The PvP Discussion Thread

[Tossing 0]

awesome story! ...i'am again at the big airfield in north sneak around' date=' 20 zombies around me. I crawling out from a hangar, then from out of nothing 4-5 shots, i'm dead and the idiot pulls ALL the zombies! ...i dont know if he servived, but the chances are TOO GOOD to kill all the zombies!!!

and i spamm "friendly" or so in the direct channel, so why are people risk there life to kill somebody?!?!?!:@:huh:

[/quote']

Lol it is really easy to survive against zombies. The trick is to kill your target before the zombies get to you.

The reason why he killed you is the reason why most people will kill you on sight. They don't know you. It is easy to spam friendly then shoot the person. When you say friendly you are asking that person to take a risk by keeping you alive. Most people won't take that risk.

The funny thing is direct chat is only about 100 yards. Most kills are from 200+.... soooooo with the removal of global chat, the chances for people to ever be friendly is slim. This change, again, sounded good on paper but over all is not good for the game. With no global chat players that don't have friends that they know outside the game won't have a chance to meet anyone knew.

It was already rare to find another person that would be willing to work with a stranger with global chat... Now with out global chat those people will have to randomly run into each other and then communicate some how before they kill each other.

[dystopeon 46]

Oh' date=' I can answer this one too. [i']Because after a week of people shooting back, everybody would look exactly the same!

you're right mostly, nearly everyone would look like a bandit. I didn't really think of it as a 'balancing' issue, more as a niche option for people who like to direct-chat & solo (they need a signifier). It's just the random encounters and standoffs that I miss... It's also a LOT to do with direct-chat in of itself.

[InsXicht 2]

awesome story! ...i'am again at the big airfield in north sneak around' date=' 20 zombies around me. I crawling out from a hangar, then from out of nothing 4-5 shots, i'm dead and the idiot pulls ALL the zombies! ...i dont know if he servived, but the chances are TOO GOOD to kill all the zombies!!!

and i spamm "friendly" or so in the direct channel, so why are people risk there life to kill somebody?!?!?!:@:huh:

[/quote']

Lol it is really easy to survive against zombies. The trick is to kill your target before the zombies get to you.

The reason why he killed you is the reason why most people will kill you on sight. They don't know you. It is easy to spam friendly then shoot the person. When you say friendly you are asking that person to take a risk by keeping you alive. Most people won't take that risk.

The funny thing is direct chat is only about 100 yards. Most kills are from 200+.... soooooo with the removal of global chat, the chances for people to ever be friendly is slim. This change, again, sounded good on paper but over all is not good for the game. With no global chat players that don't have friends that they know outside the game won't have a chance to meet anyone knew.

It was already rare to find another person that would be willing to work with a stranger with global chat... Now with out global chat those people will have to randomly run into each other and then communicate some how before they kill each other.

and this is why DayZ is dead for me, until there is a solution for this deatmatch crap.

its not like the mod is bad, its the best mod since, for me, project reality (BF2).

[Tossing 0]

and this is why DayZ is dead for me' date=' until there is a solution for this deatmatch crap.

its not like the mod is bad, its the best mod since, for me, project reality (BF2).

[/quote']

If you don't have people to play with I suggest finding people to play with on the forums. If you have a group of people to play with the game feels a lot better. Make sure you and the people that are playing with you are in teamspeak or ventrilo or whatever. This raises the experience of the gameplay (pretty much in every game). Playing alone I can understand your frustration. I don't even log on unless my friends are logging on also.

The thing about this game is that you can't really play it alone. Find a group of players to play with and try the game out again.

[poisonman 28]

So I just one shot killed a guy prone crawling up to my 2 story barn with a well aimed crossbow bolt, and was able to recover the bolt. Veteran Server, No Cross hairs, using the crappy rail sight, Do I win the game? :-D :-P

[MeatAbstract 47]

Someone mentioned factions. Could this not be tried? You choose a faction to begin with him (back to Bandits and Survivors, perhaps?) and each faction spawns on each side of the map (west and east). You can't kill others in your faction.

I know this is basically sounding very deathmatch like but regardless of what gets implemented, people are gonna kill each other. This way when people spawn, they'll be near, say, a survivor occupied place with other people. You all set off in search of supplies and you end up working together but then theres bandits to deal with.

People are just cold blooded in this game. Weapon, no weapon, you're gonna die. This way, people are guranteed some allies.

[DinkyDogg 1]

The people wanting no pvp. theres a mod thats makes dayz single player offline. go play that and get bored in 10minutes. its retardedly easy and having more people with just turns into a l4d open sandbox. It even states its for players to learn mechanics and how to survive.

I only play it to get a feel for new patches

Pvp is what makes this game. forcing people to be allies (as posted with factions) will only result in 1 faction dominating andeveryone joining the winning faction and spawn in the best places. creating imbalance in the world.

I just wish i could create my own ingame squad with player position and heal bars as well as private squad chat.

Pvp doesnt break games. people abusing mechanics, glitches and player inexperience are game breaking and diminish your entertainment

[Worrun (DayZ) 108]

I think the golden rule is that it should support the way you want to play with your character, not make any kind of judgement or anything, and not force you to play a particular way

Can you allow PVE servers then?

[pepsiblue 8]

Really the only thing I can think of that would be a simple and passive way of "dealing" with bandits and PKing would be to alter the player death message in the chat box.

So when "MasterDeBater" is killed near Elektro it pops up in the chat saying "MasterDeBater was Murdered near Elektro," instead of simply "MasterDeBater was killed."

This kind of notificiation would then warn others a PKer is in the area and they can either A) avoid that area or B) go on the hunt for a bandit. Which the bandit can then also prepare for my leaving or taking up a defensive position to take out or ambush any would be Bandit Hunters.

This wouldnt punish anyone for their actions or put any kind of handicap on anyone, but just add a small and rather vague bit of detail that players could utilize in a great many ways. Though that kidn of notification shouldnt be used in Hardcore servers. Everyone in those are on their own.

Very Very good idea. That was people know that there are things in that city. But then again, how would you know that it was a PK, or just someone who got swarmed by zombies? VEry good idea tho.

[Flambo (DayZ) 50]

Congratulations, you are the reason the gaming industry of our day is full of shit.

False. Dipshits who buy preorders and get excited about press releases are the reason the gaming industry is full of shit.

More arguments, fewer temper tantrums, pretty please.

[FVin 4]

The problem I'm having with PvP in this game is that it's literally killing the realism of the simulation for me. The irony being that it was probably included to make said simulation more realistic. Unfortunately, there are two things working against this: the environment of the internet and the way players typically treat other players on it.

There is no doubt in my mind that survivors of a "real" (hah) zombie apocalypse would be riddled with their share of psychos and purely evil folk who are only out to do others harm. Unfortunately, DayZ has more than it's fair share of those types of misfits. I tend to believe that if humanity were actually in a situation like this, then the remaining survivors would be rallying with other survivors (even if only to increase their odds of survival) instead of hunting one another down. Survivors, I think, would be working to rebuild, not working to tear one another down.

Too many players kill other players in this game for the lulz and for the loot. Hey, if making another player's internet existance miserable is entertainment to you, then have at it. But garbage like that isn't helping to make DayZ an appealing simulation of a zombie apocalypse. It just makes it a playground for griefers.

The developer prefers to think of DayZ as an experiment instead of a game. And I think that's too bad, because it really could be a fun game (maybe the right way of saying that is "a different kind of fun", since we all know the griefers are having fun). However, I'm not sure it makes for a very good experiment. What exactly is being tested here? If the goal is to see how the players interact with one another in this virtual environment, I'll go ahead and save you some time - most of the time they will be jerks to one another, and players who can really help bring this simulation to life will be driven off one by one.

To have a really interesting experiment we need more tools. If you (for example) allow players to retake some of the towns, prevent the random respawning of zombies in the area the players dominate, allow survivors the opportunity to try and win back the map.. then you might start seeing some really interesting gameplay. You might see (for example) players take up residence and do nothing but barter goods within these towns. Raiding parties that go out to zombie infested settlements to recover supplies for their village. Militias forming that keep the villages safe from zombie horde attacks. Nomads who brave the wilds to exchange goods between villages. But you're not ever going to have things like that if a player has the option of killing another player. While that may be more "realistic", that type of realism doesn't work on the internet. Because if you give a player the ability to kill another player with virtually no consequence, then most will do it without a second thought, for all the kinds of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the setting of your game.

I'm not saying PvP has no place in DayZ, only that it needs to be much more controlled so that it better simulates how a scenario like this would likely work. If you want a really interesting experiment (since this seems to be all about that), release a version of DayZ like the one described above, keep the one we currently have, and see which one players end up ultimately flocking to.

Edited August 2, 2012 by FVin

[L0G!N (DayZ) 149]

It is going to be even harder to balance that, that coming up with something like humanity. But I think the idea will be to tie it in with the concept of groups, lone wolfs, etc...

Having it so that people can develop and specialize a character to become an engineer, weapons tech, doctor, something like that - might encourage people to group together and the benefit of an individuals skill becomes important beyond just the loot they carry.

All this humanity BS and whatnot, it's not really working. The only way to solve this, as people have said time and again here, is to provide a bit more authenticity around the experience in terms of individual contribution to a group. Having that guy with medical experience in your group is going to be worth keeping him around, even though you have to split the loot.

This kind of positive benefit still provides for the lone wolf experience, and lets the crazies still going around and slaughter everything that moves.

The question is the balance, getting that right so that people who loose their characters don't commit suicide in real life. Or like, come to my apartment and shit on my doorstep or something. But it needs to be done in such a way that you don't become specialized in everything nor do you even NEED to become specialized in everything. I had a rudimentary system in place prior to alpha but I took it out pending development of some UI.

Bit of an old thread, but i was reading through the rocket said thread and stumbled upon this post to which i just want to respond, mostly in regards to the part i made italic...

The easiest and best way to achieve a balanced progess system, and avoid the horror of dieing, is to not start at 0 and move to 100%. But to start everybody at say 40%, to then have a relatively fast progress to about 60%, and to then make progress to 80% about half as fast, and smear out 80-100% over a very long time. Sure it still sucks to loose a 100% character, but seeing the progress to 60% is fast, and to 80% is decent, the loss feels still reasonably recoverable.

The above also means you don't have to specialize in something in order to do it, everybody starts at a 40% skill level, meaning that a player can already do 'everything', though with a certain success ratio (a bit more on this below), so they don't need to specialize in everything just to play the game and deal with things as they come along. So how do you prevent players from specializing in everything? Well i think you shouldn't! I think you should limit the things people can do, by limiting the availability of their tools. And make sure there is a lot of 'presure' on the rest of their inventory space to further limit the amount of tools they can switch between. http://dayzmod.com/f...sions-teamwork/ this thread basically gives a fairly decent system to accomplish specialisation by limiting the use of tools, while at the same time provide players with 'extras' that make them feel like they actually have a certain profession. While giving them complete freedom to change at will.

Character Progression:

40-100% succes ratio, what should does that even mean/say? I think that you guys (dev-team) should try to make the systems you apply progression to as multidimensional as possible. So (off the top of my head) not just a fail/success ratio of a certain action, but also chances on negative effects (breaking something), and the durability of the action. This gives you guys atleast 3 ways to tweak the system, and make progress less about a mere hit/miss... There is somewhat of a suggestion thread here: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/32582-learning-by-doing-the-alternative-to-classes-professions/ ... In an example:

Say fixing a car, a player could progress actually fitting a part (where fail & miss just mean that, do the action again), a chance to break the part (tough luck, get another part to progress), and the durability of the fix (how long does it last). The progress from 40-60% could be the fitting chance increased from 60-100%, the 60-80 progress could mean reducing the chance of breaking from 30 to 5%, and the 80-100% progress say the durability increasing from 100 to 200miles (obviously in the game these would all increase slightly as you get better, but some may warrent an earlier non-fail level than another, and chances to break should always be there, as well as breaking down). To fit in some human skill to this as well, you could give each component 3 states within the game: 100% a fully metal part, 60% partially rusty, 40% fully rusted. This state could then be integrated into the equations for calculating a part breaking and the durability of the fix.

aka. The more elaborate you make the actual progression, the easier it is to give people their basic needs from the start (everybody can fix a car given they have the tools), while you give them room to notice progression (as they fix the car more often they have less failure and breaking of parts), while there is still room for progress both from the player perspective (identifying good/decent/bad parts) aswell as within the system, by increase the durability of the fix.

And in case of engineering you could either put each of the vehicles of a 'progression path' of their own, or link progression from one to the other, with this i mean that you could have a basic engineering level counter next to this and start off more elaborate vehicles on harsher conditions, but with the general engineering level taken into account. So fixing a bicycle would be fairly easy, fixing a motorbike would be harder, fixing an quad would be even harder, then fixing a car would be in line, then an 4wheel drive, then a truck, then a small plain, then a helicopter. But how hard each next vehicle level is (for the first time) would also depend on the general engineering level. Some of this would have to depend on numbers as well, if there are a lot of choppers flying around and nobody is in a car, you may want to use this to 'postpone' the use of choppers ...

*!* Why i ressurect this issue? Well i think these kind of progression systems are detrimental to the success of the game, this early/midgame progression makes it so there actually is a game. See in Eve you also start mining the easy stuff in your little ship, and progress in all sorts of skills to finally mine the big stuff, same whether you fight in Eve, or trade, or explore. There be no game if the cake is already there to be eaten!

Edited August 7, 2012 by L0GIN