A Treatise On Survival

[Trizzo 632]

"…and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Levitation, Thomas Hobbs.

Survival isn’t fun, it isn’t meant to be. It’s tedious, frightening and utterly exhilarating. One tests their will against nature where there is no greater measure of your capabilities or worth. The only reward is a delirious sense of satisfaction when you persevere. It’s why picking up a can of freshly spawned beans can be such a powerful act. Imagination and the suspension of disbelief, “combining human interest (to be entertained) and a semblance of truth” (that a can of beans could be found in a supermarket), creates a glorious experience. Invisible, inexhaustible beans, “steak” from essentially lifeless animals and the risk of a minor cold won’t sustain the imagination forever.

This won’t be concerned with the player versus player aspect of DayZ. It is a compressive outline of some basic principles, ideas, mechanics that could deeply enrich the survival aspect of the game. Since there is a vacuum of news, which I don’t mind, I’m going to take some license and ramble on.

Overview: Divided into numbers for tl:dr and easy reference.

1) Overhaul of Status Effects

2) Night/Day/Weather Cycle

3) Survival Orientated Loot

4) Animals

5) Size of the World/Terrain

1 Status Effects Current/New

General: Effects need to come on slower, be more impactful but food/water will be much, much harder to find. Exposure effects need a huge buff. They need a drastic increase in consequence especially in the rain and especially at night time.

* Hunger/Thirst: These effects should take longer to come into effect but food needs to be much harder to find. food needs a massive overhaul. As it stands you need to find food approx. every 20 minutes but food by and large is easy to find. You typically find it when you don’t need it and eat it anyway. Hunger should be a key driving factor of the game as survival is typically orientated towards this. The exact spread of this loot will be discussed in the loot/animal section. The spread of water is actually pretty good right now, steams in hills have been discussed, hope they find their way in one day.

* Exposure/Clothes: More weather conditions, clothes for weather. You could spend all day in the rain and be fine the right circumstances. You can also get hyperthermia from rain and gentle breeze in others. Night time needs to constantly sap the warmth of players diminishing their effectiveness, increasing their desire to eat or leading to the onset of shock/hypothermia. Add poncho, more clothes (strip hunter zombies of their jackets etc) thermal layers to stave off the cold at night.

As it stands every skin, besides the ghille suit, effects your atheistic. There is little impact on the player but that’s what good outdoor clothes do. Affect you in positive different ways.

* Shock/Broken Bones/Pain: Rocket gave some details on expanding this

1.1 New Effects

Rocket has outlined some of these (injuries, splints, toilet breaks) I won’t go into much detail when he has said these were being considered. Here is some that haven’t been.

*Disease/Toilet Breaks. Has been discussed to death and more than merits inclusion.

*General Hygiene, every 3 days you need a bath (in a large water source (run in and out). Zombies can smell you and walk towards you when sneaking, audio cue if you haven’t bathed for a week.

Part 2: Day/Night Cycle and Weather

Day/Night Cycle Night time is a fun time to play and more people need to do it. I suggest 12 hour day/night cycle so we get two cycles in one 24 hour period. Night time is a scary place. Nights usually exacerbate status effects (harder to find food, harder to get warm) making it a real challenge instead of a slightly dim day time. Night time also has its advantages. Stealthy travel and more animal activity (check hunting)

*Night Time: Night time is bloody cold in most places, let alone Russia. Fire/warm clothes are the only way to heat up. Running works in the short run but when you stop your temperature will plunge.

*Rain : Poncho/special fabrics the only way to avoid wet clothes. Fire to warm them up or change clothes to stop the onset of hyperthermia.

*Weather: Sever weather events. Rain/hail/high winds/heatwaves/blizzard all affecting the players status effects in ways we can think they would. (wind rain=shelter, heatwave=more water).

*Seasons: Something for the long term. Pick a hemisphere, i don't care which, let it follow the season of it. Can go for sutble changes or large ones. Surviving winter...how exciting. Perhaps the map could be devided into 4 areas which reflect the 4 different seasons. New players have enough to worry about besdies a winter blizzard! Then again, welcome to DayZ.

Par 3: Survival Orientated Loot

Overview: So much gear you could add! The point of adding high tier survival gear in loot is that you can split it with the high tier weapons loot. This cascades when you buff the survival elements, making the survival aspect as challenging as the PvP aspect of the game, shifting the focus from PvP with some minor hindrances to a fully realised and balanced game when where best high tier finds aren’t used for murder.

*Backpacks: Complete overhaul based on weight/bulk and not slots (36 slots of matches is the same as 36 slots of AK Mags, da faq!) starting at 10L Daypacks when you spawn, 30-60L mix of intermediate bags to 90L bags. Weight in bags effects walking speed, running, endurance, drinking/eating. So if a player wants to roll with AS-50, Mk48 and 400 rounds they might have issues. Players can choose bag for a purpose. Shall I scout with a light bag? Or go on a planned expedition with a large one?

*Canned Food/Steak/Soda – Far less food spawns but makes them satisfy hunger for longer. Needs to be balanced so we simply don’t reduce both the onset of hunger and amount of loot so we arrive at the same situation in reverse. Less food but I don’t need it as often. Much deeper discussion in Animal section.

*Matches/Hatchet/Hunting Knife – All degrade, matches run out, hunting knife needs a stone to sharpen after use, hatchets wear down?…They can last for a pretty long time...not sure if it needs tweaking besides animations.

*Tents-Set it up to escape from bad weather events/shelter for injured players? I would like to see the tent used for its intended purpose of shelter but this wouldn’t make very interesting gameplay…still I would like to see a use for it that isn’t just a storage warehouse.

*Radios – Grant access to side chat if they are turned on. This way side chat isn’t annoying and can be tuned out. What about broadcast towers, aka green mountain where you can send transmission across the entire map? These become de facto control points a high prize for groups good or bad.

3.1 New Loot

* Portable Gas/Liquid Cookers – Lightweight cookers that can use alcohol/gas (lootable from world sources) canisters as fuel to cook. No need for pesky forest, used in long treks or when stealth is required.

*Shopping Trolleys/Carriages – Sure it’s copied from The Road but what are you going to do about it? Load up a wounded person, or a passenger, put in a crap ton of gear. You know you want it. A little carriage for the Old Bike (bikes need way more spawns)

*Machete: Too similar to the axe? You know you want one though. Different melee weapons do different effects. Axe= more damage, broken bones, slower Machete=quicker, less damage, more forgiving

4 Animals

General Principles– Greatly reduce the number of animals, program them to function like animals, increase rarity of large animals. Raw meat/cooked meat degrades. Given an option to cook meat for longer making jerky to preserve it forever but you lose up to half or three quarters of weight value in the persevering process.

*Behavior/Hunting Methods: Hunting should reward planning and reassemble reality not random wandering for lucky spawns. The larger the animal the rarer the spawn. Large animals generally graze either side of the early morning and evening. They rest in shelter during the day.

Rabbits, duck, quail, small game should be common, in places that you expect to find them. Shotgun pellets or chokes implemented to help kill small game effectively. Given many animals are nocturnal it means the torch could play a big role in spotlighting animals. Their eyes can reflect back at you as they do in real life. This lets the torch have utility at night, a high risk high reward way to hunt. Fish/crab trap in rivers, bait/trap in the wild?

Stats/Planning: Animals should also have the actual weight worth of meat on them. A can of beans is about 500g. A cow is 500kg. 500kg you say why would I need to ever hunt again? How are you going to carry 500kg as a solo player? Where are you going to store it? It all becomes part of the planning. A solo hunter can set up a base camp, hunt animals, trek light to carry out, persevere the meat (remembering that he will lose ¾ of weight) and live in peace for a time.

Groups can work together on something thoughtful and challenging that isn’t player killing. Animals would be “passed up” if players don’t have the ability to utilise the meat instead of wasted the glut of animals that currently spawn. Larger groups would need to better plan the food for the group. Many people would gladly fill the role of a hunter if the challenge and reward was there.

Animals/Weight Outline

Bunnies/Wildfowl/Fish =Common 1 kg

Goat/Sheep/Pig= Medium 50kg -100kg

Deer = Rare 100-300kg

Wild Cow/Bull/Bear = Extremely Rare 500kg

Predators. Add them.

5 World Map/Terrian

Make the map larger and include multiple Topo maps that flow onto each so we can have some adventurous navigation with different terrain, not just endless pine forest. Include tourist information centres in the hubs of medium-large towns so people know where they are if they can’t find maps. Larger maps are promised, I trust in Rocket and Co to deliver.

Will add as i think...what does the survivalist in you want to see?

Edited October 12, 2012 by Trizzo

[apache25 133]

very good ideas you have my beans but...............i have already suggested the gas/liquid cookers so hence it is not original. and baths? you can go for a month or more without smelling bad. yes we should have to wash ourselves but not every three days.

and the shopping cart idea is mine too unless its been used in the past.

but still very good ideas. goodbye

[seizethedayz 23]

Trizzo, I absolutely share your sentiment. I apologize because I started a thread along similar lines without having seen yours, probably due to my own haste. You are spot on.

I think what makes this game truly horrifying at least in the present concept form is that death is inevitable. It's a foregone conclusion, yet you are playing to determine the path to it. There are so many things in game that can take you.

Hunger, food, thirst, exposure, zombies, players, etc... You really don't truly know how it will end, but you know it will (barring acts of god, such as hacker script kills).

It really is a very mortal and real game.

I think what you're getting at, and what most DayZ players are longing for, is an increase in the depth of that experience. The more variables, customization, and depth we can add to the experience, the more fulfilling and diverse it will be. No one life will be the same!

General: Effects need to come on slower, be more impactful but food/water will be much, much harder to find. Exposure effects need a huge buff. They need a drastic increase in consequence especially in the rain and especially at night time.

Absolutely! I think the coolest aspect of this all would be that players might be forced closer to towns simply to take refuge during storms, with zombies howling outside, the players apprehensively trying to rest and recoup. What an atmosphere!

I think that with water, or drink even, it should be harder to find, but only in its clean, pure form. There should be plenty available water, but maybe a fair portion of it should be dirty, or infected. I would say far less soda cans, and far more empty water bottles. This would force the players to fill up at streams, lakes ponds, wells, and puddles. Some of which may not be clean. I was thinking then, water purification tablets or water filters could be added. This would allow players to draw from pretty much any source as long as they had a way to purify it.

Hey, maybe even boiling water over a campfire in a pot? Anything to add more dynamics to the game!

Hunger/Thirst: These effects should take longer to come into effect but food needs to be much harder to find. food needs a massive overhaul. As it stands you need to find food approx. every 20 minutes but food by and large is easy to find. You typically find it when you don’t need it and eat it anyway. Hunger should be a key driving factor of the game as survival is typically orientated towards this. The exact spread of this loot will be discussed in the loot/animal section. The spread of water is actually pretty good right now, steams in hills have been discussed, hope they find their way in one day.

Yes! The cans are way too plentiful. I notice the first thing I always get too much of is canned food. I think they definitely need to knock down the spawn rate. Or even, canned food could spawn damaged, dented, or leaking, and you would have to decide whether or not you wanted to take the chance and eat it. That would force another layer of decision making on the player, and would be even more rich of an experience! Would certainly make for interesting dilemmas.

Picture people fighting not over guns, but hacking each other with hatchets for the remaining water or food in a village. It's crazy to think about.

* Exposure/Clothes: More weather conditions, clothes for weather. You could spend all day in the rain and be fine the right circumstances. You can also get hyperthermia from rain and gentle breeze in others. Night time needs to constantly sap the warmth of players diminishing their effectiveness, increasing their desire to eat or leading to the onset of shock/hypothermia. Add poncho, more clothes (strip hunter zombies of their jackets etc) thermal layers to stave off the cold at night.

As it stands every skin, besides the ghille suit, effects your atheistic. There is little impact on the player but that’s what good outdoor clothes do. Affect you in positive different ways.

Should be the players other worst enemy. I hope the inventory system in the standalone has the chest, head, hands, legs, feet slots you typically see in RPGs. I think with the degradation of items, weapons, and clothes within the game you could see people out wearing cheap sneakers while their rare winter boots dry near the fire. In a sense, finding more durable gear, and gear that protects against the elements better should be the players ticket to a harsher environment (north country?) with more risk and more reward.

Players would come back to the coast from the north country boasting of their triumphs, of the terror that lurked around every corner, and about the epic journey they took to get there. Mind boggling, just thinking about it. It might even lessen banditry, as there would be this always harsh pinnacle upon which to test your mettle.

* Shock/Broken Bones/Pain: Rocket gave some details on expanding this

1.1 New Effects

Rocket has outlined some of these (injuries, splints, toilet breaks) I won’t go into much detail when he has said these were being considered. Here is some that haven’t been.

*Disease/Toilet Breaks. Has been discussed to death and more than merits inclusion.

*General Hygiene, every 3 days you need a bath (in a large water source (run in and out). Zombies can smell you and walk towards you when sneaking, audio cue if you haven’t bathed for a week.

Yea, I am much looking forward to this. I hope that by splints he means you can make your own splints, by objects you can pick up off the ground, or maybe finding a box at the hospital. The general hygeine thing I can see sometimes being a little annoying, but the zombies smelling you... man that's terrifying. Think of a zombie that's incredibly fast, but blind, and follows players solely based on smell... call him 'The Tracker!' Scaring kids into practicing good hygeine all across Chernarus.

The toilet breaks thing... Ah... I don't know, it depends on how its executed and integrated. Last thing I want is to be taking care of business and have a crawler come along...

Part 2: Day/Night Cycle and Weather

Day/Night Cycle Night time is a fun time to play and more people need to do it. I suggest 12 hour day/night cycle so we get two cycles in one 24 hour period. Night time is a scary place. Nights usually exacerbate status effects (harder to find food, harder to get warm) making it a real challenge instead of a slightly dim day time. Night time also has its advantages. Stealthy travel and more animal activity (check hunting)

*Night Time: Night time is bloody cold in most places, let alone Russia. Fire/warm clothes are the only way to heat up. Running works in the short run but when you stop your temperature will plunge.

*Rain : Poncho/special fabrics the only way to avoid wet clothes. Fire to warm them up or change clothes to stop the onset of hyperthermia.

*Weather: Sever weather events. Rain/hail/high winds/heatwaves/blizzard all affecting the players status effects in ways we can think they would. (wind rain=shelter, heatwave=more water).

*Seasons: Something for the long term. Pick a hemisphere, i don't care which, let it follow the season of it. Can go for sutble changes or large ones. Surviving winter...how exciting. Perhaps the map could be devided into 4 areas which reflect the 4 different seasons. New players have enough to worry about besdies a winter blizzard! Then again, welcome to DayZ.

Oh god yes! I think every server should be forced to adhere to day/night. It adds such an awesome dynamic to the game, and with the possibility of nightvision having batteries, I think more people would stick around. Personally, it's my favorite time to play. The atmosphere is unreal, so spooky and lonely.

The severe weather I think is probably the coolest dynamic operator on exposure. Just think of this: You're running along, you see the clouds darken ahead of you, you're in the middle of the woods, tens of miles from the nearest shelter... This might be it... I might die right here because of a storm... The driving rain pounds down on the ground, you hear muddy footsteps approaching out of the unforgiving maelstrom... Oh my... Oh my....

The seasons would most definitely be very cool, but might it be better to keep certain regions within certain temperature limits, give or take a few degrees here and there. I think winter across the land might be frustrating. I think that could be an adjustable server setting though, so people could sort out what kind of game they wanted to play. Imagine, an all winter all the time server? That would be the ultimate in survival. You'd probably die a hundred times before finding the gear you need to survive all in one life.

Could you imagine a blizzard though? Driving snow, zombies stumbling through as the flakes whip around them, you're surrounded but you can't see it yet...

*Backpacks: Complete overhaul based on weight/bulk and not slots (36 slots of matches is the same as 36 slots of AK Mags, da faq!) starting at 10L Daypacks when you spawn, 30-60L mix of intermediate bags to 90L bags. Weight in bags effects walking speed, running, endurance, drinking/eating. So if a player wants to roll with AS-50, Mk48 and 400 rounds they might have issues. Players can choose bag for a purpose. Shall I scout with a light bag? Or go on a planned expedition with a large one?

This... this.... this..... How the hell does an M107 or an AS-50 fit in a backpack anyways.... ? This definitely needs to be fixed, and made to be more spatially realistic as you stated. Maybe you could carry two guns on MOLLE attachments on the outside, and attach additional storage pouches for different things to the outside of the bag? Like, ammo, herb pouches (wild herbs!), etc...

This, for some reason, was one of the first things I noticed playing DayZ, and for whatever reason, it really annoyed me.

*Matches/Hatchet/Hunting Knife – All degrade, matches run out, hunting knife needs a stone to sharpen after use, hatchets wear down?…They can last for a pretty long time...not sure if it needs tweaking besides animations.

This is pretty interesting. What if you go to strike a match, and it fizzles. Or, if you get the matches wet then they have a low percentage of actually working. Maybe the sharpening wheel could be foot operated, and exist in a workshop sort of area in the cities. It would force players to go into high zombie areas to fix their tools, certainly adding to the challenge.

*Radios – Grant access to side chat if they are turned on. This way side chat isn’t annoying and can be tuned out. What about broadcast towers, aka green mountain where you can send transmission across the entire map? These become de facto control points a high prize for groups good or bad.

You know what would be awesome. If you could switch between 12-20 different channels on the radio, so people could converse at a distance without anyone hearing (unless they are tuned to the same frequency of course). I mean, people probably could just use teamspeak, but it would add another cool dynamic to the game.

* Portable Gas/Liquid Cookers – Lightweight cookers that can use alcohol/gas (lootable from world sources) canisters as fuel to cook. No need for pesky forest, used in long treks or when stealth is required.

*Shopping Trolleys/Carriages – Sure it’s copied from The Road but what are you going to do about it? Load up a wounded person, or a passenger, put in a crap ton of gear. You know you want it. A little carriage for the Old Bike (bikes need way more spawns)

You mean like a rocket stove? A backpacking stove? That would be some pretty cool high-end loot. You could fill up the fuel at gas stations like you fill up Jerry Cans, take it with you on your treks into the unforgiving north country. It would be invaluable, although you could just light a fire as that is relatively easy to do. But... the question is.... should fires be harder to light in certain conditions? Such as when it's raining heavily or when it's very windy out. In those cases, could you have the stove as a sure-fire way to cook?

I pity the poor bastard trudging through Cherno with a shopping cart full of supplies, when an AS-50 round hits him square in the back. You would be a walking target with that thing... Oh my god would it be funny though.

General Principles– Greatly reduce the number of animals, program them to function like animals, increase rarity of large animals. Raw meat/cooked meat degrades. Given an option to cook meat for longer making jerky to preserve it forever but you lose up to half or three quarters of weight value in the persevering process.

*Behavior/Hunting Methods: Hunting should reward planning and reassemble reality not random wandering for lucky spawns. The larger the animal the rarer the spawn. Large animals generally graze either side of the early morning and evening. They rest in shelter during the day.

Rabbits, duck, quail, small game should be common, in places that you expect to find them. Shotgun pellets or chokes implemented to help kill small game effectively. Given many animals are nocturnal it means the torch could play a big role in spotlighting animals. Their eyes can reflect back at you as they do in real life. This lets the torch have utility at night, a high risk high reward way to hunt. Fish/crab trap in rivers, bait/trap in the wild?

It would make sense to decrease the amount of large game, as theoretically shortly after society is disrupted I bet they are the first animals to go, merely for food. I like the idea of a hunter setting up a camp and maybe having a smokehouse with meats hanging, would be very cool. Or maybe just a couple tents in the woods with a firepit. Either way, cool notion.

One thing for sure, they have to increase the amount and variety of small game. I want to see turkeys strutting around the woods, quails, rabbits, maybe even foxes that will take your game from you, although that might be a stretch.

Maybe even chickens you can own? Where you can retrieve the eggs from time to time?

(I need to go to bed!) Great post man!

Edited October 12, 2012 by seizethedayz

[Trizzo 632]

very good ideas you have my beans but...............i have already suggested the gas/liquid cookers so hence it is not original. and baths? you can go for a month or more without smelling bad. yes we should have to wash ourselves but not every three days.

and the shopping cart idea is mine too unless its been used in the past.

but still very good ideas. goodbye

Thanks, but let me qualifying the bathing. A person might not smell to bad but clothes do. Polypropylene, cotton soak all soak up odor, most fabrics smell awful after intense exhersion. Three days was so it impacts people before they die. I don't foresee people living for months beofre they get really smelly! Sorry about copy pasting ideas. Was trying to keep what i had heard before to bullet point only, sorry if i claimed others as my own.

Trizzo, I absolutely share your sentiment. I apologize because I started a thread along similar lines without having seen yours, probably due to my own haste. You are spot on.

I think what makes this game truly horrifying at least in the present concept form is that death is inevitable. It's a foregone conclusion, yet you are playing to determine the path to it. There are so many things in game that can take you.

Hunger, food, thirst, exposure, zombies, players, etc... You really don't truly know how it will end, but you know it will (barring acts of god, such as hacker script kills).

It really is a very mortal and real game.

I think what you're getting at, and what most DayZ players are longing for, is an increase in the depth of that experience. The more variables, customization, and depth we can add to the experience, the more fulfilling and variable it will be. No one life will be the same!

I love your ideas! (adding individual responses, afk 1 second)

Don't be sorry man, i saw yours as i was posting! I'll read over yours later, going for some drinkies. Back in 6 hours me thinks so type away and i'll enjoy going over yours (nothing suss) :P

Edited October 12, 2012 by Trizzo

[Rastamaus 323]

Good ideas but all have been suggested before, and in a more easily digestible way

[Riem 164]

Fuck easily digestible. You used treatise correctly, and your points are well explained and while not original, I'm all for details.

Beans, have them.

Spoiler tags would help to break up the wall of text, though.

Edited October 12, 2012 by Riem