Idea to help prevent too much PvP

[Namindu]

 

 

 

 

I don't even have safe zones on my server. =P  But to counter that, I moved my traders to places where one could more easily defend themselves, where its a bit harder to try camping someone in the area.  IMO it promotes teamplay, safer to have friends with you.  I always hated safe zones, I think they just cause problems and heavily promotes anti-pvp attitude to the point of ridiculousness.  Not to mention people loitering and filling up server slots while not really playing the game.  Of course, my server never got big, so I'm sure it could get kinda chaotic if it started filling out.  But... eh I'm getting off track.

 

Servers full of anti-pvp players usually die or remain very low-pop.  However, a server full of constant pvp'ing doesn't work either.  DayZ isn't a point-and-shoot game, it's way too involved for that, and Epoch is x10 more involved.  Trading, adding scripts, and running events helps divert some away from shooting anything that moves.  But, I think one of the things in the new Epoch that's really going to help is player-to-player trading.  I think its going to really help open up positive player interaction.

I think it would be interesting if certain parts of the map were more ideal for producing certain goods, goods that players need or that provides certain benefits.  I can imagine people taking control of these areas, collecting the goods and then it would become more interesting to trade one type of good for another(you know, like the real world sans mass production and Chinese sweatshops).

 

One of the problems I see with Arma2 Epoch is the availability and overabundance of high-powered weapons.  It's just too easy to kill another player.  People love their big guns and they love hoarding them and a lot of server admins seem to feel the need to make it easier than it already is.

Our devs haven't even revealed everything yet though, so we'll see what they have in store.

 

 

I've always been interested in rule-play, but from my experience with Altis Life, people usually just butcher it lol.  The humanity system was clever to a certain point in instilling this without imposing rules and such, but it's still rather flawed.

 

 

I feel you, but 99% of people are lone wolfs, who might tag with other regulars on a server to do a mission or two.

 

But in the end. I thought of this idea....

 

 

Arma2 DayZ: Epoch is set in a future time after the Great Infection. Humanity is slowly returning to the wasteland, industrious survivors have begun to join together in small groups and rebuild society. Small camps of merchants have started to pop up to do business with survivors who collect goods from the wasted remnants of civilization. Wholesalers have landed on the shores offering imported goods to aid the rebuilding effort.

 

This is a direct quote on what the Epoch Dev said. Their for i thought, In a real word like this a trader city would have these components:

 

1. No Stealling

2. No Killing (unless broken a rule)

3. Place where people can get together.

 

So, i put in the safezones to somewhat act as rule 1. But for rule 2. its a bit hard, since arma dose not do the real world physics, so a player can open a bag when their not even looking at them, so i have the backbag script. Since when someone buys something they do the medic animation and would suck if a guy runs up and grabs shit...

[RimBlock]

Better trader city design and with their own ai guards would take out the need for safezones.

 

Sure someone could shoot you but then the AI would retaliate.

 

Give the AI a vehicle the players cannot destroy or use and have them send out hunting parties if attacked.

 

Make the AI deadly but not unkillable.

 

Put them on a headless client for minimal impact.

 

Have the trader cities with proper cover and multiple points of entry / exit. 

 

Have a car park with guarded gate (someone posted up a bus as a gate script somewhere to give a Max Max type feel).

 

Have a heli landing area with a sheltered corridoor to the trading area.

 

Personally I like the idea of Starty having better walls, better parking facilities (there are plenty of good places near the trader city that can be adapted), and a stationary Shuka (ZSU_TK_EP1) on a slightly raised platform in the middle.  Possibly CAS available from the NE hero trader (apache hunting down the bandits FTW).

 

 

For the backpack stealing, there is a script around to limit opening to only those tagged friendly but a method really needs to be developed for the removal of tagged frienlies or a open backpack request notification to the backpack owner that they then need to accept or have the backpack owner able to lock the backpack (right click the backpack from the gear menu).

 

The thought of having trader cities without any protection seems unrealistic (yeah I know.. in a Zombie infested world).  The current setup is limited based on the awesome amount of work that the Epoch dev team had to contend with to get Epoch up and running and it works fine as a starting point.  Safe zones are really just a bandaid for the problem where a more realistic solution is really needed.  I would like to work on a better solution but it will have to go to the end of my todo list.  I am also happy to collaborate with others if someone else wants to take the lead on this. 

 

RB

[DerangedPony]

What if when you kill somebody or steal in a trader zone, those traders will not talk to you anymore?

Also, traders could give out rewards for the death of these "banned" players.

[SkyDogs]

Why has my thread turned from A3 Epoch hooded cloak things, to bloody god zones in A2 Epoch, lol.

[cring0]

Why has my thread turned from A3 Epoch hooded cloak things, to bloody god zones in A2 Epoch, lol.

Good question.  Stop changing the subject people! 

[Ballz]

You can add as much anti pvp as you like. I'm still going to hunt down players and player bases and destroy them again and again and again.

[Richie]

You can add as much anti pvp as you like. I'm still going to hunt down players and player bases and destroy them again and again and again.

Me as well :ph34r:

[Neoublie]

I do find it interesting how so many of these posts are about people on one or the other side of the fence.  Etc. Game should be PVP only vs Game should be no friendly fire with minecraft building.

 

I think that the mod should be configurable and I believe the epoch team will provide plenty of configuration settings to help server admins. anything they dont add will be scripted by the community. I think you will find the range of server styles be rather diverse. 

 

I, personally, was someone who brought Arma 2 to play the original Dayz mod, I installed it and then proceeded to get ganked for about 2 hours straight and then left the genre and didn't want to play it. I was not someone to complain to admins or raged in game, I just quietly left and played something a little less PVP (might have raged a little to my friends on ts if I be honest).

 

PVE epoch servers was what brought me back to the genre (minus the pvp aspect) and I am now an admin on one of my fav servers, one of the things I found was I have now have built the mindset and skills to survive on PVP servers when I feel like it and now enjoy the PVP feel once and a while.

 

One thing is that not everyone wants to play against players who come from the call of duty or battle field twitch shooter genre.

 

An idea that might be a way to help some server owners or players could be something like a over all hive ranking system. nothing to do with saving players inventory and certainly not exploitable like server swapping to be able to ghost players.  But maybe you could have a player rating based off actions.  Like killing unarmed fresh spawns, and trading items to players to help. (maybe have a trade option, rather then placing on the ground to scan for the action of giving medical and food help without expecting compensation)

 

The benefit to a system like this could be that you need to be over a certain rating to be able to join certain servers. or if you really want PVP and no complainers you might specify you can't join if you are too friendly, maybe for sake of better words, "you are not bandit enough for this server".

 

you could also use this hive system to simply store stats for the players to be able to look at like. total gold earned, best days survived, payers kill, food eaten. that sort of thing. 

 

finally as I started this post about two sides of the fence, I should like to finish by saying, everyone who pays for arma 3 and chooses to download the epoch mod, should be able to find a server out there with like minded players who want to play the game the same as you. be that Hardcore PVP, PVP/PVE Hybird, or PVE only with friendly fire off.  and not one should be dictating how the players should have to play.

 

At the end of the day I buy a game to have fun, not have my game time dictated by having only one option.

 

Sorry for the long post and Thank you Epoch team, 

I eagerly wait for sneak peeks and possible early access and wish you all the best in the Make Arma not War competition. Awesome work so far.

 

[Neoublie]

You can add as much anti pvp as you like. I'm still going to hunt down players and player bases and destroy them again and again and again.

 

 

Me as well :ph34r:

 

PS. your the type of people who I prefer not to encounter while relaxing after a hard day of work

[TheVampire]

- "Better trader city design and with their own ai guards would take out the need for safezones.

Sure someone could shoot you but then the AI would retaliate."

 

AI are difficult to program to work correctly, and making friendly AI is also very very hard, much harder than hostile AI.

Say to make the AI friendly you put them on the same team as the player. Well, the player can kill them all day with no consequence.

Say you put the AI on a friendly team. The first player that kills a friendly AI just made that entire team hostile.

Say when you murder and innocent AI, you get put on an enemy team. Now almost all the menus and anything that is coded to be side specific is broken.

There's a reason that Sarge AI always had so many issues.

 

- "Give the AI a vehicle the players cannot destroy or use and have them send out hunting parties if attacked."

 

Ever try to write code to keep a player out of a vehicle? It's a pain.

Ever try to make a vehicle only have godmode during certain circumstances? It's also a pain.

Making AI accurately track a player also isn't very doable at the moment.

 

- "Make the AI deadly but not unkillable."

 

How deadly? How do you gauge how deadly an AI is?

Is it the damage they deal out based on their weapons, how aggressively they track you, or how accurate their shot is?

 

- "Put them on a headless client for minimal impact."

 

Everyone knows AI hurts server framerate, which is understandable.

However writing a headless client is not an easy task, and you would now requiring that the people who run the servers not only have their own copy of the game, but also have a copy of the game for a headless client, and to rent two servers instead of one to run this client on.

With A3 that means you are looking at around $37 per copy of Arma 3 (which you would need 2), and about $60 per month to rent two servers.

For the average person, this might be doable if they are dedicated to it, but for larger communities with multiple servers, you are doubling the costs.

 

 

Although I do agree with you about an unarmed trader city, realistically it would be a rag tag group of guns for hire, not a group of people who would go on a manhunt over a murder or stolen goods. But you aspirations for AI are unrealistic to what is possible at the moment.

[Richie]

PS. your the type of people who I prefer not to encounter while relaxing after a hard day of work

 

Without risk you wouldn't enjoy your hard earned loot, we're the people who make the hairs on your neck stand up and that warm fuzzy feeling when you escape.

The game needs a balance of nice people to team up with and the not so nice who want your gear :p otherwise it would be predicable and you'd soon get bored.

[Neoublie]

Without risk you wouldn't enjoy your hard earned loot, we're the people who make the hairs on your neck stand up and that warm fuzzy feeling when you escape.

The game needs a balance of nice people to team up with and the not so nice who want your gear :P otherwise it would be predicable and you'd soon get bored.

 

You still assume that I am interested in playing with the interest in always watching over my shoulder for troll players who only want to PVP. I appreciate what I have because it is hard to collect against some of the most difficult AI missions. I don't personally need to always worry some player will sneak through the woods to take all my hard earned loot and destroy my base that was very time consuming to create in just the way I like it.

 

And for the record if you wish to retort to this statement please remember I don't play with the same principles as you so I would never be on one of the servers you play on, and if anyone joins the server I play on and actively PVP's they get presently band by the owner and admins/moderators. respect of server rules is top priority and respect of players is expected.

 

Saying that I agree that players of your style want the thrill of active PVP and I respect that you and like minded players will still want the servers they choose to play on be set up to have that perpetual risk. But Please remember that the OP is about settings to minimize/discourage PVP if the server owner chooses to take the experience down the path of PVE rather then PVP and not a debate as to if they way you want to play is the only correct way or not.

[RimBlock]

- "Better trader city design and with their own ai guards would take out the need for safezones.

Sure someone could shoot you but then the AI would retaliate."

 

......

 

The comments were rough suggestions and not detailed well researched proven ideas.  Specifics are not provided like "How do you gauge how deadly an AI is?" as I would take a look at this level if I were to work on a mod aimed at addressing these suggestions, which would not be anytime soon due to the backlog of mods / ideas currently in my sig.

 

I will try to address some points though with thoughts on them.

Say when you murder and innocent AI, you get put on an enemy team. Now almost all the menus and anything that is coded to be side specific is broken.

There's a reason that Sarge AI always had so many issues.

 

 

What sort of things are coded to be side specific ?.  Which of them relate to trader cities ?.  I have not come across any yet in my limited trawling through the Epoch and DayZ code so would be quite interested to take a look.  Apart from hostility, I am not sure what would require this so would appreciate any direction on this. 

 

Pushing the player to another 'side' would seem more reasonible, maybe the civillian side where the Zombies would already be hostile but only within a defined range of the trader cities.  Sure that would make the zombies non-hostile but with AI coming after you, I would suggest you may have bigger issues to deal with.

 

It would be interesting to see how DZAI deals with bandits being hostile to other bandits as well as to the player.  Maybe one side of the bandits is in the civillian group as, whilst zombies can react to the noise they make, they cannot be harmed by them.

 

Ever try to write code to keep a player out of a vehicle? It's a pain.

Ever try to make a vehicle only have godmode during certain circumstances? It's also a pain.

Making AI accurately track a player also isn't very doable at the moment.

 

 

How do players get in to a locked vehicle ?.  Why can you not just flag the vehicle as locked on creation ?.  If the vehicle is tagged as being trader city defence then amend the damage handler to negate damage to the vehicle ?.  DZAI AI characters seem to be able to track players fairly well from what I have experienced.  They also have levels of effectiveness you can set which makes them a lot more deadly.

 

Everyone knows AI hurts server framerate, which is understandable.

However writing a headless client is not an easy task, and you would now requiring that the people who run the servers not only have their own copy of the game, but also have a copy of the game for a headless client, and to rent two servers instead of one to run this client on.

With A3 that means you are looking at around $37 per copy of Arma 3 (which you would need 2), and about $60 per month to rent two servers.

For the average person, this might be doable if they are dedicated to it, but for larger communities with multiple servers, you are doubling the costs.

 

 

Nope, I am not requiring anything.  I am suggesting options.  I have not said that this option needs to be default (either the base defence AI or headless client) but providing the option would allow people to use it if they choose to.  There are currently a number of people working on headless clients as you are no doubt aware which are having various levels of sucess.  as they mature they may become more effective and reliable. 

 

One copy of the ARMA client would be required for a headless client if the server owner chose to use it.  The server process also does not require a key to run so 1 copy of ARMA II will allow you to run the client (headless) and the server process on the same server.  Has this changed for ARMA 3 ?.  A second copy of the game would be needed to play from another machine as a player / admin.

[Mercules]

Although I do agree with you about an unarmed trader city, realistically it would be a rag tag group of guns for hire, not a group of people who would go on a manhunt over a murder or stolen goods. But you aspirations for AI are unrealistic to what is possible at the moment.

 

That is true but one of the things I did on the server I ran for a while was to add static spawn AI to various traders. 

Friendly Traders got a couple spawns of Survivor AI with a AKs, hunting rifles, and shotguns. There were 6 in each spawn and they spawned near the front gate and back gate. 

Hero trader got a spawn of Military with an armed jeep.

Bandit trader got a spawn of Bandits with an armed pickup.

This didn't prevent someone with a high enough humanity from walking into Khelm and shooting you, but they had best hope it doesn't drop too low before you get away. What it did do is make you pause if the AI are acting all weird at the trader you are going to, or missing. It meant bandits couldn't walk right into Khelm and Heros couldn't camp the bandit trader. I also put up a few extra walls and barriers so it was difficult to shoot right in and you would have to be in an area where the AI might notice you or snipe from a LONG way off. This didn't mean you were safe at a trader. Bandits noticed most of the rest of the server was near Khelm and raided it in a full on armed chopper, something that would never happen with "Safe Zones".

[Xenification]

I've never been fond of the safe zones, I foresaw the admin overhead and immersion breaking problems they would create. It's unfortunate that server operators used it so much that a majority felt they were necessary.

Anyone who never experienced having to secure and remain cautious in a trade city has missed out on one of the most intense scenarios in Epoch.  It's not easy to explain for someone who just wants everything easy peasy, because they're generally the same breed that will go straight to an admin or a forum post to complain that they got killed...rather than running back and reclaiming what's rightfully yours, using your whits and other various game mechanics.

Instead, it became a "he got in my backpack" "He ram me adman". Quite funny really.

 

And that my main problem with Arma 2 Epoch.

It´s too easy with too high spawn chances and godmodes.

I hope Arma 3 Epoch will be diffrent and will have some survival feeling.

And I hope that there won´t be the owerpowered vehicles/guns from Arma 3 

I mean the shitty things that 1 shoot you and even got TWS.

[megabison]

Anyone who never experienced having to secure and remain cautious in a trade city has missed out on one of the most intense scenarios in Epoch.

 

So true.

those trader cities should be build on kinda safe locations though like klen for example.. its nearly impossible to snipe into that tradercity and the traders that want to make profit have interest in building them on safe locations to make money.

[Sequisha]

And that my main problem with Arma 2 Epoch.

It´s too easy with too high spawn chances and godmodes.

I hope Arma 3 Epoch will be diffrent and will have some survival feeling.

And I hope that there won´t be the owerpowered vehicles/guns from Arma 3 

I mean the shitty things that 1 shoot you and even got TWS.

"Stay a while and listen..."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Swash]

Bandits and pvp make the end of the world interesting.
I don't believe in "safe zones" you don't make safe yourself in game.
If you are lucky you get the fun kind of bandits that kidnap, ambush, rob people, and set up checkpoints and extort "taxes" or tolls. They bring a server alive.
The ones that are the issue are the ones inclined to camp outside cloning facilities with a sniper rifle and take out unarmed fresh spawns. The worst, least inventive, and most pathetic of all bandits.

They should be concidered an insult to the name bandit. lol
I will never understand the mentality, and picture them as the type of people that torture small animals in their mom's basement.
Clearly afraid of anything that poses any challenge or threat.
We need more watchdogs and let the server community sort out these scum on it's own.
Not artificially imposed rules, or crybaby safe zones.
Work hard to improve your skills and use those skills to rain punishment down on those wicked murderous bastards! lol

The real bandits will stick it out and make life fun and challenging, while the sad pathetic clone killers will rage quit and cry. lol
 

[Face]

The only way to prevent "too much PvP" is to turn Epoch into a virtual reality MMO where the players are trapped inside the game and dying in game means dying in real life.