Overall View of this Mod

[phillyjoker 10]

This thread is for discussion upon the overall thoughts of how and where this mod should or is heading.

First of all, I obviously am not inside rocket's head, I don't know his processes or his plan. These observations and suggestions are built upon my own knowledge and experiences. What I'd like to do is present as many options (good/bad, old/new) that we (or I) can come up with in order to make the entire process easier and faster to complete this awesome mod/game.

Before I go any further I definitely want to applaud both rocket, his volunteers, and the community for the many hours of enjoyment they have provided myself and friends in playing this game. I also must stress that I don't want this to be so much about features, but more of a theory or if you will allow me to be cliche, the "meta" ideas about this game. I grimace using that word, since it is so abused, but it really does capture what I want more than anything I can think of at the moment.

So let's start with different headers, and use them to break up the ideas:

We'll begin with Concept.

The concept of this game is survival. Integrating a survival RPG game with a first person shooter. It's one of the most brilliant, and challenging concepts any game or mod has tried, and so very extremely successful. I can't honestly think of anything to improve upon save for getting the completed project out faster and more streamlined. As rocket has said, he wants to provide us with the features, and let the players make the game.

The only questions I have about concept really can only be answered by rocket himself. Is the goal of this mod to become a standalone game? A fully integrated DLC for ARMA III? That is the last concept that needs to be determined before just about any other thing can be decided.

Next, let's talk about Money.

Money, as everyone knows, makes the world go round. Money will be, and already is a key component of this game. It costs money literally and in man-hours in order to get this game moving. Many people want to donate both their time and money, but rocket is uncomfortable with taking people's money when he is unsure of how to best use it, and he doesn't want to become complacent. So far, he has made great use of people's time that they want to give, so that is not an issue.

My suggestion for the money may be too simple, but perhaps others with better minds can expand on my ideas. As a landlord I've found one of the best aspects is clarity and communication. If he or his staff were to, for example, make a list of expected expenses and keep the amount of donations at that dollar amount people would be able to give without fear of their money going to chips, dip, and too much alcohol to do any man good. To be more specific, the cost and efficiency of the central server seem to be rather large cogs in this mod. So why not list the cost of an even better, more robust central server and allow the community to pick up the tab? Leaving rocket and the other modders to focus their resources on other items of need.

Lastly, fixes.

This game is full of bugs and issues, and while most dedicated gamers are willing to suffer through them. It's not the gamers that I worry about. It's the modders who try to hard to fix things and cannot do what they need to seriously fix the issues at hand.

I have several ideas for fixes. The best idea is two fold. First, take some of that money I mentioned and create a closed testing system. A second central server that has a limited amount of sub-servers. 10 - 20 in order to fully test what is going on for as long as you need. Second, focus solely on that server and leave the main central server on whatever patch you feel comfortable with so us fanboys can still play to hearts content (my suggestion, the last one that restocks your ammo upon reconnect ;) ). While there are still some patches that will need to be tested on a wider variance of servers, for now, this path could more quickly get you on a track toward beta, then beta could be when you start working on the worldwide abilities of the central server and game.

Well, that's all I have for now, the hope being of course that those smarter than me will chime in and discuss the various point, and hopefully at some point rocket will read this an actually find an idea or two among my mess of thoughts. Cheers! Happy hunting all!

Edited August 3, 2012 by PhillyJoker

[Katawavyadvip 0]

[Cyric (DayZ) 254]

Didn't feel like reading the wall of text, which means I probably missed the entire point of your thread. Regardless, I used to be a DayZ fanatic... lately though, skiddies have got me down. I'm not as interested in playing anymore because I know within a couple hours, some skiddie is going to show up and fuck everything up. Also to note, I'm highly anticipating Guild Wars 2... soooo, yeah.

Great mod, losing it's appeal though. War Z looks somewhat appealing as a finished product, but I feel that DayZ will be a far superior product in the end.

[ivan keska 39]

The only thing I worry about is who is shaping the mod now, because at some point every creator of something popular has to choose between what they like and what people like. I started playing this mod because of rockets original vision of it, but if players start shaping it instead I more than likely will stop because it just won't be that realistic end of the world survival sim that made it so interesting to me months ago.

[phillyjoker 10]

Didn't feel like reading the wall of text, which means I probably missed the entire point of your thread. Regardless, I used to be a DayZ fanatic... lately though, skiddies have got me down. I'm not as interested in playing anymore because I know within a couple hours, some skiddie is going to show up and fuck everything up. Also to note, I'm highly anticipating Guild Wars 2... soooo, yeah.

Great mod, losing it's appeal though. War Z looks somewhat appealing as a finished product, but I feel that DayZ will be a far superior product in the end.

Basically not trying to get sucked up into the nitty gritty that has everyone down. Trying to figure out, out loud, how to speed the whole process up of making this a complete game. Any thoughts?

[phillyjoker 10]

The only thing I worry about is who is shaping the mod now, because at some point every creator of something popular has to choose between what they like and what people like. I started playing this mod because of rockets original vision of it, but if players start shaping it instead I more than likely will stop because it just won't be that realistic end of the world survival sim that made it so interesting to me months ago.

I understand this feeling, but after reading some of rocket's posts it seems very evident that what he'd like to do is give us enough tools and features to make it survivor mostly, but with the very real possibility of pvp. Just the thought of being able to build a base, defend an area 24/7 with a clan, and try to survive in the meantime is extremely awesome. Just hope he can get there, and trying to figure out not only the quickest way, but the most efficient way.

Edited August 3, 2012 by PhillyJoker

[Cyric (DayZ) 254]

Basically not trying to get sucked up into the nitty gritty that has everyone down. Trying to figure out, out loud, how to speed the whole process up of making this a complete game. Any thoughts?

My thoughts are that once DayZ makes it to the standalone phase, it will potentially have a far greater security system in place. As described in some other threads, ArmA was originally designed for the military to use as a form of training. It is easily "hacked" because it was never intended for this sort of mainstream indie (contradiction?) attention, it was supposed to be easy to manipulate so that various training scenarios could be created easily. Unfortunately, due to this design, it's insanely simple for anyone with a decent understanding of scripting to inject their own "hacks" into the game.

All that being said, I think that right now the skiddies are the biggest cause for concern and/or complaint. The bugs and all that jazz are easily muscled through, but we're forced to sit back and let Battleye handle the illegal scripts, which as you can probably tell from the zillion threads about it, isn't sitting well with DayZ players at the moment.

Edited August 3, 2012 by Cyric

[phillyjoker 10]

All that being said, I think that right now the skiddies are the biggest cause for concern and/or complaint. The bugs and all that jazz are easily muscled through, but we're forced to sit back and let Battleye handle the illegal scripts, which as you can probably tell from the zillion threads about it, isn't sitting well with DayZ players at the moment.

Interesting, did not know that about ARMA 2 but it is a great point. One of my suggestions in the wall of text was to get a 2nd central server, with maybe 10-20 sub-servers, and use them for all the primary testing from now on. By virture of this, maybe they could get all the other servers at least patched to stop the hackers, and then focus on the 2nd server to do all the updates and not have to worry about hackers nearly as much.

[indominator 95]

well, i get one feeling from the dayz dev team, they have their own briefing and ideas, they only get this sugestions topic to let people waste hours in here getting interested, and sometimes they can read here or not, like they dont even give a crap to suggestions from the users, its a waste

[phillyjoker 10]

well, i get one feeling from the dayz dev team, they have their own briefing and ideas, they only get this sugestions topic to let people waste hours in here getting interested, and sometimes they can read here or not, like they dont even give a crap to suggestions from the users, its a waste

Alright! Great attitude! :)

[indominator 95]

also, this only bug fixing thing is making matters worse for players like, i have nothing to do, i have everything and i am not that keen into pvp although killing on sight, i need something to do, not just plain survival that bores me to death.

so when is he going to stop fixing bugs and implement the nice stuff that we wish