Respawning Loot Prototype

[gorvi 189]

Why wouldn't it be common sense to take what a developer says literally? If Rocket says "We're adding vehicles", should I disregard the very literal statement that they're adding vehicles and instead assume that they're adding tanks and airplanes? Rocket says that under said system the world is divided into quadrants. That's 4 sections, split into NE, NW, SE, and SW squares. These quadrants reset after being "empty" for a timer. Also, doors reset. I've got questions about those very factual statements.

 

This is where assumption comes into play.  never assume.  you are making an ass out of you and me.

 

For other uses of the word quadrant.  Please consult your local library.

[Publik 404]

Yeah, another thing about the "quadrant" system is that certain quadrants will inevitably be weighted with loot. Unless they make each "quadrant" the same, which would be boring and probably would cause folks to continue residing on the coast 24/7.

The entire eastern portion could be empty just by having players respawn there.

 

Edit: I should point out that Nizhnoye and Veresnik sit rather close to that dividing line, as do Stary and Novy

 

This is where assumption comes into play.  never assume.  you are making an ass out of you and me.

 

For other uses of the word quadrant.  Please consult your local library.

So I should take what he says literally and not assume anything? I'm very confused

Edited April 4, 2014 by Publik

[hefeweizen 254]

Intended purpose is to cater to the whiny kids who want everything in the game immediately after they spawn.

 

Caters to the people too lazy to venture in land to find loot.

 

Caters to the casual newbies.

The virginity is strong with this one.

[gorvi 189]

So I should take what he says literally and not assume anything? I'm very confused

 

I have an idea that it will be split into quadrants then sectors representing a minimum/maximum amount of items before checking for spawn.  Sectors would be a group of cells such as entire towns and other landmarks while the quadrants will cover the map as a whole.

 

An example on your map would be; if there is no player in NWAF quad, the game could safely replenish items in that area.  Now if 3 players were in your coast quad, the game would recognize this and go to the next step which would be sectors.  Now lets say there is a sniper camping near a sector or quadrant.  It would stop him from seeing doors open/close and loot appearing by being in that quadrant, but other sectors in the quadrants a set distance(1-2km?) from players would still spawn.

 

quadrants in reference are nothing more then a large scale coordinate system.

 

When it comes to loot distribution, there will be checks in place to ensure against your pliers scenario.  I have a feeling loot will work nothing like it does now a and will be more sparsely distributed with the new system.

 

examples being

 

quadrant 2

sector 3b

level 1 loot: pliers, basic clothing, etc.  max 10, min 3.

level 2 loot: axes, medicine, etc.  max 5, min 1.

level 3 loot guns, bullets, food, etc.  max 3, min 0.

 

all these could randomly spawn more or less quality/quantity loot.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Gorvi

[Mahado 15]

Why won't you just refresh the loot periodically and have decaying system for dropped items..? Hopping can be prevented to some degree once you get to have your own databases for each server (meaning that you won't share same character for every server). Other then that I guess increasing the time to join new server after hopping would discourage it even more.

 

Every X hours:

Loot system

 

- Checks if the spot has loot

- If it has, then it refreshes it by changing it randomly from loot table. (Chances for no loot of course as well, in case that happens and the spot has loot, then nothing happens.)
- If it doesn't, then respawns if there is no player nearby. (Talking about few meters)

Decaying system

 

If item is dropped by player, it'll expire after XX Minutes/hours. Picking it up resets this timer.

These would do the following:

 

* Changes loot periodically if it has been left untouched (ex. being "trashy" loot)
* Removes items dropped by Player
* Prevents "waiting" at the spawn for loot

* Doesn't prevent hopping. But, should it be prevented by this system anyway?

 

[mgc 92]

Why won't you just refresh the loot periodically and have decaying system for dropped items..? Hopping can be prevented to some degree once you get to have your own databases for each server (meaning that you won't share same character for every server). Other then that I guess increasing the time to join new server after hopping would discourage it even more.

 

Every X hours:

Loot system

 

- Checks if the spot has loot

- If it has, then it refreshes it by changing it randomly from loot table. (Chances for no loot of course as well, in case that happens and the spot has loot, then nothing happens.)

- If it doesn't, then respawns if there is no player nearby. (Talking about few meters)

Decaying system

 

If item is dropped by player, it'll expire after XX Minutes/hours. Picking it up resets this timer.

These would do the following:

 

* Changes loot periodically if it has been left untouched (ex. being "trashy" loot)

* Removes items dropped by Player

* Prevents "waiting" at the spawn for loot

* Doesn't prevent hopping. But, should it be prevented by this system anyway?

 

""Doesn't prevent hopping. But, should it be prevented by this system anyway?""

I think it would be convenient if the new loot system has some anti hopper features.

[fig0451 85]

System is hamfisted and inelegant. It's also not very transparent to the player.

I don't really see how you can say that, given that you know literally none of the details, as you point out in another of your own posts.

 

What constitutes an "empty" quadrant?

No one knows. It could literally mean empty, or it could mean 75% of the items have been taken leaving 25% of the items still there, or any other number. Quadrant could restock known empty positions and leave the things that are still there ... still there.

Better question: How big is a quadrant? If a quadrant is large, it would make sense to have a threshold level as I've described above. If a quadrant is small, that threshold could be smaller, or absolute.

 

 

• Do useless items like wrenches count towards a quadrant being "empty"?
• Do players need to pick up these useless items to make the quadrant empty?
• Do players dropping items cause a quadrant to not be empty?

For the first two, the answer is probably yes, and the answer to the third is probably no.

Why?

Fairly simple: The quadrant system probably only cares about item spawn locations. So, things in the place they are spawned count, and other things don't. This is optimal because then to do a respawn check, the system only has to check it's known locations, as opposed to doing an intensive search to find all items in the map and then define whether or not they are in some geographical area. It's much more likely that a 'quadrant' is just a defined group of item spawns, as this would be less intensive on the script.

 

How quickly do quadrants restock?

No one knows, but a reasonable solution seems to be something like ... oh I dunno, say an hour delay. Every 15 minutes have each quadrant check to see if it is empty, or meets the emptiness threshold as I described above, then that starts an 45 minute timer for it to restock. If Timer is in effect, quit checking, until the spawn happens where one last check is done to see if any additional items have been taken, then you've got you're proper 'put new stuff at these locations' instruction.

 

If I pick up the last item in a quadrant, do all of the buildings around me suddenly spawn loot?

Probably not, that would be really stupid.

 

• Are there any cities bisected by a quadrant line?
• Does loot still respawn on server restart anyways?

1) As I said above, quadrants are not likely to be actually defined by some kind of geometrical container. It's waaaaaay easier to just say item_spawn_1 item_spawn_2 and item_spawn_3 are part of quadrant 1, and item_spawn_4 and item_spawn_5 are part of quadrant 2. So, it's entirely possible that a city could be one large quadrant, or a city could be made up of many smaller quadrants.

2) That depends on if the respawning system is part of or tied into an item persistence system. We don't really know about that right now, but that is certainly within the scope of this sort of thing. This question is misleading though. Why do servers restart? Primarily, to restock items. If the restocking system works ... we don't need frequent restarts any more. So this question is moot.

 

All I can see this system doing (if the last bullet isn't true) is that the servers will start with a bunch of loot, people will quickly snatch up all of the food, weapons, and ammo, and since the system doesn't sound like it'll restock very often people will just end up with an empty server. New players won't find food and will starve, and if they don't they're not going to find any weapons or ammo.

You describe a situation literally identical to how the current system works (OMG it's hard to get items in a highly populated area! People might fight and stuff!) ...

 

Even more KoS since everyone will be starving and/or that guy over there might have some gear!

... and conclude that this will result in more KoS and less items. Pretty much nonsense. Let's say the quadrants restock in an hour as I hypothesized above. Currently, most servers seem to reset every 2 hours. That'd mean we'd have twice as many items compared to a server that restarts every 2 hours.

Or hey, even if it's a 2 hour respawn, if it's tied into the item-persistence system, we still don't have to restart our servers any more unless we REALLY want more items. Come to Joe's Stop and Shop 30 minute respawn server!

 

If the last bullet is true, nothing will change at all.

Again, nonsensical, servers don't have to restart all the time if the quadrant system is implemented.

 

I've proposed a better solution in my signature.

TL:DR; your solution is hamfisted and inelegant.

Continued Below!

Edited April 5, 2014 by fig0451

[fig0451 85]

The gist of it is that the server keeps a tally of the number of items held in that server and held by the players of that server. Let's assume a server has 19,000 unique items (250 of which are carried by players) and it wants to keep a stock of 20,000. Every X-Y minutes, the server decides to restock loot on the server. In this case, it would want to spawn 1,000 new items to bring the total back up. The server would then pick 1,000 loot locations. If a picked location is

• Filled
• Has a player within X00 meters

throw that location away and pick a new one. This has a sanity count of 1,000 to 2,000 tries before it gives up and uses the current list of acceptable locations.

Ok, even assuming you are doing this the most intelligent way by making ONE table of viable spawn locations, and assuming that there are only 1,000 item spawn locations on the map, you still have to do a three dimensional spherical trace from EVERY PLAYER to EVERY EMPTY LOOT SPAWN. Assuming a full server at 40 (and remember the devs are aiming for 100 person servers!) that's up to 40,000 spherical traces + the 1,000 "is there an item here already" checks. Exactly it would be #LootSpawns + (#Players * #EmptyLootSpawns)^, where ^ denotes computations that are much more intensive. And no, your sanity check doesn't count because you haven't described how you get your acceptable locations. What current list? Where? Determined by what algorithm?

Compare that to how the quadrant system is likely to work with your numbers, which would simply be 1,000 yes/no checks on a list.

Your method is basically ludicrous in comparison.

In reality, there are probably 1,000 spawn locations in each large city, I'd wager probably 10,000 spawn locations, at least, throughout the whole map, especially given that something like half the buildings in the game aren't properly spawning things. That's 10,000 * 100 for the goal of players in the server, which is literally a million spherical traces. Oh I forgot, that's in addition to the 10,000 "is there an item here checks".

Again, compared to how the quadrant system is likely to work, thats 1,010,000 operations compared to 10,0000. And you are using sphere traces, which means calculating a line between the player pos and item_spawn pos, which is more mathematically intensive then just checking for a 1 or a 0.

 

This system would

• Spawn loot away from players
• Not spawn loot near players (loot cycling)
• Lower the loot in high-traffic areas (airfields, etc, makes server hopping less profitable, drives people away from the kill zones)
• Implants the idea that "there's always loot over that hill, or in that little farmhouse, or in that town we haven't checked in a few hours" (promotes exploration)

1) and 2) are literally exactly the same, stated in reverse. And it doesn't matter, as your method of achieving it is ludicrously computation intensive and almost certainly not workable. You say you're a developer but it seems like you have literally no experience with the Arma2/3 engine.

As for 3) and 4), have you ever considered that there being high and low traffic areas is a good thing? It's nice to have a general sense of areas that are dangerous and areas that are safe (even though nowhere is really ever totally safe). It sounds like you're trying to force the game toward exploration and spreading out across the map. IMO it would be kind of dumb if this plan succeeded and made the entire map have roughly the same player density. Differences are interesting!

EDIT: Also upon further consideration your system is inherently self-defeating. The goal of your system is to spread players out everywhere, so we have a more even distribution that's less weighted toward what are currently hot-spots due to loot and/or proximity to spawns. Well ... if players are spread out everywhere, your item spawning system will be even less able to actually spawn items. If there are people evenly spread through out the map, far less areas are going to be possible candidates for a new item spawn (as at least one player will be nearby).

Edited April 5, 2014 by fig0451

[AlphaDogMeat . 493]

Just an idle question, but what counts as a looted item?  If I pick up, say, a pot then put it down straight away, have I looted it?  Could players trigger a full premature loot respawn just by moving every lootable item as they scavenge?

[fig0451 85]

Going by my interpertation of the quadrant system, a looted item is anything that's been moved from its initial spawn position.

So yes, if you picked up something and then dropped it, it would count as moved.

Players could trigger a premature respawn ... if they knew all the items in a group. So if one house was one quadrant, thats maybe 10 item spawns, and if you did that, then sure, you can get some more things in an hour. However, there is a relatively simple counter to this: Don't make a house one quadrant. Make one item in House A, 3 items in House B down the street, and 4 items in House C 200 meters away in a quadrant. You'd be nuts to map out every quadrant if they were all randomized like that.

Also ... is this really a reasonable thing for a player to do? If they had the inventory space, wouldn't they just take items? And if they don't have the space ... why are they trying to get more things? They want different things? Why not just go to the next house and check it instead of waiting for an hour for a crapshoot?

[AlphaDogMeat . 493]

Well, I did say it was an idle question. :)  A team of 3 wandering from house to house rearranging the pots and pans in Vybor to trigger a full loot respawn at NWAF seems a lot less risky than loot-hopping 10 servers.  Though infinitely more boring.

[mgc 92]

Why not just go to the next house and check it instead of waiting for an hour for a crapshoot?

Because items still spawn at specific locations. There might not be a "next house" for miles.

[fig0451 85]

Because items still spawn at specific locations. There might not be a "next house" for miles.

With the exception of being on the north edge of the map, I don't think there is anywhere like that on the maps. And even there, you can still move to a new loot area quicker than say an hour respawn timer.

@alpha: Hopefully the 'quadrants' aren't literally huge quadrants of the map, and are more localized.

[Canned Muffins 82]

Anyone know the experimental restart times  because currently the four full servers means there is no food respawning. I logged off 2 hours ago then just logged in to the only Hardcore experimental server in Polana and No loot had respawned at all. I have a starving Hardcore character I can't really do anything with because they are starving to death and I am just waiting for a server refresh. I know where and how to find food with 400 hours under my belt but I have no idea when the Experimental servers restart.

[Judopunch 523]

Right at 8:50, straight from Rocket's mouth.

• World divided into quadrants
• Quad resets when empty for X time
• Includes resetting doors
  • Door state randomly set on world start

That's all the info we have. .....

That is exactly right. It is all the info we have. As I stated about 8 posts ago. However the thread you posted, that we were discussing, made assumptions not included in deans overview. Which would have been fine had you wanted to discuss concerns and possible solutions. However your complained and stated your suppositions as fact. 

 

I agree many of the things you brought up will be a concern, I do not believe that those concerns will be un-addressed.

[taco86 156]

@alpha: Hopefully the 'quadrants' aren't literally huge quadrants of the map, and are more localized.

 

My hope is that this "quadrant" system is just a prototype.  Hopefully each town will be treated as a "quadrant" ones this feature is fully realized.

[mgc 92]

With the exception of being on the north edge of the map, I don't think there is anywhere like that on the maps. And even there, you can still move to a new loot area quicker than say an hour respawn timer.

@alpha: Hopefully the 'quadrants' aren't literally huge quadrants of the map, and are more localized.

What I mean to say, is that depending on what you're looking for, there might not be a spawn point for that particular item for miles. The experienced player is aware of what spawns where. Imo that's unrealistic and should be fixed.

 

Quadrants? Optional.

Full random (location, type and grade) loot respawn? Necessary.

[zeroy 240]

 

• What constitutes an "empty" quadrant?

 

 

Empty of players, not loot. I think its a very effective way to prevent server hopper as server admins wont have to restart their servers at set times anymore.

[Wili 156]

Empty of players, not loot. I think its a very effective way to prevent server hopper as server admins wont have to restart their servers at set times anymore.

 

 

Don't you think it can have the opposite effect?, as the player needs to leave the quadrant in order to make the loot appear, he can just serverhop to another server, "leaving the quadrant", and coming back later.

Edited April 21, 2014 by Wili

[noother10 6]

Don't you think it can have the opposite effect?, as the player needs to leave the quadrant in order to make the loot appear, he can just serverhop to another server, "leaving the quadrant", and coming back later.

From what I understand, in the current game someone waits until a server is reset (every 2 hours normally) and joins it while at an airfield for example to get the best chance of good loot. He is guaranteed to find loot since everything is spawned unless someone beat him in.

 

Now if loot respawns after lets say 30 minutes of quadrant being empty of players and lets just guess a quadrant is a small town inland somewhere. Now if someone clears the town then swaps servers he will be at the same time on a different server that may or may not have loot depending on when the last person went through. He could wait 30+ minutes and change back servers but find nothing spawned because someone else went through the town, or he waits longer and someone else goes through and clears it again.

 

With respawning loot they won't need to reset servers as often, thus they're removing guaranteed loot spawns from server resets. They also said that doors will reset randomly to open or closed making it impossible to tell if it has been looted, so the person hopping will have to waste time. It seems the system will work much better then current. So if you think server hopping will still work for players, please explain how? With the exception of empty servers since they'll always have loot regardless.

 

My only issue with respawning loot is what will happen when its tied in with the loot management they talked about where only X number of specific items exist on a server? Say they limit Mosin's to 10 per server, what happens when 40 people with Mosin's logon to that server? What happens when the server is empty or under 10 users, will there be Mosin's spawning? Artificially trying to limit weapons/items per server won't work since we can change servers. They should just leave it as random.

[Wili 156]

 

 

So if you think server hopping will still work for players, please explain how?

I think serverhopping will work as always with respawning loot, serverhoppers will have even more chance of finding loot because the loot will not deplete like now.

I think the quadrant respawn mechanism will not avoid serverhopping in any way, maybe it will encourage it because you will need to leave the area in order to make the loot appear.

[Katana67 2907]

Yes, the system doesn't "prevent server hopping" at all. Unless they put INSANELY quick respawn timers on loot, which I HIGHLY doubt they will (and I don't want them to), swapping servers will remain the most expedient and risk-free way to gather loot.

 

If anything, it may ENCOURAGE server hopping by increasing the relative chance that a server will have loot at any given point (regardless of whether it was looted before or not). Whereas before, servers which were looted stayed empty.

 

Never mind that loot respawns don't mitigate the lack of risk in simply moving to an unpopulated server to loot. Which is the MAIN ATTRACTOR TO SERVER HOPPING.

 

This is by no means a fix to server hopping... at all.

 

It will however, remove the requirement for servers to restart every few hours (ostensibly, as this was still done in the mod with respawning loot in order to hasten the process and/or reset the server as it got laggy the longer it was up).

Edited April 21, 2014 by Katana67