About persistent objects and immersion

[brazorf 46]

First of all, sorry if duplicate or already discussed, please point me the right topic in case.

 

I like the idea of persistent objects. Though, i was looking at it from a different perspective now, and i fear it could mine the game immersion.

 

At the moment, the only thing that really makes you care for your character life is your gear: we have no skill system, no character evolution anyway, just the gear.

Having your inventory backed-up somewhere in the woods may lead to take decisions you would never have made, having the risk of losing all. I'm starting to believe that this feature would drastically change the whole game concept.

 

It is obvious that anyone would somehow enjoy this (me too), because it makes life more simple, but isn't this game about an hard survival experience? What if we're allowed to store clothes, ammo, guns and whatsoever?

 

What you guys think about this?

[boneboys 7988]

(MOTD)

 

Coming to a DayZ near you soon !

[newguyzombie 122]

maybe this could happen. but imagine you hide your backpack with some gear and ammo inside. you go your way and someone kills you. you can now go and search for new gear or go back to your hidden backpack and take this gear. but then you have to farm yourself a new backpack to hide it :)

Edited April 7, 2014 by newguyzombie

[buddhistsoldier (DayZ) 5]

i saw that mentioned somewhere, they are planning exactly that, persistent backpacks. i believe it was a post by dean hall actually

[brazorf 46]

i saw that mentioned somewhere, they are planning exactly that, persistent backpacks. i believe it was a post by dean hall actually

 

Yeah that is actually a fact. I also know there are much topics on the argument already. 

I would only focus here on the immersion issue

[enforcer1975 1111]

...

 

If you could store a ton of stuff would the worth of your characters life increase? I'm sure it will decrease for a lot of players since you can just grab the next rifle from the stash every time you die. Not that i'm against storing things...it doesn't add to immersion, it's just a good feature in any case. The value of your life would increase by a hundredfold if you were denied access to the server you were currently playing on like it would be a hunger game...having to restart from scratch on another server or wait an hour or day to be able to get to your stash on that particular server would give a player a better feeling of loss.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Enforcer

[St. Jimmy 1631]

maybe this could happen. but imagine you hide your backpack with some gear and ammo inside. you go your way and someone kills you. you can now go and search for new gear or go back to your hidden backpack and take this gear. but then you have to farm yourself a new backpack to hide it :)

This is what I hated about tents in the mod. If you die in a server you could rearm quickly. That really ruins immersion of perma-death for me. It's very immersive when you're alive in the server and you know where you've hidden things but after you die it ruins the feeling if you can know those hideouts.

[smoq2 221]

I already saw what persistent lockboxes or global-inventory where you could store items for your subsequent lives did to another game. I would hate to see the same happen to DayZ.

 

It was all like this:

 

1. Hoard loot until you have 50 of every gun + ammo.

2. PVP till the end of the world.

 

I'm all for persistent storage items, but I'm all against those items staying there after death.

Edited April 7, 2014 by retro19

[Capo 323]

The tents in the mod were fine, it allowed you to have a sense of permanency but never safety, if someone found your camp they'd probably take all the best gear and then run over whatever's left.

 

They were great, yes you could regear out of your tent, but then you had to spend the time putting the stuff in there in the first place, not to mention that you can only regear out of your tent so many times before you need to find more gear anyway.

 

It's something to do, and is in fact quite fun, trying to find a safe place to put a tent, having to constantly explore in search of gear to stockpile, the moment of fear when you find someone else's camp (maybe they're still around?!) etc. They were great, and also it will encourage people to get off the fucking east coast.

 

Epoch took the whole thing too far with the safes - nothing in Dayz should ever be 100% safe, that is adverse to why we're playing. Dayz is playing for pink slips, not bragging rights. 

Edited April 7, 2014 by Capo

[LeChat 131]

I already saw what persistent lockboxes or global-inventory where you could store items for your subsequent lives did to another game. I would hate to see the same happen to DayZ.

 

It was all like this:

 

1. Hoard loot until you have 50 of every gun + ammo.

2. PVP till the end of the world.

 

I'm all for persistent storage items, but I'm all against those items staying there after death.

 

So far the type of weapons you can store in a backpack are the sawed off shotgun, the pistols, the revolver and the melee weapons. I can honestly say that I don't see alot of people hoarding weapons and ammunition in a backpack for the sole reason that it's very limited space - particularly if the necessity of other items will become important, such as matches, pots, gas canisters/stoves and all those other things that would be concentrated around surviving. Hopefully you won't be able to store ammunition boxes or protector boxes in your persistent backpack - unrealistic yes, but it would make it so that you have less space to use forcing you to choose more wisely or selectively.

 

But yeah, I think we will just have to wait and find out how they're going to implement it to begin with.

[Zeppa 562]

What if the persistent object will be persistent as you are. Once you are out, so is your backpack.
That may be the ammobox, safetybox what ever.

edit:
Lets rephrase that, what if the items you interacted last are tied to your existence. Not so the persistent items, but the stuff inside them.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Zeppa

[mgc 92]

I've already proposed a solution to this somewhere.

Your new character shouldn't know about your last characters stored items. To accomplish this, the stored items need to be moved to a new location (random). To allow your attackers to get to your loot, a map with the new location must spawn on your corpse.

 

No idea if this is at all possible code wise, but it would fix all sorts of meta gaming.

[LaughingJack (DayZ) 767]

I've already proposed a solution to this somewhere.

Your new character shouldn't know about your last characters stored items. To accomplish this, the stored items need to be moved to a new location (random). To allow your attackers to get to your loot, a map with the new location must spawn on your corpse.

 

No idea if this is at all possible code wise, but it would fix all sorts of meta gaming.

 

Just guessing: Yes, could be possible but, as usual, not that easy and could cause a lot of problems (Starting with clipping to unreachable and finishing and server load). But nontheless I'm on your side on this idea. Since the memory of the place where you stored your things can not be deleted with char death (...by now), this would be the best solution...well I don't know about the map, but right now I can't think of any other solution for this...

Edited April 7, 2014 by LaughingJack

[zeroy 240]

I'm all for persistent storage items, but I'm all against those items staying there after death.

 

This is a good point actually. Do we know that Dean/Devs intend to have the persistence even after death? Im starting to think that it would make a lot of sense to have ability to store stuff while alive only. I can also see what many have mentioned here when it comes to the decision making knowing you can re-kit quickly should you die... it would be a game changer but not for the better!

[cruiseashimself 56]

I think when you die all your stuff clears from the server unless its claimed by another player.

In no way do I think you should be able to drop your stuff in the woods, run into electro, die, spawn, run back to the woods in electro and pick your stuff up and go on your merry way. That's an incredibly stupid idea and completely unrealistic.

You would lose the fear of dying and losing all your belonging. Thus you people will make careless decisions and it turns into battlefield with way too much running.

Edited April 7, 2014 by BMAF

[smoq2 221]

I wouldn't go that far as relocating a cadaver's stash to some other random location. If a group of players are invading someone's base, it wouldn't be fine for the spoils of their victory to become randomly scattered across the map.

 

I would go with a much simpler solution, like the items becoming unpickable or invisible for the previous owner, but that's my opinion.

 

Same solution would work for the "run to my body" problem we have now.

Edited April 7, 2014 by retro19

[kander 80]

I've already proposed a solution to this somewhere.

Your new character shouldn't know about your last characters stored items. To accomplish this, the stored items need to be moved to a new location (random). To allow your attackers to get to your loot, a map with the new location must spawn on your corpse.

 

No idea if this is at all possible code wise, but it would fix all sorts of meta gaming.

 

This is a nice alternative to what I see as the preferable option of making loot persistent for only as long as the stasher lives. A reason for this is what I have described as loot 'inflation': where any items are kept in any way after a character dies, the loot is not cleared off the server fast enough to prevent players as a whole from gearing up too easily over time.

 

The regular destruction and recycling of gear and weapons except where it is held by players just helps to keep things in balance,

Edited April 7, 2014 by kander

[mgc 92]

This is a nice alternative to what I see as the preferable option of making loot persistent for only as long as the stasher lives. The reason for this is what I have described as loot 'inflation': where any items are kept in any way after a character dies, the loot is not cleared off the server fast enough to prevent players as a whole from gearing up too easily over time.

 

The regular destruction and recycling of gear and weapons except where it is held by players just helps to keep things in balance,

Easy fix:

Items should deteriorate (very, very) slowly over time. i.e.; Your homemade bow might only have 10 good shots in it before losing some power. Arrows can break, clothes wear, food spoils. etc. etc.

[brazorf 46]

I fear that first implementation will be very simple: some container (dunno which, assume backpacks, fridges, etc.) simply will not disappear, period.

I'm pretty sure there's actually no binding between an item and its owner, therefore the "move to random spot" or "delete items after death" (both solution i like) can't be realized.

 

So, retro19 wrote my very same concern, that a potentially survival feature would turn to be an extreme pvp one. Gear up quicker, care less about your life

[mgc 92]

I fear that first implementation will be very simple: some container (dunno which, assume backpacks, fridges, etc.) simply will not disappear, period.

I'm pretty sure there's actually no binding between an item and its owner, therefore the "move to random spot" or "delete items after death" (both solution i like) can't be realized.

 

So, retro19 wrote my very same concern, that a potentially survival feature would turn to be an extreme pvp one. Gear up quicker, care less about your life

Would it be hard to bind containers to characters?

[smoq2 221]

I fear that first implementation will be very simple: some container (dunno which, assume backpacks, fridges, etc.) simply will not disappear, period.

I'm pretty sure there's actually no binding between an item and its owner, therefore the "move to random spot" or "delete items after death" (both solution i like) can't be realized.

 

So, retro19 wrote my very same concern, that a potentially survival feature would turn to be an extreme pvp one. Gear up quicker, care less about your life

 

I on the other hand, doubt that there is no link. Most inventory oriented games utilise some linking method. Usually they simply add a var to a given object that indicates it's parent ID (owner). However, that's just an educated guess based on my experience. 

 

[EDIT]

 

I thought some backing of this argument may be required as well. So here goes...

 

The system needs some kind of indication whether and item is carried or not which is switched to true/false on pickup/drop. There simply is no other way around that.

 

In many cases, this little indicator is utilised a bit further, and instead of storing just 0 and 1, it is changed from a bool to an integer, which usually corresponds to an ID of an object (parent) that "carries" it.

 

The check for ownership is still plausible, as it can be a simple verification whether the ID is different than "null" or some other integer that corresponds to a "loose" item.

 

I've seen solutions in games where parent_id = 0 meant that the player held the item, anything between 1 and 65534 meant that the item was in a container or carried by an NPC, and 65535 meant that the item was loose in the world (the map is the parent).

 

Still, it can be done in a totally different way, but since there are good programming conventions for various systems, I doubt that.

Edited April 7, 2014 by retro19

[Katana67 2907]

Not sure if you've played the mod or not, but the persistent storage in the mod allowed for a GREAT many beneficial aspects.

 

It had flaws, for sure, like remaining after a character dies and not requiring maintenance. But that's what the Alpha is for.

 

I think just disbarring a player from accessing his/her previous tent/container would be enough to discourage the detrimental aspects of being able to recycle loot. There's some flaws, sure, like having a buddy transfer your gear. But it requires two persistent storage containers, thus making for a larger footprint and making the likelihood of discovery higher.

 

That, or it could disappear entirely.

 

Not sure I'm in favor of the "random" tent dispersion after death. Would be sort of discouraging to assault camps/forts/bases if I kill the players and their tents zorp to the other side of the map. That and I want these items to remain where they are, so I can use them as activity gauges.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Katana67

[zeroy 240]

Would it be hard to bind containers to characters?

 

I have no doubts its do-able but would require that every item picked up on servers carry an owner which gets deleted when item is dropped and changed when owner changes, this would, imo, considerably higher the Client-Server messages, something the Devs already have issues with.

[mgc 92]

I have no doubts its do-able but would require that every item picked up on servers carry an owner which gets deleted when item is dropped and changed when owner changes, this would, imo, considerably higher the Client-Server messages, something the Devs already have issues with.

Items carried by the character stay on the character. Only stored items need to be moved. Doesn't that mean only the "crates" need to be bound?

[zeroy 240]

Items carried by the character stay on the character. Only stored items need to be moved. Doesn't that mean only the "crates" need to be bound?

 

Thinking again and reading Retro19 post above it may not be that hard for Devs to implement this... but I imagine items stored will be permanent even post death when first committed, We would then quickly see how it affects the game.