semipr0

I'm a minimalist. What can I say.

Sounds good, I'm more than accepting of the current alpha state. Just would like to see Epoch develop out to being on its own level, because in all fairness you guys did answer the survival equation that the original DayZ mod did not answer, and DayZ went on to be its own game and you guys ended up providing the base code for almost 70% of the servers that are still running it....kind of unfair, because Epoch actually finished the mod that Dean started...at least in my opinion.
 
So for A3 I'm just hoping to see Epoch really flesh out into something big on its own, that can capture the same level of grim/dark and neurosis that came along with long sessions of DayZ/DayZ Epoch. You all definitely deserve to really break out, because in all fairness if it hadn't been for Epoch, DayZ wouldn't have turned up as good as it did.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. Having adaptable content is an interesting idea and I don't think I've ever seen it done, but just because something hasn't been done doesn't always specifically mean its a good idea either. We've never, for example, had a live human being actually ride a nuclear bomb to see what would happen if we did that...cause its simply not a good idea and the veritable science that might be gained from such an endeavor would be largely not worth the ethical cost.
 
Having Epoch be this kind of random table top apocalypse simulation where admins can choose whatever antagonists they feel fits their theme...I think it waters down Epoch's potential to make a large coherent impression of its own. A generic "ala carte" server package where people can add a dash of satanists and finish off with a dessert of mutant unicorns just seems....like a waste of developmental effort.
 
And the reason I say that is already evident in the A2 mod community and its DayZ variants, most server PBO's that have been successful settled into a pretty predictable range of functionality offered. Getting people to play on a server that wasn't 24/7 daylight, that didn't have self blood bagging a million vehicles and whatever else was near to impossible, whats more people that adapted/bought/stole PBO's with single currency solutions had a huge advantage over servers that didn't adopt that and you ended up with large focal disparity.
 
So giving server admins the ability to say "My server only runs para military police forces as antagonists" while someone else says "my server runs mutant rainbow ponies as antagonists"....seems like a waste of development cycles because somewhere in the middle between those two is where the player demand is going to be found and having all those extra assets will be pointless because if you want to run a populated server, it doesn't matter if you want paramilitary police force antagonists.....because the players want mutant rainbow ponies and if your server doesn't have them you'll be paying for an empty server.
 
Simple facts are, antagonists, in my opinion, are a core feature of a game, having an adaptable antagonist resource serves little to no purpose because the general public will end up deciding which antagonists they like and they'll only play on servers that use that configuration.

how about players who could be resistant to a disease and you could take samples of blood to build a vaccine then mas produce it. always have 1 player on the server who is immune to at least one virus.

Juggalos to be enviromental threat for Epoch post apoc scenario?
 
Yep...I am officially scared.

Man this SDK is everywhere now. Everyone making a server browser or mod manager is using it.

Tactically the trader cities make less sense than mobile trading caravans that randomly shift between locales.
 
Stay with me on this. Trader cities aren't safe because everyone knows where they are at any given time. There is also, big surprise, one way in and one way out. Even a novice tracker/FPS tactician can pretty much understand that if they cut off the flow of individuals at these three sources they can pretty much lock down an entire server.
 
Secondly...the reason static trader cities make no sense is because in a world like Epoch attempts to represent, static trading outposts like this, unless heavily guarded, would be overrun by bandits faster than people could actually make them viable trading destinations. The entire idea that a bunch of people with valuables would be standing around in the same place is relatively ludicrous.
 
The mod is in alpha and thats as good a time as any for feedback such as this. And the simple facts are is having three mobile caravans that visit major cities and move around makes more sense from a tactical and from a realistic perspective. Most of these "trader" groups, in a post apocalyptic world, would be going where the scrounging was best, because thats where they'd get the easiest access to their stocks...and given the way supply and demand works in a world with low means of production is that just like in any hunter gatherer society, areas would slowly get exhausted and the largest consumers, which would be the trading groups, would have to wander around to keep their stocks fresh.
 
Now as this applies to new spawns and spawning in Epoch in general, this works just fine, because spawn points aren't completely random, but they're random enough for it to be a lot less predictable, and instead of you being just some fully spawned adult individual that just blinks into existence on some mystical island with strange alien manhole cover technology on it, you spawn in in the general area of where one of the trader groups is currently set up in....as one of the general area scavengers that supplies them with their wares....what a concept, an actual premise for being where you are at the time you arrive in the world of Epoch, rather than a magical island with alien manhole technology that basically teleports you to one of three murder holes on the map.
 
Spawning in a 400m radius around a city with a trading caravan that changes cities on a schedule that is potentially one of three or four major trading caravans that work various regional routes (at least in the case of Altis), as a general scavenger looking for their next meal and a few bucks sounds far more in line with what Epoch wants to be, than what it currently is.

Well if they're tamable thats okay. I don't mind having a dog along for the journey and all that, the issue is the noise. Especially if you go somewhere they can't go, like the second floor of a building for example...they bark repeatedly to the point of literally making me want to throw my 300 dollar Sennheisers against the wall.
 
If tamed, dogs should be relatively quiet I'd assume, long as their fed they have less to complain about.

In all fairness everything that develops a muscular structure is technically edible, even Fugu Fish...which are horridly detrimental to the gastrointestinal system if prepared incorrectly...are edible as long as you know what bits are which.
 
While the general layman couldn't possibly take a flensing axe to a cow and produce perfect shank, loin and butt cuts, its a good bet that even John Neckbeard, Conqueror of Grandmothers Basement....given enough extremity, could work out a way to kill a cow and produce at least some edible elements of the animal....even if those pieces did end up a bit hairy and oozy due to John Neckbeard not understanding that Big Mac's are shaved, skinned and deboned previous to becoming Big Macs.
 
That said...even as someone that doesn't like to kill dogs, from a survivalist standpoint, if its me or the dog...it'll probably be me, humans are animals too after all, and some kind of haunch or rib meat from a dog is bound to be more nutrionally helpful than a can of "bio" meat...which I guess is meat that is vaguely considered to have come from some kind of living animal?
 
Overall from a survival standpoint...just about anything that metabolizes protein ends up being something that can be metabolized for protein by something else.

Man this SDK is everywhere now. Everyone making a server browser or mod manager is using it.

This is an interesting feature. But also a conundrum for me.
 
I was the primary administrator for three DayZ servers and one DayZ Epoch server. I spent a lot of time fighting off hackers and I get how frustrating it is.
 
But on the other side of the coin...if this becomes a standard in the community...then even I won't be able to play on servers I don't personally administrate because as a younger man, I tried out a wallhack in COD Modern Warfare because I wanted to understand how other people were so good at the game...and as it turned out using said wallhack made it way easier for me to tell who else was using it.
 
Regardless of that I got VAC banned from COD MW...and I've never hacked since because I figured the knowledge gained wasn't worth the cost.
 
Would be a little disappointing to be told "once a cheater, always a cheater" when the one time I did cheat....was over a decade ago, and it wasn't done with malicious intent, and to top it all off I've spent the 10 years beyond that being a responsible server admin who's been just as plagued by cheats as anyone else.
 
Its good that its configurable but if people just leave it at defaults or literally set it to insane numbers to ensure that anyone with a VAC ban ever can't play Epoch....I'm not sure thats specifically a good thing for Epoch in the long term. Insular communities are...well...insular, after all.

I'm a minimalist. What can I say.

Oh I think that if you die to a player or a zombie its still just as viable.
 
Why? Because you still might need to go try to retrieve your gear. Chances are if you die to a player or a zombie...you're likely out in the field somewhere. And even if you get to respawn "at home" where you might have some gear on hand to help you negotiate the recovery of your corpse...theres still the fact that certain items like your vehicle keys that you might have been carrying are going to be lost, plus any and all valuables on the corpse.
 
In the case of a death by a player you're likely going to get looted and you'll lose your vehicles and any truly valuable things you were carrying, this is exactly the same as it is if you respawn at the coast....its simply different in of which you're actually rewarded for putting effort into the base building system by taking a small amount of sting out of the death by at least reducing your recovery time by a certain amount (though depending on where you die it may be just as much as a coast run)...you still lose everything you'd lose if you get respawned at the coast in a PVP death...so I don't see that as an issue at all. Death to a zombie is more or less the same thing, if you don't go back for your gear, it will be lost on next restart or if someone finds your corpse and loots it...again no different than a coast run would be, the only real difference is that your base has awarded you the ability to spawn somewhere relatively safe where you can throw together some back up gear and perhaps even use a secondary vehicle to roll out on your recovery run.
 
Now if you die to a player AT your base, you're then in the conundrum of having to continually deal with the problem that killed you. If you're unable to deal with it, or you simply log out to try to avoid it, you stand a good chance of having your base pulled down...in which situation you may no longer have a modified respawn point the next time you log in, so this would also incentivize defending your base to the best of your ability cause if you don't defend it, you're likely to lose it entirely and all the benefits that come with it. All that's lost right now, to be honest, if someone takes down your base, is the time and effort you put into making it and to be honest....thats not a benefit you're losing. The only incentive to defend your base right now in Epoch is because its yours and someones attacking it. But if you're simply outmatched...you can just log out, say screw it and come back at a later time when the person has gotten bored with destroying your stuff....cause the one thing that they can't destroy is the safe...so theres no real reason to care about the base at all because its not providing any tangible game system improvements that generate a high impulse to attain them or retain them.
 
So overall dying to a player or a zombie in an altered spawn point scenario is kind of immaterial because the penalties are ostensibly the same, but the minor reduction in hassle a home base spawn point gives is a nice enough benefit to perhaps make the house worth making in the first place and, of course, defending til you're out of bullets as well.

Well the value we establish in our characters is immediately lost once we die. So the only option is...not to die, but death is an inevitability in DayZ...its going to happen.
 
The issue is not that death changes devalue the character but the lack of death changes devalues the base building concept in and of itself. The base itself is not providing any real benefits other than adding a relatively visible target to the landscape.
 
So why base at all? This is what I'm trying to pose as a question. Other than the obvious fact that you "can" build a base, what purpose is it ultimately serving in regards to the value of your character? As things currently stand in my assessment of the additional game dynamics that Epoch brings to the table...the base building aspect serves no purpose because it confers absolutely no advantages for having done it.

Right I get that, but death is also inevitable in DayZ. No matter how good you are, theres always going to be someone that sees you before you see them.
 
The question I am posing here is not "how to make death suck less" but "how do we make all this time and effort more functionally worth peoples time."
 
See, simple facts are, you can basically just buy a safe in Epoch and you're essentially done. Why? Because sinking a ton of time and effort and resources into building a pretty little mimicry of a house around that safe is entirely pointless...other than to perhaps allow you not to get shot in the back while accessing said safe.
 
So what I'm basically saying is, how do we make base building actually beneficial? Since people can destroy it....theres almost no benefit to putting the time into it other than to play "fort" or "king of the hill" for as long as you can survive.
 
The only thing I can really think of that would make base building wholly worthwhile is the ability to respawn after death at your base, and potentially to allow for sleep healing/offline healing at it.
 
Cause that way you at least feel like you've staked some sort of claim to Chernarus and not like you're constantly having to revisit it every time you die.
 
Its not that I don't think death should be harsh, its just that death is almost preferable to building a complex base in Epoch that serves little to no purpose once you've died. (especially with the plot pole loss on death, cause then you may not even be able to get to your safe after some chucklehead covers it with tents).