Hub Towns and Levels of Decay on Zombies

[nkato 18]

Alright, I think this deserves its own thread, as I have my own set of gameplay ideas to suggest for the Standalone version of DayZ. Here goes!

Concept 1: Hub Towns

The concept design is inspired by Metro 2033 and Fallout 3. You have about four or five designated, pre-fabricated small towns that are ringed by defensive walls and guard towers, and have only two entry points. These hub towns, when fed with raw resources such as scrap metal, water, and other resources, can produce commodities such as painkillers, food, water, and ammunition. This in effect creates a localized economy that encourages the following group activities:

1. Perimeter Defense and Policing (To prevent enemy raiders or zombies from invading the hub town and stealing/damaging your facilities)
   
2. Resource gathering parties or "viking-style" raid parties that are sent out to scrounge up materiel for the hub town's industry.
   
3. Expand the base's defenses by adding more bunkers, barriers, towers, etc. This requires resources.
   
4. Anything else you'd like to suggest?
   

Here's a scenario of what you'd typically experience in an encounter with a hub town...

You are wandering along a desolate road, lost, injured, and only carrying a small hunting knife. You have to find help before more zombies find and kill you. You spy the searchlights of a hub town in the distance, and upon approaching its gates, their guards shout for you to halt.

"Avast thar! Hold fast and state yer business!" said the guardsman.

"I'm but a wanderer, lost and injured. Can you help me?" you ask.

"Arrr....perhaps, if you can help us out. Come in, and we'll discuss the matter," the guardsman would reply. The gates open, revealing a small meditent, a garden, and a row of houses within the walls of the hub town, along with a large storage building.

Upon visiting the infirmary, and getting patched up, the lead guardsman tells you about the hubtown and their issues, and what he thinks you can do for him: You can choose to leave the town without helping out, but they would be less inclined to provide aid. You can choose to stay, and help with defending the hub town, or going on the offense against enemy factions. Or you can choose to join provisioning parties where you have to search across the land for equipment, arms, ammo, and resources to bring back to the hub town. Or, you could choose to join a bandit group which is friendly with the hub town, but does not make the hubtown its home - they are planning to attack another hubtown to take it for themselves. Which do you choose...?

Concept 2: Levels of Zombie Decay (LoZD)

This is an interesting concept. Since these zombies are clearly "undead" of a sort, they could be afflicted with varying degrees of decay that determine their effectiveness in the world of DayZ. There would be a visible indicator of the decay such as more chunks of body missing, maybe half the head is gone, or something like that. This allows players to more easily estimate their chances of successfully raiding a town or building.

Here's how it works: The more decayed the zombie is, the crappier the eyesight/hearing the zombie has, the less health he has, and he's also slower. This means the zombie has been infected for a VERY long time, and decay has had enough time to set in to really affect its capabilities. However, fresher zombies will be more quicker, more alert, and have more health.

Now, how do we determine what levels of decay are present in the persistent world? That's easy: Model it after biological transmission vectors that we know about for various pathogens. People who are farther from population centers will take longer to become infected, while people in high population areas will rapidly become infected. So it stands to reason that cities like Chernogorsk will be full of heavily decayed zombies with a few "newer" zombies thrown into the mix. This allows you to create a "zombie swarm" in cities, similar to what you'd experience in Left 4 Dead.

Newer, or "fresher" zombies, will be found in rural areas as well as on military bases, because of their relative isolation from major population centers. A major determining factor for the level of "freshness" of the zombies should be the listed populations for each city, town, and location. A town with 80 people will have mostly fresher zombies, with a few decayed zombies, while a city of 5,000 will have 75% of its zombie population as heavily decayed.

Tell me what you think, guys! :D I'm interested in feedback.

Edited September 24, 2012 by NKato

[Michaelvoodoo25 3120]

Read some of the Q & A's a lot of this is covered in various questions Rocket has been asked, particularly NPC areas and events, But remember groups and clans already do this on some servers. Limitation comes in when / if you have the resourses.

Q: Have you thought of NPC territories? (Think Metro 2033 hubs in the tunnels) Personally I'd love there to be a corner of the map where survivor NPCs of remaining society don't shoot people with hero skins, but shoot everyone else on sight (having much better sight overall). This would allow a more risk/reward of being a bandit and also allow for multiple bandits to raid said settlement.Will DayZ itself be available to change via community addons? (similar to minecraft

and bukkit) Lastly... How much bug-testing will be put into work on the standalone?

A: NPC is both a performance issue and also a design issue. I think I want the game to focus as much as possible on supporting player interactions. Bug testing will be conducted mostly by the community.

and

46. Q: Will you enable player to become infected with zombie virus, and to infect others? [Xiroth]

A: With the zombie virus, no, players are immune (the "zombie virus" concept in game is being developed by my brother Dr Richard Hall, a virologist).

I saw in an interview Rocket mentioned something about the infected decay rate also and their life span / abilities etc.

[apache25 133]

i like the town hubs idea but only if the towns were defended by players.........AND rocket has said so himself that the zombies in dayz are not undead they are 28 days later style zombies

[Exenima 45]

Zombies in DayZ are Infected with a disease, they are not undead.

[Gordon Axeman 191]

Good suggestions. About the towns I think a special building interface is needed. Cities and camps should be player-only creations. And I dunno about building up a town. You need machines and materials. While first is hard, but possible, the second is nearly impossible. But large camps with big military tents, camo nets, bag fencing around and deer stands for the guards is possible. It will also perfectly fit into the atmosphere.

About LoZD: cool idea. But it should not be critical. Like zombies without one or two legs are to crawl. Or one handed zombie can do light attacks, and handless ones will rush you and try to bite. Heads should be okay, as skulls can't decompose.

Good work author. Have some beans.

[starwarsfan@gmx.de 450]

As people before have pointed out, these are infected and not zombies so there is no 'decay' really. Though Rocket has also said that the Infected will have different states varying on when they last 'fed' on something. So a well nourished Infected will run after you like an athlet but a malnourished one might simply crawl on the floor.

[indominator 95]

you will able to create bases, and defenses, better trade ability, and lots of other stuff is going to be added, use search function, bases have been so much discussed that nobody posts anymore, now the talk is or already used to be melee, cars still is a little, but mostly anything else is, there isnt a lot to suggest, even underground buildings and whatever, have a different idea make a thread if not repeated, and be sure to post on the suggestions thread so ruarz can add it to his post.

[nkato 18]

Can always come up with some kind of analogue to the decay concept for the "infected", then. The concept is there, it just has to be reworded to reflect the actual lore of DayZ. :)