Player population to zombie ratio sliding scale - An idea that others have told me is a great idea for the future of DayZ

[WOLFGEIST 122]

So, I engage in conversations about DayZ every day on Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Steam, and even Facebook. This is an idea that sort of popped up, i'll give the context:

On reddit in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/6n7lw7/questions_sosince_063_is_the_beginning_of_the/

Someone was asking about the future of DayZ. I talked a little about what I know about Enfusion and beta and mentioned that with the Enforce script working so much more efficiently than legacy, we could reasonably expect a larger player, zombie, vehicle count, etc. Someone chimed in and said Mr. Hicks said that the zombie count will remain roughly where it is now, as available bandwidth will be directed towards a higher player count as a priority. Here is my response in which the seemingly obvious idea jumped out and presented itself to me:

Well, here ChickenMan805's reply first:

Quote

"More infected is not on the menu I'm afraid. Brian said that the player count will rise(to 75 or 100) before more infected are added. Its just a bigger priority and I tend to agree. Especially with players more spread out these days."

And my reply:
 

Quote

"Yeah I'm fine with that. Sometimes there's too many as it is. Would be cool to have a sliding scale - less players on a server more infected. Go to an empty server to loot? Deal with massive hordes."

Well, a couple players responded positively and one said that I should "tell the devs", I thought "why not?". I'm SURE you guys have probably thought of this by now, but it makes sense and actually creates kind of an interesting side effect: Want PvP? Go into a full server (obviously). Want PVE? Go into an empty server! This will also dissuade people from hopping onto empty servers to get easy loot and then switching to full servers. Seems to have no real drawbacks, server owners could adjust the feature to their liking, shouldn't effect performance since it's using the bandwidth that would normally be reserved for extra players to fuel the hordes.

Only real issue I can think of is what happens if people start logging in? Well, I guess any zombie that is not in LOS or within a certain range of a player could de-spawn proportionally to however many people log in.

What do you guys think?

[deadnome 2]

Really like this idea, obviously have no idea on the practicalities of it's implementation but think it'd be great.

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

we'll have to see what they have in store for us in beta and 1.0  or i should say 2.0

[WOLFGEIST 122]

9 hours ago, green_mtn_grandbob said:

or i should say 2.0

Well, Peter does! :)

[liquidcactus 719]

Good idea. I don't see why we need 75 - 100 player servers. I'm all for more infected numbers over more players any day of the week

[WOLFGEIST 122]

10 hours ago, liquidcactus said:

Good idea. I don't see why we need 75 - 100 player servers. I'm all for more infected numbers over more players any day of the week

Hmm, that leads me straight into another idea. A server setting in which you can adjust the ratio of players:zombies. People looking for a more intense PvE experience can set up and join servers with a smaller player cap but with much more zombies.

Of course, it's easy for me to sit and type this but as deadnome said writing the code and implementing it is another story! 

[liquidcactus 719]

7 hours ago, WOLFGEIST said:

Hmm, that leads me straight into another idea. A server setting in which you can adjust the ratio of players:zombies. People looking for a more intense PvE experience can set up and join servers with a smaller player cap but with much more zombies.

Of course, it's easy for me to sit and type this but as deadnome said writing the code and implementing it is another story! 

Yes totally, the thing is for me personally. The zombie apocalypse in my head is playing the game with a group of freind's and rarely coming across any other players at all with alot of infected making it hard to move in towns. Kind of making it feel a bit like a coop game. I would just prefer the experience of meeting "outsider" players a more rare and unique experience making my group want to interact with them because we hadnt seen anyone else for a long time and you are like this " holy shit another player(s) maybe we can swap an item(s) rather than the now logic of "fuck lets stay away from them they will probs try to kill "  Alot of player traffic takes from the immersion imo. My play style is to mostly avoid everyone tho unless they are close by than ill try to have a chat to them, I never try to kill anyone unless they try first.

 

[gannon46 788]

All I can say is I can dig it. 

[Guy Smiley 534]

I like the idea of player to zombie scaling but I would also like to see high loot zones have higher infected population.  It's pretty pathetic how players can waltz into the military base and waltz out with zero resistance.  And cities should be crawling with infected.

[liquidcactus 719]

On 7/18/2017 at 9:07 AM, Guy Smiley said:

I like the idea of player to zombie scaling but I would also like to see high loot zones have higher infected population.  It's pretty pathetic how players can waltz into the military base and waltz out with zero resistance.  And cities should be crawling with infected.

Exactly, I always cringe when i see people say " There's to many zombies atm" I have a feeling they maybe apart of the pvp crowd. I'm still hoping for the day when this happens...i didnt know brian hicks said they wanted to add more player slots to 75-100 before adding more infected then there is now. That's makes me want to ignore this game for another 3 years as it sais to me the devs are more swinging towards the pvp side of things these days which makes me unhappy. Don't take this out of context however as I'm sure the devs are all for pve but I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around 75-100 player servers that is waaay to busy even for the map size (IMO)

And if anything the military areas should be the damn hardest to navigate with at least 3-4 more times the amount of zombies so you cant enter these areas with anything less than an armed team. At the moment I have a mil tent up north at TISY looting it every day trying to find the infamous SVD  :D

[t3h_kgb 6]

On 7/16/2017 at 2:30 AM, liquidcactus said:

I don't see why we need 75 - 100 player servers.

I'm betting it's because they don't want people joining empty servers to loot... Thus, if the player cap is raised to 75-100, every last server is going to display a "low" population, and we'll have a harder time figuring out which ones are empty or crawling with b-holes...