DayZ - ponderings on a sandbox game

[trig 1]

Apologies in advance for the super-extreme TL,DR, but philosophy can rarely be kept brief. 

PREFACE

Why do we love zombie movies & games?

Opinions differ, but a lot has to do with the complete chaos, desperation & a defined de-humanised enemy. Most zombie flicks will have a group trying to make it out of the infestation chaos, losing members as they go along, with the lucky few making it to safety. And we seem to never get tired of this.

Why do we love DayZ?

Because it gave us this premise. A fucked up world, chaos, zombies, bandits, no rules. Go do what you will. I always disliked set quests, storylines, fixed goals, scripted campaigns, etc in games and prefer a free roam & decisions if at all available.

DAYZ, A PORTRAIT OF A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE & MOTIVATORS

I.

Human beings only have the civilisation to thank for their progress. Group efforts towards common goals. Which is what can be expected in a zombie apocalypse as well. People would instinctively band together to complete some goals. Not getting into the moral issue here whether the common goal is group banditry or group protecting the weak and vulnerable, but after the initial shock, people would bond and try to achieve stuff together. The game’s mechanics should therefore aim to make this bit most intuitive. Right now, most time is spent coordinating meeting points for people who spawn randomly. If you spawn in low visibility, with no map, no orientation, this can be terribly frustrating.

SUGGESTION: Choosable spawn zones.

Maybe not an exact spawning point, but maybe divided into 3 zones along each map edge. So if your mates were last somewere at NW Airfield, you could spawn in a nearby zone and only need 5 or 15 minutes to run there, instead of 50.

II.

Effort continuity. In any catastrophic event people first strive to achieve some state of normality. We have seen this in DayZ too, which is great. On own initiative people choose to help guide survivors to safe zones, help outfit them, heal them, etc. We have players playing medics or militias to counter threats, etc. And we have, as in real life, those that take the path of crime, because of the obvious advantages murder and robbery have over the hard work of getting stuff yourself (i.e. why work 8 hours a day in an office to pay for a TV set, if you can rob a store and steal it). It is all sensible and legit in a sandbox.

I don’t think the game itself needs an internal mechanic that would penalise or sanction banditry. No special skins, shakings, poorer stats, etc. Real life robbers oft dress as cops or security for a heist, so let bandits do whatever they like in their endeavours, form gangs, a whole mafia if they like. All good.

However, the game should make also policing easier. Right now a lone wolf bandit sniper has his life easy, since communication and finding mates is so difficult, it’s hard if not nearly impossible to get an anti-crime operation set up. Most people just wander around trying to survive somehow. Based on the suggestions on the forum so far, if left to the players, they will quickly organise themselves to work towards common goal.

SUGGESTION: Easier cooperation/zone finding/safe zones

Logging in, getting together and communicating with (team)mates should be made much easier. Spawn zones suggestion above would make rendez-vous simpler, team comms would make communication easier, setting up safe zones/perimeters would enable teams to better coordinate. Again whether that be teams of bandits preparing raids together, or teams of cops/militias/armies trying to keep things safer, enabling players to take things into their own hands should be a priority made easier. This can range from all already planned to wild forum suggestions like enabling base construction/defense/equipment storage, radios and other comms, permanent zombie removal from cleaned zones, spawn lock (like an idea of some sort of “area claim keys” which would alow only those that have the key to spawn in an area and not everyone – others would be spawned some distance from locked down area – maybe a cure for spawn server jumpers, etc)

III.

Economy. How does it function in real life? Well, you do something, get money (or stuff) and trade it for other stuff or services. Same would happen quickly even in a zombie apocalypse. I’m a good soldier, but lousy medic? Ok, I’ll protect the medic, he’ll in turn heal me. But what will we eat? Ok, I’ll protect some more people, he’ll heal them, they’ll go and bring us food. And so we start a cooperative group. What if I’m a bandit? Do I wanna shoot at everyone and risk being shot, or will extortion and threats do? Pay our bandit gang tribute in stuff and we’ll leave your village alone, call the cops and we’ll come kill you all. Or maybe a militia will beat the bandits off. Endless possibilities.

SUGGESTION: Resources (loot) so limited/tied to certain zones, you’re forced to trade as you can’t possibly loot weapons and food and medicine on your own in any easy way.

Ties into the two suggestions above as easier communications and perhaps safe zones (or at least defensible zones) would enable this. People could take over villages, reinforce them, set up hospitals, trading posts, armouries, etc. This could all be entirely player driven, no NPCs needed. Bandits could try to raid them, militias defend them, etc.

VI.

Zombies. I understood the story is in the works why and how they appeared, etc. But is their function as just a nuisance when you go raid a shop, when the real danger are hostile humans, or should they actually be the main threat to everyone in game. Did they only create the initial chaos in which survivors/bandits then battle it out, or do they still present the first and foremost danger to both?

SUGGESTIONS:

1. They’d spawn less often, but in more places?

– so woods and other areas are no longer safe, but zones, once cleared stay cleared longer, less zombies spawn there if their numbers are kept in check.

Maybe somesort of an algorithm that multiplies living zombies, thus slowing multiplication if you kill them. A good motivator for everyone to waste their precious ammo on killing zombies, lest they multiply (through infecting healthy villagers hiding barricaded in those un-enterable houses, in case you didn’t know why those houses were un-enterable)

2. Less uber zombies, but more of them?

– so we follow the zombie movie doctrine, you’d sooner run out of bullets than zombies. They should either not chase you forever, or not be as extremely fast and deadly. If they’re slow and persistent, then perma-chase is fine, you can outrun them, but they’ll keep on coming (like I love the persistency of a few monkeys or crawlers after me). If they’re superathletic kickboxers though, they should give up after a while, focus on nearest opportunity target, rather than only one selected, much less aware of their surroundings, so you can do sneaking, hiding, stealth. You should be scared, but not in a situation like now, when there’s really nothing you can do if out of ammo, but accept the inevitable sad fate.

3. More zombie loot?

Right now they scarcely carry anything. If each had a single random piece of small loot (food, medicine, ammo – maybe even defined by the type of zombie they are city/rural/solider), you’d be motivated to shoot and loot them, not just sneak around, while preying on survivers.

V.

Since the core and in many opinions the best feature of the game is “make your own objectives”, people quickly started assigning their own. Some want best stuff, some want higher zombie-kill counts, other lowest/highest humanity. Reward this accordingly.

SUGGESTION: Visible/Postable/Screenhotable stats of as much as possible.

Upon exiting/saving the game or being killed a debrief screen that would show: hours survived, zombies killed, zombie headshots, survivors killed, bandits killed, most used weapon (either weapon you fired most shots with or got most kills with – bragging rights for 150 makarov headshot kills ftw lol!), humanity level, cans of beans eaten, transfusions given, etc. I’m sure most these stats can easily be collected and displayed.

CONCLUSION

DayZ is a perfect sandbox, where players and player teams can give the game content. It should just be optimised to enable easier cooperation and functionality for achieving goals and providing said content. 

ABOUT ME (& why I dared to be as arrogant as to suggest anything at all to such a superb project)

Trig (aka Triglav) has been a dedicated modder for more than a decade, involved heavily in projects such as the ancient OFP’s US Civil War total conversion mod, Mount&Blade’s TLD total conversion mod and many smaller modifications for many other games, so ingame-motivators and reality concepts are somewhat of an obsession. Also been left by several girlfriends for excessive gaming habits. Consider this post not as a critique, but as a heartfelt thank-you for providing an excellent sandbox experience and my lame little attempt at making some sort of a contribution to it.

P.S.

If you read through this whole thing, congrats. I owe you a can of beans if we meet ingame.

[Publik 404]

If you ever meet a guy named Jeff, you owe him a can of beany-weenies.

You actually bring up a really good point about zombies. They aren't a threat; the threats are other humans. I agree that zombies should be harder/more varies. As it stands, once you figure out that (spoiler alert) you can prone crawl to within a meter before setting them off, they're kinda tame.

The stats could be a locally saved thing, kinda like that. I also agree that loot should be more spread out, and that seems to be the way Rocket is going anyways. I disagree however with choosing your own spawn point and I'm not sure how you could make grouping up easier other than fixing Direct Chat, which is something on BIS' side.

[trig 1]

Ok Jeff, beans set aside.

About choosable spawn point, I meant more like somewhere in a general zone.

Maybe if the inhabited map is divided into 9 spawn zones, N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW and each would have several random spawn points like only south coast has now. So you could generally start somewhere at the edge of north as well, and not always have to make the whole walk north form the coast... So then a squad could say, le'ts spawn NW and meet at Lopatino, for instance, rather than having to track there all the way from south each time.