Car Binding System Discussion

[Egor190 14]

Hey, I have a idea I thought about suggesting. Id like to present it before General Discussion to get some feedback and ideas to fine tune the idea before suggesting it.

Let me preface this with the basic mechanics of The Key.

Every player will begin the game with a key, which will take up the final tool slot space (unless I'm wrong, if you have every tool, adding 1 more will give you a full belt).

This key isn't like most other items. It can only be added to your tool belt and can not be added to your backpack or any other kind of storage, unlike other tools.

When you drop your key, it is destroyed. If you loot a key off another player, yours is destroyed and replaced with the new key. No matter what, you may only have 1 key at any time.

Ok, so onto my example. We will use 2 players named James and Greta to illustrate how the key will work in practice.

James and Greta begin the game (with the new key item, of course). James spawns in Elektro, and finds a DMR and sets out north.

Greta spawns in Solnichiny, and is lucky enough to stumble upon a freshly spawned V3S truck soon after hitting the quarry.

Greta goes up to the vehicle and finds that this truck is unbound to any players key, and so is able to bind the V3S to hers.

Now, Greta can set the V3S into 2 distinct modes.

Unlocked- The truck will behave much as any vehicle does now, with any player able to hop in and drive off. (adds map optional finding feature)

Locked - This is the main feature of the key. In locked mode, players can still enter the vehicle (to facilitate the transportation of friends and friendlies), but only the key holder can enter the driver seat. (adds forced map finding feature)

Greta considers setting it to unlocked mode and bringing it back to her groups base camp, so that any of her friends may drive the vehicle around (at the risk of it being stolen, of course), but decides to take the safe route and set it to locked.

She takes the truck to the NW Airfield, thinking shell load it up with guns and NVGs from the barracks, but is sniped by James, who is camping the airfield.

James is happy to have a new truck sitting before him, but he is unable to get in because the truck is locked. He now loots Greta's key item, which destroys his old key.

He is now able to enter the truck and drive off, with the truck now bound to him. He decides to go to sleep soon after, so leaves his truck hidden in the forest and logs off for the night.

Other players come across the truck while he is gone, but cant steal it because James has the key. James wakes up and logs in in the morning, only to find his truck has been vandalized. Upset that they could not steal it, bandits trashed the truck and stole his gear he left in it.

However, the truck isnt destroyed. Why? Because as part of the key update, it was also made that vehicles are much harder to destroy, requiring satchel charges, M136s, etc to render a vehicle completely destroyed.

All of his windows and tires are shot out now though, and his engines red so he will still have to put effort in to repair it.

James decides he'd like to get his truck up and running again, so he heads south to the Chern Factory in search of vehicle parts. While looting much needed engine parts, James is axe murdered by a unnamed server hopper.

The server hopper loots James' key, and is shown on the map where the truck is (another feature of the key of which ill go into more detail below). Combined with his map, he is able to pinpoint James' truck, and being the sociopath he is, finds and drives the truck into Chern hospital, blowing up the truck and all the precious-as-gold morphine, much to the lamentation of noobs everywhere.

So ends the story of James, Greta, and server hopping dicks.

Finer points of The Key:

When you are in possession of a key, you are shown on your map where the vehicle that key is bound to is located.

This has many implications, a cool one being that if you're part of one of those groups that wants to horde lots of vehicles, the death of a member and looting of a key could compromise your base. Of course, you can keep your vehicles unlocked but you lose the benefits of the key.

Keys are not compatible with vehicles outside of map boundaries.

Vehicles bound to keys respawn in their original location after 3 days of inactivity by the keyholder. If you arent playing atleast once every 3 days, which is a full weekend, then other players deserve to have fun with the vehicle you're in possession of. If you set your vehicle to unlocked mode, it'll stay until whatever the current respawn time is right now for inactive vehicles (7 days I think?).

This compromises the increased security with requiring you to be more active to maintain your vehicle.

More to come

Intentions of The Key

I hope that with something like this implemented, active players can feel safe to log off and expect to have their vehicles there the next day.

Although it may be hard to believe, this can actually make the logistics of a small group of people hoarding a lot of vehicles much more difficult. If you lose a member and his key is found, it can lead players to your base. If your base is spread out to avoid this, it is more likely to be found anyway since that's more locations for a lucky player to stumble upon.

I think it will also facilitate interesting scenarios as well. Say you find a camp consisting of 3 locked cars. You can estimate they have atleast 3 players, so its a decent sized group. You cant steal the car just yet, but you know since the cars are there theyve been used within the last 3 days, meaning its likely they'll be back soon. You can set up a ambush at their base to take those players out and get their precious keys. I think this adds to the sandbox style of Day Z.

As it is now, you stumble upon a camp of people, take their cars, run over their tents, rape their women all while they are asleep. They log in the next day and no interesting game play has happened, theyre just screwed since they werent on the game 24 hours a day to guard it.

Once again, more to come hopefully

Last section- Questions and Answers

Q. Is implementation of something like this possible in the scope of the mod? OR! Is this idea worth the pain in the ass of implementing entire new systems?

A. I don't know, but I hope someone in the know can shed light on this.

Q. Can other players steal gear from a locked vehicle?

A. Another reason I created this thread here. Id like to hear your ideas on this if it were to be implemented. Should a locked car be reasonably safe storage?

Q. How do cars become unbound?

A. Inactivity respawning, willful unbinding (dropping your key), being destroyed outright (Doable but now tougher to accomplish, as part of my example)

Q. Wont this make hoarding easier?

A. Yes and No. Keys leading you back to a persons vehicle could make vehicles change hands more quickly. Vehicles being able to be locked doesn't necessarily make hoarding easier. It could very well end up being a bunch of solo players or small groups with locked cars making it difficult for large clans to accumulate and hoard all the vehicles, as many tend to do now.

Q. What about something like this for tents?

A. Tents are infinitely less rare and much easier to hide than a bus. A system like this is not needed for them.

Feedback- Please be constructive and let me know if you like or don't like the idea and tell me what you'd like to change about it.

Thanks for reading the thread and my horrible writing.

[mtuckner 46]

No...

[djkling 5]

hmm... I would have to say no, but its a well thought out point.

[Techercizer 82]

I'll take "no" for 200 dollars, Bob!

[yahhzoo 10]

Need a tldr, but I think the way vehicles spawn and anyone can take them is awesome. If people were able to bind them to their character it would cause way too much hoarding.

Just what I think.

[Egor190 14]

Need a tldr' date=' but I think the way vehicles spawn and anyone can take them is awesome. If people were able to bind them to their character it would cause way too much hoarding.

Just what I think.

[/quote']

The idea is actually intended to cut down on hoarding indirectly.

Ill try to think of a TL;DR but it seems the idea isnt being well received so I may not bother.

[Yeni 53]

No. When I see a car, Im gonna take it. If I cant take it, then theres a problem.

[legwiz 0]

Yeah, this key system might work just fine, but rather than each person spawning with 1 key to bound, would make more sense if each car had its own key, and the first one to reach it, would have de option to . And I think would be crap if you make impossible to people steal another person's car, so with a Toolbox, you could just hot-wire the car.

[Egor190 14]

Yeah' date=' this key system might work just fine, but rather than each person spawning with 1 key to bound, would make more sense if each car had its own key, and the first one to reach it, would have de option to . And I think would be crap if you make impossible to people steal another person's car, so with a Toolbox, you could just hot-wire the car.

[/quote']

Keys spawning with the car may be a more elegant way for them to be acquired.

As for your toolbox suggestion, I feel those are a common enough to make the whole idea rather pointless. Why go through the effort of making a complicated car ownership system when 99% of the time, itd just be overruled by a toolbox.

If that was the case, id say just scrap the idea outright.

---

No. When I see a car' date=' Im gonna take it. If I cant take it, then theres a problem.

[/quote']

In that interview rocket did recently, he mentioned he would like to add more ways to "rebuild civilization", or so to speak. Adding things like research, manufacturing, improved base building, etc. I feel that a system like this goes hand in hand with that.

Since this is a video game, people cant be on 24/7 to guard their stuff. If this was real life, you could be asleep and the sound of your car being stolen would wake you up. Or, if a post apocalyptic scenario like Day Z actually took place, staying alive would necessitate 24/7 guards because vehicles could be a very vital element to survival for a community. This just compromises the realities of real life and those of a video game.

If you want to create a true sandbox where players can form their own communities, cities, etc, this is a needed step. How can the game ever be more than afk survival in the north or Chern deathmatch 2012 without adding more elements of persistence? As it is, vehicles are one of the few things to do in the game once you're past the point where zombies aren't a threat anymore and you rarely see other players.

Honestly, I think the vehicle system is fine as is if you want to keep the game as it is today. But if you want to create something more, you just gotta facilitate ways for players to create a community.

[Horrible_Sniper 11]

Yeah' date=' this key system might work just fine, but rather than each person spawning with 1 key to bound, would make more sense if each car had its own key, and the first one to reach it, would have de option to . And I think would be crap if you make impossible to people steal another person's car, so with a Toolbox, you could just hot-wire the car.

[/quote']

Keys spawning with the car may be a more elegant way for them to be acquired.

As for your toolbox suggestion, I feel those are a common enough to make the whole idea rather pointless. Why go through the effort of making a complicated car ownership system when 99% of the time, itd just be overruled by a toolbox.

If that was the case, id say just scrap the idea outright.

Because the idea of owning something outright is stupid for DayZ. If you say "Well, he has the key to the car, it's his now, no one can take it, just destroy it" then basically vehicles are useless, as they'd have to be hidden extremely far off the map to avoid being spotted and destroyed. You can't have a mechanic that doesn't allow theft, this is DayZ, theft is half the game.

[Egor190 14]

Yeah' date=' this key system might work just fine, but rather than each person spawning with 1 key to bound, would make more sense if each car had its own key, and the first one to reach it, would have de option to . And I think would be crap if you make impossible to people steal another person's car, so with a Toolbox, you could just hot-wire the car.

[/quote']

Keys spawning with the car may be a more elegant way for them to be acquired.

As for your toolbox suggestion, I feel those are a common enough to make the whole idea rather pointless. Why go through the effort of making a complicated car ownership system when 99% of the time, itd just be overruled by a toolbox.

If that was the case, id say just scrap the idea outright.

Because the idea of owning something outright is stupid for DayZ. If you say "Well, he has the key to the car, it's his now, no one can take it, just destroy it" then basically vehicles are useless, as they'd have to be hidden extremely far off the map to avoid being spotted and destroyed. You can't have a mechanic that doesn't allow theft, this is DayZ, theft is half the game.

I dont think you fully read or understood the concept of my idea. First of all, I said that in my vision for this update, vehicles would be a lot harder to outright destroy. This is something I believe already needs to happen anyway. Since when can you make cars explode with small arms or by hitting a road block at 20 KMH? I fired 10 rounds out of my M4 at some guys tractor today and it exploded, TWICE somehow. Thats dumb. Thats removing vehicles from play for long periods of time for almost no reason. Thats not realistic.

Second of all, I stated that this binding system would only apply to vehicles within the confines of the map. This is one of the key points to make this idea work. You have to find the persons vehicle before you can ambush them. The idea is that you're finding more vehicles because of this, because its now safer to leave vehicles near where other people may stumble and inside map boundaries.

Third, and possibly most important, this doesn't remove theft from Day Z. You can still steal their shit out of their car. Want the car itself? Ambush the guy on the way back to his car.

What does all this mean? It means there's still theft, for one. It should mean you're seeing more vehicles within the area of play, and not hidden 200 miles from the map boundary. It should mean that cars are still being stolen left and right, except instead of "I was sleeping and I woke up and my car is gone" it could now be "I was heading back to base camp and a crazy firefight ensued over possession of the vehicle". Theres a actual confrontation now instead of simple moving loot from one place to another. I think thats cool.

I'm glad criticism is coming and thats why I posted this here. Im glad you disagree with me. However, I think many of your points are false, namely the fact that this idea is in any way shape or form trying to remove theft from Day Z. I mean come on, did you not read the part where when you die and get looted, people will now KNOW where your vehicle is? That is 100% stab a bitch and steal that shit territory.

[w_epley 37]

Dislike, unrealistic and detracts from overall game play. Ok idea for some other game though, just not this one.

[fml 29]

Agreed with above.

Also, whats stopping them from smashing a window and hot wiring it? Besides the engine of the game?