Some minor changes to improve (re)playability

[kawaiigirl42069666xxxxxx 34]

I made a rant post earlier that someone criticized as belonging in the suggestion forum, so I've rewrote it. I'd like some input and bumps, and maybe the opinion of Rocket himself.

Helicopter crash sites - There's generic loot, and then there's good loot. There's only a few places worth looting as an end game, which causes players to ignore exploration in favor of making a straight line to those areas. The only good loot to be found in this game through exploration is crash sites, but anyone knows they're pointless to look for on a server that hasn't been rebooted lately.

Suggested change: Crash sites should spawn and despawn (when looted) continuously at a very slow place. This will encourage exploration as well as discourage server abuse (constant restarts).

Vehicles - They're a little bit too rare, which encourages hording and stashing. We need more vehicles rolling through major cities, causing havoc and getting blown up. We also need less 40 minute jogs.

Suggested change: Increase the amount of vehicles on the map and add random spawns, further increasing exploration gain.

Night - Servers empty out the moment night hits and/or players are forced to increase their brightness and gamma settings.

Suggested change: Slightly increase the visibility during night time and increase the spawn rate and spawn locations of night vision goggles.

Bandits - This is a hard one, and I know Rocket has a "do what you want with only moral consequences" type of game in mind, but the game has devolved into mindless deathmatch. The reason for this is because there's too many upsides to being a bandit and nothing but downsides to being a helpful survivor. There's also a large lack of communication, which only encourages the shoot first/ask later response.

Suggested change: Add some type of bounty to murderers (I realize there's a lot of shades of grey here and it wouldn't be an easy thing to implement). Increase the text and voice communication distance. Warn players on server join if they have voice chat disabled. Readd the ability to enable global chat on a server.

Edited July 29, 2012 by noiradle

[LockeDown 144]

heli crash sites are rare, and I've come across plenty with viable loot on a server that's been up for quite a time. I don't believe this merits change.

More vehicles would be nice, I'm not against the idea but more vehicles brings more stress on the server. As for vehicles despawning after x amount of time not being used- they already do that. Making it so that vehicles just vanish after a few hours without someone in them is less realistic then they are in their current state.

Plenty of servers I've seen reset at the onset of their night cycle. I would like to see that changed. As for the viability to see in darkness, you don't have to turn your brightness up or anything. You have a flashlight. Illuminating your position is dangerous, but it gives you visibility. That's the point. Spawning in more NVGs makes no sense. Night vision is treasured because it's rare AND useful, unlike mountain dew.

Again, killing is too grey to define black and white like this. If you're forced to kill a group of freshly spawned bandits who attempt to kill you, all the sudden- you're the bandit with the bounty. There shouldn't be visible or game changing action taken against bandits. Guess what? In real life, it's easier to be an asshole to get what you want than it is to be charitable and kind. So this holds true to our nature in game, methinks.

As for hackers; if a game exists- there will be hackers. That's life.

[kawaiigirl42069666xxxxxx 34]

heli crash sites are rare, and I've come across plenty with viable loot on a server that's been up for quite a time. I don't believe this merits change. I've experienced the complete opposite.

More vehicles would be nice, I'm not against the idea but more vehicles brings more stress on the server. As for vehicles despawning after x amount of time not being used- they already do that. Making it so that vehicles just vanish after a few hours without someone in them is less realistic then they are in their current state. I'm not talking about hundreds of vehicles, just a good chunk more and stricter despawn rules. It takes an entire week for an unused vehicle to despawn I believe.

Plenty of servers I've seen reset at the onset of their night cycle. I would like to see that changed. As for the viability to see in darkness, you don't have to turn your brightness up or anything. You have a flashlight. Illuminating your position is dangerous, but it gives you visibility. That's the point. Spawning in more NVGs makes no sense. Night vision is treasured because it's rare AND useful, unlike mountain dew. I disagree, spawning more NVGs (which makes seeing in the dark easier) in a game where nobody wants to play in the dark seems pretty logical. The fact that they're rare adds no merit to your argument, although they certainly are useful.

Again, killing is too grey to define black and white like this. If you're forced to kill a group of freshly spawned bandits who attempt to kill you, all the sudden- you're the bandit with the bounty. There shouldn't be visible or game changing action taken against bandits. Guess what? In real life, it's easier to be an asshole to get what you want than it is to be charitable and kind. So this holds true to our nature in game, methinks. True enough, but I think Rocket intended moral choices to be a big part of this game. The problem is, when everyone is a bandit being everyone else is a bandit, you end up with a really dumbed down gaming experience.

Replies in bold. Thanks for the input!

Edited July 29, 2012 by noiradle