Intelligent, Personal Scavenging

[hatfieldcw 184]

What if loot spawns produced different items for each player who approaches them, and the type of loot spawned would be weighted based on the player's style of play and needs? Try to keep an open mind here, and suspend disbelief for a moment regarding server performance and client-side abuse.

You can search the same building time and again in DayZ, getting new spawns each time. This, to me, represents the time spent searching the premises, is justified by the impossibility of unearthing every tin of beans or chemlight on the first pass, and compensates in large part for the fact that we're only able to enter and search a tiny fraction of the buildings in the game. There are twenty buildings in a little village, but you can only search three of them, for a total of eight loot nodes? No problem, spend an hour there and you'll have about the same result as you would if you were able to search them all. That's just an abstraction of the scavenging process, acceptable in a video game.

So having two people searching one building, it's reasonable that they'd each find a certain amount of loot, so instead of having to share one search worth of salvage, they discover more. If I find it, I'm not going to display it on the floor, I'm going to stick it in my pocket, so it's possible to find stuff without letting your comrades know about it, or you can collect it and offer it to them, at your discretion. So each loot node will have different contents for different observers, while items that are dropped by a player are displayed to all.

Finally, different survivors are going to be looking for different things. A hungry guy with nothing to eat in his inventory will be more inclined to seek that, a thirsty guy will look for drinks. If I'm out of bandages or AK ammo or have no map, I'll prioritize that sort of thing, making them marginally more likely to appear as a result of my search. At night, I'll be checking basements for flares and flashlights, but I'll ignore that sort of thing during the day. What's more, if I have low humanity and am banditing for a living, I'll be less interested in food and drink, which any passing survivor can supply me with in exchange for a little lead, and more interested in weapon upgrades, ammunition and camouflage clothing. It won't be a huge difference, maybe a couple percent either way, but basically you'll find a different ratio of ammo, food, drinks, medicine and other items depending on various factors, including humanity, time of day and current inventory. This should cut down on the number of redundant binoculars, crowbars and hatchets as well.

In a nutshell:

1: Everyone gets their own loot at spawns

2: The stuff you find is slightly weighted based on your need and playstyle

[heliman (DayZ) 26]

the game already does this. ever wondered why suddenly your looking for a map and then you head to the most obvious place to find one only to find it. that's why. rewarding players for their playstyle... lets just leave it at meh which is a no for me atm.

[Bizmal 19]

What if loot spawns produced different items for each player who approaches them, and the type of loot spawned would be weighted based on the player's style of play and needs? Try to keep an open mind here, and suspend disbelief for a moment regarding server performance and client-side abuse.

You can search the same building time and again in DayZ, getting new spawns each time. This, to me, represents the time spent searching the premises, is justified by the impossibility of unearthing every tin of beans or chemlight on the first pass, and compensates in large part for the fact that we're only able to enter and search a tiny fraction of the buildings in the game. There are twenty buildings in a little village, but you can only search three of them, for a total of eight loot nodes? No problem, spend an hour there and you'll have about the same result as you would if you were able to search them all. That's just an abstraction of the scavenging process, acceptable in a video game.

So having two people searching one building, it's reasonable that they'd each find a certain amount of loot, so instead of having to share one search worth of salvage, they discover more. If I find it, I'm not going to display it on the floor, I'm going to stick it in my pocket, so it's possible to find stuff without letting your comrades know about it, or you can collect it and offer it to them, at your discretion. So each loot node will have different contents for different observers, while items that are dropped by a player are displayed to all.

Finally, different survivors are going to be looking for different things. A hungry guy with nothing to eat in his inventory will be more inclined to seek that, a thirsty guy will look for drinks. If I'm out of bandages or AK ammo or have no map, I'll prioritize that sort of thing, making them marginally more likely to appear as a result of my search. At night, I'll be checking basements for flares and flashlights, but I'll ignore that sort of thing during the day. What's more, if I have low humanity and am banditing for a living, I'll be less interested in food and drink, which any passing survivor can supply me with in exchange for a little lead, and more interested in weapon upgrades, ammunition and camouflage clothing. It won't be a huge difference, maybe a couple percent either way, but basically you'll find a different ratio of ammo, food, drinks, medicine and other items depending on various factors, including humanity, time of day and current inventory. This should cut down on the number of redundant binoculars, crowbars and hatchets as well.

In a nutshell:

1: Everyone gets their own loot at spawns

2: The stuff you find is slightly weighted based on your need and playstyle

I hear you but I think it would make the game easier and it's easy enough as is.

[hatfieldcw 184]

the game already does this. ever wondered why suddenly your looking for a map and then you head to the most obvious place to find one only to find it. that's why. rewarding players for their playstyle... lets just leave it at meh which is a no for me atm.

To the contrary, I spent hours in Berezino one day, running from supermarket to supermarket and getting piles of wristwatches and ALICE packs, but no map. It was terrible. I'd trade every pile of loot in that store for a "Find a freaking map" command that leaves me vulnerable for five minutes and then yields one.

[Hetstaine 10852]

No :)

You get what you get and thats it. Just because you need akm ammo does not mean the chance of finding it is weighed more heavily in your favour, even if only slightly. That takes away the worry of having an empty gun or near empty as you know you will stumble on some quicker than normal because of your 'play style' as you put it.

Scavenging around with only two bullets for a long time really changes how you play the game. I am hoping really hoping Rockets drops the fuck out the percentage of military equipment being spawned. Get back to basics and away from the whole wookie www3 model we have going on atm.

Edited September 6, 2012 by Hetstaine

[Flipseytroll 0]

DayZ is successful, in my opinion, because it is quite realistic. If DayZ was the real world, we as survivors would need to share everything we have with each other(or kill everyone else and get all loot).

So I don't think it's a great idea to remove the intense feeling in the game by giving good loot away that easy.

The game needs to become harder, not easier.

[hatfieldcw 184]

Okay, ignoring the weighting, how does everyone feel about the personal loot? Three guys search a barn, they get three times as much loot as one guy searching that same barn. Good? Bad?

[hoik 415]

I think the only reasonable outcome is that three players would find the loot in a particular place three times as fast. If an individual was to loot a place thoroughly i don't see why they wouldn't be able to find the exact same items...

I think your working on the theory that a single loot 'node' is actually representative of more than one building. So if that were the case than individuals who are actually looting the one spot, in theory are in completly different rooms or buildings, am I right? And to counter the fact they they are not, you are making the assumption that as they 'virtually' loot these other buildings they are only picking up items that are of value to them - Its interesting, but I'm not convinced that just because you need something that you are more likely to get it. Admitedly it will be your priority, but that really has no direct influence on the chance of actually finding items in the game world/reality.

Edited September 16, 2012 by Hoik

[Chimaera 68]

The game needs to become harder, not easier.

Amen to that brother

Has anyone noticed how the screaming for stuff has gone subtle now everyone makes suggestions that will gradually take away why i started playing.

Dont even tempt me to mention CoD kiddies etc... :P

Heres my tenpenneth

It should be realistic as far as is humanly possible within the boundries of the code.

You should not find all you need without extensive looking (in a apocolypse people wouldnt say as they were dying ooh player xx is coming so ill put out his pyjamas on the floor ffs)

We need better loot pile less empty cans

and make empty cans non selectable as the scroll item so the can can only be accessed by the gear menu (ie when there is a can and a bandage the can is the pickup item..)

Get rid of all the silly weapons (all fancy hardware AS50 e.g. would be locked in secure military bunkers or sites it would not be laying in a fecking tent for eg or at a heli site)

Ammo should be found by the bullet not the clip, full clips would be rare.

Make zonbies tons harder and then survivng will mean something