Game Design Analysis: Why Cross-Server persistency must die

[omacaco 0]

I've skimmed the 8 pages so I may have missed someone already saying this:

What if every time you logged in you started on the coast again? You would still have your gear, but you wouldn't be in your original camp spot. This defeats a few problems; No more random people spawning behind you, no more server swapping in the barracks to find gear, and your life has more value intrinsically, rather than just because you where in a good camp spot at the time.

Also all this talk about world economics and such, there is no(VERY little) economy in DayZ just because anything you want you can find, you don't need to trade an AK for bandages or something. And even if you would be willing to you wouldn't trust the other person to give you the AK and not to just shoot you with it. the only economy is people healing others, usually more for humanity purposes and not as a trade.

Those are the idea parts, this is just the random thought part:

All people value their life, they don't want to start over or have to go searching for a map and compass again. This would lead you to believe that the life doesn't have value, the gear does (and it's true,) but to the owner, the value of his life and gear are interchangeable. The real problem is no one else values their life; this is just a matter of human nature. If there was no punishment for breaking the law, people would regularly slaughter others to get to the front of the line at McDonald's, so society created a system of law and punishment to prevent that. Rocket says he refuses to put in artificial restrictions to the players, so this is an issue that will always exist. Bandit outfits where an idea, but they obviously didn't work.

Also in a primative villiage type of situation, everyone was reliant on everyone else for survival, so the all helped one another to survive(this is also the cause of most groups formed in zombie movies/games), in DayZ you can survive perfectly fine on your own, and so no one else means anything to you.

Wow this went on for much longer than I intended.

[diosmio 0]

To remove Cross-Server persistency would be the death for this mod...

If you can only play on one server has a lot more negative effects than positive.

What if the server shuts down forever? Your hole charakter will be lost.

What if the server is down? You can't play. Except creating a new one on a different server... and to start from day one, again!

What if there are hundreds of players bound to one server? You will not be able to join. Not to speak of joinig with some friends.

When you have the possibilty to have more than 1 character (if you don't own 2 copys), the relationship between you and your character will be lost.

[hishnik 23]

I know i'm late to the party, but i can pitch in my few cents.

Tartantyco, i kind of see your point. And in all honesty, until i got GPS+Rangefinder and really good weapons, i too, did not value life. However, the rarer the items you get, the more you begin to value your life. During the DB bug time, i kept spawning in the same spot, with same set of equipment. I did not have any navigational equipment (e.g. compass/map/gps), i cannot begin to explain to you the pain, that it caused to play for about total of about 16 hours (4-5 horus at a time) to find yourself in same position as you were originally.

As for server hopping, i believe it was Rocket, who earlier mentioned the 50 player cap. I think that is a Arma2 issue, not a mod, remember this is all based on that game, so he is working with the limitations that already exist.

You will notice that not all people hop servers, the 'persistence' that you are referring to only applies to your character and items, the larger items (tents/cars) do not fall into this category. Which acts as a great incentive for people to stick to the same server. Also your corpse, if only on that server, so if you're making your way back there, you gotta be on that server.

I personally, see few possible options to try and make this issue little less gameplay disruptive, while keeping the persistence.

For instance, penalty if you switch the server within short period of time - you get reset to the beach line. This would prevent server hoping to get to certain locations by teleporting. Example: Join the low pop server, safely run to airfield, log out, join the high pop server, and start killing folks around the airfield where you just spawned.

This will also help with situations where people are trying to get away from night time, because it's scary and unplayable, they get to enjoy day time, but on the beach, what a wonderful way to spend time - sunbathing on the beach :)

Secondly, if there was a way to have the person logging out (whether its by abort or alt-f4, or ctrl+alt+del) to remain in game for another 20-30 seconds, that would act as a silent incentive to prevent people to server hopping when it gets hairy

As many folks mentioned before me, as is it takes up to 30 minutes to join A server. If it will take you that long (most likely longer) to join THE server, on which your character is saved, this mod will die out quicker than it became popular.

I find myself changing 2-3 servers a night, and not because i'm trying to get into a better position, or cheat death (i embrace death), but due to server issues. Take last night for instance, we were on one of the US based servers, we started playing it was around 730pm server time (getting darker, still some light, but it's getting dark), about an hour later, one of our group mates, logs out to go AFK for 20-30 minutes. He comes back, joins the server, and he tells us "why do you have a flare it's daylight". Myself, and another player, are confused, as we cant see our weapon, its so dark, we start asking him if he joined different server... and no, he's on our server. We log out, log back in, and it is daylight, the server switched by 12 hours. So i'm thinking to myself, i was at a complete disadvantage to anyone joining that server after the switch, as i'm in the darkness with the rain, and they got sunshine.

Point is - by your suggestion, i would have to stick to that crappy server until it restarts, just to continue playing, am i understanding you correctly?

Granted, above mentioned example, is somethign that is considered an exploit, and is a bannable offense, however, there are other examples too..

For instance, you joined a server 2 hours ago, played for 2 hours, and all of a sudden, you get constant yellow and red broken chain. Its unplayable, you watch your friends teleport around you. Or even worse, you watch your friends get killed by a teleporting player, because of the lag. By your measures, you should stick to the same server, and continue suffering.

As for the 'Economics' of the server, they would still get skewed by having few good players log in at the same time. Say player A got everything 3 nights ago, and hasnt played since. Player B played yesterday and picked everything there was up. Player C just spent 5 hours, and now has everythign. All of a sudden all of them get onto the server together, by sheer luck. Does this mean that this server should just completely stop spawning everything, because 3 of 50 people have gathered those items previously? I would leave the economics out of the conversation, it's too complex of an issue to tackle, and its not broken... so lets not 'fix' it :)

As for all the folks aswering with one word, or even one sentence to shut down the conversation, learn to present your opinions, otherwise just stay out of the way. You arent becoming part of solution, just part of the problem

Thats my 2 cents

p.s. Disclaimer, I scanned through the thread, and really concentrated on the first few and last few pages, so if any of the above mentioned has been talked about previously, sorry about that.

p.s.s. jeez, my answer is a book of its own

[Tartantyco 1]

You can't use the current state of the servers as an argument.

Your argument about economics seems senseless. You bring a lot of vague bits into the discussion so there is really little I can comment on. Basically, the economic problems are numerous. First of all, the over-abundance of equipment de-values everything(And devalues your life as well). Second, the fact that you can loot across multiple servers means that rare items aren't that rare anymore within the world. A group of player can have all the high-end toys that they have looted across several servers and crash one server with their gear, completely unbalancing the natural ecosystem in terms of economics, power, interaction, etc. It is very much akin to invasive species devestating natural ecosystems in the real world.

I have mentioned nothing about things not spawning anymore or stuff like that, these are some assumptions you've constructed, so I'll not respond to those. Maybe you're referring to something someone else said.

A functioning economy requires scarcity, supply, and demand. None of these exists currently, so it is quite broken(Or, more accurately, not implemented as this is an Alpha).

As for your life having value, you spell out the problem very well. You don't care about your character's survivability to an appropriate degree until you get a hold of equipment that is truly rare, something most people will not have. This means that reckless behavior is fully acceptable, allowing bandits to behave in ways that are completely unrealistic(Within the context of the mod), throwing themselves into situations that are almost certainly lethal.

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

A functioning economy requires scarcity' date=' supply, and demand. None of these exists currently, so it is quite broken(Or, more accurately, not implemented as this is an Alpha).

[/quote']

how can anyone take you seriously when you say something like this, anyways this can easily be fixed by making it so when you log in all the loot around you is despawned, thus u have to wait X amount of time for loot to spawn, or make it so loot does not spawn around you

problem solved without ruining the game

[omacaco 0]

A functioning economy requires scarcity' date=' supply, and demand. None of these exists currently, so it is quite broken(Or, more accurately, not implemented as this is an Alpha).

[/quote']

You keep bring up the economy of DayZ. There is no economy in DayZ as there is no trading of goods or services on a regular basis, with the exception of someone helping out a random other survivor with a bandage or blood pack. And even those, as the only thing used with other people, have very little "value": I'd take another can of beans before I'd take a blood pack.

As for your life having value' date=' you spell out the problem very well. You don't care about your character's survivability to an appropriate degree until you get a hold of equipment that is truly rare, something most people will not have. This means that reckless behavior is fully acceptable, allowing bandits to behave in ways that are completely unrealistic(Within the context of the mod), throwing themselves into situations that are almost certainly lethal.

[/quote']

You also keep talking about life having no value when you have no loot; do you run into chreno guns blazing at every zombie you see every time you die and start over? No, because every life has great potential, and therefore value.

...when you log in all the loot around you is despawned' date=' thus u have to wait X amount of time for loot to spawn, or make it so loot does not spawn around you...

[/quote']

Loot has to spawn around you. it only spawns when people are around and despawns when no one is around, otherwise you have the whole server full of empty tin cans that no one can see and it just causes more issues. Also people spawning effecting loot could be used to grief someone. Go up to the airfield and just keep re-logging so that no one there can get any good loot. That my seem like a lot of work just to annoy people but having played minecraft, there are no ends people will not go to, to annoy other people on the internet.

[deadbolt (DayZ) 10]

Loot has to spawn around you. it only spawns when people are around and despawns when no one is around' date=' otherwise you have the whole server full of empty tin cans that no one can see and it just causes more issues. Also people spawning effecting loot could be used to grief someone. Go up to the airfield and just keep re-logging so that no one there can get any good loot. That my seem like a lot of work just to annoy people but having played minecraft, there are no ends people will not go to, to annoy other people on the internet.

[/quote']

fair point, how about if you disconnect from a server you are unable to join a different one for X minutes

[omacaco 0]

fair point' date=' how about if you disconnect from a server you are unable to join a different one for X minutes

[/quote']

that's an idea that has been tossed around a lot lately. I like it in theory but I can see how it would create issues for people that are changing servers legitimately. IE "oh my friend is on but this server is full so I'm gonna switch to play with him"

[Raygin 1]

I really love the fact that things save across servers. Being stuck on a dead server isn't good, nor is being unable to go on a full server where all your stuff is. This isn't WoW where everything is stuffed into realms.

[hishnik 23]

You can't use the current state of the servers as an argument.

I believe i can. A lot of the problems we are talking about' date=' in the context of the 'current state' are limitations of the engine (Arma 2). Servers by design, have a limit to what can be done. As is, Rocket was able to expand some limits to great extend, for instance the 'spawn'.

If you have ever tried modding in Arma, you know that limit is 50 objects spawn upon a trigger. In laments terms if you do an action that is considered a 'trigger' you can have up to 50 objects (be it loot or zombies) appear on the server. Currently, you have that * all the 'trigger points' (be it a town, mil base, or deer hut).

Your argument about economics seems senseless. You bring a lot of vague bits into the discussion so there is really little I can comment on. Basically, the economic problems are numerous. First of all, the over-abundance of equipment de-values everything(And devalues your life as well). Second, the fact that you can loot across multiple servers means that rare items aren't that rare anymore within the world. A group of player can have all the high-end toys that they have looted across several servers and crash one server with their gear, completely unbalancing the natural ecosystem in terms of economics, power, interaction, etc. It is very much akin to invasive species devestating natural ecosystems in the real world.

While i understand your concern, i dont understand how i am "bring a lot of vague bits". I gave you a very real example. Unless the server will keep track of EVERYTHING spawning and being looted, and follow the loot chain constantly (e.g. player who looted gets killed by another player, who loots him, and later is killed by another player who didnt loot him) your hypothesis is flawed. Just the same way as you're describing, multiple players join in from different servers "with the high-end toys", you can have identical situation, just happening over a longer period of time.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but you're suggesting - server does a check of inventory of players vs. loot available when it spawns something. So if the player is on with somethign super rare, it will not spawn it until that player logs off. Am i understanding you correctly? If so, the above mentioned example explains how 'overpopulating' the server with good items can happen.

Second option - you're talking about server doing a check of all registered players (registered to the server) inventory vs. loot available, and based on result spawns the items. In this case, you're talking about creating an insanely complex database, that will not only be ridiculous amount of work to create. But also will have a chance of ruining the game due to people with good items stopping playing, and so noone else has a chance to get those items

I have mentioned nothing about things not spawning anymore or stuff like that' date=' these are some assumptions you've constructed, so I'll not respond to those. Maybe you're referring to something someone else said.

[/quote']

You have not, but i was giving you an example of what happens if you stick to one server, and why you would want to have more than one server at your disposal available to you.

If server crashes/bugs out/hacked into/lagging you have only two choices:

a. you pick another server and start from scratch

b. you quit the game and wait for the server to be 'repaired'

A functioning economy requires scarcity, supply, and demand. None of these exists currently, so it is quite broken(Or, more accurately, not implemented as this is an Alpha).

As for your life having value' date=' you spell out the problem very well. You don't care about your character's survivability to an appropriate degree until you get a hold of equipment that is truly rare, something most people will not have. [/quote']

Perhaps i over exaggerated a little bit. I value the life of my character, regardless of the items. I value the life, because that life has direct correlation to MY time spent playing the game. I do not like wasting time, even though that is what i'm doing playing the game in first place. I am personally of the mindset that i need progress, otherwise i'm wasting my time. Therefore, if i play the game just to die, i waste my time.

To my previous point, I was very much upset when after having my character alive for 3 days i got killed at night during heavy rain crawling through the city to get out of it, and while trying to minimize my exposure, and crawled into a zombie doing same actions. I ran, and attracted even more attention. Spending close to 30-40 minutes afterwards just making my way towards my corpse.

That being said, i was much less upset when i was gunned down by bandits just after spawning on the beach, because i have not invested nearly as much of my time (which is my metric for 'value').

This means that reckless behavior is fully acceptable' date=' allowing bandits to behave in ways that are completely unrealistic(Within the context of the mod), throwing themselves into situations that are almost certainly lethal.[/quote']

This statement makes no sense to me. If the bandit is reckless, he has a different set of values than you, or me. During the last week, i actually only was killing bandits, avoiding any civilians... Though there were one or two casualties of war, but they were taken care of due to association with bandits.

I feel that as it stands right now, it's a fair game for all. You do, whatever you feel is safe and you are comfortable with. If you are willing to take a risk and go into a dangerous territory in hopes of getting something you really want - that means you value that chance, much higher than you value your life, otherwise you'd stay out of it.

Even when i was spawned on the beach near Cherno after death, i made sure to get out of there, as i was, with nothing. Opting for checking one of the smaller towns/barns on the way to my corpse, than try to get items in Cherno, mostly due to danger associated with it.

On other note, have you played with people who have been alive for more than few days? The game play is COMPLETELY different. Its no longer a rush to the point in hopes of getting what you want. It's survival mode, you have to roll dice on who's going in to check, and in process exposes themselves to clear danger.

The real problem is no one else values their life; this is just a matter of human nature. If there was no punishment for breaking the law' date=' people would regularly slaughter others to get to the front of the line at McDonald's, so society created a system of law and punishment to prevent that. Rocket says he refuses to put in artificial restrictions to the players, so this is an issue that will always exist. Bandit outfits where an idea, but they obviously didn't work.

Also in a primative villiage type of situation, everyone was reliant on everyone else for survival, so the all helped one another to survive(this is also the cause of most groups formed in zombie movies/games), in DayZ you can survive perfectly fine on your own, and so no one else means anything to you.

[/quote']

The game is set in essentially a post-apocalypse environment,there are no laws for player to abide by, no policing factors, its a complete anarchy, as it should be. It's up to the players on the server to make friends or enemies. There isnt a 'society' to create any rules/laws, if you have friends you are playing with, you will have set of rules you play by. But in the end, its all up to the morals of the people behind the keyboard. At first i was friendly, now... not so much, after being burned multiple times, i no longer care for that, i value my life ('time spent') more than i value someone else's.

As for group survival, i will some what disagree. Yes, you can survive alone, but if you are with group of friends (i'm talking about the ones you're chatting with on out of the game VOIP) you have higher chance for survival, as you have more sets of eyes covering same territory, and more guns ready to defend.

All of that being said, i'm of the mindset that any in game communications, except for direct (range of say no more than 500 meters) chat should be disabled.

You shouldnt be able to chat with people who are 10 km away from you. You need to have ability to talk to those in direct vicinity of you (to ask friendly/not). That would force people even further into 'survival' mode. When your chat is quiet, and all of a sudden you hear talking, and you know they're nearby, yet you dont see them... talk about suspense ;)

[omacaco 0]

For the part you quoted of me, That's pretty much exactly what I meant about society making rules and how that isn't in the game. Also I may have messed up my english, I meant, basically, no one values any life other than their own.

All of that being said' date=' i'm of the mindset that any in game communications, except for direct (range of say no more than 500 meters) chat should be disabled.

You shouldnt be able to chat with people who are 10 km away from you. You need to have ability to talk to those in direct vicinity of you (to ask friendly/not). That would force people even further into 'survival' mode. When your chat is quiet, and all of a sudden you hear talking, and you know they're nearby, yet you dont see them... talk about suspense ;)

[/quote']

rocket has already (I'm pretty sure) said that when direct chat is fixed he's gonna turn off global and side and all that. I'm of the opinion that there should be radios with frequencies that you can tune to to talk (or type) to only certain people that are also on that frequency. It would be pretty interesting, though I don't know if it's possible.

[hishnik 23]

rocket has already (I'm pretty sure) said that when direct chat is fixed he's gonna turn off global and side and all that. I'm of the opinion that there should be radios with frequencies that you can tune to to talk (or type) to only certain people that are also on that frequency. It would be pretty interesting' date=' though I don't know if it's possible.

[/quote']

That actually would be awesome, not sure about how dificult it would be to code it, Life mod had radios implemented, so it's possible, just matter of how much time it would take to make.

I thought about it before, it would be awesome if you could maybe leave notes on the walls (predefined) for anyone who comes there after you to find. This would play in nicely, especially if mobile radio's arent easy to come by, and maybe have some stationary in churches and such

Imagine if you could raid a small city, and leave a note "Heard of survivor post to the north, in church at Novij Sobor, going there. Have radio set to frequency of 630"

That would be just amazing i think

[thebigJ_A 0]

You can't use the current state of the servers as an argument.

Your argument about economics seems senseless. You bring a lot of vague bits into the discussion so there is really little I can comment on. Basically' date=' the economic problems are numerous. First of all, the over-abundance of equipment de-values everything(And devalues your life as well). Second, the fact that you can loot across multiple servers means that rare items aren't that rare anymore within the world. A group of player can have all the high-end toys that they have looted across several servers and crash one server with their gear, completely unbalancing the natural ecosystem in terms of economics, power, interaction, etc. It is very much akin to invasive species devestating natural ecosystems in the real world.

I have mentioned nothing about things not spawning anymore or stuff like that, these are some assumptions you've constructed, so I'll not respond to those. Maybe you're referring to something someone else said.

A functioning economy requires scarcity, supply, and demand. None of these exists currently, so it is quite broken(Or, more accurately, not implemented as this is an Alpha).

As for your life having value, you spell out the problem very well. You don't care about your character's survivability to an appropriate degree until you get a hold of equipment that is truly rare, something most people will not have. This means that reckless behavior is fully acceptable, allowing bandits to behave in ways that are completely unrealistic(Within the context of the mod), throwing themselves into situations that are almost certainly lethal.

[/quote']

I don't know where you're getting the idea that the item economy is breaking. I have good gear on my character, and I hop into a server and die, sure, that gear is now in that server. However, the guy who picked it up off my corpse changes servers, now it's off again. See, it's a two-way street. Things are constantly moving around, not permanently accumulating on servers. It's a hypothetical problem you made up in your head, and you didn't even think it through.

And just because you've decided YOUR life has no value , don't assume it's that way for everyone. Every time I respawn, I'm careful from the start. Even if I have no good loot yet, I likely spent hours getting to where I was, or trying to meet a friend, and lost that progress. that life had value. Besides, if someone does want to run screaming into Cherno on spawn, so what? Who are you to tell them they can't? It doesn't affect you in any way, doesn't change anything for your game, so why does it matteR?

[rigges (DayZ) 0]

I'm impressed; there are actually some good discussion and design ideas coming from this thread. I think it stands to reason that people that care about a game being interesting and different are actually playing this mod and not the usual run and gun fans.

A few quick points because I've been working too hard today to write a wall of text:

“If it ain't broke don't fix it” I think people appreciate Cross-Server persistency for many reasons which are clearly bigger than the gameplay reasons stated. The fact that I can actually jump on and play at any time with any friend from around the world just by finding a server which suits all of us, is excellent, and that is just a mild point.

I am a lecturer in game design and I don't believe if something isn't perfect that it should be chopped out. If my left leg wasn't as strong as my right, I wouldn't chop it off, but I could find ways to make it stronger. I think there are a lot of design challenges around Cross-Server Persistency and what really should be looked at is how to make it work best for this game.

Simple concept of not hopping into an area that a group of people have set up as a camp would be to set up hotspots. The more items placed in a general area (tents, fence, vechs etc) the hotter that spot. If you have a camp that is "Hot" enough, people can't spawn into that area, they could be bumped a certain distance outside that area. Based on these concepts, only certain areas should be allowed to get hot, leaving cities and major loot areas always cold. If you want to control a very important area, then you need people manning the post. Of course, other issues come with these ideas, but it is really about working with what is in place and not removing anything, as clearly, based on the numbers, things as they are, work pretty well.

I wouldn't go for the "every time I join a server I'm on the coast" because people can't go on adventures that take longer than one day. As I don't have time to play for hours on end, I'd like to think I can start travelling to a place on the map one day and return other day to continue my quest.

Oops, promised no wall of text, but I still have a million other points. Guess I’ll keep all that to myself, the key point still stands, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, work around what is there because what is there is pretty great.

[feriluce 2]

Tart' date=' i dont need more arguments or a 5000word thread, you are describing a MMO, if you want a mmo, go play a mmo. This isnt a mmo.

Nothing personal bro, but this mod didnt get where it is now just because, and i do believe cs persistency is one of the pilars of that. There a MnB mod who did something like this and did very well too, maybe its what just players want? 5000 constant people playin seem to think so.

[/quote']

I'd actually say that this is about as close to an mmo as you can get in the arma engine.

For instance I've fleshed out an idea for a zombie mmo for months now, and the gameplay in Day Z is basically exactly what I had envisioned as the basic concept of it. The only thing thats missing to make it a fully fledged mmo would be to have everyone play on the same huge server.