SideStrafe - Jul 2012 - Interview with Rocket

[ScaryNachos 9]

This is an interview that SideStrafe had with rocket a little over a week ago so some of you have probably seen this. It's an hour long and the majority is Rocket & SideStrafe speculating about possible new features for DayZ or at least what they would wish to implement. As well as some cool speculations they talk about improving servers and supporting more types of play styles instead of deterring play styles eg instead of adding stuff to stop player killing they add more options so you might do something else.

Obviously this is pretty much all idealistic and experimental possibilities for the future of DayZ but it is pretty cool to hear Rocket's view on the community and to see how approaches everything from a developer's point of view :)

These types of interviews are always pretty neat, post a reply or share the link for people to see this :P

[ScaryNachos 9]

Not even a view yet? Bump :P

[Dingus (DayZ) 429]

It's an hour long and the majority is Rocket & SideStrafe speculating about possible new features for DayZ or at least what they would wish to implement.

I love the devs here and all, but these hour long speculation interviews never do much for me when my legs are still getting crushed on stairwells and rock formations or when nearly half the community is wearing duped gear. I'm starting to fall off the hype train a bit lately. They've got all my support, but the more I play the more I see the same bugs.

I hope no one takes it the wrong way. Don't mean to throw a lemon at your thread.

[Ankhenaten 111]

I listened to it. It was kinda funny as sidestrafe did a video to underlie the interview where the whole server was killed by a hacker ... I heard now enough interviews .. sandbox and all that ..

[Brudagon (DayZ) 64]

Wasn't informative and this is an old video. And Sidestrafe sounded super tired and bored.

[Kar98 27]

Dat kiwi accent. Should've asked what his favourite number is: 60 or 6

=]

[(AOW)n4zRuDiN 10]

I'II watch it, cheers.

[Shaun of the Dead 36]

Well I found the top comment interesting.

[deathdanish 8]

I think the choice to introduce more content in the hopes of decreasing player boredom, hence reducing the amount of player killing, is naive. Content cannot be released faster than players can complete it. The players that are bored right now will finish any content and be bored again - meaning they'll either quit, or much more likely, they'll revert to player killing.

He refers to the mod as an experiment. I think the experiment has produced results: give players a weapon, and the option to kill other players, and they will kill other players -- sometimes without even knowing why. Video game culture has instilled the notion of death=failure. The only way to safeguard yourself from death is to kill other players. Shoot first, or you will eventually lose the game. The design of the game has forced it to become deathmatch with zombies. Any emergent gameplay produced is really owing to the sandbox nature of the game, not any design, mechanic, or thematic decisions.

He wants to elicit emotions based on the authentic nature of your experience. I guess emotions can be pretty split between desirable emotions and undesirable emotions. Right now the only desirable emotions elicited by the game are excitement and accomplishment. The undesirable emotions include frustration, jealously, mistrust, dislike, anger, etc. He thinks excitement is cheap and the sources of accomplishment are both few and fleeting. Anyone can create a masochistic experience -- so really I wonder if he is proud of what he has created apart from the technical hurdles overcome.

"Death should be traumatic." The notion of harsher death penalties just emphasizes the importance of the shoot first mentality and puts the value on your own life, and that of your squad, unarguably above that of other players.

He seems to flip flop between toting the mod as an alpha, as an experiment where new ideas should be implemented and tested -- and as an environment that must be handled with care as to not upset its testers. DayZ started off with implementing pretty radical changes, seeing how they worked, and tweaking or reverting. Right now the experiment seems to have stagnated -- it is not producing any new valuable results. It needs new input, more experimental groups.

"Once you've mastered survival... the only other challenge is killing players." Well, first of all, killing players isn't very challenging. Choosing NOT to kill other players is truly challenging. The majority of players will almost invariably take the path of least resistance to beat the game and avoid failure. Again, killing players is the safest way to assure continued momentum.

Edited August 1, 2012 by deathdanish

[ScaryNachos 9]

I love the devs here and all, but these hour long speculation interviews never do much for me when my legs are still getting crushed on stairwells and rock formations or when nearly half the community is wearing duped gear. I'm starting to fall off the hype train a bit lately. They've got all my support, but the more I play the more I see the same bugs.

I hope no one takes it the wrong way. Don't mean to throw a lemon at your thread.

I get what you mean, I think these possibly are for the hype, I think he is hinting at what will be in DayZ for ArmA3 mostly but who knows :P Hopefully these bugs will be fixed though, the duping of gear is a tough one though, it plays on server lag and is easily done, i've done it a bunch of time unintentionally.

[ScaryNachos 9]

Wasn't informative and this is an old video. And Sidestrafe sounded super tired and bored.

I said it was mainly speculation :P It isn't old, it was posted a little over a week ago and only has 42K views so a bunch of people haven't heard it.

[ScaryNachos 9]

"Once you've mastered survival... the only other challenge is killing players." Well, first of all, killing players isn't very challenging. Choosing NOT to kill other players is truly challenging. The majority of players will almost invariably take the path of least resistance to beat the game and avoid failure. Again, killing players is the safest way to assure continued momentum.

I've deleted the majority of your post for the sake of space but I will be refering to each paragraph :P

You're definitely right about the way players complete content faster than it's created but if they can create content that is randomized providing PvP player an alternative, I saw a post that the radios should spawn and randomly get distress signals and this will trigger a mini-mission with the option to find & help/find and kill or ignore. As well as other types of missions but I won't re-post :) When he was talking about holding back on big announcements I think he may be working on something that could provide an alternative option than PvP possibly.

I have no argument against this paragraph really other than it is in the alpha so we may not have seen the results he is aiming for. I completely get what you're saying but he said it himself "If he knew the answer it would be implemented". I think any sandbox game with no designated route(Quest chains) will always head for PvP but its about designing a game that is creating the illusion of a sandbox but has you on a designated path with goals possibly?

This is actually a really good point about having more rewarding feelings from the game, right now im pretty tired and I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would prove a strong positive motivator or boost for players but I'm sure somebody on here can.

I believe he meant traumatic for both players, at least that's how I took it, after him speaking about how he felt bad about shooting a player and everything, how he plans this I don't know but if he makes death harder without creating something to make players taking a second thought before murdering another player, I'll have to agree with you then.

Well its not that not killing players is difficult, its just boring. All you need to simply survive is a hatchet, a hunting knife and matches but this is a video so we always need something to do that is worth our time. I try to kill other fully geared players because that is a challenge since we're on the same level, my most recent murder was a bandit camping Stary, he saw me first, luckily I only had a Winchester and was coming in the direction of the coast so he didn't think I had night vision goggles took cover behind a bush, waited, then flanked him a shot him in the back of the head. Killing him was rather satisfying :D