Dayz Mentioned in Extra Credits.

[leviathanapsu 94]

Perhaps mentioned is too strong of a word. The image flashes while they are mentioning games with an over-abundance of a certain sort of player type. Not the most flattering thing for the game, but still thought it was pretty spot on since I had been thinking of DayZ at that very moment anyway.

 

https://youtu.be/1drDuaQXm_U

[Whyherro123 2283]

Many months back, in 2014, I tried to get some of my friends to join me in Day Z.

 

" you mean that game where you spawn in and get tortured to death by squeakers for shits and giggles? Yeah, no thanks".

 

Day Z has been known for its "particular type of playerbase" for a LONNGGGG time, and I believe that this is detrimental for the game in the long run. No, I don't think that PvP should be removed, but I definitely think that there should be 1) other "enemies" other than player vs player (namely, player vs nature and player vs infected), and 2) things to do other than "find gun, shoot players, respawn, repeat".

 

Right now, and for the appreciable future, it doesn't look like that is going to be happening.

[MrAerospace 87]

I think that the video makes a perfectly reasonable assessment of DayZ. It's very concerning to me that killers have basically always been catered to, to the point where its been too long that the game has lost too much of the other types of players.

 

Bartle's Taxonomy has been mentioned before in here, but it is a completely new concept to me, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I can instantly see the merit of this theory, and it's already changing the way I understand gaming. It's informing me so much better on how to assess not only features in game, but people's motivations and reactions to these game features, including my own...which leads to an interesting paradox; if I take pleasure in making the lives of killer types so uncomfortable that they rage-quit, does that make me part of a meta-branch of the killer type?

Edited October 26, 2015 by MrAerospace

[scriptfactory 620]

Bartle himself talks about this episode and his theory.

http://massivelyop.com/2015/10/23/extra-credits-explains-bartles-taxonomy-and-its-application/

[ToxicHeart 34]

Thank you for sharing this information guys. I'd never heard of this and I'm thoroughly enjoying what I'm learning. I see frivolous research in my near future

Edited October 26, 2015 by Heartlessxwolf

[Red_Ensign 990]

Many months back, in 2014, I tried to get some of my friends to join me in Day Z.

 

" you mean that game where you spawn in and get tortured to death by squeakers for shits and giggles? Yeah, no thanks".

 

Day Z has been known for its "particular type of playerbase" for a LONNGGGG time, and I believe that this is detrimental for the game in the long run. No, I don't think that PvP should be removed, but I definitely think that there should be 1) other "enemies" other than player vs player (namely, player vs nature and player vs infected), and 2) things to do other than "find gun, shoot players, respawn, repeat".

 

Right now, and for the appreciable future, it doesn't look like that is going to be happening.

 

you can mitigate that by just joining a less-populated server, or a roleplaying server.  if you just wanna explore with minimal risk, choose less populated (or empty).  if you wanna have encounters and not die (as much), a roleplaying server is good.  or you can just organize a group to play with for mutual protection.

 

note:  the original poster plays on roleplaying servers and he's someone you can meet in-game and he won't shoot you in the face.  I won't shoot you either.  in fact, I'll often come save you if you're dying, or bring you stuff if you died and have nothing.

Edited October 26, 2015 by Red_Ensign

[Yuval 221]

This is how DayZ works okay? You cannot convince an mlg call of duty player to love fnatic lulz League Of Legends okay? It doesn't work like that.. If you can't be arsed to work for your gear and risk dying and loosing it all, don't play.

 

Fuck me if I don't wake up every Tuesday saying "Today I want to get force-analed with a rotten banana and force-drank some disinfectant spray".

 

DayZ doesn't speak to everyone and these "raping" can be very easily avoided if you go north.

 

It's like hating sports, playing soccer and blaming FIFA that this game isn't fun.

Edited October 26, 2015 by StanleyWasHappy

[pilgrim* 3514]

I think that the video makes a perfectly reasonable assessment of DayZ. It's very concerning to me that killers have basically always been catered to, to the point where its been too long that the game has lost too much of the other types of players.

..//..

 

Yes, I understand your point ..; but you decide to log in to in a post-apocalypse death-disease-wreckage-war survivor situation with rabid zombies and starving desperate people trying to stay an inch in front of their own horrible death in the ruins of a totally collapsed civilisation

 

so unless you can convince them to be decent human beings again - you might expect people you meet to be.. perhaps "not very nice"

Edited October 26, 2015 by pilgrim

[MrAerospace 87]

Not the point. Griefing/KoSing/PvPing - "Killers or Clubs" whatever you want to call it, are toxic elements in an MMO. Without balances and checks, they cause a spiraling feed-back loop that only serves to drive everyone else away except the players that revel in it. (With the exception of the explorers, these guys are just getting tired of the map.)

 

That is what the video is saying. That is what I observe happening in DayZ and it seems to be repeating in these very forums too. I'm not against the play style, it's what made DayZ interesting in the first place. I just want it balanced out, reduce the PCP and there will be less people overdosing on it .

Edited October 28, 2015 by MrAerospace

[emuthreat 2837]

I've been getting more concerned lately with the developers interests gravitating towards actively facilitating PvP in DayZ, as if it need help in some way.  I've been grinding through these past few months with no zeds trying to hone my shooting and survival skills, in hopes that once the game is feature complete, I will be able to go about whatever random mission I choose, confident in my ability to survive Armed Assaults from other survivors.

 

I am really hoping for some serious easter eggs, and mission type elements added into Chernarus.  For instance, the massive railway system would be a great task for people to come together and accomplish clearing the rails and getting all the switches operational.  The power lines leading From Elektro to all the major cities (assuming the lines go underground from Berezino to Svetlojarsk) would be a great large scale endgame task for a group to maintain; requiring substations and transformers to be activated in each individual town and city to bring the lights back on, at least just the streetlights.

 

There is so much space in Chrenarus, and so much infrastructure items modeled into the map, that it would seem like an enormous Chekov's Gun to not make any of those features useful down the line.  I am specifically lookin forward to seeing all of the radio towers being repairable/upgraded to facilitate longer range radio communications. (maybe scale the radio frequencies back to five or so).

 

I would be sorely disappointed, if after all this time and effort, the development team could not find a way to facilitate a playstyle of an on-call tow truck company, who works for peaches and shotshells.

[Rags! 1966]

The whole idea is that in a game about survival, sitting on the top of a building with a sniper rifle or machine gun and picking off every living human you see has zero survival benefits, yet constitutes the majority of what players do. 

 

If we were all plopped into a scenario of survival that DayZ strives to be, or when we all think about what we would do in a situation where society has collapsed and there's basically nobody left...none of us say to ourselves "I'm going to sit on top of a building and shoot any surviving human being I see because teh lulz."

 

The key is to make surviving challenging, or at least something that must be tended to at all times so that players are more focused on their own wellbeing instead of what jollies they can get from hitting somebody with a Mosin Nagant in a neighboring county. 

[pillock 850]

DayZ does sit apart from other games I've played, in terms of its scope and potential to cater to all player types. Thing is, it doesn't do that at all well yet, and it's mostly - if not entirely - down to the fact that basic survival is much too easy, and  "permadeath" doesn't really exist (because you can restock from your own dead body or from previously-hoarded gear).

 

To use Bartle's player types as an example: 

 

there is nothing for "Achievers" to achieve, beyond accumulating gear (which, in itself, is boring); there isn't a great deal to attract "Explorers" because, despite the map being large, the far-flung locations are pretty similar to each other with not much of interest in between and no challenge at all in reaching them; "communicators" can't communicate except with proximity chat, which is pretty limited in scope and usually ends in death anyway. And that leaves "Killers".

 

I know Bartle's player types are not perfect for describing DayZ's player-base, but it's useful for illustrating the limitations of the gameplay in its current form. I don't think there is any solution that doesn't involve making, first and foremost, the individual single life your your current character actually matter to players - if you die, you need to lose everything, with no comebacks; if you can meta-game your way around permadeath, then in-game progression quickly becomes meaningless. Secondly, maintaining the single, valuable life of your current character needs to be difficult. Otherwise, why will anyone ever bother using features like farming, hunting and fishing, except for mild amusement once every blue moon? And why would anyone bother cooperating with other players they meet, except for mild amusement and the lack of other things to do? And if you can run around the entire map, visiting every location within a single play-session without much risk or required preparation or impediment at all, what's the point in having it be so large?

[scriptfactory 620]

I don't think there is any solution that doesn't involve making, first and foremost, the individual single life your your current character actually matter to players - if you die, you need to lose everything, with no comebacks; if you can meta-game your way around permadeath, then in-game progression quickly becomes meaningless. Secondly, maintaining the single, valuable life of your current character needs to be difficult. Otherwise, why will anyone ever bother using features like farming, hunting and fishing, except for mild amusement once every blue moon? And why would anyone bother cooperating with other players they meet, except for mild amusement and the lack of other things to do? And if you can run around the entire map, visiting every location within a single play-session without much risk or required preparation or impediment at all, what's the point in having it be so large?

 

I agree with many of your points but why do you believe that making survival hard and permadeath permanent would make people less likely to kill each other? Based on my previous experience people would focus solely on the short game if the long game was too difficult to achieve.

 

Do you know a game that has implemented such a scheme successfully? When I still wrote MUDs there was a widely talked about quote from Bartle that was something like "Players like permadeath as much as pedofilia" which is to say, not at all. There was even work done that was shown that the harsher the penalties for death the less likely it was that players would take risks and interesting chances, which is to say, it demotivates the chance that they will interact with each other thereby increasing KoS. In fact, every game I know has shown than an increased PvE element has absolutely NO effect on killing. The only things that I have seen work are (de-)motivators or player avatar changes (ala DAoC).

I don't think making survival harder will reduce KoS and killing but I am more than willing to change my mind if you present me with any kind of evidence that suggests the opposite.

[B4GEL 175]

I don't think making survival harder will reduce KoS and killing but I am more than willing to change my mind if you present me with any kind of evidence that suggests the opposite.

 

From my personal experience i found a lot more depth to interactions during the famine of .55,  more people wanting to trade rather than risk a gunfight and even when you did get KOSed it was more likely to be for the food than for the fun of it. Once things become more scarce i think that the item damage mechanics will have a big effect on peoples willingness to KOS, if they really need someones supplies they might attempt a holdup rather than spraying them down and ruining all the items.

Anecdotal evidence isn't really much to support the claim but I'm pretty certain that making survival harder wont do anything to increase KOS at the very least.

[pillock 850]

I agree with many of your points but why do you believe that making survival hard and permadeath permanent would make people less likely to kill each other? Based on my previous experience people would focus solely on the short game if the long game was too difficult to achieve.

 

Do you know a game that has implemented such a scheme successfully? When I still wrote MUDs there was a widely talked about quote from Bartle that was something like "Players like permadeath as much as pedofilia" which is to say, not at all. There was even work done that was shown that the harsher the penalties for death the less likely it was that players would take risks and interesting chances, which is to say, it demotivates the chance that they will interact with each other thereby increasing KoS. In fact, every game I know has shown than an increased PvE element has absolutely NO effect on killing. The only things that I have seen work are (de-)motivators or player avatar changes (ala DAoC).

I don't think making survival harder will reduce KoS and killing but I am more than willing to change my mind if you present me with any kind of evidence that suggests the opposite.

 

The way I see it, making permadeath a matter of starting again from absolute scratch each time, combined with difficult basic survival would do two things:

 

1/ make it more risky to go out seeking combat, since you have more to lose if the other guy wins (unless you are a new spawn);

2/ make cooperation with strangers actually worthwhile.

 

At the moment, neither of these things is true. For new spawns, combat might seem an attractive option, to acquire gear quickly - and there is nothing wrong with that. But if all you do is fight other players at the coast, it ought to be difficult to make progress beyond that - ie. your character will die of wounds sustained or starvation or exposure to the elements before long anyway.

 

Making progress and getting away from the coast should be tough. It should require equipment and preparation for the journey: boosting your health/fitness to a level where you can survive a long journey on foot, or finding a vehicle to do it quickly. But finding a vehicle either requires that you steal it by force (risk of death) or spend time fixing one up (need for sustenance and survival in the mean-time). At the moment, you just point yourself in-land and hold down "W" for a while - and that's not good enough, in my eyes.

 

I have no problem with the idea that the coastal spawn points are full of blood-thirsty bambis, scrapping over what little resources are available there. But I think making progress towards higher-level gear and 'safer' locations where you can survive in the longer-term should require effort - and that requires difficult survival mechanics. If a player has spent time and effort acquiring gear + 'soft skills' (whatever they turn out to be) then the prospect of losing all that and being dumped back among the coastal bambi-fights might persuade more people to avoid combat if they can. If cooperation with other players made survival tasks easier, it might persuade people not to kill everyone they see. Because death in DayZ has never been particularly difficult to avoid, or even much of a set-back to the player when it does happen, I think that's why such a large proportion of people go out seeking battle.

 

Exploring the large available area needs to be difficult in order for it to be rewarding -  that requires survival over long-distance journeys and long periods of time to be difficult, and for the price of not surviving to be worth avoiding death above all else.

[Herkyl Puuro 52]

I agree with many of your points but why do you believe that making survival hard and permadeath permanent would make people less likely to kill each other? Based on my previous experience people would focus solely on the short game if the long game was too difficult to achieve.

 

Do you know a game that has implemented such a scheme successfully? When I still wrote MUDs there was a widely talked about quote from Bartle that was something like "Players like permadeath as much as pedofilia" which is to say, not at all. There was even work done that was shown that the harsher the penalties for death the less likely it was that players would take risks and interesting chances, which is to say, it demotivates the chance that they will interact with each other thereby increasing KoS. In fact, every game I know has shown than an increased PvE element has absolutely NO effect on killing. The only things that I have seen work are (de-)motivators or player avatar changes (ala DAoC).

I don't think making survival harder will reduce KoS and killing but I am more than willing to change my mind if you present me with any kind of evidence that suggests the opposite.

 

Would be interesting to hear what kind of suggestions you have for motivators or demotivators in Dayz.

 

I also believe making survival harder doesn't disencourage killers, because basically killer gets a more rewarding experience after being able to survive and to kill. Compared to most PvP games combat is extremely exciting and rewarding experience in Dayz, just because the effort you have invest to be able to kill. It's cool even if you loose. I don't think making weapons and ammunition scarce will have any real effect on killing, because if a player plays to kill, he will find the tools for it first - because it's what he wants to do and works for it. Most likely it's the players who are trying to find other ways to play just end up defenseless.

 

In one massive open world multiplayer game I became the head of security of my community, which was growing and expanding, and in that my role I put a lot of thought into the subject, as there was no law in that world. The devs had created a rich world, so many of my friends were peaceful types developing their character, trading and getting rich or questing, but as they were sometimes targeted, so to protect them I had to find out ways how to get killers to not kill my people. By the time I quit playing even the most notorious stricly killer communities left us in peace. I accomplished this by turning my character to be one of the most skilled killers in that world, by creating an army of hitmen, basically a secret police and some macchiavellian deal making. As a result, hurting one of us so bad an idea for the personal experience of the killer, and for that player's own community, that killers rather chose to find victims elsewhere. So, in that world and in my community it was only punishment which kept people from killing.

 

The problem in Dayz is, that even it's a big and in some ways a rich world, it's still just basically a PvP game, as some features which would make the experience richer in other ways are just missing. And as characters don't stay, there's no reputation, so no one knows who they are dealing with when they are meeting new people. Exciting sure, and realistic maybe, but reality is there are plenty of killers using old and new ideas to trick and kill you.

 

In Dayz, I've liked to explore, and develope, enjoy the little things and make my own missions, and even socialize, but after hundreds of hours of gameplay it feels like I've done most things except killing. I have a base, and a couple of stashes filled with weapons with attachments, and an itching trigger finger. I mean it would be cool to go to a quest or something, but as they aren't there it feels like I could do some killing, and become very good in it.

Edited October 27, 2015 by Herkyl Puuro

[emuthreat 2837]

From my personal experience i found a lot more depth to interactions during the famine of .55,  more people wanting to trade rather than risk a gunfight and even when you did get KOSed it was more likely to be for the food than for the fun of it. Once things become more scarce i think that the item damage mechanics will have a big effect on peoples willingness to KOS, if they really need someones supplies they might attempt a holdup rather than spraying them down and ruining all the items.

Anecdotal evidence isn't really much to support the claim but I'm pretty certain that making survival harder wont do anything to increase (Decrease?) KOS at the very least.

In the Famines of .58 Experimental, I met and befriended some folks while picking apples who said that if food weren't so scarce, they would have killed me instead of picking apples and talking. But that was a severe example of survival, as starvation happened way too quickly; it would have been more economical to keep people alive as hostages farming apples. I think a lot of things are gong to change with the implementation of the new zombies.  Hopefully gunshot report physics will make the zombies a slow, but ominous, threat for those who stake out an area for PvP.

 

The way I see it, making permadeath a matter of starting again from absolute scratch each time, combined with difficult basic survival would do two things:

 

I don't think absolute scratch is ever gonna happen, as base building is definitely a confirmed part of the end product.  Hopefully, soft skills will become complex, and useful enough to create an unavoidable sense of value for each character.  I would love to see such skills as restraining other players, farming, general crafting, sprinting/endurance, cutting timber, lock-picking, filling bottles of water, and many other operational tasks becoming affected by a soft skill mechanic.

 

Permadeath resulting in the loss of camps would be impossible to implement fairly, due to the prevalence of shared stashes; it's also just against the nature of the game.

 

Heck, I'd even be on board for the crafting of a bedroll, that would designate a spawn position on a given server, so long as it took 2 dozen burlap strips, 2 dozen rags, 6 burlap sacks, and 4 tanned leather to craft.

 

1/ make it more risky to go out seeking combat, since you have more to lose if the other guy wins (unless you are a new spawn);

2/ make cooperation with strangers actually worthwhile.

Brutal zombies will do a lot to steer people towards cooperation, and possibly make radios an important piece of equipment to maintain.

[MrAerospace 87]

I would wager that it's not explorers that reduce the killer population but exploring itself. What I mean by that is any game mechanic that gets in the way of killing. Take for example the central loot economy. It's been months since it was implemented to make truly random loot spawns. As of 0.58 loot is pretty abundant, and it requires only slightly more effort to find a gun than before. Yet, we still hear the "Y NO LOOT :(" alarm call of the neurologically impaired bandit. Still worse, the killers who aren't destined for Darwin awards adopted an exploit to bypass the main mechanic of the game; Loot farming, in all it's server hopping, loot cycling, join=kick server glory.

[VIPEREYE1 17]

Many months back, in 2014, I tried to get some of my friends to join me in Day Z.

 

" you mean that game where you spawn in and get tortured to death by squeakers for shits and giggles? Yeah, no thanks".

 

Day Z has been known for its "particular type of playerbase" for a LONNGGGG time, and I believe that this is detrimental for the game in the long run. No, I don't think that PvP should be removed, but I definitely think that there should be 1) other "enemies" other than player vs player (namely, player vs nature and player vs infected), and 2) things to do other than "find gun, shoot players, respawn, repeat".

 

Right now, and for the appreciable future, it doesn't look like that is going to be happening.

Your friends must be a lot like mine, By any chance are they the type that would rather play world of warcraft until there brains turn into liquid and trickle out there nose? Because that's exactly how my friends are, it's pure blasphemy to me how they can have any fun playing some thing so utterly boring. Not that Dayz it exciting all of the time, but the whole purpose of playing is for those "moments" when shit hit's the fan.

[robophant 102]

Perhaps mentioned is too strong of a word. The image flashes while they are mentioning games with an over-abundance of a certain sort of player type. Not the most flattering thing for the game, but still thought it was pretty spot on since I had been thinking of DayZ at that very moment anyway.

 

https://youtu.be/1drDuaQXm_U

 

yay, DayZ was mentioned in some channel of some smart-ass who likes to talk smart about stuff everyone with half a brains already knows about everything there is to know. yay

I just wasted a click :s

[Whyherro123 2283]

Your friends must be a lot like mine, By any chance are they the type that would rather play world of warcraft until there brains turn into liquid and trickle out there nose? Because that's exactly how my friends are, it's pure blasphemy to me how they can have any fun playing some thing so utterly boring. Not that Dayz it exciting all of the time, but the whole purpose of playing is for those "moments" when shit hit's the fan.

 

No, it was just that getting captured, handcuffed, tortured (usually beaten and force-fed everything under the sun, all while under a veritable torrent of brain-vomit verbal abuse, of the lowest of calibers, if you catch my drift), and inevitably killed, got old real fast. And, doing the same to others got old even faster, if that is possible. It got to the point where, soon after getting captured, my friends would log out, even (especially, even) if it would kill them. Why suffer through a couple minutes of abuse, to give some shithead some schadenfreude? No, they would log out specifically to deny the asswipes the pleasure. They were going to die anyways, why bother?

 

To prove my point: I have been playing the Standalone since it was EA-released, and have been "captured" many times (usually through my own free will, as interaction other than "BANG BANG -Assault rifle shaped erection-" is ..... rare). Take a guess as to how many times I've survived. Not just been left with gear, but lived through the experience?

 

Once. I was a Bambi in Berezino, starting pants, some rags, and a can of spaghetti.  I was held up in the western part of town, stripped, and so on and so forth. I usually try to insert some humor into these situations ( " I am not that kind of girl", " Momma said never to put out on the first date" " Please be gentle, this is my first time", and various innudeno-laden things. I usually get murdered before I can say a full sentence). This time, the players laughed, removed my pants, handcuffed me, and left my open beans at the end of the street. Every other time I was held up, I usually just got a couple of cursewords ("Get rekt bitch") and a bullet to the back of the head.

 

The game hasn't really changed all that much since 2013, in my opinion. What else is there to do, other than fuck with other players? Build a camp? Sure ...... for what? Stash guns? For what? Build a farm? Why? Stash trucks? Why?  The "survival" elements of the game are seemingly geared towards killing other players, and you don't really have much incentive to survive for long asides from gear, which you use to kill other players, in order to take their gear/prevent them from getting better gear. An ouroboros of asswipery, burn-out, and disillusionment. 

 

I even tried RP servers. I got killed more often then not, but at least they had an "RP" reason:

 

-spawns on beach, sees players-

Me: "Hey guys, whats going on?"

Them: Look out, its a carrier!

Me: "No guys, I just spawned. Look , I just want to search this town for food"

Them: He is being aggressive! 

Me: " Oh fuck off -gets axe to the head"

 

Of course, this was all before "whitelisting", so I might have a better time now. But, I am just feeling very burnt out on Day Z in general. Believe me or not, but but the whole purpose of playing is for those "moments" when shit hit's the fan." is your opinion, and I can only run around and kill other players mindlessly for a limited amount of time.

[hleVqq 139]

Make survival harder and there will be less focus on PVP. It's as easy as that. I cannot be bothered to just "survive" if I'm fully healthy and have tons of guns and ammo to waste.

 

The game is still in development and not everything works as intended. Deciding what's good or wrong about an unfinished game is not really a good idea.

Edited October 31, 2015 by Powerhouse

[MrAerospace 87]

Bartle's theory is not used to assess features as being good or bad. Did you watch the video...the whole point was to preemptively determine how different game features affected the four different play styles.

 

Secondly, what do you mean by making survival harder? Less loot? That means even less stuff for players to interact with...that's actually going to send players faster into PvP mode. More zombies? It's PvE, that's only going to attract more achievers, which will increase the killer population even more. 

However, if you place zombies inside buildings where loot is likely to be, all of a sudden you've just turned two PvE elements into a P&E (player interacting with environment) mechanic. I.E. now players have to deal with a zombie in a way that won't attract attention, so that they can then gather the loot.

 

Or, the most counter intuitive step may be finding a way to remove the vicinity bar, so that now all players will need to concentrate on finding objects in their actual location rather than running into a building and using a quick shortcut that completely detaches the player from the environment.

Edited October 31, 2015 by MrAerospace

[buddy_cassino 69]

...Or, the most counter intuitive step may be finding a way to remove the vicinity bar, so that all of a sudden all players will actually need to concentrate on finding objects in their actual location rather than running into a building and using a quick shortcut that completely detaches the player from the environment.

 

Beans !