Should every loot location have a tiny chance of spawning any type of loot

[theirongiant 200]

What I mean is that there is a lot of lot that you know for a fact won't spawn in certain places meaning that once you've got a basic loadout there are a ton of places that you have no reason to search. Would making every loot location have, in addition to it's usual loot table, a vanishingly small change of spawning a random item from the global loot list encourage people to search more?

[gqren 49]

Maybe not every item in every lootspot, but a more randomized table wouldn't be too bad, IMO. That would make it more interesting when checking out both larger and smaller cities, and maybe give people an incentive to loot the, as of now, useless buildings instead of piling up outside the military bases.

[taco86 156]

I'd personally like far more of the loot to be "bound" to random "encounters" spawned around the map.  Think of the helicopter crash sites on experimental, but far less specific.  For example, there could be a crashed lorrie loaded with lots of food, or an ambulance with medical supplies.  There could be checkpoints with some limited military gear and/or ammo, or even weapons cashes randomly placed within houses outside of major cities and towns.

Essentially the idea is to have items bound to more "realistic" settings with the end result being increased immersion.  These settings (helo crash, road block) would of course not be static though.  The goal is to reward those who spread out and explore while also possibly drawing multiple players towards each other pushing further interaction.

Edited June 12, 2014 by taco86

[gqren 49]

I'd personally like far more of the loot to be "bound" to random "encounters" spawned around the map.  Think of the helicopter crash sites on experimental, but far less specific.  For example, there could be a crashed lorries loaded with lots of food, or an ambulance with medical supplies.  There could be checkpoints with some limited military gear and/or ammo, or even weapons cashes randomly placed within houses outside of major cities and towns.

Essentially the idea is to have items bound to more "realistic" settings with the end result being increased immersion.  These settings (helo crash, road block) would of course not be static though.  The goal is to reward those who spread out and explore while also possibly drawing multiple players towards each other pushing further interaction.

 

I like that idea. The implementation of the crashed choppers is good, and could be further developed =) Something like this isn't bad at all!

[Evil Minion 943]

...

A very good idea - it would also cause every server to be somewhat different so you can't relay on third party information that much. I would like to see this system implemented for things like berry bushes, deer stands or wells as well. Especially the last are far too common in my opinion - reducing their number by ~70% but keeping all locations (randomizing between them) would do the job and might give us a reason to actually drink from ponds and lakes.

 

Even houses could work in a similar fashion: Whats a police station on one server might be a fire station on another and a simple residential building on the third. So if you are looking for specific loot you better get to know the server or search around instead of just opening a map in your browser. Of course the general locations (towns, cities, bases) will still be similar but not 100% identical.

[MarchmelloMan 16]

I also think that loot should be spread more over the map.. actually, (advanced) players probably only plunder 10% of all the locations and run via "autorun" past all the other places.

[theirongiant 200]

Maybe not every item in every lootspot, but a more randomized table wouldn't be too bad, IMO. That would make it more interesting when checking out both larger and smaller cities, and maybe give people an incentive to loot the, as of now, useless buildings instead of piling up outside the military bases.

 

I would include everything but I'd make the odds on the higher end loot really, really unlikely so it'd be like a lottery win. It'd make people more likely to loot if they remembered that one time they checked a shed in the middle of nowhere and found something awesome.

[funky_mish 75]

Yep, I agree that more randomisation is a good idea. Reasoning is easy too. Sure, you wouldn't expect to find a stab vest under a kitchen table, or an M4 propped against the wall in a factory office. But there are other survivors, and they move things around... maybe someone stashed those items to come back for them, but never made it back.

[smoq2 221]

I'm going to contribute something a bit different but still related to the topic...

 

I had a pondering session once on how to implement a mostly player-driven loot economy into DayZ SA. Let's take a fairly popular item as a case - M4.

 

Let's say, there's a system that allows only an X amount of m4 to be available on a given server. Of course it wouldn't just remove the excess amount of M4 when 4 new equipped players joined, but rather simply try to remove specific M4's if they meet certain conditions (e.g. Never picked-up/never seen by anyone) to reach an acceptable balance level.

 

We would have the item randomisation covered, as you would find items in various strange places where other players ditched them for something else.

 

Of course it would be very hard to find a weapon as you would either have to kill/talk to get one or be very very lucky.

 

As for other items, you can still craft a bow and go hunt, there are plenty of wells around - defending and surviving is still very much possible, throw in craftable clothes and you basically can go on living forever. But if you want some better gear you would have to go for unconventional options (everything else apart from simple searching) to get it.

 

I'm sure many will not like this, it is simply my opinion and how I would envision a perfect survivor game environment.

I would only like to ask not to boycott the idea outright but rather ask a question like "But what if..." if something doesn't stick. :)

[Katana67 2907]

90% of what will make or break DayZ (and has made/broken mods, including the vanilla mod, in the past) is loot balance.

 

People just keep kicking the can down the road, and rightfully so. This is alpha, and they're not into balancing the loot yet. But I think that causes folks to underestimate its significance. We don't know what DayZ will, should, or can be... simply because we haven't ever really had a lot of things (i.e. decent zombies, truly balanced loot, a good hunting system, a good health/wellness system, etc.) Furthermore, people get acclimated to certain loot distributions and then those become the norm (i.e. canned food in every residential building).

 

To answer the question in the OP, yes, I do believe that there should be a small... miniscule... chance that everything should spawn everywhere. However, that doesn't preclude certain buildings from FAVORING different types of loot, obviously. This is something that a lot of people don't really understand. Simply because there's a .0005% chance that an M4A1 will spawn in a log cabin, doesn't mean that having a 20% chance of one spawning in a barracks somehow gets rendered irrelevant and people abandon these locations entirely.

 

Take Deer Stands in the mod, for example. They were great sources of high-end loot for a while, fairly low-yield... low-chance... but distributed across the map so that they represented a low-risk, high-time, low-reward method of gearing. Whereas with hyper-centralized loot locations, all you really have is a high-risk, low-time, high-reward method of gearing.

 

That and the loot tables/distribution is also, unsurprisingly, dependent on the overall gamut of loot offered to the player. Like it or not, I don't want a humdrum M4A1 remaining "high-end." There really isn't enough so-called "high-end" loot to even justify going away from residential areas. 

 

People always cite "Aw, well you won't have high-value buildings anymore" or "WTF do you want M4's spawning in houses for?" That's not what this is about, I'm afraid.

 

High-value buildings will still remain high-value. High-value loot spawns at a higher RATE than anywhere else, so they're still valuable. However, it also gives reason for the player to search every nook and cranny of a town. And every house therefore becomes a Forrest Gump-esque box of chocolates.

 

Generally, I'm in support of all loot having a chance to spawn everywhere. But it largely depends on what those chances are, and how frequently that loot spawns. Which, I think, will be the prerogative of the loot management system further on.

Edited June 13, 2014 by Katana67

[theirongiant 200]

Not much more to add to that. I agree completely. The chances of finding high end loot in low end places should be vanishingly small but that would be enough to psychologically make every house and hut a lottery scratchcard, chances are you'll get a can of spaghetti hoops but maybe this time you'll scoop a huge prize. As a rewarding gameplay mechanic it's all win.

 

imo of course.

[gibonez 3633]

I think it should be completely random , loot should be far more random than it is now.

 

Military locations should only have a slightly higher chance to spawn military loot and civilian locations should spawn military loot along with civilian loot with of course military loot being relatively rare.

 

A more randomized loot system would keep the map populated not just 3 percent of the map where military buildings are.