The problem of Player Count tracking using third-party services

[Komalt 27]

With the patch implementing the new server browser that only shows player count as "Low", "Medium", or "High", the Dev team made an effort to make the game more unpredictable and sort of eliminate people who would loot on servers by themselves and then jump on a full server to PVP.  Not only that but they also eliminated the in-game player count screen.  So there is no in-game way to tell how many people on the server there are exactly, and this is how it should be for an immersive survival game like this one.

There are of course 2 problems, one of which I think can be solved easily as perhaps a server Admin option.   Trackers such as DayZSpy or GameTracker use what most multiplayer online games use, they receive information freely from the IP of the server, which broadcasts information such as the player count and their in-game names.  Thats why DayZSpy shows your DayZ name and not your steam name.  For most games, a player population server count is useful and does not effect the gameplay.  But for a game like this it should be disabled, or at least made an option to be disabled so that players would properly be unable to know if they are truly alone.

The other problem is of course more difficult, because the decision was made to integrate with the Steam server system.  This means that even if you were to disable the above third-party websites from obtaining information, you are still able to see who is on the server by viewing the players in your current session through steam, where the players are identified by their Steam name.  Because of steam policies and whatever the agreement might say between Bohemia Interactive and Valve, this may be difficult to disable at this point.

 

These 2 issues severely compromise the developers intention to disable showing any sort of player counts in game.  The developers should look into disabling the above options.  As it simply just means experienced players who wish to gain an advantage by looting on empty servers will continue to do so with ease, while new players are even more clueless.  It also means that once a player finds out about these services, some of the immersion is broken as it is known that many people use these services to track players and server populations, which is an unintentional and bad 'meta-game' within DayZ.

Edited June 11, 2017 by Komalt

[sanguine00 167]

I'd be interested to know if the developers are as passionate about this as you are.  Personally, I see it as a non-issue, but only because my enjoyment of DayZ hasn't changed at all between knowing the exact number of players on a server and only knowing an approximate population.  It's made no difference at all for me.

The way I see it, the concept of "looting up on an empty server" is going to go the way of the dodo, anyway.  Mods will attract people who want quick PvP.   As for vanilla, people will quickly discover that the loot economy, when completed, will result in much the same looting experience regardless of the server population.  And for people who want no player interaction at all, there will be the self-contained "single-player" mode, or they can host their own local server once the server files are released.

Edited June 11, 2017 by sanguine00