WHAT IF: Region's Zombie Spawn was linked to Humanity?

[bbilbo1 149]

I would like to propose a new feature. This proposal is a non-intrusive, region-based environmental reaction to general player activity. I have no intent on railroading players into any specific gameplay, nor am I proposing a direct 1:1 cause/effect directed at individual's zombie spawn. This will, instead, apply an improved, dynamic, player-driven world.

PROPOSAL:

-Zombie spawn was region-referenced instead of the current player-zombie spawn system.

-The region kept a log of all player interaction, such as PvP, bandaging, blood transfusions, trading, looting, etc.

-When entering a region, the player's client would query the region's Humanity Rank on the server.

-The zombie spawn for players would be proportionate to the region's logged humanity.

-Zombies would NEVER go away completely (nowhere is completely safe), but would be a less in high-humanity areas.

-Places prone to high-levels of murdering, stealing, and PVP would be swamped with zombie spawn.

Things That Will GIVE Humanity To a Region:

• LARGE GAIN: Giving medical attention to another player. (to always help, or at least do no harm has been the cornerstone of medicine and society)
  
• MEDIUM GAIN: Dropping food and drink to the ground that another player consumes. (breaking bread and sharing food with others has culturally always been an indication of civility)
  
• SMALL GAIN: Fixing objects/vehicles (tool-making and realizing "the whole is more valuable that the sum of it's parts" is a human concept that gives us strength as a community unit)
  
• TINY GAIN: Killing Infected (ridding an area of the infected menace means a benefit to all)
  

Things That Will REMOVE Humanity From a Region:

• LARGE LOSS: Killing another player for any reason (bandit or not; taking the life of another human being will ALWAYS remove humanity)
  
• MEDIUM LOSS: Shooting at and wounding players (to do harm to others is to cause suffering, suffering drains humanity)
  
• SMALL LOSS: Vehicle and Object destruction (To take something useful, and destroy it goes agaist our ways of survival)
  
• TINY LOSS:Looting (although justified by resource scarcity, taking something that isnt yours from a body, or someone's residence is wrong.)
  

So, Here we have a system in which players are free to do whatever they want, as they can right now. But now, players' decicions have an actual impact! Currently, we have a static, cold world that offers nothing, no matter what we do. I'm hoping in this system, the world would offer several things:

It gives objective, feasible consequences to actions. Many folks believe it is our actions that ultimately shapes the world around us. This finally gives us a feature that does exactly that!

It finally will give players a visible metric to measure the community's level of game-based humanity. No more idle speculation on the forums and complaining about what other players choose to do or not do. We will esily see the work of other players.

It will finally allow non-civilized areas to spawn infected. In short, If there are other people, there will be possible infected. Cities, farms, wilderness. ANYWHERE.

Players are demanding a safezone? Let them make a safezone for themselves! Kill the infected, dont be assholes to each other, and eventually, with a little upkeep, maintenance, and player-run policing, you have a *relativaly* low-spawning player colony. (Until a clan of bandits show up, over-take the colony, and throw the area back into hive of lawless infected and criminals.)

I'm not saying 1 player kill would spawn a swarm of zombies. Nor am I saying 1 or 2 backpacks full of bloodbags and transfusions would make the region friendly. That notion is way, WAY, too small-scale for what I had in mind.

What I'm talking about here is VERY LARGE NUMBERS.

How large?

My idea is that it would take a community of players (one way or another) for an extended period of time to influence the region's environment positively or negatively. That means one or two players spamming an action couldn't, practically speaking, be solely responsible for influencing an entire region.

In order to min/max my system on a solo, small-scale, you would ultimately need to repetitively collect incredibly massive amounts of resources. Ultimately, increasing your chances of encountering other players and taking those resources just to spam actions for ridiculously extended periods of logged-in time.

In short, players won't actually see their actions influence a region on a solo-minded scale. Only in cases where there's an strong overabundance of positive or negative Humanity actions, whether that be the result of player cooperation and teamwork, or a more passive, "Everyone ends up doing 'X' in this location" activity.

What would happen and what would the effects be to this system? Tell me how all this would pan out?

Edited August 5, 2012 by bbilbo1

[Yatagan 62]

Sounds like the beginning to a good theory perhaps...

So a peaceful nice country town would have fewer zombies than Elektro or Cherno which would be LOADED? Hmmm, possibly. Though that may just serve as balance. If you're surrounded by 200 zombies, you'll be more likely to work together, increasing humanity and lowering spawns. Hrmm...

[Adjta (DayZ) 37]

Makes sense. More dead bodies = more zombie bait.

[M4L 42]

Zombie posse !! yay

[teteiyusu 36]

Its an interesting idea.

Though I could see that making just starting annoying as Cherno, Electro... would be swarmed... making it even more difficult for fresh starts.

The system is there to be worked with.

But there needs to be a little more incentive...

Maybe Good Humanity could help with not being seen and heard as easily by zombies, while bandit may be vice versa?

Or maybe Good Humanity would allow things spawning in around that area to have a higher chance of not being cans but useful items. While bandits may cause more empty cans... meaning they are getting penalized for using others to get their gear so that is what they may be forced to do and maybe in the end have to be kind?

and then! Maybe it could stick from character to character as more of an account features where it'll penalize or reward certain play...

I dunno litterally was just typing as these came up just not...

But yea...

In any case everything has pros and cons and its gonna take time for Rocket to find the best way for the humanity to work. =)

[bbilbo1 149]

NOTE: It's not my intent to force a "Survivor=right Bandit=wrong" game mechinism. This is not what is being proposed. Players will always be able to do whatever they wish in the game.

I was simply imagining a mechanic that would give objective and feasible consequences to players' actions.

It still keeps all the power in the player's hand to do whatever they want.

[Dickhat 99]

Makes sense. More dead bodies = more zombie bait.

I approve this idea. Needs some working but sounds great. Someone call Rocket.

[SxyClutch 7]

Its an interesting idea.

Though I could see that making just starting annoying as Cherno, Electro... would be swarmed... making it even more difficult for fresh starts.

The system is there to be worked with.

But there needs to be a little more incentive...

Maybe Good Humanity could help with not being seen and heard as easily by zombies, while bandit may be vice versa?

Or maybe Good Humanity would allow things spawning in around that area to have a higher chance of not being cans but useful items. While bandits may cause more empty cans... meaning they are getting penalized for using others to get their gear so that is what they may be forced to do and maybe in the end have to be kind?

and then! Maybe it could stick from character to character as more of an account features where it'll penalize or reward certain play...

I dunno litterally was just typing as these came up just not...

But yea...

In any case everything has pros and cons and its gonna take time for Rocket to find the best way for the humanity to work. =)

It would be difficult for fresh starts unless they made the ability to either melee zombies with fists, or give us a starting melee weapon, maybe a usable knife, or a large pipe. Taking guns out was something I agree with, but nothing at all sucks.

[vier0hr 21]

DOes actually sound like a good idea. I think for overall server load and game stability the zeds will most likely have to spawn near players, or else we would have lag and zombies everywhere taking up space when not needed.

The overall idea is great though, and I think it should be looked into as well.

[bbilbo1 149]

UPDATE: Gave it some more thought and fleshed out my idea a little more. Edited first post.

Thanks for all the feedback!

Edited August 1, 2012 by bbilbo1

[paradox. 12]

I just wanted to present a hypothetical situation and get feedback on how it would impact the game.

Let's Imagine what this game would be like if:

-Zombie spawn was region-based instead of player-based

-The region kept a log of all player interaction, such as PvP, bandaging, blood transfusions, trading, looting, etc.

-The zombie spawn would be proportionate to the region's logged humanity.

-Zombies would NEVER go away completely (nowhere is completely safe), but would be a less in high-humanity areas.

-Places prone to high-levels of murdering, stealing, and PVP would be swamped with zombie spawn.

If you feel like humoring me... let's say this was implemented.

Things That Will GIVE Humanity To a Region:

• LARGE GAIN: Giving medical attention to another player. (to always help, or at least do no harm has been the cornerstone of medicine and society)
  
• MEDIUM GAIN: Dropping food and drink to the ground that another player consumes. (breaking bread and sharing food with others has culturally always been an indication of civility)
  
• SMALL GAIN: Fixing objects/vehicles (tool-making and realizing "the whole is more valuable that the sum of it's parts" is a human concept that gives us strength as a community unit)
  
• TINY GAIN: Killing Infected (ridding an area of the infected menace means a benefit to all)
  

Things That Will REMOVE Humanity From a Region:

• LARGE LOSS: Killing another player for any reason (bandit or not; taking the life of another human being will ALWAYS remove humanity)
  
• MEDIUM LOSS: Shooting at and wounding players (to do harm to others is to cause suffering, suffering drains humanity)
  
• SMALL LOSS: Vehicle and Object destruction (To take something useful, and destroy it goes agaist our ways of survival)
  
• TINY LOSS:Looting (although justified by resource scarcity, taking something that isnt yours from a body, or someone's residence is wrong.)
  

So, Here we have a system in which players are free to do whatever they want, as they can right now. But now, players' decicions have an actual impact! Currently, we have a static, cold world that offers nothing, no matter what we do. I'm hoping in this system, the world would offer several things:

It gives objective, feasible consequences to actions. Many folks believe it is our actions that ultimately shapes the world around us. This finally gives us a feature that does exactly that!

It finally will give players a visible metric to measure the community's level of game-based humanity. No more idle speculation on the forums and complaining about what other players choose to do or not do. We will esily see the work of other players.

It will finally allow non-civilized areas to spawn infected. In short, If there are other people, there will be possible infected. Cities, farms, wilderness. ANYWHERE.

Players are demanding a safezone? Let them make a safezone for themselves! Kill the infected, dont be assholes to each other, and eventually, with a little upkeep, maintenance, and player-run policing, you have a *relativaly* low-spawning player colony. (Until a clan of bandits show up, over-take the colony, and throw the area back into hive of lawless infected and criminals.)

What would happen and what would the effects be to this system? Tell me how all this would pan out?

I actually like this idea alot... i really hope they expand on this idea and implement it some how into the game.

[Zetal 90]

This is one of those unique ideas that would actually fit with Day Z. It doesn't limit players, or even really affect the ones that take the actions, it affects the world. I think that successfully starts to mold the 'player driven world' that Rocket wanted.

+1

[islandjack1 8]

Great idea, I concur!!

[Zetal 90]

One thing I'm worried about, though, is the technical aspect of this suggestion. Keeping track of constant server additions (ie whenever anyone loots, kills a zombie, or anything else) might be a strain. Does anyone know whether the Hive already collects this data, or not?

[bbilbo1 149]

One thing I'm worried about, though, is the technical aspect of this suggestion. Keeping track of constant server additions (ie whenever anyone loots, kills a zombie, or anything else) might be a strain. Does anyone know whether the Hive already collects this data, or not?

I assumed it did.

We already know that the game keeps tabs on our location (every time we log-in it tells us the region we're in).

The debug window shows how many zombies there are, as well as how many we've killed

The debug window also knows when we've killed, and wounded others

The game knows that we can give each other medical care.

Even if the game can only spawn zombies based in logged-in players (we are actually "servers" to the zombies) I would guestimate that it can still querey the region we travel to, and spawn zombies based on it's new "humanity rank."\

Rocket's been working on a way to track player activity, including measures to document and assess Alt+F4ing.

I'm just going on speculation, that's all.

[hkurban 31]

A little similar but still markedly different than an idea I had to make zombie speed/stamina linked to volume of deaths in an area.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/53091-scaling-zombie-difficulty-based-on-food-availability/`

[Zambizi 16]

Combine the two imo and it would be primo.

[Killzor 7]

Sounds like the beginning to a good theory perhaps...

So a peaceful nice country town would have fewer zombies than Elektro or Cherno which would be LOADED? Hmmm, possibly. Though that may just serve as balance. If you're surrounded by 200 zombies, you'll be more likely to work together, increasing humanity and lowering spawns. Hrmm...

Wouldnt it eventully iron out because people then decide that since they arent surround with zombies they will go back to killing players?

[Radlemus 0]

I like the idea! Have some beans!

[Zetal 90]

I assumed it did.

We already know that the game keeps tabs on our location (every time we log-in it tells us the region we're in).

The debug window shows how many zombies there are, as well as how many we've killed

The debug window also knows when we've killed, and wounded others

The game knows that we can give each other medical care.

Even if the game can only spawn zombies based in logged-in players (we are actually "servers" to the zombies) I would guestimate that it can still querey the region we travel to, and spawn zombies based on it's new "humanity rank."\

Rocket's been working on a way to track player activity, including measures to document and assess Alt+F4ing.

I'm just going on speculation, that's all.

Ah, good point. Well, in that case, I see no reason not to implement this. =)

[ivan keska 39]

NOTE: It's not my intent to force a "Survivor=right Bandit=wrong" game mechinism. This is not what is being proposed. Players will always be able to do whatever they wish in the game.

I was simply imagining a mechanic that would give objective and feasible consequences to players' actions.

It still keeps all the power in the player's hand to do whatever they want.

Your forgetting some people here are full blown retards and consider consequences and punishments to be the exact god damn thing. Thou I'm amazed none of them have shown up yet.

Anyways I like this idea but low humanity should cause zombies to more easily spot you or find you, as a way to help deal with the griefers near electro and Chernobyl that just sniper people.

[bazbake 456]

The more people you murder, the higher your zombie aggro. That's really cool...

Zombies spawn as players enter a location, right? What if the number of zombies that spawned when your player entered a location was modified by your humanity? So the lower your humanity, the more likely you are to spawn zombies when you enter a location reflecting the fact that the only thing keeping the zombies at bay is the survivors you keep killing.

This is a direct consequence of your actions. Survivors kill zombies. You kill survivors. Zombies don't get killed. Therefore, zombies spawn in greater numbers because no one else is there to kill them.

[ZenBC 35]

I agree with the sentiment but instead of an area, tie it to players. The more murders, the more zombies spawn wherever the player goes. For example:

1 murder = 1.2x zombies spawn whereever you go

2 murders = 1.4x zombies

etc etc etc until 10 murders will equal 3x the number of zombies. So then those people sitting up in the hills sniping, as soon as they enter a city with 10 murders, they have to fight off 3x the zombies as someone with no murders. Couple that with increasing zombie aggro (if that's possible) and all of a sudden, bandits can't go near buildings anymore because a hoard of zombies spawn.

I would go so far as to say maintain the murders over the life of your character so you can't just get a team-mate to kill you, respawn and run back to pick up your gear and then go loot. So if you kill 100 people over your lifetime, you're fucked anytime you go near a city.

So to summarize:

- Change the name in the top right from 'murders' to 'profile' or 'bloodlust' or similar.

- Each PvP kill earns you +1 in the profile category, which remains after death.

- For every +1 increment in your 'profile', zombie spawn is increased by 0.2. This happens because Zombies can 'smell' other people's blood or the gunpowder on you.

- Reduce by 1 for every hour you play so gradually if you change your ways, it goes down, but you have to spend a LOT of time not doing anything to anyone.

- DON'T reduce profile from helping others - you'll just find groups shooting each other non-critically then healing each other.

I feel like this is actually something that could be implemented quite quickly and easily perhaps? Not that I would know, but perhaps it would encourage people to talk first and kill only if you are willing to spend an hour hiding in a bush in the middle of nowhere...

Bandits? Massively reduced. Human factor? Massively increased.

EDIT: I think it still needs some thought - a +100 profile person running through elektro would ruin everyone's day... Open for suggestions?

Edited August 2, 2012 by ZenBC

[CaptainCrow 0]

I know people have probably considered it, but just putting it out there; If you make it more difficult for PvP'ers to get loot the normal way wont they then just resort to killing more 'good' (for lack of a better term) players to take their gear they've recived from the beneficent game?

[ZenBC 35]

I know people have probably considered it, but just putting it out there; If you make it more difficult for PvP'ers to get loot the normal way wont they then just resort to killing more 'good' (for lack of a better term) players to take their gear they've recived from the beneficent game?

Generally that will mean going near a highly frequented town - increasing zombies where they go means unless they're a sniper well out of the city it's going to be more difficult to find someone bar camping in a forest somewhere and hoping someone is nearby. Also if people run towards a village with 2 buildings and 100 zombies, it's a sure fire sign there's a mass murderer around there waiting to cap someone...