anti-wiki tactics

[amaterarerasu 15]

I am thinking on the phenomenon of playing games that are backed up by sprawling wikis where you can find everything about a game. I am thinking that, it would be interesting if rocket made it so that the rules of the game, and certain little aspects could vary from update to update, so as to always obscure the underlying game mechanic. So that the only way to know the game fully well is the old-school way: playing. That would add to the "lets explore this" allure of the game. Otherwise the game runs the risk of losing its mistery.

Im talking about new spawn points, appearing or disappearing, rare loot appearing in a residential area for certain update. Tougher zombies on such city or other. MAybe more infestation or hungrier zeds in certain cities, etc. changes in the weather, a bit like seasons, etc.

A bit like what happens in soccer games, where its basically always the same game, but the small tweaks and such make you have to re-learn the game on each of its yearly iterations. A bit of secrecy on part of the devs would be good too. Rumors and such would very much enhance the spirit of the game. Maybe certain randomness in the servers? like not all servers have exactly the same spawn rates for loots?

What Im saying is: the core game should always evolve/devolve, to keep un guessing and exploring. a bit like a real place might evolve.

[boxman80 964]

I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing is at the forefront of Rockets thinking with stand alone release, or at least I hope it is. I remember reading one of his interviews where he specifically stated he didnt want to have any official explanations, manuals, guides or details simply because it spoils the immersion and the idea of players interaction, sharing info along the way and the mystery/potential/excitement surrounding that - and to be honest I completely agree.

I feel players are cheated out of much of the "magic" of a game when they can simply Google up any aspect of the game and know outright the facts. Many game, particularly in the case of Day Z, deserve to have that mystery around them.

I was fortunate enough to be registered on the forum among the first 5 or so thousand and I remember all the mystery and hype around the rumour that Night Vision goggles were in the game somewhere and that there were guns with tactical lights too! That sort of gossip and community "legend" aspect is at the heart of Day Z and it needs remain there!

Good post mate, i hope it's not wasted here among the "this game is dead" and "is the G36 a hacked weapon" posts!

Edited August 30, 2012 by Box

[kebman 213]

You never know what loot there will be, or if there will be any at all. To me, that's enough.

[amaterarerasu 15]

I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing is at the forefront of Rockets thinking with stand alone release, or at least I hope it is. I remember reading one of his interviews where he specifically stated he didnt want to have any official explanations, manuals, guides or details simply because it spoils the immersion and the idea of players interaction, sharing info along the way and the mystery/potential/excitement surrounding that - and to be honest I completely agree.

I feel players are cheated out of much of the "magic" of a game when they can simply Google up any aspect of the game and know outright the facts. Many game, particularly in the case of Day Z, deserve to have that mystery around them.

I was fortunate enough to be registered on the forum among the first 5 or so thousand and I remember all the mystery and hype around the rumour that Night Vision goggles were in the game somewhere and that there were guns with tactical lights too! That sort of gossip and community "legend" aspect is at the heart of Day Z and it needs remain there!

Good post mate, i hope it's not wasted here among the "this game is dead" and "is the G36 a hacked weapon" posts!

haha thanks mate! I am very enthusiast of this game. I think it is potentially a game changer for the industry (no pun intended). who imagined a fps-ish game could be so haunting!

[boxman80 964]

I think you are tight about it being an industry changer for sure.

[Frozen (DayZ) 144]

no matter how complicated mechanics will be, there alway will be people who dig the info about it and post it somewhere(and i`m the guy who like to read it :)). that how things are rolling. and knowing what stuff is allowed in mod, and what not is especially essential, because of all the hacking is going around.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

Whats really out there for people to get? A map, where stuff spawns, whats in the game, and how much damage x does.

Outside of an instanced world per server there is nothing to do about the map.

Where stuff spawns is easy though, cap the loot and stuff no longer spawns where it did, it's on people's person or in their tent/vehicle. Go find it...

Whats in the game can't be fixed people will look at the code, same for damage.

I agree with your post, I'm just sceptical of how much Dev's can really do to fight the wiki trend. Check my post out for item caps, it explains how it would work and how it could re-locate items.

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

[00dlez 22]

Not that I disagree with OP, but it is mostly up to the player whether or not they want to reference the wiki, loot spawn maps, etc. When I play Day Z, I don't use an outside map with loot and such labeled on it, and if I don't have a map, then thats life.

I'm not distinctly opposed to having more fluid changes in the game experience, but the world is so massive that I don't think it's needed and if a player doesn't want a wiki and prefers to explore themselves, then they have that choice.

[bazbake 456]

There are some easy solutions to this I've been thinking about.

• Create far more loot spawns and divide the chance for loot to spawn over the new number of spawns. For instance, instead of residential loot spawning in 20 locations, have it spawn in 400 with only 1/20th the chance of the loot spawning. This would force players to range over a wider area looking for gear with most locations producing absolutely nothing but with an overall chance of useful loot appearing eventually being the same. The same could apply for military loot, making it extremely rare in any one location but increasing the number of locations it spawns so that it balances out (the military was everywhere, after all).
  
• Campsites would also be an excuse to hide loot in the woods. And, likewise, to place roaming zombies in the woods.
  
• As someone else suggested, have more "helicopter crash" style loot spawns. Ambulances, car crashes, tractor crashes, etc. Useless vehicles, but if you wander around the vicinity you can find industrial, medical, and residential gear along the side of the road.
  
• Tie the chance of finding a certain kind of loot at higher rates to places where it is obviously more likely to be found instead of just randomly assigning it. That way people are rewarded for thinking intelligently about their scavenging choices.
  

While people could still create maps, having one filled with dots would be pretty useless.

[agippo 37]

I would love some random elements in the game, and I agree the rampant supply of WIKI's is ruining the reaility, whats the use of the "real" in game map, when you can load up an intereactive map that lists everything? Want to know the effectivness of a rifle? no need to actually shoot it and risk the consequences, just load up the wiki!. The issue is, if you dont use these cheats/helpers, you are at a severe disadvantage, so everyone uses them.

I have no idea how the hell you would implement randomness across multiple servers, but I would love to see this

[heliman (DayZ) 26]

those who look at the wikis only ruin the experience for themselves. doubt you can curb such attitudes.

[Quaby 93]

I dont think you can censor everyone who posts guides or wikis. There is a magical thing called free speech and that kinda means you can say whatever the fuck you want.

[amaterarerasu 15]

I dont think you can censor everyone who posts guides or wikis. There is a magical thing called free speech and that kinda means you can say whatever the fuck you want.

Hey no-one is talking censorship, everyone will write whatever the F they want as you say.What I mean is tha gaming nowadays has to take into consideration the existence of wikis in their design. This other game, also with perma-death interestingly, the binding of isaac practically relies on the wiki for you to know what each item does. What Im saying is that any tactics designed to make the writing of an exhaustive wiki REALLY hard will result in new gaming style, with more reward for investigation, etc.

This game has a lot of PVP, so, even if true that its up to you to look at wikis or not, the fact remains many will, and that makes it slightly unfair.

TLDR: Devs should put some consideration into the fact that wikis WILL exist, and think about how to incorporate them into the game's concept.

[xximrtwoixx 104]

There are some easy solutions to this I've been thinking about.

• Create far more loot spawns and divide the chance for loot to spawn over the new number of spawns. For instance, instead of residential loot spawning in 20 locations, have it spawn in 400 with only 1/20th the chance of the loot spawning. This would force players to range over a wider area looking for gear with most locations producing absolutely nothing but with an overall chance of useful loot appearing eventually being the same. The same could apply for military loot, making it extremely rare in any one location but increasing the number of locations it spawns so that it balances out (the military was everywhere, after all).
  
• Campsites would also be an excuse to hide loot in the woods. And, likewise, to place roaming zombies in the woods.
  
• As someone else suggested, have more "helicopter crash" style loot spawns. Ambulances, car crashes, tractor crashes, etc. Useless vehicles, but if you wander around the vicinity you can find industrial, medical, and residential gear along the side of the road.
  
• Tie the chance of finding a certain kind of loot at higher rates to places where it is obviously more likely to be found instead of just randomly assigning it. That way people are rewarded for thinking intelligently about their scavenging choices.
  

While people could still create maps, having one filled with dots would be pretty useless.

Reducing the percentage chance that loot drops would effect all locations, thus even having more locations you would not even chances of generation back out. Also this would not generate the effect you think, because a player could avoid all the travel and farm one location thus maximizing their return for time spent looting. Thus this would be rendered useless...

Campsites already exhist, they are called player tents, they are usually filled with things....

I like these mini scenarios as they could be used to tell a narrative or make the player think about the initial outbreak, but IMO rational locations should still be the end all be all, especially if these isolated unique things function the way they do now, single spawn on server restart.

I agree with rational locations, IMO these should be built up as there are some places you could go and nearly be guaranteed to find certain things. If you know where a military base or an armory odds are it will be filled with thousands of arms and tons of military equipment. The drawback of these locations should be the danger one faces in going to them not a stupid random chance that they are sudenly empty but will be filled if I come back a half hour later. The danger should be Z's, bandits, and established groups that have made this location their home. Why take from a military base if your group is big enough to take it over...

[00dlez 22]

This game has a lot of PVP, so, even if true that its up to you to look at wikis or not, the fact remains many will, and that makes it slightly unfair.

TLDR: Devs should put some consideration into the fact that wikis WILL exist, and think about how to incorporate them into the game's concept.

Most games on them have hackers on them these days, and Day Z is no expception. I better install hacks too, otherwise I'll be slightly unfair.

...

Just play your own game.

The wiki doesn't augment in game skill. If I use the wiki I'll get sniped in Cherno by a hill camping CoD Fanboy just the same I would if I didn't use it, unless I play smart.

I won't argue that someone with a wiki map has an advantage over someone who doesn't, but it isn't going to significantly change your game experience, so don't worry about it.

[bazbake 456]

Most games on them have hackers on them these days, and Day Z is no expception. I better install hacks too, otherwise I'll be slightly unfair.

...

Just play your own game.

The wiki doesn't augment in game skill. If I use the wiki I'll get sniped in Cherno by a hill camping CoD Fanboy just the same I would if I didn't use it, unless I play smart.

I won't argue that someone with a wiki map has an advantage over someone who doesn't, but it isn't going to significantly change your game experience, so don't worry about it.

This is someone who relies on wikis.

tl;wr munchkins gonna munch.

When I first played the game, I didn't know anything about wikis or forums. I knew that water collects at the bottom of hills, that powerlines connect cities, that dirt roads are less populated. I found decent loot in random locations and each time was excited to discover that these things existed. I even found due north by the movement of the sun in the sky. I was exploring, surviving, and learning.

(To understand my personality, realize that I played through Demon's Souls without even looking at a manual or walkthrough except one time in the poison fields because I was bored. And another time when I kept dropping shiny crap in front of that crow when he kept saying "Shiny" and he wouldn't give me anything after ten to fifteen minutes...total "Guide Dang It" moment there and I wasn't in the mood. Anyway, that's the kind of person I am.)

And...then I found these forums and realized that the entire online culture was built on powergaming. Powergamer is a name that powergamers think is a compliment, even though it's not. A more appropriate word, perhaps, is munchkin, named after the perhaps incorrect belief that children, or munchkins, are more likely to play games not for the experience but in order to be vicariously powerful and dangerous and conquer the games they play.

When you realize how many people are using Mumble and Team Speak and have browser windows open showing them maps full of loot and their spawn rates, you quickly realize that the game you thought you were playing is not the game that other people are playing. When you wonder why a 40-person server still feels empty, it becomes clear in hindsight that it's because powergamers, or munchkins, only care about maximizing their power ratio over time to its greatest degree with the most direct efficiency. So the people reacting realistically to a zombie apocalypse and going inland to loot towns will never find the players making mad dashes for medical supplies and military loot in Elektro. If they even bother instead of just server hopping until the loot they want spawns.

I eventually started metagaming myself and looking at damage tables and maps. I even server hopped at Balota airfield once. I stopped though. This was originally because I hated being that guy, but it came as no consolation when I realized I had pretty much memorized everything short of all of the deer stand locations anyway so at least the maps had nothing to offer me.

When I was a kid, games were really, really hard. And there were no saves. So completing a game was sometimes not an option unless you cheated. But finding a cheat or tip book was a commercial enterprise you engaged in. You paid to directly seek out the answers. You didn't have to surround yourself with cheats just to have a discussion about your favorite game. But game developers realized that everyone was cheating, so they put secrets in the game that you could only find if you cheated. And then they sold you the tip books themselves. Or offered magazine subscriptions (seriously, fuck you, Nintendo Power, and I'm glad you're dead).

This is how games used to respond to cheats and walkthroughs. They adapted to either capitalize on them or adapted to counter them. But in the age of the internet, you can't really make money on cheats and walkthroughs unless the people you're targeting are really, really clueless. (Seriously, I don't even know how people make money on porn anymore, let alone FAQs and walkthroughs.)

I'm waiting to see what DayZ eventually ends up doing -- whether it will cater to munchkins by ramping up the difficulty curve so that only endgame content matters and everyone will end up using wikis and maps and server hopping to quickly skip past all of the zombie shit and just start shooting each other. Or if it will combat munchkinism by designing the game so that maps and spawn tables are increasingly useless. It'll be interesting to see, at least, if they can learn something and design a game resistant to the information age.

Note: Valve already had a great version of this and they nailed it down quickly. They randomly punished server farms, gave you a level editor, allowed you to play with bots, and made it so that all of the weapons in the game are balanced against each other with in-game descriptions of exactly what the weapons do, making it pretty meaningless to look up online what maps look like or to keep buying new weapons when you can still wreck shit with a pistol or a shotgun or a backburner. Even when they sold new weapons, they allowed those new weapons to randomly drop and kept them balanced with their original weaponry as well. The model was so effective that powergamers think they're powergaming even though they're paying tens or hundreds of dollars for equipment that's no better than the stuff new players start with and they're literally paying for other people to get the game for free.

Note 2: TF2 is a bit of an exception since you get to keep all of your loot even when you die, so some things won't match (like keeping the weapons relatively well-balanced). That said, it's an effective way to look at how removing the influence of a wiki can work by removing the significance of certain loot comparisons and offline maps.

Edited August 31, 2012 by BazBake

[malau (DayZ) 36]

I dont think you can censor everyone who posts guides or wikis. There is a magical thing called free speech and that kinda means you can say whatever the fuck you want.

Yep, people just love to force their style of play onto others. It's funny and depressing to read alot of posts where people just want to suck the fun out of everything.

In this case they could have said "Wouldn't it be great if shit was randomized !", but instead they change it to 'let's stop other people from playing the game in a way that's different to the way *I* play it, and then mock them for playing it differently too'.

[malau (DayZ) 36]

I dont think you can censor everyone who posts guides or wikis. There is a magical thing called free speech and that kinda means you can say whatever the fuck you want.

Yep, people just love to force their style of play onto others. It's funny and depressing to read alot of posts where people just want to suck the fun out of everything.

In this case they could have said "Wouldn't it be great if shit was randomized !", but instead they change it to 'let's stop other people from playing the game in a way that's different to the way *I* play it, and then mock them for playing it differently too'.

[malau (DayZ) 36]

I dont think you can censor everyone who posts guides or wikis. There is a magical thing called free speech and that kinda means you can say whatever the fuck you want.

Yep, people just love to force their style of play onto others. It's funny and depressing to read alot of posts where people just want to suck the fun out of everything.

In this case they could have said "Wouldn't it be great if shit was randomized !", but instead they change it to 'let's stop other people from playing the game in a way that's different to the way *I* play it, and then mock them for playing it differently too'.

[00dlez 22]

Not that I disagree with OP, but it is mostly up to the player whether or not they want to reference the wiki, loot spawn maps, etc. When I play Day Z, I don't use an outside map with loot and such labeled on it, and if I don't have a map, then thats life.

I'm not distinctly opposed to having more fluid changes in the game experience, but the world is so massive that I don't think it's needed and if a player doesn't want a wiki and prefers to explore themselves, then they have that choice.

This is someone who relies on wikis..

You, sir, are worng.

I play without wiki's and 3rd party help. I may well be at a disadvantage but it doesn't significantly impact my game play so I don't care, which was my point to the OP.

Thanks for playing.

[00dlez 22]

Yep, people just love to force their style of play onto others. It's funny and depressing to read alot of posts where people just want to suck the fun out of everything.

In this case they could have said "Wouldn't it be great if shit was randomized !", but instead they change it to 'let's stop other people from playing the game in a way that's different to the way *I* play it, and then mock them for playing it differently too'.

[amaterarerasu 15]

not to sound like an old fart but I recall, pre internets era, how mysterious videogames could be, how daunting even. Shadow of the Beast, anyone?

Thats why I like Dark Souls very much too, and I think it relates to dayz in many ways.

I only hope that keeping the world mysterious and unpredictable is a part of rocket's agenda. Its what pulls me into the game! A feeling you dont find in games nowadays, almos ever.

theres way too much hand-holding...

[synesthesia 4]

Bazbake, amazing post. Have all of my beans. All of them.

Besides the meme spewing kneejerkers about, i think op raises a very valid point, which, in part, not only relates to dayz, but lets leave it there.

I believe this game likes to be treated as the mystery you mention. Thats why its map is huge, thats why its so eerily silent, thats why at night the map feels even larger, and more dangerous. I remember so very vividly my first incursions into cherno, asking for help when shoot on sight twats were not as ubiquitous as now. Then i showed it to some friends, and we sinned. We got into the wiki, we raided the nwa several times, used mumble, shot on sight. Now i have a brand new l85a2 on my hand, rangefinder, m24 on my backpack, and i feel invincible. And you know what?

I'm also bored.

Theres no mystery anymore to any of chernarus, and i miss newbs running around with lee enfields, learning the tough lessons it taught in the distance. And i know its my fault. Im not saying there wont be a wiki, but its most obvious exploits can probably be circumvented with a bit of randomization. I know i loved binding of isaac because of how vague the descriptions were, of how you had to choose whether to eat the telepill or not. Its what's drawn me into dark souls. I LOVE not knowing, being thrown into a world, and told me to survive, using only my skill. Ring any bells?

Edited August 31, 2012 by Synesthesia

[wolfstriked 143]

What should be happening during this alpha is us trying out different takes on Dayz. Harsh world where you are forced to constantly loot and you die very easy or is standalone set in its ways and what we see now is what we get.I am not sure if a harsh game world is better for the masses but would like to try it out.And a way to screw the online loot maps is to scatter loot everywhere.Force players to wandering and if they spot a town it then means something.Right now I spot towns and I never ever try to loot them because of super markets and the NWAF.If supermarkets were empty,as they would be in a real life apocalypse,then spotting a new town will force players to have to loot them.But alas its how Dayz plays,seems to be centered on the rush to supermarket then head to military spawns and then PVP.Would it be better to force players to constantly loot and scavenge?.

[pwajnkaim 1]

But some things in the game really need an explanation, such as how to use such a complicated inventory system or be aware of dangerous bugs which can make me lose items, also the character in dayz is wearing a military suit and knows how to use guns so he must have some knowledge at least about what ammo a gun uses, so why not wiki that up.