The Great CLE Loot Experiment (Starving Players)

[CrashBoomK 12]

Alright I've seen several times where people say they are starving and no food is spawning. I want to figure out if there is a actual bug with some servers/restarts or if the loot is just somewhere else but I need the communities help to figure this out. Anyone is welcome to participate and this should enable us to provide some solid feedback to the Devs on CLE.

 

Here is the deal. If you are a veteran player or pretty skilled at hunting for items/food and can't find anything on a server you are a freshspawn on then post the info in here in reply to the main post. Include the ServerName, IP address (these have changed in the past on some resetting of servers), Version (since this changes), Date and Time you started and also what Town you spawned in/near. Other Veteran players will respond  to the posts listing the server info etc and indicate what they found and where (town) on that server including date and time.

 

What this will enable us to do is verify if it's just one persons experience or if there really is a bug causing some servers to quit spawning loot. Plus being able to identify specific servers to the Dev team if this is the case will enable them to more easily find the cause and fix it by reviewing those specific servers.

 

Hopefully people will participate. Thank you for your Time.

 

For my take after doing this earlier today on another site and spending a huge chunk of hours on a server someone said was devoid of loot, I feel that items aren't respawning at all just it's leftovers other players didn't need, want, or find.  The longer before another patch I think this will become more obvious.  I'd be interested to see a map of where items are respawning for those servers that we manage to identify as having issues.

[CrashBoomK 12]

Server: DayZ SouthCentral 0-1

IP: 50.97.95.150:2302

Version: Latest 0.56

Spawn Point: Edge of Elektro

Time: 1330-2100 Mountain 5/15/2015

Server Pop: Fluctuated from under 75 to 75 to way less later on.

Results: Someone said this server didn't seem to have loot so I went and checked it out. Around Elektro I found pretty much no loot except a hardhat and a hayhook and moved on. I observed at least 10 other people doing about the same thing on my way out. I ate apples and berries and kept moving. Made it to Mogli found a wool coat and killed a cow several times and some chickens (Server crashes allowed me to kill more than normal) and ate up and made a bow and some arrows. I then began crisscrossing the map killing animals and eating them and drinking from fountains. Server Population later began to drop off. I checked the whole southern half of the map and then headed up north through Polana, Gorka, etc since the population dropped off and had kind of remained steady I wanted to see if I could find more stuff in Berezino that up to the East Airfield and Novo. There were about 14 people left when I logged off.

While I found some of the stuff I needed like matches, ammo, rope etc... It definitely feels broken. What it seems to me is that the same issue private hive servers were having is present on this server. Items aren't actually respawning what people are mainly finding is leftovers others didn't touch. Was I able to survive? Yes by living off the land. I didn't find any actual food items except two sodas in deer feeders. I did manage to find more stuff as I went westward but not near as much as you would think if I logged in right after a server restart. So yes I don't think it's working at all we are experiencing the same thing as before but how visible it is depends on the server as on another 1st person server I've got tons of gear etc but I'll check that one in a few days to see if things are more scarce.

TLDR- I think it's broken (at least on this server) but isn't easily visible except for on High Population/Visited servers due to the sheer amount of loot that spawns when they update patches and the remaining gear in the west there is only more because it takes more to reach there. It will become more obvious the longer we go without the servers being wiped is my guess.

[Girth Brooks 570]

Fruit and veggies are invisible right now unless you tab for them. Loot  IS spawing but tends to find a weird out of the way place to show up. Just how it is until next patch. Low pop servers will have more stuff on the coast, high pops have been picked over and now most decent stuff spawns inland.

[CrashBoomK 12]

Fruit and veggies are invisible right now unless you tab for them. Loot  IS spawing but tends to find a weird out of the way place to show up. Just how it is until next patch. Low pop servers will have more stuff on the coast, high pops have been picked over and now most decent stuff spawns inland.

For one what is your proof that loot IS spawning?

 

Two you can say that but if you'd taken the time to read what I wrote in my 2nd reply I criscrossed the southern half of the map and  went north later on then later on in the evening when the population dropped off I should have found more stuff inland but in fact I did not. despite knowing the coast was picked clean.  So how do you explain that?

[Beizs 186]

Lootsplosions are proof enough that loot is spawning.

 

That, compounded with the fact that I've seen loot spawn in areas multiple times in my play session today alone (twice in front of me, the rest going back to the same building), is proof that loot is respawning.

 

There's actually not really much of an issue with loot respawns... The issue is that it's not regional. This means that it spawns a new piece of loot randomly on the map when a piece of loot is picked up. So, with the coast seeing heavy activity (as well as the center of the map), those places appear pretty much permanently empty from a couple hours after first initialization. Loot is respawning there, but people pick it up very quickly. You'd be amazed at how close players are to you in a 75pop server, even when you seem like you're alone.

 

Up in the far north and far west, there's plenty of loot on most servers. It really just depends on the server and where people have been on said server.

 

The main issue, in my opinion, is despawning loot. I think that loot that isn't picked up often should be despawning much faster to improve loot respawns in the heavily trafficked areas. However, regions should be more than enough to fix everything once they're implemented.

 

Let me put it this way. I survived entirely on apples, with no weapon and a rain coat being the only piece of loot I could find that was worth taking until I hit around Grishino. From there and further north and west, all over the place (except the NWAF and surrounding towns, despite Grishino being an exception), pretty much every town had worthwhile loot. Granted, food IS rather scarce, but that's really a good thing. There's enough to scrape by until you can start farming or hunting once you hit the north west... And I'm now at a point where, despite losing my entire backpack thanks to it falling through the floor, I'm still well provisioned.

[BeefBacon 1185]

I've made it to Severograd and the surrounding villages and I'm yet to find much of any value. I found some bullets in a house that clearly hadn't been picked over, but that's it.

 

I'm yet to find a single food item, so I get to search trees for apples. I get a 1/10 success rate, which is so fucking frustrating I can't even.

 

Wool coats are everywhere. In fact I'd go so far as to say that 9/10 of the items (bar books) I've come across have been wool coats of varying colours. Isn't uncommon to find a house that has a dozen wool coats and nothing else.

 

I'm yet to find a bag or a gun that didn't once belong to somebody else. Bags that have items (all useless) in them and weapons with a single round chambered or in the middle of a field are the only ones I've found.

 

Canvas pants and jeans are the only legwear I can find. Wool coats, rain coats and the occasional bomber jacket/check shirt/ hoodie are the only tops I can find. Footwear and headwear seems more or less normal.

 

Finding houses with no items whatsoever is extremely common, to the point that I'd say around half of all houses contain no items while the rest contain useless items or clothing.

 

I lucked out and found a can opener very early on. It is worthless.

 

I tried to farm but I was told I needed water. Didn't try it in a greenhouse but at that point I'd said "screw it" figuring that picking apples and berries is probably the most efficient way of gathering food, as fucking awful as it is.

 

I hate picking apples. Please God. No.

 

I've noticed that I seem to get hungry a lot more quickly now, and shoes seem to degrade faster. Actually had to replace my shoes. I've gone from energized or not hungry to dark red hungry a couple of times now. Not sure if they've tweaked it or I'm slowly going mad from picking these fucking apples. I approve either way, though.

 

I'll see if I can head further west. I may as well skip NWAF. I don't think they have apples there.

[CrashBoomK 12]

Lootsplosions are proof enough that loot is spawning.

 

That, compounded with the fact that I've seen loot spawn in areas multiple times in my play session today alone (twice in front of me, the rest going back to the same building), is proof that loot is respawning.

No Lootsplosions are not proof enough.  They actually happen as well when the server is first brought up and is full of items.  A perfect example would be today I was in a Small cabin with the Yellow on one side.  It was completely empty.  The servers are brought down to make some tweaks etc.  I waited and kept refreshing and was in during the first 5 minutes or so.  I get in and there is already a lootsplosion of clothes already there and there were very few people on at the time and none of it was there before.

 

Now did you play before the latest tweak/fixes that they took the server down for earlier today or after?  Maybe their tweaks fixed it and you played after it's hard to know since bringing servers down refreshes and changes the loot.

 

It's honestly hard to really know without Developer confirmation but as we saw in the past it's hard for them to know as well because it took alot of people saying something for them to realize yes there really was a problem with private hives with CLE and this feels like the same thing.

 

It's made harder by the fact that the past week we've had multiple patches/server tweaks which cause a refresh of loot.  Characters have been wiped of course at those times so people start all over.  These make it hard to get an accurate picture if CLE is in fact working correctly.  The only real way is extended  testing on a popular server over a long time and to account for the players who just give up after picking the coast etc you need a large amount of dedicated players to actually reach NW pick it clean and then see what happens.

 

Now think about the effect population has on servers.  The more people that log in over time means the cleaner the coast gets picked.  On a popular 75man 1st/3rd that prolly means the southern coast is barren and people either get discouraged and log off after grabbing whatever or server hop or whatever.  Others will make it inland but it takes alot more time to travel to the NW the more barren the coast etc becomes.   On a low pop 1st person server there is still plenty on the coast and even more when you move inland but you don't even notice if it respawns usually because there is just so much and fewer people to collect it.

 

People's spawn point and migration also have something to do with it.   How much time do people have to play and just how long will they play if they get discouraged because it's so hard to find something?  Now someone who can afford the time to play hardcore to test my theory can go to a server and start out with nothing and slowly head all the way to the North West despite nothing being on the coast at all.  So yes there is always going to be more loot in the NorthWest on a server like experimental where the characters get wiped frequently because not enough people have the time or equipment to make it there.  If we could have a map of people logging in and tracing their routes on a specific server I doubt many would make it to the North West at all.

 

That's not even mentioning that by the time most people reach the North West they have at least some gear that other people left behind.  I imagine the map for what people actually take when compared to tracing people's routes would look about the same if they were heat maps.  You'd be Hot almost all along the coastline then things would get progressively cooler as you approached the NW till it showed cool or cold for there.

 

I could go on why CLE seems to be working but it's so hard to actually get concrete proof without a Dev giving us some actual data on specific servers or saying otherwise what's happening.  There are just to many factors to account for and bar someone actually recording CLE in effect spawning a item in front of them on a server others say has a problem it's just to hard to diagnose.  Again I'll point out what happened with CLE and Private Hives when first implemented which tons of people insisted that oh no it's working it's just harder and your to lazy to look etc..., but in fact it was actually proven and confirmed that Private Hives weren't working forcing some changes so that it would be playable again.

 

I think the Devs are doing a great job honestly just that far to many people jump to conclusions about systems working or not without taking into account all the variables that should be seen before you can say that with assurance.

 

Probably the only actual concrete way to verify if CLE is actually working would be to hole up somewhere burn and ruin everything at that location (probably one that has had a lootsplosion so you know it's likely something else will spawn) so it's devoid of loot and then wait for something else to show up similar to how people use to loot cycle things because on a server full of people at some point something should spawn there if it tends to have lootsplosions.

Edited May 17, 2015 by CrashBoomK

[aasand 92]

Lootsplosions are proof enough that loot is spawning.

But have you ever seen a lootbomb with food?  As i see it now we get lootbombs with books, brooms, hats and so on.. All those things are already there because none picks it up. Other things seems  be taken and never respawn in the same form.

 

So what i wonder is.. How does the servers calculate what is available when people log out with stuffed backpacks and so on? Serverhoppers for example?

Edited May 17, 2015 by aasand

[twr 43]

you're alot better off joining a high pop server that has loot being picked up and respawned.

 

as much as i hate it, pick some apples and head as far west as fast as you can. it's the only way you will beat starvation. i think they increased the rate at which you have success picking apple trees in EXP... thats what im currently playing(only about 10 hours since .55, im really poopy faced on dayz right now), and i tend to find apples every other pick...

 

with that being said. i didn't buy a game to pick apples... did you? before you say "find another game" if you say picking apples is fun or necessary you're out of your mind!

 

and CLE is broken. has been broken. and will probably stay broken(i hope not). persistence hasn't worked correctly since it was put on servers, so i will continue to believe that it will never be fixed, until it is actually fixed.

Edited May 17, 2015 by twr

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

you're alot better off joining a high pop server that has loot being picked up and respawned.

 

as much as i hate it, pick some apples and head as far west as fast as you can. it's the only way you will beat starvation. i think they increased the rate at which you have success picking apple trees in EXP... thats what im currently playing(only about 10 hours since .55, im really poopy faced on dayz right now), and i tend to find apples every other pick...

 

with that being said. i didn't buy a game to pick apples... did you? before you say "find another game" if you say picking apples is fun or necessary you're out of your mind!

 

and CLE is broken. has been broken. and will probably stay broken(i hope not). persistence hasn't worked correctly since it was put on servers, so i will continue to believe that it will never be fixed, until it is actually fixed.

Picking apples is necessary.  

[cash81 506]

Picking apples is necessary.

Because a zombie apocolypse survival sim is nothing without the constant picking of apples lol

[twr 43]

Picking apples is necessary.  

 

i disagree bro, give me farming tools or something else... i cant stand the apples

[Caboose187 (DayZ) 3036]

i disagree bro, give me farming tools or somesurvive.lse... i cant stand the apples

Those are just as necessary.  Hence why it's a survival game.  Do what gotta do to survive.  Be it picking apples or growing food

[Turbidblue 1]

But have you ever seen a lootbomb with food?  As i see it now we get lootbombs with books, brooms, hats and so on.. All those things are already there because none picks it up. Other things seems  be taken and never respawn in the same form.

 

So what i wonder is.. How does the servers calculate what is available when people log out with stuffed backpacks and so on? Serverhoppers for example?

 

I ran into a lootbomb with food yesterday (on a low pop server). Before that, I was around 6 hours in on my character and hadn't found a single food or drink apart from invisible fruit and I had trouble finding good pants as well. I did mostly hang out around the coast though, to learn the map better. Since I'm a fairly new player (110 game hours) and not particulary interested in pvp I've tried to avoid the coast. This was a bit inland but still not too far from the coast. It had all sorts of canned food, sodas and lots of fresh fruit. I got energized and still couldn't fit all the food that was left in my SPOSN. There was at least 30 cans of food and maybe 15 soda cans, and fresh fruit.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Turbidblue

[Beizs 186]

No Lootsplosions are not proof enough.  They actually happen as well when the server is first brought up and is full of items.  A perfect example would be today I was in a Small cabin with the Yellow on one side.  It was completely empty.  The servers are brought down to make some tweaks etc.  I waited and kept refreshing and was in during the first 5 minutes or so.  I get in and there is already a lootsplosion of clothes already there and there were very few people on at the time and none of it was there before.

 

Now did you play before the latest tweak/fixes that they took the server down for earlier today or after?  Maybe their tweaks fixed it and you played after it's hard to know since bringing servers down refreshes and changes the loot.

 

It's honestly hard to really know without Developer confirmation but as we saw in the past it's hard for them to know as well because it took alot of people saying something for them to realize yes there really was a problem with private hives with CLE and this feels like the same thing.

 

It's made harder by the fact that the past week we've had multiple patches/server tweaks which cause a refresh of loot.  Characters have been wiped of course at those times so people start all over.  These make it hard to get an accurate picture if CLE is in fact working correctly.  The only real way is extended  testing on a popular server over a long time and to account for the players who just give up after picking the coast etc you need a large amount of dedicated players to actually reach NW pick it clean and then see what happens.

 

Now think about the effect population has on servers.  The more people that log in over time means the cleaner the coast gets picked.  On a popular 75man 1st/3rd that prolly means the southern coast is barren and people either get discouraged and log off after grabbing whatever or server hop or whatever.  Others will make it inland but it takes alot more time to travel to the NW the more barren the coast etc becomes.   On a low pop 1st person server there is still plenty on the coast and even more when you move inland but you don't even notice if it respawns usually because there is just so much and fewer people to collect it.

 

People's spawn point and migration also have something to do with it.   How much time do people have to play and just how long will they play if they get discouraged because it's so hard to find something?  Now someone who can afford the time to play hardcore to test my theory can go to a server and start out with nothing and slowly head all the way to the North West despite nothing being on the coast at all.  So yes there is always going to be more loot in the NorthWest on a server like experimental where the characters get wiped frequently because not enough people have the time or equipment to make it there.  If we could have a map of people logging in and tracing their routes on a specific server I doubt many would make it to the North West at all.

 

That's not even mentioning that by the time most people reach the North West they have at least some gear that other people left behind.  I imagine the map for what people actually take when compared to tracing people's routes would look about the same if they were heat maps.  You'd be Hot almost all along the coastline then things would get progressively cooler as you approached the NW till it showed cool or cold for there.

 

I could go on why CLE seems to be working but it's so hard to actually get concrete proof without a Dev giving us some actual data on specific servers or saying otherwise what's happening.  There are just to many factors to account for and bar someone actually recording CLE in effect spawning a item in front of them on a server others say has a problem it's just to hard to diagnose.  Again I'll point out what happened with CLE and Private Hives when first implemented which tons of people insisted that oh no it's working it's just harder and your to lazy to look etc..., but in fact it was actually proven and confirmed that Private Hives weren't working forcing some changes so that it would be playable again.

 

I think the Devs are doing a great job honestly just that far to many people jump to conclusions about systems working or not without taking into account all the variables that should be seen before you can say that with assurance.

 

Probably the only actual concrete way to verify if CLE is actually working would be to hole up somewhere burn and ruin everything at that location (probably one that has had a lootsplosion so you know it's likely something else will spawn) so it's devoid of loot and then wait for something else to show up similar to how people use to loot cycle things because on a server full of people at some point something should spawn there if it tends to have lootsplosions.

 

I played before and after the latest update/hotfix. I don't believe it wiped everything on the map, unless a bunch of  the same items just happened to spawn in the same place. Remember, if the server has a backlog of items to spawn at a restart, it's likely that it'll spawn a bunch during initialization, which would explain lootsplosions after restarts (especially with the fact that the CLE is buggy).

 

I saw evidence of loot respawns before and after the latest update. I'm certain beyond all reasonable doubt that loot is and was respawning, at least throughout yesterday.

 

The loot on the coast thing doesn't disprove my ideas. Loot respawns slowly - and every time it respawns, it respawns somewhere completely random on the map. The coast continues to be looted and the north west are less looted. This leads to a buildup in the northwest (lootsplosions are incredibly common in some far NW towns, furthering my theory) and scarcity on the coast. Items do spawn on the coast. One of the times loot spawned directly in front of me was on the coast - and I can't put it down to a glitch in rendering, as it wasn't visible, wasn't visible on the search screen, then, suddenly, it was. It was next to a pair of badly damaged canvas pants, too.

 

But have you ever seen a lootbomb with food?  As i see it now we get lootbombs with books, brooms, hats and so on.. All those things are already there because none picks it up. Other things seems  be taken and never respawn in the same form.

 

So what i wonder is.. How does the servers calculate what is available when people log out with stuffed backpacks and so on? Serverhoppers for example?

 

 

Of course I've not seen a loot bomb with food. That's more evidence to what I'm saying. People pick up food. People do pick up clothing and weapons, but they don't pick up more than one or two of the same type of item when it comes to just about anything else. Food and ammo are two of the things that are never in lootsplosions (or very rarely)... Why? Because people pick up just about every piece they find. Ammo is slightly more common, which makes sense as people will leave ammo they don't need once they have a good weapon and ammo for it. It also tends to be ammo for either crappy guns (.22) or ammo for rare guns (5.56), in my experience.

 

The server only factors in actual loot on the server. It definitely takes no notice of player inventories, whether they're on the server or not - that's been explicitly stated. I'm a little less clear on whether it counts loot that's been picked up then dropped, though it seems to not count that stuff, as people move items out of an area to cycle loot - and that's still doable, to my knowledge.

[Evil Minion 943]

I was playing Day 0.56 for the last days and did not find any big loot pileup only a few minor ones that were actually not all that unrealistic (piles of clothes). So it seems loot distribution got better though it's not perfect.

The main issue, in my opinion, is despawning loot. I think that loot that isn't picked up often should be despawning much faster to improve loot respawns in the heavily trafficked areas. However, regions should be more than enough to fix everything once they're implemented.

I think that's exactly the opposite of want you want in DayZ. With more loot spawning where more loot is picked there is no reason to move everywhere. Cue everyone sitting at the coast enjoying free resident loot spawns. On the other side loot spawning somewhat random while avoiding large pileups would create a much more dynamic gameplay where players actually have a reason to move away from the spawn areas.

Now that suggestion does make sense on a server level as here we want the opposite: players staying where they are instead of hopping around. So high population servers should spawn more loot than low population servers.

[CrashBoomK 12]

 

I played before and after the latest update/hotfix. I don't believe it wiped everything on the map, unless a bunch of  the same items just happened to spawn in the same place. Remember, if the server has a backlog of items to spawn at a restart, it's likely that it'll spawn a bunch during initialization, which would explain lootsplosions after restarts (especially with the fact that the CLE is buggy).

 

I saw evidence of loot respawns before and after the latest update. I'm certain beyond all reasonable doubt that loot is and was respawning, at least throughout yesterday.

 

The loot on the coast thing doesn't disprove my ideas. Loot respawns slowly - and every time it respawns, it respawns somewhere completely random on the map. The coast continues to be looted and the north west are less looted. This leads to a buildup in the northwest (lootsplosions are incredibly common in some far NW towns, furthering my theory) and scarcity on the coast. Items do spawn on the coast. One of the times loot spawned directly in front of me was on the coast - and I can't put it down to a glitch in rendering, as it wasn't visible, wasn't visible on the search screen, then, suddenly, it was. It was next to a pair of badly damaged canvas pants, too.

 

So you played on private hives and experienced the fact that CLE was broken which the Devs confirmed that it wasn't working at all on Private Hives btw but your still gonna tell me it was working?

 

As for restarts they don't do crap.  What I'm talking about is when they take down the server and actually reset it which happens whenever they make tweaks or patches.  Private Hive servers were given the ability to do this after a fashion by the Devs because CLE was broken so they would actually be playable.

[HarryPotter (DayZ) 172]

So, does no one think loot bombs are what's messing up how the loot spawns?

If a server knows it's got 500 cans of food in the economy and they are all situated in 10 spots due to loot bombing on the map how can they spawn in anywhere else?

[twr 43]

So, does no one think loot bombs are what's messing up how the loot spawns?

If a server knows it's got 500 cans of food in the economy and they are all situated in 10 spots due to loot bombing on the map how can they spawn in anywhere else?

 

exactly they cant.

[HarryPotter (DayZ) 172]

Edit: wrong thread was supposed to post that in the 0.56 exp thread. Here will do though.

[blackberrygoo 1416]

Just played yesterday on us south central 0-1 3PP (never play third person but just had to check the situation of loot) ... It looks as if it's easy enough to survive on this "broken" server , I started in Cherno , rummaged around and found only clothing in the 20 buildings I searched , and managed to sprain my ankle somehow (lol)... So while I was dealing with that I made my way up to kozlovka, found a can of beans and picked some apples , I also found a water bottle among a huge lootsplosion of clothes in a one story cabin house , so after finding seeds and a hoe in Drozhino, I was almost set up , just needed more food to sustain myself for farming .. So I made it to Zelenogorsk , made some peppers and found even more seeds , food and a water well , I know live In Zelenogorsk (still technically on the coast mind you ) and I now had to switch servers b/c southcentral 0-1 was doing some weird lockup thing ... But when I switched servers I found the FNX45 and the other stuff at zeleno mil base ... Not too much, not too little , all obtained in about 2 hours of play before work and I only had to pick berries for about a collective 15 minutes to survive Cherno to kozlovka !
EDIT: will add pictures when I get off of my mobile soon .

Long story short CLE is NOT broken , that would imply it's not working at all ... The term-phrase this thread is looking for is Not working as intended , because I literally saw loot appear in a garage I had just been in (with no loot previously) when the server went down for a restart , it wasn't there before restart then after restart it was a hoodie, rope , burlap sack and I believe some type of food ! I believe it appeared somewhere between kozlovka and Drozhino so my guess is the CLE is working , but putting it in places that people rarely go (and not to mention it seems like CLE only "shuffles Loot" on restart , as if items ONLY despawn on restart ?) . So I think restarts are governing when the CLE despawns and respawns loot , when really loot should be despawning at all times , but again CLE is not broken as we have seen instances of it doing it's job , it just needs further work as this is the first iteration of it.

 

EDIT : this is the spot where i found the PET bottle inside of a huge clothes lootsplosion:

 

This is how he looked before logoff:

 

Edited May 18, 2015 by Grapefruit kush