PvP feedback/suggestions & allowing/adding reasons for trust

[Leo (DayZ) 1]

FIRSTLY: A MESSAGE TO EVERYONE WHO IS NOT ROCKET.

I made this thread to provide feedback for Rocket. He is the one supposed to read it and I hope he will. You are all free to read it as well and reply but I don't really care what you have to say. The person who do might have interest tho is Rocket. So if you want to reply aim it towards Rocket. No discussions please.

In DayZ people choose themselves if they want to be a friendly guy or a bandit. I understand we need to keep this ability to choose intact. Bandit players are no problem.

But what I feel like is that currently in DayZ most players want to be friendly and team up(with random players) but can't or see no reason to because of how the game works. This is something we can change. Make it "easier/safer" for friendly players to find each other and add more reasons to play in a group, while keeping the ability to play as a bandit intact. Changes like when people no longer spawned with a gun. That was one of the best changes I've seen happen in all the DayZ patches.

So lets get started. I'll begin with how it also begins in DayZ. Spotting another player and deciding what to do next. Currently the decision what to do next is usually shoot the guy. You do this for self defense. The distance you can get killed at is huge and you will die really fast. You simply don't have time to try to communicate because you will be dead before you can say "friendly!"

Whats going on here and what should happen can be showed quite easy with some graphs. There is the Range Graph and the Time Graph. Lets start with the Range Graph.

Range Graph HOW IT CURRENTLY IS

Range Graph HOW IT SHOULD BE

If players get the chance to communicate before they have to fear for their life they won't have to kill everyone they see on sight simply because they don't know. They will have quite a bit of information about the other player after all. What did he say? Does he keep moving closer to me even though he can already communicate? Even if he won't communicate that will tell you a lot.

Weapons won't have to be completely useless at longer ranges. they just need to be less lethal giving a player the chance to run away to safety if a player he spotted starts shooting at him.

How do we achieve this result of reduced killing range? (or increasing communication range, but I won't go into that) One way of doing it would be to nerf all the guns accuracy and damage. But this might hurt the games realism and authenticity. I think weapons will need a slight nerf but we can't go too far. Do remove one shot kills like the lee enfield and make the weapons that are two shot kills now possibly three shots.

Possibly a better way of doing it tho would be to significantly increase the rarity of primary weapons and their ammo. Also make carrying the ammo for primary weapons take more inventory space. What kind of weapons you can currently find is ridiculous. The AS50 sniper rifle is more common than a CZ550. The best example of a balanced primary gun in dayz would be the double barreled shotgun or even the crossbow(crossbow needs a buff tho). All weapons will need to be rebalanced and some removed. Lets use the lee enfield as an example on what should happen: -Lee enfield spawn rates (slightly) reduced. -Lee enfield bullet damage reduced from one shot kill to two shot kill. -Lee enfield clip size reduced from 10 to 1.

Altho the weapons that need the biggest nerf are all the military weapons. They need to be EXTREMELY rare. reduce the spawnrates of these weapons in firestations, deerstands and crashed helicopters. Deerstands can spawn CZ550s instead. that rifle completely disappeared from the game and its sad because it was one of the better balanced guns. ammo quite rare, only 5 rounds per mag and doesn't one shot kill, especially at range.

What we are aiming for is that everyone will be running around with pistols. They are the perfect standard go to gun since they can't hurt so badly at range. Note that players can still carry a primary weapon as well. Its just really stupid to do so because it will be an ineffective weapon against infected, and if infected start attacking you while you still have your primary out you can get screwed before you switched to your side arm. Making primary weapons and their ammo so rare will also tell players who see others carrying a primary a lot of information. Using a primary against infected will be almost out of the question after all. You don't have enough ammo for that. and chanses are if a player has a primary he must have a pistol too. Primary weapons will be quite rare after all. Why does he have his primary out? Chances are if he does he is a bandit. Or while you are trying to communicate with a person you just spotted he switches to his primary weapon. Chances are he's hostile. I suppose its kinda like recreating the bandit skin. But in some indirect way and nothing is certain.

Sure, some people might cry that they can't get cool guns anymore. But honestly a double barreled shotgun is just as cool to kill a person with as an AK. and a CZ550 will be just as shiny as an AS50 if the CZ550 is rare enough. Altho that doesn't even matter. DayZ isn't about shiny weapons. It's about interaction getting an experience with other players.

The second graph is actually really simple. Its "time to communicate" VS "time to kill" I kind of started talking about this already with the lee enfield being a one shot kill. This stuff mostly applies to short range engagements tho since you are already communicating. Again, pistols would be the perfect balance. If player A decides he wants to kill player B it will be a bit risky now, because player B will have time to respond and return fire.

The next thing I want to talk about is adding more reasons for players to play in a group.

One of the obvious things that would be a great addition would be more things to do other than finding loot & repairing vehicles. But I'd imagine these things will take a lot of time to implement and I don't know much else to say about it other then "They should be there!". So lets move on to things I can say something about. These are hopefully a bit easier to implement since its just gonna be about tweaking what we already have. kinda the same as what I suggested with the weapons actually.

Make certain areas of the map almost unaccessable for players who are alone. Have the infected deal more damage and have certain areas have more infected activity than others. For example a small town could be accessible, or sometimes accessible to single players. But a large town like Cherno or Electro would be too dangerous to enter alone. What I mean with sometimes accessible is randomize the amount of infected that spawn. If you're lucky there will be hardly any infected in a small town, but Cherno and Electro are so big there will always be infected. One of the most important things that need to happen for infected to be more dangerous is that they will be able to hit players that are running at full speed. Perhaps the infected will break the chase if a player ran so much meter away from the infected spawn building. This will give players without a weapon that got spotted at the border of a town a survival chance.

The next suggestion which would support group play is the following: Remove the ability of a player to bandage himself, or make self bandaging less effective than when another player does it for you. Like, after bandaging yourself you will lose another 2000 blood until you finally stop bleeding. This change will also have an effect on infected difficulty and not being able to enter certain areas alone. Exactly what we wanted.

My final suggestion is more about the PvP aspect of group play. It will add reason to play in a group and at the same time make players a bit more survivable, something I was aiming for as well back at the start this post. The suggestion is:

Every time a player is about to die, rather than dieing he will enter the unconscious state with the hourglass timer and bleed. If no one helps him he will bleed out before the hourglass timer is over, if someone bandages him he lives. This mechanic is already in the game but not common enough. It needs to happen almost, if not all the time. Whats important tho is that it will happen INSTEAD of dieing. Don't make all players go unconscious at half their normal HP. That will just reduce survivability again. The suggestions made at the start of my post about weapon killing power had this final suggestion in mind. What makes everything work is the balance between the two. Survivability is increased enough, while hopefully keeping authenticity intact.

Rocket, I hope you found my feedback helpful. Some of my suggestions might not work too well but I hope I did bring over the general direction I think you should be going.

Regards, Leo

EDIT:

I've got some updated thoughts about the primary weapon balance. Basically I've had some pvp action again in the last few days and I realized how hard it is to hit moving targets in DayZ. This is just the way the arma 2 engine is so we will have to work with it, so what I suggest is to have a good amount of high clip size, low bullet damage weapons in the game because these will be the most balanced weapons when comparing battle vs moving and stationary targets. Example weapons: MP5, winchester, remington, m1040, all the pistols. These weapons, plus some lee enfields, double barreled shotguns and CZ550s should become the standard weapons in DayZ. any of the other weapons should be really rare and possibly not even spawn in fire stations or deer stands.

Edited July 25, 2012 by Leo

[Gogster (DayZ) 626]

First problem, directed at you not Rocket.

The range of the shortest sniper rifle is 500m, are you suggesting players can communicate over this distance?

decibel levels are reduced by six for every time you double the distance between you and the noise.

Read more:

How to Calculate Decibel Level Distances | eHow.com

http://www.ehow.com/how_6390965_calculate-decibel-level-distances.html#ixzz21XyXx12G

[DryGulch 32]

No discussions please.

Is this your first time on a forum , son?

[Leo (DayZ) 1]

As I said in my first post, I don't care about this forum. All I know is that Rocket is a nice guy and I'd like to help him on his game. If this forum is necessary for that, so be it.

If you wanna sit here and bitch at each other all day please go ahead. I don't mind.

It would be great tho if you could just provide feedback for Rocket, using my first post in this thread as a base. Say what you like about my feedback and what you don't. Explain why you do/don't like it. Or add other suggestions. I'm sure Rocket would like that.

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

Well first off, all suggestions here are basically adressed to Rocket or atleast teh Dev-team, and most if not all want to give suggestions/feedback to improve the game. Second, while you may have ideas others may hold different view points, and they may have good arguments to support what they do or do not like. Though if you state you won't change your viewpoint anyways, there is realy no reason to discuss. What are you afraid of though? can't deal with a lil critisism in regards to your ideas? I know some people think that people that disagree with them are trolls or whining or w/e, merely for not seeing things their way...

Now i liked your first part about communicating, that is actually a fairly different aproach to the problem of KoS (though i must say i don't read those threads often so it may well be the somaniest thread about communication ranges). But then you go into what you call 'sollutions' for teamplay, and i think i pretty much disagree on all of them, though seeing you are not interested in discussion nor changing your stance, there is also no real reason to 'restate' my arguments or different sollutions here, i prefer to do so in threads where i can expect some feedback on my own views, because even though i think i'm always right... more then often it turns out that i got some things wrong as well... that doesn't mean i fail, it just means i'm human...

[Poopty Pants 0]

Seems that youre scared of people whether theyre in day z or not.

[undefine 4]

FIRSTLY: A MESSAGE TO EVERYONE WHO IS NOT ROCKET.

I made this thread to provide feedback for Rocket. He is the one supposed to read it and I hope he will. You are all free to read it as well and reply but I don't really care what you have to say. The person who do might have interest tho is Rocket. So if you want to reply aim it towards Rocket. No discussions please.

Rocket said he appreciates both sides of the arguement, therefor, your post is invalid.

[Quaby 93]

If rocket read every redundant pvp thread his head would explode. I got one of my suggestions posted on by one of the dayz staff and I shit my pants with joy; try to set some more reasonable goals. Also, most people post fully understanding the chance of getting special attention is pretty much nil.

"If you aren't rocket, don't post on this"

What the fuck dude, this is a forum. Send him a goddamn email.

I would reply with actual feedback but then I would have to read an unoriginal pvp post, and I just aint up to it. Whatever you are saying, it has been said. And the chances are people trolled on the people who posted it 2 days ago too.

If you REALLY want them to pay attention, use search and write an original, thought out suggestion. Mine was about a lootable wal-mart-esque store.

Edited July 25, 2012 by Quaby

[Poopty Pants 0]

Youre lucky you didnt read it. Terrible waste of time. Seems obvious the reason he made post for "rocket only" is because he knows people like me will see his ideas are idiotic but thinks that he is somehow special only rocket will understand.

Here is snippet of his post:

"What we are aiming for is that everyone will be running around with pistols. They are the perfect standard go to gun since they can't hurt so badly at range...Sure, some people might cry that they can't get cool guns anymore. But honestly a double barreled shotgun is just as cool to kill a person with as an AK. and a CZ550 will be just as shiny as an AS50 if the CZ550 is rare enough. Altho that doesn't even matter. DayZ isn't about shiny weapons. It's about interaction getting an experience with other players."

Edited July 25, 2012 by Poopty Pants

[Quaby 93]

^Sweet, thanks! So it IS a run-of-the-mill less good guns thread.

Edited July 25, 2012 by Quaby

[Leo (DayZ) 1]

I had some new thoughts about the weapons in DayZ. Added an edit to the bottom of my first post.

[drseptapus 49]

I agree with... oh wait. We're not supposed to discuss anything.

Edited July 25, 2012 by drseptapus

[Leo (DayZ) 1]

No discussion means don't comment on any replies made in this thread. Just say what you think about the first post and thats it...

I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant, guess not. Or this forum is filled with idiots.

Edited July 25, 2012 by Leo

[drseptapus 49]

No discussion means don't comment on any replies made in this thread. Just say what you think about the first post and thats it...

I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant, guess not. Or this forum is filled with idiots.

So if you want to reply aim it towards Rocket. No discussions please.

Yeah ok. It's a forum for discussion, get that attitude the fuck out of here.

Being a douche aside,

You're punishing solo players way too much. You're making it so if you're playing alone, you will have to stick to small towns and the wilderness to survive.

And the issue with PvP isn't the lack of communication. It's people not trusting each other. That dude sniping? Isn't sniping you because he can't hear you, he's sniping you because he wants those beans in your pocket.

Also that post is way too long. You're going to lose people.

[3rdparty 229]

matey, he aint got ze time to read through all these threads n forums, maybe glance over them once a night or week sure. but if ye've lived through a few updates then ye know the staffing limitations!

i mean even i go through these forums regularly and i saw alot of tings raised that have been raised in other threads too.

those 3 circles, should be 1 with the same labels. I think ye should be able to communicate at distance, but not verbally, through gestures or body language (other than saluting trolls XD)

however i do think the towns should be far more dangerous, but peeps should be able to bandage themselves, you kinda already lose the ability when ye are at low blood anywayz (passing out?)

and concerning your "rocket only, ney your concern simple DayZ sheep.. but ill post it in a public forum anyway". Allow me to introduce to you... the dictionary!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Forum?s=t

[Leo (DayZ) 1]

Well first off, all suggestions here are basically adressed to Rocket or atleast teh Dev-team, and most if not all want to give suggestions/feedback to improve the game. Second, while you may have ideas others may hold different view points, and they may have good arguments to support what they do or do not like. Though if you state you won't change your viewpoint anyways, there is realy no reason to discuss. What are you afraid of though? can't deal with a lil critisism in regards to your ideas? I know some people think that people that disagree with them are trolls or whining or w/e, merely for not seeing things their way...

Ok. Couldn't stop myself from replying (altho this is ruining the thread because what we're talking about has NOTHING to do with dayz suggestions/feedback).

All I asked for is that people won't turn this thread into an endless discussion, nitpicking on every single thing another person said, or simply bitchfighting.

It doesn't matter whether or not I change my viewpoint because I am not the game designer. I just post my thoughts, another person posts his thoughts and the actual game designer can base his viewpoint off that. Thats the type of system I had in mind for this thread, because I think it keeps things much clearer for rocket to read.

I can totally deal with criticism. I even sort of said that in the last line of my post:

Rocket, I hope you found my feedback helpful. Some of my suggestions might not work too well but I hope I did bring over the general direction I think you should be going.

but, it doesn't matter. I made a decision to simply leave back my feedback and not go into it any further, discussing every single part of it with random people on this forum. I don't want to do that.

I tried making a ticket, posting my feedback there but it was not accepted by the dev team. https://support.dayz...7726&c=hwIYOUoW

thats why this thread exists on a "forum"

All I asked was to follow the one rule I made in this thread. If you would have just followed it everything would have been fine and the thread would have been pleasing to read. But it was too hard for all of you. Instead you twist around what I exactly meant with the rule, making me look like a terrible person or something. I guess thats all people really want to do on forums then.

Edited July 26, 2012 by Leo