CLEanup

[emuthreat 2837]

So I learned an important lesson this week, regarding the way that long-term persistent items such as tents and barrels are cleaned up by CLE.  I, as well as many others, were led to believe that all you had to do to keep a stash or camp from disappearing was to make sure you use it on a regular basis.  Sadly, this is not the case.  Early on in the stable .59 experience, I picked a "home" server and we then proceeded to set up a sprawling network of camps, dropsites, and even a vehicle service warehouse--that was just over 90 (probably closer to 45) days ago.  I know this because every tent and barrel that we set up has despawned, with the exception of a couple tents and barrels added after-the-fact to expand storage.

Just like clockwork, the decay timers of 90 days for durable persistent objects did their jobs; regardless of how recently I had moved items into or out-of the inventory of each container.  And yes, I did interact with every container, as each tent or barrel was dedicated to a specific class of item.  Just last week, I brought a few tires up to the vehicle service warehouse, rearranged each tent, refilled the fuel cans stored in some tents, went up to the general camp, and brought some loot down closer to the coast from the vast stockpiles.  The only things left of the camp yesterday, were a handful of barrels that were placed in the camp after a few weeks of hoarding; the rare ammo and valuable attachments seemed to indicate that nobody had disturbed the camp.

So here is my problem:  The way that this CLE cleanup timer works would require any person or group seeking to play the game in a manner based on accumulating an abundance of useful goods, and distributing them throughout the map for convenient long-term use, would also have to META-GAME the hell out of their storage network. I already know that the solution is simply to leave a note in each barrel or tent when it is set up, stating the date of placement and the required maintenance date--at which one would have to completely empty the container and pick it up, then reset it and replace the contents--or replace them all with new instances of each tent or barrel.  It would require a spreadsheet to keep from losing you camps.  This seems like an extremely labor-intensive and arbitrary task, and given that this game is being designed with persistent base building as a core component of the game, this issue should be resolved by changing the criteria by which CLE decides to clean up 90-day class storage containers.  It is insane having to completely empty out every tent and barrel in a camp, and laboriously reset the entire camp; to repeat this process for each and every stash location maintained by a group or and individual, would require an unacceptable amount of needless effort. A fix for this quirk of CLE would greatly reduce the contempt associated with trying to play the game in an organized manner, only to have it all magically disappear.  I suggest opening/closing windows and doors to tents, and removing/replacing lids of barrels as an adequate means of the CLE determining that that particular storage item is not abandoned and thus not subject to time-based decay.  This is as important as persistence itself; if this cannot be fixed, you may as well just turn it off and release .50 as the finished product.

I spent a lot of time helping set up a pretty sophisticated supply network.  Now all of that is gone.  I feel like if this aspect of how decay works, was effectively communicated, I would have probably worked around it, begrudgingly.  At this point, a workaround is not sufficient.  Adding one more layer of arbitrary labor, and the requisite heavy-metagaming, to the already considerable amount of time involved in setting up and maintaining camps, is a non-start.  It's hard enough as it is, trying to convince people that this game is worth playing with the permadeath feature; if I were to throw on the pile, that any objects of value that they had collected would just up-and-vanish because the tent had been set-up in the same place for too long, they would probably never even consider it.  I'm starting to have doubts, myself...

 

Edit:  I was going to submit a ticket on the feedback tracker, but apparently, somebody is still trying pretty hard to disrupt BI.  I also went back to the status report in which the 45 day cleanup timer was mentioned.  It said nothing more specific than to directly interact with an item to reset its cleanup timer.

Edited February 25, 2016 by emuthreat

[Mad Vlad 43]

Bummer man. I foresaw this coming so we moved all of our barrels, tents and protector cases last week. 

[blackberrygoo 1416]

I believe the 60-90 day timer is only temporary until it's worked out better  , but also it *should* refresh that timer every time it's rearranged so it must be a bug ...

[thedoctorlome1 6]

A while back in a status report Hicks said the timer would be for 90 days, but would be change so that if the object is not interacted with in 7 days it despawns. The patch for this is likely coming in .60.

Edited February 20, 2016 by thedoctorlome1

[Guest]

No offence mate but didnt you go to the debug island multiple times just because 

I dont think your "i dont have the time" argument holds any juice in my opinion

please dont take this as an insult because you are a wealth of knowledge on these forums relating to dayz

i just laughed a little because deep down i feel you are so good at dayz you have nothing but time to manipulate the world to your advantage 

disregarding the time you spent setting up your home server you would still play knowing your camp will dissappear after 90 days 

i think it is a small price to pay to not have servers/game worlds like H1Z1 where every 10 metres is some ones base


 

[sneakydude 480]

15 hours ago, blackberrygoo said:

I believe the 60-90 day timer is only temporary until it's worked out better  , but also it *should* refresh that timer every time it's rearranged so it must be a bug ...

I hope your right on this 60-90 day timer. So many games and people have stuff wiped. Its depressing when you build a base, and all your stuff goes poof because the database or coding is all wrong.

I cant count on one hand anymore the number of times a database, or coding has wiped someones base from the game. I can count on 2 hands how many games are out there that has problems with persistence, and decay. The system theory is flawed.

We have backups sure, but why do we need them? when so many other games like MMO's have your stuff stored for over 10 years of inactivity on your account. Database wipes are not funny, especially when you work so hard like the OP did and it all gets wiped.

Chalk it up as another EA alpha problem. Just like the other 10 games i can count.

Sorry emu, for your loss. This is why i didn't bother firing up the game until they get camps fixed. Its been well over a year and we still have issues with persistence.

 

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

WIP. That is all.

[emuthreat 2837]

19 hours ago, thedoctorlome1 said:

A while back in a status report Hicks said the timer would be for 90 days, but would be change so that if the object is not interacted with in 7 days it despawns. The patch for this is likely coming in .60.

7 days is still a pretty short amount of time to have to interact with dozens of tents and barrels, which are widely distributed throughout the map.  Hopefully they can find a more realistic balance, while still addressing clutter of abandoned sites.

 

 

13 hours ago, Guest said:

No offence mate but didnt you go to the debug island multiple times just because 

I dont think your "i dont have the time" argument holds any juice in my opinion

please dont take this as an insult because you are a wealth of knowledge on these forums relating to dayz

i just laughed a little because deep down i feel you are so good at dayz you have nothing but time to manipulate the world to your advantage 

disregarding the time you spent setting up your home server you would still play knowing your camp will dissappear after 90 days 

i think it is a small price to pay to not have servers/game worlds like H1Z1 where every 10 metres is some ones base


 

No worries, dude. It's still alpha.  That means that we should be giving feedback.  I made a point of it to try to understand and test persistence; to the point of discovering that vehicle wheels still have some issues that  need to further exploring  in .60, if they allow an iteration up long enough to get the required number of tires in the same spot to start causing problems.  I got so preoccupied at collecting vehicles, that I never even bothered looking for much trouble this patch.  Got so much helicopter loot while looking for tires, that I got bored and started fishing a bunch, to fill all the camps with food.  Now that I go to YOLO it all away before the wipe, CLE has beaten me to it. lol

And I was interested in going to the island, until new vehicles dropped in .59 exp.; still haven't made the trek.

5 hours ago, sneakydude said:

I hope your right on this 60-90 day timer. So many games and people have stuff wiped. Its depressing when you build a base, and all your stuff goes poof because the database or coding is all wrong.

I cant count on one hand anymore the number of times a database, or coding has wiped someones base from the game. I can count on 2 hands how many games are out there that has problems with persistence, and decay. The system theory is flawed.

We have backups sure, but why do we need them? when so many other games like MMO's have your stuff stored for over 10 years of inactivity on your account. Database wipes are not funny, especially when you work so hard like the OP did and it all gets wiped.

Chalk it up as another EA alpha problem. Just like the other 10 games i can count.

Sorry emu, for your loss. This is why i didn't bother firing up the game until they get camps fixed. Its been well over a year and we still have issues with persistence.

 

Hopefully our efforts will help to keep this game rods ahead of the imitators.  Mostly made this thread as a PSA to other basebuilders, and a workaround to the feedback tracker being borked ATM.  But still the loss is real.  Real but negligible, as all of the more recent bases will be obsolete before the 90 day timer; and I also know to repack tents and barrels to see if it will extend the timer--still think this bit might be worthy of testing, but I forget when the oldest of the more recent bases was established.

4 hours ago, ColdAtrophy said:

WIP. That is all.

Yup, WIP.  Still good to explore the mechanics and make issues known.

[sneakydude 480]

20 hours ago, emuthreat said:

Hopefully our efforts will help to keep this game rods ahead of the imitators.  Mostly made this thread as a PSA to other basebuilders, and a workaround to the feedback tracker being borked ATM.  But still the loss is real.  Real but negligible, as all of the more recent bases will be obsolete before the 90 day timer; and I also know to repack tents and barrels to see if it will extend the timer--still think this bit might be worthy of testing, but I forget when the oldest of the more recent bases was established.

Our efforts have been really helpful i am sure but emu, you must be confused? dayz isnt orginal Dead Rising (デッドライジング, Deddo Raijingu?) is a 2006 open world survival horror beat 'em up video game.

If i am not mistaken more games fall into this category.

 

Either way doesn't matter, they are doing a good job, hopefully we can see a good final product. It is what interests players. Open world 100 player servers are what people want.

[yazar8 584]

10/10 topic title.

[emuthreat 2837]

On 2/21/2016 at 0:34 PM, sneakydude said:

Our efforts have been really helpful i am sure but emu, you must be confused? dayz isnt orginal Dead Rising (デッドライジング, Deddo Raijingu?) is a 2006 open world survival horror beat 'em up video game.

If i am not mistaken more games fall into this category.

(snip)

I consider DayZ to be the first multiplayer, persistent open-world, zombie apocalypse, survival game.  I only played the first Dead Rising, and found it to be more of a time-management game, than an open-world survival game.  State of decay comes close, but I learned that they have stopped development towards multiplayer capabilities.

On 2/21/2016 at 1:11 PM, yazar8 said:

10/10 topic title.

Is it still a portmanteau word, if half of it is an acronym?

[sneakydude 480]

4 hours ago, emuthreat said:

I consider DayZ to be the first multiplayer, persistent open-world, zombie apocalypse, survival game.  I only played the first Dead Rising, and found it to be more of a time-management game, than an open-world survival game.  State of decay comes close, but I learned that they have stopped development towards multiplayer capabilities.

It was the first open 240km MP game on the market, that i will give it credit for. Its far from done. But i cant agree its the first idea.

[bingo_fuel 205]

I think it was mentioned at some point that there are plans to implement a function that bundles all containers of a camp together and the "time to live" timer is rest when a player interacts with any container of the camp. Currently you have to pick up the container to reset the cleanup timer (this was described in a status report some time back).

Imho the game needs a "short cleanup cycle": The server has a max number of barrels configured and after some days all barrels are picked up and hidden => no new barrels are spawned in until old unused get cleaned up. Right after 0.59 came out I found many spawned in barrels in one loot run. But now it's much harder to find one. I think the reason is that most servers have the max amount of barrels in the world and don't spawn new barrels in.

Edited February 25, 2016 by bingo_fuel

[bingo_fuel 205]

double post

Edited February 25, 2016 by bingo_fuel

[emuthreat 2837]

59 minutes ago, bingo_fuel said:

I think it was mentioned at some point that there are plans to implement a function that bundles all containers of a camp together and the "time to live" timer is rest when a player interacts with any container of the camp. Currently you have to pick up the container to reset the cleanup timer (this was described in a status report some time back).

Imho the game needs a "short cleanup cycle": The server has a max number of barrels configured and after some days all barrels are picked up and hidden => no new barrels are spawned in until old unused get cleaned up. Right after 0.59 came out I found many spawned in barrels in one loot run. But now it's much harder to find one. I think the reason is that most servers have the max amount of barrels in the world and don't spawn new barrels in.

That was mentioned, but not necessarily "described" in the Sept 15 status report.

The specific terminology used was:

Items have a 30 minute lifetime which can be refreshed by picking up the item, or directly interacting with it.

Base Objects (Tents, Ammo Canisters, Protector Cases, Barrels, Vehicles) have a 45 day lifetime. This will eventually move to 7 days once systems are in place for intuitive lifetime refresh

Backpacks (not including the improvised and crafted types) have a lifetime of 4 hours

Crafted backpacks have a lifetime of 1 hour

 

Don't worry, I'm sure I will find plenty of problems with the new Intuitive Lifetime Refresh system, once that is implemented.   For instance, will a single barrel or tent count as a camp, or will it just despawn as soon as you walk far enough away from it?  Are these types of things going to be specifically communicated in the relevant status report, or are they going to focus more on promotional materials (gameplay from the previous patch) as the latest trend has been?  Personally, I would prefer the Status Reports to contain useful information for testing/playing each new game version, rather than more videos of streamers; that I could easily find in 5 other places should I decide that I wanted to look for that type of thing.

[CaptainFist 6]

Hi,

45 Days is the max value?  is it possible set i to whatever i want? e.g. 120 Days ?

[Mookie (original) 799]

And what's the max value for an epic thread necro? Two years?

 

...sorry.

[eno 1049]

Whoops I hadn’t seen the day actually- but it begs the question is the mechanic changed?

[Max Planck 7174]

20 hours ago, CaptainFist said:

Hi,

45 Days is the max value?  is it possible set i to whatever i want? e.g. 120 Days ?

 

Dude...

 

Locked.

[Max Planck 7174]

Since the resident necromancer is 'confused', I'll explain myself, thusly:

If a topic is three years old but you still have something to say on the subject, it is better to make a new topic on the issue than resurrect the old one. The reason for this is that information given in the thread may be outdated, and that people seeing it for the first time might respond to other posters expecting an answer that will never come. So, for clarity, we tend to lock topics that have gone past their expiration date. This is one of those cases.

I know it's a judgement call, and I'm making it. Do look into my eyes and tell me I don't have the face to pull it off.