Possibilities for the endgame

[Sike (DayZ) 8]

I had this idea I posted on the steam forums in response to someone who was asking for ideas for a better endgame but that isn't really the best place to start a good discussion about the game so I'm bringing it here to see what you guys think.

 

Taking a queue from MMO's lets create a raid mission DayZ style. No quest line, no NPCs, and no scripted events. Just one seriously hard to impregnate "dungeon" if you will and who ever you can convince to try it with you.

 

The reason you would dare try it is this...

 

Some of the world's top scientists were sent to Chernarus to study the infection. They were under heavy military guard and their goal was to find a cure that could stop someone from becoming a zombie and possibly even keep them immune. The facility they were using was as secure as it can get. Underground, thick concrete, blast doors, short dark hallways... you know all the works. They could have continued their work with impunity as long as it took to find the cure but something went horribly wrong. It could have been a guard who got infected on one of their many runs outside to find and capture a specimen for the scientists to study or it could have been something more sinister, maybe a scientists decided to start playing god and tried to modify the infectious virus to make someone more than human.

 

We don't really know what happened but whatever happened the facility was quickly overrun and the evacuation order came. The helicopters came and took as much staff as they could but it was too late. Most of those rescued were carriers now and with helicopters already overloaded taking them down was easy once someone turned into one of those things.

 

Now the facility is silent. The workers at the facility locked the doors behind them before they left and took the keys with them when they were evacuated with the hopes that perhaps they could return and continue the work that was done there. With everyone dead though it doesn't look like that remains a possibility.

(this is where you come in)

 

One day as you're left wandering the wasteland that was once chernarus you come across one of the crashed helicopters of the failed evacuation and in it you find a strange key. With it you have the ability to reopen the lab and see what lies inside but you don't want to go alone. You put a rag tag group of survivors together and you all decide it is worth it to check this place out.

 

When you get there you notice the area is infested with the worst types of zombies, the heavily armored kind. You and your group hasn't come this far just to turn back though. You work together to bring them all down and when you're done you approach the doors. The guy with the key uses it to unlock it and you are greeted with nothing but a large dark room. As you enter you see signs of a massive struggle. Blood everywhere, bodies piled up against fighting positions, and nothing but silence. As your group continues the large room comes to an end. To continue you must go through a maze of cramped hallways and long stairwells and that is where you meet the inhabitants of the facility.

 

They come at you fast and with little warning. No matter how careful you try to be they keep getting close. You are firing weapons at point blank range, just missing your comrades by mere inches as you try to keep them off of each other. Every now and then you see evidence of what the scientists were actually up to. Lab tables covered in blood, human body parts under microscopes, some really gruesome looking found footage on a projector of a live specimen being dissected. Then just when it looks like it is too hard to continue on you reach the end. Battered and bloodied you come across what it was all for. Amongst the lab equipment and failed experiments you find what makes it all worth it. Vials of the cure.

 

The end.

 

I think this is the direction the game should go. It gives a meaning to all the work you go through getting geared and establishing relationships with other survivors. Without heroes anymore there is not much incentive to have positive player interaction anymore. Stand alone looks like it will just be a lot of people avoiding contact and others grouping up for the purpose of protection and/or the thrill they get when they kill other players. The future looks pretty bleak even with animal companions who wont betray you.

 

So how about give people a reason to band together and fight the one true enemy, the infection. Shift some of the focus from almost entirely being centered around PvP and bring it back to some of the PvE elements of the game.

 

You could make it in the form of a underground facility in the far northern reaches of the map or put it out to sea on an oilrig or small island. Load it up with 200 army infected. Stash it with plenty of those storytelling elements you use to make the player guess for himself what happened then make the loot legendary and worth the effort.

 

That can be done in a number of ways. Make it a cure or permanent immunity like I said. Or make it incomplete so you have to take the lab equipment with you and find out how to go about finding the cure in your own way. This can be used to enhance the already existing PvP structure as well. A whole meta could evolve around betraying your group to take all the science gear for yourself or rationing it out to whoever is the highest bidder for gear. Maybe we will find it out it has a side effect that lets a player infect whoever he wants with his own bodily fluids so a new meta would evolve around bandits taking prisoners and biting them or giving them an infected blood transfusion. The possibilities are immense.

 

So what do you guys think? There doesn't have to be something like what I came up with. I am mainly just spitballing to see what you guys might want. A DayZ raid mission with legendary loot like I said or something else? What would you guys do to add to the endgame?

[Nesuma (DayZ) 108]

Sorry but ultimate nope, nice story telling but completely not suited for dayz. This game is about not having an end. "Endgame" is pretty vague, you could experience it after 3 minutes if you find a camp of a clan or after 3 weeks on your own. Or never. That's the point of DayZ. But do not worry, once surviving becomes harder more people will create groups to really survive, I guess...
Also all survivors are already immune.

[Sike (DayZ) 8]

Also all survivors are already immune.

The mod had infection so I'm under the assumption that it is being carried over.

[Chaingunfighter 917]

The mod had infection so I'm under the assumption that it is being carried over.

You got diseases but you weren't actually becoming infected by the virus that turns you, just one of the countless bacteria/viruses that would inhabit the super unsanitary bodies of those infected. I mean, they're wearing the clothes that they died with and are covered in various bodily fluids, so getting sick from being attacked is just inevitable. But the devs have confirmed that you're not getting the zombie virus and that it will probably never be an official feature.

[Rags! 1966]

Ever had food poisoning? And I don't mean

 

"Oh, that piece of toast was sorta questionable." food poisoning. 

 

I mean

 

"Holy mother fuck, I haven't slept in 36 hours and I've puked so much my sides hurt and I'm dry heaving so much I'm gagging myself with water just so it doesn't hurt as bad when my body makes me hurl" food poisoning. 

 

Yea, that shit's no joke. You thought getting the stomach virus was bad, but a bad oyster and overdue crabcake will fuck your innards up like an exploding colon bomb. You want an endgame in DayZ? Brother, you spend a week in a post-apocalyptic electricity vacant Chernarus and not catch a social class severing full-blown Soviet Bloc Stomach Stalin and we'll see what you say about "endgame". 

Edited March 15, 2015 by Rags

[Whyherro123 2283]

Survival in and of itself is the "endgame"

[archamedes 238]

Ever had food poisoning? And I don't mean

 

"Oh, that piece of toast was sorta questionable." food poisoning. 

 

I mean

 

"Holy mother fuck, I haven't slept in 36 hours and I've puked so much my sides hurt and I'm dry heaving so much I'm gagging myself with water just so it doesn't hurt as bad when my body makes me hurl" food poisoning. 

 

Yea, that shit's no joke. You thought getting the stomach virus was bad, but a bad oyster and overdue crabcake will fuck your innards up like an exploding colon bomb. You want an endgame in DayZ? Brother, you spend a week in a post-apocalyptic electricity vacant Chernarus and not catch a social class severing full-blown Soviet Bloc Stomach Stalin and we'll see what you say about "endgame". 

have my beans. Im actually stealing this quote for facebook when someone actually complains about a sore tummy from the yoghurt they ate

Edited March 16, 2015 by archamedes

[Whyherro123 2283]

Ever had food poisoning? And I don't mean

 

"Oh, that piece of toast was sorta questionable." food poisoning. 

 

I mean

 

"Holy mother fuck, I haven't slept in 36 hours and I've puked so much my sides hurt and I'm dry heaving so much I'm gagging myself with water just so it doesn't hurt as bad when my body makes me hurl" food poisoning. 

 

Yea, that shit's no joke. You thought getting the stomach virus was bad, but a bad oyster and overdue crabcake will fuck your innards up like an exploding colon bomb. You want an endgame in DayZ? Brother, you spend a week in a post-apocalyptic electricity vacant Chernarus and not catch a social class severing full-blown Soviet Bloc Stomach Stalin and we'll see what you say about "endgame". 

I actually cannot WAIT for diseases, both infections and water and food-borne diseases. I cannot wait for the crying on the forums when people drink straight from ponds and rivers, then die like animals. Eat food that is slightly undercooked? Spend hours in-game with severe diarrhea and vomiting, leading to life-threatening dehydration, with all that implies. Forget to clean a wound? The wound gets severely infected due to sweat and dirt (from the playerbase sprinting everywhere), and you have to deal with the effects, which may not be treatable with just a couple of the in-game oral antibiotics. Instead, you would have to search long and hard for an antibiotic IV drip.....maybe from a Red Cross Quarantine Camp, which is CRAWLING with hundreds (if not thousands, realistically) of infected due to the patient overflow?

 

If anything, I would like 90% of the "water pumps" (you know what I am referring to) removed from the game. It removes a critical aspect from survival if safe, potable water is next-to-guaranteed in every town.

[WolfgangErikson 127]

I thought DayZ already has an end-game scenario?

"you are dead"

That's worked for me so far.