Why is the life expectancy going up?

[badclown 6]

people are getting better:

Im at a 4 day char atm and this is my best run so far and Im NOT avoiding the PvP hotspots. Shot one guy in Devil Castle, a second one in NW airfield who disconnected and avoided 2 others at the airfield, cuz I was in a bad tactical situation.

I like it that I started to make the decision when to NOT engange.

But please, post some server statistics.. 32 minutes.. thats bad for your reputation Rocket, people will think this game is for softies now hrhr

[Horrible_Sniper 11]

I am surprised noone has asked this.

But we haven't the faintest idea. It is currently calculated across all characters (ignoring those who died within a few minutes).

Given the vast swathes of people who died earlier' date=' there must be a dramatic rise in survival times for it to be rising. Any budding statisticians have some thoughts?

[/quote']

My 2 cents.

You fixed ladders, I haven't laughed at someone I know going up, up, up, splat in a while, all the while being mauled by pissed off zeds.

On servers with the beta patch and no chat outside of direct, people are starting to... play more cautiously, and not "Whose shooting in Cherno?", "Friendly in Cherno?", they're just staying quiet and moving as they should, avoiding people like the plague.

Increased number of servers has led to increased number of inverse servers, so a lot of people are playing on day time servers.

Just 3 of my thoughts based on observations.

[Skint (DayZ) 138]

If it is based just on In-game Time then that is wrong.

I could play all day with many characters alive for 30 minutes or so, then re-spawning, but the data would say I'm surviving for a long time because I've been "in-game" for a long time.

It should be based on individual character's total survival time, a measure of player's skill keeping one character alive in the DayZ world.

[Timberfox 2]

I know that its sacrilege to suggest, but; could some of your time tracking codes be wrong?

[esaciar 1]

I would've imagined it would be common sense to measure life expectancy from an individually spawned character, surely?

[Banicks 55]

Yea quick leaners Rocket! Give the community a bit more credit :P

Once survivors learn to be stealthy around zeds to get what they need, and avoid other people. You survive alot longer.

I spent two weeks up north just hunting animals, filling up at dams, occaisionally hitting the outskirt towns and airfield when it was quiet. Out of sheer boredom I went into a town, propped myself in some offices and began killing zeds. Got up to around 200 kils before I ran out of ammo and was promptly stomped.

It's really not hard to survive. Just stay away from people, theyre the ones doing the killing. The zeds arent. However, I look forward to these changes in their behaviour and fully expect the statistic to lower until their behaviours are re-learnt.

[Lukio (DayZ) 24]

Some basic explanations:

1) Players are getting off the coast, because that's essentially what every new player learns first.

2) There are tons of tutorials, lootmaps and videos available, helping people understand how to move around and how the underlying beast named ARMA II and its inventory, movement etc. works.

3) Players survive by cooperating or being a hunting hermit.

4) Bandits and Zombies are mostly avoidable once you know your way around and what to look out for and where to stay away from.

5) On some servers its very easy to quickly gear up in Elektro / Cherno within the first 20 minutes and then bug out.

All in all what you want to look into is a statistical progression of character survival time/per character.

It would be the average time it takes for a character to extend their life expectancy for more than one hour. In my case it took me around 5-8 deaths to survive longer, from then on I'd easily make it longer than two - three hours until I fell from a stair or something else stupid happened.

I'm pretty sure there is a certain ramp up time where deaths occur in a shorter frequency until most players "get it" and there is a large increase of life expectancy per character.

[demazi99 1]

Wasn't the life expectancy about 4 hours almost 2 months ago?

[Deceptor 9]

Some basic explanations:

1) Players are getting off the coast' date=' because that's essentially what every new player learns first.

2) There are tons of tutorials, lootmaps and videos available, helping people understand how to move around and how the underlying beast named ARMA II and its inventory, movement etc. works.

3) Players survive by cooperating or being a hunting hermit.

4) Bandits and Zombies are mostly avoidable once you know your way around and what to look out for and where to stay away from.

5) On some servers its very easy to quickly gear up in Elektro / Cherno within the first 20 minutes and then bug out.

All in all what you want to look into is a statistical progression of character survival time/per character.

It would be the average time it takes for a character to extend their life expectancy for more than one hour. In my case it took me around 5-8 deaths to survive longer, from then on I'd easily make it longer than two - three hours until I fell from a stair or something else stupid happened.

I'm pretty sure there is a certain ramp up time where deaths occur in a shorter frequency until most players "get it" and there is a large increase of life expectancy per character.

[/quote']

Very true it took me a while to get use to everything, and now I had a character at his 6 day mark. Also I was able to survive by going through small towns, and taking stuff from their. Also I am friendly to which does not help much, but it could help when I come across another player. My last life the 6 day guy got killed by some guy in the wilderness I said friendly he must of just wanted my beans ;(.

---

Maybe if your wanting the survival rate to go down, I would put something in the game the next update without telling anyone. That way it is a surprise, and we would all have to figure it out!

[Timberfox 2]

If it was based on people getting better, i think we would see huge increases in player alive times. Once players learn what not to do, their lives should go from 30 minutes, to several hours.

But really the statistics behind it are complex, and untill we get database access, i doubt we'll be really able to determine the cause.

For Ander, these things might be usefull to look into, possibly all graphed at the same time:

If time permits, try to categorize the players based on average survival time, and not play time. Then do statistics on the different groups. Just because someone plays a lot doesn't mean they are 'good'.

Average lifetime/ total play time.

Murders/ total playtime

Murders/zombie kills

zombie kills/ total play time

Gun usage statistics/time

[landshark 1]

I am surprised noone has asked this.

But we haven't the faintest idea. It is currently calculated across all characters (ignoring those who died within a few minutes).

Given the vast swathes of people who died earlier' date=' there must be a dramatic rise in survival times for it to be rising. Any budding statisticians have some thoughts?

[/quote']

I'll tell you exactly why the life expectancy is going up.

You started off with a small playerbase, they got to know the game and played together, thus the original high life expectancy of several hours (wasn't it like 4 hours and 30 minutes)?

You then had explosive member growth during the past 30 to 45 days or so. With this means a TON of newbie players coming to the game. This immediately dropped the life expectancy to very low numbers (wasn't the lowest around 24 minutes?).

Now, the player growth is slowing down (still growing, but growing at a slower rate) while at the same time the old newbies are now much more experienced and able to stay alive much longer.

In summary: The cause of the decrease in life expectancy is slowly being removed while the cause of the increase in life expectancy is slowly being added.

Eventually it'll start to even out, when your new member growth isn't so explosive and is more linear. I'd say a few more months before that happens (unless you get another huge influx of new players).

And that is why the life expectancy is rising.

[patluk@sasktel.net 1]

I think you changed the loot tables at some point, maybe in 1.6. In 1.5.8 I never found any ammo or guns, and there were way more zombies.

The only other thing I can think of is that people are just learning and being more careful. If you think about it, 30 minutes is a really silly short time to be alive in DayZ unless you're totally clueless. That's not enough time to run into Cherno even if you spawned right next to it.

You said the early data was saturated with quick deaths. Maybe finally the raw numbers are starting to reflect the present state of DayZ players.

[Javier (DayZ) 0]

I think people goes more to the north, there it s harder to find anybody ( Devil's Castle to the East)

[Sgt.Spam 42]

I think the numbers are starting to level out because that huge recent influx of players are finally starting to figure out the game.

Your older numbers of like 4+ hours came from a much smaller group of dedicated alpha testers that had been testing for more than just a week.

That's my theory.

[lexxer 25]

Umm...you nerfed Zombie spawns/numbers from previous versions. People dont die to Zombies anymore.

As soon as you figure out:

a. they cant run in buildings

b. they have to stop to attack you

Zombies are a non issue.

[Jia 1]

Perhaps the people who jumped into the game to play it like a Cherno deathmatch arena have slowly adapted to surviving in DayZ. Some of them may have left again - no achievements, no K/D ratio, no PvP leaderboard might not seem appealing to them on the long run.

[el mariachi 10]

I think people are taking less risks because the 'rewards' are not worth it.

[darklight12345 4]

Umm...you nerfed Zombie spawns/numbers from previous versions. People dont die to Zombies anymore.

As soon as you figure out:

a. they cant run in buildings

b. they have to stop to attack you

Zombies are a non issue.

i feel that this is countermanded by the ability for zeds to glitch through walls' date=' whether attacking through them, moving through them, or seeing through them. Also their insane pathing. I think these issues balance ouy the runs you described.

For example, i was in a firehouse getting attacked on the third floor by a zed that glitched through the walls. A friend was was nearby and actually said that he was floating in the air outside halfway glitched into wall.

Perhaps the people who jumped into the game to play it like a Cherno deathmatch arena have slowly adapted to surviving in DayZ. Some of them may have left again - no achievements, no K/D ratio, no PvP leaderboard might not seem appealing to them on the long run.

tbh, i wouldn't mind some kind of long term leaderboard. Basic info like length of time survived in game, zombie kills. pretty much one for each of the stats.

[DaPessimist 1]

Maybe people are dying faster. I'd like to know what your minimum time required is set at. Most people these days either rush Cherno/Elektro for gear, and die quickly... or they kill themselves on purpose over and over to spawn on the east coast. Make those part of your data, and I'm sure life expectancy will fall.

[ThirdHorseman 18]

every time somebody posts something about shoot on site all i can think about is the scene from The Walking Dead when they are in the bar and the Sherriff character has to shoot the two dudes because they were going to end up doing bad things. the two guys he killed were looking out for their group just as rick was looking out for his. he murdered them because he had too just as they would have murdered him if they needed to.

murder is going to be a part of life in a post apocalyptic world. simply because everything will de-evolve down to the lowest common denominator.

Yes, but if that scene had been DayZ then the instant the two guys came into the bar everyone would have started shooting each other.

Instead, the FIRST response was hope. Look, here are other survivors! Maybe they have news? Maybe they are friendly. It was only until the two strangers gave AMPLE warning that they were up to no good did the situation resort to violence.

Every time I have been killed by players in DayZ it has been instant shoot-on-sight. I enter a barn...BAM. I turn a corner...BAM. I get to the top of a stairwell...BAM. They aren't spotting something in my gear they need, they aren't making any moral decisions, they aren't making any emotional choices. They are just shooting cause it's easier.

And that is as far from the Walking Dead scene you describe as can be. If anything, it's more like the end of "Night of the Living Dead" with armed men just shooting and not checking first.

"that's another one for the fire."

[DaPessimist 1]

And server population is less dense. Used to be all servers were 50/50. Now, there are so many servers, that there are tons with only 15-20 people on them. I think the servers have actually outgrown the population at this point.

[lodestar 3]

If you have a single player who lived for 5 days you need around 300 players dying within 5 minutes to pull the average down to 30 mins. Consider how once a player lived for a few days it's a lot more easier for him to keep leaving for longer and longer, it's natural for the average to climb slowly, even if new players are joining and dying early.

Also, the way how offline time counts towards it affects long living players more than the others. If you played for a few hours, then logged off alive, that will count as a day later. If you died 10 times within those few hours, it will only count those hours.

[Mitritch 4]

If you have a single player who lived for 5 days you need around 300 players dying within 5 minutes to pull the average down to 30 mins. Consider how once a player lived for a few days it's a lot more easier for him to keep leaving for longer and longer' date=' it's natural for the average to climb slowly, even if new players are joining and dying early.

Also, the way how offline time counts towards it affects long living players more than the others. If you played for a few hours, then logged off alive, that will count as a day later. If you died 10 times within those few hours, it will only count those hours.

[/quote']

Rocket wrote that only in-game time is counted.

[wazthatme 9]

Well in my last life i was with a team and had camped a little city with maybe 20 maybe 30 at the most zombies and just farmed loot for a few hours only died when we went after someone we dont like IRL lol when to elektro to kill him and got killed by someone else so that life was well over 5 hours of camping just took off north from the start no good stuff just starting stuff unless i stop to cut though something i can make it to about green mountain from cherno with maybe stoping for food and water once

[Leo (DayZ) 1]

Possible reason for higher life expectancy:

There are so many dayz servers now not all of them are completely full all the time. Less people playing on the same server = less people killing each other.