What is stopping the devs from upping the difficulty?

[Capo393 0]

Dayz has always pitched itself as a brutal survival game, the amount of times I've heard 'struggle to survive' in relation to this game is astronomical. 

The issue is that beyond the first couple of days of the patch, it simply is not difficult to survive at all. Food is extremely easy to acquire, I never find myself looking for food, it's always something I find while looking for something else, and I always find it in large quantities. 

The first couple of days of 60 were some of the most fun I've had playing dayz, and also it was the first time I've ever had to use cooking as a way of not starving. 

So I want to know, what is stopping the devs from drastically reducing the amount of food spawning immediately, or next patch? As the devs have independent control of the cle, I see no reason why they couldn't maintain a standard level of food during the first few days of 61 while everyone is fresh, and then drop the level of food by even half once the rush has died down. 

Tl;Dr we have the basics of crafting, hunting and cooking, what is stopping the devs from lowering food levels as of right now?

[Tigermonk 140]

'Tl;Dr we have the basics of crafting, hunting and cooking, what is stopping the devs from lowering food levels as of right now?'

hmmm where to start on this one... jeez this IS a tougher question than 'where do I find a can of peaces' thats for sure.. but alright I'll help you out here.

what should be making survival harder 

- more zombies (not yet in the game because the server engine can't handle 100's of them at the same time without huge lag)
- more animals/predators (not yet in the game because about the same reasons zombie hordes aren't)
- hunting should be harder/crafting should have a failure rate.. so it actually requires 'soft skills' so to speak (learning how to craft 101)
- canned foods are the up most easy thing, because that gets left behind (we up until this day have not clear idea how many people lived in this country before the breakdown)
- canned food will be easier to find regardless (if you know what to look for and where) 
- once more wildlife will be introduced AND more zombies (later patches 0.62-0.63 before their optimized) that can of food you're talking about WILL be gaurded by 100 zombies or more.. so have at it.. that'll make it harder for everyone to obtain it

hope this helped ;)

cheers

Tigermonk 

[Lexman61 78]

 I presume the developers of DayZ must find the difficult balance between a realistic engaging game and a real-life-apocalypse-simulator.

Too much of the first type and the result could end up being a run-and-gun FPS. Too much of the second would lead to a frustrating and excessively slow game pace (just think if they added toilet needs, personal hygiene, sleep requirements and other "realistic" features in order to make the game as real-life as possible).

Let's not exceed with too much "realism".

 

 

 

[nl 986]

I think they keep it easy to survive for the moment so players have a chance to test other game mechanics.

If players were constantly struggling to keep their characters alive they would get no feedback about all other stuff they try to implement.

[Evilsausage 87]

I think its unlikely more Zombies will lead to run and gun. I think it would be nice if Zombies actually where a threat.

You will take a big risk firing at them, both because it would alert more zombies and players.

You will then really need ammo for surving vs zombies in bad situations. Which will probably mean people don't wanna waste it all in PvP.

[odin_lowe 3686]

1 hour ago, Capo393 said:

Dayz has always pitched itself as a brutal survival game, the amount of times I've heard 'struggle to survive' in relation to this game is astronomical. 

The issue is that beyond the first couple of days of the patch, it simply is not difficult to survive at all. Food is extremely easy to acquire, I never find myself looking for food, it's always something I find while looking for something else, and I always find it in large quantities. 

The first couple of days of 60 were some of the most fun I've had playing dayz, and also it was the first time I've ever had to use cooking as a way of not starving. 

So I want to know, what is stopping the devs from drastically reducing the amount of food spawning immediately, or next patch? As the devs have independent control of the cle, I see no reason why they couldn't maintain a standard level of food during the first few days of 61 while everyone is fresh, and then drop the level of food by even half once the rush has died down. 

Tl;Dr we have the basics of crafting, hunting and cooking, what is stopping the devs from lowering food levels as of right now?

A good portion of the player base are mainly playing in Private Hive servers, so what we just need is more Admin tools for those hosting servers. They will be able to adjust weapon spawns, ammo ratio, food quantities, etc. That's been announced a while ago, and it'll be the best way to find "your" DayZ experience.

Public servers will be something very distinctive when we reach 1.0 and we'll be able to identify them as Vanilla Stand Alone. With the better admin tools and mods, the DayZ Stand Alone experience will vary greatly from server to server. 

This, and everything else mentioned in this topic so far. There's nothing stopping the devs really, but it's one brick at a time.

[sneakydude 480]

1 hour ago, Evilsausage said:

I think its unlikely more Zombies will lead to run and gun. I think it would be nice if Zombies actually where a threat.

You will take a big risk firing at them, both because it would alert more zombies and players.

You will then really need ammo for surving vs zombies in bad situations. Which will probably mean people don't wanna waste it all in PvP.

Heck yeah, Just doing the testing i was doing at the military tents,  i found when the hordes of infected are there it gets rather difficult to stay away from that 40 foot arm reach.

but that's survival at its arm reach.

[Capo393 0]

3 hours ago, Tigermonk said:

3 hours ago, Tigermonk said:

- more zombies (not yet in the game because the server engine can't handle 100's of them at the same time without huge lag)
- more animals/predators (not yet in the game because about the same reasons zombie hordes aren't)
- hunting should be harder/crafting should have a failure rate.. so it actually requires 'soft skills' so to speak (learning how to craft 101)
- canned foods are the up most easy thing, because that gets left behind (we up until this day have not clear idea how many people lived in this country before the breakdown)
- canned food will be easier to find regardless (if you know what to look for and where) 
- once more wildlife will be introduced AND more zombies (later patches 0.62-0.63 before their optimized) that can of food you're talking about WILL be gaurded by 100 zombies or more.. so have at it.. that'll make it harder for everyone to obtain it

hope this helped ;)

cheers

TigermoTigermonTigermonk

 

Thanks for your reply :). While I agree that implementation of more zombies in towns and an increase of wildlife will lead to better cause for, and access to the survival mechanics, I still see no reason for food to be so plentiful, at least in this current iteration of the game. 

I'm not saying canned goods should be completely absent from the loot tables, but at the moment it's almost a non issue. But you make an interesting point, if I cannot get to the food, it might as well not exist. 

Now for the other replies. I don't think a slightly greater challenge would lead to people being unable to test other elements of the game. A huge amount of people played over the first few days of the patch, so loot was scarce as fuck, but for the most part everyone got through it, had a blast and had time to fix cars often enough to discover they were respawning, for example. 

While I understand that the devs aren't trying to create a simulator, and neither are they creating h1z1, I've been under the impression that the devs have been trying to create a challenging, authentic survival experience. Reducing the food spawns would absolutely not put us into 'press 'e' to wipe your ass' territory, but would rather make it so that at least one of our basic needs as human beings isn't being met effortlessly.

I'm not gonna even talk about mods. Oce has a much smaller community, so there will be little choice when it comes to mods unless I want 300 ping.

Edit - sorry for the formatting, my phone's a nightmare. 

Edited July 15, 2016 by Capo393

[sneakydude 480]

No there is no reason to have food so much plentiful, however we have just a few too many bugs with cooking to not allow us some time until they fix all the crafting problems.

Also the pots right now have a good chance to destabilize and cause you to gear wipe. True... seen the server destabilize a few times while playing around with the pot in hand.

Also the new Helm might have some effect too, now that i have found it has 2 other slots in the face mask part of the helm

 

[Mookie (original) 799]

My perception in the patches up to and including 0.59 was that the spawn rates of canned food were falling (and I'll leave out the Patch That Dare Not Speak Its Name - 0.55, when there was almost none at all).

But the phenomenon of finding stuff in pockets has made finding it much, much easier in 0.60. Personally I've no objection to making it much more rare - especially if we can fix remaining hunting/cooking/horticulture bugs. For any of this to have an effect, though, something would also have to be done about the sheer plentifulness of apple trees.

[eno 1049]

I agree with this entirely... make wells randomly break so you need a pipe wrench crafted with a pipe to fix them. Make smaller ponds a last resort to drink from at any level of health. 

But I also agree that much of what we're seeing in excess right now is simply a workout for the overall spawn mechanics. Making sure things are spawning in where they're supposed to and how. Once there's some confirmation that it's all in good order I expect we'll see the sliders dropped down to minimums. 

 

[Saylor Twift 34]

Canned food and other "house" food definitely needs to be more rare, even to the point where people will start trading food for other items.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Saylor Twift

[Capo393 0]

2 hours ago, eno said:

I agree with this entirely... make wells randomly break so you need a pipe wrench crafted with a pipe to fix them. Make smaller ponds a last resort to drink from at any level of health. 

I would love it if small ponds weren't so ok to drink from, a dam or a river I can understand, but I would have squirted out my weight in brown if I ever drank that much ditchwater in real life. Also, pond water being much riskier would push traffic into towns and isolated wells for the water supply. But one thing at a time :D

Are the pots really that messed up? I had no idea.  

[Brokenbones 62]

Canned food will be greatly reduced.

[eno 1049]

27 minutes ago, Capo393 said:

 

Are the pots really that messed up? I had no idea.  

I've been carrying one for two characters across .60 so far and never had any issues... weapon with attachments... I do have issues when I drink from the pot- I can't drop the pot or return it to inventory but I relog and it works. This typically happens when I am also storing things in the pot- can't recall it if happens when the pot only has water in it. 

I guess I'm rolling the dice or there is some other combination of things causing problems that we're not putting out finger on. 

[ebrim 998]

I definitely agree that safe water is rather too abundant. Pathogen risk should be increased for both water pumps and ¨natural¨ sources. The only water that should be absolutely safe is water you have either boiled or chemically purified.

Food, well, there's just way way too much of it. I'm also thinking it may be nice to have a soft skill for foraging that means your chances of finding an apple or berries begins very very low or perhaps just increase the amount of time per attempt for low-skilled harvesters.

Zombies, I think we're getting there.

Predators are kinda freaking me out with the amount of time I spend solo in the woods... So that's probably a step in the right direction. :D

Edited July 15, 2016 by ebrim

[ebrim 998]

Apologies for the double-post but I realized I left out what is perhaps the most important factor:

Stamina system.

We don't ultimately know what it will look like but the ability of players right now to run nearly infinitely at cheetah speeds makes all the other factors mentioned above less of a problem than they would otherwise be. There should also be a significant trade off for carrying more, heavier, gear and that should come in the stamina system.

By far, and for the last year, this has been the system I'm anticipating most as the one that will finally cause us players to make some really important choices rather than the current status quo of "more is better" in basically all situations.

Edited July 15, 2016 by ebrim

[emuthreat 2837]

13 hours ago, Capo393 said:

As the devs have independent control of the cle,

You gotta be kidding me, right?  The CLE is still in its infancy.  They can tweak the loot settings, but I would say they are a far cry from having independent control of what spawns, where, and in what quantities.  Have you noticed the towns with 200 down jackets, and not much else?  Or the houses that spawn piles of identical shotguns?

They have said time and time again, that food spawns will eventually be a sliver of what they now are, but I seriously doubt they have the capability to correctly balance it at this time.  Personally, I think they should just take out all packaged foods for a few weeks, to see how it goes over.  Won't bug me a bit...

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edit: braggs

Edited July 15, 2016 by emuthreat

[Funkmaster Rick 373]

nl had it right: it's all about testing. Alpha testing used to be so tedious they paid people to do it; I think we can all adapt to little things like this.

[Capo393 0]

22 hours ago, Funkmaster Rick said:

nl had it right: it's all about testing. Alpha testing used to be so tedious they paid people to do it; I think we can all adapt to little things like this.

I understand that we're testing systems in progress, but again, I don't see how a lower abundance of food would interfere with testing. 

On 15/07/2016 at 5:23 AM, emuthreat said:

You gotta be kidding me, right?  The CLE is still in its infancy.  They can tweak the loot settings, but I would say they are a far cry from having independent control of what spawns, where, and in what quantities.

Err, I dunno if that's the link I intended on posting but, the general gist of what I mean is that they can alter the loot tables and cle in general without needing to create a whole new patch, allowing them to change loot spawns on the fly and as necessary. The impression I got was that they could definitely change what, where and how much spawns.

Just to clarify, I am aware that the general goal is to scale back food spawns drastically, increase zombie spawns, as well as increase chance of disease etc, and that all these things need proper testing and balancing or it could cause calamity.

 But as foods main impact would be on player behaviour rather than server performance, why wait? Currently we have an amount of food where everybody is quite comfortable, and could be used as a safety net if it is found that food has been made too rare for example. At least that's how I understand the cle to work. It is rather complicated so maybe I'm completely wrong. :)

[emuthreat 2837]

Like I said, I'd love to see them turn off the packaged food spawns.  Unfortunately I think that the CLE is still a bit rough around the edges, and it would be unlikely that they could get the titration just right at this time.  That's why I think just taking food out of the tables would be the way to for now, just to see if the community could bear it.

The most recent CLE update that I know of, was to fix the abundance of .308 rounds in Vavilovo.  It fixed it, allright.  Vavilovo now spawns nothing but down jackets.  That's kinda my point, that the CLE tuning still seems very imprecise.  They'll get there eventually, but for now, it is still looking pretty slapshod.

[bfisher 561]

I guess the "what's stopping them" is they just haven't built/fixed it all yet.

This is what they need to do (forgive me if I repeated anyone's ideas):

• Make it so you need to eat/drink more frequently
• Lower the food capacity so players can't use their stomach as additional storage (you can't eat half a dozen cans of beans IRL)
• Lower the amount of "easy" food - the entire map is covered with cans, apple orchards and berries.
• Fix the mechanics for hunting, fishing, cooking and human cannibalism.  
• Add more "bad" food that will cause you to get sick - eating uncooked meat, spoiled or partially spoiled cans, rotten fruit and veggies (whatever happened to that?), bacteria, parasites or poison in open water supplies
• broken well pumps that need fixing (or fixed well pumps that need breaking)
• more food in markets to turn them into PvP hotspots.

In general, the game needs more things to "do" to survive to make it anything more than a "walking around abandoned town" simulator / oversized Call of Duty map.

[Mookie (original) 799]

2 hours ago, bfisher said:

 

• Make it so you need to eat/drink more frequently

Really? If it was more frequent I'd be spending at least 90% of my time eating and drinking...

Availability is the problem. Not need.

[svisketyggeren 662]

I understand the need for holding back features from gamedevelopment, but honestly im not playing much Dayz these days because the game is just to easy. Just gather couple beans cans and water and head north to get the essential gear....no challenge at all, gets stale and boring fast.

[bfisher 561]

On 7/17/2016 at 9:04 AM, Mookie (original) said:

Really? If it was more frequent I'd be spending at least 90% of my time eating and drinking...

Availability is the problem. Not need.

Do you just eat once or do you keep eating until "stuffed"?  One of the problems is you can stuff your face with half a dozen cans of beans and fruit and basically use your stomach as additional storage.  Once I get stuffed, I usually die of boredom before I need food again.