General Spawning Behaviour (Zombies, Loot, Animals, Vehicles, etc)

[Publik 404]

Respawn zombies around the town they spawned at or are killed at. When you spawn it, choose a location x00 meters away from the town and out of sight of any players within draw distance. Once spawned, tell the zombie to move towards the location where the previous zombie was killed.

What would this do for the player? Zombie counts are constant, but you'd be able to clear a town and hold it. Zombies would come in from the forest to replace the old ones. There wouldn't be any gimmicky popping into creation nonsense, no one would have zombies spawn on top of them. Players could fortify an area and not have to worry about zombies spawning inside, they'd only have to worry about securing a wall which would give them something to do.

 

Respawn loot in a similar manner as the zombies. Every A-B minutes, spawn enough items into the server to bring the number of items in the server (in inventories, on the ground, etc) up to a certain cap. Spawn the items in random buildings across the map that are outside of render distance of the players.
What would this do for the player? You can guarantee a fairly constant amount of loot on a server, somewhere. Areas like major cities would be generally scavenged clean, meaning players need to move around the map to find loot. You wouldn't often find stuff in major cities, so the smaller towns get a larger appeal. Server hopping would be inefficient, because anywhere high-value loot spawns is likely to already be empty. It would facilitate the idea that the grass is always greener somewhere else.

If a group of people want to fortify a town, they could erect walls and watchtowers and so on and clear out all of the zombies. However, this town wouldn't suddenly become some sort of loot haven. Loot wouldn't respawn there often/at all since there would often be players nearby. Players would have to venture out to get more supplies/hunt for food.

This system is also not very exploitable. Since loot respawns somewhere away from any player, there's no way to tell on a 15km x 15km map where stuff respawns. You and your buddies might have a general understanding that you haven't been to Zelenogorsk recently so there might be stuff there, but it's not a guarantee.

 

You can apply this to spawns for just about anything. Players, vehicles, animals, loot, zombies, whatever. When that item is destroyed, removed, or killed, find somewhere far away to add in a replacement.

Spawns would be generally not near other players, or weighted towards that (they're not still using that shitty lottery-style weighted selection algorithm, are they?). Wildlife could be thinned out in high-traffic areas or over-hunted. You could always assume that there's a vehicle somewhere over that hill somewhere to replace your wrecked car.

This also helps with the current issue with respawning loot, which (last I heard) was that they were trying to spawn it all at once on the server. Don't respawn anything until you need to.

[IcePick (DayZ) 4]

This would be Great!!

I mentioned something like this the other day on a gaming forum and thought to put it here too.. Looks like I've  beaten to the post, Good to see that I'm not the only one thinking of it.

 

It could spice things up as players may come across wandering Zeds in the bush.
It would keep Zed threat on the map and give folk a chance to clear an area, at times there could possibly be a heard of Zeds all heading back to one location (at a non alerted state if there is no more firing and running around), they can then start to re-infest an area, this is where players could take up def ops and try to keep them out. They could have it set so the longer you have a town or area Zombie free, the more Zombies will start to spawn and add to the army of walking dead trying to re-infest (obviously have a limit).

Could be a great way for players to work together to survive if elements start to affect wellbeing ie, rain and cold. Sentries will need to be out to guard folk that are in building staying warm and dry, and players working together (if they want) to clear a town to scavenge safely. This would be better than Zeds just reappearing. Oh the possibilities!!

Here's to the future.