When the time comes for gameplay balancing...

[Dagwood 680]

Please make adjustments from too hard toward the desired level of difficulty. What do I mean by this?

Here's an example:

Let's say we're talking about balancing the amount of good that spawns in the loot tables (as is being discussed in another thread). Where we are now in terms of food scarcity is that it isn't scarce enough to add to the games difficulty/challenge. This means that to improve gameplay the amount of food available needs to decrease. Clear enough so far? What I fear is that the devs will make small, incremental changes in spawn rates until they reach a level that has the desired effect on gameplay. In other words, they are going to undershoot with their adjustments until they reach their sweet spot.

FOR DAYZ THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT STRATEGY

When a game is too easy, people stop playing it because it is not challenging (ie entertaining) anymore. When a game is too hard, people go to the internet to learn from others, or they persevere until they succeed.

When the devs made increases in difficulty in the mod, people would bitch and moan about it being broken and unfair, and then they would read/learn how to adapt to the changes, and then surviving was too easy again.

Imagine the forum full of, "please help, can't survive first 5 minutes" or, "dayz is too hard: why H1Z1 is a better experience" threads instead of "wtf do I do now" or "game is boring without KOS" threads.

TLDR; I think people quitting dayz because it is too hard is a much better niche for this game than people quitting because it is too easy.

And yes, (insert alpha caveat here). I am making this post in preparation for later stages in the development process.

As the community of a game with a reputation for being hardcore, we should be ashamed at how much whining goes on about fun v.s. Challenge. If we want the devs to crank up the difficulty, we need to start asking for it now before it's too late.

[TheFarm 158]

Great post, I'm sure almost everyone will agree with you. In addition to all of that I would really like to see military bases be the most difficult zones with huge swarms of armored zombies, followed by wilderness with infected bears and wolves.

Towns could become completely player controlled, where some towns may kill you at the gate and others will hand you bacon and a gun, and tell you who their enemies are. There is nothing that is actually scary in the towns now anyways, but walking through the woods and military bases is already terrifying but not difficult enough.

[HIHBGaming 14]

The difficulty will come after they implement the more important things. Once we see working Zeds, disease and detrimental weather things will get interesting, I assure you.

 

As I stated in another thread, people can't go by the now because the game is just nowhere near what it's going to be.

[gibonez 3633]

I hate the word balance.

 

I rather they just emulate real life to their best of their ability and any "balance" is done via controlling the loot spawn percentages.

[Loopest 60]

Move this to the right thread, Boneboys.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

Great post, I'm sure almost everyone will agree with you. In addition to all of that I would really like to see military bases be the most difficult zones with huge swarms of armored zombies, followed by wilderness with infected bears and wolves.

Towns could become completely player controlled, where some towns may kill you at the gate and others will hand you bacon and a gun, and tell you who their enemies are. There is nothing that is actually scary in the towns now anyways, but walking through the woods and military bases is already terrifying but not difficult enough.

No infected animals, please. It would ruin the purpose of hunting, as I doubt you'd want to wear clothes made from pelts carrying disease. The highest concentrations of zombies should be in the big cities (Elektro, Cherno, Berezino, and the big city to the north) followed by bases and then small villages, although actually creating a good system for this might be difficult (all zombies simply spawn from a preset number to every specific building. Some military bases only have a few buildings, so it would be incredibly weird to see like 40 zombies crowding around one barracks)

[randomspawn 215]

Well, your example of food is unlikely to ever be solved. Whether you are hunting animals, or hunting beanz, it's a time sink. Unless they decide to become DayZ(Duck Hunter Edition), they won't push it so far as to require hunting just to survive. That means have servers capable to spawn enough beans and rice for 100 players. 

 

Some here want reality, but in reality, after the first week or two post-infection, all those cans would be dried up, and the wild animals would be harvested. That's not going to happen, so we will always have beanz. 

 

As for your point about people quitting, meh, I don't think it matters which side they fall on. The game will have a core of players that will play. The thing that will truly drive people away is if they feel all the clunky mechanics and glitches that we currently see are carried over into beta and final release. We have to start seeing some of the payoff from all the talk about AI pathing, navmesh, messaging improvements and those kind of goodies. I could care less if I find 2 or 10 cans of beans, but if I am still getting zombies clipping through walls, and players still hiding in floors/walls in the jail buildings, then I will find a new game.

[Mos1ey 6301]

I hate the word balance.

 

I rather they just emulate real life to their best of their ability and any "balance" is done via controlling the loot spawn percentages.

 

That's exactly what the OP is talking about - balancing loot spawns.

[andrestor 78]

I think, as long as others in the forum, that loot spawns as they stand are done so that the chances of finding bugs with them are higher, since there is more food.

When the bugs are wiped, or the game enters beta, this should be balanced.

That's what I think, if this is game design then it definitely needs balance.

[Dagwood 680]

Ok, obviously the game is not balanced or even attempting to be balanced at the moment. And obviously balancing will need to happen further on in the development process. That's not what I am trying to discuss/lead into discussion.

Let's stick with the food scarcity problem to be consistent.

Right now, there is too much food. There is enough food on the map to bring every player up to energized from the brink of death every restart. When loot respawning is implemented, I'm sure the amount of food and drink will be just as over-abundant. This is an example of a mechanic that needs to be balanced.

When we get to the point in the development process where balancing occurs, I hope that the developers do it so drastically that at first it feels impossible to survive.

Please, seriously process that for a moment.

The more likely occurrence is that the developers will make an adjustment, slightly increasing the difficulty, only to be rewarded with bitching and moaning from the community. This will happen every time they make an adjustment; no matter how dramatic the increase in difficulty. If they take this gradual approach, the game will never be the anti-game a lot of us signed up for.

Does that make any sense? Make the game really fucking hard, and if it is so hard that we can't figure out how to survive, THEN make balancing adjustments to relieve the pressure. Don't hold our hand up the difficulty ladder with us kicking and screaming the whole time. Give us a real challenge and if we aren't crafty enough to adapt, then you can save us.

Please tell me someone understood that