Playing with friends = good for the community?

[CaptainPlanet (DayZ) 23]

No real life friends that play this game, all my friends I have made through the game.

Best way to do it is when you DON'T have super end game items. When you die, and have nothing... that's when you do it.

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

You also stated.. "Another thing to consider is that groups of friends with ties outside the game have already established a "team". People not part of their "team" will have a harder time gaining their trust. I'm sure a good number of groups will just kill anyone not on their chat server."

Your probably right but then again if you make it even harder for out of game friends to get together to group up through yet another game mechanic, can you blame them? This is supposed to be about survival. Trust is not supposed to be given out freely.

I'm not suggesting we make it harder for people to group up(with their friends), I'm suggesting we make it practically impossible, so people have no choice. It's not about giving players even more hoops to jump through, it's about removing the hoops entirely. Forcing people to play the role of the lone survivor who has to look for help rather than just meet up with it. That is the setting of this game after all.

Edited July 15, 2012 by bad_mojo

[CLewis 31]

I agree that this would be a good thing for the "survive an apocalypse" feeling of the game. With some group oriented endgame, it would force people to interact with strangers, making people try to earn the trust of others.

This would make this game a true social experience (in games), where strangers learn who to trust and not to.

Can/will it be implemented in the game? No Chance... Too many people would object to it, and it seems like He likes the metagaming.

I would love it, but it's not going to happen.

[mwgarner@hotmail.com 4]

I agree with what you are saying. I made a post yesterday regarding the differences between playing solo and playing with a group. It is like playing two completely different games. Playing solo makes this game feel like a zombie apocalypse, playing in a group makes this game feel like a PVP death match.

I started out playing solo and this game scared the crap out of me. I loved it! Then I played with a group of 5 or 6 real life friends and suddenly the game wasn't scary at all. We actually get a bit bored looking for things to do as survival is pretty much a certainty as we have all the best equipment. Even if we die, we have a base loaded with stuff to go back to.

I am actually contemplating only playing this game solo going forwards and not using online maps or other things to assist me.

But, like others have said, if grouping up with friends was not an option in this game, a LOT of people wouldn't play it anymore.

So there needs to be at least some choice for the player. If there were specific anonymous servers where you have to play solo and group with randoms, that would be great.

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

Yeah, I understand this would be a deal breaker for some. In the "what do you want to see in standalone" thread I mentioned this being added a another server category. So the teams would still have regular servers for the clan wars but solo players would have their own place too.

I'm not trying to exclude people or punish their style of play, I just think the experience would benefit from this as an option.

Edited August 10, 2012 by bad_mojo

[syntox 1]

Was going to make a new thread with my thoughts on this issue, after my experience playing solo recently when I normally play with a premade group. Thought I'd just necro this one instead.

I feel like premade groups which use external voice communication reduce the authenticity of the dayz experience. Most groups will simply Kill on Sight any players who are not on ts/vent/skype/etc with them, and this is not really a realistic representation of what would happen in a zombie apocolpyse. The lack of limitations on premade groups lead to more of a open world pvp deathmatch scenario than an authentic zombie survival game. Many people have suggested increasing the need to group with other players (reducing the viability of solo play) in order to reduce banditry/ pvp deathmatch. However, premade groups can just assist each other and continue to participate in a pvp deathmatch so this doesn't really solve the problem. But limiting group play will lead to a significantly smaller playerbase, as people generally want to play with their friends.

However, it is difficult to formulate a model by which those on both sides of the argument could get the most of their dayz experience. I guess this could possibly be accomplished through a "group play" server setting.

"Normal" - Caters to casual players / those who want to play with friends. DayZ in its current state.

"Solo Play" - Caters to hardcore / solo players. Players are spawned with names generated from their GUID and lifecount (name changes every respawn). There is no player/server list. Players do not choose a server to join, rather a server is chosen for them based on ping. These features help, but how do you actually guarantee that two friends don't end up on the same server? Lock microphone to the game client or something extreme like that?