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

[gordonfreemantr 8]

Suggestion ;  Remove all canned foods, close all water pumps, forcing players to find food and water from the wilderness. 

                      It should be a nightmare journey from Cherno/Elektro to NWAF, only a few to survive the hunger,thirst,hostile animals,zombies/infected, diseases, bandits.. 

 

Edited April 14, 2016 by gordonfreemantr

[igor-vk 909]

Dayz was never hard or difficult. There were some extreme experimental udates but that was only for testing. To make dayz hard, we need more than one thing. It should be combination of scarcity of food/warm clothes, weather, infections of all kind and offcourse good and unforgiving zombies. If you leave one or two things out its just not hard to survive any more.

Unless devs gave up on survival and switched to sanbox only.

[Ultimoses 110]

I want to have to share my spaghetti with my mate, because we would otherwise both die. I want to have to split those 4 rounds of ammo, so we can both defend ourselves, even if it's only 2 bullets each. I want to have to sneak around towns, keeping a low profile, because them infected would kill us otherwise. I want to have to stay vigilant outside of towns, even in the deepest woods, because bears and wolves might turn up. I want to feel some kind of a struggle at all times.

Currently, when fully geared, you can hide in a bush and survive a long time, just consuming the food you're carrying. You don't have to worry about diseases (I play since the last week of december 2013, nearly 1000 hours now, and i have never been sick), the weather is nice, it's not too cold and not too warm, there's plenty of ammo and guns, canned food all over the place. I know that many of those factors are still in development and can therefore not be iterated upon until the new engine parts are finished and in place.

But 0.55 was the best DayZ experience i've ever had.

[ColdAtrophy 1850]

If I wanted an easy experience, I wouldn't be here. If I wanted a game made for the lowest common denominator, anyone can pick up and play and do well, I wouldn't have supported this project. Games like that are churned out on a weekly basis by the development factories of AAA publishers. 

[Just Caused 423]

I actually pretty liked Bolt zombies with their AI in one of older versions. They were fast and dealing lots of hits in few moments. Once again I was actually scared from zombies ( aside from first time I started playing DayZ ) and I felt like I needed to find a way past them using stealth ( considering that I have 700+ hours of DayZ, it's pretty awesome to have fear from zombies once again )

[c4p 30]

14 hours ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

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?

I hope NOT! There should be ONE game called DayZ. A harsh, unforgiven enviroment where everyone has to fight with teamwork agains hunger, thirst, infected, etc. and sometimes players to survive. If they are starting the base game with different modes, it will split the commmunity even more.

Why does DayZ need more than one mode? I can't see the reason, easy mode will come with mods. We don't need that from the devs.

Don't get me wrong, I love mods, some of my favorit games were mods in the past, but in case of DayZ I'm not sure if it's good for the experience itself...we'll see. I want mods for DayZ too, but I fear it will end as in the mod with very very few vanilla servers with even fewer players...

[Noctoras 409]

15 hours ago, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

 We've been known for a long time for being a punishing survival experience.

This is arguable, apart from PvP there hardly is a danger, if you do not really act like a goof. So I do respectfully disagree with this part. The analogy with the silent majority is often stressed and often true. However, you never know where the majority is unless you test it. 0.55 for various reasons should not be taken as a reference for customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Number wise I agree that 0.55 was rock bottom for a while, but it was fixed too soon to really show whether players would be interested in that as a whole and secondly no loot at all partially didn't make it a good testing ground either. I know that calling the current game a WalMart simulator is/was not the nicest thing I could say, but this is how I percveive it, especially with guns being maybe 30x as frequent as screwdrivers. For me it also kills immersion, if the Chernarus population has less need for tools or canned food than for guns. (ready made food and weapons+attachments are the items spawning way too frequently in my opinion)

I also disagree with modding being necessarily a benefit for community. The Division or Dark Souls 3 tell us that people don't just fracture into 1,000 mini games, if not all their wishes are fulfilled. A fractured player base is a more than realistic scenario in my humble opinion, though. That said, I do not call for modding to stay out. Modding has been announced as a key sales argument, so it must be in now. It just doesn't mean I like it or think it will be positive ;)

Since I think that a message board is also for discussing or presenting differing opinions, I will just leave these lines there.

Edited April 14, 2016 by Noctoras

[GaryWalnuts 1680]

15 hours ago, silverblade1233 said:

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.

 

15 hours ago, ☣BioHaze☣ said:

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?

Given that there are many playstyles and preferences (PVE, PVP, 1PP, 3PP, clan, lone wolf, Public, Private, KOS, cooperation), I'm not convinced that any amount of balance tweaking can ever satisfy the base as a whole, nor do I think it can lead to some mythical unification of the base.  Players simply like what they like and they will always play the way they enjoy, or they won't play the game at all.  With all of this disparity I think we still all have one thing in common: none of us want the game to be homogenized into mediocrity.  Trying to please everyone with a single model will do that, and trying to please a single playstyle will drive away a remaining base that still wants to play.

There's an old adage: if you try to please everybody you end up pleasing nobody. 

When mods come they will rightly pull a population of players away from vanilla.   But there will still be the same preferences towards certain modes of play within vanilla.  Does this "split the base" as they say, or does it actually keep more players around because they continue to enjoy the game as they please?  I think the latter, and so instead of trying to corral disparate crowds, why not give them a choice?
I like the idea of Novice-Normal-Veteran difficulty levels.  They could be divided into three hives with no overlap (making it impossible loot up on a novice server and take your easy loot to a veteran server). 

Does a player want to loot up quickly on a bright sunny day and get into a firefight without spending 2 hours gearing up?  OK, play on Novice hive and be geared up by the time you reach NWAF.  Does the player want sparse loot, more hunting, low visibility, frequent hypo & hyperthermia, disease, more aggressive infected and animals and an unforgiving environment where even fully geared and experienced players face potential death by weather every day? Alright, play your Veteran character.    A little bit of both?  Just play normal.

I do think the difficulty level would split the players (are they not inherently split anyway?) but in a more sensible way - and I guess that's my main point. There should always be a risk of being KOS'd while harmlessly farming off in some remote town, that's an essential part of the game.  But I also believe environmentally difficult servers would see less of that and foster more cooperation simply because suffering untold horrors alone for days on end might make us think twice about popping the first person we've seen in days without even saying boo. 

Just my 2 cents.

[Private Evans 1303]

Regarding modding....Will we see a BI licence for modding A3 using Dayz resources and vice versa ???

[Five_Seven_Clown 88]

I agree with what many people are saying about modding, if there is an easy mode too many players will choose that over harder, riskier gameplay. DayZ will become a "platform" rather than that niche anti-game that got so many people talking about it in the first place.

I think the one big lessons we can take away from the early access experience; is that you now have a bunch of owner/players who all want different things from the game they bought into. And many seem to feel that they should have a say in how it is developed!. Even if the DayZ developers had shared a detailed vision of what the finished product would be (I don't think that happened), the existence of the Mod and its sub mods would cloud that vision in the mind of the players. To me it sounds like Modding is the answer to any and all criticism from people who are not satisfied with the final product but as everyone has there own idea of what that is we'll end up with a wide verity of games all purporting to be DayZ!

If modding is to be a thing I think there could be some parameters on what can be done and still be called DayZ. For example new maps, I think new maps would enhance the experience as would new items in the correct class in the loot tables.

As for difficulty, DayZ is an odd game, if it is to be that anti-game some of the norms will need to be ignored or turned on their head. I think the spirit of DayZ shares some similarities to Minecraft survival mode. DayZ gameplay breaks down into phases :-

1. Spawn and immediate actions to prevent death. Risks are everything, the environment, AI and other players both geared and not. Character attachment is low.
2. High risk looting, grab what you can for the coming journey. Big risks are AI and other players both geared and not. Character attachment is medium.
3. Planned route to high end loot. Risks mainly from other players that are geared, attachment is medium to high
4. Living in comfort, self sufficiency. Risks are low from other players but attachment is high but after too long wanes as you crave the risk.

During each phase you are free to play however you like but objectively the game is harder at the start than in later phases but that is ok because your goal is to make life easy for yourself if you can, that is where the attachment comes from. After phase 4 your goals are limited. Hoard, PvP, Chopper hunt, RP, tent/stash and the Tisy bio-hazard base etc. Maybe what the game needs is an endgame that is not death. Perhaps a rescue or retirement option for your character as the ultimate goal if you have survived long enough.

 

[kungfubeer (DayZ) 3]

Many of us feel that you are trying too hard to make this a shooter game instead of what attracted us to the game as a zombie survival game.  As the mod became more military, SA pulled back to the basics.  Now, it seems that there is a major push to have too much military style gear and too much emphasis of vehicle development.  I think if you placed horses and bicycles in game instead of cars, you'd nail it!  I do not have an issue with minimal military gear, but the excess has resulted in less want to craft, stock food, and set up camp because a small group kitted to the teeth (and everyone gets to that point quickly) can take out an entire community of survivors in seconds.   In my opinion, an emphasis on survival from zombies would put you back on track, not the tools to hunt and kill players so much.

[WolverineZ 28]

6 hours ago, Noctoras said:

Number wise I agree that 0.55 was rock bottom for a while, but it was fixed too soon to really show whether players would be interested in that as a whole and secondly no loot at all partially didn't make it a good testing ground either. I know that calling the current game a WalMart simulator is/was not the nicest thing I could say, but this is how I percveive it, especially with guns being maybe 30x as frequent as screwdrivers. For me it also kills immersion, if the Chernarus population has less need for tools or canned food than for guns. (ready made food and weapons+attachments are the items spawning way too frequently in my opinion)

I also disagree with modding being necessarily a benefit for community. The Division or Dark Souls 3 tell us that people don't just fracture into 1,000 mini games, if not all their wishes are fulfilled. A fractured player base is a more than realistic scenario in my humble opinion, though. That said, I do not call for modding to stay out. Modding has been announced as a key sales argument, so it must be in now. It just doesn't mean I like it or think it will be positive ;)

Since I think that a message board is also for discussing or presenting differing opinions, I will just leave these lines there.

Thanks Noctoras, you hit the nail on the head. I feel the same way. I get how modding can increase a game's longevity, but I say way after the game's been released. Having mods available at or around the time of release is not a good decision.

Edited April 14, 2016 by WolverineZ

[Noctoras 409]

On 13.4.2016 at 1:17 AM, Hicks_206 (DayZ) said:

you can frequently see the vocal masses pipe up when the title gets too difficult (see: 0.55).

Just having had a look at current SteamCharts - I have to correct my previous statement with regards to 0.55 - actually currently there are evel less people playing than in 0.55 (so much for the "silent majority" ...), although I definitely attribute it to the long time between patches. I don't know why a "vocal minority" is so keen on making a challenging game look bad, where guns are not as frequent as smarties. I just cannot stand this majority-minority stuff anymore, this is so detached from reality unless someone really makes a in-game-survey. Of course, the opinion of the "vocal masses" may differ.

This majority-thing is simply abused for generalising one's opinion and can be (ab)used both ways. Said that, done here.

Edited April 21, 2016 by Noctoras