Make Epoch great again! (Endgame motivation)

[Hausser]

Hi.
So i've been playing epoch on and off since 2013 ( i guess? back when you sometimes would spawn as bird ...) and every time me and my pals played it (or any survival game, for that matter) we run into the same problem:
After a few weeks, once your base is "finished" and your have your favorite rifle multiple times on storage, as well as everything else you need to survive, the game becomes kinda boring. Sure there are missions, you can go player hunting/base raiding and so on, but that doesnt keep you (or at least us) playing for that much longer.

So, what i toughed could counter that, with some inspiration from the great eve online:

How about every town, village, logging camp, production plant and so on on the map gets some kind of "capturable" building, that would spawn a certain ammount of some ressource, per day, based on its "kind".
Like, a small town would give you enough food and water to sustain your group for that day, a industrial zone building would spawn industrial loot stuff, big cities could spawn high tier loot, and so on.

These buildings could be capturabel each day at a certain hour (like, lets say, 20:00 server time) with some minor obstacles in the way to prevent someone from just walking in, so the "owners" have time to rush "home" and try to defend", but removable easy enough that you dont have to grind for days to mount an attack. (So new or small groups can jump right in to the fun)
This could be pushed even further by allowing a small number of certain deployable defence items, like sandbags, barbed wire, and so on.

Well, that's basically it - it is possible?
Is it feasible?
Would you guys like it?
Please like, share and subscribe ;)

regards
hausser

[KPABATOK]

How about nukes, destroying bases randomly every 7 days? Seriously, there should be more global events in Epoch. Earthquakes seem to be boring, since the loot they give are crap. But always catch me by surprise and I jump in seat :D

I have more ideas, just today all are out of my head. Will edit post.

[KPABATOK]

Ok, so I think Epoch suffers the most from lack of survivability aspect even though it claims in description about "harsh enviroment", base mod is as peaceful as Disney Movie. It was the same with DayZ SA but they made a little bit of progress in current builds. So while server admins will do what server admins do (disable everything and make it easy peasy KOTH EXILE style arena PVP. Why not just use Exile mod for that?), what could be done by developers to differentiate Epoch mod from other mods (and maybe make it more like Breaking Point slightly) is this:

 

1.) Food scarcity, by default (sure it can be edited, but I will only talk about base mod), animals spawn just fine. Kill them, get meat, make fire, cook. Cosy.

2.) Deadlier antagonists (sure some of it will come in far future updates)

3.) Diseases, radiation zones, some danger that can not be seen (we have radiation stats already, possibly will come in far future).

4.) Visual impairment due to the factors above (I loved blurry vision in early DayZ SA builds, it made it so much more realistic and fun trying to navigate when you don't see shit after losing blood)

5.) Removal of safezones. They are pointless and break immersion. Japanese server KongariBacon did it the best. Admin left only brown traders. Trading was dangerous. It should be.

6.) Scarcity of all weapons and ammo above 6.5mm, scarcity of ghillie and wet suits (since they are not craftable like in DayZ SA, it could only be done artificially by making them spawn less, same with armour vests, helmets).

7.) Making gas stations almost empty, and some completely empty at random. Mad Max style.

8.) Vehicle should cost not 1000-2750 crypto, but 10 times more. Same with guns. Just make everything 10 times more expensive. Viper's server, while having only stupid Black Market traders, on the other hand did it very well by making i.e. VTOL planes cost several hundreds of thousands of crypto as far as I remember. Maybe a bit too extreme, but he understood the idea at least. Other vehicles were expensive too.

9.) To be continued.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[baal_jayjay]

You could survive by looting the buildings or you can survive by nature.
So opaltaltar for maintain, buildings of wood, self-made weapons.
More weapons separated between civilian and military.
I agree with the less ammunition there.
Producible ammunition such as arrows or ammo for matchlock and flintlock rifle.
 

Black market which is never shown on the map, is hidden,is extremely expensive and after each server restart is elsewhere
 

Event building, for example, a factory with a cool house with ammonia as a coolant.
You can find a lot of food and drink but there is danger the ammonia leak.
This can happen over time and by bullet in chimney, tanks.
When then happens in building fog you can see nothing the temperatures go into the under 0 you can freeze and ammonia is toxic you need gas mask.

Grow food yourself.

more antagonists for exaple:
Monkeys to which you have tested high-potency drugs.
You can not know the ape from open windows climb.
Or animals that are mottled by radioactive radiation.

[KPABATOK]

Yeah black market not shown on map would be one of the things that I would like other servers who have BM to implement. Otherwise it is just like playing in editor, choose whatever outfit and gun and go blasting non-stop at AI. Just boring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[natoed]

black market traders just makes epoch another flavor of wastelands (if the server has a reg high pop) in my opinion.

How's about some more missions from the traders that follow the lore of epoch regarding the mass extinction event/ technology corporation that wipe out everything.

[TheVampire]

What I enjoyed doing when I ran an Arma 2 Epoch server was tinkering with AI, anomalies, and survival aspects.

Something I really liked about namalsk was trying to survive it at night. I adjusted the temperature settings on my server so that you either were relaxing around a fire with your buddies at night, or chewing through heatpacks to get what you needed done.

I had DZAI with roaming vehicles (among more) but my buddies began jumping the 3 ai and selling the vehicles for easy cash. I added some lines so there was a 5-10% chance that a Ural would spawn loaded to the gills. The first time they ran into it and all 20+ ai spilled out it made them play a little more reasonably.

Anomalies I'm a big fan of. Anything that is the unknown will keep your players going. A rotating ai city, unique unicorn patrols, scary vehicles, hell you could irradiate the hell out of an island on the map and tell them it has a secret and they'd all keep going there. Epoch lacks a lot of the unknown in the end game.

Basically as a server owner anything you can add that makes the game realistic and challenging without being unfair to slow down the player or make them be challenged and routinely lose gear will extend the trip to end game. Things like pulling helicopters from your Tanoa map, adding AI, random events, treasure hunts, etc.

[Helion4]

A lot of this is all down to play style of the Arma-mod players.

There, I said it.

Most players will only play if they have a Sniper rifle.                    **** Did you reach 'end game? oh then I'll delete everything you own and you can go play only using LMG's then, enjoy****

Most people buy a heli and Lift-sell every vehicle they can find. ****how about starting over and you can only use ground vehicles?****

Most people buy everything                                                               **** well next play through, you cant use the traders to buy weapons or vehicles or food or meds etc, choose one. ****

From A2 to A3 this seems to a repeating pattern, and when players say they are bored, they never want to change - they want the mod to change. I played Tetris on the Nintendo Game Boy, for hours & hours & hours and eventually I got bored. My friend pointed out to me that I should turn the Game Boy upside-down and play....it was like playing a new game!!!! And what was better, once i got bored of playing upside-down I flipped it right side up again and the experience changed AGAIN! I did this multiple times, until the Amiga500 came along. Changing the way you play can have so much affect on a game!

As @TheVampire points out, the server host can make the difference in stretching out play towards end game with new and inventive ideas, but I also believe server owners should trust more in the core mechanics of the mod too, for example:-

Making loot spawn more frequent = speeds up 'end game'

Removing Antagonists = speeds up 'end game'

adding 100 spawn points = speeds up 'end game'

Black Market traders full of everything = speeds up 'end game'

PVE = An obvious fast track to end game much much quicker than anything else.

All these things affect the speed of reaching end game, and have to be balanced properly ( or even not included in a server)  to ensure risk/reward is a reasonably tough decision to make. That's what made the Dayz mod (& other early Arma-mods) phenomenon an incredible experience, many players had something they hadn't known before then. FEAR of DECISION. Now there is no fear, because  - "i'll just buy my sniper & big pack back if I die".

Quote

Epoch lacks a lot of the unknown in the end game

This, this is also a big problem. There simply cant be anything unknown nowadays. With admins spawning all items/vehicles/weapons in - to YouTube videos showcasing a latest update, nothing is left to be discovered. And I imagine if all epoch devs kept quiet while working on new content, we would have even more posts like  "is epoch dead"  and many more players and server hosts will abandon hope.

There are a couple of interesting ideas in this thread.

[TheVampire]

What Epoch endgame needs is something similar to DayZ Origins, but perhaps less grindy.
Bosses that are hard to find or expensive to summon, that have a very low rare drop chance which allows the players to access something unique like Sector B was. Maybe something that requires a large group.

 

Something else is an ongoing fight, like I was working towards with VEMF. If players don't login and fight expanding AI, it makes it harder on the players to do what they need done.

Unfortunately I don't see either of these being added into the core mod.

 

[natoed]

On 4/2/2018 at 1:58 PM, TheVampire said:

anomalies

I'm lov'n the anomalies by ALIAS

Some editing is required to get them working for epoch and those battle-eye filters can be a bitch at times.

the custom sounds do bloat my mission file but are worth it, plus I'm using old mate  Suppe's sector B to spawn in IceBreakr Zetaborn at a custom mission.

yep Alienz  n zombiez plus epoch = fuck yeah

[LSxD]

How about that? Make Epoch a real survivasl experience again?! I spent like 1000+ hours on playing Epoch 0.2.x and it was the best online time I ever had. I'd like to face something challenging at least once again in my lifetime. Epoch without any rules BUT cheating/hacking and a server that really demands you. No pu**y mode mods, nothing but the pure, clean epoch experience and at least a week of farming with 4 ppl before you can start to build a base!!! That is was made me play ARMA for some thousands of hours. Nowadays its CTI or KOTH but the greatest mod ever "EPOCH" today is just a waste of time, because no one is interested in anything chellenging... best times were on the "skaronator" server. F**k you Ch*** from Inf*****, you're just some kind of disease!!! Get yourself a job and stop to fuck up the community!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Helion4]

well, some of that is correct. Nobody can stop server hosts from making their servers easy. It all comes from the hosts trying to tempt players onto their servers by making it easy, I think.

(I dont think infistar visits theses forums anymore)

[viper179]

On 1/28/2017 at 8:30 AM, KPABATOK said:

Ok, so I think Epoch suffers the most from lack of survivability aspect even though it claims in description about "harsh enviroment", base mod is as peaceful as Disney Movie. It was the same with DayZ SA but they made a little bit of progress in current builds. So while server admins will do what server admins do (disable everything and make it easy peasy KOTH EXILE style arena PVP. Why not just use Exile mod for that?), what could be done by developers to differentiate Epoch mod from other mods (and maybe make it more like Breaking Point slightly) is this:

 

1.) Food scarcity, by default (sure it can be edited, but I will only talk about base mod), animals spawn just fine. Kill them, get meat, make fire, cook. Cosy.

2.) Deadlier antagonists (sure some of it will come in far future updates)

3.) Diseases, radiation zones, some danger that can not be seen (we have radiation stats already, possibly will come in far future).

4.) Visual impairment due to the factors above (I loved blurry vision in early DayZ SA builds, it made it so much more realistic and fun trying to navigate when you don't see shit after losing blood)

5.) Removal of safezones. They are pointless and break immersion. Japanese server KongariBacon did it the best. Admin left only brown traders. Trading was dangerous. It should be.

6.) Scarcity of all weapons and ammo above 6.5mm, scarcity of ghillie and wet suits (since they are not craftable like in DayZ SA, it could only be done artificially by making them spawn less, same with armour vests, helmets).

7.) Making gas stations almost empty, and some completely empty at random. Mad Max style.

8.) Vehicle should cost not 1000-2750 crypto, but 10 times more. Same with guns. Just make everything 10 times more expensive. Viper's server, while having only stupid Black Market traders, on the other hand did it very well by making i.e. VTOL planes cost several hundreds of thousands of crypto as far as I remember. Maybe a bit too extreme, but he understood the idea at least. Other vehicles were expensive too.

9.) To be continued.

Why thank you my good sir.