Social Observation: Playing DayZ to not play DayZ

[jonahcutter 51]

Tents are a very very carebear mechanic in a mod that prides itself on being cruelly difficult.

Even without item duping and tents, survival supplies and ammo are extremely easy to come by. It is not difficult at all to quickly be walking away from food, drink and ammo because you simply cannot carry it all.

Are the devs happy with the survival aspect of the mod basically being an inconsequential hoop to jump through? And the Zeds themselves little more than a nuisance?

Were the devs intending to make a small-squad, mil-sim pvp mod about camping l33t weapon spawns and assembling vehicles? Because for all the philosophizing about creating freedom, that is what the mod currently is. Right now, DayZ is about "gearing up". And "gearing up" as gameplay is mainstream mmo gameplay. It's pure WoW. Doesn't matter if it happens in an open-world environment or not.

The mod starts out strong, immersing players in intense, choice-based gameplay and moment-to-moment survival. But it fails to sustain that. It falls apart. The "choices" rapidly devolve into watered-down ArmA pvping over weapon spawns. Or just sniping (and counter-sniping) for shits and giggles.

The fetish for military hardware and the inside-the-box thinking of "gearing up" as gameplay, along with being able to save gear through death with tents, are core design elements that are counter to the stated purpose of the mod.

Edited August 13, 2012 by jonahcutter

[heathy87 1]

quite hilarious when you think about it isn't it johan, its all about gearing up, its just like wow, well to be quite honest i'm not ashamed of what i get enjoyment out of, wow, dayz, stalker, minecraft.. i play all that shit.

to read a post saying 'tents are counter to the purpose of the mod'.

what purpose is that? survive? thats the only stated goal i've read. if surviving entails stockpiling loot to save you time IF you manage to die, who cares.

well i'm still reeling over the fact that everyone is playing exactly what they hate, gearing up simulator... hahah thats made my day.

truth be told there just isn't enough tools in the mod currently, you can gear up, you can fix vehicals and you can pvp, thats about the extent of the mod. when you have done 3 of the 3 the only thing left to do is start again or give up for a while.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Phill

[DemonGroover 8836]

I agree wholeheartedly with the OP

It would be nice if everyone were to play in the 'spirit' of the game, but whenever there are exploits people will take the piss and use them.

I honestly dont see the point of playing this game if all you are interested in is server hopping, duping and Alt-F4-ing when things do get interesting.

And the perma-death is a joke. For some players there is no such thing as perma-death, just a 30 minute inconvenience before they are geared up again. I really hope Rocket can implement a system that eventually does punish death for what it should be in a game like DayZ .

[jonahcutter 51]

quite hilarious when you think about it isn't it johan, its all about gearing up, its just like wow, well to be quite honest i'm not ashamed of what i get enjoyment out of, wow, dayz, stalker, minecraft.. i play all that shit.

to read a post saying 'tents are counter to the purpose of the mod'.

what purpose is that? survive? thats the only stated goal i've read. if surviving entails stockpiling loot to save you time IF you manage to die, who cares.

well i'm still reeling over the fact that everyone is playing exactly what they hate, gearing up simulator... hahah thats made my day.

truth be told there just isn't enough tools in the mod currently, you can gear up, you can fix vehicals and you can pvp, thats about the extent of the mod. when you have done 3 of the 3 the only thing left to do is start again or give up for a while.

I enjoyed WoW a lot, in the first year. It was great exploration and the pvp was fun as hell that first year. I loved STALKER with the Redux mod. If you weren't properly prepared before heading into the last couple levels, and managed your resources well, you could find yourself starving to death and facing impassable levels of radiation.

DayZ prides itself on being an "anti-game". Yet it quickly falls into the same gameplay as many other mainstream games.

It is interesting to see how the mind virus of "gearing up" as gameplay, of purple fever, is even carried over into games that pride themselves on thinking outside the box.

As far as tents... tents remove much of the fear of death. They remove the pain of death. For a mod that has stated it wants to be cruelly difficult, this is directly counter to its own intentions. Again, I chalk it up to the way we as gamers are programmed to think. Even devs who are intent on creating an original experience easily fall into thinking very much like mainstream devs: What do we do when players don't like losing their loot when they die? Answer: Tents!

Of course, it's the wrong question to be asking. The devs should be asking: Does this proposed mechanic mitigate the pain of death? If so, why the hell would we want to do that?

When someone complains about losing their loot through death and having to start all over again at zero, I'd think these devs would smile to themselves and say "mission accomplished". Instead, they've decided to hold players' hands and make it easier on them by using the mainstream approach of providing players with a bank.

Tents should wipe as soon as you die. They should not allow you to re-gear after death. Death should mean something.

Edited August 13, 2012 by jonahcutter

[Virfortis 111]

Bear in mind that this is all hypothetical talk, and is thrown in with the core of the argument because some people can't understand a line of thought.

If there is no right way to play DayZ, then obviously there is no wrong way. Yet, we all say hackers are doing it wrong, so there is a wrong way. By logic, there is then a right way. The right way is metagame free, and that much is obvious. Yes we need to push for better radios, it's Alpha, give it time. Why is metagame free my (supposed!) "right" way to play? Because it is the one that sticks closest to Rocket's goals. In earlier posts, he came out and said he wanted DayZ to make players feel and think, yet they don't need to if their buddy can watch corpses and talk on TS. Tents have no problem storing respawn gear for the ghost of the player running back from the graveyard of the shore.

Just a thought: It becomes kinda pointless to put in a system where your character can steal a dead man's clothes and impersonate them (by stealing their username temporarily, more realistic version of what the Spy does) in order to infiltrate them, if they can just ask over TS if they're there or not.

However, random DMers obviously think every other playstyle is wrong, else why would they spam carebear on anyone that isn't looking through CoD-tinted glasses? They get a fantasy advantage, namely the ability to respawn without penalty, and then don't want a fantasy disadvantage in the form of a bandit skin? It's a double standard, trying to point the spotlight away from them so their playstyle remains the easiest.

And THEREIN lies the core of the issue. There is no right or wrong, but there is DEFINITELY the "easiest" way. Metagaming, DMing, DCing, Server Hopping, things of this nature, all make the game easier. It lowers the difficulty standard, and these people aren't looking for a challenge in the first place.

So while there is no right, or wrong, there is definitely an easy or hard. An easy mode in DayZ is counter-productive to DayZ's vision, and of course the people taking this easy mode are going to bitch, moan, ragequit, QQ, and cry tears of hate the moment they have to deal with a few difficulties to curb their exploit of games not requiring feeling/thinking. Let's not forget, when the outside-of-the-map exploit was fixed, these same people flamed rocket for caving in to carebears. Everything they don't like, or would make THEIR game harder, they write off as a carebear feature and move on. Meanwhile, they're playing ArmA2 with a zombie theme.

[heathy87 1]

tents are counter to the idea of single life game types, its true, having them in the game though is necessary, once you have geared up, its only right that to continue the hoarding fetish which becomes a passive trait once you have everything and done everything, that you have some place to put stuff, and no, vehicles aren't the only places you should be able to store things, i guess the only problem is that the knowledge of a previous tent is known by the gamer in a fresh spawn so, there's nothing you can do to stop that apart from deleting them on death, but still, that takes away a potential treasure trove to be found by someone else, i say let them stay, its not really harming anyone any more than say the uncontrollable hacking. it is one of the only methods of stockpiling and well tbh i've been playing since 1.6 and i've not yet bothered to drop a tent anywhere so its not like everyone uses them.

there is no real way of punishing death in a game because noone will play it simple as that. it might be fun the first couple of times but then it gets boring having to deal with some arbitrary system punishing you for failing, when losing hours of game time should be incentive enough to not die. i only log in for brief periods to check out new iterations, the glitches and the amount of hacking has shunned me away currently, although i've not yet ran into a hacker i have my character from 1.7.1.5 i lost my ghillie in 1.7.2.4 and so if i die i've lost probably a week of play time invested purely into one character, that alone makes me not want to put more time into it or run the risk of being killed by non-legitimate ways.

also stalker rocks (currently playing misery mod myself), so does metro, dayz should definitely steal the hazards from those games, such as radiation and chemical spills, the power stations and other areas should be death traps not only from infected but from neglected machinery and other problems. hell they should just outright steal the anomalies and have everyone on the server running for cover randomly twice a day.

Edited August 13, 2012 by Phill

[Virfortis 111]

tents are counter to the idea of single life game types

I think, ultimately, loot is too common. It's not like WoW where there's tiers of loot, a bullet is really a bullet period. In short, everything is "purple" quality, and needs to be treated as such.

Everything needs to be super rare, then maybe tents won't be as big of a problem.

[Kar98 27]

A very good post OP. I've felt that Dayz late game tends to be more Diablo than Dayz. Taking out tents would be an interesting experiment. I'm one of those groups that hordes weapons and I think back questioning why I do it since I'm not going to be using those 5AKMs and 4 M24s. If tents were taken out I don't think I would have too many issues. What I would like to see as a compromise is perhaps a temporary storage location or fixed location where you could raid NWAF, dump stuff in there, then raid elsewhere while having some mates watch the loot. You could then use that loot for trades but they had better be fast due to the temporary nature

[Kar98 27]

I think, ultimately, loot is too common. It's not like WoW where there's tiers of loot, a bullet is really a bullet period. In short, everything is "purple" quality, and needs to be treated as such.

Everything needs to be super rare, then maybe tents won't be as big of a problem.

It won't fix the issue due to duping though. It will make it harder for those starting off and make it more worth the risk to kill everyone on site since everything is rarer

[ZekkCC (DayZ) 51]

Ugh.

[jonahcutter 51]

It won't fix the issue due to duping though. It will make it harder for those starting off and make it more worth the risk to kill everyone on site since everything is rarer

Duping isn't a gameplay issue. It's a bug that (hopefully) will be fixed.

It's not a design choice by the devs though. Tents are.

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

Adventure is usually MISadventure, it is something inflicted to you against your will, rather than something you really wanted to put yourself into.

I had a cousin who visited Cambodia and Burma. You could see the look of death on everyone's eyes. If you were sick, you'd be worse off if you went to a doctor. That was his vacation.

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

I think, ultimately, loot is too common. It's not like WoW where there's tiers of loot, a bullet is really a bullet period. In short, everything is "purple" quality, and needs to be treated as such.

Everything needs to be super rare, then maybe tents won't be as big of a problem.

But that means a noob with a magarov can kill someone with tons of gears and hours on this game. Just aim and shoot.

[jonahcutter 51]

I think, ultimately, loot is too common. It's not like WoW where there's tiers of loot, a bullet is really a bullet period. In short, everything is "purple" quality, and needs to be treated as such.

Everything needs to be super rare, then maybe tents won't be as big of a problem.

A bullet is a bullet true.

But a Winchester is not a DMR.

There are tiers of loot in DayZ.

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

So many beans. I whine about this stuff so much my catchphrase is "get rid of tents and vehicle storage." If you ever wanted to see the true carebear mentality behind DayZ, check out the LayZ's with their item hoarding.

LayZ's think they are tough and want to teach everyone else a survival lesson. But they also need to feel what it's like to be defenseless and I agree that DayZ isn't tough enough for those players.

[insaneturtle 0]

personally i server hop to get the gear (note by this i mean a compass. seriously they are the hardest thing for me to find) i spend days (relative term somtimes i find a quick body to loot or kill some player ghosting me) usually getting back faster (note this doesn't mean i constant server hop it means i just hate the ridiculous grind that getting any high end gear is for anyone without a clan). this doesnt make me a bad player it just makes me a player that for lack of a safety net wants to be able to compete with all the clans and large player groups that allow for a ridiculously short death experience. i still sneak past zeds and players and i still take getting pinned down and murder like a man.

[insaneturtle 0]

A bullet is a bullet true.

But a Winchester is not a DMR.

There are tiers of loot in DayZ.

wow wow wow wow....... a bullet is not a bullet theirs a huge difference between an m107 50 cal bullet and a Markov's terrible tiny bullet (i dont even care enough to find out its size)

[jonahcutter 51]

wow wow wow wow....... a bullet is not a bullet theirs a huge difference between an m107 50 cal bullet and a Markov's terrible tiny bullet (i dont even care enough to find out its size)

I know. I was making the point that there are tiers of loot in DayZ.

Glad we agree. :)

[derrida (DayZ) 18]

I think if your tent(s) destroyed on character death, that would make the game way way better.

Imagine a DayZ where dying actually meant more than having to run 30min to stock up again on endless supplies?

[Strategos (DayZ) 190]

"Duping isn't a gameplay issue. It's a bug that (hopefully) will be fixed."

I believe Rocket has said is can't be fixed in the mod due to issues with the Arma II engine.

"I think if your tent(s) destroyed on character death, that would make the game way way better."

Tents are supposed to disappear 2 days after you die. I don't think that mechanic ever worked.

[bazbake 456]

wow wow wow wow....... a bullet is not a bullet theirs a huge difference between an m107 50 cal bullet and a Markov's terrible tiny bullet (i dont even care enough to find out its size)

You probably should. In other words, a Marakov fires a 9mm bullet. A M107 fires a 13mm bullet. A M1911 fires a 12mm bullet. A shotgun fires an 18mm bullet. It's funny how much damage people think bullets do just because the gun firing them is really, really big.

Flattening bullet damage would allow players to defend themselves from others earlier while flattening the slope of our current king of the hill bullshit. Taking away tents would knock the kings off the hill and kill the hoarding and loot grabbing.

We'd be back to cyclical survival instead of the current plateau of "endgame loot."

Shit, there shouldn't be an endgame. The game should be the game. There should be a lot of other things going on which shape the player (humanity, secret conspiracies, etc) but dying should cripple your performance and knock you back to the bottom of the ladder. Otherwise there will never be room for new players at the top.

If you want to stay on top, you should fight harder. Not farm loot and metagame.

Imagine. The first half hour, you feed yourself. The next couple of hours you get the weapons necessary to defend yourself in urban combat against any opponent who threatens you. The next couple of hours after that, you have all of the weapons necessary for complex tactical combat and can start picking fights with other groups of players. Or help newbies. Or hunt newbies. Or stabilize the zombie threat and start handing out sodas in the red brick house in Gorshino. Who the fuck knows?

You die, you survive again, you arm again, you climb back to the top. Over and over. Some things stay...peoples' respect for you as a player. Their memory of what you did for them when you were last alive. Etc. Other things are gone...your map, your loot, your food, your raw meat.

[ACow 102]

But that means a noob with a magarov can kill someone with tons of gears and hours on this game. Just aim and shoot.

A bullet is a bullet true.

But a Winchester is not a DMR.

There are tiers of loot in DayZ.

Indeed, I think someone with a makarov deserves to kill me if I'm careless enough to let them get close enough to hit me several times with that thing when I've got an AK or a lee enfield and I haven't downed them first. Ever tried to hit someone moving two blocks away with that peashooter :P Think its better than trying to aim with the lee enfield, then use it. If its better in enclosed spaces than the lee enfield/AK, that's a good thing. Opportunity cost and adapting, that's what its all about.

Tangent idea: bulletproof/ballistic vest. Rare. Realistic. Partially deadens the impact from 1-2 low calibre rounds, then its largely useless. Sniper rifle or something bigger still practically goes right through the thing. Bigger armour=slower, laboured awkward movement. But everything should still be pretty realistic as far as I'm concerned. Take a small hit and you might survive where you otherwise didn't, but you've still taken damage/bruised/got broken bones, and the next one will still kill you. Shot to the head still kills/knocks unconscious at the least. Possible in the arma II/III engine?

Edit: the thought of trying to run from proper dangerous zombies in full body armour elicits a few giggles...

Edited August 13, 2012 by ACow

[spliff (DayZ) 24]

But the way I see it, we currently have two games:

DayZ: Zombie apocalypse survivial simulator

and

DayZ: Server hopping, item farming, meet with friends to go people hunting/pubstomping with no consequences/attention paid to the great and unique dayz mechanics.

They just happen to share the same servers.

I am, I admit, putting out the idea that perhaps group 1 would enjoy DayZ more if group 2 weren't there.

I think group 2 would REALLY hate it if group 1 wasn't there.

/hackers aside as group 3.

i think that hits the nail on the head. and i hope when the standalone game arrives things like easy looting on empty servers, then joining full ones or "ghosting" to kill someone who defends himself "too good" will be goners.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

Does anyone know if there is a realistic encumbrance model in the mod?

It doesn't seem too noticable as my character does seem to move slower with a LMG but not appreciably.

AS50 or MK 48 Mod 0 should have you at a near walk for your sprint speed as they weigh a ton compared to an assault rifle.

Bigger loaded pack = slower reaction time and movement speed.

More realism please Rocket.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

Bumped for good discussion.