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

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

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.

Yep, speaking only about the mod. Perhaps I should have made that more clear but it is a text only medium and hard to convey all the nuances...

I agree, he most definitely has accomplished a hell of a lot with very little. I don't profess to know his mind but it would stand to reason that they (The DayZ dev team) would try as much as possible in this Alpha mod now to establish much of the standalone content later.

I'm simply saying they should take another radical turn and see how it works out. We are after all only testing this thing, not playing a full-on finished product.

[AryanBoogeyman 185]

It's obvious you

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.

It's obvious you are a proponent of meta-gaming which is a discussion unto itself as it relates to the mod and standalone. I'm more concerned right now with the mod and seeing what new twists and turns it's evolution takes.

Good posts and well thought out replies.

Signing off, have work early tomorrow.

[bazbake 456]

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?

Someone didn't get the memo...

[tarin4med@gmail.com 10]

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.

Honestly, I don't really give a damn what they do to the mod anymore. I am waiting on the standalone.

I don't use storage and I probably never will, definately not in the mod. Depending on what all types of features that are in the standalone, well, that's a different ballgame that nobody has a clue about.

and to the guy up there who says everybody has an as50 and a L85, I left both at a crash sight just the other day. They don't have any interest to me at all. I don't have a team so having a sniper is pointless to me.

My main goal until the standalone is strictly to find and empty camps and destroy vehicles.

Edit. And you do realize I am completely against the OP. There needs to be storage. I agree. I just know that atm the way it dupes equipment in dayZ it is the probem. I don't want it removed. I was just making a over-the-top statement.

Edited August 15, 2012 by Ratnix

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

It's obvious you are a proponent of meta-gaming

So is the creator of DayZ.

So is pretty much every designer of any sandbox or open world game in history.

Meta-gaming begets emergent play which exponentially increases the value of every mechanic added to a proper sandbox game because players are left to their own devices to find ways that the designer never imagined to utilize his tools and mechanics.

Designing a sandbox game and then watching the players utilize meta gaming to create emergent styles of play is like giving a caveman a sack of grain and a cow and coming back the next day to find out he invented Philly Cheesesteaks. Does it get out of hand sometimes? Sure, but that's when the designer comes along and shoots the cow, spanks the caveman, hands him another sack of new toys to play with and then stands back to see what happens this time around.

It's incredible; and, it's an essential part of what makes sandbox games great.

So, yes, I'm a proponent.

Edited August 15, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[Banicks 55]

I think I understand what you are trying to say: items aren't rare and hoarding isn't fair.

Yes and no. There is nothing wrong with hoarding, it is preparation for your eventual demise or gearing up a new player for your crew with minimum risk.

It is abused by duping to the point that bandits never have to touch a populated town or go anywhere near their chosen sniping location. Let's be honest, once you have all your gear, a tent, secured gear in the tent and a sniper rifle, DayZ has no end game other than killing other players. The 'hero' may alter these things.

I'm all for tent cities if they are actually properly found and not duped. WarZ will be a great experience for me because a bunch of Australians are already clanned and waiting. Our primary concern will be self improvement and also ensuring a moderately well stocked armoury. Same concept for DayZ, tents are necessary so that you don't need to carry everything.

I agree wholeheartedly that items need to be rarer. But until duping is resolved, it won't happen. I'm not sure if the duping can be stopped because of the Arma 2 base coding. But without a doubt all these issues will be stopped come stand alone.

[bazbake 456]

Meta-gaming begets emergent play which exponentially increases the value of every mechanic added to a proper sandbox game because players are left to their own devices to find ways that the designer never imagined to utilize his tools and mechanics.

Meta-gaming also breaks the game by undermining every boundary established by a proper sandbox game because players abandon the mechanics of the game in order to achieve an advantage only accessible by circumventing the rules of the system.

We also call this "cheesy as fuck."

It's why people whine that the game is getting too easy while they have an online map from dayzdb.com open in one screen, their HDR turned up to max so they can go loot hunting at night, and go on forums asking for medics to roll through on their server to patch them up with some morphine while they wait for it to restart so they can grab those NVGs that are more likely to appear in a fresh spawn.

Carebear stare all up in this motherfucker. And then someone declares that this is the heart and soul of the game. While they don't even bother picking up an in-game map because it's topographical and doesn't tell them where all the deerstands are.

Heh.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

No, it's fine. Decry all the demons of emergent game play and meta-gaming without bothering to acknowledge any of the vast and varied benefits. Ignore that some of the greatest games of our generation had their genesis in the "undermining" of other games that allowed emergent play and experimentation.

But definitely throw all that out and focus on that other stuff.

It makes your argument so much easier to construct, I'm sure.

And I wouldn't want to inconvenience you.

Edited August 15, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[SmashT 10907]

I didn't read the entire original post, duping/spawning weapons using cheats can hopefully be sorted with standalone though and I assume everything will be wiped either at this time, beta and definitely before release.

Once that is fixed, weapon degradation over time seems like a simple solution to combat gun inflation. Rocket has already talked about this being implemented.

Edited August 15, 2012 by smasht_AU

[Herr Robert 28]

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.

Maybe that would work if the devs were alot harder on admin abuse. In the game's current state, you would just have clans abusing the mechanic by hoarding or duping the best gear so no on else can have it, and then the clan admins would just use poor excuses to ban anyone that threatens their monopolies. Add in off map hoarding to this equation, and you would have 99% of the best gear end up in the debug zone where only a lucky few can use it.

[Beafy 11]

Very intresting topic with some intresting princibles, then again, I do play EVE online, and I did take part in "Burn Jita"

OP if you havn't read about "Burn Jita" read up about it, people trying to colapse the economy, and then profit from it.

As 90% of the eco is player generated with VERY rare thing put in place to control it, yet the devs knew of the plan

to collpase the economy, and encouraged it. Fantastic.

Slightly failed, mind.

Anyway, I digress, you have a fantastic point, I think rocket will take great interest into this matter, defo one to look out for

in the future, or the standalone.

[sostronk 334]

Tents should be immediately destroyed on your death. Its possible for me and I do sometimes run straight to my tent after a respawn (I pick up 1 can of beans and 1 Soda from nearest town which is enough to get me there). Other times I want to experience the fresh spawn feeling again. This obviously isn't enough to stop the loot inflation but alot of fixes like this would help. Id be fine to temporarily remove tents. But at the same time, duping and hacking apparently won't be "fixed" during the mod so what is the point. Mod will be forever broken where "standalone" is the solution.... almost sounds like its intended as a sales point.

[athemeus 0]

And unlike the loot in loot spawns and on server restarts, they never go away.

Currently? Not true. Tents disappear all the time, containers eat items, containers disappear. And lets not forget random deaths! Items get drained out of this world pretty aggressively. I think you underestimate how quickly.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

@xXI Mr Two IXx

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.

Who has the items doesn't effect if they are truly rare or not, any system that gives a set percentage chance of item spawn will never be able to represent scarcity because nothing is truly scarce, there are no finite amounts in such a system. A player can farm a spawn until he obtains any given item, I know this because we routinely farm NW or Stary and load tons of high end gear into our blue truck before parking it behind a bush at the edge of the map.

Labelling my proposal as "artificial" is complete bs, items with a hard cap are truly rare, if they are horded by one group it only means that that group was proved to be better at aquiring a scarce resource than you and the other million people playing DayZ. If they don't want to use said items but instead want to horde them for their own future use or hold them to prevent the oposition to having them thats their perogative, they are the ones that planned and executed a scheme to obtain them. Go shoot them and take their shit if you don't like it.

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.)

"People will be better than me at the game and have an advantage over me..."

You call it abuse, I call it surviving in a world with finite resources, nothing is infinite if you want something you have to go find/take it from someone else. This is what survival is.

Why are you so short sighted that you think this must be implemented on the mod in its current state, the end goal is standalone and that is where a mechanic like this would truly shine, because most of the things your bitching about wouldn't be present. Would people still hoarde gear and do everything they can in their power to aquire as many of the best items as possible, yes, thats what surviving is. Would it suck to be a newb or fresh spawn, hell yea, it would suck to be alone with nothing in a survival scenario.

You don't point out actually downsides like inactive players with loot, you only look at how people will be able to shit on your experiance. Thats what survival is, you shit on the people that are not part of your group because they are your competition. All of your posts/threads are like this, nerf bandits, nerf snipers, nerf storage, nerf vehicles, qq, qq. You don't want anyone to be able to put in time and work to have an advantage. I don't get what your bitching about a new spawn can go find a whiny or enfield and they are instantly as deadly as a player that is month old, its already all up to that players skills.

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.

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.

1. has no effect on everyone running around with high tier gear...

2. has no effect on everyone running around with high tier gear, do you really think people that are pissed won't just respawn asap and then bandits never get a chance to loot the body.

3. The system can't be manipulated by players? They can only farm loot and get all the best shit, they just shouldn't be able to carry as much of it....

Player growth occurs when they knock the guy off the rung above them and climb over his dead body.

Your system doesn't stop the growth of new equipment they can farm away all the gear they want.

Meta-gaming also breaks the game by undermining every boundary established by a proper sandbox game because players abandon the mechanics of the game in order to achieve an advantage only accessible by circumventing the rules of the system.

We also call this "cheesy as fuck."

It's why people whine that the game is getting too easy while they have an online map from dayzdb.com open in one screen, their HDR turned up to max so they can go loot hunting at night, and go on forums asking for medics to roll through on their server to patch them up with some morphine while they wait for it to restart so they can grab those NVGs that are more likely to appear in a fresh spawn.

Carebear stare all up in this motherfucker. And then someone declares that this is the heart and soul of the game. While they don't even bother picking up an in-game map because it's topographical and doesn't tell them where all the deerstands are.

Heh.

Again with the I hate people that organize/think their way to success. What are the boundries that exhist in DayZ, I thought a large part of the games appeal is that it doesn't have boundries or tell you how to play, you do what you want how you want.

There is a difference between meta gaming and min/max, to me you describe the min/max mentallity that is prevelant with all gamers more than meta gaming. There is no way to stop min/max its a logical self intrested behaviour, the only way to avoid it is to create systems that don't allow players to min/max, ie log out timers, unique linked servers, or set difficulty and view settings.

Storage is a feature that is required in standalone as it is how players will be able to transition from surviving to thriving.