Revamped loot system: anti slot machine

[Sabata (DayZ) 1]

Don't you feel sometimes like a slot machine player, awaiting for the jackpot to appear in front of you? Does it make sense in a game like this? It's a well known and cheap system to create addiction, apart from that... aren't there other alternatives?

What about a less random loot respawn system?

1. Shorter day/night cycle (this actually was mentioned by Rocket, forced by engine right now). My proposal: 1 hour daylight, 30 minutes nighttime.

2. Respawn all loot items when dawn begins

3. 100% chances for loot to be spawned. Means a top tier loot point will always spawn such items, not garbage, low tier stuff or nothing at all

Implications:

- Highly decreased randomness: you don't feel like an idiot trying to hit a jackpot anymore

- Fight for extremely rare guns/gear: since top tier locations are known, and respawn time is fixed too, it promotes teamplay and organization to conduct looting operations.

- Too much certainty takes away some excitement? That's quite subjective to say at least. A bigger chance for reward should bring a bigger risk chance.

- What about empty servers? Top tier stuff won't respawn unless server reaches a minimal amount of players (half the slots or so)

- What about server hoppers? Less room for it since hopping into an empty server has no point. May still require a mechanism to penalize this exploit.

- Playing during night isn't optional, you don't simply bypass it. NVG may become overpowered though, as it's the only gear that makes a big difference

Any other thoughts or is this another insane/dumb proposal from me?

[neverm1nd 0]

I agree with some points and disagree with a couple other, shorter day/night cycle im sorta split with.

Day/Night Cycle: I really enjoy playing at night time for a few hours. It makes it abit more suspenseful when trying to loot at night (which i prefer for high spawn areas). And also decreases your chances of getting killed by bandits (to a degree) unless your a derp-a-derp that is running around chemlighting like a boss then your prolly gonna get shot day or night because your broadcasting your location and painting a bullseye on your back...But the point of loot respawns refreshing at dawn/dusk is a good idea, i would then be able to organize operations alot easier to gather loot and then pvp wouldnt be abit more objective based and would promote abit more teamwork as well. Not so sure about 1hrday 30m night, maybe something like 3hr day 2hr night, that way it would promote more people to stay on the server knowing that nighttime isnt a 8-9hr ordeal they must suffer through.

The 100% spawn chance im not a big fan of, while i would love to run around in a ghillie suit with a camo sniper rifle and night vision rockin headshots like a boss day or night, i personally believe that this would make it more pvp based, because more people would have the higher grade gear after a few day/night cycles and then those people would turn towards pvp more because there would be a lack of objective once higher tier loot is obtained.

Its overall a good idea and i like where its headed but some randomness needs to be implemented in order to have a balance of pvp and pve in my opinion.

[Sabata (DayZ) 1]

Not so sure about 1hrday 30m night, maybe something like 3hr day 2hr night, that way it would promote more people to stay on the server knowing that nighttime isnt a 8-9hr ordeal they must suffer through.

I see your point, loot refreshing every 5 hours is probably the biggest issue here though. If the loot respawn event happens out of my play sessions then I'm f*cked. I also think this event should happen on all servers at same time or another kind of server hopping could born. Well, all these issues comes from the central database, sometimes I think it creates more issues than it solves...

The 100% spawn chance im not a big fan of

Yeah I guess the way I explained it sound very unbalanced. Let's say a top tier point should give AK's at worst chance. What's the point of raiding an airbase as I've done many times to find only garbage, ammo, grenades and food? The risk doesn't pay off.

[DayZPvP.com 143]

What's the point of raiding an airbase as I've done many times to find only garbage' date=' ammo, grenades and food? The risk doesn't pay off.

[/quote']

That's the point, there is a risk. Without the random chance and the risk what are you left with? Just a menu with every item in the game that you can just click on and get the gun. BF/COD/Halo/every other FPS ever has that.

Let's try and keep DayZ unique please.

[Sabata (DayZ) 1]

What's the point of raiding an airbase as I've done many times to find only garbage' date=' ammo, grenades and food? The risk doesn't pay off.

[/quote']

That's the point, there is a risk. Without the random chance and the risk what are you left with? Just a menu with every item in the game that you can just click on and get the gun. BF/COD/Halo/every other FPS ever has that.

Let's try and keep DayZ unique please.

No, that's not even remotely what I said. I said I want a big risk (even bigger as is now) for some reward at least, even if it's a miserable AK. I just don't want a slot machine travestied into a zombie game. And get your homework done before comparing ideas to CoD/whatever, those who repeat such phrases are usually the ones that spend thousand of hours in those games.

[Cosmo I BH 1]

I like the real-time day/night cycle and I think that it shouldn't be changed one bit. Regarding the 100% spawn chance idea; The experience from DayZ would be slightly less amazing if you know that you're gonna find something usefull all the time. Finding empty tin cans might seem like you have wasted your time, but it really adds something to the realism of the game.

- Cosmo.

[neverm1nd 0]

The loot spawns if there were a shorter day night cycle should be spawn at night star spawn at day start. Either way the mechanics implemented right now suit me just fine its nice to find the high end loot but it feels eve. Better after finding the garbage loot for an hour and a half. Not sure that the shorter cycles would ever be implemented but if it is I hope its a server command and not forced a cross all servers then the players could carry items over only to and from servers with the same lootspawn and cycle settings.

[Shroom 12]

Don't you feel sometimes like a slot machine player' date=' awaiting for the jackpot to appear in front of you? Does it make sense in a game like this? It's a well known and cheap system to create addiction, apart from that... aren't there other alternatives?

What about a less random loot respawn system?

1. Shorter day/night cycle (this actually was mentioned by Rocket, forced by engine right now). My proposal: 1 hour daylight, 30 minutes nighttime.

2. Respawn all loot items when dawn begins

3. 100% chances for loot to be spawned. Means a top tier loot point will always spawn such items, not garbage, low tier stuff or nothing at all

Implications:

- Highly decreased randomness: you don't feel like an idiot trying to hit a jackpot anymore

- Fight for extremely rare guns/gear: since top tier locations are known, and respawn time is fixed too, it promotes teamplay and organization to conduct looting operations.

- Too much certainty takes away some excitement? That's quite subjective to say at least. A bigger chance for reward should bring a bigger risk chance.

- What about empty servers? Top tier stuff won't respawn unless server reaches a minimal amount of players (half the slots or so)

- What about server hoppers? Less room for it since hopping into an empty server has no point. May still require a mechanism to penalize this exploit.

- Playing during night isn't optional, you don't simply bypass it. NVG may become overpowered though, as it's the only gear that makes a big difference

Any other thoughts or is this another insane/dumb proposal from me?

[/quote']

Very innovative. I completely agree!

+1 for a well written suggestion.

[L0G!N 9]

I don't agree with pretty much everything in this suggestion :) ... not that i think it sucks, but i just disagree based on a couple of arguements and a different view of opinion :)

1. In order to explain why i disagree i will compare this with another 'survival game' called Minecraft (which you likely know). So minecraft has a very short day/night cycle, and the choice for this is made with great care, it is the 'thing' that creates urgency in the game, as this is the time when monsters come to kill you. So w/e you want to do (top side) you 'want' to do during the day, the cycle is short to have that sense of urgency and to limit the amount of things you will be able to do. Having a long cycle in minecraft would totally bork the game, as you would have plenty of time to prepair and 'watch paint dry' befor a long night of basically just mining the crap out of it. Having the short cycle means you can only do this and that b4 you need to retreat to a save place, and/or you only have a short period of time to 'farm' baddies, before they despawn and you have a short time to do other things (aka. f/e make more swords/arrows). And the availability of stuff is plenty full, so having just a short time, gives just enough time to get what you need, giving a sense of 'ok i made it' (be it through the day prepairing for night, or through the night just staying alive)

In DayZ though, the baddies are always around, and the sense of urgency doesn't come from day or night, it comes from your vital signs and the 'urge' to find something to defend yourself with (no matter if it is day or night). Now what night does, is it does create some sort of urgency, as it is much harder to find your way around during the night, and if you 'can' you will want to find the stuff you need during the day, to just 'log off' or make it for the woods during the night, so you just don't have to 'bother' with running around a town with 15m of visibility.

What the current long time does remove though, is a sense of urgency if you play during the day, and add a sigh of 'relief' during the evening as it starts to get bright again (these feelings tend to follow rather shortly in minecraft), if DayZ they can be totally avoided. But, seeing day and night are not driving the urgency, and seeing that the 'availability' of items is scarcety and not abbundance (like in minecraft), one needs a longer time to 'somewhat feel save' and a longer time to 'be prepaired for' and feel 'stressed about'.

So, 1h and 30min are just to short. Though i will agree that the cycle needs to be shortened to add a slight tense of urgency to the day, and short enough to give a sense of 'its going to end, ill make it through' for the night time. A minimum would likely be 3h for both, which will be long enough to matter, and short enough to 'force' most, if not every, player through them.

2. Respawns are currently (what i picked up on these forums sofar) 10min or so, I personally think this is way to short. Doubling or even trippling this to 30min would make every find more valuable. BUT, i will have to add that i think there should be way more spawnpoints for items, preferably 75-80% of houses should be enterable, and have a chance to spawn something (but also a chance to not spawn something). This will mean that in general there will be a bit more items available (though more scattered), while there it takes longer for items respawn.

This will deal with the following, in about 70% of all the respawns i was forced to take, i was 'behind' somebody else. This meant that all stuff was taken, because there is such a limited amount laying around (more spawnpoints would mean a longer time to gather stuff, which would give any other player a chance to also find something. At the same time, a longer spawn time, will also make people move on sooner, if it's 'just' 10min, why even move from a town, just take what you can get, move to the treeline, go for a drink & toilet break, then loot again. If on the other hand the time is 30min, it may well be faster to just move on to the next town, giving players that come after a bigger chance to also get some stuff.

3. Here is a topic on which i would like to write my own suggestion someday soon (i wanna play realy, and been typing for about 4h now :( , but i'll give the essence anyways). The map will have to be reviewed and likely redesigned with the following in mind: Risk, Reward, Chance. These are 3 'scales' that should be used to generally devide the map up in sectors, or even apply it to certain town sizes (as sectors). Again this comes 'together' with having more places for spawns, and thus more enterable buildings (if even just 'versions' of the same building with different spawn types, loot tables and chances assigned).

Then using things like:

- High risk, High Reward, Low Chance

- High risk, medium Reward, medium chance

- High risk, low reward, High chance

- And all other variants of combinations between these.

Would be the catagories of different sectors used to devide up the map. And within a certain sector, the various buildings could adhere to the variations. This way a high risk city may have more certainty of finding something every spawn, but it may not always be high reward. While a medium risk place, may have a lower chance on finding something, but it may still be High reward. etc...

If you combine this with longer spawn times and shorter cycles, i hope you will agree that it's more likely that people will move and explore. While this would also increase the chances of finding something worth while as you do so. And if possible it would even be cool if the loot chances could take into account 'IF" something is looted in the last X spawn times, and based upon that, increase chances on higher reward spawns. If nobody has been 'somewhere' it's more likely that there is something there, while if a place is looted often, it's more likely that the stuff that is there is less valuable (as people take the stuff that is more valuable first, disregarding if it has ever been there, seeing this still is a game ;) )

So yeah, all the area's you posted on could indeed be improved, but i disagree in the way you want to improve them ;) ... and now i just wanna go and play a bit :-/

[Sabata (DayZ) 1]

In order to explain why i disagree i will compare this with another 'survival game' called Minecraft (which you likely know). So minecraft has a very short day/night cycle, and the choice for this is made with great care, it is the 'thing' that creates urgency in the game, as this is the time when monsters come to kill you.

You brought a nice comparison here, there's however a paradox in dayZ world: night doesn't play any role other than a safer scenario for those who managed to get NVGs. Let's see if I can explain the paradox: a real life day/night cycle in this mod is actually unrealistic because players bypass or use it to customize their playing experience instead going through it as a real person would do. In real life you don't disconnect when things get ugly.

My idea however only touches this aspect of dayZ partially, what I really want is to turn gameplay around a single game day event. This has huge consequences and is what I really would like to discuss along other persons. The relatively short timespan I proposed just had to do with the fact players shouldn't miss the event, and not everyone can play on-line several hours or match its playing time with the event.