Long term standalone discussion; globalization, logistics, economy, and more.

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

I'm tired of talking about the nit-picky little devices that everyone wants or doesn't want to see right now. Let's discuss the more epic aspects of this zombie apocalypse and how the dev team can continue to add to the depth of this game later in it's life. So we're talking long term here.

 

 

We can all see how the creation of this mod has both marked, and shaped, a shift in the game market. Just look at the games we see following rapidly in it's wake. WarZ, Nether, 7 Days to Die, The Dead Linger, the Division, the list goes on. The drive for these kinds of environments is obviously the newest frontier in gaming. With this, the demand for persistence and richness of content is growing rapidly... Plus, I think we can all appreciate how the Standalone has to compete against it's own free mod. It has to transcend the level of gameplay we already have.

 

As I listened to NPR today (as I do every morning), I started thinking about the more global implications of an apocalypse scenario, and I think the box of Chernarus is severely limiting the future potential of this game. We've already discussed ideas like map portals and such (the ability to physically travel to the border of one map and join another cell and server). This is going to become absolutely necessary. Allow me to set up a little scenario.

 

- The mega map.

 

Just imagine for a moment that through map-stitching, it were possible to spawn, travel all the way from the coast of Chernarus to the northern border of the map, and keep going through cell after cell of environments. If the devs really wanted to, over time they could stitch together an absolutely massive game world. I'm not actually postulating that we could ever reach the size of say, the earth; but Altis is pretty damn huge. Now imagine that you had traveled from the coast of Chernarus, through possibly three cells of complete terrain, and you're all the way in Germany. Now imagine that death would send you to the previous cell, or even back to your original spawn cell (assuming there's no way to establish a remote spawn of some kind). Wanna talk about perma death, consequences, curing the community of "Why don't I just kill myself instead of deal with this broken leg" syndrome? This is it. Totally, incomprehensibly vast physical distance. It would be nigh impossible to travel to your previous location and retrieve your gear. Your camp, or fortification, or stash, might be 40,000 km away.

 

- A persistent item economy would mean that logistics, production, and trade would become a logical necessity.

 

The movement of goods is one of the world's oldest known professions. The silk road dates to over 5000 years ago, and just look at it's expanse. Because of the death mechanic, these frontier areas would be high risk, high value areas where seasoned survivors would go to explore, search for more supplies (or rare items), and maybe even attempt to establish their own safes areas, camps, or stashes, since they would likely be less frequented by other players as they grow more distant from the original spawn point. So it's safer in the aspect that you could more easily try to hide a camp in these lower population, higher risk zones.

 

-Radio towers.

 

Towers could have access panels which you might interface a radio with, and thus use that radio to broadcast communications with anyone who has a radio in other cells (In the same server group.) This would make it feasible for, heh, stalkers I guess, to communicate with other players and potentially initiate trades from vast distances. Maybe using the tower would have some limitations, like only allowing you talk to one cell at a time.

 

 

-Production.

 

The crafting system is a step in the right direction, but I think it should be taken a little further. Imagine if you could find a generator, and use it to power machinery inside a factory, and then gather raw materials to produce things like new guns, for example. Or car parts. Or what if power plants could be brought back online and kept online to produce electricity? These are daunting tasks, which would require lots of scavenging and teamwork to accomplish, but they have obvious benefits. Control over a structure gives you the ability to defend yourself from zombies (which should be a serious threat and a major concern a lot of the time), and also it would provide you with warmth and a place to store gear, which brings me to my next point.

 

- Safes with keys.

 

I saw this one on a DayZ doodle rant, and I think it's a pretty good idea; Buildings could randomly, here and there, have an open safe with a corresponding key inside. The safe would allow you to store a limited amount of gear (maybe certain safes could be larger or smaller than others) with relative safety. Keys of course would have to be indestructible and persistent to the server (or server group, rather) that they were generated on. This means that going to another server group would result in the key not appearing in your inventory, and being added back to your inventory when you return to that server group. This might necessitate some kind of special "key ring" inventory slot which would function independently of the space or weight of your normal inventory, so as to avoid glitchyness and confusion. Also, if a key is not retrieved from a corpse, it should be automatically returned to the person who died with it. Perhaps safes could even be sabotaged with explosives (and repaired, so they don't all end up destroyed and useless), so they aren't perfectly "safe" either. Also, players could possibly use certain tools like a file, or a grinder, to produce copies of a key, which they could then give to other players whom they trust.

 

Anyway just some big ideas to get you guys going. I'm tired. Anyone else have pipe dreams like this? I'm talking large scale stuff people, come on, GET IN. We can think of some crazy shit. Discuss.

 

Here are the diagrams made later in the forum discussion. Bringing them here for ease of access.

 

 

 

 

A little diagram of player spread and movement across a 2x2 cell setup - a goal I think is entirely feasible to accomplish by next year.

Edited October 18, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[strideynet 36]

Brilliant idea with a cellular mega map. I can imagine servers with 1000 players on it or even more then that. The problem is finding some crazy enough to host something that intensive. Ideally, people could choose to host a group of cells (a flesh) . Imagine the in depth levels of trading, camel trails across regions. You could get stuck in a desert and need water, someone will sell it to you.

Main problem.

Dayz standalone is already mostly coded. To use this system a complete recode would be needed, so this is feasible if a dayz 2 was to be produced. Production sounds cool as well, maybe metel rich regions that you could mine and ship out.

Loved it all.

If only it wasn't a crazy dream!

[leviski 2152]

Id like rocket to just take SS13 and then translate it completely into DayZ

 

making the same game, but on a different engine with different goals and ideas. (obviously not set in space either)

[m.w. vindicator 880]

This is the dream for December 2014.  It would be epic if Chernarus was the lower right square of a 3x3 grid of maps.  Even a 2x2 grid would be amazing.  the architecture required to make "server groups" would probably be immense.  

[rossums 2190]

Wow.

A sensible suggestion for once without people trolling in the first couple of posts.

I think it's a brilliant idea - it would also provide enough of a different experience (between each of the cells) which would reduce the need for third-party/private servers.

The sheer distance would be a brilliant deterrent to all the spawn-cycling and it would be very nice to see a sort of progression as you move outwards from Chernarus to the more distant areas.

I think another good addition would be something that KoS suggested in regards to the health system, it should be more in-depth and require a lot more attention than 'Eat food when your food reaches the bottom' - it could perhaps relate to your exhaustion in travelling long distances.

The crafting system WILL have to be a lot more in-depth than is currently anticipated but I think DayZ will be able to hold it's own against the various other games and their crafting systems that offer a similar experience.

A lot could be done with this idea though - great write-up!

[AP_Norris 1017]

I definately love safes.

If they're short of places to stick em... They could have a bank with a safety deposit box room.

Maybe as a group you decide to fortify the area and let players use these under supervision.

It would be a bank! Lol.

And, some folks might wanna pull the most amazing heist ever.

With about 200 separate explosive charges and a big firing squad.

Their name would certainly go around the server if somebody caught a glimpse.

The more amazing unscripted possibilities the better.

Maybe some of the longer running more populated servers have such slim pickings of loot players have to trade and can't afford to waste bullets or risk destroying some bodies items.

When going into towns there would be more people than roaming Zeds running stores and trading stuff from their safes they secured long ago.

Would be like minecraft but less blocky.

[Karmaterror 982]

I like the idea of "cells", iv wanted this for a long time. A while back I di an idea about including some community maps by leaving the roads off the main map.....but being able to then leave that map for another....just awesome. Could the map changes be done simply by a script that atomaticly logs you out, then into the new server, all hidden by a loadscreen. 

 

On a private hive I could see multiple maps joined together working well, but would it be difficult with public hives? just thinking that it not only has to save your gear but also the map your on, also any keys for safes would be useless in another public server group.

 

And all for safes, only issue that always pops into my head is...what if someone kills me while I have my safe key but dosent take it. Maybe if the key is not on anybodys person and isn't in the game world somewhere, EG on a survivor body or inside a car, then the safe could be emptied and the key returned. Its a lil how tent cleanup works atm.

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

Main problem.

Dayz standalone is already mostly coded. To use this system a complete recode would be needed, so this is feasible if a dayz 2 was to be produced. Production sounds cool as well, maybe metel rich regions that you could mine and ship out.

 

I disagree. DayZ is in Pre-alpha and right now they are only tackling basic gameplay issues (like netcode and zombies) and adding more content. These are ideas for the more distant future of the game (say two, three years from now), when the more basic issues have been addressed and the team's priority is going to be managing the longevity of the game. I do believe I saw Rocket say on an interview that they would like to work with cells or map portals, whatever you wanna call it. So it's not a far fetched idea.

 

Actually the biggest problem I foresee, as the stalker pointed out, would be getting server groups to cooperate in an efficient way... I'm trying to think of some creative solutions, like allowing each server to have their own NESW configurations for map portals, for example. Undoubtedly, the number of "home" servers would outnumber the "fringe servers." I say home because I don't want to postulate that Chernarus must be the original spawn point. Perhaps players could spawn there, or a place like Celle, and move between fringe servers to other home servers.

 

 

So if green servers are home spawn servers, and yellow and orange are the fringe servers, then there would be more green servers than yellow, and probably more yellow than orange, ect. Obviously. When the player reaches a map boundary, the game would automatically give us a server selection screen which would allow players to simply choose which host they want to play that offers the geographical area they are travelling to. Actually I think this is a more elegant solution, as it leaves less up to the maintenance of portals and such by admins...

Edited October 15, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[Skat3rat 1633]

This idea of multiple maps combined into one big map has always been a dream of mine for DayZ.  I've always loved games with huge maps.  Imagine if DayZ's map eventually became the size of Europe.  As the OP suggested, you could have different servers host different maps and as you reach the border of one map and get into the other map, it gives you the list of servers hosting that map and you can choose which one you want to join.

 

Maybe some day you could even choose to spawn at a different map?  Instead of Chernarus, you could spawn at a map based somewhere in Italy for example.

 

Also, you could find items, clothing, and cars relating to the map you're in.  So in Chernarus, you would find Russian weapons, items, clothing, and vehicles.  In a map based in France though for example, you would find French weapons, items, etc.  This would probably help with trading a lot to since instead of having to travel great distances to get an item from another country, you could trade with some guy who already went there and got what you want.  It would help with crafting too for the same reasons.  An item needed from far away could be obtained by trading with someone who already got it.

 

Obviously an idea like that would take years to accomplish but it would be one of the coolest things in DayZ, imo.

[geryon 180]

Whether it's cells or simply making the map bigger it doesn't matter to me.  Simply put 15 x 15 is too small for a survival type of game play.  The vastness of the map will remove most of the action KOS junkies.  Not saying the threat of death or murder will disappear nor would you want to but yoloswag style game play will be non-existent.

 

Since the world is so massive we should allow team spawning.  Unless you want that the incredible journey experience to meet your buddy.

 

I would suggest the environment be much more dangerous.  Weather should be much more of a factor.  Dangerous animals too, possibly?  Finding food should be a lot harder in the woods (outside of the rural areas) i.e. big game hunting .

 

Kudos on the economy system idea as well.

[Cormyr 39]

At the moment.. all I have time for is.. hellz yeah! 

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

Wow.

A sensible suggestion for once without people trolling in the first couple of posts.

I think it's a brilliant idea - it would also provide enough of a different experience (between each of the cells) which would reduce the need for third-party/private servers.

The sheer distance would be a brilliant deterrent to all the spawn-cycling and it would be very nice to see a sort of progression as you move outwards from Chernarus to the more distant areas.

I think another good addition would be something that KoS suggested in regards to the health system, it should be more in-depth and require a lot more attention than 'Eat food when your food reaches the bottom' - it could perhaps relate to your exhaustion in travelling long distances.

 

 

 

IKR? Anyway, I agree. The health system as is, would not suffice. I'm hoping for surgery attempts based on tools you can find, your actual attention to disinfectant, and maybe some kind of behind the scenes acquired skill level. So by the time you're say, south of Berlin, you've found a scalpel and a suture kit and antibiotic wipes and latex gloves. You've removed bullets before. You can build a splint. Also I agree with your idea, there should be some level of exhaustion, as well as sprinting, the whole deal.

 

Player condition should definitely play into it to. You're overall diet and calorie intake vs. calorie burn should be a serious concern, as well as the cold, especially at night time (which would have to be unavoidable at some point, IMO). When you're talking about travelling thousands of miles, you have to keep up a steady diet. Lying down for hours on end to camp out a city and "snipe noobs" would be a serious waste of time, because if it starts raining, if it's too cold, you're actually very likely to die of hypothermia or to catch pneumonia. Not to mention the threat of zombies should be high, so all of these things would mean that while KoS would never stop (of course), deliberate man hunting and the like would become much more challenging, as it would be taking away time from the major source of concern; your own personal survival.

 

One game I think can provide a small example is Don't Starve. The game is simply set up in such a way that keeping your character from starving is actually one of the most time consuming aspects of the game. Not that I'm suggesting we should be starving to death every five minutes, but what I mean metaphorically is that we should simply be more occupied and engaged with the environment. Naturally difficult obstacles I think will promote a lot more of that group mentality and purpose we are all kind of itching for. Just look at WoW. People form groups to go fight monsters, and get loot. They also fight each other. DayZ could do exactly the same thing, but without the rules between the two. The difficulty of the environment would mean we would see groups of players getting together with the specific goal of "making it to Berlin." It would just be... awesome. Literally awesome. That's why I'm thinking it could work similar to a board game... In that death would revert you to the previous cell you came from. You might be a little rusty when you spawn. Maybe your level of physical conditioning has lowered a bit. You have to start running again to get your legs back. This would help promote fringe servers since respawns would necessarily be limited to original spawn points. Maybe it would only work one time, so that if you die once, revert to a previous cell, and then die again inside that cell, you have to choose from an "original spawn" server.

Edited October 15, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[enforcer1975 1111]

Long wall of text...while i'd love an epic world where you have lots of room between yourself and the next KoS player but i doubt many would want to play since it would be like playing alone on a server most of the time. It would be good though if Chernarus was expanded to use the whole space you see when you zoom out, imagine the distance... You don't happen to have stumbled over the term half gaia project...could be coincidence but who knows.

[m.w. vindicator 880]

IKR? Anyway, I agree. The health system as is, would not suffice. I'm hoping for surgery attempts based on tools you can find, your actual attention to disinfectant, and maybe some kind of behind the scenes acquired skill level. So by the time you're say, south of Berlin, you've found a scalpel and a suture kit and antibiotic wipes and latex gloves. You've removed bullets before. You can build a splint. Also I agree with your idea, there should be some level of exhaustion, as well as sprinting, the whole deal.

 

Player condition should definitely play into it to. You're overall diet and calorie intake vs. calorie burn should be a serious concern, as well as the cold, especially at night time (which would have to be unavoidable at some point, IMO). When you're talking about travelling thousands of miles, you have to keep up a steady diet. Lying down for hours on end to camp out a city and "snipe noobs" would be a serious waste of time, because if it starts raining, if it's too cold, you're actually very likely to die of hypothermia or to catch pneumonia. Not to mention the threat of zombies should be high, so all of these things would mean that while KoS would never stop (of course), deliberate man hunting and the like would become much more challenging, as it would be taking away time from the major source of concern; your own personal survival.

 

One game I think can provide a small example is Don't Starve. The game is simply set up in such a way that keeping your character from starving is actually one of the most time consuming aspects of the game. Not that I'm suggesting we should be starving to death every five minutes, but what I mean metaphorically is that we should simply be more occupied and engaged with the environment. Naturally difficult obstacles I think will promote a lot more of that group mentality and purpose we are all kind of itching for. Just look at WoW. People form groups to go fight monsters, and get loot. They also fight each other. DayZ could do exactly the same thing, but without the rules between the two. The difficulty of the environment would mean we would see groups of players getting together with the specific goal of "making it to Berlin." It would just be... awesome. Literally awesome. That's why I'm thinking it could work similar to a board game... In that death would revert you to the previous cell you came from. You might be a little rusty when you spawn. Maybe your level of physical conditioning has lowered a bit. You have to start running again to get your legs back. This would help promote fringe servers since respawns would necessarily be limited to original spawn points. Maybe it would only work one time, so that if you die once, revert to a previous cell, and then die again inside that cell, you have to choose from an "original spawn" server.

 

 

 

 

I disagree.  

 

 

 

Death should always bring you straight back to square one.  You should spawn at one of the home servers (Chernarus, Celle, Lithuania, or Amsterdam) according to your grid.  

[m.w. vindicator 880]

Oh, and I like the idea of reaching the edge of the map, and then selecting the server you will migrate to.  This seems the least random and easiest to accomplish.  Less stuff going on in the back ground and more player control.  This way, it would be easier to switch maps with your friends/meatbags

[enforcer1975 1111]

Oh, and I like the idea of reaching the edge of the map, and then selecting the server you will migrate to.  This seems the least random and easiest to accomplish.  Less stuff going on in the back ground and more player control.  This way, it would be easier to switch maps with your friends/meatbags

I wonder how you would have to do that...a border station perhaps? Locations like this would attract lots of KoS players who would gladly shoot an unsuspecting player who just wants to migrate to another server. A big map would really be better since you never know what happens when a player reaches the border and connects to a server that is currently restarting...

Edited October 15, 2013 by Enforcer

[Skat3rat 1633]

I wonder how you would have to do that...a border station perhaps? Locations like this would attract lots of KoS players who would gladly shoot an unsuspecting player who just wants to migrate to another server. A big map would really be better since you never know what happens when a player reaches the border and connects to a server that is currently restarting...

It could just be that you can hop to another map no matter where you are at the border.  If you only have one specific place people can go to change maps, then too many people will camp it.  However if you have it set up that someone can change maps no matter where at the border they are, then it's less likely you'll have people camping the border.

[m.w. vindicator 880]

I wonder how you would have to do that...a border station perhaps? Locations like this would attract lots of KoS players who would gladly shoot an unsuspecting player who just wants to migrate to another server. A big map would really be better since you never know what happens when a player reaches the border and connects to a server that is currently restarting...

 

 

True.  That is why I think there should be dozens of "portals" or the entire border is a portal that migrates you to the new map in a position relative to your former position on the previous map.

 

 

 

Does that make sense?  I am not sure I put it into words right.  

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

Open borders. Basically, you split the edge of a cell into maybe four different zones, and when you join the next cell, you are placed in that same quarter or whatever of the next map. I don't see why there would have to be one specific location for it to happen, it would just be a long boundary line and once you reach it, the game would automatically prompt you and ask if you want to travel to the next cell. Clicking yes would open up the browser, no obviously would leave you in the cell you are currently in. Vehicles should have the ability to move across borders (and therefore across servers) as well.

 

i doubt many would want to play since it would be like playing alone on a server most of the time.

 

Not really... People would naturally want to go out into the frontier to avoid high traffic areas and explore more of the world. Since you can't respawn in those cells, people will probably tend to form groups to accomplish this task. Also the frontier cells could have higher value loot, more zombies, ect. If you build it, people will come. I would do it, so that I could establish a base of some kind and maybe run supplies back to the coast and even help other people travel deeper into the frontier. What we should see is actually a nice little spread of players, with the highest concentrations in the spawn cells, and then dispersing further and further out. I think the constant sort of movement towards the frontier regions would actually give a lot of players a really satisfying life cycle.

 

 

 

I'm not sure about the spawning mechanics yet. If the dev team did something like this, it would undoubtedly need tweaking and changes to certain things after the fact, as it's clearly hard to predict what people will do. Spawning only at original locations would indeed be extremely challenging... but I think that players should always have free choice over their original spawn cell whenever they die. So say you die on the way from Chernarus to Lithuania, you might be like, fuck this, I want to spawn in Amsterdam this time (or of course you could choose the closest one if you want to try to retrieve your gear) . That should be a choice players have. It will keep the game feeling nice and fresh.

Edited October 15, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[King of kong 1117]

I'm tired of talking about the nit-picky little devices that everyone wants or doesn't want to see right now. Let's discuss the more epic aspects of this zombie apocalypse and how the dev team can continue to add to the depth of this game later in it's life. So we're talking long term here.

 

 

We can all see how the creation of this mod has both marked, and shaped, a shift in the game market. Just look at the games we see following rapidly in it's wake. WarZ, Nether, 7 Days to Die, The Dead Linger, the Division, the list goes on. The drive for these kinds of environments is obviously the newest frontier in gaming. With this, the demand for persistence and richness of content is growing rapidly... Plus, I think we can all appreciate how the Standalone has to compete against it's own free mod. It has to transcend the level of gameplay we already have.

 

As I listened to NPR today (as I do every morning), I started thinking about the more global implications of an apocalypse scenario, and I think the box of Chernarus is severely limiting the future potential of this game. We've already discussed ideas like map portals and such (the ability to physically travel to the border of one map and join another cell and server). This is going to become absolutely necessary. Allow me to set up a little scenario.

 

Just imagine for a moment that through map-stitching, it were possible to spawn, travel all the way from the coast of Chernarus to the northern border of the map, and keep going through cell after cell of environments. If the devs really wanted to, over time they could stitch together an absolutely massive game world. I'm not actually postulating that we could ever reach the size of say, the earth; but Altis is pretty damn huge. Now imagine that you had traveled from the coast of Chernarus, through possibly three cells of complete terrain, and you're all the way in Germany. Now imagine that death would send you to the previous cell, or even back to your original spawn cell (assuming there's no way to establish a remote spawn of some kind). Wanna talk about perma death, consequences, curing the community of "Why don't I just kill myself instead of deal with this broken leg" syndrome? This is it. Totally, incomprehensibly vast physical distance. It would be nigh impossible to travel to your previous location and retrieve your gear. Your camp, or fortification, or stash, might be 40,000 km away.

 

A persistent item economy would mean that logistics, production, and trade would become a logical necessity. The movement of goods is one of the world's oldest known professions. The silk road dates to over 5000 years ago, and just look at it's expanse. Because of the death mechanic, these frontier areas would be high risk, high value areas where seasoned survivors would go to explore, search for more supplies (or rare items), and maybe even attempt to establish their own safes areas, camps, or stashes, since they would likely be less frequented by other players as they grow more distant from the original spawn point. So it's safer in the aspect that you could more easily try to hide a camp in these lower population, higher risk zones.

 

Radio towers could have access panels which you might interface a radio with, and thus use that radio to broadcast communications with anyone who has a radio in other cells (In the same server group.) This would make it feasible for, heh, stalkers I guess, to communicate with other players and potentially initiate trades from vast distances. Maybe using the tower would have some limitations, like only allowing you talk to one cell at a time.

 

 

On to my other point. Production. The crafting system is a step in the right direction, but I think it should be taken a little further. Imagine if you could find a generator, and use it to power machinery inside a factory, and then gather raw materials to produce things like new guns, for example. Or car parts. Or what if power plants could be brought back online and kept online to produce electricity? These are daunting tasks, which would require lots of scavenging and teamwork to accomplish, but they have obvious benefits. Control over a structure gives you the ability to defend yourself from zombies (which should be a serious threat and a major concern a lot of the time), and also it would provide you with warmth and a place to store gear, which brings me to my next point.

 

Safes with keys. I saw this one on a DayZ doodle rant, and I think it's a pretty good idea; Buildings could randomly, here and there, have an open safe with a corresponding key inside. The safe would allow you to store a limited amount of gear (maybe certain safes could be larger or smaller than others) with relative safety. Keys of course would have to be indestructible and persistent to the server (or server group, rather) that they were generated on. This means that going to another server group would result in the key not appearing in your inventory, and being added back to your inventory when you return to that server group. This might necessitate some kind of special "key ring" inventory slot which would function independently of the space or weight of your normal inventory, so as to avoid glitchyness and confusion. Also, if a key is not retrieved from a corpse, it should be automatically returned to the person who died with it. Perhaps safes could even be sabotaged with explosives (and repaired, so they don't all end up destroyed and useless), so they aren't perfectly "safe" either. Also, players could possibly use certain tools like a file, or a grinder, to produce copies of a key, which they could then give to other players whom they trust.

 

Anyway just some big ideas to get you guys going. I'm tired. Anyone else have pipe dreams like this? I'm talking large scale stuff people, come on, GET IN. We can think of some crazy shit. Discuss.

I love the idea. Really like the idea of cells. Just an example, but imagine traveling to the Germany cell, finding a plane, then flying to the end of the map and you get say, 4 or more options, you can travel to the Republic of Ireland, France, Britain, or Spain/Portugal, depending on how much fuel you have. Same for cars although you can't travel to island cells.

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

I love the idea. Really like the idea of cells. Just an example, but imagine traveling to the Germany cell, finding a plane, then flying to the end of the map and you get say, 4 or more options, you can travel to the Republic of Ireland, France, Britain, or Spain/Portugal, depending on how much fuel you have. Same for cars although you can't travel to island cells.

 

 

And just imagine boating off the coast toward the North and finding Namalsk, or boating west and finding Tavania, or going south and finding, dare I say it... Altis? Maybe south from Altis would be Stratis, and west of Altis would be Lingor. East could be Sahrani. You could build a huge network of islands with the existing maps already...

 

Altis would have to be an original spawn area.

Edited October 15, 2013 by SalamanderAnder

[RedTailedLizerd 12]

I think all this is completely possible but these sure will be very far ahead goals. The dev team already has a to-do list the size of an elephant and many of these suggestions are very MMORPG-ish which is not the direction Rocket wants. Sure, he did say numerous times that he did want many more RPG and MMO elements in game but this stuff requires very serious planning and a much larger workforce, more money and more of a fan base. Which frankly, I don't think a so called indie developer as small as BI can achieve. Just putting it out there. If this whooe cells and major islands and going inbetween them happens (ehich is an amazing idea) the DayZ "flesh" as someone said a group of cells would be similar in size to Azeroth (WoW world), still very big size diffrences and such but DayZ'd have no fast travel. It would be amazing to be able to travel between these diffrent islands which would definantly sugest adding large frigates and ocean going ships to the game (as SalamanderAnder has suggested before) which would be awesome. But all these additions would require a lot more diversity in the game. I'm talking weapon diversity, vechical diversity, player diversity, survival diversity, bio-diversity and even possibly the dreaded zombie diversity. But it is possible that there could evntually be a map the size of Azeroth in square kilo meters (with a little help from other developers probably and maybe in a sequel with a better engine) with as many diffrent THINGS as WoW (diversity wise).

Note: I really don't want DayZ to become World of Zombiecraft but a lot of the fundementals of WoW are pretty good.

Edited October 16, 2013 by RedTailedLizerd

[RedTailedLizerd 12]

So if green servers are home spawn servers, and yellow and orange are the fringe servers, then there would be more green servers than yellow, and probably more yellow than orange, ect. Obviously. When the player reaches a map boundary, the game would automatically give us a server selection screen which would allow players to simply choose which host they want to play that offers the geographical area they are travelling to. Actually I think this is a more elegant solution, as it leaves less up to the maintenance of portals and such by admins...

This is an excellant way to tackle the issue. Though, I have a few suggestion to add to that:

• depending on the amount of people who hit the portal at the same time (or within a certain amount of time) they'll be transported to a corresponding server which they can all connect to in a sort of "bus" that holds them all until they move between servers/maps, once they've reached the destination they'll be strewn about the portal entrence so people aren't all clustered for an explosion. Or an invincibility could be activated fir 10 seconds after cell transportation. To make all this easier there could be one server with all their portals leading to maps/cells hosted by the same one you originally joined to not allow someone getting chased to go into a portal to a diffrent server to escape their pursuers. So basically there wouldn't be a choice for the closest and best server for you as the server you originally joined would be the best one for you and your location to eliminate people abusing portals as escape routes.

• Or portals would just take a designated amount of time (90 seconds, maximum cell download time) all players traveling through a trans-cell portal would be forced to wait 90 seconds before being realeased into the next cell with a few seconds of invincibility to eliminate portal campers destroying anyone who passes through immediatly after they enter the cell.

P.S. @OP (Original Poster, SalamanderAnder) maybe you should make a post only for this whole cell transportation issue that the decs will hopefull look at? And incourage people to make their own large idea topics so they are more visable and can have their own seperate discussions

P.P.S. Just so evenyone knows it's not good to qupte entire original post when they are as extencive and explicit as this one to make a small reply.

Edited October 16, 2013 by RedTailedLizerd

[Skat3rat 1633]

This is an excellant way to tackle the issue. Though, I have a few suggestion to add to that:

• depending on the amount of people who hit the portal at the same time (or within a certain amount of time) they'll be transported to a corresponding server which they can all connect to in a sort of "bus" that holds them all until they move between servers/maps, once they've reached the destination they'll be strewn about the portal entrence so people aren't all clustered for an explosion. Or an invincibility could be activated fir 10 seconds after cell transportation. To make all this easier there could be one server with all their portals leading to maps/cells hosted by the same one you originally joined to not allow someone getting chased to go into a portal to a diffrent server to escape their pursuers. So basically there wouldn't be a choice for the closest and best server for you as the server you originally joined would be the best one for you and your location to eliminate people abusing portals as escape routes.

• Or portals would just take a designated amount of time (90 seconds, maximum cell download time) all players traveling through a trans-cell portal would be forced to wait 90 seconds before being realeased into the next cell with a few seconds of invincibility to eliminate portal campers destroying anyone who passes through immediatly after they enter the cell.

P.S. @OP (Original Poster, SalamanderAnder) maybe you should make a post only for this whole cell transportation issue that the decs will hopefull look at? And incourage people to make their own large idea topics so they are more visable and can have their own seperate discussions

P.P.S. Just so evenyone knows it's not good to qupte entire original post when they are as extencive and explicit as this one to make a small reply.

 

I think that making people wait a certain amount of time before being able to move over to the next cell is a good idea.

 

I was talking to a few friends about the idea last night and one of them did bring up the fact that people could use these cells to escape combat.  One problem/dilemma would be aircraft.  Are they just going to float in the air or something?  If two choppers are in a fight and one tries to escape into another cell, is there the possibility that the chopper chasing it could ram it or something?  Same for vehicles too.

[SalamanderAnder (DayZ) 1747]

Well I was also hoping for people to pitch other ideas, like agriculture or goals that might also be separate but enhanced by a cell based map experience.

 

I did consider the possibility of escaping through map portals, however, you can look at player lists when you browse severs so I assume it would be pretty simple to find the person you are looking for across the boundary, unless you don't know their username... However, I think independent hosting, and allowing players to choose their destination server, is the most efficient way of realizing this kind of goal. Trying to put architecture in place to somehow put every cell on the same server just seems impossible.

 

Also, you could simply prevent players who are in combat from crossing the portal. We already have a combat timer. It would apply to this just like it applies to leaving the game. Brief invincibility when joining another server would be a good idea.

 

As for air vehicles and such, this I am unsure of. I don't really know the limitations of the engine. They'd have to find a way to log out with the vehicle as part of their character, so the game would have to say "Is this person in a vehicle? Are other players in the vehicle? What kind of gear is in the vehicle?" and it would have to save that information, then log out the entire vehicle and it's contents from one server, log them into another server, probably on the ground somewhere. Perhaps the devs could place multiple "spawns" on a map for possible human, land vehicle, boat, and air vehicle placements. There could be many of these across the boundary of a map (or on the coast in the case of island cells) which would make it hard to predict exactly where people would be coming into the game.

 

Again, if two choppers where in combat, they would not be able to leave the server at all.

 

So let's say you approach the boundary line with a helicopter. Upon reaching it, the helicopter should go into auto hover, to allow the pilot to select a new server to join. Maybe with planes the devs could make something similar to the landing autopilot which would just maintain altitude and speed for a while so that the pilot could browse servers while the plane continues to fly off map, until finally he selects the server, and all of the content that player is attached to would just disappear into thin air. On the next server, the player (or players) would spawn in the plane, on the ground. Since these entry points (at least for vehicles) would be pre- placed, the devs could make sure that incoming planes, helos, or cars, wouldn't simply spawn inside a tree or in a place that would make takeoff impossible.

 

Or who knows, maybe they can find a way to spawn things in mid-flight. That would be ideal, but of course the game does have limitations.

Edited October 16, 2013 by SalamanderAnder