Saving Gear: welcoming solution

[roadtripper 4]

Hi,

 

I've been playing this awesome game for some time, and I have come with a solution that is (I think) a great addition to this survival gameplay:

 

Very frustrating is it, when you try to stay alive but because of some mistake you loose everything.. Example: Though I am always friendly I have been killed many times just because I wanted to make contact. Now that I have a great kit, I do not want to interact because of the risk of loosing it all. But, this takes away a great aspect of the game.

 

So how would you grant players the possibility to regain their kit faster and more conventient: like real survival - you can bury things!

 

So the idea is to give more attention to containers (bags, backpacks, military containers/ boxes) which are needed to bury items (gear) in the ground. You can fill these with items you want to save and bury it on any location. You will have to remember the exact location by the landmarks, since only people with a map and a pen can mark it 'X'. From where-ever you're spawned: you need to reach that exact point. So it also brings a mission to the gameplay.

 

Bury things with bare hands will take you 1 or 2 minutes, but I've seen a shovel: so with this it should be done in 20 seconds.

Of course you can use different items, with different shovel qualities.

 

After you die, this container will remain in the ground for a certain period of time (depending on quality of container) and is connected to the player and not character. But as longs as the player is in the server, other players should be able to dig it up... when they see someone bury things somewhere, they should be able to wait and get the score or attack during action.

 

Please, let me know what you think :)

Edited February 7, 2014 by roadtripper

[novogeek 253]

I guess fundamentally the idea to bury things isn't a bad idea ... but if you look at the perma-death system ... how would your new character know where your old stuff was buried.

 

I guess the same can be said for your tents and stuff and you can't always have super realism.

 

I like the burying thing ... but there should always be a risk. There should be a visual indicator that something is buried here ... so people who are looking can try and find your stuff. There should also be a chance that if you just bury something without protecting it that it will get damaged or destroyed.

[roadtripper 4]

The ground of course is 'molled-up'... stirred up.. or whatever you call it.. 

 

I understand that in real-life you can not simply know where exact you previous character has burried some items.. but frankly when I think about it: you start your game in the madness in the middle of nowhere.. so there is a lot of assumptions. So looking at the story-line or experience, I'd say you could make an assumption on how your 'new' character knows where to look... it may have been a friend who told him/her.

 

Of course others could be at the site when entering the server, so there is of course a risk that another player came by, saw the ground and burried it up.

[Lupine 14]

Yes, the Idea of Stashes around the country side is a good idea. you could require several items to make it happen though.. like (as suggested) a shovel (but how about a collasable military one that fits in the pack) a yellow box or ammo can, maybe the burlap sack and plastic bags and duct tape can add a month or two to its life. you would have to have a limit on how many "stashes" a player could bury (so that they are technically "nodes) so.. 40 players on a server are aloud 5-10 reserved stashes for a maximiun of 400 "reserved" on any server at one time.

 

If someone finds your stash.. (you could possibley "craft a stash" of some sort.. out of stumps or logs or rocks in the forest) then when you log in or when someone discovers it you get a message saying "stash number 4 found" or some such thing... at least letting you know that you dont have to waste your time with trying to recover it. even better if you could short name each stash ie: stash number 4 "first-aid & food" ... "found". you could potentially have a window that opens up from your Inventory. I feel it is important to make this game to anialistic.. the fact u die, you restart with nothing really really really becomes "old" quickly. There needs to be some sort of insurance or benifit from being a vetran player, else people will get bored and move on.

[Wolfguarde 108]

It's not a bad idea, though they should be raidable all the time. Indicators should differ depending on the terrain the item is buried in (torn-up grass around a dirt patch in grassy areas, dirty/rocky snow atop snow-capped mountains, exposed roots in forests, rough patches in fields). If animals are added, there should be a chance on server tick/restart that animals prone to digging will find a stash with food or drinks and ruin some of the contents, or eat the food if it's not canned. There would need to be a cap on how many the player can make, and they should by rights not be able to store much (a backpack full of materials per hole at most). The bigger the stash, the more disturbed the ground around it looks.
As for players not knowing where their predecessors buried their things, I look at it this way: the roleplay element does not necessarily give you a character, just a shell with which to explore the world and feel its desolation. It is not deep enough to warrant questions of memory. And what's to stop a person in an apocalypse from searching for stashes? It's definitely not a stupid idea if you know what to look for.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Wolfguarde

[Sonic-NKT 38]

i like the idea, but it should be visible if other players stumble in the woods over it.

But i guess this kind of stuff is best on a server with its own hive, so people can dug things up even if the player isnt in the game.

If a character died the things should disappear after a short time so the server wont get to crowded.

[chekovp 89]

Its an alright idea, but its not really that hard to gear up and the lag this could cause would probably be pretty bad.

As for Lupine's suggestion, I don't think it would work too well. As there is a max of 40 people per server at this time, this could increase and probably will. But it won't always be the same 40 people on the server, this will increase the amount of saved "stashes" to a possibly infinite amount. You could put a cap on the amount of stashes per server, but this would give significant advantages to only specific people who were able to set stashes before the cap was hit. Just my opinion, I'm very against anything that gives any one player an advantage over another.