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

[thepcv 32]

How can anyone hate this topic? The effort required, and knowledge of basic game mechanics itself, is worth commending the effort. That being said though I disagree with your ideal of "skill progression" for lack of a better term. While I get the concept, which is a GREAT one, I definitely don't dig the implementation. It stray's too far off, if you go deep with it, from the military-sim feel with zombies thrown in. Which is what this is, and is what makes it successful. However, as you spoke, a compromise is definitely in order. It could be something as simple as: "do X thing Y amount of times to achieve Z" or "in order to achieve Z you must achieve X via X over time/Y". A shallow "skill" system of sorts. But even the term skill system makes me cringe when it comes to this mod/arma in general. This game should try to distance itself from an RPG as best as possible, to keep it successful. The addition of humanity was a great step forward and is more akin to what I am trying to talk about. Using your idea of gun lockers and tents in conjunction with numbers is where I'll jump off on my own.

What if, like humanity, we used numbers to calculate what we can and cannot do? It would keep a "skill system" to a minimum, and very shallow, but still provide many of the incentives of which you are talking about. It could even add to the idea of perma-death. What if once you had so many items on you (kept track of via a numerical tally) you were able to deploy a tent. Then if you had X amount of items in said tent (also kept track of numerically) you could deploy the gun locker. So on, and so forth. A very simple idea, not fleshed out in the slightest, but a hell of a lot easier to implement and fairly neutral to both ends of the spectrum.

In retrospect this could even be applied medical supplies. Once you've used X medical supply Y times, you can then "upgrade" and start using Z medical supply. For example: Painkillers 5 times unlocks epi-pen, that 5 times unlocks antibiotics, that 5 times unlocks morphine injector, that 5 times unlocks blood bag. etc. Applying this to medical supplies would stress the importance of a single life, and promote a bit of smarter playing on the gung-ho murderers play-style.

I've probably convoluted my idea with too many commas and run-ons, but I hope someone gets the gist. I think a simple system like this would be much easier to implement without breaking anything that is already in place. But even with what i've listed, which in theory works, can still create a bad sense of attachment. That sense of attachment could drastically, DRASTICALLY, change what makes this game so widely popular. Which is bad.

[smallhil 26]

Just love reading discussions like this.

My idea about storage is that the last person who saves a tent/vehicle is the "owner" of it. If the "owner" dies his tents/vehicles, with everything in it, will despawn after a certain amount of time (maybe the moment when the body despawns). So anybody has an opportunity the become the new "owner" by saving the tent/vehicle just as you can loot a dead body. Groups can save the stuff their dead buddy, playing in a group gives you an advantage just as IRL.

I don't like the idea of skillsets, especially gunskills if you're good at handling the controls then you're good at it.

What possibly could work is the more times you do things the faster you do them. Things like blood transfusions and engine repairs should take far more time. Ofc any progress of repairing/transfusing or whatever will be saved when you interrupt an action and you won't get locked in an animation. Imagine your car breaks down in a zombie infested town and an repair would take 10 min.The ability the do those things real fast (lets say 30 sec) could be a real advantage then. (The numbers are arbitrary).

Just thinking up loud.

[bazbake 456]

Inflation. I'm going to discuss this in a new thread.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

Just love reading discussions like this.

My idea about storage is that the last person who saves a tent/vehicle is the "owner" of it. If the "owner" dies his tents/vehicles, with everything in it, will despawn after a certain amount of time (maybe the moment when the body despawns). So anybody has an opportunity the become the new "owner" by saving the tent/vehicle just as you can loot a dead body. Groups can save the stuff their dead buddy, playing in a group gives you an advantage just as IRL.

I don't like the idea of skillsets, especially gunskills if you're good at handling the controls then you're good at it.

What possibly could work is the more times you do things the faster you do them. Things like blood transfusions and engine repairs should take far more time. Ofc any progress of repairing/transfusing or whatever will be saved when you interrupt an action and you won't get locked in an animation. Imagine your car breaks down in a zombie infested town and an repair would take 10 min.The ability the do those things real fast (lets say 30 sec) could be a real advantage then. (The numbers are arbitrary).

Just thinking up loud.

Agree with this as a form of skill progression. When a character starts out he/she shouldn't have a hope in hell of just automatically being able to assemble a heli main rotor assembly. Given time and the successful repetition of similar tasks, said character should be able to at least attempt this operation.

I guess what I'm in favour of is a sort of modified "Morrowind" type of skill progression where your character can attempt anything but the chances of being successful at it increase with repetition of the same tasks. Hell, I think you should have a better chance to damage a vehicle with a new character than actually repair it.

The same idea can be applied to any of the current interactive tasks in the mod and others I would like to see added for standalone. Hunting, medical, mechanical, weapons maintenance, construction, etc.

OP I think you have some good ideas and would agree that storage of some sort needs to stay in some form but as it is tents(duping) just flat out break the mod. Remove until fixed for a better experience.