How can we fix camping ?

[Rags! 1966]

the map is too small for anything over 50 with the deforestation that's already ruined this once-nice map

 

Wrong. Fifty is woefully underpopulated. 

 

Chernarus is approximately 19 Kilometers from the Northwest corner to the Southeast island. From Kamenka to Novodmitrovsk is 16 Kilometers. The walk from spawning in at Kammywobo to the NWAF is 10.5 Kilometers as the crow flies. That is an immense amount of real estate.

 

At fifty players, most of the map is a snorefest. It's a playerless expanse of nothing but podcasts playing in the background of an occasional wanderer. The problem is not that we have too many players, the problem is that those players are spawned in a condensed area at the coast and not spread out across the map, they are not incentivized enough to move inland which creates a clusterfuck in spawning areas and relatively little else apart from maybe the NWAF and Veresnik.

 

 

Encounters should be extremely sparse (unless you seeking them out by going to 'hot zones'). 

 

The threat/apprehension of encountering potentially hostile players should always be a possibility wherever you go. You should not be able to make extremely accurate guesses that people will not be where you are. I shouldn't be able to, in a survival game, predict where players are. Your guard should always have to be up and you should always have to watch your back. If I can travel for literally hours from town to town and not see another player in a fully populated server, then there are some serious questions that need to arise from spawn locations and total populations and mobility encouragement. 

[Whyherro123 2283]

Wrong. Fifty is woefully underpopulated. 

 

Chernarus is approximately 19 Kilometers from the Northwest corner to the Southeast island. From Kamenka to Novodmitrovsk is 16 Kilometers. The walk from spawning in at Kammywobo to the NWAF is 10.5 Kilometers as the crow flies. That is an immense amount of real estate.

 

At fifty players, most of the map is a snorefest. It's a playerless expanse of nothing but podcasts playing in the background of an occasional wanderer. The problem is not that we have too many players, the problem is that those players are spawned in a condensed area at the coast and not spread out across the map, they are not incentivized enough to move inland which creates a clusterfuck in spawning areas and relatively little else apart from maybe the NWAF and Veresnik.

 

 

 

The threat/apprehension of encountering potentially hostile players should always be a possibility wherever you go. You should not be able to make extremely accurate guesses that people will not be where you are. I shouldn't be able to, in a survival game, predict where players are. Your guard should always have to be up and you should always have to watch your back. If I can travel for literally hours from town to town and not see another player in a fully populated server, then there are some serious questions that need to arise from spawn locations and total populations and mobility encouragement. 

 

Damn straight. Half, if not more, of the map goes completely unused. The map is not "too small" or "deforested", it just doesn't get fucking used for anything. You can't say the "map is too small" if the entire player base can be found in approximately 6 locations, and about 5-10 square kilometers out of 225+

[Razgries 25]

I like the thought of undergrowth on the ground, but that can be demanding on PCs, then again most players get fantastic FPS in the forest so there is room to play deep in the woods. Maybe the option to spray paint a tent like you can weapons black/green and drape netting over them would be enough. As it is now the bright blue tents stick out like a sore thumb from very far away. I found one camp in the short time I was playing with an AUG and an ammo box full of ammo and an extra mag for it on PTR, I saw it from over 100m away through the trees and was like what the heck is that (was my first time seeing civilian tent)... I left them my AKM and all my mags so I didn't feel bad about it. But I knew then tents while persistent where far too visible to keep things safe over night on a very busy server.

[emuthreat 2837]

As player count is going to increase later on, it's understandable that it would be nice to be able to hide a small camp a bit better. Nothing has officially been announced yet, but the designers do have something in store for this topic (it looks very promising). Just hang in there, and I'm sure that Brian or Peter will include some info + screenshots in upcoming status reports and on the Trello board.

Like pirates' booty?

Edited January 7, 2016 by emuthreat

[SMoss 2101]

Like pirates' booty?

Not exactly. There'll be something else on the way.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

I'm hoping world-containers are added in increased variety and become more viable to store things in.  I hear that they don't hold their loot for long periods of time without destroying/deleting contained gear.  I rarely have anything to give up, and don't return to sites frequently enough to check.  I also am afraid of losing most things that i own because it's bare-minimum.

 

If wardrobes, bins, letterboxes, fridges and cupboards were able to hold loot as long as a tent, then every single house in chernarus would be a potential treasure trove and would hide in plain site.  There's so many there, that you could generally safely store your stuff, because who's going to check each-and-every-single-last-container?

Edited January 7, 2016 by q.S Sachiel

[ImageCtrl 719]

Basic idea here is just to brainstorm a bit about how we may fix camping in DayZ

A camp was always time limited. Nothing wrong with this.

The problem is you need so many tents atm. A tent need more storage.

 

Dean Hall had the idea to implement underground bases. I hope this idea is still alive.

Edited January 7, 2016 by NoCheats

[Espa 711]

I think one of the best options would be to simply make the forests and wooded areas more "wooded" looking and realistic. This are some screenshots from Miscreated:

 

 

 

These forest areas look much more dense and real and lines of sight are far shorter than they are in DayZ's very simple wooded areas. Significantly breaking these long lines of sight would go a long way to making forest more interesting and easier places to hide stashes of goodies.

 

Please share this in a new Suggestion topic! This is lovely. It's always bothered me that we can see so far inside of forests and even to other towns that are ridiculously far away. I know of no woods in RL that are so easily spaced out. . I think this would definitely excite the current atmosphere and bring some freshness to Chernarous :)

[emuthreat 2837]

Not exactly. There'll be something else on the way.

Groovy.  Are status reports still even a thing?  The anticipation is killing me.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

Please share this in a new Suggestion topic! This is lovely. It's always bothered me that we can see so far inside of forests and even to other towns that are ridiculously far away. I know of no woods in RL that are so easily spaced out. . I think this would definitely excite the current atmosphere and bring some freshness to Chernarous :)

Come to Australia.  The forest is quite open.  Ah the mighty eucalypt. Strong; tall; and shedding kilos of volatile detritus every season.

[SMoss 2101]

Groovy.  Are status reports still even a thing?  The anticipation is killing me.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that it'll be good to go next week when the guys get settled after the post-holiday rush at the office.

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

While I agree that you don't normally see people in Pulkovo, I also agree with the OP that we lack decent wilderness area for (relatively) safe camps. I know some people believe their vehicle is safe if parked somewhere in Topolniki, but somehow this doesn't cut it for me. Remember that the map has just contracted more or less five times just by the sheer existence of cars. This will only continue with more reliable vehicles and eventually the chopper. And the North is only getting deforested, too (I hear Tisy is finally coming soon). I'd like to get some areas hard to access, or at the very least denser woods as suggested above. Yes, huge swaths of the map are unused but it's not like you can kick back and have a bonfire anywhere you want. Or leave your car.

 

Barring additional space, it frustrates the hell out of me that we can't paint or put any kind of camo on our cars/tents/barrels. Right now I would welcome it more than further improvements to the driving performance.

[ZomboWTF 527]

Just face the fact...the map is too small for what they want to achieve with the game.

 

I dont know the technical reasons for why they dont expand the map, im sure there are some. I personally would be happy to see a large wilderness area added, miles of forest to get lost in...where u actually had to hunt to survive. Where all this survival gameplay aspect they are developing actually matters, cos it will never matter on the small map we have now. And if they had to make it so that u loaded into this map separate from the orginal map, thats fine. We already have players serverhopping all over the place on public servers...like the game is some kind scifi-shooter with alternative dimmensions.

 

i'm in your boat, for a decent survival game, there would be a map from the size of Altis required to make cars actually important,

just like getting food and water from natural resources would be way more important on a larger map

 

the map of chernarus was fine as it is, and in my opinion allready pretty damn small and crowded for building a camp or even just a barrel anywhere and not have it found in a few days

and they even added more and more little towns and more buildings, you can basically go nowhere without seeing buildings on the horizon somewhere

 

right now hiding stuff is pretty okay, but once helos are coming, camps or hidden storage in woods will be a thing of the past,

since it's just to easy to spot stuff in the woods from above, this was a big problem in the mod as well

 

Sure, bigger maps mean less interaction with players, but i would be fine with that, i also was fine with Chernarus in the mod having a limit

of about 40 players, it was playable, since you had certain hotspots (just like you have now)

 

the thing missing from dayz, and i think everyone can agree with me on that, is the actual need to survive,

it's way to easy to survive , the only thing kinda hard to do is getting a very good gun (and even that is not nearly hard enough right now)

 

i hope the devs are going to add in more of a survival feel later, rght now i have nothing making me want to play DayZ over the old Stalker games + misery mods...

because that is really hard to survive

 

i certainly hope the devs are working on the new renderer first though, and that it will bring decent culling with it,

i can look over many many bugs and immersion breaking things,

but not being able to play in a city because of 10fps is making it just impossible to play the game for me

 

this wasn't supposed to be a rant btw, i know the devs are working hard, i just hope they are done adding content soon and can start optimizing the game,

because the game is awesome despite all it's little flaws

 

 

Please share this in a new Suggestion topic! This is lovely. It's always bothered me that we can see so far inside of forests and even to other towns that are ridiculously far away. I know of no woods in RL that are so easily spaced out. . I think this would definitely excite the current atmosphere and bring some freshness to Chernarous  :)

Take a look at the Celle map for Arma2, the woods there were made really really good and pretty damn realistic for Arma standarts,

but forrests with exclusively needled trees do look way more barren and more like in chernarus than they do in miscreated, but with way more undergrowth

Edited January 8, 2016 by Zombo

[Nebulae3 422]

Oh. That kind of camping.

 

They could also improve the zombie AI like in H1Z1 - zombies will sense and track other players nearby who have camped for too long.

But a good suggestion about the forest which is really easy to see through at the moment and provide really no protection or cover -

when a camper lower his/her graphic settings in-game with a sniper rifle.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Ori42

[ZomboWTF 527]

They could also improve the zombie AI like in H1Z1 - zombies will sense and track other players nearby who have camped for too long.

But a good suggestion about the forest which is really easy to see through at the moment and provide really no protection or cover -

when a camper lower his/her graphic settings in-game with a sniper rifle.

 

why should anyone be punished for that? if anything you should be punished for sprinting all the time, sweating a lot would increase the range at which zombies can smell you,

moving fast makes you easier to see and to hear, camping is the smart thing to do, just because it's boring and doesn't require anything but patience, it shouldn't be punished...

 

i don't want dayZ to become another game with bunnyhopping firefights where everybody tries to avoid bullets by sprinting around like a headless chicken while hipfiring,

turning rate and speed are way to high as it is, and needs to be turned down

[Nebulae3 422]

I agree about sprinting and stamina use, and I don`t like H1z1 bunny jumping and their implementations at all, but the forest in dayz SA should be more dense and harder to spot other players.

And when the warmth system work properly and heat packs will be something of a value in-game in dayz - u can`t camp too long until u catch cold and start shivering unless you have heat packs or heated items from campfires (warmth system) and that has been part of dayz SA since the beginning.

The zombies are too predictable at the moment - they need some random elements build into the zombie AI. 

 

Edited January 8, 2016 by Ori42

[Me1andMe2 4]

I think the big problem is the ridiculous size of the tents and their bad storage capacity compared to their size. Just compare the size of barrel (49 Slots) to the tent (63 Slots), its retarded.

Barrels are just the superior storage unit and I hope they will get removed/nerfed soon since they are supposed to be also used for other things (leather,fire) which will not happen until they are changed.

I think if the tents are changed to a normal single person tent instead of a family tent things will be much better. Something like this http://i50.tinypic.com/i6crgw.jpg or that http://www.atlanticsports.co.nz/shop/111-206-large/bivy-tent-one-person.jpg

 

If we get helis than we will have problems with the tents. Maybe reduce the view range ? Dunno we will see once we get them.

I think the big problem is the ridic

[xalienax 621]

Wrong. Fifty is woefully underpopulated. 

 

Chernarus is approximately 19 Kilometers from the Northwest corner to the Southeast island. From Kamenka to Novodmitrovsk is 16 Kilometers. The walk from spawning in at Kammywobo to the NWAF is 10.5 Kilometers as the crow flies. That is an immense amount of real estate.

 

At fifty players, most of the map is a snorefest. It's a playerless expanse of nothing but podcasts playing in the background of an occasional wanderer. The problem is not that we have too many players, the problem is that those players are spawned in a condensed area at the coast and not spread out across the map, they are not incentivized enough to move inland which creates a clusterfuck in spawning areas and relatively little else apart from maybe the NWAF and Veresnik.

 

 

 

The threat/apprehension of encountering potentially hostile players should always be a possibility wherever you go. You should not be able to make extremely accurate guesses that people will not be where you are. I shouldn't be able to, in a survival game, predict where players are. Your guard should always have to be up and you should always have to watch your back. If I can travel for literally hours from town to town and not see another player in a fully populated server, then there are some serious questions that need to arise from spawn locations and total populations and mobility encouragement. 

Different stroke for different folks i guess. No where should be 'safe' but i dont agree with the idea of spreading the human traffic (or indeed increasing it) 'equally' to all areas either. its both unrealistic and fundamentally changes how the game plays imo.

 

I do agree with you on one point however- that spawning need some serious revision. also i think loot distribution need serious revision. There should be specific reasons to go to specific towns. more unique buildings rather then spamming the same buildings by adding towns everywhere like they have done. Eg. One town might have a major warehouse that served the areas stores (likely contains some of the basics). another town might have a major medical center (best chance for rare medical items). Farming villages good places for hand tools, etc. 

 

I think certain 'predictable routes' are not only a good thing but quite realistic as well. varying up player spawn locations might increase the odds of meeting a freshie, but most people will quickly revert to doing laps of 'prime loot' spots or making the heli crash circuit. 'sensible' concentrations of specific categories of loot would at least incentivize people to move about more, in a non-intrusive and natural way. Most of the towns and cities (excepting military locations) all feel very samey. there is no reason if im in one of the new cities in the north to head way down to the south west since more or less once civilian area might as well be the next. If each of the major towns/cities had one or even a few special buildings/facilities unique to them, that had higher spawn rates for items that make sense to be there, then there would be a reason to travel the great distance. also please note, Im not asking for designated 'loot-splosion' buildings- just enough of a rate bump to them to make that specific city & unique building the Go-To for more specialized items.

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

Too meany cooks wreck the game! Let B.I. finish the game the way they want the game to be ! 

[Nebulae3 422]

Netting is almost impossible to find as well on private hives related to the camo/ghillie tent topic in this 0.59 patch. So I hope the item will be more common in next patch.

I admit that my barrels and tents have been raided, but I really don`t mind since I use it to store more basic items like food and water bottles since I seldom use a backpack.

Edited January 9, 2016 by Ori42

[pilgrim* 3514]

..//..

r a crafted item like a ghillie covering, we can make out of natural fibers, ( let's say,, ropes and straw from hay bales ? ... ) Dye the whole thing in a barrel with berries to match your particular surroundings ) And this possible cover should be coded much the same way our current ghillie suits are. But to a more extreme. 

I think the best solution would be to have them not render beyond 50 meters or so. Simply because this would address the video setting exploits

..//..

 

Standard camo netting..; it is a normal military item -  can cover vehicles, barrels, tents, or make a hide with a tripod or a couple of sticks.

This can spawn in-game or can be crafted from fishing net - both in fact.

Reduces visibility greatly.

Cut smaller pieces from the military camo netting it to craft your ghillie stuff, or join together several pieces of fishing net to craft one large vehicle/tent size camo net

 

Second option =  stain or spray the tents (and stash-barrels) - why not spay-paint a barrel green, black or camo combination, is that a problem?

Also, most real tents will take 2 or 3 diagonal stripes of black or green without falling to pieces.. same principle = this breaks up the outline (crafting again)

 

Pile a few green pine branches against a tent (or pile branches against barrels) -  three or four green pine branches will break the outline and the color of a tent to make a big difference

(Note: this has to be programmed into the tent color, as 'crafting' or else from a distance pine branches will look like bare sticks.

 

IRL - myself, wearing a mountain pack with a bright colored stripe down the back , I would FIRSTLY rub dirt in it, AND  if noit effective, then spraypaint a couple of green zags across the bright color it (this will not ruin the backpack at all, I swear) and add some dirt in the paint,

OR just hang or tie a spray of green pine branch over the back of it. Tie a bit of netting over the top and thread in a handful of foliage.

Netting - as well as tents or barrels, you can cover helmets and headgear, and add greenery - you can wear a simple hang of netting over your head - held in place under any hat - just for face-shadow and to break the outline, or you can also add green plants, grasses, whatever.

 

Note - there is no reason for creating full ghillie suit (unless you really want that degree of invisibility). To  become less visible you need some netting over your face or head, and ideally a piece of netting across your backpack..thread in a few or strands of long grass or weed.

Same for tents.= some sticks or rope and some greenery to weave in.

 

Also - drab tents.. green tents, stone colored tents

 

- you may have noticed, all the permanent military tents in the game are NOT bright blue. Where does the military get that stuff from?

 

Hey, take a knife and cut the side out of a military tent, roll it up and take it away - or find tarpaulins on building sites or on the backs of trucks,

Or use a couple of neutral colored blankets from civilian houses.

(I have a problem about blankets - can't understood why there are NO Blankets in Chernarus - you can do so many things with a blanket and every house must have at least ONE, right?.. it's the thing you can guarantee to find. They are good for shelters, can be converted into ponchos, carrying stuff, hiding ground-stashes, making headbands, moving unconscious players, cutting strips for camo, covering barrels, making slings for wounds,or keeping you warm, .. ya know? 

 

A while ago there were threads on constructing shelters here on the Forum, with many design suggestions. Each crafted shelter is in fact a stash of one kind or another. At least half those suggestions could use a tent as a base for the structure.

 

Tents should also be permitted under tree cover (under low branches) with only the front 2 feet (clear) forced to remain on bare ground.( - if at all technically possible - but not under water or in walls or rocks, ok?)

 

*

The rendering problem.  if it is too difficult to change the color, shape, visibility, by crafting solutions, then yes, make them not render beyond a fixed distance, But this is a messy alternative IMO and will lead to all kinds of problems (firstly - this would definitely not be implemented before the new rendering engine IMO, and then might turn up unforeseen problems)

 

xx pilgrim

[Rags! 1966]

No where should be 'safe' but i dont agree with the idea of spreading the human traffic (or indeed increasing it) 'equally' to all areas either. its both unrealistic and fundamentally changes how the game plays imo.

 

It's a fundamental change that needs to happen. When you know the areas in which unprotected fresh spawns will enter the game there is nothing realistic about that as well. You shouldn't be able to predict where to go in order to find the most helpless targets because that's just where they spawn in. Spreading spawn points around the map will vary player movement and actually get players to go to places that they never do now. 

 

Being able to predict where the most helpless players are is not a good gameplay decision. Not knowing where from a player might come or how deadly they might be forces perception and decision making, as well as makes it harder for players to feel safe.

 

there is no reason if im in one of the new cities in the north to head way down to the south west since more or less once civilian area might as well be the next. If each of the major towns/cities had one or even a few special buildings/facilities unique to them, that had higher spawn rates for items that make sense to be there, then there would be a reason to travel the great distance. also please note, Im not asking for designated 'loot-splosion' buildings- just enough of a rate bump to them to make that specific city & unique building the Go-To for more specialized items.

 

Nothing is a more attractive player magnet than two simultaneous things: Where the best loot is...and where other players gather.

 

Nobody goes up north because there is no reason to. You spawn far from it, players hardly ever traverse up that far, and by the time you were to make it there you'd have passed better looting places anyway. The most violent places on the map are the coastal areas where you spawn. The loot there is residential at best, nothing at worst. But...that's where people spawn in. That's where the player population is. So that's where all the activity is. It's a clusterfuck at the coast while cobwebs gather in many of the cities and towns that Bohemia has created for us to play in.

 

They made cities and towns that have no reason to exist as of yet. Spreading out spawning would give those places a reason to exist. 

[Whyherro123 2283]

I've been in some of the interior towns and villages and never seen another person. Much like how I spent a couple of days several weeks back wandering around through the north, and asides from around where the new military base was supposed to be, also never saw another person.

 

Plenty of people in Vybor, NWAF, Berezino, Elektro and Cherno, however  :rolleyes:

[Kirov (DayZ) 585]

I've been in some of the interior towns and villages and never seen another person. Much like how I spent a couple of days several weeks back wandering around through the north, and asides from around where the new military base was supposed to be, also never saw another person.

 

Plenty of people in Vybor, NWAF, Berezino, Elektro and Cherno, however  :rolleyes:

 

Yep, but I still miss the pristine wilderness of the North. I hope they stop after Tisy, which they probably won't.

 

When we talk about 'safe' areas, it really just means 'areas super hard to reach so you'd better know what you're doing'. The concept of distant areas you have to machete your way to is really interesting. The rocks in the North already provide some relatively safe space for barrels, but I guess it's gonna be hard to call them home.

[ZomboWTF 527]

I've been in some of the interior towns and villages and never seen another person. Much like how I spent a couple of days several weeks back wandering around through the north, and asides from around where the new military base was supposed to be, also never saw another person.

 

Plenty of people in Vybor, NWAF, Berezino, Elektro and Cherno, however  :rolleyes:

 

well, just adding more players to the server won't help anything though, because then the warfare at Cherno/Bere/Elwktro/NWAF will just grow bigger, every other place will be just as empty as ever

 

the problem isn't "too few players on the map", allthough with how big they made the map the player density sure went down, the problem is that getting to high risk loot locations is way to easy

 

once the stamina system is in, the player movement speed is lowered, and cars are getting more of a meaning, just as survival actually being difficult would really help the gameplay to be something else than a black and white between running simulator and non-stop shootout

Edited January 11, 2016 by Zombo