Lower 'stuffed' threshold/ reversal of loot locations

[BeefBacon 1185]

These are two ideas that are unrelated, but I figured I would just stick them into a single thread.

 

Stuffed Threshold

 

My DayZ playthroughs fall into one of two categories. Either I find no food at all, or I find all of it. Neither is much fun because one provides too much of a challenge and the other provides none at all.

 

For most people finding too much food is the most common, and so they propose the solution of massively reducing the amount of food items that spawn on the map. This, I think, is not the correct solution as it will lead to the polar opposite of having too much food - and that is having too little food. While this is a survival game, I'm sure many will agree with me that this is first and foremost a game, and people don't want to spend their entire play session with black and white vision, scouring the map for a single rotten kiwi.

 

An overabundance of food leads to KoS. All you have to do is eat an entire bag of rice, drink some water and you'll be healthy for the next hour. Since you won't need to eat anything, you can fill your inventory with ammunition.

 

My proposed solution is that the 'stuffed' debuff should have a much lower threshold, meaning that players won't be able to eat all of their food all at once and be fine for the rest of the game. Instead they'll have to eat smaller amounts more regularly, which means that their inventories will have to be, in part, dedicated to the storage of food rather than ammo boxes.

 

In order to allow healing, I propose that players always be in a healing state, but the rate at which they heal is directly affected by how hungry they are. A player that is starving won't heal as fast as a player that is well-fed. This means that a player that is able to find enough food to stave off death from starvation will be able to regain health if they are hit by a zombie. This would help negate one of my pet peeves that is black and white vision induced by low blood and an inability to find enough food to reach the 'healthy' status.

 

tldr; The threshold for 'stuffed' should be lowered so players need to carry food with them. Players should also heal naturally, with the healing rate being affected by how hungry they are. 

 

 

Good loot should spawn in cities

 

I feel as though the loot system is the wrong way round. Military bases should be virtually stripped clean while cities should be a veritable bounty of loot. However, this would require that zombies become a threat.

 

Towns and cities should be absolutely teeming with zombies, meaning that players should be forced into the wilderness if they want any chance of survival. Obviously DayZ is in alpha and cannot currently support large numbers of zombies so this is more of a 'down the line' suggestion, but I figure it bears discussion.

 

Towns and cities should be full of both zombies and valuable loot. The (an) objective of players should be to loot towns, or to build enough firepower to effectively defend themselves while looting in towns.

 

Military loot spawns should barely spawn anything, since they would more than likely have been cleared out long ago. However, what little loot they do spawn should be extremely valuable. Towns and cities should be more reliable locations for certain military spawns (like AKMs, ammo, grenades maybe) but dedicated military locations like airfields should be the only places that spawn attachments and extremely high-level weapons (PKMs, M4s, grenade launchers, etc).

 

A system like this would drive players to hunt and fish rather than snipe from a tower in Berezino. Towns would become high risk/reward locations that only groups and well-equipped players can enter.

 

Fresh spawns would have to craft bows to hunt animals, or loot villages in order to survive. Gunning it for NWAF would only yield a red dot sight and a pair of gorka pants, and popping into a supermarket for a bag of rice would be suicide for a player armed only with their dukes. 

 

It would also add a tangible objective to the game. That being to clear out, loot and maybe even hold a town or city. It might also encourage players to cooperate, since a lone player with a revolver will have less chance than a small group armed with bows, mosins and pistols when looting a zombie-infested town.

 

Again, this would only be viable when zombies are no longer... how they are, and when they are more numerous, but I figured I'd get the idea out there if it wasn't already.

 

tldr; Towns should be filled with zombies, but also contain a large amount of valuable loot in order to enourage freshspawns to hunt and fish rather than have a punch-out in Berezino.

 

 

Thoughts?

[Evil Minion 943]

Stuffed Threshold

 

[...]

 

tldr; The threshold for 'stuffed' should be lowered so players need to carry food with them. Players should also heal naturally, with the healing rate being affected by how hungry they are.

At first I was like - me it would just make it harder to get to healthy state. Then I realized making it harder to get to healthy state is a good thing. Instead of just having to find a bag of rice and a well you would need to invest more time and carry some of this food with you. Which makes getting to healthy a greater achievement. Because of this I dislike the second part - always healing would readuce the practical use of being energized and hydrated which in turn has the opposite effect. Instead the healing effects (both blood and health) should be a reward you have to work on - so yes to a smaller stomach.

Good loot should spawn in cities

[...]

tldr; Towns should be filled with zombies, but also contain a large amount of valuable loot in order to enourage freshspawns to hunt and fish rather than have a punch-out in Berezino.

I disagree with the "place XY should already been picked clean" argumnent and think this should depend on the players actions instead of some mysterious former inhabitants. With proper loots spawning this would be the consequence anyways as everyone would look for gear there. But I would like loot spawns to be more specialized. You should not find tons of food, medical supply, tools etc. in military buildings. Instead you should have to visit residential areas for them. Buildings with a high chance of sapwning weapons should have a low chance of spawning food, hospitals and clincs should spawn medical supplies but less of other types and so on. Right now "looting a town" is more like "move straight for police and fire stations" as you will find almost everything there.

[BeefBacon 1185]

always healing would readuce the practical use of being energized and hydrated which in turn has the opposite effect. Instead the healing effects (both blood and health) should be a reward you have to work on - so yes to a smaller stomach.

 

 

The healing effect when hungry would be incredibly slow, even slower than it is when energised. I propose this only because, if food is a lot harder to come by, a lot of people are going to spend a lot of time with desaturated vision. For me it's either this or there needs to be more ways to recover health without relying on other players. Recovering health on your own should be more difficult but it should be possible without having to find a year's supply of food.

 

And yes, I agree with your second point. I'm not part of the 'omg ur so tacticool' crowd, but I do believe that there needs to be greater emphasis on low-tier weapons. Military loot should only spawn high-end military gear, but most of that gear should be near-worthless without basic gear. For example, military spawns should spawn more attachments than weapons, and cities should spawn more weapons and ammo. Players who go straight for airfields might maybe find a good weapon, but they're unlikely to find the ammo for it. It's more likely that they'll find an attachment for a weapon they don't have, meaning that a very basic summary of a playthrough would go spawn - hunt/ loot small villages - attempt to loot town - if successful go for military spawns to find high-end attachments for weapons found in towns. Currently it seems to be spawn - go to police station/ airfield and find food on the way.

 

Another alternative would be to make airfields equally dangerous, so airfields still spawn weapons along with their respective ammunition but getting to them is harder due to the large numbers of zombies. Could argue the airfields were used as refugee camps or something.

[BeefBacon 1185]

Bump? Bump.