Limited resources [Minecraft proof of concept]

[Apanthropy 11]

Hi there. This is a long post, but I felt I needed to get my opinions out there rather than just responding in random threads over and over with what I want to say.

For a long time I have been a believer in the whole "if you have a scarce amount of resources, you will encourage more trading and alliances, rather than always have everyone kill on sight". By resources I mean food, water, medical supplies, weapons, ammunition, vehicles - everything. Currently in Day Z, it is extremely easy to gear up and survive. By this I do not mean high-end military gear, which I will address shortly. What I mean is that, for any Day Z player who is even decent at the game, it only takes 20-30 minutes to find food, water, a backpack, an assortment of watches/compasses/maps/hatchets, and a pistol/shotgun/AK with enough ammo. They are set for survival, and it isn't even a struggle to stay alive. I won't even get into the zombies and how boringly easy it is to stay alive from them.

I know this subject has been debated for a long time, and I just want to preface the rest of my post with three things:

1) I am in NOT advocating absolutely zero banditry or player killing. In fact I think that is a very large part of what makes this game great. All I want is to have a game with a system that gives players viable options for both killing, and not killing other players.

2) Item scripting and duping of high end military gear is another subject entirely and has nothing to do with anything in this thread (it obviously should not be in the game, though).

3) Other things would have to be implemented as well to make something like this actually work and be fun to play, I believe. Maybe even something as obscure as a rebalancing of how hunger/thirst/blood meters work in the game. Zombies being much more threatening is another big one that I think would need to be there to coincide with this, as well as adding a large variety of items in general - a lot of the time maybe useless to you during the present time, but always useful to at least someone that you might come across.

Also, I could be totally wrong in all of this, but I'm not satisfied with how Day Z is currently, and I really feel that this is something that could potentially make it a more interesting game again.

Onto the main point of this post. Here is a thread I was linked to by a friend on the Minecraft forums that I believe is a very good proof of concept of the idea of having fewer resources in general for players:

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1212125-closed-map-experiment/

For a tl;dr, basically 30 players played on a PvP server with a closed 350x350 map for several months (only playing when all 30 could be on at the same time). They weren't allowed to leave these boundaries, and therefore the only resources in the game were also contained in these boundaries. It meant that eventually their resources would run out, and the end result was that the players formed alliances and trading corporations in order to obtain resources that they didn't have, by trading with others for what they needed. All the resources they were trading with were all, essentially, an infinite resource in a normal Minecraft map. Things such as wood, saplings, iron, diamond, sand (for windows) and even cobblestone once the wood for pickaxes began to run out. After the fallout of all of their resources, when the corporations crumbled, players STILL teamed up and formed groups for the sole purpose of keeping themselves alive from NPC enemies. It was both safety in numbers, and the ability to pool what little resources they had. Something you never see in Day Z right now, because there is such an abundance of resources. Why team up with someone you don't know when you don't receive any benefit from them whatsoever? You can get your own food, water, medical supplies, and safety (weapons+ammunition) extremely easily already. There's zero point in giving mutual help to another player through yours and his resources.

The conclusions drawn in the thread were done with a separate intention from what my thread here focuses on, but the results are still beneficial for both parties. And yes, the two games are different in many ways, but similarities can definitely be drawn.

I often frequent a hardcore deathban Minecraft server that has a 1 month ban if you die. While you see less killing in general than you do in Day Z because of the fact that it's simply harder to kill people in Minecraft in a lot of circumstances, you will generally find that when players have the ability to, they will kill (or grief) anyone they do not know. The only times this doesn't happen are when players have almost no resources (just like two players starting off in Day Z without a weapon and befriending each other) or when they have enough resources to where it takes a very long time to actually kill them (diamond armor, enchants, etc.. something that doesn't have a parallel in Day Z). There are definitely alliances on this server, but they are based on friendships that have formed outside of the game generally, on their forums, etc. Basically, the bottom line is, with infinite resources in a deathban server where players can do whatever they want, they will exhibit the same qualities that players do in Day Z - they kill other players.

Now, the experiment that I linked is not a deathban server. However, we can still see examples of trading, teaming up, and forming large corporations/alliances that occurred EXCLUSIVELY from the lack of resources, as well as players teaming up for the exclusive benefit of staying alive and pooling resources towards the end when everything in the game was becoming scarce. Everyone playing knew that a lot of the things they took for granted were now very limited and valuable, and understood that in order to have them, they would have to cooperate with the people that already owned them through trading for a resource that they had an excess of. Without this lack of resources, basically none of this would have happened at all. You would have seen very minimal trading, and the only alliances formed would have been of people who were already friends to begin with, or who made friends with others on the server over time. No alliances, trading, or teaming up of any kind would have been formed exclusively for mutual benefit, rather they would have all been formed out of friendship and nothing in the actual game.

Therefore, I believe that, while from a different game, this can be a very good example of why having much more limited resources in Day Z could potentially be a good thing. Not only would it make the game more difficult in general (something a lot of people desperately want), but it would at the very least ENCOURAGE player interaction beyond simply killing each other. Because maybe you can kill one or two people with only 2 bullets in a pistol, no food, and maybe 1 bandage, acquiring a can of food here, or 3 bullets there. But then what happens when you find the 3rd, 4th, or 5th person? And who's to say they have what you need after you kill them, if resources are scarce? Two sets of eyes would make it easier to find food and water when it's a rarity. Two players with few resources would also be much safer if you upped the zombie difficulty as well (something that is hard to do currently, but could be possible in the standalone). People would slowly start to realize that maybe teaming up with strangers to pool their resources would, in the end, benefit both of them more greatly than the benefit they gained of just killing them without a second thought.

Just food for thought on the state of Day Z currently.

Edited September 28, 2012 by Apanthropy

[Sandwichx 103]

Yes. Yes. Hell yes. All of my yes. This is what I want to see happen with DayZ in a nutshell.

[Odrama Vin Laden 18]

This is pure excellence, have some beans. Maybe one day we can trade for DELICACIES like this.

[DemonGroover 8836]

I would love to see a version of DayZ and a few servers do this. Setting finite resources would simulate things a lot more closely than having the Loot Fairy fritter about from barn to barn spreading Lee Enfields wherever she goes.

Imagine finding a high end gun but knowing that once those bullets are gone you may never find bullets for it again. Would that person camp on a hill and snipe away? Supermarkets would run out of tins and eventually the only food would be animals (which could be limited, though not finite as well)

I would play this, just for the experiment rather than anything else. I even discussed such a gametype in a post a while back.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/94147-an-actual-dayz-revisited/

[Skin69niks 72]

Finite resources...no bullets to kill people...we resort to sharpening spears...cannabalism ensues...game dies. Good story I hope the devs keep the "loot fairy" because that shit sounds about as fun as a trip to the dentist.

[puppetworx 474]

Interesting OP. I read Sex at Dawn a few months back - it's a book based around the the effect that abundance of resources has on a population, specifically with regards to 'sexual resources'. It contests that the move to farming and away from hunter-gatherer behaviour coincided with the move away from egalitarian communities and towards individual property ownership as a display of status, this in turn resulted in increased violence from greater competition. Such behaviour has been observed in certain other species of mammals and the book, controversially, makes the case that sex and 'sexual partner ownership'(marriage) in humans is another of those abundant resources.

With property ownership being such a big part of DayZ I'm skeptical that this would have a huge effect on killing. Other then by what skin you wear in DayZ your character is entirely defined by what they own, since there is no skills ladder. There was a thread started a few days ago asking how many people had actually died from starvation or hunger. The numbers are extremely low and if it has happened it's been on purpose, or a one-off. So there is definitely room to play with on this idea, and I'd love to see it.

Something that might be interesting to see in the game is loot which requires teamwork to access. E.g. crashed vans that have loot inside and need 3 players to right and gain access to, or weapons caches that have heavy blast doors and need 2 players to open.

[sostronk 334]

Personally, at this stage, I think the key is going to be with the "party" feature that Rocket has been contemplating. Really I don't see a way around it. Either your a lone wolf or your in a clan. If your in a clan your working together with your clanmates. If your a lone wolf your all alone. Ive really seen the PvP decrease in this game lately and its mostly the casuals who have stayed around playing. Its kind of getting lonely as a bandit to be completely honest. I hunt down groups of players and nobody wants to fight. They want to work together. If things keep going the way they are I may very well give up on being a bandit and go farm loot and repair vehicles and help people and do all those social things. Its just no fun getting into a firefight with people who are just trying to protect themselves and would rather be teaming up.

[Hello moto 70]

I like this idea very much. If not finite, have a very low percentage for food to spawn

[Steak and Potatoes 13480]

I really like the first paragraph I tried to read the whole thing but fell asleep but I'm on board with the first 15% of OP

[hawc 63]

For a small community this could work but not for the whole game. Not everyone will play from day 0 which means someone joining a few months later will be at a disadvantage.

Maybe just for weapons,equipment, so there are only a fixed number of items. When one gets destroyed another one can be spawned. But that could turn out the same as vehicles.

[Sandwichx 103]

Someone could host an event like what was described in the Minecraft event. Get 30 or more people and play on a private hive server with these limited resource rules and see what happens. I can see things like canteens quickly becoming a very valuable resource, as, after all the sodas have been drunk, they would be the only source of water. Same thing applies to matches and knives for hunting animals.

[Taiphoz 95]

not sure I like any of this, I would be game for the food / water to be limited IF a player would then have the ability to grow their own food, and farm their own water through water pumps or wells or something, but limiting this resource is just stupid the end result is simply that it runs out and everyone dies.