DayZ: The state of death, and the Great Storage debate

[Udak 104]

I like the idea of character progression, but I think it can't be a multiple hat-situation. That is, you pick flavors on spawn (think medical, mechanical, survival) and then the progression is done within that class; no one who chooses mechanical would be able to perform any medical work beyond a bandage, for example. Your flavor would have a specific character model to aid in identification, and within the flavor would be additional choices that would be made on further progression--think vehicle vs home construction/defense for mechanical, or assault rifles vs sniper rifles for survival. Mutually-exclusive paths, essentially

Further point would be that to progress, you would have to DO things specific to your class. Expect to be killin' zombies/guttin' animals for survival and healing dudes for medical. This prevents the stockpiling (dupes?) of skillbooks to quickly ramp up your ability.

Suddenly, your survival dude doesn't shoot the medic on sight, because he's at 6000 blood and has no way to heal up to 12k because you decided to focus on guns versus animal gutting.

Plus, bandits can still take potshots from the hills on Electro. Everyone wins!

[Brudagon (DayZ) 64]

Look pal, your expectations are set way too high for this mod. I assure you things will change in the standalone, but this is a nonflexible mod of a military sim, Rocket has done his best. However I strongly agree with your feeling that it should be in the standalone.

[Erik (DayZ) 61]

I am really glad that there are still people who actualy care and spend their time trying to improve Dayz. Thank you for the incredible post.

[Shag 90]

I dont like skills. its flawed. what is a snipers special skill? can they magically shoot guns better than mechanics? nah

I do agree with storage being an issue but necessary for deeper gameplay.

I think that storage is already limited by item type, reduce the weapon item type for weapons to 1 or 2.

Stop storage in vehicles, or drastically reduce it.

Have items saved by a player disappear immediately upon death.

Stop duping somehow in new engine.

Profit....

[insitv 305]

I like the idea of character progression, but I think it can't be a multiple hat-situation. That is, you pick flavors on spawn (think medical, mechanical, survival) and then the progression is done within that class; no one who chooses mechanical would be able to perform any medical work beyond a bandage, for example. Your flavor would have a specific character model to aid in identification, and within the flavor would be additional choices that would be made on further progression--think vehicle vs home construction/defense for mechanical, or assault rifles vs sniper rifles for survival. Mutually-exclusive paths, essentially

Further point would be that to progress, you would have to DO things specific to your class. Expect to be killin' zombies/guttin' animals for survival and healing dudes for medical. This prevents the stockpiling (dupes?) of skillbooks to quickly ramp up your ability.

Suddenly, your survival dude doesn't shoot the medic on sight, because he's at 6000 blood and has no way to heal up to 12k because you decided to focus on guns versus animal gutting.

Plus, bandits can still take potshots from the hills on Electro. Everyone wins!

Good in theory, but it would destroy the game for every solo player. Right now you can't trust anybody and forcing players into a specific role would greatly decrease their freedom to do things.

Let's say you need blood and aren't a medic. Just shoot the next animal hunter you see and eat all his stuff. 12.000 blood there you go. Specific roles/classes would only restrict any solo player and favor teams of players.

[Sneakers O'Toole 57]

That is the exact problem we are trying to solve. You are killing people with no fear of death while they do fear it. Why do you think their reasons for fearing death are any different from your reasons for cheating it? They don't care if you kill them because they move 100yds back to the coast, they care because they will lose all their good gear and/or wasted time. Its the same thing, you just use an advantage to get around it because it doesn't suit you.

People say don't get attached to your gear, but I hope that everyone is only saying that because we are in alpha. Your character means absolutely nothing unless you care about kill/days survived counts. Even if DayZ forces you to care about death because you don't want to waste all your gaming time running and/or lose that rare weapon, it is still accomplished its mission IMO. Get attached to your gear, fear death because it means hours of walking to get back to that same point, but don't be a ***** and just avoid the mechanic because you don't like it. If you want a game where you don't have to spend hours getting the best gear to go kill people, I'm sure the community can point you towards a game that is exactly like that. I hate to be that guy, but it definitely sounds like you should go play one of those games.

Bullshit. It takes me 30mins to run to my camp.

If I was PVPing with team8's who can hold the area I died in, then I can respawn near the area I died and get the gear off my dead body in 5mins time. Is that somehow more honourable? NO.

[Mourek 40]

The death is permanent, you just have to start attaching yourself to your character, zombie kill count and murder kill count a little more ;)

[Fear The Amish 40]

The problem with this is the leet loot wasn't a problem before hackers. back before this mod became popular my clan had 1 m16a2 cco sd..... thats right out of 20 people 1. we also had 1 DMR and 3 NVG's between all of us. and WE were considered leet geared because of that. you have to remember so the people that had them were VERY protective of their bodies. 90% of this thread's issues can easily be resolved by fixing the hacking issue because that takes out the influx of the super high tier weapons. also the ammo... you know how hard it is to find a consistent amount of the high end weapon ammo with out the filling out clip issue and hacking?!? it was ridiculous.

[insitv 305]

The problem with this is the leet loot wasn't a problem before hackers. back before this mod became popular my clan had 1 m16a2 cco sd..... thats right out of 20 people 1. we also had 1 DMR and 3 NVG's between all of us. and WE were considered leet geared because of that. you have to remember so the people that had them were VERY protective of their bodies. 90% of this thread's issues can easily be resolved by fixing the hacking issue because that takes out the influx of the super high tier weapons. also the ammo... you know how hard it is to find a consistent amount of the high end weapon ammo with out the filling out clip issue and hacking?!? it was ridiculous.

Of course the majority of the high end loot comes from hackers and/or dupers but consider that now we have over 3.000? servers running! That means MUCH more barracks/crash sites to be looted. Item inflation is only natural because when you die someone else takes your gear, it doesn't get lost.

Only in rare cases people with comparable high end gear kill each other and as a result some loot is lost. But that's the exception.

[The Sad Panda 113]

I read it all, The Sad Panda. Let me point out something you said first...

So you know exactly how death in this game works. What progress in this game is. And what counts as permadeath.

But you just...

I mean...

Oh, God, it's one of those posts...

So it takes 30-60 minutes to grab an AS50, a ghillie suit, three water bottles, a hunting knife, a box of matches, a military flashlight...are you even going to try to take this seriously?

...But you already...like, the first thing you said...

...*sigh*

But...you led with this. Why didn't you just keep talking about this instead of shoving a completely unrelated game design suggestion into the middle of your point?

So why did you spend five paragraphs telling us that this isn't true? I mean, you didn't defend your contradictory point at all, but it would have helped us if you just hadn't written it in the first place and just stuck to the original quote above and then a conclusion: "External storage diminishes the power of the game's "perma-death" mechanics." I mean...why would you even stray from that point?

Oh. So you realize your side of the argument is incredibly weak, so you kept accidentally giving ground to the other side of the argument to the point that you forgot what you were arguing about.

If you can't see the difference between limiting storage capacity and ending PvP, I got nothin' for ya.

Playstyle (n.): def. "shit I like to do."

Got it. You know, you could have trimmed this down to three paragraphs and then moved all of the other game design suggestions to a completely different post because no one who showed up here to debate tents and permadeath was expecting to see your ideas on how to make cool new tents out of scrap metal and the introduction of Skyrim-style RP mechanics.

--P.S. If this post sounds slightly condescending, it's nowhere near as condescending as that original post was. I mean, good Lord.

First Point: If you want to define permanent character progression by measuring it completely by items that can be taken off and discarded at any point in time, then more power to you. Personally, I would like to have something that's actually permanent. Something that makes a character worth holding on to.

Second Point: You're putting words in my mouth, I said "re-arm" not "have everything that I could possibly ever want in the history of everything" Re-arm can mean anything from an Enfield and a Makarov, or an M4 SD with a G17, which is easily in the realm of possibility depending on where you get to respawn at

Third Point: The entire point of the thread is that the two subjects are linked together. Just from having a form of external storage, it lessens the effect of gear progression based characters, BUT having external storage opens up different forms of gameplay options (I'm sorry if it really offends you that much that people are using a sandbox in a different way than you do). Therefore it's in the best interest of the game to facilitate multiple preferences, while still keeping both mechanics in a functioning state. If someone wants to play Cherno Deathmatch 2012, the sandbox should allow it. Not everyone wants to play Cherno Deathmatch 2012 though, so it needs to facilitate more options than that, which is what sandbox games do in the first place. The suggestions that I make throughout the thread are meant to address this, allowing perma-death and storage mechanics to exist in harmony. In my opinion, they're far from unrelated.

Fourth Point: I'm once again, acknowledging that storage mechanics can cause problems with Perma-Death. I haven't denied this a single time, I've simply stated that there are more productive solutions available than the complete removal of external storage. I've never once said that storage isn't a problem, but I have said that despite the problems, the mechanic is worth modifying and saving.

Fifth Point: I don't acknowledge my argument is weak at all. I simply make an observation that in a real survival situation, hoarding isn't a completely uncommon behavior. I make note of why it should be allowed to exist (up to a point) in terms of gameplay. I'm also not sure how I'm giving ground at all on the subject, seeing as how I approach the subject from a mostly neutral standpoint. Acknowledging the merits of a different viewpoint is hardly making a viewpoint weak.

Sixth Point: "Playstyle (n.): def. "shit I like to do." You're a funny guy. Despite your hostile attitude throughout your entire post, this actually made me chuckle. Let me make something clear. I've never been a bandit, I've never been a merchant, I've never been a medic, I've never been involved in large scale organized play, and I've never sat above a major city with a sniper rifle waiting to pick other players off.. But until the day when Rocket pops into the forums and clearly states "Ok, this is a form of play that we're not interested in including in the sandbox", then I will defend players rights to play whatever legitimate (Not hacking =P) playstyle they want.

Seventh point: I made this post extra beefy just for you, since you are probably my biggest fan. I'd sign an autograph for you, but it seems I've run out of ink while writing this reply. Ohh well

[The Sad Panda 113]

Look pal, your expectations are set way too high for this mod. I assure you things will change in the standalone, but this is a nonflexible mod of a military sim, Rocket has done his best. However I strongly agree with your feeling that it should be in the standalone.

I should probably go back to edit the OP at some point, but I never meant to imply that all of these features should be put into the current DayZ (Arma II), but rather something to look at when the game is standalone, and the devs have the freedom to work at the engine level of the game, as opposed to just modding aspects of Arma II

[bazbake 456]

I'd like to see chance removed from the game and 'skill development' introduced as an experiment, e.g. lighting fires, cooking, healing, running stamina, steadiness of aim(this one will be very controversial) are all possible skills that the player can develop, amongst many more. The result of character progression is that players will have to work harder, use more caution and will become more attached to their characters lives.

If you removed chance from the game, people would log onto the server 5 minutes after reboot and raid all of the high value places. It would get ridiculous. And it would ruin a game that is already suffering from server hoppers and hoarders. I consider this a bad idea.

The result of character progression is that people who suck at certain things will get advantages over people who are better at them but have just started. And people who are better at certain things will get even larger advantages over people who are just as good but have just started. If you suck at gunplay, don't worry, eventually the game will make you better at it. Unless, of course, you suck at gunplay and run into someone else who sucks at gunplay but has been around longer than you. Naturally, this person will kill you and now you'll go back to the beginning and gain nothing from your encounter.

And that's the thing. In DayZ, you learn from your mistakes and successes and adapt. In a game with skill progression, you don't have to. In fact, people who encounter you and don't survive will necessarily make no progress in several areas that you, as the winner, will make significant progress. Oh, and you get to keep their loot as well. So the winner doesn't just win, they WIN. And the person who loses doesn't just lose, he LOSES.

In order to keep what you have, you'll naturally work harder. But under a skill progression system, not losing something will now REQUIRE LESS WORK. And that's the paradox of investing in progression that rewards lasting advantages during a life. It becomes easier for you to play the game. And while the consequences for failing feel dearer, the actual dificulty decreases. This is a game-breaker waiting to happen.

Ever heard of stratification? It's a social phenomenon when people with the most resources are rewarded disproportionately than those with the least resources. It's the same system that is currently plaguing the game when it comes to tent and vehicle storage. Basically, people with advantages use those advantages to succeed such that, when someone who is actually their competitive equal but lacks those seemingly arbitrary advantages competes, they are dominated no matter how smart, fast, or cunning they are.

This is actually a huge problem in the real world, but if you want to see a microcosm of this system, look at Dayz's gear, loot, and storage system.

Reality check. For example, a guy with gunfighting skills goes up against a newb with none. He wins the fight and continues. Whatever progress that newb made is lost. Now gunfighter has better skills than before. Same newb fights gunfighter, gunfighter wins again...except more easily than last time. And so on. And so on. Eventually the gunfighter who survives becomes the best gunfighter in the entire world. And people who are actually better at FPS games or smarter or more cunning ambushers fall before the might of the gunfighter.

This works in a single-player game like Skyrim because you don't have to deal with other people and the difficulty of the game curves up subtly to keep up with you. But if you had to play against other people in Skyrim, what would happen? They wouldn't magically become stronger because the game needs more competition. They would just die. And in a game where all of those skills disappear, you would become a god and they would be ants.

These things sound like good ideas because most people think no one has ever thought of their new idea before. But these ideas have been implemented in other games and it's easy to see where they've failed horribly. To prolong the life span of DayZ, the game doesn't need a constant progression toward infinite power. It's not a MMORPG, it's an online MMOFPS. What it needs is to have its balance issues resolved with creative new options. It needs to maintain a constant threat at all levels, and this means the bullet damage needs to be flattened and the intro level to PvP needs to be lowered with the threat of zombies being increased. Metagaming has to be subverted, so we need to limit the efficacy of external storage while randomizing loot spawns even further. And the environment needs more random stuff for people to play with and interactivity so that logging onto the server is always an opportunity for something interesting and incredibly risky to happen.

High risk, high reward, flattened difficulty curve, and the removal of power players exploiting the game's systems.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

What it needs is to have its balance issues resolved with creative new options. It needs to maintain a constant threat at all levels, and this means the bullet damage needs to be flattened and the intro level to PvP needs to be lowered with the threat of zombies being increased. Metagaming has to be subverted, so we need to limit the efficacy of external storage while randomizing loot spawns even further. And the environment needs more random stuff for people to play with and interactivity so that logging onto the server is always an opportunity for something interesting and incredibly risky to happen.

So basically like DayZ except incredibly boring and watered-down?

Constant threat levels? So much of the atmosphere of this game relies precisely on variable levels of threat depending on where you are, who you're with, how recently you spawned and what equipment you have.

Even out bullet damage?

No storage?

*sigh*

Edited August 13, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Anyway, +1 for new storage containers, but I don't know why it has to be tied to an incredibly convoluted class system.

Just give us rare materials, construction tools and let us build shit.

Let players figure out what they want to do in the game, instead of their "class" telling them what they're good at.

[insitv 305]

BazBake you get my beans for that post but social stratification is already plagueing the game. People with vehicles getting all the crash sites after server restarts, people with high end gear able to defend important loot locations better than less equipped groups and the list goes on.

Skill progression like i suggested earlier in this thread would help newcomers to close this gap. Of course it could divide the different "social classes" in this game even more but to prevent that you set a maximum level of mastery if you will call it that. With time you catch up. It's the same with items, with time you get more loot and catch up to the already geared up people. You just have to be careful.

Edited August 14, 2012 by insitv

[The Sad Panda 113]

2) Skills/Abilities

The way you propose it, or let me say, you have in mind: No, please no!

My idea would be that every man and woman could do blood transfusions, give morphine, repair vehicles etc. It stays the same. Why?

Learning all this new stuff would (in my opinion) alienate quite a few people who are new to the game or new to the genre. I mean, first and foremost, DayZ is a shooter. Maybe a very realistic one (more so than other shooters i've experienced) and a very difficult one at first. But it still is a shooter. I wouldn't want to mix in RP mechanics (just yet).

Where i could see a compromise: The more often you give someone a blood transfusion, the better you get at it. Let's say if you start a new character, you will restore 6000 blood per transfusion. You can maximize your output by doing it very often and reach the highest level of 12.000 blood per transfusion we have right now. Same with other components that are currently in the game. A very good mechanic, who's repaired many vehicles, will need less time and resources to repair a vehicle. The list goes on but the idea is the same.

tl;dr: Give everyone the same abilities but let them improve. The more often you do something, the better you get at it and the less resources you'll require in the future.

I had missed this earlier, but I really like this point at least for the survival basics, like medicine, cooking, and hunting. I'm not completely sold on being able to repair a vehicle right off the bat though, perhaps it would require tinkering with smaller devices first

[insitv 305]

As vehicles are a luxury item already i could accept that B)

[ixtilion 39]

I stoped reading because OP takes readers for idiots.

If you want to make 3k words long posts, don't make them boring+judging.

Dude, go to school and learn to read.

[The Sad Panda 113]

@ BazBake

Unless I've horribly misunderstood someone's post in this thread, I don't think anyone is asking for skills that enhance or modify your performance in a firefight, it's things like the application of medicine, preparing of food, construction of shelters, upkeep of vehicles, etc. A system that gives an edge during an actual firefight would be fundamentally un-DayZ. I don't think anyone is actually asking for + gun damage or + damage resistance skills,

Now I do realize in the OP I stated that

"Skills could even go so far as affecting combat, and could serve to negate stockpiled weapons in a way, but more on that in the next section. Anyway, with a skill system in mind, take a moment to reflect on what it would add to the depth of the game. Post your ideas, criticize it, tell me I’m crazy – post your thoughts and add to the discussion"

and after re-reading it, with your previous post in mind, I realize that I worded that passage very poorly. What I was alluding to was that guns could degrade over time, and require that their owner perform maintenance on them. Never in a million years did I mean to imply that someone would be able to get something like a +10 aim stat that would make their bullets go straighter.or some nonsense like that.

The skills that I suggest are purely to add depth to already existing survival mechanics, not to make player X better than player Y in a firefight, because player X has 300 confirmed kills, whereas player Y just spawned on the beach. Will be editing that passage to reflect that

Edited August 14, 2012 by The Sad Panda

[syncmaster (DayZ) 63]

Bullshit. It takes me 30mins to run to my camp.

If I was PVPing with team8's who can hold the area I died in, then I can respawn near the area I died and get the gear off my dead body in 5mins time. Is that somehow more honourable? NO.

I have no idea what your point is exactly. Especially I was only replying to this post by you.

I got all the weapons I wanted and saved them in a tent.

When I die i mess about with all the noobs in the cities dying some more times for fun, and then run back to my tent to gear up.

I only want to play this game with decent equipment. I am not going to spend 30 hours to re-gear everytime I die. I'm all for 'realism' but it's a fucking video game, and I have only a certain amount of time for it.

Thanks for your support I guess.. maybe??? You prove our point perfectly, people like you will always exist and even when mechanics are put in place to stop you, there will always be that sense of entitlement that you are special and the rules don't apply. I am just saying people should not play a game that involves spending time gearing up if you do not want to play a game that involves spending time gearing up. Does that make sense? Go play a game where you start with the best gear if that's what you want, there are 8,312,403,104 of them out there. Let us enjoy the 1 game that isn't just another FPS.

[Sneakers O'Toole 57]

What is your point?

Forget about storage. I can start (5mins) with the best gear if i have some teammates. To guard my dead body. That is what happens in pvp engagements.

It's as simple as that. If you enjoy running around with a makarov for a week then more power to u. My time is rather more important to me than that.

[jonahcutter 51]

You should be a sad panda, because no one is going to read that long ass post. Very sad indeed.

Seriously, its a fucking video game. Who has that much time or that much to say about it?

Lol I'm trying to figure out what's worse. The length of the post, or the condescending attitude in the post.

p.s. Tents are a highly carebear, mainstream-mmo mechanic in a game that promotes itself as innovative, cruel and difficult.

Edited August 14, 2012 by jonahcutter

[FoxHoundSnake 0]

@ OP:

Very well thought out post and this is exactly the way I was hoping the standalone will go. I'll be directing some friends here to check this out as well, since we've discussed similar ideas.

I also rather liked the tone of it too...make me chuckle a bit :)

[Killlg 5]

I completely disagree with the idea of character skills and a progression of these skills based on how often you perform activites within that skillset. I disagree with this because your actions in DayZ determine who/what your character is, everyone should be able to do everything perfectly well. The difference between every player should always be what they hold in their inventory, that's the true tale of our characters.

I like your idea of being able to use a splint to enable walking with a broken leg and even your idea of weapons breaking down and requiring maintenance. I do not think gun maintenance should be a progressable skill within DayZ. Every character should be able to repair guns equally well, it should depend on the parts you've collected, stored, and scaveneged. I believe this would add depth to DayZ in the sense that certain guns could break down more slowly while others may degrade quicker. Pistols, melee weapons, crossbows might be easier to repair than more advanced weapons. Maybe scopes and lenses could crack?

As for your storage arguement, I feel it's weak. I'm under the impression that when I place a tent and put items in it that they may as well already be gone. Anyone could find that tent, steal from it, destroy it. Who's to say my next character doesn't find that tent? And I do mean my new character, maybe you don't take those days survived as seriously as others do but I can see them one day being represented by your total play time and every death of mine is tragic and permenant. In order to retrieve something from a tent or even my own rotting corpse I have to first make it there alive, secondly my items have to still be there for me to retrieve, and thirdly I have to place them there in the first place. While I can agree with lowering the inventory count on vehicles and tents, and more importantly lowering the weapon storage slots would help. But destorying the items I put there, just why? Any moment I'm not sitting next to that tent is a moment another player has to steal from it without my knowledge. With duplicating and other such exploits removed from the game I don't see why I shouldn't be able to store items permenantly.

If storage as it exists now was removed or altered I can't say I could give two flying shits, I haven't gotten around to storing myself some start-up camps but I was planning on it. Death is practically inevitable in DayZ and feel I should be able to prepare myself for it. Who's to say my current character didn't have a kid and tell him the location of the tent with awsome gear in it with his dying breath, or at anytime for that matter? DayZ doesn't need too many new mechanics, it needs more things, giving me items to collect and things to build in the world permenantly. When I drop a tent and put something in it I'm not just thinking about stopping by later and picking my stuff back up whether I've died or not, I'm also thinking about those who might stumble upon it. I'm putting something in the world that won't go away until someone destroys it or takes it from me and then it continues to exist with or without me and that's why building will be so intriguing in DayZ.

Just imagine stumbling upon an abandoned camp, a bunch of tents that have been looted several times over only leaving the most undesireable items and maybe a few gems that couldn't be carried off. Duping sucks, yeah, and what you suggest would negate it a bit, but duping is a bug and one that will be squashed before DayZ is fully released. The same goes for hacking. This storage suggestion seems like a silly attempt to stop part of these issues which will be resolved without the need for drastic changes in the games mechanics.

[Kigre 2]

Good read, i see your points. Specially on the skillset of players. Some are doctors, some a mechanics, some are soldiers, some are survivalists, some are strong, (Carry weight) and some are a little weaker and have faster movement. Things like these i like.

Dont mind the people that dont bother to read a single page of words. That in itself is a statement.

Peace.