A few thoughts on.. (Difficulty, Modding, etc)

[Hicks_206 (DayZ) 4297]

So, one of the topics that is frequently on my mind is difficulty. Where we fall on the spectrum, and if you'll forgive the expression - "What we can get away with".
Peter (Lead Designer) and I frequently spend a lot of time thinking about this, talking about this, hell even arguing about this. There will be times where I swing from one side to the other, the game developer side of me wants to make things as hard as they can be, the side of me that spent thousands upon thousands of hours playing and streaming DayZ Mod on twitch.tv is very aware of the border of playability. Fortunately we have a Lead Designer that is willing to do whatever he needs to do to survive when in DayZ, so he is *in tune* with struggling to survive. :)

DayZ suffers (at times) from a small amount of double personality. We've been known for a long time for being a punishing survival experience. Obviously that shifts from build to build during development, but the titles identity as a whole has always had that associated with it. That said, because of the uniqueness of the DayZ experience - be it from the stories you experience and pass on to others, or the tension that comes from the uncertainty of potentially losing it all over the smallest of choices, DayZ has carried a very large identity in the consumer market outside of the typical personality type that might enjoy something punishing in his/her survival. You can see it in the countless hours of Youtube videos, twitch streams, and reddit posts. DayZ has become (and potentially always was) something different to many different types of people.

So where does that leave us, the developers, with the base game experience? It can be daunting combing over user feedback and trying to take that into consideration when paired with the intended game design of DayZ. Let us not forget that happy consumers rarely feel compelled to get up and let their feelings be known (for the most part, there is always the exception to the rule) they are too busy playing the game, and experiencing their own stories. The vocal userbase is more often than not those that are unhappy, and with DayZ (aside from the time it takes to develop the title) you can frequently see the vocal masses pipe up when the title gets too difficult (see: 0.55).

This is where our strong commitment to game modification (modding) comes into play. The decision to "hand the keys to the kingdom" over to the DayZ community once the base game and engine are at a point of stability allows us to do our best to stay firm to what DayZ is, and do our best to keep it difficult without having to make those types of users feel ignored and neglected. A good portion of the userbase has expressed concern about this - citing the fractured userbase of DayZ Mod once the binaries (or hell even the old Hive.dll) made it out into the public ecosystem. Mods such as Lingor, Namalsk, Taviana, Epoch and many others certainly did split the userbase up. There is no denying that - but there is also something to be aware of, a lesson I'm sure many of my favorite game developers when I was younger had to learn (see titles such as Ultima Online, Shadowbane, Asheron's Call, etc). You can't force people to play the way you want them to. You can design the path to go the direction you want, and iterate upon it, and refine it time and time again - but given enough time, people (life, heh heh) WILL find a way (around it).
Not to mention the fact that the industry, and the ecosystem in this genre is already large, and only growing larger. If you don't give people the option or the tools to play how they want to - they WILL find another experience that does. In the end, you have to get ahead of the bull - so to speak.

So that leaves us with a few key points.

- Keep the experience as punishing as you can while maintaining the core gameplay loop.
- Do your absolute best to ensure that the users are combating the environment, the antagonists, the struggle for survival - and NEVER the gatekeepers to those areas. (UI, Usability, etc)
- Provide the community with the tools they need to take the work we the developers have done, and craft it to their own style of experiences.
- Continue to iterate upon the base game past 1.0 - keep it fresh and compelling, like watering a beautiful house plant you do your best to keep the base game community thriving and interested.

I apologize if I've rambled - I like to sit down and type out my thoughts at times to let you all see a bit behind the curtain.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

9 minutes ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

-snip-

- Keep the experience as punishing as you can while maintaining the core gameplay loop.
- Do your absolute best to ensure that the users are combating the environment, the antagonists, the struggle for survival - and NEVER the gatekeepers to those areas. (UI, Usability, etc)
- Provide the community with the tools they need to take the work we the developers have done, and craft it to their own style of experiences.
- Continue to iterate upon the base game past 1.0 - keep it fresh and compelling, like watering a beautiful house plant you do your best to keep the base game community thriving and interested.

I apologize if I've rambled - I like to sit down and type out my thoughts at times to let you all see a bit behind the curtain.

Hey, wow!

Thanks, Byron! I know this isn't a Q&A but....

Can you touch on loot and ammo scarcity and how you might plan to attack balancing this for a more brutal experience?

Is there anything you can share about progress involving gear weight and stamina systems?

How much disease is on tap for 1.0?

[silverblade1233 18]

I think when .60 comes out, as long as the loot economy is good (people can find some guns down south in the cities but not a lot of ammo), and military gear up north (not in the towns, at the military areas) and canned food is un common then the game will already be harder (which is good). As long as there are good zombies, and other AI like wolves, the game will be at a perfect difficulty level. Maybe servers can have presets like in the mod that changes the strength of zombies, etc.

[☣BioHaze☣ 7337]

7 minutes ago, silverblade1233 said:

-snip-Maybe servers can have presets like in the mod that changes the strength of zombies, etc.

Hey yeah, that's a good question too!

Will Vanilla 1.0 have Novice-Normal-Veteran-(maybe even)Hardcore difficulties?

If so, are there plans for how these will differ?

[BeefBacon 1185]

I don't think many people agree with me, but .55 was the most fun I've ever had in DayZ. It was so difficult, but so rewarding. I never starved to death, I just moved inland and searched the places other people hadn't bothered to check. I eventually got to the point where I was actually in pretty good condition. I might not have been energised and hydrated all the time, and I may not have had a fully kitted M4, but I was in good nick. I found myself actually picking up food whenever I found it, because I didn't know when I'd next see a can of peaches. In short, it was awesome. For anyone with any interest, I made a video showcasing my success. 

However, I can see why most people didn't like .55. I'm hoping we'll see diversity without too much division in the community. I'd love something really survival focused, but at the same time I'd love to see something like STALKER with mutants and radiation and so on, or something like one of those silly DayZ mods with tanks and things. I'm hoping DayZ, at its core, is more or less finished by the time modding becomes available. I can see 'vanilla' falling to the wayside very quickly indeed, especially if it's missing most of the features of the finished game. People would take it upon themselves to 'finish' it themselves, and I don't know if that'd be a good thing. It might seem premature, but I'm very interested to see how DayZ progresses past 1.0.

Do map tools come under modding, or would people be allowed to create new maps for vanilla before modding tools (for new mechanics, weapons and so on) are made available? Are there any plans to release new official maps, post 1.0 perhaps?

[Five_Seven_Clown 88]

I like the old adage, "easy to use, hard to master". I think you guys are on the right page and when the pieces fall into place you'll have user experience that we want.

I think the mod's fatal flaw was all the querks with the mechanics and UI that caused the players to need to work around them like some kind of sick metagame. The Alpha can sometimes be like that too.

If the UI gets the polish and a new player only needs to know a few keys you can make the game quite punishing and they will quickly learn how to survive.

[WolverineZ 28]

Thanks Brian for your thoughts. Glad to see how the decision making process is done behind the scenes.

Although releasing the "keys to the kingdom" is an eventuality, I would like to say something that I've learned from both school, work, and life in general, which is "Stick to your standards". I know you and your team have always done this, and done far more than many of us expected, but hear me out.

For instance you mentioned "You can't force people to play the way you want them to."

In other words "Let people play the game how THEY want to play it", which is great as I'm all for that. Power to the People, Power to the Players.  But why not re-phrase it to "Let them play it however they want within the boundaries of the vision or goal that the Creator(s) wanted their game to be"?  You touched upon this when you wrote "You can design the path to go the direction you want, and iterate upon it, and refine it time and time again."

And you went on to write "If you don't give people the option or the tools to play how they want to - they WILL find another experience that does."

I'm slightly in both agreement & disagreement with you on the last quote though. For example, let's take a board-game like Monopoly or Risk, etc. People read the rules and play the game. Sure, they'll learn techniques or things to do in certain situations (depends on the complexity of the game) that are unique to the game, and may have an advantage over other Players, but the point is they are all still playing within the rules/design/boundaries/parameters of the game. The game Creator had a goal/vision set in mind, tweaked it over time with some trial & error, used some test-player feedback, released his/her final product, and Bob's your Uncle. You could expand this to video games. There are games that are simply single player adventures, or more complex RPG "Open World" settings.

And DayZ SA is a much more complicated game akin to a MMO Survival Sandbox game. We all know that. But even as a Sandbox type of game where you can almost do anything you want, the Creator still had set out a vision or goal, and then the players played within those rules/boundaries based on sound decision making by the Creator.

If your original vision or goal was to make the SA as a non-definable game (if that's even a term) then great, go for it. But I always felt that the Mod and the SA were supposed to be a gritty survival horror game, similar to experiencing (or living?) in a "Walking Dead" world, or maybe a slightly morbid "The Road" world. So why not just stick to your guns and keep the SA to a gritty survival Zombie apocalyptic game? Are you worried that if you don't release the "keys to the kingdom" for modding purposes that the player-base will just fall off the planet? I don't think that will happen. 

Sure, maybe the PvPers will drop off, since they might not get their "insta-gratification" (or "fix") of shooting other players (Battlefield, COD, or CSGO come to mind). But I truly think that those Players who follow your vision will continue to play. Like the old adage "If you build it they will come", and I think it still holds true in many facets in life or culture.

So what I'm simply saying is "Don't fret about what some of the more vocal community base want this game to be like in their minds".  Rather, just set your vision, and "they" will follow. "They" being those who like your vision, and many or all players will play DayZ how they like it yet still set within your rules or vision or boundaries.

I for one am worried about the eventual community split, but we'll see. That's still many moons to go, so in the meantime we can all still enjoy your gritty survival horror MMO sandbox game. It truly is one of a kind, and simply put I play no other game other than DayZ SA. I'm so happy you put this out in Alpha to allow us to experience this adventure with you guys. Looking forward to not just .60, but beyond that.

Thank you for reading my post (if at all). 

 

Edited April 14, 2016 by WolverineZ

[Widget (DayZ) 18]

Difficulty itself isn't a problem. As server owner of DayZ MOD I saw that most problems comes with snowball effect. It is the difference between freshspawns and full geared players. Skill, good gear, lot of loot gives hell alot of advantage. We've tried to make our server harder in DayZ MOD, removed one shot-one kill guns, made top tier loot harder to find. Result was that most skilled teams that never died, owned the server because all worse players died with AKMs with ironsights in their hands or other crap weapons. So I think that difficulty should rise with our lifetime. Each day should be harder somehow then previous one. In this way, poor players won't have their game too hard. Old hardcore players that never die would have their life more challenging. Wouldn't that be something that would work for everyone?

I have no idea right now how to fight snowball effect. If DayZ gonna be real hardcore style, worse players would be screwed. Why not make a game that would give a challenge for all type of players? Even without modding.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Widget (DayZ)

[WolverineZ 28]

2 minutes ago, Widget (DayZ) said:

Difficulty itself isn't a problem. As server owner of DayZ MOD I saw that most problems comes with snowball effect. It is the difference between freshspawns and full geared players. Skill, good gear, lot of loot gives hell alot advantage. We've tried to make our server harder in DayZ MOD, removed one shot-one kill guns, made top tier loot harder to find. Result was that most skilled teams that never died, owned the server because all worse players died with AKMs with ironsights in their hands or other crap weapons. So I think that difficulty should rise with our lifetime. Each day should be harder somehow then previous one. In this way, poor players won't have their game too hard. Old hardcore players that never die would have their life more challenging. Wouldn't that be something that would work for everyone?

I have no idea right now how to fight snowball effect. If DayZ gonna be real hardcore style, worse players would be screwed. Why not make a game that would give a challenge for all type of players? Even without modding.

Good point, but on the other hand think about this:

A newb learns the ropes, and over time by trial & error, they get better and better. Practice over & over again builds confidence, experience, and skill. The newb becomes the veteran, and the cycle continues.

And thus I get to my point, which is "Why punish skilled players to make their lives so much more harder than the new player?"

I totally get what you wrote, but there's got to be a better way at making things fair. For example, why not make all weapons more civilian rather than military grade? I don't know what the best answer is as you have way more experience than I do since you're a server owner, but is your server similar to 434 or Europa? What mod are you using for your server if I may ask please? Or better yet, what's the name of your server, so I could look it up. You've piqued my interest.

[poddywiggle 1]

I think the difficult nature of this game is what makes it so compelling!

The feeling you get when you've discovered a valuable item you've been looking for is exhilarating at times. It feels like you've had a small victory.

When you come across another player, you must decide whether to fight or flight. Sometimes you take risks and talk to other players, or hunt and kill for their belongings. 

I don't care how hard it is to find gear, or getting killed at the hands of another player, I enjoy the challenge. I just don't like the deflated feeling when you die from things out of your control ie ladder glitches or running down stairs too fast (although funny to watch others die from it). All that time and effort has gone to waste for no good reason.

These are the things once removed from the game, will keep people playing Day Z forever.

[Rags! 1966]

Worst developer ever. 

You can't just go around giving freedom to players and allowing them to make their own experiences and stories out of your product. You have to narrowly guide them to the point of wanting more but not providing it until about the time your third DLC is out, and then finally make the game what everybody wanted it to be. And if you set the Season Pass at anything less than $40, you're just showing how out of touch with modern game development is right now.

Letting players craft their own styles of experience? Where the heck do you get off thinking you can just go and pull a stunt like that. You'd better make sure that the ability to edit even the size of the UI is locked behind a premium service tied to my universal Bohemia Live account that makes sure I'm connected to the internet, too. 

I can't wait for this site to have a store where I can buy pink camo M4's and dance moves. That's what games really need. Not all this freedom bollocks. 

[Widget (DayZ) 18]

16 minutes ago, WolverineZ said:

Good point, but on the other hand think about this:

A newb learns the ropes, and over time by trial & error, they get better and better. Practice over & over again builds confidence, experience, and skill. The newb becomes the veteran, and the cycle continues.

And thus I get to my point, which is "Why punish skilled players to make their lives so much more harder than the new player?"

I totally get what you wrote, but there's got to be a better way at making things fair. For example, why not make all weapons more civilian rather than military grade? I don't know what the best answer is as you have way more experience than I do since you're a server owner, but is your server similar to 434 or Europa? What mod are you using for your server if I may ask please? Or better yet, what's the name of your server, so I could look it up. You've piqued my interest.

We had our servers online about 3-4 years ago. We've tried to make our fork of vanilla DayZ at dayzinfo.pl and we had a private server closed for Polish community. Our ideas were to create DayZ same style as you have it right now in SA. We were working on hunger system similiar to current only (we also had stomack and life was generated when you were full), unfortunatelly our main coder had real life problems and had to stop. But part of it was already working on test server. We've also tried to reduce damage output by removing some weapons and dropping spawnrate of better ones. Like for example we had one sniper M40 which was not so powerfull as DMR. Result of such tries was that there were 3-4 pieces of M40 on server. All in hands of 2 top groups on server. That made real advantage because they had sniper rifle, opponents had AKMs and M4 with iron sights. Even if there would be loot controled by economy, even if there would just 1 piece of each type of top tier weapon, all those weapons would be in hands of top teams which would make then even better. That is the end game on server where are good teams and bad teams.

I am hardcore player, I want game hard. In DayZ, 7 days to die, only first 1-2 days are hard. In DayZ MOD, getting rifle, high capacity backpack and 2-3 cans of food ends nightmare. End of challenge, only players are "difficulty" then, rest was just too easy. Balance is not a solution here because you do balance at some level. There will always be situation where your gameplay is hard below balance level and easy over it. You can set that level high but finally game would be easy and gets easier as you reach endgame. It think that difficulty shouldn't be linear. That just don't work.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Widget (DayZ)

[Irish. 4886]

I cant wait for modding.. and to see where you all take the SA. 

Thanks for the update! 

[Rali 0]

As someone who has done modding for ARMA 2 and 3 I honestly can't wait for DayZ modding to become available. I'll be straight on it!

Thank you for all the work so far, take all the time you need, honeslty people purchased a Alpha game and they can wait, a good game takes years and years to develop. Highest of respect to the Devs and the **** you put up with.

 

¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)
Rali
(¸.•´ (¸.•´ ¸.•´

[AnarchyBrownies 1383]

I think modding for a game like this is overrated. I can see its value in some ways and I understand the desire to mod, but some of the most classic games in history haven't been modded. I think sometimes people THINK they want mods and then what happens is what you pointed out, Brian: the community fractures. People get mods to make the game what they think they want and I think a lot of times it gets boring fast. People find it grueling so they find mods that make the game easier, play it for a month, and then stop. Why? Because if you find it annoying having to trek around finding a gun for hours (for ex.), don't worry there's a mod that starts you with one. After being gifted that you start wondering why you have to run around everywhere to find some action. Don't worry, there's a mod with vehicles everywhere. Then after a little while of this you just ask yourself why you don't hop on COD or CS:GO, or hell even ARMA and just do the thing you want to do anyways. The same thing you fear happening if you DON'T allow modding happens anyways. People feel no real pull towards a game and its community, and they leave. Mainly I think when the masses grab on to the mods, they're looking to get rid of the things they don't like, undervaluing that experiences surrounding the things they don't like. This is such a cornerstone of the DayZ experience. A community for a game is built around both what people like and don't like. Both the desirable and undesirable things to do in the game. It's a shared experience. Modding, to me, represents the focus on the individual and I think the community loses something quite quickly when the game becomes saturated with customizations.

I understand mods for games where you have scenarios but not for games like DayZ. I can understand it again for single player games (Skyrim). But I really feel like for a multiplayer game with this type of character, it would be best to control the game as much as possible. That being said, I've accepted the fact that DayZ will be moddable. You guys have always been very clear that's the direction you're going so there's no choice but to accept that and I can choose to enjoy the game in whatever state I want. Hopefully what people come up with is original and interesting, rather than DayZ on super easy mode. The good mods that DayZ had most added things that were probably going to come to DayZ anyways. The rest were just mods based on instant gratification. People are drawn to that, but I think in the long run they appreciate not having it much more, as the original hype surrounding DayZ as an anti-game demonstrates.

[simplegsb 3]

I've been watching the development pretty closely and I dive in to check out the new versions from time to time but the one thing that prevents me from staying right now is the lack of PvE difficulty. I want to be in constant fear and always needing something. An end to complacency! Awesome to hear these thoughts. I'm looking forward to shitting my pants.

 

Thanks Brian.

[Kerbo 198]

Thanks Brian for sharing your thoughts here with us. I want DayZ to be a hardcore survival experience so am glad to hear you at least entertaining that possibility. Some of the best DayZ game play I had was on a short-lived mod of the mod called ShinyZ. It was utterly brutal and I loved it. I spent hours gathering the materials needed to craft a knife and just at the point of starvation managed to find and kill a rabbit. More often than not this mod killed me but I loved the rewarding feeling I got when I managed to cheat death for a while and stay alive. I for one hope DayZ standalone becomes equally as brutal of a survival experience. If not then I hope someone makes a mod that is hardcore.

[floomoo 21]

That's definitely not a ramble. That looks to me like a transcript from one of the nightly discussions about DayZ I engage in with my buddies and twitch viewers.

My personal preference (that is entirely my own and I'm not forcing it on anyone else) is to keep the game punishing. Make the game a difficult layered survival game where patience and careful logical thinking will allow players to survive the longest and gain the best loot, either crafted or found. Balance all of those core survival pillars of the game (eating/drinking, keeping warm, not getting sick, treating sickness, avoiding/engaging infected) more towards the difficult side but not impossible. Then once the game has robust modding support after v1.0, the community will tailor the game into what they want and the player base will go with what suits their preference. There will be easy mods with thermal AS50's on the coast and golden guns galore, as there will be even more difficult ones that will remove guns all together and make infected extremely dangerous beings.

Yes, this will split the player base but I find that argument trivial. Players will go where they want and play what they want at any given time. If tomorrow some huge amazing polished zombie survival game that was pretty much a 'Walking Dead' simulator with all the bells and whistles dropped in outta nowhere then you could likely lose a fair chunk of the player base to that. The next craze that all the kids wanna do could be cheese making, who knows? I'd argue that with mod support the game will sprout out in many different directions and take it's various forms to cater for what people want, but at least they will still be in the DayZ player base and community. Under the DayZ umbrella, not somewhere else.

I think you're on the right path Brian (and the DayZ dev team). Dean wouldn't have singled you out as the future lead if you weren't. And if all else fails, go with your gut feeling. It's an amazing and underused tool.

If you ever want a good ol' chin wag, healthy debate and/or robust feedback on DayZ, I'd be quite keen to have a casual yarn with you sometime. Just look up floomoo, on the forums here, Steam, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter and even on Facebook.

Cheers!

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

Getting out of Cherno alive should be a task only suited for the best of players.    Looting a chopper crash site should be for the skilled or well-prepared.  Getting to NWAF should be a nightmare. 

 

This easy mode stuff..  bores us.  I'm glad to see you're thinking about it more.  Respekt.

 

Take whatever you think is too "hard" and multiply it by 3.  The kids with either quit or wait for easy mode.  The rest of us will survive.

Edited April 14, 2016 by sausagekingofchicago

[Coheed_IV 381]

Great topic, thanks for sharing. Providing this flexibility is what BI is all about, that's where DayZ came from. But, it does come with some disadvantages in multiplayer. Lets minimize them. 

I think good difficulty comes from an ebb and flow, and survival is about adapting to this. For me, good difficulty could come from any one feature (hypothermia, disease, CLE, weather, hunting) being pushed to the brink. This could maybe create community cohesion, which seems like something that MMOs try to do. Pleasing the player base by finding the right level for each aspect seems to be very difficult.

It's difficult to fight everything, but if you know what to fight, and plan for it, it can be a harder more interesting fight. 

Regardless, I can't imagine anyone with more experience to make these tough decisions than these guys. 

[Kohlbar 270]

I liked being forced to eat berries on the side of the road, wondering if they were poisonous or not, wondering if I was gonna die of hypothermia before I found matches, and cursing at the fucking houses for having no canned food in them.

[[DGN] Johnny 115]

7 hours ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

<Snip>

- Keep the experience as punishing as you can while maintaining the core gameplay loop.
- Do your absolute best to ensure that the users are combating the environment, the antagonists, the struggle for survival - and NEVER the gatekeepers to those areas. (UI, Usability, etc)
- Provide the community with the tools they need to take the work we the developers have done, and craft it to their own style of experiences.
- Continue to iterate upon the base game past 1.0 - keep it fresh and compelling, like watering a beautiful house plant you do your best to keep the base game community thriving and interested.

I apologize if I've rambled - I like to sit down and type out my thoughts at times to let you all see a bit behind the curtain.

A Developer is the highest tier of Game Master. You're not the GM sitting at that Friday night table, designing a game for a specific community, you're the guy who wrote the book. You facilitate and empower those middle management GMs, those Clan Leaders and Network Leaders, with the functionality to cater to those different communities. And that creates an inception of content development. You create, a soul behind the code that caters to a diverse group of players, while not being universally watered down.

IMO, those points of yours are perfectly on track. Hidden somewhere in the syllables and wording, defines a game that is going to have one hell of a shelf-life. Looking forward to seeing what comes of it. ^.^

 

[IGAR 2]

ppl are so overhyped for modding support, but they don't get that it will ruin the original dayz. There wont be many servers except '10000 cars, spawn with M107' ones.

[S3V3N 1402]

Mods will always make the core game better. Let's face it vanilla Arma is shit. Even in Arma II I needed modded missions to really enjoy the game. The singleplayer was buggy and broken even a year later (probably the only game I got shot at during cutscenes). So it dreads me that Bohemia actually wants to give a singleplayer story a go in Dayz. Bad idea. Dayz will need a good workshop model. That's something to think about. Modding is split these days, into those who do it for cash mostly (workshop, item-shop), and those who do it for the love of it (total conversions). The latter takes years to work and the sooner we'll see modding tools, the sooner, people will start. I'm sure those of the old mods are already waiting to release Overpoch style weapons and gameplay to the standalone. And herein lies my problem: I don't think any of the mod versions of Dayz should be brought to the SA. Not even Namalsk or the Taviana Map. Because they belong to the mod and unless heavily modified, they would still feel like the mod (often non-enterable buildings, too many weapons spawns, AI-vendors etc.). If the community was smart, it would seek out new mods. I've stated numerous times that I would love to see a Jurassic Park total conversion with realistic predators. Dino model packs with animations are dead cheap in Unity store, so the content is in parts already available, there. Or how about a pirate mod where pillaging and stealing is the objective? Or a camping simulator, where you hook up your trailer and visit the island with your family? The options are there :) It doesn't have to look like Dayz at all and maybe we'll see some of these TCs turn into standalone games at some point. Some moddest and small, some large and ambitious.

I expect missions to be one of the first useful things in Dayz modding. I would like to write a mission, too. I write novels and screenplays, so why not. But the big goal would be to see something so alien and new that neither me not you thought about it. Dayz's engine has a place in my heart and I'm willing to learn it over, e.g. Cryengine. I have some experience developing games (commercially), but I retreated from the industry, because it's an industry. Even in a niche game like Dayz this shows. The pressure is there and creativity suffers. FPS-MP-Games today rely more on perks than skills, so Dayz is a refreshing change and could be a basis for more skill-based shooters and survival games in the future. Just how these looks and play, depends entirely on the community. As much as I loved them when they were fresh, the old Dayz mods should not see a return on the new engine. Instead we should look at other options and see what is unique about the engine and tools. We need to be able to create custom classes and tweak their behaviour without skimming through thousands of lines of code. 

Fact is: mods have never been more popular than now. But they aren't the same as when I used to play mods. Killing Floor was a mod for UT2004, Natural Selection was a Half-Life mod. Both of those were total conversions and pretty much took ages to develop with a non-commercial team. Now things are even more difficult. Even though we have more helping tools, a lot of processes are still very time consuming. People always name motion-capture when it comes to animation and think it's as easy as that. But motion capture data needs cleanup and skilled techs to use them properly. Just as an example. Animations are still a major time factor when making games. But they create the realism of our characters. I'm wondering, if maybe there is a way to create a team that survives on donations and perhaps crow-funding, i.e. to pay the people working on the project a small amount of money for their effort. Modding cannot monetize and that's okay if you do it for the love of it. But it seriously sucks that many projects get abandoned, because the people working on them simply needed to be paid or had to find work in real-life. I'm not expecting a salary out of it, but I think if there is an interest in a topical game and people are willing to pay someone to develop it, this should be possible. 

In terms of facilitating modding, the Dayz devs could perhaps look into options how teams could present themselves and their work in a framework provided through Dayz (some kind of newsfeed site for Dayz-mods, which bundles all the modding developments). And how to give the most promising teams wider access and support, so they can finish their job faster. It would be a kind of "official mod", but chosen by popularity vote. These modding devs could be former professional digital artists, aspiring ones or simply knowledgable researchers, 2D artists, coders. I've build several modding teams and know that it is almost impossible to get good people from the start. These teams grow over time, but if we could find an incentive (like getting paid even a little), a lot of people would try harder and finish their work. Which would lead to faster mod releases, hopefully. Which then again could be picked up by Bohemia, expanded and optimized and then released. It's a veritable business model, providing the modders work well enough and are modest enough to accept the conditions of the agreement.   

Edited April 14, 2016 by S3V3N

[erv_za 17]

Mr. Hicks

Please know that any fears concerning modding dividing the userbase, can be stopped by giving careful considerations to the design of the server browser.

Players should never see servers and mod types that they are not interested in playing.  THE END.  The only purpose of a server browser is to help the players join the server where he would have the most fun.

Showering the user with choice, thinking that if all the options are presented to him, he will naturally choose the best one, IS A MISTAKE. 

If a good server is hidden between a hundred bad servers, the player will never find it.

The server browser should require deliberate action before users can see any mods.  Additionally, users should have to whitelist and be able to blacklist mods or server so that people can easily find the server that is best for them, without been distracted by millions of servers that they are not interested in.

In the old days, mods would be launched by adding certain flags to the shortcut for the game executable.  So you would have a shortcut on your desktop with an expectation that if you double clicked it, you would be playing the game that you expect and you would only see servers related to that expectation. 

The server browser should allow you to save its configuration to the desktop or menu where with one click it  would only show you the game types that you expect without the user having to carefully consider what servers might be best for him.  Think about this for a moment, if all the game's players had to waste a few minutes ever time they launched the game and you could make that time a little bit shorter, how many man-years would you be saving over the games lifetime.

Edit: Would it be possible to create a Curated server list? Either by Bohemia, or a Steam user sharing a list on the steam workshop that their friends can subscribe to?

Edited April 14, 2016 by erv_za