Storage and Loot Inflation: Not a Problem, a Sleeping Crisis in Game Design

[bazbake 456]

One big issue with tents and vehicle storage being indefinite is the inevitable inflation that will occur and I think it's about time we get down to the nitty gritty.

When you find an item, that item stays in the world until it is removed. If someone takes that item from you, they haven't removed that item from the world. It remains. However, if they have a tent, they can now store that item even if they have absolutely no use for it.

But you now have to find a new item. You could track down his tent, maintaining the same number of items in the world. Or you could go back out and find something new. In the case of the latter, the act of taking your loot has actually created another piece of loot to fill the void. Every time you enter a loot spawn, you create new items in the world. I believe that these items will eventually disappear if left unattended, but in the meantime the only way to stop this is for you to get the loot you want.

This is different than "procuring" an item. Loot that never existed magically appears when you go looking and slowly disappears or is wiped on a server restart.

Of course, you don't want to have to start over from the beginning, so if you find a tent you pitch it and fill it with things you will eventually need. Not now. Not next time. But maybe the next five times you die. But here's the catch. The guy with the tent who stole your loot is doing the same thing. And unlike the loot in loot spawns and on server restarts, they never go away. You're both creating mountains of loot out of thin air.

So now you're running around spawning new loot and storing it in your tent. Over and over again. And the other player is stealing other peoples' loot and storing it in a tent. Over and over again. Maybe he's even stealing from your tent, forcing you to go out and search for more loot. Meanwhile, he's just storing this loot in one of many tents around the server.

You will never run out of loot. Because the loot you have is just ones and zeros. And there is no such thing as scarcity because the loot you have was created by an algorithm.

And if you do hit scarcity, what do you do? Server hop, naturally. So not only are you filling your original server with loot, you're filling new servers with loot and moving valuable loot to a server that otherwise wouldn't spawn it. And since you're tired of that guy stealing your loot on the original server, you make new caches around the map jumping from server to server shoving in newly created loot as you go by like a crazed ground squirrel.

Eventually, tents full of loot become very common. And I'm not talking tents full of common loot, I'm talking tents full of useful loot since that is the loot most likely to be saved.

You see, in an MMO like WoW, they can dial down loot spawn percentages. They can prevent server hopping. They can restrict your number of bank slots. They can prevent you leaping to another server. They can control the conditions under which loot spawns with bosses. They can make loot "untradeable" so that once you're done with it no one else can use it. They can limit what level you get access to loot. They can even sell you loot that makes previous loot obsolete once you reach a certain level. They have an incredible number of economic checks and balances in place to prevent something like this happening and even then they often fail.

Right now what we're experiencing is loot inflation. And as much as people want to blame it on dupers and scripters, I'm kind of glad they're doing this. Because this is what was going to happen eventually no matter what. They are fast-forwarding us into a situation it would have taken a population of 2,000,000 players and an extra four or five months of game time to accomplish.

But here we are. This is the system of loot and economics we are destined for. This is what happens when you can farm loot on multiple servers, store as much loot as you want in as many tents as you want, and have no limit to the amount of equipment you can own at any one time.

Now, I hear some possible solutions already and I haven't even finished typing.

"Just take away the ability to use other peoples' tents."

Well, if you do that then what you end up with is slower inflation in exchange for power-gaming. Players will just farm loot anyway and then never lose it. You'll still be able to take loot off of players' corpses and store it in your own tent. The inflation is still going to occur as players are motivated to loot harder and faster and resort to server-hopping to do so. And then their deaths will be inconsequential, as they currently are, and the loot they lose will still be on the servers and never go away.

"Wait, what if we just make it impossible to loot other players?"

Then...all murder just becomes killing for fun and PvP disappears. This would partly check inflation if combined with the removal of the ability to loot other peoples' tents, but then again you now have a system where survival is just living long enough to put stuff in your tent and then we have the exact same situation as the proposal above with a little less loot.

"What if tents disappear on death?"

This is one proposal I kind of agree with, but I'm not going to lie and say it's not easily exploitable or that it won't fail in the first couple of weeks.

1. Put tent on a server other than the one where you risk dying.
   
2. Have one player store everyone's loot and then log off/create a player just to store peoples' loot.
   

"What if you can give certain people permission to use the tent?"

See the first solution. This one should be obvious.

-----------------------------------

I'm going to come out and say it. Hoarding breaks the game, not just because it gives players the ability to survive multiple deaths without slowing down but because it encourages an economy of loot inflation in which everyone has quick and easy access to everything they need within 15 minutes.

And don't pretend that this isn't true. People come on the boards for advice in how to do this and get dozens of responses. When people complain about the rarity of loot, you get a half dozen people telling you that the only intelligent way to get loot in this game is to spend fifteen minutes on a high-population server hunting down loot. And they do this without any sense of irony at the revelation.

Seriously, hoarders and power-gamers (I don't use this as a synonym for hardcore gamers, I use this as a synonym for munchkins who break game systems by researching code, compiling data tables on loot, and then using metagaming exploits in order to maximize their performance in the absence of perseverance and trial-and-error) are breaking your game, Rocket.

The only caveat is that hackers are breaking the game even worse and as someone who plays without a parachute/training wheels (oh, I'll most definitely steal from your cache, I just won't horde the crap I steal from it and have only taken what I needed), I know exactly how shitty it is to work hard and then have a hacker ruin everything for you. I've been there. Repeatedly. But I also know exactly how this ends and it's with shitty loot calculations and an endless September of PvPers exploiting the hell out of the game.

There are a lot of solutions to this dilemma, of course, but the two biggest ways this game is going to break is 1) hackers and 2) persistent storage. I can't tell you which one to address first since the latter seems to be a partial solution to the former for people who just can't handle the stress of being outright abused. But I can tell you that both need to be ditched for this game to stay on track.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

Without gear sinks, inflation runs rampant. How many players have you run across with this combo recently? AS50, M4A1 SD, ghillie. Rarest of the rare is now common place.

Broken mechanics = broken gear economy = broken gameplay.

+1 for removal of tents and a complete character/gear wipe on next build.

Then when Rocket introduces new features he can have a clean slate to test said features with.

The first rule of DayZ is: you do not talk about DayZ....

No wait... don't get attached to your gear.

Edited August 14, 2012 by AryanBoogeyman

[I2ejected 25]

Tents aren't the problem, it's the script kiddies and exploiters. People who don't use script or exploit the game usually have okay gear for themselves in their tents so they can kind of gear-up for a life or two. People who dupe have enough military grade weaponry to start up WWIII and be set for the rest of their gaming experience. While script kiddies spawn stuff in tents & vehicles and leave them there for their friends, themselves, and others which just ruins the whole gear up and survive aspect of the game.

So no persistent storage doesn't need to be removed it needs to be fixed. All I have to say is hopefully in the standalone of DayZ they fix duping and hacking then this game will be fine.

As for a current fix lower the amount of storage in vehicles & tents also lower the spawn rate of tents and higher grade weaponry.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

Tents aren't the problem, it's the script kiddies and exploiters. People who don't use script or exploit the game usually have okay gear for themselves in their tents so they can kind of gear-up for a life or two. People who dupe have enough military grade weaponry to start up WWIII and be set for the rest of their gaming experience. While script kiddies spawn stuff in tents & vehicles and leave them there for their friends, themselves, and others which just ruins the whole gear up and survive aspect of the game.

So no persistent storage doesn't need to be removed it needs to be fixed. All I have to say is hopefully in the standalone of DayZ they fix duping and hacking then this game will be fine.

As for a current fix lower the amount of storage in vehicles & tents also lower the spawn rate of tents and higher grade weaponry.

I have to respectfully disagree.

Tents are the problem because they are the mechanic that enables duping/ server hopping/gear hoarding that leads to infinite ammo, infinite guns, infiite supplies. Without a working mechanic we are better off with no storage mechanic. Maybe then we will have a survival game instead of DubstepSelloutLensFlare Zombies4...

( :D )

Edit: Hacking is insanely bad and a cancer to this game/mod.

Edited August 14, 2012 by AryanBoogeyman

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Step one fix storage/bugs that allow duping of items. IE tents/vehicles save automatically on server restart, this eliminates the easiest way of duping gear.

Step two: Real scarcity, this is accomplished by fixing spawn rates to possession rates. If this isn't enabled people will always be able to farm equipment and nothing will ever be rare, only require you to farm away for hours. If a dmr exhists in only .09% of items it should spawn at that rate until it is possessed at that rate, ie in a tent/vehicle/inventory. Once it reaches that rate it does not spawn again, the hive tracks all of the items on your person and tents/vehicles are on the sever so sync these rates and you have the possesion rate. In standalone this would be easier as Rocket as inidicated the end goal is EVE type servers, so they will have all of the data.

[Patient Zer0 39]

Before the ridiculous stores of spare loot can be addressed, the means by which they were acquired need to be addressed first.

The various duping methods, script creation and server hopping make it far, far easier to get the so-called "rare" items in the first place. If those items were appropriately rare, there wouldn't be enough of them to allow the luxury of storage. Anyone who found them would put them into use immediately.

My sense of the intended way of things is that someone might have a pair of NVGs after a few days, or a sniper rifle, or a ghille suit. Not all three.

While a complete hive wipe needs to happen in a bad way, clearing all characters and removing all tents and vehicles from all servers, without addressing the other issues first we'd just be in the same situation in a couple of months again. Hoarding is the best way to take all of the drama and tension out of the game, but people will continue to do it as long as the activity is more gratifying than some other activity in the game.

At the moment, there's really nothing else to do except wander the countryside looking for loot and vehicles. It's natural that people will want to hold on to the things they find - even if they never actually use them. The number of vehicles hidden away in some dark corner of the forest which are never actually driven is staggering. People find them and, recognizing the scarcity, stash them away for fear of losing them. This negates the whole purpose of vehicles, and at the same time denies them to the people who actually would put them to use, break them, blow them up and put them back into circulation at the next server reboot.

Implementing a punishment for blatant server hopping (such as spawning the hopper back on the coast after x+3 server joins within 15 minutes) is a solid way to make server hopping both risky and not worth the time it takes to hoof it all the way back to the NWAF - this alone dramatically cuts down how much "rare" loot a person can turn up in a night and encourages them to maybe spend their time doing something else.

Introducing a way by which gear is actually removed from the server is also crucial. Whether it's some form of 'durability' which eventually makes items useless through use, or a simpler mechanic that merely deletes items randomly from a player's corpse on death, every faucet needs a corresponding drain or the sink overflows.

We're drowning in loot.

[Hetstaine 10852]

Sometimes you get these strange players who do not (couldnt be fucked and why bother anyway) server hop and also do not pitch tents. But still , because we find tents we are running with a dmr and m107. Threw the as50 because my partner likes her winnie :) It all comes down to how you like to play the game really. Clearly most like to have the fully armed top of the range sniper ghillie combo, we run in survivor clothes as we dont like the ghillie look at all..yep..full weirdos.

I expect the whole duping mess and respawn rates of high tier gear plus hopefully to an extent server hopping will be much better adressed in the stand alone. Not holding my breath for many fixes in this version. A full wipe is only go degear the current mess for what..a couple of hours max ? Not really going to fix anything.

[MastaOfDisasta 30]

The loot inflation from duping and hacking far exceed that of the simple tent mechanic.

[MasterSith 19]

Even with the duping, scripting and hacking fixed 100% we will still have this issue because the only item sink is what human players don't want or can't carry. The best items will be picked off of dead bodies 95% of the time and so the top items remain in circulation. Skins obviously do not have this problem (once duping is fixed).

The only true fix as I see it is to implement an EVE style item destruction on death. This would give the killer/looter some of the loot that the killed had but not all of it. This system could be tweaked to keep rare items rare and common items common. It could also consevibly reduce KOS tendencies while increasing the natural conflict points (military spawns) since gearing through PVP would not be as predictable.

On a side note I believe that heli spawns should also be controlled by the hive and not the server since a server on a 6h restart schedule will spawn in 4x as much heli loot as a server on a 24h restart schedule.

Anyway, there's my 2 beans.

Edited August 14, 2012 by MasterSith

[bazbake 456]

@xXI Mr Two IXx

Real scarcity, this is accomplished by fixing spawn rates to possession rates.

For a second there you had my beans. Then I realized this would just lead to artificial scarcity. In the same way that diamonds are highly valued because of monopolies and marketing.

I can already see the server admins logging on right after a scheduled restart, looting NWAF, and then logging off after stockpiling that loot. And the entire HIVE being forced to deal with their shenanigans instead of just one server.

Edited August 14, 2012 by BazBake

[tarin4med@gmail.com 10]

First let's say duping and scripting are gone from the game.

Players A and B do what you say and hoard eq.

Player C (that would be me) comes along in my nightly camp hunts and finds their camps. I then proceed to empty their tents in a tree and save their empty tents.

As I'm leaving I see player B coming to drop off some stuff so I kill him and hide the body.

I see no issue here.

The problem right now is duping and scripts.

[Heiduk 265]

@xXI Mr Two IXx

Real scarcity, this is accomplished by fixing spawn rates to possession rates.

For a second there you had my beans. Then I realized this would just lead to artificial scarcity. In the same way that diamonds are highly valued because of monopolies and marketing.

I can already see the server admins logging on right after a scheduled restart, looting NWAF, and then logging off after stockpiling that loot. And the entire HIVE being forced to deal with their shenanigans instead of just one server.

How is a cap on possession rates any more artificial than specifying a spawn rate? If you don't want item inflation you either need to remove items at the same rate they are being added or you need to cap the total number in circulation. Anything else will just change the rate at which inflation or deflation occurs.

Capping the total number, based on player population, is probably technically easier and largely invisible to players. When there are to many NVGs in circulation, players just stop finding them in spawns. Their gear doesn't break or disappear into a wormhole when they die. Of course, there also needs to be a way to get gear back into circulation from players who abandoned the game while their character was still alive but that is certainly solvable.

As for unethical admins getting all the best gear, well that just means we will have to pry it from their cold dead fingers or steal it from their tents. I don't see a problem. I could imagine some servers turning into gear ghettos but spawn rates could be dynamically adjusted to address that if necessary.

[ezay75 57]

Wow dude. You wrote a giant walltext just to talk about loot inflation. We all know what it is, no need to explain over 1500+ words what it is.

[bazbake 456]

First let's say duping and scripting are gone from the game.

Players A and B do what you say and hoard eq.

Player C (that would be me) comes along in my nightly camp hunts and finds their camps. I then proceed to empty their tents in a tree and save their empty tents.

As I'm leaving I see player B coming to drop off some stuff so I kill him and hide the body.

I see no issue here.

Haha...!

NO.

(But ha!)

How is a cap on possession rates any more artificial than specifying a spawn rate? If you don't want item inflation you either need to remove items at the same rate they are being added or you need to cap the total number in circulation. Anything else will just change the rate at which inflation or deflation occurs.

Everything is artificial. He used the words "real scarcity" and I pointed out that the scarcity he was pushing was artificial scarcity. I also showed how easily abused the system would be.

Capping the number of items benefits hoarders and server hoppers and abusive admins but does nothing for the player base. It would drastically increase the value of items, yes, but only because players would use metagaming to manipulate the in-game economy like a bunch of weasel shits. (This is the most obvious end result and better to spot it now before someone thinks they're actually clever or something.)

The easy solution is to limit what your player can carry to their inventory and backpack.

1. You can't create more loot than there are players to carry that loot. Instant loot cap.
   
2. If you die and your teammates can't recover your body, your loot disappears on respawn unless someone else picks it up, empties out their own inventory, and then THAT loot disappears on respawn. So loot will drain out of the in-game economy naturally as players die or abandon their old equipment for better equipment.
   
3. It doesn't matter if a player gets the best equipment and quits because...it has no effect on subsequent loot. He can stop playing for 10 years and come back and he would have had no effect on the in-game economy. In fact, players don't effect the loot economy until they lose loot in this system.
   

Plug pulled. Problem solved.

Of course, there are obvious complaints.

1. Players aren't motivated to keep looking for really good shit once they've found it all. And with the threat of death they'll be less likely to risk losing it and will probably just quit the game with all of their equipment.

• This...is not logical. It almost sounds like it makes sense, and I'm sure someone will respond this way, but if so why bother playing the game in the first place once you even got the best loot the first time?
  

2. "Oh no, if I die my life sucks and I have to play from the beginning like a newb!"

• Did you not get the memo?
  

The fact is, there needs to be room for player growth. And there needs to be a way to stop the constant growth of new equipment. And if sacrificing player security in a game with permadeath is the cost, then so be it. External storage needs to be removed from the game.

Edited August 15, 2012 by BazBake

[MasterSith 19]

First let's say duping and scripting are gone from the game.

Players A and B do what you say and hoard eq.

Player C (that would be me) comes along in my nightly camp hunts and finds their camps. I then proceed to empty their tents in a tree and save their empty tents.

As I'm leaving I see player B coming to drop off some stuff so I kill him and hide the body.

I see no issue here.

The problem right now is duping and scripts.

The more realistic scenario after duping and scrips are fixed is:

Player C Gets in a gun battle with Players A and B. Player C manages to kill both player A and B. Player C realizes that Player A's M107 is better than his own AK-74 so he takes it. Player C then realizes that Player B's L85 is better than the extra ammo he is carrying in his backpack so he takes that too. The 2 rarest items in this battle survive despite their owners dieing. This scenario goes on several times and the rarest items do not get removed from the game.

If a tent is involved then it is more likely that you would loot the tent and leave the rest of the supplies (if you don't have a storage location yourself) so that you have a potential gearing up point if you die before the owner realizes his location is compromised. I have been using this strategy for some time now (granted it will be less effective once the dupe camps are removed).

[vendaar 18]

tl;dr pls

[Lysander_of_Sparta 43]

Heh, I get a fuzzy feeling reading this thread because I realize how much more mature the DayZ community is than most other games out there.

On topic, now. Yes, I have seen so much more rare loot than I did when I started playing this game. I am one of those few people that works for their loot, though. I would vote for a complete wipe, but that would really piss off those players like me who work REALLY hard to get their shit.

Maybe what Rocket could do is reduce the spawn rate of tents, maybe make em as common as bear traps, at least that would really reduce the amount of excess loot. Also, He could reduce the amount of loot that can be stored in a tent. Make tents not able to store other tents. This wouldn't cap the loot amount, but it would severely reduce the amount of increase until a permanent solution could be found.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

Haha...!

NO.

(But ha!)

Everything is artificial. He used the words "real scarcity" and I pointed out that the scarcity he was pushing was artificial scarcity. I also showed how easily abused the system would be.

Capping the number of items benefits hoarders and server hoppers and abusive admins but does nothing for the player base. It would drastically increase the value of items, yes, but only because players would use metagaming to manipulate the in-game economy like a bunch of weasel shits. (This is the most obvious end result and better to spot it now before someone thinks they're actually clever or something.)

The easy solution is to limit what your player can carry to their inventory and backpack.

1. You can't create more loot than there are players to carry that loot. Instant loot cap.
   
2. If you die and your teammates can't recover your body, your loot disappears on respawn unless someone else picks it up, empties out their own inventory, and then THAT loot disappears on respawn. So loot will drain out of the in-game economy naturally as players die or abandon their old equipment for better equipment.
   
3. It doesn't matter if a player gets the best equipment and quits because...it has no effect on subsequent loot. He can stop playing for 10 years and come back and he would have had no effect on the in-game economy. In fact, players don't effect the loot economy until they lose loot in this system.
   

Plug pulled. Problem solved.

Of course, there are obvious complaints.

1. Players aren't motivated to keep looking for really good shit once they've found it all. And with the threat of death they'll be less likely to risk losing it and will probably just quit the game with all of their equipment.

• This...is not logical. It almost sounds like it makes sense, and I'm sure someone will respond this way, but if so why bother playing the game in the first place once you even got the best loot the first time?
  

2. "Oh no, if I die my life sucks and I have to play from the beginning like a newb!"

• Did you not get the memo?
  

The fact is, there needs to be room for player growth. And there needs to be a way to stop the constant growth of new equipment. And if sacrificing player security in a game with permadeath is the cost, then so be it. External storage needs to be removed from the game.

Couldn't agree more.

Storage removal should be implented now in the Alpha phase as a test to fully explore it's ramifications.

I will be extremely uncomfortable with no /severely reduced storage but I will learn to cope with not having a safety net. Seems to me that is more in line with Rockets stated intent of making the "anti-game".

The overabundance of gear is watering down the entire experience. How exciting is it to take down someone who is fully geared when you yourself have all the same gear?

Pointless DMing is done much better on other platforms and shouldn't be the primary focus here.

We have been fed the same gameplay for so long that it is hard to think outside the box but ultimately will be much more rewarding.

Take the training wheels off Rocket, we can handle it.

[tarin4med@gmail.com 10]

The more realistic scenario after duping and scrips are fixed is:

Player C Gets in a gun battle with Players A and B. Player C manages to kill both player A and B. Player C realizes that Player A's M107 is better than his own AK-74 so he takes it. Player C then realizes that Player B's L85 is better than the extra ammo he is carrying in his backpack so he takes that too. The 2 rarest items in this battle survive despite their owners dieing. This scenario goes on several times and the rarest items do not get removed from the game.

If a tent is involved then it is more likely that you would loot the tent and leave the rest of the supplies (if you don't have a storage location yourself) so that you have a potential gearing up point if you die before the owner realizes his location is compromised. I have been using this strategy for some time now (granted it will be less effective once the dupe camps are removed).

And when the person who kills somebody with those weapons already has those weapons, what do they do?

The problem right now is that tents don't save everytime you remove something from it, you have to do it yourself. People just don't do it. Why should they save their empty tent when then can not save it and have the eq come back?

There will be much less of a problem once they fix the duping situation and meanwhile I will continue to find camps, empty the tents and then Save them empty.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

And when the person who kills somebody with those weapons already has those weapons, what do they do?

The problem right now is that tents don't save everytime you remove something from it, you have to do it yourself. People just don't do it. Why should they save their empty tent when then can not save it and have the eq come back?

There will be much less of a problem once they fix the duping situation and meanwhile I will continue to find camps, empty the tents and then Save them empty.

I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that Rocket has stated that duping is impossible to fix in the mod. It is for this reason that I believe tents should be removed utterly. Better no mechanic than a horribly broken one.

Also there is a systemic glitch that is responsible for the never-ending supply of items. Many people (myself included) have reported tents that magically refill at every server restart.

I'm not pretending to be an authority on it, just repeating what has been stated before.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Without gear sinks, inflation runs rampant. How many players have you run across with this combo recently? AS50, M4A1 SD, ghillie. Rarest of the rare is now common place.

This has exactly squat to do with "persistent storage" and everything to do with the fact that the persistent storage items in the game are infinitely duplicating themselves as well as any items contained within.

People complain about the frequency of tents, items, weapons, rifles, ammunition, etc. all while tens of thousands of every item in the game are being magically created every day by duplication bugs and exploits. We all know they're there; how can you sit and purport to have a serious conversation about item frequency and rarity when the giant elephant in the room is the fact, of which we're all aware, that none of these item frequencies actually represent their real rarities due to the ever-presence of these bugs and exploits.

Fix the bugs. Close the loopholes. Then we can have a discussion about item rarity.

As for inflation, rocket has already proposed a solution: items will decay, require maintenance and occasionally be damaged or destroyed upon player death.

That's it. That's all that is necessary.

Taking out or crippling persistent player storage or hamstringing a squad's ability to establish squad or team-based storage facilities because there are some design issues to resolve is textbook throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It's like what's that, you have a cold? Okay let me cut your head off. There? Don't even feel that runny nose anymore, do you?

In summary: expand upon persistent storage mechanics adding new options for storage, especially for squads; fix item and tent duplication; add item damage, decay and maintenance. All your woes solved and we didn't have to excise a major portion of the core game-play in order to accomplish it.

Like magic.

[tarin4med@gmail.com 10]

I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that Rocket has stated that duping is impossible to fix in the mod. It is for this reason that I believe tents should be removed utterly. Better no mechanic than a horribly broken one.

Also there is a systemic glitch that is responsible for the never-ending supply of items. Many people (myself included) have reported tents that magically refill at every server restart.

I'm not pretending to be an authority on it, just repeating what has been stated before.

Well, seeing as they are working on the standalone, I don't see any reason to fix the problem.

The easiest solution to the issue in the mod is to completely remove storage of any items. Anything else is just wasted time developing that will have no bearing on how the standalone game should work.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that Rocket has stated that duping is impossible to fix in the mod.

If duping is in fact impossible to fix now that he's working directly (or very closely) with the ARMA team, and if you are only referring to the mod and not the stand-alone game, then fine. Take tents out. I don't care. Nobody will. Honestly I hate to say it but if you plan on sticking around and playing the mod after stand-alone comes out for like $15, you're just being silly. Buy the stand-alone game. That will be DayZ. The mod is going out to pasture along with all these silly duplication issues and 99% of the "hacking" going on right now

Their claim that the mod will continue to be "supported" may be genuine, but the level of support and what they are capable of achieving with DayZ as a mod has already been established I believe: not much more than we see right now. In fact he's probably accomplished more than anyone thought possible with the RV3/A2OA engine.

Edited August 15, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[A Bush killed me 189]

everyone has a AS50 and M4 SD. I miss enfield battles :(

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

The easiest solution to the issue in the mod is to completely remove storage of any items. Anything else is just wasted time developing that will have no bearing on how the standalone game should work.

Blowing your head off is also a guaranteed way to cure your cold.

Storage is not going to be removed in stand-alone. If there's one thing rocket has discussed more than any other mechanic, it's persistent player storage to facilitate long-term goals. It's literally one of the first things he talked about as being planned for the stand-alone game (underground bunkers for squad storage).

It's here to stay, and it's a critical element of the game. Taking out storage flattens the design and undermines any sense of progression, long-term goals, etc. which simultaneously weakens the squad play and cooperative elements of the game.

10 of my friends get together and start saving up supplies to try and build an underground bunker or build a boat, but, oh, it just so happens that the guy who happened to be the one to pitch the tent got shot so, everyone's work is arbitrarily destroyed? What?

It's a completely senseless watering down of what is already an amazing sense of progression that DayZ provides between the early stages of "Where am I?" and "How do I?" up to what obviously has the potential to be one of the greatest player-driven multiplayer experiences in the history of gaming. And hitting "reset" every time you get shot isn't going to help us get there. This isn't Mario Bros. where we need to start at 1-1 every time we get a Game Over. If you take the effort to form relationships in the game and maintain those relationships and cooperate with other humans to accomplish long term goals then you should benefit from that effort and dedication long-term, not just until the next time a stray bullet hits you.

Permadeath has consequences. You lose contact with your group which can take hours to reestablish depending on what they were doing when you died (most often it's a firefight which they can't just drop at a moment's notice to come pick you up). You lose your connection to the history and story of your survivor. You lose your "score" which for you can be your zombie kills, murders, bandit kills, days survived, distance walked, cows killed, whatever it is you're tallying - gone as well. You often lose gear, despite claims to the contrary. If a bandit squad downs me and 2 of my friends in a 5 on 5 shoot out, chances are the remaining squad mates are going to beat a retreat and we are going to come out with a net loss of gear and weapons. You see, in squads that don't rampantly exploit item and tent duplication bugs the loss of a single rare weapon can be devastating. If ideas like my player identification system see light, you will lose even more than that - accumulated memories of your encounters with other players in the game and the actions/crimes you have witnessed.

I'll reiterate. "No player storage" is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We have problems to solve, no doubt, but they can be solved and rocket will maintain this rather critical element of the late game DayZ experience - cooperating in teams and squads to stockpile gear, supplies, food and equipment in order to facilitate long-terms goals and advancement.

Edited August 15, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby