Reduce the effectiveness of out of game knowledge

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

Gamers today are systematically dissecting games to exploit every little flaws in the game mechanics, so here are a few suggestions to greatly reduce the exploitation and sharing of those informations.

• Loot points cycling: When a place like the NW airfield is being looted constantly, it should simply stop dropping anything for several days and it's "spawning potential" should be redirected to less used loot points. Relocationg the content of a loot point manually shouldnt affect it's cycling.
  
• Loot chances: these should self adjust based on the percentage of guns in the game world (tents + inventories) a rare gun becoming too precious should eventually drop to zero in the loot table until it's presence in the game lower, this also allow the devs to tweak the game dynamically. Want to make survivors more hungry? lower the target percentage of food cans in the world.
  
• item breakage: Weapons should break, NVG and flashlight batteries should eventually die, i don't care if it's unrealistic, it's required in order to force the loot to cycle. There shouldn't be any way to repair the weapons either so they will all eventually need replacement. Beside the tools, there shouldn't be any advantage that remain permanent (until death) once aquired
  
• Vehicle spawn: Vehicle spawn should be COMPLETELY random. Anywhere near a road with no obstruction.
  
• Server decoration: The road blocks, barricades and the like should have a 50%50 chance to not spawn, this will not create a new map but will change details around and keep some freshness.
  
• Zombie spawning: ZOmbies shouldn't "just" spawn around loot, the dayZ team can collect where players spend most of their looting time. Places that are heavily visited would be swarming with zombies, while less visited places would hardly spawn any when a player arrive.
  

Edited August 11, 2012 by Lady Kyrah

[Teiwaz 45]

Gamers today are systematically dissecting games to exploit every little flaws in the game mechanics, so here are a few suggestions to greatly reduce the exploitation and sharing of those informations.

• Loot points cycling: When a place like the NW airfield is being looted constantly, it should simply stop dropping anything for several days and it's "spawning potential" should be redirected to less used loot points. Relocationg the content of a loot point manually shouldnt affect it's cycling.
  
• Loot chances: these should self adjust based on the percentage of guns in the game world (tents + inventories) a rare gun becoming too precious should eventually drop to zero in the loot table until it's presence in the game lower, this also allow the devs to tweak the game dynamically. Want to make survivors more hungry? lower the target percentage of food cans in the world.
  
• item breakage: Weapons should break, NVG and flashlight batteries should eventually die, i don't care if it's unrealistic, it's required in order to force the loot to cycle. There shouldn't be any way to repair the weapons either so they will all eventually need replacement. Beside the tools, there shouldn't be any advantage that remain permanent (until death) once aquired
  

Those are espacially good ideas IMO, but I don't know if something's possible by modding (kinda doubt that).

Edited August 11, 2012 by Teiwaz

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

My personal vision is that if you are going to build a system where loot spawn infinitely (which is necessary to cope with the transient nature of the playerbase) You need to design your system so it is eventually going to "eat back" everything it gave to the players.

Think about it, would it not make the game so much better if there was no way for the players to create "habits" in the system?

Zombies are atracted by human activity, so the more players spend time in a zone, the more zombie infested it would become, and as they avoid this zone, the concentration would start to change.

[Dalegor Dobrutro 22]

I agree with topic. Today game in DayZ with guides and loot maps give very easy advance. If total rookie who dont check earlier this things have very interesting challange game with exploring, and if someone use website tips he just in 5 minutes do all he need to do and he have nothing more work. So from boring people start shooting rookies on beach.

Edited August 12, 2012 by Dalegor Dobrutro

[generationvii 6]

I'm pretty sure Rocket has thought about this already (at least i hope so) and some of these ideas have been brought up on the suggestion board before.

I especially like the batteries and item wear idea, not only would this affect item hoarding but it'd also create another

endgame objective. Ofcourse the vehicle thing is a must for the future since the way it is now just screams "gotta hoard 'em all"

Edited August 12, 2012 by GenerationVII

[Frozen (DayZ) 144]

• Zombie spawning: ZOmbies shouldn't "just" spawn around loot, the dayZ team can collect where players spend most of their looting time. Places that are heavily visited would be swarming with zombies, while less visited places would hardly spawn any when a player arrive.
  

and we will end up with free to loot NE airfield. and cherno and elektro will swarm with infected. i like that )

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

and we will end up with free to loot NE airfield. and cherno and elektro will swarm with infected. i like that )

It's also very likely the airfield won't be worth checking out considering how farmed it is :D

But this wouldn't be permanent, as players adapt to the changes, so will the game adapt to the player's reactions. A bit like a dog chasing it's own tail.

[Frozen (DayZ) 144]

It's also very likely the airfield won't be worth checking out considering how farmed it is :D

But this wouldn't be permanent, as players adapt to the changes, so will the game adapt to the player's reactions. A bit like a dog chasing it's own tail.

are you sure that i`ve read NE? :D

[Carebear Baddie 47]

I like most of these ideas. I have concerns about a couple of them though:

Second bullet point: How would this be achieved with the ability to server hop? Inventories are constantly going from server to server along with the players.

Fifth bullet point (small objection): If these road blocks are permanent to a given server, some server admins may complain about the amount of roadblocks etc on their server. If not, wouldn't it be possible for someone who logged out to find themselves spawned inside the roadblock (or whatever building) upon server reset?

Oh, and beans to you!

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

I like most of these ideas. I have concerns about a couple of them though:

Second bullet point: How would this be achieved with the ability to server hop? Inventories are constantly going from server to server along with the players.

Fifth bullet point (small objection): If these road blocks are permanent to a given server, some server admins may complain about the amount of roadblocks etc on their server. If not, wouldn't it be possible for someone who logged out to find themselves spawned inside the roadblock (or whatever building) upon server reset?

Oh, and beans to you!

2. It would be adjusted not per server, but globally. The hive server know what everyone and every tents contains equipment wise, "all" it has to do is to regularly "update" the loot tables the servers are using.

5. I was not thinking about having them permanent, more like shuffling every server reboot, this is just an idea for "easy" map alteration from server to server. And yes it could lead to spawning problems.