FPS Guru interview

[Kiro (DayZ) 57]

Rocket just did an interview at fpsguru.com

Here's a really quick summary of what he said:

1. He thinks about removing the respawn button and adding a suicide animation, and you'll need a weapon to kill yourself.
   
2. He wants underground bases, got inspiration from X-Com, he'd like to be able to introduce new regions, "being able to go from one island to another". These underground bases would be in another instance, separated from the main map.
   
3. Zombies hearing will be fixed next hotfix. The zombies spotting was tweaked during last patches, and is based on probability : the probability to be spotted when getting closer is higher.
   
4. They could fix the zombies going through door but not in this mod, only in a stand alone game.
   
5. He's been working on the disconnection during firefight issues this week. They going to track people's login and logout, and put a cooldown on respawn, and start to punish you if you do it a lot during a long period of time.
   
6. There is no confirmation of a stand alone yet. If there is one, they'll release a really polished product and it will cost around 15€. (20$)
   
7. In a stand alone there wouldn't be a single player/coop mode. It will be an open world survival zombie game, even if some players are frustrated by it. He doesn't want a designed story line, but rather elements in the game that tell a story (newspapers...)
   
8. He supports locked cars.
   
9. He wants Eve's capital ships in DayZ, ie. bases to defend that take years to build.
   
10. Ability to customize your character is a huge priority. Clothing, bloods on your hands if you touch corpses, a jacket would protect you from rain...
    
11. First fighting will be added.
    
12. Grow your own food in underground bases. He'll try to add farming in the mod, before the stand alone.
    
13. Different zombies: for example malnourished zombies would walk slower, but no boomer like in l4d
    
14. No skill points. Ever.
    
15. Fishing and skinning animals will be added.
    
16. Bears and wolves, more sickness, more coldness, blizzard... more survival elements.
    
17. They worked on dog companion but it's very buggy, they don't run up and down hills. But he thinks they would be "a really cool addition".
    
18. He wants ageing and beard.
    
19. The world is unfair and unbalanced and it will stay that way.
    
20. He wants to add "nonsense items" and let the players decide what item to use as a currency, so no "real" currency will be introduced.
    
21. Their goal is to get 200 players per server, so they're working a lot on improving performances
    
22. Next patch will mainly fix bugs.
    
23. No "sanity" system, he doesn't want to restrict what players can do.
    
24. He won't develop a trading system. He wants players to make the trading system themselves.
    
25. No safe zones. Zones have to be defended by players themselves.
    
26. He wants to add snow and other climates but there are a lot of technical limitations.
    
27. He destrusts server-driven features, he prefers players-driven systems (trading, safe zones, bases...)
    

Edited July 20, 2012 by Kiro

[Mourek 40]

thanks!

[Wrath (DayZ) 140]

Number 5 made me sad. No logout timer means players will still d/c and its up to the few members working on day z to monitor thousands of servers.

[Chaos5061 48]

Number 5 made me sad. No logout timer means players will still d/c and its up to the few members working on day z to monitor thousands of servers.

I don't know they may implement some sort of tracking system and it flags a CD-Key that is doing it to many times. What is too many times is the question.

[KField86 237]

Number 5 made me sad. No logout timer means players will still d/c and its up to the few members working on day z to monitor thousands of servers.

That doesn't necessarily mean it won't happen. He hasn't said specifically the mechanic he's going to implement. He's working on multiple ways of combating it and we may see a more worthwhile mechanic implemented to prevent this exploit. Truthfully, I think they need to just go ahead and allow server hosts to kick and/or ban for abusing this. At least until the issue is rectified. I simply don't understand what the problem is. Theres hundreds of servers. If I want to ban someone ghosting or disconnecting from combat, when Rocket himself has said this is a known EXPLOIT, why can't I ban someone for doing it? They'll just find a different server anyway within a couple of minutes, and they won't be losing any of their gear and progress.. They just won't be allowed to play on my server, and ruin the time of the gamers playing on the server I provide them. I'm still going to be renting a server regardless, but I really don't want anyone to have a bad experience because of exploits while playing there. Shame.

Edited July 20, 2012 by KField86

[nucleqrwinter@gmail.com 156]

That all sounds good, except the number 5 which is really disappointing IMO.

It's not about people DCing too many times, it's about them DCing that one time when they are being shot at. And that's hardly often enough to set punishments that wouldn't affect regular players.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Nucleqrwinter

[haroldsax 14]

See, a lot of that won't work if something serious doesn't happen to people who just murder for no apparent reason. Of course, I have no idea how to punish/identify/relate to a murderer, but there's no way in hell that there's going to be half of those features without an EXTREMELY well connected, well conversed, and well understood community.

IE - not going to happen.

[Wrath (DayZ) 140]

See, a lot of that won't work if something serious doesn't happen to people who just murder for no apparent reason. Of course, I have no idea how to punish/identify/relate to a murderer, but there's no way in hell that there's going to be half of those features without an EXTREMELY well connected, well conversed, and well understood community.

IE - not going to happen.

Of course most of it will happen. Most people play with real life friends, or join a 'clan'. The only thing in that list which requires group play is the 'underground bases'. In eve you cannot build a Titan without the help of a several hundred people large corporation. Obviously the scale will be smaller here as they're aiming for ~200 players per server. Still, building underground bases won't be a necessity, and if you really want one you'll have to join a group.

(personally I think the idea is a little bit weird but its all good)

[Kiro (DayZ) 57]

See, a lot of that won't work if something serious doesn't happen to people who just murder for no apparent reason. Of course, I have no idea how to punish/identify/relate to a murderer, but there's no way in hell that there's going to be half of those features without an EXTREMELY well connected, well conversed, and well understood community.

IE - not going to happen.

Can you give an example? What feature couldn't be implemented if murderers aren't punished?

He said there will be no safe zones, ever. If you build a base, your own clanmates have to defend it, or else it will be destroyed. There will never be any punishment against murderers, and the world will always be unfair to new players, and will always be dangerous.

At the end of the video he said he doesn't like server-sided events like plagues or tornadoes because they're not players-created. He wants most things in game to be the result of players interactions. If a player is punished, he must be by the other players, not by some hand of god coming from nowhere to punish his moral choices.

EDIT: what he said about punishing people for disconnecting too many times is really disappointing. It doesn't solve any problem, it will maybe create new ones. I disconnect often, if I'm afk more than 5 seconds, I log out, and there's no way to know if I logged out to avoid death or because I was going afk; and I often change server to find the right one (mainly to find one with the correct timezone, sometimes because of hackers)

I don't understand why he didn't say anything about adding a disconnection timer? It would be much more simple and will eliminate the problem.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Kiro

[spuddy0108 185]

I missed the interview, thanks for this.

[Mooseocalypse 59]

No skill points. Ever

That's disappointing. I'm hoping a reasoned argument can bring him around to the other side of this issue.

[Wrath (DayZ) 140]

That's disappointing. I'm hoping a reasoned argument can bring him around to the other side of this issue.

Skill points are a horrible idea and go against the main theme of this game.

[Kozmas 30]

Fist fighting. FUCK YES. I am going to rename my IGN to Chuck Norris and head over to NWAF with my fists of fury.

[Kiro (DayZ) 57]

That's disappointing. I'm hoping a reasoned argument can bring him around to the other side of this issue.

Edited July 22, 2012 by Kiro

[thoxon 26]

6. There is no confirmation of a stand alone yet. If there is one, they'll release a really polished product and it will cost around 15€. (20$)

Hmmm. I thought he was going for a minecraft model. This sounds like he isn't going to release anything until after beta.

[Mooseocalypse 59]

Skill points are a horrible idea and go against the main theme of this game.

But the main theme of this game, as far as I can tell, is a highly realistic zombie apocalypse survival simulation. How many of us here, if the zombie apocalypse struck tomorrow, would actually posses the skills to survive? Could you run long distances? I'd wager that the majority of people on this forum would struggle with 1 or 2 miles of running, to say nothing of killing and cleaning an animal, firing a weapon, applying first aid, etc.

Character progression would create a lasting bond between a player and his avatar that would transcend the current kill count/gear/days alive connection. Also, I believe it would drive teamwork, lower the rampant PvP, and give players a long-term goal to achieve.

I don't mean for skill points to become overpowered, but it would add needed diversity.

[myskaal 50]

He thinks about removing the respawn button and adding a suicide animation, and you'll need a weapon to kill yourself

Love it.

He wants underground bases, got inspiration from X-Com, he'd like to be able to introduce new regions, "being able to go from one island to another". These underground bases would be in another instance, separated from the main map.

This peaks my interest. My concern with the whole base thing rests in the decline of the impact of perma death. So I'm interested to see how design regarding this plays out. The idea of death needs to be a looming, unwanted threat. If you take away the concept of avoiding death and doing everything you can do to survive it destroys some of the gameplay. It's a little bit of a problem now, in fact. It's so easy to just get all the gear you need in hardly anytime at all. With these bases/complexes/camps, there is the worry that if you die, it's no big deal. Just run to the base, grab out of your stash, and you're right back where you left off.

There HAS to be negative impact. There HAS to be motivation to survive.

I don't know how this can be addressed. Something like... if there was some sort of skill system involved. You die, you start from square 1 again. Perhaps that's a place to start - but without the inclusion of some sort of deck building/skill system I don't know how it could be addressed. Smarter people than me would hopefully - will fortunately be - in on the development of this.

He's been working on the disconnection during firefight issues this week. They going to track people's login and logout, and put a cooldown on respawn, and start to punish you if you do it a lot during a long period of time

I imagine that until the game goes standalone, the best that can be done with DayZ is hacked workarounds. It sucks at the moment but I'm not at all worried about alt-f4ing being something that won't be dealt with in DayZ.

In a stand alone there wouldn't be a single player/coop mode. It will be an open world survival zombie game, even if some players are frustrated by it. He doesn't want a designed story line, but rather elements in the game that tell a story (newspapers...)

Perfect.

He supports locked cars.

You forgot to add... with some way to break into them and other "locked" things (like bases/camps - he said that as well

He wants Eve's capital ships in DayZ, ie. bases to defend that take years to build.

This is the underground complex thing he was talking about. The underground/instanced thing is where he is thinking this should/will go.

The world is unfair and unbalanced and it will stay that way.

I would expect nothing less.

He won't develop a trading system. He wants players to make the trading system themselves.

Perfect

No safe zones. Zones have to be defended by players themselves.

Again - love it. Would expect nothing less.

***There is no confirmation of a standalone yet \snip/

Another thing I am not worried about. It is where he wants it to go and I believe there is enough demand/hype/support for it to happen.

Edited July 20, 2012 by EliJRn

[lordopeth 274]

Good read and some good stuff in here.

Thanks for posting.

[peliluola@gmail.com 28]

I like the "can't suicide without weapon" thing. Well, shouldn't be too hard finding a zombie or jumping off a building and daddy zit.

[perestain 33]

But the main theme of this game, as far as I can tell, is a highly realistic zombie apocalypse survival simulation. How many of us here, if the zombie apocalypse struck tomorrow, would actually posses the skills to survive? Could you run long distances? I'd wager that the majority of people on this forum would struggle with 1 or 2 miles of running, to say nothing of killing and cleaning an animal, firing a weapon, applying first aid, etc.

Agreed.

But they would also struggle with all those things AFTER they had been paying chinese child workers to grind skill points in a videogame for them, so thats not an argument in favor of skill points, really.

Character progression would create a lasting bond between a player and his avatar that would transcend the current kill count/gear/days alive connection. Also, I believe it would drive teamwork, lower the rampant PvP, and give players a long-term goal to achieve.

I don't mean for skill points to become overpowered, but it would add needed diversity.

Thats pure speculation.

A skill system breaks immersion to a great deal, because you play an abstract, number based version of a character. In roleplaying this works because roleplayers do not behave on the basis of authentic motives, they imagine a story, often to cover up pretty shallow item or stat grinding.

I don't want to "imagine" in DayZ, I want to play the game, experience authentic situations acting upon real motives and incentives, not try to get my skill x to value z while pretending some imagined storyline in the meantime. I hate RPGs, or better I am done with them for more than 10 years now. They do not offer authenticity.

Edited July 20, 2012 by perestain

[Never 237]

So it more like Rockets doesn't have many ideas and the things he does what to add hes nicked from other games.

A lot of things seem to be mostly cosmetic as well. 'Beards and bloody clothes', hmm, More solid core mechanics beforeand over adding a pubic hair growing mode would be nice.

[Russianism 14]

1. He wants ageing and beard
   

My beard gets so long I trip over and fall, then to be eaten by zombies.

[thefonztm@gmail.com 86]

Happy fucking day! I totally guessed number three while back! (probability based spotting)

[Reecon 3]

Love it. All of it.

[mindtrucks 28]

EDIT: what he said about punishing people for disconnecting too many times is really disappointing. It doesn't solve any problem, it will maybe create new ones. I disconnect often, if I'm afk more than 5 seconds, I log out, and there's no way to know if I logged out to avoid death or because I was going afk; and I often change server to find the right one (mainly to find one with the correct timezone, sometimes because of hackers)

Rocket has stated that their databases do log data which shows plenty of information on when people log out, IE when they're fired upon, when they fire a weapon themselves, if they are bleeding or not, etc. So with that in mind I do believe this system will be helpful.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Mindtraveling