General idea for instanced player housing/camps

[decoman 45]

Rest assured, the following is not really meant to be an idea for use with the DayZ mod, however I did want to mention this in case any developer could make use of this:

Concept:

In a game like Eve online, defending structures in ones territory has traditionally been as trite as a continous ping pong game, with no real resolve as any side is limited to simply respond as required to rebuild destroyed structures after being offline while attackers raided your stuff. With players logging on at different time zones, any camp in a DayZ like game will be open for razing with little or zero defence.

To create a plausible and rewarding experience with player housing, it seem like a good idea to have camps themselves being onlined basically depending on how many people associated with a camp are themselves being online and playing the game.

The gist of this mechanic would be to allow others to find, and approach an instanced base while allowing defenders to react to this, with zero timezone ping pong play.

Unfortunately, this idea doesn't work well in an open landscape or with games that are tailored for realistic environments, because if players are expecting to be able to move around then they should be able to stumble over hidden locations or even search for such locations. However, there are options and I want to suggest some solutions for this particular problem.

Controlling the access to quasi-instanced locations by:

• Placing the quasi-instance on an island that isn't interactable from the main land by sniper shot, or when observing through the lenses of binoculars. Nor should a boat trip allow access.

• Placing the quasi-instance behind mountains. Requiring some kind of mountain terrain that preferably is not left to the border areas. Tunnels openings found anywhere would basicly be leading to nowhere, but mechanics could be designed for allowing a player to access a hidden site, given that this player has certain knowledge of how to reach it (knowing coordinates or simply having the privilege of simply knowing the location)

• Placing the quasi-instance inside a tunnel system beneath the ground. The same way a tunnel opening could lead to a hidden base, any hole or cave at ground level could lead to player bases, given that there is some way of controlling how players access this.

• Caves around the coastline could work. Realistically they would be accessible via boat, but if boats cannot be used then this particular idea could fit in.

• An instanced base could simply be offlined and becoming inaccessible off a set of criterias, like being dependent on how many players in the friendly party that are online and logged into the game.

• If a single player associated with a base is online, then the base might be considered being offline to others. Perhaps some type of bases could allow benefits but also restrictions: a large base is open to attack the moment a single player is online and logged into the game, while a small base might offer more security by being considered offline for the purpose of determining if the base is open for invasion by others.

Exploit potential: unknown

It would be important to isolate the area off the regular playing ground, in order for preventing anyone to simply access them directly or by dirty tricks (teleportation or glitching).

One way of allowing some access to such locations could be to allow people to spot the opening, in order for ambushing anyone entering/leaving the instance. A middle area could perhaps be a fun playground to resolve combat, with regard to a disputed entrance/exit for an instance. Meaning that an attacker cannot simply stay 1m off the opening and shooting people spawning out of nowehere as they exited their instance.

It would be a bad idea to allow access to such a place without any hinderance, simply having access to the location of the opening, because of the time-zone problems of people not being online at the same time.

An easy way for controlling the instance could perhaps be to place a solid padlock on the doors of the opening. Not really realistic, since locks should be destructible, but still it would be plausible to some extent, in having coded locks or locks requiring a special key.

There are probably lots of ways to design such quasi-instanced areas and hopefully it should be possible to include them in a world that otherwise is based on realistic movement without teleportation features found in fantasy games.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Treehugger

[christopher.hill449@gmail.com 314]

You have beans sir.

[decoman 45]

Thanks! :)

It just occurred to me that the type of barren inaccessible houses in DayZ could be used as instanced player housing. :)

When player is online the house is accessible, and when he is offline the entire house becomes inaccessible (maybe with a few minutes delay before offlining as an anti-exploit measure). An obvious exploit, would be that people would occupy all housing to prevent others to move in. A combo solution could be to allow a house to be occupied by more than one player, which would mean that two stranger going online can suddenly meet eachother in some hallway. The instanced area would in such case be an appartment room, with a magically locked door that is unbreakable.

A obvious consequence of such mechanics, will probably be that people will try to camp individual houses or even camp individual doors inside a building.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Treehugger

[decoman 45]

A particular problem with metagaming (that also can be compensated for):

It just occurred to me that if an instance is onlined by the presence of a single player, then this would probably lead to metagaming, which could be interesting I guess, where an agent/spy could simply log on for allowing "bandits" enter the secluded area unbeknownst to the other players in the group if they are not logged on. With small camps this type of problem would have much less an impact than if it affected a large camp.

To alleviate the horrific impact of spies exposing a large base to "bandits" because of a single spy, a large base could be "onlined" and accessible to outsiders only by having more than one player logged in. That one guy that isnt a spy could easily be killed by the spy or anyone entering the area, however the guy dying would be able to try alert the others if possible, so that they could log into the game and defend their property. It would thus seem like a good idea to avoid having too many spies around. If the requirement to online a base and making it accessible to a hostile party were set to be 10 people for example, a single spy would be faced with the challenge of possibly having to kill his 9 fellow group members, or simply wait for his bandits to appear.

The game mechanics that allows an intruder to gain access to a "online" camp that is accessible would be important to decide upon, for determining if a spy inside a camp/base can let outsiders move into the camp/base or not. Else an attacking party will have to be given the tools or opportunity for accesssing the secluded camp/base on their own.

The particular concerns of being a part of a group and residing in an instanced camp open to attack should probably be divided into several factors:

1 The residing members of a group, being a bunch of people located at one spot, would be open for attack and thus be one kind of objective for the attackers to accomplish in a raid.

2 Any structures would be susceptible to player attacks inside the camp/base

3 Any player items stored around might be looted if simply lying around, but one might ask if players would even dare having stuff lying around with regard to the items possibly being stolen by other group members.

4 An attacker might want to pursue the defenders and chase them around in their own base. I.e defenders having a need for defensive structures like walls, sandbags, trenches, gun positions or whatnot.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Treehugger

[decoman 45]

One might wonder how anyone is supposed to find and approach such an instanced camp/base that simply cannot be found when walking about.

A more plausible solution for allowing access to a secluded camp/base, would be to create a mediating area inside the game that would either act as a door opening or a blocked passage (part of a tunnel for example). If the passage is open (people are online and the camp/base is active), then anyone could stroll in if they knew where to look. If the location of a camp/base is compromised with other people learning about its existence, then defending the camp/base might be problematic. Having players stick around near the base seem like a good idea, else it would probably be difficult to return to base quickly enough if the camp/base came under attack at some point in time.

An different solution could be to have the players use a token, for teleporting into a secluded area from a nearby location. This other solution would limit who could possibly enter the secluded area, to whoever having aquired a token for passage. A token offering access would not work if an instanced camp/base is "offline" (players not logged in, or not enough players logged in). It seem sensible to perhaps have the token display when the camp/base is "online", or perhaps a better solution is to simply display a 24 hour delayed response, in which a hostile party would have to guess when people will be online on the day if they want to try an attack. The more time they use for taking note of when the camp is labeled "online", the better the prospects are for actually being able to attack at a time when the camp/base is open for access.

Exploit potential: If one guy (perhaps together with other peole) were to create such an instanced camp with the sole purpose of keeping it hidden by always being run by that one guy using the camp, thus making sure that the camp would never be accessible to others if the "onlinging" requirement were say two people, then some kind of limitation would have to be imposed to prevent such an unintended consequence.

A solution to such a situation, could be to deny the possibility of a camp/base being accessible to group members when being "offline". That would mean that for example 10 of out 100 in a group would have to be online and playing in-game in order for being able to access their own camp/base in the instanced area. There would still be a potential for an exploit, by hiding stuff at a secluded camp/base if run by only one player, though that one player would be locked out of his own camp/base, if not calling in other group members to temporarily open the camp/base for acceess.

If the players in a group were to be allowed for deciding themselves on the fly how many players were to be online for the camp/base to be online, then this could be exploited, by denying attackers access, on a whim.

If the players in a group were to be allowed to offline their camp/base on the fly by all logging out within a minute, this would be considered an exploit.

One way of preventing this exploit just mentioned, where there is an instalogging in order to quickly offline a camp/base, could be to have camps/bases be open for a minimum of say 30min or 60 min in increments. This would mean that if the camp/base goes online at 12:00, then it will not be possible to offline the base until 12:30 or perhaps and hour later at 13:00. If the camp/base is kept online at 13:01, then any offlining is not possible until 13:31 or perhaps an hour later at 14:01. This way, a defending and attacking party will each have their initiative for resolving the situation. The defender will have to anticipate an attack, and the attacker will have to anticipate a logoff. If the timestamp for when a camp/base was initially put online is kept hidden from an attacker, then the outcome of an assualt should be equally favourable to both parties.

I think it would be a good idea to force a camp/base to be open once an attacking party managed to gain access into the secluded area. Offlining a camp/base when under attack seem like a bad and unrewarding feature. This leads to the obvious problem of exploit like situations, where an attacker might sneak in and hide inside someones base, to try force the camp/base to stay open after the defenders have logged off. This might or might not be an interesting feature.

Another twist to the camp/base idea (important):

If protecting an online camp/base from potential attacks seem overly burdensome to a group of players, then maybe a base should only be accessible when at least one player is moving about inside the instanced area or nearby. This would mean that a camp/base could be online but locked, and only truly opened once a player belonging to the group owning the camp/base is actually around or nearby. This way, a group of players could be all over the map without having to worry too much about loosing all their stuff just because they wanted to play on some distant area of the map.

A multidimentional world could be interesting still:

If one did accept the notion of a multi dimentional world, it could be rewarding by having the instanced areas look like any other landscape found ingame. This way there could be grass fields, forests and housing. It would be weird though, if the location cannot be reached and there probably would be an obvious challenge in designing these areas where the stuff seen in the horizon might seem overly fake or unfamiliar. This kind of concept, where the instanced area is an open landscape, allows for a hostile party to spawn on the outer area somewhere along the circle with the camp/base found in the middle. Defenders would have the challenge of suppressing an advancing force from maybe several directions. However, sniping would probably be overpowered in a large open landscape. If the defenders could be automatically notified of intrusion, then perhaps the overpowered benefit with the use of surprise sniper attack can be mitigated. If an instanced area were to be an entire island (small one) then the blatant use of a multidimentional world could be hidden from the players and otherwise appear to make good sense.

Edited August 5, 2012 by Treehugger

[indominator 95]

well, what if the group is made of a clan, they wont even let other people in it, just kill any strangers, and probably just try to create a dialogue with other clans about CF or trade when implemented.

[Sando 9]

This question has always bothered me, how do you maintain threat without making it pointless to try and defend?

My only real thought was that you could build front doors with a bank door basically, which if you don't know is set to lock for a certain amount of time and literally cannot be opened during that time, by anyone. So a clan can set a timer (not sure on visible or not to other players, that would need some thought), during which no one, not even themselves, can access the building. Then make it some sort of minimum timeframe after this where it can't be reactivated, like 4 hours or so.

This would mean that clans could have a very clunky on/off switch as to when they can be raided and when they might need to defend it. They can't simply lock it for an hour and go raiding, because then they'll have to defend it for 4 hours before they can log off. The clan can, however, ensure that there are people on whenever the place is accessible and be able to defend it.

Basically, you want people to be able to sleep/work without worrying about someone plundering their stuff, but they shouldn't really be able to do very much in game without the threat hanging over them.

[xDIx Revenge 51]

Very lengthy and well thought out read. I'll be sure to bookmark this and read over your comments again. From the small section of the OP i had time to read, i definitely agree on how fine a line there is in making these instanced bases more friendly to offensive/defensive situations.

I do like the idea of stumbling across camps that are "deserted" as the player is logged out. But with a whole underground instance it may be more annoying losing your stuff to raiders everytime your offline. I know its the annoying thing to come back to find your tent empty, and vehicles gone because you were out all weekend. Right now we just have to put up with it, but i would love to see SOME form of balancing in the sense that defenders have a POSSIBILITY to help their stash, and defend their land.

+ 1 Beans for a post that wasn't just a "y u no" post.

[decoman 45]

It just occurred to me that entrances to anything below ground, could "spawn" inside buildings. Imagine a cellar door that can be opened and then there would be stairs down.

And if the tunnel complex underground (instanced) is offline (few or no players being logged on) then the entrance would disappear. It would be a little silly if more than one cellar entrance was found in a building. As I wrote above, when being online, the entrance could be either open or closed depending on what is decided upon. I mentioned earlier that the entrance could be locked if no online players were nearby (like 1km or something like that).

The idea about having cellar doors being portals to a mediating space between global game world and an instance would not be realistic, given that a cellar door would vanish if an instance became offline.

I guess all houses could have a cellar door with a cellar, and then any portal/opening down in that cellar could appear and disappear as a consequence of an instance being online or not. I think I like this idea better, because it is then not obvious to anyone entering a building that there is a portal/opening down in the cellar, and few people might want to bother with looking down in the cellar in every building they enter.