less likely it is that you make a mistake while doing it. The more you repair engines, the more likely you are to repair a helicopter. etc.

Problem with this is, you have to balance it. We don't want immortal super soldiers, but the additions have to be good enough to add a real value to the character. It has to be more valuable than a really rare weapon. Doing something faster is not enough, because people don't really need that. They will still risk their lifes and do stupid things, I mean who cares if something is taking you 10 seconds or 9?

And the other thing is, if someone survived for 500 hours, hasn't he deserved a really good boost? I would give such a person the ability to shoot like a robot. Problem I am talking about is that the more your survive the better has to be the reward. If you survived 100 hours or 500 hours you want to feel the difference, otherwise it gets pointless and boring to survive longer.

 

???:

???

 

If you have ideas for solving this problem, for adding value to a character, go on and present it right here. I think this is the most important part for the game to change. We have to find a solution, or we will never have a survival game as Dean Hall intended it to be from the beginning.

(I know there have been similar threads like that, and I made one about character value myself, but in this one I wanted to point out what is wrong about DayZ in its current state)

Edited February 2, 2014 by Wayze

[Element47 2481]

carefully formed search strings in the suggestions subforum will reveal several discussion threads to every single of the points you bring up, which i am sure you are aware of.

we have more than enough post-farming threads where the same arguments are repeated again and again...

[crimsonbzd 247]

DayZ is a great game. I love it. In this game I am more emotionally involved than in any other game I have ever played. But there is one aspect I have to disagree with...

 

Now it may sound ridiculous, but DayZ is no survival game and it never has been.

 

What?! DayZ no survival game? But there is hunger, you can die of thirst and all that kind of stuff! It is super realistic!

 

Now hear me out, I will explain why DayZ is no survival game very soon, be patient.

 

 

Examples

 

You are Herberd, a guy who is running through the woods far, far in the north. You are hungry, you are thirsty. You survived for 200 hours, because you are a careful person. You don't have any ammunition for your weapon and your gear is mostly ruined. A friend is calling you "What's up man? I am at the coast, let's meet up!". Your friend at the coast? You would have to run hours to reach him. So you think: "What am I going to do?". Well, there is a simple solution, isn't there? You go climb up a tower and jump off the roof...

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

You are Janine, a woman who survived for 500 hours. You are a very skilled person. You know how to survive any combat situation. You use an M4 and really common gear. When you run up the stairs of a building you fall and break your right leg. The next hospital is far away, it would take you hours to limp over there.

Instead of crying for help, you go on the roof and jump down...

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

You are Mohammad, a guy who is always friendly to everyone. You survived for 1000 hours, your friendlyness is impressiv. But one thing you hate is other people telling you what to do. You walk along the coast. A group of 4 people is running straight at you. You never carry a weapon, so nobody shoots you on sight. Your are so funny that you managed everyone that engaged you to just leave you alone.

They tell you to stop. You make some jokes, but it seems they don't care about you. They tell you to drop your pants. Dropping your pants? You won't do this, you are a proud Mohammad and you would never do such a dishonorable thing. So you tell them "Go f*ck yourself", you are not kind anymore. One of the guys shoots you in the leg "DROP YOUR F*CKING PANTS AS*HOLE!", you have nothing to lose. No weapons, no gear, nothing. You simple tell them "Go on, kill me.".

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

You are Jack, you heard DayZ is a survival game. You start playing it. You find some gear, food and everything you need to survive. You run around in unpopulated areas so you don't get killed. You do that for 5 hours. Boring. Why are you doing it? There is no point is surviving. You decide to go to the coast and expirience something exciting.

YOU ARE DEAD.

You respawn.

 

I think you get the point. DayZ is no survival game because there is no point in surviving. If a player tries to survive at all costs, he will realise that the game is just boring. A life is simply worth nothing, the only thing there is are weapons, vehicles and houses. And as soon as you can store them, people will go maniac because they cannot lose anything if they die. A veteran character does not differ from a fresh spawn character.

 

But let us assume that there was a point in surviving.

 

 

What would happen?

 

If survival was more important than obtaining gear etc., people wouldn't run around the coast or hotspots. They would populate the whole map just to not encounter so many people. But as they do it, encounters will get more rare but also more unexpected. You are more likely to encounter a player at Shakhovka, because he will think the same as you think "I will go there because nobody is there". He wants to survive just like you, but you may encounter unwillingly.

Secondly people will act way more authentic. If I have a broken leg, I won't simply kill myself, I will do whatever I have to to survive. And if I have a 100 hours character, I may even kill my friend just to survive. These things happen in real life, but no way it would happen in DayZ. If you look at a character you spent weeks on, it may change the perspective of some players.

 

But how do we add the urge to survival, no matter what? The only way to do that, in my opinion, is adding a value to a characters life (obviously). And how to we do that? The only way is progression, meaning that the more you play a character, the more valuable he is. If I have a 100 hours character he is more valuable than a 10 hours character.

 

The most important question now is, how do we manage that? How do we add a value to a character? What would a player really care about?

 

 

Solutions?

 

Statistics:

It could show your friends how long your survived. But I don't think that would solve anything. How many people actually care about statistics, especially in a game like DayZ?

 

Appearance:

Your character could change his look the longer he survives. Not a good option in my opinion. Who cares about looking like a survivor? And more importantly, how do you want to differ a 100 hours character from a 1000 hours character?

 

Skills:

This is the only way to go in my opinion. The more you do something, the better you get in it. The more you craft things, the more chance you have to craft prestine things. The more you treat wounds, the less likely it is that you make a mistake while doing it. The more you repair engines, the more likely you are to repair a helicopter. etc.

Problem with this is, you have to balance it. We don't want immortal super soldiers, but the additions have to be good enough to add a real value to the character. It has to be more valuable than a really rare weapon. Doing something faster is not enough, because people don't really need that. They will still risk their lifes and do stupid things, I mean who cares if something is taking you 10 seconds or 9?

And the other thing is, if someone survived for 500 hours, hasn't he deserved a really good boost? I would give such a person the ability to shoot like a robot. Problem I am talking about is that the more your survive the better has to be the reward. If you survived 100 hours or 500 hours you want to feel the difference, otherwise it gets pointless and boring to survive longer.

 

???:

???

 

If you have ideas for solving this problem, for adding value to a character, go on and present it right here. I think this is the most important part for the game to change. We have to find a solution, or we will never have a survival game as Dean Hall intended it to be from the beginning.

(I know there have been similar threads like that, and I made one about character value myself, but in this one I wanted to point out what is wrong about DayZ in its current state)

 

Alpha.

 

Like that guy said, use the search bar.

 

I'm sorry you spent all that time writing it, it looked great, but I fear few will actually read it.

 

However, I am going to make a new poll thread based off this idea to get a good community idea on the matter.

[frosti 2165]

Yeah it was discussed many times that there need to be more survival.

[TedZ 424]

This

is

Alpha

=)

[lumo1234 68]

I do agree with you, character progression is a good idea if its implemented correctly and does not break the balance of a game.

 

I.E small things such as the more you hunt and skin/gut/cook animals the more efficient you get at it, say you've cooked a lot of meals, your meals are more filling.

 

Adding a cap to how many skills you can "master" would be another good way of forming groups.

 

Anyway wont go into too much detail, im sure the idea has already been thrown around by the dev team, and how/what they are going to do may already of been decided.

 

P.S Prepare for the stupidly high amount of people posting with "This is alpha!" (2 people already in the time it took me to type this out)

[Wayze 549]

Guys, it has nothing to do with alpha. If Dean doesn't want to implement such features, because he fears that players don't like it, he won't do it. And as it looks, he really fears it. He was talking about implementing a medical skill system, but it is not enough for the game to be a survival game. No matter how many features you add, there has to be progression at the character himself. And if this is not in the plans of developement, which I think is the case, it will NEVER be a survival game until some modders do the impossible.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Wayze

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

The examples you gave are not problems for DayZ to fix. They're players that need to realize dayz isn't for them.

 

If your first instinct when faced with a 10km journey is to jump off a roof, why the fuck should the game change to suit you?

[skoms 86]

 

You are Mohammad, a guy who is always friendly to everyone.

 

LOL

[Wayze 549]

The examples you gave are not problems for DayZ to fix. They're players that need to realize dayz isn't for them.

 

If your first instinct when faced with a 10km journey is to jump off a roof, why the fuck should the game change to suit you?

Now I ask you, what would be the point of running 10km? What would be the point of wasting 1 hour of my life just to do something I can reach within 2 minutes? And the best part, I do not lose ANYTHING. It is not the players fault that he is talking the most intelligent way to do something.

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

LOL

 

Arabs are some of the nicest people I've ever met.

[Wayze 549]

carefully formed search strings in the suggestions subforum will reveal several discussion threads to every single of the points you bring up, which i am sure you are aware of.

we have more than enough post-farming threads where the same arguments are repeated again and again...

As I said, I want to point out why DayZ is no survival game. Did not find that with my search skills. Maybe you can help me? :)

[DeatHTaX 1217]

Now I ask you, what would be the point of running 10km? What would be the point of wasting 1 hour of my life just to do something I can reach within 2 minutes? And the best part, I do not lose ANYTHING. It is not the players fault that he is talking the most intelligent way to do something.

 

The fact that someone would think it's a waste of time kind of points towards the whole mindset problem someone who makes that decision has.

 

This game is totally about the journey, and not the destination, to be completely cliche

[Wayze 549]

The fact that someone would think it's a waste of time kind of points towards the whole mindset problem someone who makes that decision has.

 

This game is totally about the journey, and not the destination, to be completely cliche

Nope, the game is not about the journey. The game is about whatever you want it to be. And you cannot decide that for others. It may be the journey for you, but it is simply something else for the others. Besides, if you saw every place in chernarus 100 times you won't give a f*ck about the journey anymore.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Wayze

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

Now I ask you, what would be the point of running 10km? What would be the point of wasting 1 hour of my life just to do something I can reach within 2 minutes? And the best part, I do not lose ANYTHING. It is not the players fault that he is talking the most intelligent way to do something.

 

First of all I wouldn't be communicating with people 10km away. Secondly, if I wanted to go 10km, I would just run there because survival is what I'm looking for in my DayZ time. I'm not looking for a quick fix, I'm not looking to maximize my fun. I'm not looking to work the system to make my time more useful. I'm looking to put myself to the test in the environment Rocket has outlined for us.

 

If you can't find the point in running 10km, what's the point in even playing DayZ? What's the point in playing any video game? It's all just meaningless 1's and 0's painting pixels on your screen. You gain nothing, your time is always wasted.

[Whyherro123 2283]

Good points. I never played the mod, but even when I researched it in anticipation of the Standalone, it appeared that there wasn't really much of an endgame, where players have something to strive for once they get their basic needs met. I understand that a lot of "hardcore" players apparently disregard Epoch as "unrealistic, not the real Day Z, carebearish", but I believe that something like Epoch is entirely needed and necessary in order to provide some sort of endgame.

Thing is, make it entirely player-driven, like EVE. 

[Combine (DayZ) 247]

Precisely. Without any pink glasses on: DayZ is a survival game. Many aspects include survival.

 

It's just that most core features or intended features are still missing because *drum roll* Alpha. It is still growing. Also, fact is, we can not be 100% certain on development. While the game has set goals from the devs, feedback can and will always influence those just slightly or perhaps completely. It really depends.

 

Time will tell.

[SolidOwlPL 37]

Survival - "the state or fact of continuing to live or exist, typically in spite of an accident, ordeal, or difficult circumstances."

 

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/survival

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

Nope, the game is not about the journey. The game is about whatever you want it to be. And you cannot decide that for others. It may be the journey for you, but it is simply something else for the others. Besides, if you saw every place in chernarus 100 times you won't give a f*ck about the journey anymore.

 

So you've met every person in Chernarus? This is a multiplayer game. The journey has more than just scenery.

[skyline-gtr 130]

Not sure if I have this correct but your main gripe seems to be that you can respawn ?

 

Let me say that I do consider DayZ to be a survival game. Maybe my ignorance but I have yet to see a game which has more survival aspects then this.

If we took out respawning, it would solve the issue which i think you have but not in the way you intend.

It would still be about survival but would no longer be a game.

[frosti 2165]

Precisely. Without any pink glasses on: DayZ is a survival game. Many aspects include survival.

 

It's just that most core features or intended features are still missing because *drum roll* Alpha. It is still growing. Also, fact is, we can not be 100% certain on development. While the game has set goals from the devs, feedback can and will always influence those just slightly or perhaps completely. It really depends.

 

Time will tell.

 

I think that somethign so simple as score board with survived hours per life would be enought to make surviving interesting for now. Maybe server bound.

[Wayze 549]

Not sure if I have this correct but your main gripe seems to be that you can respawn ?

 

Let me say that I do consider DayZ to be a survival game. Maybe my ignorance but I have yet to see a game which has more survival aspects then this.

If we took out respawning, it would solve the issue which i think you have but not in the way you intend.

It would still be about survival but would no longer be a game.

The game has survival aspects, never said something different. But being a survival game requires to have a point in surviving. Right now in DayZ there is no point in surviving. And no, read the post, I was not talking about removing respawning. xD

 

Precisely. Without any pink glasses on: DayZ is a survival game. Many aspects include survival.

 

It's just that most core features or intended features are still missing because *drum roll* Alpha. It is still growing. Also, fact is, we can not be 100% certain on development. While the game has set goals from the devs, feedback can and will always influence those just slightly or perhaps completely. It really depends.

 

Time will tell.

We are the community. We are here, right now. We can change the development. This is the whole point of this community. Saying "time will tell", won't help anyone.

[Element47 2481]

skill progression wont happen. many do not want it, and iirc dean stated it does not fit the vision.

 

If you would follow what Dean and the dev team actually communicate to the community, you'd know all the survival focus that is planned, like an exposure system inspired by the Frostfall mod  (he is actually in touch with the dev of that mod due to this), or improvised weapons like makeshift bow and hunting/fishing taking an important role in maintaining your character healthy

 

stats and appearance have been positively discussed by the community. considering the fact that Dean is a stat whore i am sure we will see a lot of possible numbers available to the player to base bragging rights on.

[MuchHigher 65]

These are the DayZ of our lives.

[DeatHTaX 1217]

Nope, the game is not about the journey. The game is about whatever you want it to be. And you cannot decide that for others. It may be the journey for you, but it is simply something else for the others. Besides, if you saw every place in chernarus 100 times you won't give a f*ck about the journey anymore.

 

Okay way to contradict yourself lol.

 

And I and many other people say it is primarily about the journey.

 

Going through towns, meeting different people, experiencing near death encounters, firefights, exploring the expansive landscapes, finding new locations, being startled by a zombie who ran through a wall, making Bambis fight over who wants to be in your group, and the list goes on. Who plays this game simply to get somewhere or to find loot? That's an incredibly sad and ultimately unfulfilling way to play this game if you ask me.

 

So yeah, to me this game is about the journey, and on a journey you meet people, have great experiences, and ultimately have a great time.

 

Why on earth would you want anything else from a game like this?