I know... another loot spawn suggestion (PDF attached)

[lucianpin 80]

DayZ loot re-spawn system in my view

 

I tried to think of a loot re-spawn system having in my mind two big concerns about game play:

 

1. Like any other game, it is normal that you evolve and you become more equipped as you progress through the game. In DayZ your normal progress would be from fresh spawn on the south - east coast to travel many kilometers to the north - west and to get your rewards for surviving that distance and time. In my view, this would mean finding better gear there, bigger challenges.

 

But here comes the first problem: how can you offer this experience to every player? Actual loot re-spawn systems or any other previous experiments have proven not to be efficient because: the high valuable loot is spawned there with a determined probability, but the game cannot control the player flow in that area – first come, first served, not to mention server hopping. You cannot predict how long it will take to the system to re-spawn an item and until that happens, you don't know how many player have already visited that place and found nothing.

 

2. Server hopping – this is a really big problem. Once an area is known for high quality loot, players will start to server hop in that area to increase chances of finding good gear.

 

 

I consider a challenge to resolve this two problems and I have an obsessive question: how can I guarantee the same great experience to every player? Don't get me wrong, I refer to looting system to be the same experience for everyone and not the personal experience of each player.

 

Firs of all, let's consider the following map saved per player in the central DB of players (along with all the inventory and health attributes of each player):

 

So each player has saved the history of all visited map squares in order they were visited.

The most recent visited squares are considered “hot”, then older are “normal” and the oldest visited are “cold”. A server timer could easily make player visited squares to “cool down” in time. Trigger could be when a player moves from one square to another or just time based. No matter if player changes server, this maps is bound to his account.

 

Now each game server instance has a map too divided in the same squares but containing information about loot items. When a player moves from one square to another, the destination square is being populated with items based on the following criteria:

- item spawn probability is adjusted from high to low based on player personal map: square status from cold to hot. (cold would have higher spawn probability, hot would have near zero probability)

- also item spawn probability can be adjusted based on the physical location of the square in the map (high valuable loot vs east coast loot)

 

Ok, what if the target square is already populated with loot? Then do nothing, unless that square is marked as “cold” and server tells you that you are alone in that square, wipe all the loot and spawn new applying the above rules.

Draft.pdf

Edited June 9, 2015 by lucianpin

[Rags! 1966]

This did not warrant the downloading of a pdf file. 

[lucianpin 80]

This did not warrant the downloading of a pdf file. 

 

I don't know how to insert images :) really

[Evil Minion 943]

Actual loot re-spawn systems or any other previous experiments have proven not to be efficient because: the high valuable loot is spawned there with a determined probability, but the game cannot control the player flow in that area – first come, first served, not to mention server hopping. You cannot predict how long it will take to the system to re-spawn an item and until that happens, you don't know how many player have already visited that place and found nothing.

I actually think this is an intended effect (server hopping aside). You want loot to work a little bit like grass in a savannah or steppe - if lots of players grazed over it thee won't be much left but when left alone it will slowly grow back. You do not want to provide loot for players but instead you want them to work for it. Any dynamics resulting in player movement and looting have an impact making gameplay more diverse - in fact not providing "the same experience for everyone" might be the better option.

 

Now currently the loot system lacks in the consistency department. Loot is not "growing back" at an equal rate but rather ends up in piles at very few locations. This way you can reduce the instances where players either find tons of loot or noithing at all. A ntaural progression is still given by the existance of spawn areas that are naturally visited by more players while further away player density tends to drop while gear state tends to increase so you end up finding better and better gear just by the place getting looted by fewer people who are less interested in basic items.

[lucianpin 80]

I actually think this is an intended effect (server hopping aside). You want loot to work a little bit like grass in a savannah or steppe - if lots of players grazed over it thee won't be much left but when left alone it will slowly grow back. You do not want to provide loot for players but instead you want them to work for it. Any dynamics resulting in player movement and looting have an impact making gameplay more diverse - in fact not providing "the same experience for everyone" might be the better option.

 

Now currently the loot system lacks in the consistency department. Loot is not "growing back" at an equal rate but rather ends up in piles at very few locations. This way you can reduce the instances where players either find tons of loot or noithing at all. A ntaural progression is still given by the existance of spawn areas that are naturally visited by more players while further away player density tends to drop while gear state tends to increase so you end up finding better and better gear just by the place getting looted by fewer people who are less interested in basic items.

If you say server hopping is good, then it is useless to continue discussing.... If we do a simple math calculation you would see that the probability of spawn for some specific item (like AK mag etc) is not the same with the probability that a player could find that item - mainly because of server hoppers...

 

EDIT: with my solution you have better control on what a player is likely to find during his trip.

Edited June 10, 2015 by lucianpin

[Evil Minion 943]

Have we ever met before? Server hopping is one of the greatest issues in DayZ as it has massive impact on player dynamics and thus loot distribution and overall gameplay (aside from being one of my pet issues). Having connections between servers is not a bad thing - them being far easier to use, faster and less risky than traveling from place to place on a single server is not. This needs to be changed but is not really the topic here.

EDIT: with my solution you have better control on what a player is likely to find during his trip.

And I think that's not what you really want. You don't want to spend a lot of resources on a mechanic that basically causes players to have roughly the same experience every time regardless of their actions or the actions of other players. Instead you want a dynamic system that is highly dependent on the actions of the players with a little bit of randomness.

[lucianpin 80]

Have we ever met before? Server hopping is one of the greatest issues in DayZ as it has massive impact on player dynamics and thus loot distribution and overall gameplay (aside from being one of my pet issues). Having connections between servers is not a bad thing - them being far easier to use, faster and less risky than traveling from place to place on a single server is not. This needs to be changed but is not really the topic here.

And I think that's not what you really want. You don't want to spend a lot of resources on a mechanic that basically causes players to have roughly the same experience every time regardless of their actions or the actions of other players. Instead you want a dynamic system that is highly dependent on the actions of the players with a little bit of randomness.

There is randomness too in what I suggest. There is item spawn probability per region. So probability means you will not see same loot each time you begin as fresh spawn. I don't see where is the problem. Right now, the east coast is nearly empty - and this can be done with my system too, just setting a low spawn probability in that region. You say that the advantage of the current spawn system is that loot distribution is dependent on player choices and admit that it has the issue with server hopping. I say that in my solution there is no problem with server hopping but I lose that advantage - loot distribution dependent on player flow. Really I still choose my solution.

 

With the current loot spawn system, players with best gear will be the server hoppers, the lucky ones that arrive first on a server that was just started after the maintenance... and so on...

I am disappointed that neither Hicks and no one understand that the probability of spawn for an item is not enough because they can't control the player flow - sever hoppers. There will always be players that will report that some item is too rare and lucky players that will say "you are stupid" I just found one. Hicks thinks of a system to distribute items based on region etc... he is very focused on item's land location / server, not item per players. The effort to distribute items per region is useless because server hoppers will get best gear, the other will have a much lower probability to find something.