Isn't item permanence counterintuitive to permadeath?

[omgwtfbbq (DayZ) 1069]

Read whole post before commenting, please.

 

 

 

 

I don't know, I always felt that DayZ is supposed to be cripplingly difficult; item permanence seems to take away from that. From what I see, tents/fridges/other items used for storage will be used in the following manner:

 

> Put a ton of food and weapons and backpacks and other survival gear in container

> Get killed

> Run back to container

> Instantly geared up again

 

Basically, it's the same crutch the mod DayZ used. I know other early access survival Minecraft/DayZ games use item permanence, but with DayZ supposedly drowning in realism/authenticity, doesn't it seem a bit silly to be able to lose everything you worked hours to achieve, then spawn as a new scrub in the apocalypse, immediately skipping half the game to continue doing whatever you were doing, death being only an inconvenience? Yes, I know it is entirely possible to get everything you need in other places in under an hour, but that requires knowing where items you want spawn and a decent amount of luck. Tents just require a friend guarding the stash o' loot until you get there. 

 

Easily the biggest challenge of DayZ is acquiring all the survival things you need, then maintaining those items indefinitely. That's the overall goal of the game, survive. If that is the singular goal of the game (considering you cannot win, you only lose when you die), why make it easier to do half of the difficulty of the game? 

 

Yes, the same could be said about dying, then running back to your body and getting your stuff again. But hey. at least some of it got damaged. Yes, that isn't "realistic/authentic" either. Yes, someone can find your tent. Emphasis on can, not that they will. Neither is putting something on the ground, then red words appear on your eyeballs and causes you to cease to exist for a few moments, and when you come back the item has been ejected from reality. It isn't a perfect system, and I'm not offering an alternative perfect super-solution that will solve everyone's problems and make it rain canopeners, I'm simply having people think about development direction and decide if a design choice supports or deconstructs the central conflicts of the game. 

 

DayZ: Gear up, survive. Unless you have a tent. Then it's go to tent, survive. Death no longer has its looming threat. It becomes a mere inconvenience.

Edited July 30, 2014 by omgwtfbbq

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

You're forgetting that other players can find your stash. Where the real issue arises is from clans who use their own server as a stash spot because they will just lock it.

[omgwtfbbq (DayZ) 1069]

You're forgetting that other players can find your stash. Where the real issue arises is from clans who use their own server as a stash spot because they will just lock it.

 

 

Read whole post before commenting, please.

 

 

Yes, someone can find your tent. Emphasis on can, not that they will. 

[Karmaterror 982]

Don't start calling item persistence a crutch aswell....man I hate it when people try to enforce an opinion that way. And its fine for perma death.

 

Your camp has perma death aswell....at any time it can die....even without you dying personally....if anything that adds to the survival dynamic. You could very well run the 30-40 mins back to your camp and find its gone....now if you skipped looting because "hey I got a camp" then its just hurt....not helped you.

 

Also its not "instant regear" If you camp anywhere sensible (where players wnt find it) it will be a considerable run from any spawn point. As in the mod you could find you have looted most of your essentials before you arrive back and may ot even bother visiting your camp.

 

If ya think peepes sat at there campsites guarding them in the mod, you are wrong. Iv never seen that in over 1000hours of play. They place stratigicly in a concealed spot and continue playing. Campsites were hunted methodically, on high pop (50 or above) a camp wouldn't last more that a few days.

 

Persistance was not a cruthch, it was a design decision in the mod and did nothing but add a huge dynamic to the game.....something im sure dayz would not have been half the game it was without.

 

Still the biggest point is that the camp also has perma death.....that only adds to the tension and survival aspect of the game :)

[mortaug 8]

Heck with tents, add the ability to hide items in hay bales, stashed under a tree, bury it in containers, etc. 

Just as you don't keep all your gear in 1 place IRL, you place caches.

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Yes.  Tents break permadeath.  I'm not a big fan of it but at least it offers something to do and there's no guarantee your gear will still be in your tent when you finally get back.  Even your buddy can't guard it 24/7.

[hellcat420 212]

You're forgetting that other players can find your stash. Where the real issue arises is from clans who use their own server as a stash spot because they will just lock it.

you cant stash stuff on a private server then bring it to a public server.

[Dagwood 680]

Item persistence is a big problem when implemented in a pubic hive setting. With thousands of servers available, hiding a tent in a very accessible place on an empty server is laughably easy. Player dies, switches to camp-bearing server, grabs gear, and switches back to populated server.

The same feature (persistence) on private hives is a whole different beast. With everyone and everything locked onto the same server, placing a camp and hoarding gear becomes more difficult and more predictable. Players can and were easily tracked back to their stashes in the mod. If you see a fresh spawn sprinting west in a straight line, chances are he's got a camp in his sites.

I agree, item persistence in the public hive is detrimental to permadeath and gameplay as a whole.

[Shrub Rocketeer ™ 879]

I am agree

 

when you dieing tent and loots can go also because after new life is begin how you know is somewhere a tent what is have loot and gun for you? also when is coming the death moment player will FEEL FOR TRUE pain of lose EVRYTHING and this making life more special and is more value

[Evil Minion 943]

Thats why tents should not be linked to any particular player but merely provide an option to store items. As long as other can steal your tent and the items inside I don't see an issue. Right now you can still run to your corpse that may or may not be guarded by a mate.

 

Anyways I always though merely using your items and waiting 30 seconds to spawn at the coast is a fairly minor setback. As tents help preserving gear (given they won't be stolen) there should be some additional punishment to keep death from being a mere annoyance. Increasing death timers might help because it would bother people in real life. Note that this is more an issue of death than an issue of item persistence.

Edited July 30, 2014 by Evil Minion

[leviathanapsu 94]

It seems like it would be easily resolved by having the tents tied to your life. As long as you persist, it does. The minute you die, the tent either disappears, or better yet, begins to break down. I would love to see it where after you die, a tent and it's contents begin to degrade under the assumption that the original owner isn't attending it any more. Items begin disappearing as looters run across it, etc. Sure, you might get there in time to get some items, but nothing is pristine any more and who knows what has gone missing. Worse, you have to find a new tent since this one is now unusable.

[hellcat420 212]

Item persistence is a big problem when implemented in a pubic hive setting. With thousands of servers available, hiding a tent in a very accessible place on an empty server is laughably easy. Player dies, switches to camp-bearing server, grabs gear, and switches back to populated server.

The same feature (persistence) on private hives is a whole different beast. With everyone and everything locked onto the same server, placing a camp and hoarding gear becomes more difficult and more predictable. Players can and were easily tracked back to their stashes in the mod. If you see a fresh spawn sprinting west in a straight line, chances are he's got a camp in his sites.

I agree, item persistence in the public hive is detrimental to permadeath and gameplay as a whole.

do you know what else is laughably easy? stealing peoples stuff from a tent they hid  in a very accessible place on an empty server.

[pillock 850]

I've suggested this a few times before, but I think you should get booted off the server when you die, and locked out for 24 hours. That way, if you wanted to carry on playing, you'd have to do it from a fresh start in a new server where you don't know where loot or players are. There would have to be an exception made for server owners playing on their own turf, but that's only a very small proportion of people.

 

It wouldn't stop people trying to hoard stashes in empty servers, but it would go some way towards improving the current situation, I think.

[omgwtfbbq (DayZ) 1069]

I've suggested this a few times before, but I think you should get booted off the server when you die, and locked out for 24 hours. That way, if you wanted to carry on playing, you'd have to do it from a fresh start in a new server where you don't know where loot or players are. There would have to be an exception made for server owners playing on their own turf, but that's only a very small proportion of people.

 

It wouldn't stop people trying to hoard stashes in empty servers, but it would go some way towards improving the current situation, I think.

 

Persistent storage wouldn't be as bad as it is if people were locked to one server, but then there's the "well what if the server is down/lagging" argument again. In other words, persistent storage should not exist.

[hotcakes 348]

Persistence ultimately adds depth to the game because of all the plays you can make with it. 

[TheWizard14 372]

you cant stash stuff on a private server then bring it to a public server.

 

 

In the DayZ mod I was apart of a clan that essentially "white listed" AKA only allowed clan members in the server and was also connected to the public hive. If you weren't part of the clan, it kicked you. 

 

In the clan server we were performing mass duping, and spawn farming the heli crashes and barracks which is shameful when I look back on it.

 

Hopefully whitelisting doesn't become a feature/thing later on in the StandAlone because I don't want the same turmoil to happen.

Edited August 18, 2014 by TheWizard14

[CANUCKinNZ 108]

you cant stash stuff on a private server then bring it to a public server.

Is that true though? Why can't I load up my tent on a private server, then grab gear. Log out, then log onto a private one? Or will I be able to have 20 different characters on separate servers? Kind of defeats the purpose if 1 life and done too doesn't it?

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

Is that true though? Why can't I load up my tent on a private server, then grab gear. Log out, then log onto a private one? Or will I be able to have 20 different characters on separate servers? Kind of defeats the purpose if 1 life and done too doesn't it?

Private and public are suppose to be separate but you can have a locked public to use as your own special loot farm and bring your ill-gotten gains over to an unlocked public.  People seem to confuse locked as private.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Caboose187

[CANUCKinNZ 108]

Private and public are suppose to be separate but you can have a locked public to use as your own special loot farm and bring your ill-gotten gains over to an unlocked public.  People seem to confuse locked as private.

Thanks for clarifying. Now that you mention I hooked up with some dudes on TeamSpeak who had a locked public who duped like crazy and had about 20 tents full of gear and as50`s. I didn't do it but must admit I used there gear from time to time when I died and wanted to get revenge fast.

[IronCross 78]

People will literally complain about anyway, even if it's a feature that the majority want and will enjoy the game more because of.

[Bororm 1156]

DayZ doesn't have perma death.  They should have never called it that from the start, it's stupid.  Do you even have to recreate your character when you die? no.  You respawn.  Hell it literally says "respawn."

 

How is that different from any other FPS?

 

If there were skills or player attributes and you had to make a new character each time, then yes.  As it stands, the game doesn't have that.  It's a pvp game with full loot is what they should have said.

 

Any ways, even if it had permadeath I don't see the issue with persistence.  The world continues with or without your character, it makes sense.  You can't accurately represent a loss of memory, no matter what crazy gimicks you come up with, so there's really no difference from me having a stash and me knowing I can go find a gun in a piano house.  Other players can loot/destroy my stash, so there's no guarantee it will remain.

 

I don't see the issue at all.

Edited August 18, 2014 by Bororm

[roguetrooper 201]

How long does it take to gather the full equipment for your next spawn (clothes/back/vest/helmet, weapons, ammon, food, drinks, tools)? You need to travel hundreds of kilometres, finding stuff, return it to your tent, walk out finding more again, return and in the meantime equipping your current character. When you spawn again, you may have your full equipment "at hand", but once you've taken it, your tent is more or less empty.

 

There is hardly an advantage when you have a fully equipped tent at hand (i.e. know the location that you just need to travel to). You need to invest a lot of time to fill it and the time you've spend on this you can also use for equipping your new-spawn character by usual searching/travelling. You don't save time, you just relocate the process of gathering into the "past" (seen from your new-spawn).

[gibonez 3633]

On one side of the spectrum it is due to giving you a means to quickly gear back up.

 

However on the other side of the spectrum it only makes perma death even more consequential.

 

Let's look at rust.

 

Rust has your character not only have persistence in a sense that if you die your character dies accross all servers, but if you leave the game your character stays in game in a sleep animation.

 

What this does is forces players to build shelter, defenses and often times form communities in order to protect their progress and base.

 

What this also does is make defending yourself that much more important, losing your base literally means you start all over again a process that could take dozens of hours sometimes.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

once killed you should need to buy a new copy of the Alpha.

[Calvin Candie 189]

How long does it take to gather the full equipment for your next spawn (clothes/back/vest/helmet, weapons, ammon, food, drinks, tools)? You need to travel hundreds of kilometres, finding stuff, return it to your tent, walk out finding more again, return and in the meantime equipping your current character. When you spawn again, you may have your full equipment "at hand", but once you've taken it, your tent is more or less empty.

There is hardly an advantage when you have a fully equipped tent at hand (i.e. know the location that you just need to travel to). You need to invest a lot of time to fill it and the time you've spend on this you can also use for equipping your new-spawn character by usual searching/travelling. You don't save time, you just relocate the process of gathering into the "past" (seen from your new-spawn).

Inception time. Nice! But actually there is a difference. You are much more safer running to your stash as a new spawn then looting cities. AND again, you are much safer hoarding items to your tent when already fully equiped.