SEASONAL ONLINE GAME MODEL FOR DAYZ 2 | Bohemia Interactive should change the game model in the vanilla experience

[dannyboyle 15]

DAYZ SEASON BASED MODEL
INTRODUCTION
Seasonal model refers to a online game service model where the elements of the map change over time, they evolve, like Fortnite or Destiny 2 games. Yeah, I know these are games that DayZ players probably hate, I don't like them either, but I do recognize that the seasonal model in open world multiplayer games could be a very good idea for better content management. With this model the game has a narrative line where different things happen each season, that interferes with the players' survival, forcing them to make different decisions or follow different paths with each new season, having to adapt to this changing world.

First of all I want to say that this does not refer only to a system where the maps change with real time seasons (winter-spring-summer-autumn) according to the time of the year with elements like snow, flowering leaves, or trees without leaves and leaves on the ground, that would be great indeed and can be part of this game model, it would be interesting to aim for that, even if it means fewer official maps or smaller but better worked maps, this refers more to the fact that the game evolves over time, as if the years passed in the game just as they do in life. 

Leaving aside the mod servers, I'm talking about the Vanilla experience, DayZ should be updated in a big way every six or three months, would be six-monthly or quarterly season model, depending on what the studio can cope with, that's why it's called a seasonal model, not by seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn). The important thing about seasons is to show that the world changes dynamically, that new things happen, not just between players, things happen without the players having full control. The season based model would include new events and new stories, I mean NPC stories, yes, PvE needs to be improved, a open world online game that is only PvP or that barely tends to PvE tints can't evolve in a big way, If you want only PvP just create a primitive and simple arena server with no events and kill each other, it's the easy way.

DayZ 2 concept main menu with seasons. 

TECHNICAL BENEFITS
The seasonal model would also allow for the content produced in the game to be scaled, as if it becomes cumulative the game would crash. A game divided into seasons allows for much better control over the content injected into the maps, devs will have better control over the game content in each season, avoiding saturating the map with elements and having total freedom to remove and add new ones or to add back old ones that we previously removed.

For example, in Red Dead Online Rockstar Games started to inject cumulative content massively, dynamic events on the map, and the game eventually ended up collapsing, the game was without animals for more than 6 months or more until they managed to fix it, the problem was because as being a P2P game players generated that content on the map and as they added new roles (bounty hunter, moonshiner, naturalist, trader, collector) and you acquired them each role had new events that were generated over the map adding new events related to them, this made the game collapse, mainly the generation of animals for hunting, that's why new players, the ones who had no role or only one role, kept generating animals around them and it was curious, while players with many roles didn't see them. Because of this problem I think they actually abandoned the game, if any of you played this game maybe you'll understand some of what I'm saying, they simply fixed the animal problem but they had to stop producing content because it was too complex to keep creating more cumulative roles and events. 

That's why I think a seasonal model is much better than acumulative, because the content is limited to only the seasons, or part of it. Obviously, there would be elements that would be more permanent than others, like animal spwans, for example, and even within seasons you can control basic elements and introduce others to balance the hardware resources if you want to introduce new things.

¿WHY A SEASONAL MODEL HELPS?
-Content Isolation: Limits how much is active at once, reducing the chance of conflicts or system overload.
-Balance Opportunities: Developers can rebalance systems between seasons based on data.
-Thematic Focus: Each season can have a clear identity (e.g., winter survival, faction wars, etc.) which helps engagement and simplifies design/testing.
-Improved Performance: Less legacy content running in parallel → fewer processing demands.

PROBLEMS WITH A CUMULATIVE MODEL (LIKE RDO):
-Exponential Complexity: Every new feature has to interact cleanly with all previous ones.
-Systemic Conflicts: Like the animal spawns vs. new events
-Inflexibility: Once content is live and tied to progression, removing or altering it becomes controversial and risky.

The good thing is that DayZ moves on private servers, but increasing all that content without splitting it up would make the game run very poorly as the content increases across the map, conflicts can arise as more things are added and accumulate. A seasonal, modular system with scoped content is more sustainable, especially for live-service games aiming for long-term evolution.

CREATIVE BENEFITS
Creative benefits are undoubtedly also very large, you can develop evolutionary narrative, which changes over time; this is undoubtedly linked to the technical section where things can be added and removed from the map in each season depending on the narrative you want to present. When I talk about narrative I don't mean singleplayer games with cinematics, I mean like a action role-playing narrative game like Skyrim where everything develops in real time on the map, everything is playable and interactive, there are no cinematics, you can meet an NPC on the map and he will talk to you but if you want you can shoot him, or walk away and ignore him, it's up to the player. The player is responsible for the content they avoid with the choices they make, for example, if a player kills an NPC he could be missing out on an interesting narrative line in the game that would help them better understand that game world, or he could even lose important items or other elements, even their decisions could interfere with future seasons or future quests.

I recommend this thread about radio station design with NPCs, as it's a clear example of core seasonal narrative, where players could tune into the radio with different characters each season and have them change over time.

MAP CHANGES DURING THE SEASONS
We are talking about changes within the same map, currently that is done using different maps, each map has its different settings, but here we are talking about a single map changing over time.

-Loot placement may change seasonally, for example, during the first seasons it would be easier to find loot, there would be cars in better condition, etc... but also more infected, While in later seasons there would be more trade and farming in settlements, there would be almost no loot since almost all the food would already be expired.
-Obviously as I said, dynamic narrative could be introduced with even characters, and generate concrete events in every season to give the game a unique lore, a story, a meaning. For example, if we do not give food to a certain NPC who is locked inside a house, he could appear dead from starvation or suicide in the next season.
-The map changes would also include the appearance of survivor settlements on the map in case of wanting to add a season with factions.
-Buildings that have suffered damage could appear destroyed.
-Some routes could be unusable after a certain season, for example, a bridge destroyed. 
-The spawning grounds of creatures could be vary per season, for example, in one area the wolf population may have multiplied significantly.
-After a few seasons, two years, gasoline would no longer be useful, and we would have to use biodiesel made by us or by NPCs, horses might be a better mode of transport than in the early seasons.

DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE YEAR WITH DIFFERENT CLIMATES
We talked about this before, it would be great to have Winter - Spring - Summer - Autumn with visual changes on the map, each season could have a specific time of year. Each time of year in each season could change things like where the NPCs, animals, infected are, and obviously, non-living elements on the map could also change.

WINTER
-The infected during the winter would hide in closed places such as buildings, garages, warehouses, houses, etc...
-In winter animals like bears wouldn't appear as often, we could find them sleeping in caves because they would be hibernating,  which gives rise to adding other things in places where they are no longer.
-The map would look snowier, It would also be colder and we would have to keep an eye on our clothes, or not bathe if we don't want to suffer hypothermia and even lose a limb.
SUMMER
-Forest fires could break out and trap us, they can be initiated by lightning in thunderstorms, random events, or players.
-The ice in spring and summer would be melted, so without ice sheets we might not be able to cross a river or lake on foot.
-Extreme heat waves reduce stamina/endurance more quickly, the player needs to hydrate more often, shade and interiors help with energy recovery, some items (food, medicine) spoil more quickly, risk of heatstroke or dehydration.
-Severe droughts, drying up or polluting water sources, increasing the value of clean water as a resource or currency, and the need for filters, purification tablets, or solar collectors. In a summer season narrative design, a rumor tells of an old school with a tank on its roof that still holds water. The player must reach it before another faction.
-More useful solar panels allow you to recharge devices like car batteries (There are no 100% electric cars, I mean the battery to start the car).

During the rainy seasons buckets can be used on the roofs of buildings to collect fresh water.

Here, it would be important for Bohemia to be able to deliver content every three months, content that corresponds to each season. The autumn and spring seasons could be with less content, in the end all the content that was generated, part of it, could be reused, the spawns of each season, specific events created in x season could be used in another if they do not have a lore focused on that one.

DYNAMIC EVENTS
Bohemia should focus its efforts on generating content based on open world dynamic events basically, situations in which to put players. Dynamic events could have human presence not controlled by players, NPCs, animals, infected (horde event), atmospheric elements (storms), or situations such as planes gas-bombing certain areas to kill the infected.

For example, in the first season of the game there might be contaminated zone events, where the military is still bombing areas, but in later seasons where all hope has been lost, because civilization has fallen, those events would be replaced by other different ones, If you want to live that experience again you'll have to go back to season one. This is understandable because DayZ currently has few dynamic events, but let's imagine that they want to generate and introduce sophisticated events, even with NPCs, or narratives, this content cannot be cumulative because it is very difficult to control.

Bohemia should make an effort to introduce non-playable human characters into dynamic events—humans escaping a horde, a girl searching for her father who's on another side of the map, and things like that—and give players the freedom to intervene in those PvE events.

Some bad soldiers patrolling roads and highways armed.

Here we could differentiate between:

-Non organic dynamic events (limited/finite): Limited ones are those that last once, once consumed they cannot be repeated again, they are lost, for example, if we find the girl who is looking for her father and we or and infected kill her she will no longer be able to find her father, the same if another player or infected kills the father, so we will not be able to see the outcome of her story. If the players manage to unite them, it will lead to a final narrative, we will help them evacuate to a certain area. Even if we rescue them we might still see them in future seasons, or see something related to them.

-Organic dynamic events. These events are like an Ouroboros; they repeat constantly over and over again throughout the season. They may have a limited number of generations, but they can repeat more than once, even reaching several. This type of event would include gas bombings generating contaminated areas, which can be repeated randomly at certain points on the map at any time. For example, bad soldiers patrolling roads could also appear randomly several times.To do this with NPCs, a system of dynamic events triggered by a circular perimeter of layered activation must be developed where the player must enter the perimeter for the event to be activated by passing through the different layers. For example, there could be a survivor up on a rock and an infected below trying to kill him, we could see him from a distance, but until we get close enough to the perimeter where the layered event is activated, he won't see us or tell us anything, and if we don't save him by killing the infected in time, once the perimeter is activated, this survivor could slip and fall, but if we look at him from a distance, he would simply stay there waiting for some player to activate the event. The perimeter system event could have activation layers where each layer the player steps on, the player does not see the layers, it activates sequences, for example, if there are 3 layers the first could be the NPC shouting "Hey, you, help, please", if you go back and leave that layer the NPC sits down again and becomes silent, if you re-enter that layer he gets up and asks you for help again. If you cross the next layer you activate a dialogue where he tells you something to help him but also activate the possibility of him slipping and falling is also activated, perhaps a time trial to trigger the mocapped animation sequence, so there it is only a matter of time before he falls, a third layer would activate another dialogue or animation.

This is a concept for an organic dynamic event where a bear scavenges for meat, human bodies, in a wrecked vehicle, because it's hungry. This bear could carry infected blood in its teeth or even claw. This event is organic because it could be repeated in multiple ways in different areas of the game. In the case of vehicles, we could see that at first they are not there and when they appear they remain static on the map, then bears or wolves may appear looking for corpses. A wide variety of scavenging events can be created, for example, a garage with an open door and inside there are two wolves eating a body, outside the garage some blood is seen. , The garage event can be repeated multiple times in different garages located throughout the map, the same as with crashed vehicles. As you can see, these are reusable events that can be injected into many areas of the map and can be injected again, that's why I call them organic.

The server awards limited dynamic events per season per player. For example, if a player has been allocated two dynamic events, the second player is much more likely to find the third one, which would be generated due to his proximity to the event spawn zone. If that player has not entered the game for some time, the new dynamic event will be awarded to the player who has viewed the fewest dynamic events. Many players will lose dynamic events because they will be awarded to other players, giving replayability to the season.

Players can help each other or not by the events they encounter, for example, an event could be a man who gives you clues about where a certain object or person is located in x place during that season, the player on the server is free to then share that information with other players or keep it to himself and say nothing.

CROSS-EVENT/QUESTS
Players can encounter quests activated by other players and intervene in them. For example, a quest to find a certain person — if another player finds them first, they can choose to kill or protect them. Imagine a girl looking for her father, both the girl and the father are on the same map, if the players find one of the two they can end their life, or they, the NPC's can die along the way, the NPCs will always be willing to go with you and will tell you that they are looking for each other.

If you see an event in the distance, two players can influence the same event.

I recommend watching this glitch video about Red Dead Online https://youtu.be/z4oOHtIzPCM

To put it in perspective, the mission is a bounty hunter mission launched by another player from a sign next to the sheriff's station. The mission is generated in the world, and the event is placed in certain parts of the map. Generally, you have to go to that point and capture the outlaw, dead or alive. Alive gives you more money, and you have to deliver it to the sheriff. The outlaw can escape if you get distracted by shooting other NPCs. 

Surprisingly, I discovered a glitch: if you wait in areas near where these events are generated by other players, the NPCs from those events don't attack you. It's as if they were on your side or you were on their side. You can walk around the event and see the outlaw. Whereas if you're the one who triggered the event, from the sheriff station sign, when the NPCs discover you it's a shootout.

The magic of this bug is that you can fight other players while defending NPCs and the NPCs defend you, in fact the other player might not even know that you are a real player, in that case I was with a friend when I captured that video.

These types of situations increase PvE, since the player is fighting against NPCs who are also supported by other real players, something that Rockstar never officially implemented, in fact I think almost nobody knows about this bug.

I made more examples of this bug:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2WdJH5b2E0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9vRdoLbGJo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1hcWuy-17o

Since it's a bug, sometimes NPCs end up attacking you, I think it's when you shoot them or the other player's mission ends, which is normal because the game wasn't designed for that.

 

Example in DayZ:  two different real players have developed a different role where one has to kill a certain NPC person because some NPC has told him to: that NPC person killed their brother, and if you kill him and take their head, he will give you more clues about something. Other player is the opposite: he has to help that NPC person escape the map because is in danger, If the player on that person's side finds this person before, what he has to do is protect the NPC and escort it to a certain point for their evacuation from the map, a bunker, a helicopter, etc. The NPC will follow you across the map and can die. If you are the opposite, your objective will be that if by chance you meet on the map, you have to confront the player protecting the NPC and that NPCs to cut off the NPC head and take it to the other NPC, the one who claims it and has promised you something in return. If the killer player arrives before and kills the NPC, then that content ends for the other player, but if the other player protects the NPC, the content continues for the both players until the NPC is safely at the indicated point. The players don't have to meet at any point, there are no indicators of anything, it's a coincidence that they are found, in fact there may be several players who think they have to cut off that NPC's head and only two who have to save him, and even a player who doesn't know anything about this may kill that NPC, so if that happens that content ends for one of both players.

It's easy to understand. The objective is to evacuate an NPC from an area, point A to point B. He can give you a position with coordinates of where he is. You have to locate it. The other role player can arrive before and kill the NPC. Another player can even get there first, without knowing what the NPC's role is, and kill it. Even if the player who has to kill that NPC arrives and sees the corpse of the NPC, he can take its head and he won't lose that metaprogress because they would have achieved that objective: that NPC dies.

As you can see there are multiple variables in the quest, and it is a very simple quest, it is only an NPC at a specific point on the map and that moves with you from one point to another while you have to prevent it from dying, you also have to take into account that the infected and the animal predators are also dangerous, they can kill the NPCs too, and that person might also need to stop and rest, eat, etc... That NPC is generated at the moment in which one activates that mission, the one to kill or the one to escort and it will be a coincidence that two players find the same path. The only difference is that those who have to kill him don't know exactly where the NPC is and there will probably be more of them, they only have a general approximation of the area because whoever gave them the information doesn't know where the NPC is as is logical, while the one who has to escort him has fewer players and they do receive coordinates to find the NPC on the map.

What happens with NPCs could also happen with real players, it could also be that an NPC tasks you with killing a real player, giving you a description of the player, hair, tattoos, scars, etc. For example, let's think that there is a very simple system that has activated that. Imagine two NPCs and one player only kills one of them, the other runs away and saves his life, if the game marks that one as survived that will activate a side faction quest where other player can be task to kill that real player having a physical description of him, that NPC has been able to escape and tell that to other NPC, obviously the NPC will not travel around the map in real time to the safe zone, it will be enough to escape from the player's viewing radius at certain point.This system could simply be tied to if we attack NPCs and they run away, that could have future consequences with other NPCs.

 

This explains a bit how Bohemia could use cross events based on, for example, having factions, there could be events where some of these are from our factions and we can participate in them, If we enter that area nothing happens to us, but if another player approaches, it does.

MANAGING MULTIPLE MAPS WITH THE SEASONAL MODEL
About more maps, let's suppose that Bohemia has 4 official maps to control with content, almost like right now, the seasons could move through maps with narrative taking the players through different flavors, for example, the first 3 years (real life time) of the game could take place on the same map, but in the 4th year a new map could be added and narratively move the players to that map, dedicating the work of the following next 3 years years mainly to that new map and its seasons and abandoning the previous one, but always leaving it replayable,  in any new season the game could make us return to a previous maps if the developers consider it.

The problem I see here is that I would like to have multi-map, to be able to jump from one server to another and change maps, being able to return to old maps, the problem is that creating seasonal content for several maps consumes a lot of time for developers and is very difficult to manage, the solution could be to leave the old map active with limited content, as currently occurs with the game, with some events that are repeated and elements that are repeated (infected, animals, etc..), but without new content.

What could be done with this is that some elements of the new map make us interact with the old ones, for example, going to look for a specific species of plant on the old map, or going to a certain house on the old map and finding a certain object.

LENGTH OF THE SEASONS AND THEIR STRUCTURE
This also seems complex to me to manage, how long a season lasts and how its content is distributed in the game since its release, especially if there is a complex narrative with NPCs and not just dynamic changes to the map over time, like what I said about the bears and the caves.

About this I thought that the game season could have a real duration per server of about 30 hours. From the moment the server is online, 40 hours pass, sometimes more, sometimes less, and in those 40 hours, specific situations and events will be generated that players must encounter. That's why I say that this type of design allows a lot of room for replayability, because you might start playing again and find things that you won't have found on the first playthrough. If a server is stopped, for whatever reason, the seasonal hours are also stopped, and will only continue until the server is restored.

The essence of DayZ would not be lost, you would start a season and you would have to survive, with the only difference being that in each season there would be different events and different settings and things that would force you to adapt to the new circumstances of the moment, and If you squeezed out that 40 hours season few times, you can replay again the previous seasons until Bohemia releases a brand new season with new original content.

On modified servers the timescale could be adjusted and the server could be stopped and better adjusted to the actual lifespans of the players.

REPLAYABLE SEASONS
Seasons should be replayable, or at least able to be started from scratch, since the goal is for the content to be replayable, for example, in Destiny 2 I believe there is no option to replay previous seasons, so the content worked on by the developers is lost, thats bad for the new players, maybe you advanced to a new season but missed details or things that you didn't discover in the previous one, things that another player did, that allows for replayability.

META PROGRESSION SYSTEM
Here I think players in hardcore mode should be able to keep their progress and items, but obviously they could be stripped of them during season changes.For example, maybe in the fifth season you found a letter, maybe this letter will be useful to you in the sixth seson, so that element would move to the sixth. In a season where you change to other maps and move around by helicopter thanks to some soldiers who evacuate you, perhaps they would make you hand over everything you have before flying with them.

I repeat that it would be nice if there were several difficulty levels, for example a permadeath one where if you die you lose all your progress and have to start from the first season again, another hardcore where you would only have to start the season again, and another where if you die you would just spawn again in another part of the map.

Some examples of meta progression

-Each player has a persistent "Codex" of discovered events, lore entries, and dynamic world states from previous seasons that can affect the future.

-Legacy Skills: Maybe minimal skill carry-over—e.g., “Your character remembers how to repair car engines faster after Season 3,” nothing OP, just flavor and slight utility. We could have lost an arm and still have that problem in the following season.

-Objects / Relics: Cosmetic-only badges or gear skins tied to season completion or challenges. For example, a military outfit might endear you to an NPC, while if you're not wearing it, they might treat you differently.

Meta progression in a season-based model can feel almost like losing your life, with a high value, which can lead players to make extreme decisions to survive without overreacting. You survive because you don't want to lose all your progress. You don't just lose items, you lose the progress of many hours of play. You lose specific items to solve lore issues or things you want to discover that you didn't discover the first time you played that season, so I think that allows players to act in a way that is more realistic to how they would in real life, there is a great fear of losing, especially if you play with permadeath.

DIFFICULTY MODES
This is a simple overview of how difficulty would be structured, difficulty would be based directly on how long a player can survive without dying.

-EASY SURVIVOR MODE: If you die in a certain season you won't lose progress, you'll just spawn somewhere else on the map. Maybe some items or something will be taken from you to penalize you, but nothing serious.
-HARDCORE SURVIVOR MODE: if you die you have to start over the season again from the scratch. You would lose everything, not just items, all your character progress would be reset to zero. You will start with all the meta you ended the previous session with.
-PERMADEATH SURVIVOL MODE: you will lose all your progress, not just the season you died in, you will lose all your progress from all seasons, you will have to start over again from the first season. Permadeath mode and even hardcore mode have more value with seasons, let me put you in the situation, maybe you were with someone you met recently, a real human, you're in permadeath, a horde is chasing you and you have low stamina, you shoot him in the kneecap so you don't lose all your meta progress, since surviving becomes much more necessary knowing that you're going to lose all your meta progress from previous seasons, we're talking about each season lasting 20 hours or 40 hours, and you leave him limping, the horde goes after him and you run away,
REPLAYABILITY: Permadeath players will always be able to return to a previous season as long as they don't die.

The difficulty of the environment (infected, animals, weather, human NPCs) will be the same for everyone, or in principle it has to be that way. This also prevents developers from having to balance so many things, and on the other hand, the game experience must be that way.

MULTIPLE CHARACTER-DIFFERENT SEASONS
Players should be able to control different characters in different season lines, at least storing their metadata even if they don't play the season. For example, one character in permadeath and another in the hardcore line, each with their own unique metadata and progression. This is because if you have a character in permadeath, you might want to play the new season that's come out without having to make all the progress again, so having a hardcore line saves you from having to start all the seasons from scratch if you die.

Maybe you're doing a permadeath challenge and you're on season 3, but the new season 6 released by Bohemia comes out tomorrow, then the hardcore line can help you play season 6 when it comes out and put the permadeath challenge on hold to enjoy the new season.

MODDED SEASONS
Seasons should be able to be modified by modders, adding additional content and enriching the foundation created by Bohemia, allowing them to make changes and improvements, vary their length, and better adapt them to each community servers.

There would also be modified servers that would not have seasonal elements, for example, someone who just wants an unchanged map, like DayZ currently is, that would exist and it would not be difficult to create, in fact I think it is the easiest thing to do, you just have to deactivate things and place spawns and loot.

SEASONAL PAYMENT MODEL
Yes guys, Bohemia is a company and it has to financially survive, it is not a sister of charity.

The model shouldn't change much. Every three-four years, if a new map for the new seasons is released, the new fee would be charged, you pay for a new map and three years of new content and support.

A marketplace (workshop) with paid assets could be introduced where modders can create and sell them if they want, I think it's fair that people who create assets, maps, or scripts can make money from it if they want, because their work should be compensated, and Bohemia would keep a portion of the money, especially on consoles.

Bohemia could also make collaborations with actors and companies and introduce paying character skins that fit the game, nothing ridiculous, we are talking about a serious setting, it could for example be a famous character skin like Cillian Murphy or George Romero, things that do not affect the core of the game, these skins could be rented, lost upon death or after a certain period of time.

 

Introducing an in-game currency, be able to exchange real money for that currency, is not a good idea, it's very tempting, but it would destroy the core of the game and progress, I think there are better ways of monetization like the ones I mentioned before that wouldn't affect progress or break the setting. 

This game model demands a solid foundation. It can't be like the old DayZ, which has been more like an Early Access game with many shortcomings. There must be a solid foundation of systems and elements that allow for the easy production and manipulation of seasonal content, there must be a clear roadmap and a paved path for such a design, the game can't be like an Early Access where everything is still being created from scratch, there has to be a previous foundation already built, the basics, to build something like this, For example, the infected systems should already work perfectly from the release, the vehicles, the dynamic event systems, etc.
 

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If I can, I'll continue expanding the thread. I've missed a lot of things and this is just a rough outline of how I think DayZ 2 should evolve as online game, I also think such a design would be avant-garde and pioneering in terms of revolutionising the design of seasonal online gaming, and it would also make content management much more efficient, much more orderly.