[Opinion] High Pop/Low Pop Risk Imbalance

[[DGN] Johnny 115]

So, after plugging a few hours into DayZ, I think everyone settles on the degree of cheese they are willing to use in DayZ. Maybe it started with using ventrillo, skype, or teamspeak instead of direction communication, then you learned how to gamma goggle, maybe some combat logging eventually (of the attempt to now adays), moved into gearing on low population servers and switching to high pop for PVP, maybe to get that netting you broke down and started server hopping, slowly fell into purposely ghosting in PVP, or after a few 100 hours moved towards owning a public server and kicking others to build your own personal palace in safety. Then there's the full darkside, the duplicators, transporters, aim bots, and input hackers.

Sooner or later, we all decide our level of cheese.

Many of these things we've either accepted like third party communication or gamma goggles, have moved to respectable private shards to limit certain other issues, or have just learned to deal with. The question I would like to raise, concerns directly with the Risk vs Reward imbalance between High Population Servers and Low Population Servers and ask the community what they think would solve it or if it's even really worth bothering with.

So the general idea is that servers become more safe, the less players that are on. Even with a static increase of zombie spawns or dynamic threats, without player population being taken into account, the threat will always be less when less players are online in a server. This, for public servers, means the most intelligent time to play (and DayZ definitely rewards intelligent choices more often then not) is when players are not online. Which led to me question if this is really in the nature of "balance" or "spirit" of DayZ. So here comes the questions...

 

Is "exploiting" low population servers for gear and switching to high population servers to PVP, a healthy DayZ mechanic? Would the game be improved by helping combat this? If it is an Issue, how would you fix it or help curve the risk vs reward?

 

 

[Buakaw 274]

Remove public hive, remove 3rd person. Problems solved. Playerbase shrinks by 80%, lots of other "problems" solved. That's my opinion tho.

Anyway no need to overanalyze stuff in an alpha, I do think public hives are destined to vanish eventually tho.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Buakaw

[LordBlackwolf 656]

The only way to really combat it would be to force players to only play on one server but then you'd have a bunch of cry babies crying because they no longer can server hop and will use the excuse that it limits their choice on which server to play on.

[Konfucious K 183]

One way to mitigate all that would be to force one character per server so people would be more inclined to go explore-looting. Another is to set all privately owned Public Hives to Private so people/clans can't buy a server for gear, though I actually don't really have an issue with this. Could also limit the amount of servers you can switch in an hour or whatever.

As for the low-pop exploit I think it's not really a big enough issue if we fix the other problems like server hopping abuse because they can be invaluable places for noobs to learn their trade(s) without being hunted by trolls every time they spawn. Even I enjoy just running around a low-pop now and again, not necessarily for looting just maybe avoiding stress that day. :)

[[DGN] Johnny 115]

34 minutes ago, Konfucious K said:

One way to mitigate all that would be to force one character per server so people would be more inclined to go explore-looting. Another is to set all privately owned Public Hives to Private so people/clans can't buy a server for gear, though I actually don't really have an issue with this. Could also limit the amount of servers you can switch in an hour or whatever.

As for the low-pop exploit I think it's not really a big enough issue if we fix the other problems like server hopping abuse because they can be invaluable places for noobs to learn their trade(s) without being hunted by trolls every time they spawn. Even I enjoy just running around a low-pop now and again, not necessarily for looting just maybe avoiding stress that day. :)

I can dig the extended cooldown periods. Make playing on a server a specific action, not an arbitrary "click and load". 

Also messed around with the idea of zombie's speed, aggro radius, and damage scaling with the server population. I would imagine the same concept would work with any predator. Raise the bar a little more on low pop servers.

Personally, not a big fan of the Clan Server Cheese. Not really sure where IMO, privately owned servers fit in the public hive. Perhaps only connected to each other? Having them connected to general public hosted servers just has that pay-to-win feel.

[pilgrim* 3514]

Interesting ideas DGN Johnny

I had some ideas on server balance a while back. Mine were about loot. I noticed that most low pop servers in my ping area were kick severs on the public hive, exploiting the lack of enforcement of the server rules.
I did some off-the-cuff math on this (statistics) to see how it was changing the game. This exploit messes up the idea of "loot economy" and enables about 30% of players to play absolute PVP deathmatch without consequences.   

I suggested that BI has full control over the loot, even if they have zero control over enforcing server rules - so they can adjust the loot ratios and spawn to balance servers, to encourage the gameplay BI has designed in to DayZ, and to discourage the server exploits turning DayZ into another standard Shooter.

Your interesting suggestions are in line with this, from a different angle.

One problem that came up was - there ARE a few honest public-hive servers who worry about low population: they thought they would be penalized by any weighting system.

It is important to understand that the AVERAGE public hive server population [Europe, friday evening] is SEVEN players or less; so if you see more than 7 players online you are on a high-pop server.

 

xx p

[Woody2 25]

I'll put my two penny worth in.

I've got a public server which is relatively new and feel a little confused about the negative comments about public servers. I have had a "no kicking" policy from the start and that will remain constant (also a no unscheduled restarts or closing the server policy too). I see lots of negativity about the game on this forum (mainly about the behaviour of players and the rule flouting of server owners) and I decided to try and fix that for the average player by giving him somewhere to play of a better quality.

The alternative for me, eg of going to a Private hive, would mean an empty server or a long period of trying to fill it with whitelisted players, neither of which would provide a very interesting playing environment. at least for a good few months. Without a player base already in attendance, a Private hive is a slow starter

So far, these are my observations

1) For the first few weeks, the server languished down at 700th position on Game-trackers (not helped by this forums extended period offline). During this period, the amount of players online would be at best 2 or 3 other than myself, most of which would stay on for an average of 15 minutes (server hoppers gearing up)

2) In the last 4 weeks, with me pushing it at every opportunity, the server has gone up to 306th place with up to 20 players online at peak periods. What is most encouraging is that now players are coming online regularly (the same names night after night, and they staying online, some for over 3 hours. Fewer players are hopping in and out too, probably because with more players online, quick hit gearers feel their character is more threatened.

Ultimately, the way to support "public servers" (and by extension the game and its development) is to play on them. When I first began playing the game, I was put off by being excluded as a "newbie" from the cliquey Private servers, and more often than not, immediately being kicked from so called "public" servers by server owners protecting their own loot farms. What kind of advertisement for the game is that?

In the end, without new players, this game will die or become marginalised. As it stands, new players are not particularly welcomed to this outstanding game by the server set up and the attitude of some (not all, but some) players.