Two suggestions: map and the economy.

[avant gard 0]

Hello,

First of all I have to say what a game. I have never played anything like DayZ and the emotional response the game gives you as a player is incredible. Truly ground breaking and extremely unusual.

There are obviously lots of things to iron out and tweak that I am sure you are aware of (inventory system, bugs etc.) and lots of features that will be added later but what I would like to suggest is a solution to two of the largest issues currently in the game which are unlimited player killing and the economy.

I completely agree that the pvp system is essential to the game. The emotional response without it would just not be there. I am in no way suggesting removing it. What I am suggesting is to increase the value of life. Currently, the ability to store equipment seriously devalues life as the only punishment after death is a slight walk. I don't particularly have a problem with storing equipment and I understand why people do it but because some players have lives which are less important than others a system of maniac killing has developed which is detrimental to the ability of players to create the world within which we play. My suggestion to increase the value of life is to massively expand the map.

Whilst 250 km2 is a large map, it is only 15 km on each side. As such, you are never that far from your stash or your group. The system as it currently is is similar to Tibia (when your corpse retains your equipped items but you can go back to your stash). A map with for example a 150 km trek to a stash would significantly increase the value of life - as well as the value of vehicles and other such items. I would suggest a map in the order of 10,000 km2 +. The landscape itself is irrelevant, there are large portions of earth with basically the same landscape for thousands of miles (the Eurasian Steppe for example). The key in my opinion is to increase the value of a life without forcing anyone to play in any particular way.

Hopefully such a large map is technically feasible.

Secondly, the economy does not work (as I am sure you are aware). There is an abundance of survival goods as well as equipment which again, devalues life. It is relatively easy to be fully equipped from scratch an hour or so after death. With the abundance of goods, there is little need to cooperate or collaborate with others [which is unusual as mainstream political theory holds that in a world with an abundance of resources conflict should be minimal, yet here we have a blood fueled anarchy]. Goods need to be far more scarce and I like your ideas on crafting and player created in game goods. It is vital though that the economy functions properly for the realism to hold together: a year after the infection the survivors would have looted almost all of the pre-infection goods and would be hunting, manufacturing etc. their own goods.

Finally, I do think it is important that we are given as little information as possible. I do not think that a kill count is of much use - it is surely up to us to remember our kills or not. For the same reason I am delighted to see you removing bandit skins and possibly the humanity system.

What has been created here is truly groundbreaking and I really hope that you can create the world which will continue to stimulate a player's emotional response. I think that increasing the value of life is the key to maintaining the unique proposition of the game.

Thanks.

[gatorontheloose 29]

right now every player has every possible resource available to them. if there was some currency (beans, coins, or whatever) you could sell your skills / unique inventory. right now there is so much PKing because the players themselves are worthless - the gear is the currency.

Maybe this stems from the ARMA soldier just having all the skills right away. but a regular 'survivor' would not know how to maintain automatic weapons nor skin animals, fix a broken limb, fix vehicles, etc.

getting paid to taxi people around, to heal them, to trade goods & services, would rock. Only the truly dedicated survivor could live completely on their own and they have to help dozens of people to be able to get to that level.

[Deathcall 101]

I think that a lot of people are asking for the same thing but in different ways.

Overall, what people actually seem to want, is the so called "social-experiment" that Rocket keeps mentioning, not the PVP experience we have now. It looks to me that what most "invested" players aim for is that feeling of actually being a post-zombie outbreak world and striving for survival.

The value of life, the surplus (infinite) amount of available supplies,etc., that's what seems to bother a lot of the players who have been posting lately.

I think we should gather all the like-minded people in this sub-forum and create a huge thread advocating (and compiling) all these ideas. Hopefully the devs will take notice.

And if others don't like our "realism", there's always the possiblity for different kind of servers, isn't it?

[blogg10 1]

I have to agree. At the moment, I imagine like myself most players feel torn. We want the whole 'rare military-gear' thing, where items gained feel like they have worth and that they really are rare things, but when we get them it's all too easy to have them taken away from us. I know that I for one in the standalone would be seriously pissed off if it worked like current DayZ - that is, I find an SVD camo or similarly-rare item, and then I feel scared to go anywhere near a place players could possibly be just in case some trigger-happy DMR-wielder gets the jump on me and fires a full clip at me, one of which is bound to hit.

[avant gard 0]

Hi Deathcall,

I looked a bit more through the suggestion forum after I posted (the forum is quite large) and I agree that lots of people are saying the same thing: that life is not valuable enough and inflation is too high.

I don't really agree with Blogg10, I think the point is that you should feel scared to go anywhere incase you are shot. This is what provokes the emotional response. I do, however agree that shooting at people should have more consequences (i.e. that you might get shot) and I think the optimum way is to do this is to increase the value of life.

Do any technical people have an opinion on a 10,000 km2 map? Is it possible and what sort of server operating cost are you looking at?

As much as I cannot get on with Eve Online, the player made economy is a masterstroke and should be studied for incorporation of some elements into DayZ.

My overall sugestion is to have the pre-infection items exist for one time only, after which if they are consumed or taken, they don't exist anymore. The only way to get items is to create them yourself (either through hunting or manufacturing). The repair of buildings etc. will encourage groups to form and model a real - world free market economy with monopolies, competition, collaberation, trade, murder, doublecross and theft. The main issue with this is that there is a massive first mover advantage and if you enter Day Z a year late (or die), you will face a massive barrier to entry as there are no freely avaliable goods. This might be a little hardcore..

The overall on feeling on other suggestions is that ammo will become the currency which is fine but food, water and medical supplies will also be a currency. For a currency to be credible, it must be widley accepted, widley usable and act as a store of value. I think that these three items fulfil these criteria and have the added advantage of being consumable so they are frequently destroyed (as such we do not need a regulator such as a central bank to destroy currency when inflation gets too high). The disadvantage is that they are necessities so there will be an initial period of severe deflation which may break the game for many people.

I do think that the economics are the key to creating a masterful experience in DayZ and we should probably have a more specific area to discuss this because it is such an important issue but also very difficult to balance out a mechanic that works for everyone but at the same time punishes everyone.

[Deathcall 101]

I don't think that Day Z can reach Eve Online level of economy... it's just too much for a game such as this. The good thing is, we don't need that level of complexity in a zombie apocalypse. We only need something that will fit the scenario and enrich the game.

I'd like to argue about this further, but I'd like to know if the devs are actually interested in an economy system (or giving us the ability to create one) before we go into theory crafting.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

A massive world is acheavable, a very massive world, its just that it would need to be broken into segments and each server would represent one of these segments. Travel between servers would require actual travel within the game world to the boundry area then you would be allowed to travel to the next location. This would function much like EVE online the issue is avoiding tolls/gates because those areas would be heavily camped.

Here's a post I made about this a fairly long time ago, not much interest/debate, but I think it would solve the issue with gates. Having community servers makes this harder as they can drop/disappear at any time.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/18321-geographic-servers/

I also made a suggestion for the economy, where loot would be capped at determined possesion rates amongst players/storage. I think this would create an economy that would lead to immergent play and it could also be scaled down after start up to wheen players off of pre shtf supplies toward their own creations.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/83090-dynamic-hard-loot-caps/

[avant gard 0]

Hello xXI Mr Two IXx, I read your dynamic loot suggestion the other day and I think it is really quite good. I especially agree with:

"People blame scripters/dupers for all of the high end gear currently floating around the game economy, I believe and as some others have pointed out this is merely an acceleration of the game's economy."

As lots of us have said, DayZ is experiencing hyperinflation of goods due to the regular creation of items. Hyperinflation causes a loss of value of said goods and as such the value of life is deminished (as the consequence of death is low(er)).

This is a similar suggestion which I think is also good : http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/8616-lifedeath-calculator-intrinsic-valueculture/

So, we have three approaches to this (that I have seen anyway): 1) The removal of spawned goods entirely 2) A cap on the number of spawned goods that can ever exist 3) Spawning as function of the behaviour of players in aggregate. All approaches would I suggest need to allow for players to create goods and thereby allow the economy to fluctuate.

I agree with you Deathcall that there is not much point in discussing economics if it is not going to be implemented or if the developers have already decided their approach. It would be nice to have some feedback on this from them. I do not particularly agree that the Eve economy is complex - it is a reasonably simple economy in which the needs of the aggregate are met by individuals or organisations. It is balanced by spawned goods from NPCs, however.

On the map question, I agree that having small maps on individual servers as part of a greater whole would not be ideal as 1) logging in/out is frustrating 2) transition zones would be deathtraps. I am under the impression that there would be one central server running the standalone version of the game rather than multiple private servers communicating with one central server. I am not in any way technical so I would appriciate someone with technical experience advising if a 10,000 km2 map is possible with one server holding a population of say 20,000 players. I know Eve online does this, but I also know that in terms of data sent/recieved, it is not that complex and due to this is point and click boredom.

Clearly, a large server running a large and complex map would be expensive but some ball park capital and operating costs would help to determine the economic viability of proceeding in this way. For example if it costs $2 million capital costs and $1 million p.a. operating costs, there would be a viable business model if 500,000 people paid a one time fee of $30 ($15 million) [this is a very simplistic example not taking into account tax, NPV etc.]. However, I have no idea about server costs or game development costs but pricing points and operating profits are clearly important in determining if a technically feasable idea is actually feasable.

It would be nice to have some more feedback on this.

Thanks.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

I've never played EVE but from what I've read their system actually consists of different sectors with tolls, to get between them, I don't think its possible to have a system that does not accomplish server/instance changes in a world that big. Loading and manual login/logoff can probably be avoided, but I don't think you can just have one massive world w/no loading or transistions. Maybe there is but I couldn't tell you. T