EVE concepts in DayZ (solution to horizontal load balancing)

[ShaddnArakh 7]

TL;DR: towards the end of the post.

Why single shard?

DayZ has persistent characters, so it has to have a persistent world. Single shard solves most problems like server-hopping, disconnecting to prevent death and other types of abuse and cheating. The problem is, an endless Skyrim-like territory will require endless server capacity, so we need to apply the 'multiple separate solar systems' idea from EVE Online to DayZ in an authentic manner.

Islands: a solution to horizontal load balancing

DayZ has to be set on a cluster of islands. Each island is supported by its own server instance. When the character travels from one island to another, he moves between instances, yet all characters persist on a single server simultaneously.

You cannot see one island from another. To get to another island, you have to swim 1 km into the open sea in the direction of the destination island. Then you’ll be prompted to confirm that you are willing to leave your current island and enter the destination island. After a loading delay, you will appear 800m out in the open sea next to your destination island. You will approach the shore as usual by swimming. The resulting drop in body temperature will depend on what gear you have (fins, wetsuit etc).

By using a boat or a helicopter, you can travel to islands that are located much farther and more importantly carry more items. Much like normal travel, you’d have to fly 1 km out into the sea, select destination and spawn next to it a few seconds later. Depending on the implied travel distance, an adequate amount of fuel is consumed by your vehicle, which is a big restriction on round-the-world travel given the scarcity of vehicles and fuel in the world.

It’s a cold new day

All new players are spawned on the shore (let’s say they are survivors from a sunken refugee transport running away from infested mainland) and have to make their way inland to survive. To avoid spawn camping, players are spawned across multiple islands a certain distance away from anyone who spent more than 1 hour in-game. Example: rough perimeter of Limnos is over 100 km, so that is a lot of secluded space for people to be washed ashore.

‘Lawful good’ players may police the coastline to search for newbies and repel griefers. ‘Chaotic evil’ griefers may do the exact opposite. It’s a hardcore dog-eat-dog world out there. No safe landing zones, PVP anywhere.

Something to die for

Hunger, thirst, cold and scarcity of medicine, fuel and ammo dominate the post-apocalyptic landscape. Single players will have to look for supplies and fight off the infected and animals. Of course, at some point they will accumulate good gear and start looking for more things to do.

Carpool lane

While it is entirely possible to be a lone wolf (good or evil), it is much easier to survive as a group. An organised group can do more like find enough spare parts to fix a boat and find enough fuel to travel to another island (and slaughter everyone there). Joining a team will expose players to a whole new layer of gameplay: using vehicles, raiding enemy camps, protecting own camps, clearing towns of infested, securing buildings etc.

Also, ammo, fuel, water, medicine should not spawn close to each other, so it should be economically justified to form a group, split to scavenge, then regroup and exchange the findings as compared to raiding a single location altogether (power should not be in numbers alone).

Goodnight, sleepy head

Logging off is an equivalent of sleeping. Players who fall asleep must realise that they are vulnerable when asleep. Normally, sleeping players disappear in 30 seconds. Players, who shot a gun within past 5 minutes, will disappear in 5 minutes after logoff. Wounded/bleeding/shocked players will disappear within 10 minutes.

Finders keepers

Backpacks and player stuff disappear with players. Stuff placed in tents/vehicles/lockers will stay in-game. Stuff placed anywhere else will be destroyed during daily server maintenance.

Tents have no locks, so stuff can be stolen by anyone. Vehicles have no boot locks so stuff can be stolen from them but they do have ignition locks, so vehicles cannot be stolen. Lockers, you guessed it, have locks. To access a locker or to start a vehicle, you need the unique key (it’s 21st century, you can’t hotwire a modern car or military chopper). The key can be picked from the (dead body of the) owner.

If a key hasn’t been used for too long, it’ll despawn and spawn in the corresponding lock, granting free access to the locker/vehicle to whoever finds it first.

Buildings work like huge lockers and can store vehicles and stuff. But players need to fortify the buildings before they can be locked securely, which requires gathering a lot of scrap metal, wood and other supplies. Only organised groups can afford creating and maintaining (yes, they degrade and decay over time) secure buildings.

Karma police

There is no karma, no bandits, no friendlies, nothing of sorts. The only way to identify a person is their unique player name. You can 'tag' people you see on a scale from 'friendlies' to 'enemies' and share these records within your group. Access to strategic information on who is roughly who in your region is huge incentive for group play.

Conclusion

I think it is beneficial for everyone to start thinking in the direction of a stand-alone game, because Rocket said there will be one. The community should start discussing possible game design choices (single shard? trainable skills? character specialisation?) as early as possible.

TL;DR

1. DayZ standalone should be played on a single huge server like EVE Online (the most hardcore space survival sandbox simulation of all MMO games).

2. To avoid building the biggest data center in the world, players will exist over a cluster of islands, each island supported by a single server. Travel between islands requires resources.

3. End-game is geared towards group play.

...

99. Discuss.

Edited August 9, 2012 by ShaddnArakh

[Danthepianist (DayZ) 5]

In theory it more or less makes sense. However, would all of these islands be unique? Chernarus was already made, unless what you had in mind was hundreds of Chernaruses separated by water (and I won't get into the weird geographic implications that would have), you're talking about having rocket add 10000% more content. And I assume you mean for there to be a way to spawn with your friends, at least on the same island.

The Karma police point you make is baffling. You're talking about a single server with almost a million different people, and we can assume far more since you're talking about the distant future of this mod, and then about "accumulating knowledge" about these people.

I like the idea of being able to set up in a building, but I question whether we actually need to see more buildings wrapped in razor wire than there already are.

[ShaddnArakh 7]

In theory it more or less makes sense. However, would all of these islands be unique? Chernarus was already made, unless what you had in mind was hundreds of Chernaruses separated by water (and I won't get into the weird geographic implications that would have), you're talking about having rocket add 10000% more content. And I assume you mean for there to be a way to spawn with your friends, at least on the same island.

The Karma police point you make is baffling. You're talking about a single server with almost a million different people, and we can assume far more since you're talking about the distant future of this mod, and then about "accumulating knowledge" about these people.

I like the idea of being able to set up in a building, but I question whether we actually need to see more buildings wrapped in razor wire than there already are.

Thank you for your feedback. You have good points there.

Unique islands

If hand-crafting islands requires too much development power, they can be randomized to an extent - coastline shape, forest patches, terrain, buildings, etc. can be generated randomly with some pre-moderation and finishing touches applied by level designers. It's okay if nearby islands look similar. But the islands that are further apart should be more discernible, so it makes travel interesting. Mountainy/flat, sand/grass/forest, deserted or with more buildings, different spawn rates for loot etc.

Karma police

Yes, you are right, baffling. I was thinking along the lines of EVE Online, which uses a "standing" system, where you can "flag" anyone on a scale from -10 (red) to +10 (blue) and share this information with your mates. This is an in-game private reputation system, which helps to:

- mark known friendlies and neutrals (and not kill them on sight)

- mark known enemies, bandits, idiots etc. (and avoid them / kill them on sight)

Having access to this information is one of the primary reasons to join a group.

Setting up buildings

The bad thing about barbed wire is the "dog in the manger" situation. People seal off buildings that they don't use. If the barbed wire was scarce and had to be maintained to be effective, people would only protect buildings that they use.

The grand reason for people being dicks (barbed wire, sniping newbies etc.) is that there is nothing to do once you get a decent rifle. You can only run around and mess with people.

There are pirates in EVE Online, too, but they are small in numbers. Being a griefer demands skill and resources (unlike DayZ today), so it's a respectable career path.

Edited July 24, 2012 by ShaddnArakh

[lukeyu2005 19]

Arma 2 engine doesn't work like that.

Don't expect it anytime soon

[AluCaRdBe 32]

TL;DR

1. DayZ standalone should be played on a single huge server like EVE Online (the most hardcore space survival sandbox simulation of all MMO games).

2. To avoid building the biggest data center in the world, players will exist over a cluster of islands, each island supported by a single server. Travel between islands requires resources.

3. End-game is geared towards group play.

...

99. Discuss.

Eve online is played on a single server? As a network engineer, i am amazed. Allso i'll name my firstborn after you if u can find me a server that supports 800K players (probably 5x that by the time it gets standalone) cause i have heard of dual 22nm Xeon servers getting brought down to their knees by 50-60 slot dayz games, not even gunna start with the router(s) you'll need ( they exist, but this company can't pay it).

long story short:make users pay/manage their own servers= affordable + scalable + redundant + higher availability.

so no, imo the current system is good & affordable, i'll agree with u on tl;dr 3) tho.

Edited July 24, 2012 by AluCaRdBe

[ShaddnArakh 7]

Eve online is played on a single server? As a network engineer, i am amazed. Allso i'll name my firstborn after you if u can find me a server that supports 800K players (probably 5x that by the time it gets standalone)

EVE Online has over 400,000 active subscribers.

Daily peak number is about 45,000 players on a single server (record number of simultaneous logged users is 54,446).

They all play on a single server, which is split into solar systems (DayZ: islands). 5,000 players in the same system (island) at once is a tolerable amount for their hardware.

And these players are not just sitting there, thousands of players are actively maneuvering withing each other's sight and shooting at each other with pretty complex ballistics.

I understand it's pretty amazing and hard to believe, so I will relieve you of your first-born-naming promise.

P.S. Here's a bit about their server setup: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Tranquility

Edited July 24, 2012 by ShaddnArakh

[ShaddnArakh 7]

Arma 2 engine doesn't work like that.

Don't expect it anytime soon

1. Who said anything about Arma2 engine? I'm talking about DayZ standalone, based on any other proper current engine (from UE4 & CE3 to Arma 3).

2. I'm not. Q4 2013 would be awesome.

Edited July 24, 2012 by ShaddnArakh

[AluCaRdBe 32]

EVE Online has over 400,000 active subscribers.

Daily peak number is about 45,000 players on a single server (record number of simultaneous logged users is 54,446).

They all play on a single server, which is split into solar systems (DayZ: islands). 5,000 players in the same system (island) at once is a tolerable amount for their hardware.

And these players are not just sitting there, thousands of players are actively maneuvering withing each other's sight and shooting at each other with pretty complex ballistics.

I understand it's pretty amazing and hard to believe, so I will relieve you of your first-born-naming promise.

Dayz= Windows server 2008 R2 for now which caps at 2TB of ram max ( ps, i have no idea how ur gunna fit 2TB of ram in a single server), I'm no game designer or a (very) good software engineer, but the thing ur askign this server to do is gunna need more than 2TB of ram, again, afaik.

I'll hold on to my firstborn promises, take a boys name tho, ima throw it down the well if its a girl anyway.

[ShaddnArakh 7]

Dayz= Windows server 2008 R2 for now which caps at 2TB of ram max ( ps, i have no idea how ur gunna fit 2TB of ram in a single server), I'm no game designer or a (very) good software engineer, but the thing ur askign this server to do is gunna need more than 2TB of ram, again, afaik.

I'll hold on to my firstborn promises, take a boys name tho, ima throw it down the well if its a girl anyway.

How old are you, Mr. Network Engineer? Do they teach to read at the Network Engineer School?

I am talking about a standalone game, built on a suitable engine and running on a suitable hardware. I'm not expecting this game concept to run as "DayZ 1.8 still-alpha mod to three-years-old game". I am not expecting it to work on the current DayZ server setup.

[AluCaRdBe 32]

21, granted i've only been working for 6 months, but still. We did not have a course "Reading 101" and if you wanna know what they did teach me(to spare future questions)

-CCNA+Security (i did the real exam a month after finishing)

-Windows server & linux server.

That aside, you're indeed talking about the standalone game built on a suitable engine ect ect...

So, loosely based on rocket's interview, this standalone game (he said september this year, but i'll be reasonable and say max Q4 2013)

you expect this company to:

-Develop a total new engine or (again being reasonable) make the whole arma team ( inexperienced with the new engine) redevelop the backend structure.

-Develop ARMA III

-Develop DayZ

-Pay that kind of servers themselves

:D

Blizzard couldn't do it, EA couldn't do it ( All the battlefields run on user servers, and the ones who are centralized(login servers), fail miserably under load.)

This company can't do it( no offense bohemia)

[ShaddnArakh 7]

Okay, now let me clear up a few points (most info gathered from Rocket's interviews).

1. There is no "this company". DayZ is developed privately by Rocket and a small team. They are sort-of-sponsored by BIS (who got at least 500,000 sales for Arma2 and a lot of preorders for Arma3) in the form of paid wages while they are not working on DayZ. BIS has no rights to DayZ.

2. Going single-shard-huge-world-with-islands is an awesome direction, which almost nobody tried before. It requires huge resources and definitely won't be done within a year. It's bigger than that but we waited for some games for years.

And it's definitely bigger than BIS can handle. The best BIS can hope for is that Rocket decides to stick to current gameplay idea (zillion of servers with hive server), licences Arma3 engine for it and publishes it with BIS.

3. EA and Blizzard never cared about making a single-shard MMO, because they are focused on maximising profits. Their games are designed in such a way so that they don't require a single persistent world, because making little elves grind their way to lvl 80 is maximising profits. They are not looking for a revolution.

We're still allowed to dream. There are already dayz-inspired MMOs in the making (google world war z) but they sound kind of sucky at this point.

Rocket's vision is amazingly hardcore, I love that and I'd like it to achieve the pinnacle of today's gaming technology rather than becoming another awesome game.

[AluCaRdBe 32]

1. kinda enforces my point of them not having enough recources ( i mean $$) to redevelop basicly everything + pay for amazing hardware.

2.Totally agree. But as long as rocket does dayZ pro-bono, he needs BIS and BIS needs him.

3.Not sure which is better... going for $$ and then let the $$ make a better game, or not going for $$ and then be limited in what u can do because u don't have $$..

This would be yet another 'revolution' and i totally support it. Just like i'd like to run a DayZ server but don't got The 10K € to spare for a server, the same fate awaits this "revolution", no recources....

His vision includes letting the community pay for the servers they play on, its the only reason why this is cheap and possible...

[ShaddnArakh 7]

Hey isn't is cool that Rocket confirmed that EVE Online type of single-shard hardcore univese is 'holy grail'? Yay! :)

[sgtcuddles 24]

how would you stop spawn camping? as far as when you swim/fly to another instance how to you stop people from just camping the islands edge waiting to take an easy shot on a disoriented player loading in to the new area. that is why its hard to visualize a cluster like eve. it seems like you would need to add too much structure to society to prevent these things from occurring,(like in eve where there are guards at each warp) Im no genius with game creating so I dont know the potential we have with gaming technology these days. I suppose you could have a buffer zone of like 2km or something where if you were to travel towards the next instance and reach 2km from that buffer zone you would load in to the next, but once you do load you have 2km of space to travel before you reach a free roam zone. once you zone in you could freely roam but you couldn't just start popping off shots at people zoning in. I guess i just dont understand how that would work, especially on such a hardcore game where death is permanent. I suppose you could limit instance traveling to players with just boat and air capabilities making a player zoning in harder to target. maybe theres just something im missing when it comes to implementing an eve server system in a game like dayz where there is no structure to society like a policing military force or anything.

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

They have already stated they would ideally like a single server like EVE.

The other points you made are basically the game as it stands now.

It doesnt have to be islands it can just be linked maps

like http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/35060-multi-map-dayz-linked-servers/

[Warped_Jack 16]

This is very idealistic, but I like the idea, especially the having to spawn on islands and get to the coast and boat/copter/swim out to move islands. Coasts will become even more dangerous IMO, and I fully expect we'd end up with a popular island with ever-so-slightly better/easier to obtain spawns which attracts a lot of PvP attention (and that's a good thing).

Patrolled/camped coasts sound like a lot of fun, it'll be just like gatecamps in EVE, except over a larger area and hopefully with more action

[xximrtwoixx 104]

I think the entire map could have some islands but not every server should be an island and not every connection should be via island. Say for instance the setting was TX @ South Padre Island, there are a few large islands off shore that people could get to but most of the other servers would be continental and not require you to swim, also one Island could have a huge bridge to it.

Swaping between servers could be with a zone that extends the entire length of the map, you move into the zone your player gets a token on the hive that they can move to the next server over. When you transfer you are at the same relative position lat/long wise on the next server over. (Basically the transfer zones exist in both servers, thus they should be wilderness type of areas) This allows players to handle the security problems with transfering and gives to much area for campers to camp, but would still allow authentic things like watching main roads for traffic.

[CarloNord 29]

I like it.

[Knollte 13]

I agree DayZ Can learn alot from eve but I would be carefull with some features

-Tagging :Eve suffers from massive blueballing that in the end prevent alot of PvP and take the fun out of combat(blob warfare).

-High artificial "xp"skill requirements to get the usefull gear also preventing pvp(and lol supercaps online).

...

actually thats all.

eve is awesome

Edited August 9, 2012 by Knollte

[ShaddnArakh 7]

how would you stop spawn camping?

I probably didn't make this clear enough although some posters picked up on that just fine. When travelling, you do not spawn in a single point. You spawn anywhere on the coast depending on your departing position. That's tens of kilometers of coastline. You cannot realistically camp tens of kilometres of coastline. Recon and look-ahead scouts would eliminate any chance of you still running into someone on the coast, in case you're that worried (e.g. if you're transporting valuables). That's another reason for teamplay. Another reason to get bigger vehicles to travel.

Much like in EVE, travel requires speedy or sturdy vehicle, team of friends, certain skill, patience and balls, lots of balls.

Edited August 10, 2012 by ShaddnArakh

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

I think EVE has some big issues with blob warfare that wouldnt emerge in Dayz, the perma death mechanic, and hopefully larger maps would make it harder to maintain territory like you do in EVE.

[ShaddnArakh 7]

I think EVE has some big issues with blob warfare that wouldnt emerge in Dayz, the perma death mechanic, and hopefully larger maps would make it harder to maintain territory like you do in EVE.

The permadeath and efficiency of modern firearms against human bodies effectively prevent blobs.

[Neek (DayZ) 53]

Hey isn't is cool that Rocket confirmed that EVE Online type of single-shard hardcore univese is 'holy grail'? Yay!

We can only hope! An fps style sandbox modeled off eve will blow gaming a new ass hole!

[Neek (DayZ) 53]

eve is awesome

[Mograph 0]

Eve online is played on a single server? As a network engineer, i am amazed. Allso i'll name my firstborn after you if u can find me a server that supports 800K players

Eve has always run on a single server, It is a super-cluster of sorts, with many servers all connected and acting as one huge server with very complicated load balancing. The more players are in a single solar system the more server resourced the system assigns.. The most concurrent users eve has had on its single server is around the 70k mark.

But eve charges a £10 subscription on a monthly basis, so the developers have a sizeable pot of cash to support and develop the game client and server software. not to mention they have microtransactions with an £80 monacle!