Abundance is Realism

[jqp 9]

Great example of Alexandria idiocy, the way the guy leaves the psycho priest to close the gate. For hundreds of years, militaries around the world have had regulations for how to handle guard duty. In fact, it's so simple and central that it's one of the US military's ten commandments (I forget their name for it); you don't leave your post until properly relieved. It's hard to believe nobody in that suburb had military experience, particularly since they're known to be gov't types, and gov't is riddled with vets. Even if there were no veterans, it's also common sense, and in any of about a million military manuals (which you might think people would read after a Zombie Apocalypse, lol).

 

It's pretty simple. When you put people on guard duty, you tell them not to leave their post until they are officially relieved, and that there will be severe punishment for failing to follow procedure.

 

ETA:

 

Well, I would say that let's say 5 first years are just people trying to survive and use up pre-apocalypse supplies. Then, they start rebuilding the civilisation and then the living conditions would improve. Like Rick turned from a badass into a farmer.

Five years is way beyond a slacker timeline, lol. 5 years is what it should take to clean up the whole mess and put down all the zeds. That's just 5.4 zeds a day per survivor, given a 1:10k survivor:zed ratio. And waiting 5 years before rebuilding is crazy. You start rebuilding immediately. Edited August 16, 2015 by Morlock

[derLoko 30]

The road is a far more realistic representation of a post apocalyptic event.

 

The Road is generally quite unrealistic because afaik there is nothing that could simply wipe out all plant life - especially not in such a short time. It's an extremely artifical scenario.

 

 

Anyway, my point was that the scenario in The Road is completely different from a "zombie apocalypse" - In fact, they're polar opposites:

 

The Road apocalypse: 

100% of humanity left + 0.01% of food left = scarcity

 

Typical Zombie Apocalypse, happening extremely fast:

0.01% of humanity left + 100% of food left = abundance

 

DayZ Apocalypse:

?

 

The walking dead is a bit of a special scenario - the spinoff will explain the beginnings, we'll see where they go with that.

Edited August 17, 2015 by derLoko

[jqp 9]

The Road is generally quite unrealistic because afaik there is nothing that could simply wipe out all plant life - especially not in such a short time. It's an extremely artifical scenario.

Surely there are similarities that obtain across all plant species*, or at least, all plant species of substantial food value; that's the point that the author attacks. Say, a bioweapon designed to starve the enemy, while your (GMO?) crops are unaffected. But, the virus mutates, and jumps across to your crops, too. Or, a virus designed to eradicate an invasive plant species mutates and jumps to everything.(Or maybe there aren't; if you left frickin algae unmolested, people would figure out a way to survive off of it, lol)There's no hard and fast rule that says a microorganism that attacks plants that was deadly enough couldn't eradicate the species it afflicts in a short period of time.

Anyway, my point was that the scenario in The Road is completely different from a "zombie apocalypse" - In fact, they're polar opposites:The Road apocalypse: 100% of humanity left + 0.01% of food left = scarcityTypical Zombie Apocalypse, happening extremely fast:0.01% of humanity left + 100% of food left = abundance

Yes, excellent point. If you want to kill of lots of people by starvation, it's best to leave them alone, and target their food supply instead. A virus just kills them all off before starvation can kick in, lol.

[gibonez 3633]

The Road is generally quite unrealistic because afaik there is nothing that could simply wipe out all plant life - especially not in such a short time. It's an extremely artifical scenario.

 

 

Anyway, my point was that the scenario in The Road is completely different from a "zombie apocalypse" - In fact, they're polar opposites:

 

The Road apocalypse: 

100% of humanity left + 0.01% of food left = scarcity

 

Typical Zombie Apocalypse, happening extremely fast:

0.01% of humanity left + 100% of food left = abundance

 

DayZ Apocalypse:

?

 

The walking dead is a bit of a special scenario - the spinoff will explain the beginnings, we'll see where they go with that.

 

A massive volcanic event sure can.

 

As for abundance sure but it does not mean availability.

 

What good is tons of food going to do for you if you cannot find it due to artificial scarcity done due to looting.

 

You really misunderstand how fragile the food network is in the world.

 

Food is perishable and even tiny short disruptions in the food chain result in extreme rarirty in food

 

 

That is how shelves look prior to a snow storm. The few actually obtain the food meanwhile the vast majority do not.

 

Same thing would happen in dayz food would not be abundant since it would largely remain unavailable after all the looting in the early days of the incident.

[Whyherro123 2283]

The Road is generally quite unrealistic because afaik there is nothing that could simply wipe out all plant life - especially not in such a short time. It's an extremely artifical scenario.

 

 

Anyway, my point was that the scenario in The Road is completely different from a "zombie apocalypse" - In fact, they're polar opposites:

 

The Road apocalypse: 

100% of humanity left + 0.01% of food left = scarcity

 

Typical Zombie Apocalypse, happening extremely fast:

0.01% of humanity left + 100% of food left = abundance

 

DayZ Apocalypse:

?

 

The walking dead is a bit of a special scenario - the spinoff will explain the beginnings, we'll see where they go with that.

The Road is actually very realistic. It just depicts an event that Day Z does not.

 

It depicts "biosphere dieoff", as opposed to just "biosphere interruption". The "easiest" way for the Earth biosphere to be destroyed in such a way is through suspending a fuckton of dust and particulates in the atmosphere. Notice how, in "The Road", the sun is almost never shining, and everything looks so dingy and dull? Such an event could occur after the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera, a major meteor impact (which is exactly what killed off the dinosaurs), or aggravated "nuclear winter".'

 

Oh, and plant dieoff could occur very quickly by blocking off access to sunlight. Say, 10 years or so? It would also cause the planet to get very cold (albedo is a thing, where the different things on the surface [water, ice, vegetation, etc] all reflect solar heat at different rates), making it almost impossibly difficult for plants to grow. 

[jqp 9]

If organic life is really so fragile, then it's kind of hard to explain how it's still around after millions of years. Steadily progressing, too.

P.S., I'm still amused by the notion that hoarded food somehow disappears into thin air. As if starving people are just going to sit around twiddling their thumbs saying, "it's all been hoarded, oh well, guess we'll just starve to death quietly then!" LOL.

[pillock 850]

DayZ doesn't give you an explanation as to what has happened.

 

There is no backstory, no prologue nor introduction. You wake up on a beach, not knowing where you are or how you got there or why. You don't know who you are. You don't know what has happened prior to your arrival in this place where you now find yourself. Are you from here or are you an outsider who's washed up from some shipwreck? You don't know.

 

You have the scenario as it is, as you find it, and you can use the evidence in front of you to try and piece together some kind of explanation as to what went before. But there is no right or wrong answer, because that hasn't been written into the game's scenario. It isn't realistic or unrealistic - it just is what it is.

 

Once you've played the game a bit, you realise that the only "survivors" are those people like you who appeared on the beach with amnesia. There are no natives; noone remembers; noone is at home in this place; noone has roots. Nobody rebuilt society after the collapse: there is evidence of some failed attempts, but noone succeeded. Why - we don't know, but that's the reality.

 

Shops are bare. Houses are bare. People's possessions are scattered in random places, from apartment blocks to barns to industrial premises to military compounds. There seems little logic to it sometimes, but that's the reality.

 

Don't complain that this is unrealistic, and definitely don't base that complaint on some pseudo-scientific mathematical formula that makes sweeping assumptions nonapplicable to the game in question. If you need a backstory, make one up based on what you see around you. There are good reasons for loot scarcity in DayZ - some are technical, some are gameplay-related. The possible fictional events that might lead to this situation are very open to interpretation and can be explained with a bit of imagination.

[sachad 1016]

If organic life is really so fragile, then it's kind of hard to explain how it's still around after millions of years. Steadily progressing, too. P.S., I'm still amused by the notion that hoarded food somehow disappears into thin air. As if starving people are just going to sit around twiddling their thumbs saying, "it's all been hoarded, oh well, guess we'll just starve to death quietly then!" LOL.

 

Organic is a pretty generic term. Dinosaurs and early mammals were both organic lifeforms, but one didn't survive an ELE whereas the other one did. Also, you answered the question yourself. Time. A human lifetime means nothing. And we are very fragile creatures that have managed to adapt the environment to ourselves, instead of ourselves to the environment. 

 

Sure, there would be massive caches of loot dotted around the land, but you would still have to find them. And if you have a cache, and you know that nothing new is being produced, you're not gonna want to share with too many people lest you run out yourself. Furthermore, a good chunk of the people would completely depend on others to feed themselves, as is the case in today's modern society. They're not going to survive off the land very long. The Alexandria community from TWD is a good example. Many if not most of them are sheltered from the outside and rely exclusively on others to bring food and supplies, or else they'd die within days.

[gibonez 3633]

If organic life is really so fragile, then it's kind of hard to explain how it's still around after millions of years. Steadily progressing, too. P.S., I'm still amused by the notion that hoarded food somehow disappears into thin air. As if starving people are just going to sit around twiddling their thumbs saying, "it's all been hoarded, oh well, guess we'll just starve to death quietly then!" LOL.

 

It does not disappear but it might as well be since it would mean the same to you and me.

 

The pure numerically impossibility to consistently find these stores of food means it might as well have vanished.

 

Just because it does not disappear does not mean you will ever find it, thus it might as well be gone.

 

From a pure realism standpoint finding one of these hoarders stashes would happen once maybe throughout your career playing the game.

[kenotrs8 3]

1) The "infected" in Day Z are most emphatically not "slow zombie mopes". Have you played the game at all? If you have, you would know that the "infected" SPRINT AT YOU, BALLS OUT, to the point where if they are within 30 meters or so, and you aren't paying the utmost attention, you essentially have to "spray n' pray" with an automatic in order to kill them before they smack you around. And they usually manage to get in a few whacks.

 

2) "Kill hundreds of thousands of zeds".

 

Sure thing, pal. It might not be a big thing to you, playing a game and all, but look at it from the survivors perspective, both our own, and those who came before. These "infected" were once your neighbors, that guy down the street you went to the pub with, co-workers, friends, your goddamned family members. Hell, none of the cities/towns in South Zagoria are all that big, I see no real reason as to why, in a town like Svetlojarsk, a resident couldn't somehow know 95% of the people that lived there.

 

And now you have to kill them. Yes, as they come at you, screaming for blood, but you still have to kill them. That..... probably isn't something the in-game people could just shrug off like changing a tire. The in-game survivors most likely have a "healthy", well-developed case of PTSD, if not other neuroses (depression, anxiety, etc), as a result of having to murder 99% of their former acquaintances.

 

3) Remember: South Zagoria literally just underwent Civil War (Day Z takes place right after the ARMA II campaign), with Communist militas hiding out on every mountaintop, being all "insurgent-y" and such. With the Quarantine, and accompanying restriction of law and order to the cities, the militias probably jumped right back into action. Hell, they could have blamed the government for the outbreak! Said militia was more than capable of waging all-out war against the CDF, IIRC. 

So, you've got:

1) quarantine, preventing you from leaving your city, or even your house past a certain hour (ensures you get exposed to both "THE infection", as well as other secondary communicable diseases that proliferate between people in close proximity)

2) loss of power and related services (medical, police), with all the accompanying issues (cant keep food cold, nor medication, nor pump water)

3) fucking WAR

4) outbreak of other diseases, as a result of poor sanitation, starvation, lack of clean drinking water, leaving many otherwise-"healthy" members of the population at deaths door.

 

Nobody said that the "reanimation" of the infected only took a week. Shit, for all we know, it could be weeks, or months! And, if one person "reanimates" in Svetlojarsk, some poor bastard down in Cherno isn't going to find out  until it is too late. Remember: no electricity, no Internet, no phones, nothing. So, by the time Freddy Farmer outside Cherno finds out his sick Aunt is going to come chewing on his jugular, there is a wave of death sweeping down from Svetlo.

 

In a real apocalypse, i would have no issue blowing away my "goddamned family members" if they had been reduced to flesh eating husks.

[stinkenheim 249]

In a real apocalypse, i would have no issue blowing away my "goddamned family members" if they had been reduced to flesh eating husks.

Then I feel sorry for you.

Most people wouldn't know it was an apocalypse immediately, the virus or infection or whatever we call it would likely not be fully understood for a while- the book World War Z goes into this quite well. Effectively there is a lot of misinformation initially and governments refusing to accept certain claims or else hoping that things will be contained and dealt with by other countries.

The infection would also likely not be a quick illness, it's not like one minute you're fine and the next you want to eat someone's face, it's entirely possible that your mum or wife or whoever has been ill for a while. The government has probably not said too much about what happens after just that the victims become violent and need to be kept isolated... Well your wide who you have been caring for for a few days has just coughed loudly, you go into the room and she's struggling to breathe. You try and help her but she keeps coughing up blood and mucus and she looks terrified. Then she stops coughing and goes limp, her eyes glaze over. She's clearly dead.

You're upset, you cry and hold her cursing the cruelty of whatever god you believe in and hoping that she's not really dead. You likely pray, you've never done it before but hey, why not try now, you make any bargain you can think of if you can just have her back. Just as you're about to give up all hope she twitches, her arm starts flicking and moving and she gasps a long and drawn out gasp. Blood is still around her mouth and her eyes are dark and hooded but she turns to look at you, 'it's a miracle!' You think. God answered your prayers and sent her back to you, you cry again, this time with happiness. As you go to embrace her she lets out a hideous wail and lunges at you, clawing at your face. You try and push her away, you don't want to hurt her because it's your wide but she's clawing and scratching any part of you she can reach.

You scramble back to the door and manage to close it just as she lunges again, you slump down with your back to the door and begin uncontrollably sobbing as the thing that was your wife scratches and hits the door trying to get out, all the while hissing and screeching at you.

So yeah, if that had happened if be pretty upset, and I sure as hell wouldn't find it easy to just kill her because as far as I know, as far as anyone's been told it's just an illness which makes people violent. Maybe it's like rabies. Maybe there's a cure.... If there's a cure then there's hope, she can still be saved.

I think any person in that situation wouldn't immediately go and grab the nearest weapon and think 'oh Mary's pissed, better shoot her in the face'. You'd hold on to hope for as long as possible, it may take her attacking someone else you care about to see that actually there's nothing of her left.

Seriously doubt most people would immediately be able to kill friends and family without any hesitation.

[mercules 1290]

Here is a possibility not being accounted for in dealing with the scarcity of food. The "infection" does not kill it's host. It turns them violent and aggressive and they actively try to EAT anything moving. Now a very likely scenario for such a virus is not the, "Sick people don't typically eat a whole lot..." standard we are used to but that the virus actually causes these people to crave food and eat voraciously in the days before they become aggressive and effectively "mindless". Anything relying on refrigeration is gone pretty quick and frozen food spoils even faster once thawed as it is almost universally wet and soggy if thawed and not cooked it rots very quick. So the only things would be dry goods and canned goods. As people succumbing to the disease become less mindful it's entirely possible they end up ruining as much food as they do eating it. 

 

Let's not forget that you can literally starve to death with a full stomach eating things like rabbits or not having a proper balance in your diet. 
 

[kenotrs8 3]

Then I feel sorry for you.

Most people wouldn't know it was an apocalypse immediately, the virus or infection or whatever we call it would likely not be fully understood for a while- the book World War Z goes into this quite well. Effectively there is a lot of misinformation initially and governments refusing to accept certain claims or else hoping that things will be contained and dealt with by other countries.

The infection would also likely not be a quick illness, it's not like one minute you're fine and the next you want to eat someone's face, it's entirely possible that your mum or wife or whoever has been ill for a while. The government has probably not said too much about what happens after just that the victims become violent and need to be kept isolated... Well your wide who you have been caring for for a few days has just coughed loudly, you go into the room and she's struggling to breathe. You try and help her but she keeps coughing up blood and mucus and she looks terrified. Then she stops coughing and goes limp, her eyes glaze over. She's clearly dead.

You're upset, you cry and hold her cursing the cruelty of whatever god you believe in and hoping that she's not really dead. You likely pray, you've never done it before but hey, why not try now, you make any bargain you can think of if you can just have her back. Just as you're about to give up all hope she twitches, her arm starts flicking and moving and she gasps a long and drawn out gasp. Blood is still around her mouth and her eyes are dark and hooded but she turns to look at you, 'it's a miracle!' You think. God answered your prayers and sent her back to you, you cry again, this time with happiness. As you go to embrace her she lets out a hideous wail and lunges at you, clawing at your face. You try and push her away, you don't want to hurt her because it's your wide but she's clawing and scratching any part of you she can reach.

You scramble back to the door and manage to close it just as she lunges again, you slump down with your back to the door and begin uncontrollably sobbing as the thing that was your wife scratches and hits the door trying to get out, all the while hissing and screeching at you.

So yeah, if that had happened if be pretty upset, and I sure as hell wouldn't find it easy to just kill her because as far as I know, as far as anyone's been told it's just an illness which makes people violent. Maybe it's like rabies. Maybe there's a cure.... If there's a cure then there's hope, she can still be saved.

I think any person in that situation wouldn't immediately go and grab the nearest weapon and think 'oh Mary's pissed, better shoot her in the face'. You'd hold on to hope for as long as possible, it may take her attacking someone else you care about to see that actually there's nothing of her left.

Seriously doubt most people would immediately be able to kill friends and family without any hesitation.

 

That my friend is why i would be sipping Pipsi-coladas on the beach by day 50, and you would be a piece of chewed up flesh in the belly of a big mama sized zombizzle. The ability to separate emotion from action in the right circumstances is nothing to sneer at :)

 

Potentially if my mother was the first person in town to turn and we had seen nothing on the news or radio your point would stand, otherwise you had shed loads of warning and should have been looking after your mum through the (thick) bars of a solid cage.

Edited August 19, 2015 by KenoSkiR

[Whyherro123 2283]

(I digress)

 

Zero empathy with these kids nowadays, I tell you.

 

Sickening.

[BeefBacon 1185]

Abundance is boring. Having just enough to get by is what makes the game interesting. Might not be realistic, but there are plenty of aspects of DayZ that aren't realistic.

 

Finding a high capacity vest and, I don't know, an AKM with a magazine is great and all, but it's not so great when everybody else on the server also has an AKM or an M4 or something because 'abundance'. What's really awesome is finding a high capacity vest when all you have is a gun holster, or an AKM when you've got a trumpet and a half-full AKM mag.

 

The most fun I ever had with DayZ was, I think, .55 when no food was spawning. I'll admit that the apple picking was boring as fuck, but having to look everywhere to find stuff, scrounging up a couple of rounds to put into my badly damaged backpack and having to sneak around zombies because I wasn't carrying a fucking armoury was fun.

 

There's a balance to be found for sure. Having too much is almost as boring as starving to death as a freshspawn 5 times in a row. By making food and such abundant you may as well get rid of the hunger and thirst system entirely and turn DayZ into that H1Z1 Battle Royale thing.

[renpab80@gmail.com 41]

different people, different tastes. Whats the point in having abundance of loot + respawn of loot? Just rename it in Costal WarfareZ.

 

Scarcity is a core feature in a mature survival setting for me, it ups the difficulty, creates tension and lets you get better connected with the game world, cause you "feel" more in touch with your character, it hurts more when you die.

 

The scarcity of ressources should be as dangerous as the unknown stranger with a gun you just spotted. Everything else would be just child's play.

 

I still hope they will pull through with the promises of the past, hardcore difficulty, scarce food/ammo sources. It should feel like hitting the lottery when finding 10 bullets for your gun.