So I thought I would start a discussion on character value in dayz. I have noticed over the years, from playing the mods when they came out all the way through DayZ SA and A3 mods, that character value is an issue. When someone posted Hicks blog about character value, and soft skills it really got me thinking about where dayz could go down the road with the idea. So my hope is that players here can start a discussion on character value, soft skills, and reasons to continue playing the game at "end-game" levels. And on that note, my further hope is that at some point a dev will read this post, or a modder, and will utilize some of the ideas listed here. I think this game has insane potential, but only if it finds a way to expand upon the mod experiences, not take from them. Lately, the game feels empty and great effort needs to be put in to interact with other players on any level. I would like to see things get to a state where the community is constantly interacting with each other, with as little effort as possible. So please discuss this here if you feel like it. List any ideas, grievances, hopes, and dreams below.   I'll start with a few of my own: 1. Character value, in dayz, has almost always been placed on the items you possess. I think this is an issue. While I believe its important to feel value in finding rare items, I also don't think players should instantly feel like going off and hiding once they find a nice weapon, or a working car.  There should be a balance between "loot" being important and your player being equally important. a) One of the things I took from the mod days was that finding a working military class firearm was not too difficult. A trip to the known spawn areas would typically result in you having ammo, and a working gun within 2 locations. Finding melee weapons was equally simple. Run to the areas you know they spawn in, and within 1 or 2 spots you would find something. There seemed to be a better balance of loot in the old days. Perhaps things were overabundant, but the result was that players could get moderately geared in a reasonable amount of time, allowing them a feeling of freedom to interact with other players and not need to put in hours to get back to that same point. Players that like PVP help move this game forward whether you like it or not. They kill people who don't want to die. That creates tension, and stress. The result is fear. Fear is healthy for this game. PVPers cause riffs on servers, clans attacking clans. A community forms from the dust of pvp/kos, and making it too difficult for players who enjoy hunting fellow dayz players makes the game suffer I believe. b) On top of that, the old mod spawn areas were all along known routes, which forced interaction. Now we have a severely spread out map and spawn areas are everywhere. If you simply add more players in to the server, it really does not fix the issue. You can see from playing Arma that a large map, with a ton of players still equals action only being in a few places while the rest of the map is a dead zone. What we need is forced interaction, through design. Which I hope to touch on next.  2. Loot: Its an issue. BI knows this better than any of us. I cant begin to imagine the pains of testing loot, locations, and reset timers. Its a nightmare. But I see some things that could really help out, if possible. a) I'd love to see loot spawn in as a "set" at random times, in specific locations; To help tell a story about what you are seeing. I hate that I loot these cars, all broke down on the road, and there is not really any blood, no broken windows.. no dialogue about what happened here. Now a lot of that is art department. But what about the loot that spawns there? Empty pants on the ground. A hat on the roof. Backpack on the hood. Maybe one item or two inside of them. But do they somehow ever tell a collective story? Is there ever any dialogue created by how things spawn in? Not really. Improvements have been made. Seeing weapons spawn in, with items attached makes you wonder sometimes.., "was this just dropped here? Am I being watched right now?". I cant tell you how much fun that is. b) I'd love to see barrels spawn in half full with items that make sense: like it was someones camp until recently. Infected with firearms on their bodies, and other items that tell you, "this person went through some sh*# before they got infected." I want to stare at the floor of a house for a minute because I'm not sure what I am seeing.. I want to feel more life in the static part of dayz. With loot zones, and all the parameters that BI has programmed in.. perhaps its not too hard to have loot spawn in "Sets" of sorts? A grouping of items, that have a chance of spawning together. A pack with ammo, and food next to a rifle with a damaged round jammed in the chamber. Things like that would be amazing. I'd love to call my friend over to a house, just to see the loot that spawned and the way it spawned in. The two of us bantering back and forth about whether or not a player left it there. c) I'd like to see firearms, and weapons with ammo easier to find at military areas. Leave the other loot as is for the most part, but make it so that players who simply want to run to the military areas to get guns and ammo can do so in short order. See, not everyone wants to go get shot for a gun. Not everyone wants to PVP. But if you give everyone an area, that says "come here for military weapons" then you hoard all of the action into zones. This helps a lot, I promise. The NWAF used to be the place to go for action. Id like to see loot spawn in geographic zones, which create a flow for players. It would be quite simple: make the NWAF the place to go to get guns and ammo of military type. Use myshkino for the same thing. Make Tisy more for rare items, helicopters, etc.. Use the other military sites for clothing items mostly with rare chance of finding actual military weaponry. Why? Well, military bases would be really tough to sneak into to loot if this whole thing was real. The big bases would be scary for anyone to approach. But the little ones, the outposts, the police stations, etc.. would all have been looted ages ago if time has gone by. Those places wouldn't normally have guns and ammo stocked up after "the fall". People have already been there to get them. But the bases... typically those wouldn't have been touched. So stock them up with guns and ammo. Zone stuff out so players know, if you're here.. you must want to die or kill others. Leave other areas so players not looking to get shot up can still afford a chance of finding the same things. Create a flow to the game again. Don't have players running all over the place, finding the same loot in all the same places, fragmenting the whole thing you created. Create forced interaction through design.  3. Soft skills have been described in various ways throughout development. Recently I have seen a change that many DayZ players seemed to dislike, in the direction of soft skills by BI development staff. A soft skills addition that as described, really just shows what your player has done last and not what he/she has done most. I think there is a treasure trove of possibilities with soft skills to create character value. Whether BI gets it right, or someone else creates a mod that gets it right, I don't see it being overly difficult to do something with the soft skills that would make each and every player feel value in staying alive.  a) What I see perhaps working is making soft skills a variable of sorts. When you spawn in fresh, you have a variable attached to your player. Any time you attempt to "craft" something, there is a chance of failure, or damaged items, less items, etc.. So if I try to craft a stone knife as a new player.. perhaps the first try fails, and it says, "The rock broke in half." Or "You find nothing" if you try to cut some sticks off a bush. Make it so that things like animation play ever so slightly longer, items have more of a chance of not being found, or found in lessor quantities, damaged condition, etc.. This does something very important: it makes it tough to start out. This is key for DayZ. Players need to feel a sense of accomplishment once they learn to stay alive for longer than an hour. So make it tough on new players. Make them drink water more often, eat more often, more prone to disease, lose more blood when damaged.. and so on. Now have this be a small variable. Something a player can notice, but not something so tough that it upsets people into giving up. A player should notice that they now find more sticks when they search for them, having done it about 3-6 times. Now they find 3 pristine sticks, instead of 1 worn one. Do this with all types of crafting. Use a variable for damage, and shock: A new player shakes more with his weapon if damaged. Not so much that its crazy.. but just enough to be perceived over time as you have learned something in the game. So as our players grow beards, and have on clothing that shows experience.. our actions also show that experience. We light fires in the pouring rain once experienced enough to do it. We get larger amounts of meat, in 100% condition when skinning animals once we've done it several times. Allow us to build our characters in a noticeable way, and end up with a character that survives better, adapts better, and withstands injury, weather, and hunger better. Once weight is involved, use the same method to allow us to carry more weight with less side effects. Again, the aim is a fine balance that is just barely perceivable. I want to be in pack of players, some new, some seasoned men of the North.. a Bear attacks us all at a campfire, and the new players get knocked unconscious in 1-3 hits from the bear. But the older players.. they take 3-6 hits before they get knocked down. The new players hunker behind the seasoned players for safety. The older players face the threat with courage and experience. I want something small, but something that would create value in your characters life. Value perceived by survival and ability, not by the gear that you carry. 4. Once we have base building, camps, houses that have doors barricaded.. this will be one of the most important aspects of DayZ. If you have the gear stored away to make your death meaningless, then what is the point of dayz's harsh world and loss of everything if you die? It becomes something else, other than what was intended. A pvp/pve sandbox, with very little meaning. Once you've done it all, there is little to gain from playing the game. If there is no value in your characters life, then there is no reason to keep playing. You play to get items. Once you have them, then what? It becomes a revolving door of gear up, hoard gear, go kill and get killed. Eventually boredom sets in, and you move on to something else. We should feel like interacting with others in the game. We should know like before, that certain areas mean certain death. But other places, are areas where you constantly meet others who are not looking to kill you or rob you. Why would other players suddenly not want to rob you? Well, they wont. Ever. But if you make them feel like robbing someone for loot is too risky when you can simply go look for it. If you make them think twice about risking their character dying. You start to change the reason they rob another player. Now they do it for interaction, and entertainment. They don't do it out of greed as much as they do it out of necessity. To some degree.. trust me, I know people are just mean spirited bastards at heart sometimes. ;)   TL;DR We need more character value. Discuss.