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Sleeping in multiplayer?


retsaki

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We don't even know if combat will be between players as an option, much less how everyone will get their sleep. Maybe players will simply not sleep and the need for it will be taken out : o

 

The devs have said this is to the discretion of the server operators. If they want PvP they can activate it, or they can just leave it off.

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If everyone agrees to be helpful, this is not a huge issue.  However, even with small groups leaving your base becomes an issue.

 

A person makes a base fortifies and logs off.  Goes to sleep, goes to do their day thing (job, school, etc) and log back in that day, or even the next day.  What has happened to all your stuff in the intervening time?  Has another player looted your home?  Has someone run in, tossed a few steaks into the over and fire it up?  Has someone looted it?  Has some kited a horde into my place?

 

Same thing applies to someone sleeping and staying in the game.  Someone could easily open a door, walk in, loot my stuff and leave.  Or they could throw a steak in the oven or start a campfire at the base of my stairs AND at the bottom of my rope ladder?!?!

 

Lets take this the other way.  Lets say I run off to loot, come back, drop stuff off and leave for another run.  Another player finds my house and loots it.  Now they could loot it because they know I am gone.  OR they could loot it thinking it was a find.  Maybe I have not logged in in a week and they don't have a clue.  The end result is when I come back, my stuff is gone.  :(

 

The anonomity of the game turns a lot of people into bastards (see Dirt, DayZ).  They say this is "because this is how it would be"... when they are really saying "I am an @sshat, deal with it!"  The abilites to greif in an assundry of way is immense.

 

If I were to devise a solution I would make "Player Housing".  If a player invests enough resources into a space, then other players cannot enter it.  Lets say that resource is 3 planks.  So if a player has at three barricades on an entrance/egress another player cannot pass.  If a player sealed off all the doors and window on a house, then another player could not enter.  If I had a sheet rope, then I need to put a little room at the bottom (a few walls and door) then another player could not enter.  A player made door would not even need to be barricaded.  If I go so far as to barricade a city block and added walls to the gaps, then it could no be crossed.  However, if someone could find a way in, or kited zeds into a fortifcation, then they would be in.  So even this method is not fool proof.

 

The next step up would be "Guild Housing".  Where as, if you are part of a guild you can cross any player made housing of the same guild.  The devs would then have to add some sort of boolean value if a player wanted they constructions allowed in guild access (o = guild, 1 = no guild). 

 

My .02

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That's so immersion breaking, though American. If you're on a whitelisted server where people cooperate, it's not necessary, and if you're on a PvP server you're kinda destroying the entire point.

 

I think a more tenable solution would be to have locks and keys that can be found. Players that put a lock on a door are the only one who can open them… perhaps suspend realism a *little* and have them be able to give duplicate keys to other players on command. If a player with a key dies, they drop their key. Locked doors could be much harder to break down, and then add in sufficient barricading to make them very, very hard to break down. Triple barricade your windows and such, and you have a real fortress.

 

Also, hiding your loot becomes a priority. Having some clever hiding places craftable could help greatly with that. Under floorboards, in walls, etc. with a slight visual cue as to where they are.

 

And finally, the ability to trap up your base when it's implemented should also help deter potential looters.

 

 

Edit: And this has the potential ability on a whitelist somewhat friendly server of notifying people that this is "your" place and not to go in. Can always make up rules from there, given that it's whitelisted.

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That's so immersion breaking, though American. If you're on a whitelisted server where people cooperate, it's not necessary, and if you're on a PvP server you're kinda destroying the entire point.

 

I think a more tenable solution would be to have locks and keys that can be found. Players that put a lock on a door are the only one who can open them… perhaps suspend realism a *little* and have them be able to give duplicate keys to other players on command. If a player with a key dies, they drop their key. Locked doors could be much harder to break down, and then add in sufficient barricading to make them very, very hard to break down. Triple barricade your windows and such, and you have a real fortress.

 

Also, hiding your loot becomes a priority. Having some clever hiding places craftable could help greatly with that. Under floorboards, in walls, etc. with a slight visual cue as to where they are.

 

And finally, the ability to trap up your base when it's implemented should also help deter potential looters.

 

 

Edit: And this has the potential ability on a whitelist somewhat friendly server of notifying people that this is "your" place and not to go in. Can always make up rules from there, given that it's whitelisted.

 

I dont disagree with you one bit.  However, having your stuff stolen by another player who did not know it was your place...

 

I think MP comes into its own with Private servers, where I could invite a few other people and we could agree to a play schedule.  We log in at the same time and play until we run into another player, team up, move on.  After a period of time we could send out a team for looting while the other fortifies, farms, etc.   Switch up now and again.  The ability to have four or five people work is a game changer.  Then it does not become immersion breaking for the group.  If we want to invite someone else into the fold, give them the codes and welcome aboard.

 

I really look forward to see how Zed kiting is going to work in MP.  With two or three man hunting parties.  Or hell, just have all of them equiped with small arms.  It is going to be like plowing a field :) 

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There should be plenty of ways of marking a house as "yours," though. Hopefully spraypaint gets added in the future, and it'd be nice to be able to paint signs and such. I just think a somewhat realistic option would be the better one to a game-y mechanic. Just my personal take on things, though.

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I just think a somewhat realistic option would be the better one to a game-y mechanic. Just my personal take on things, though.

 

I agree.  However, if realistic options lets @sshats abound... then I am for gamey mechanics.  On small servers, admin could do the trick.  As long as they are logging someone sort of unique id for the purchased product and not just some created charater.

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I really look forward to see how Zed kiting is going to work in MP.  With two or three man hunting parties.  Or hell, just have all of them equiped with small arms.  It is going to be like plowing a field :)

 

 

I wonder about this too. If you have half a dozen skilled players and as a group you focus on killing zombies how long will it take you clear big areas? Will there be any challenge? I single player can easily kill 500 Zs a month (that has been my average and that was focusing on survival and scavenging and crafting).  Put six skilled players together and focus on eliminating zombies and I bet you could kill 5,000 a month as a group.

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That's so immersion breaking, though American. If you're on a whitelisted server where people cooperate, it's not necessary, and if you're on a PvP server you're kinda destroying the entire point.

 

I think a more tenable solution would be to have locks and keys that can be found. Players that put a lock on a door are the only one who can open them… perhaps suspend realism a *little* and have them be able to give duplicate keys to other players on command. If a player with a key dies, they drop their key. Locked doors could be much harder to break down, and then add in sufficient barricading to make them very, very hard to break down. Triple barricade your windows and such, and you have a real fortress.

 

Also, hiding your loot becomes a priority. Having some clever hiding places craftable could help greatly with that. Under floorboards, in walls, etc. with a slight visual cue as to where they are.

 

And finally, the ability to trap up your base when it's implemented should also help deter potential looters.

 

 

Edit: And this has the potential ability on a whitelist somewhat friendly server of notifying people that this is "your" place and not to go in. Can always make up rules from there, given that it's whitelisted.

 

I rather like Rathlord's ideas over American Steel's suggestions (no offense kind sir).  Similar game-y suggestions evolved in Ultima Online with various unintended consequences.*

 

I think the fear of losing your loot would blend well with the overall horror of the game.  Plus, there are some ingame limits to stealing someone's loot.  1) Looter can only carry so much at a time.  2) The stuff has to go somewhere!  3) One and two are inversely proportional.  If a looter is taking stuff all the way across the map, trips will take much much longer, dangerous, and be less frequent.  If the looter has a safe house close by, one could potentially find the safe house and recover the stuff.

 

I like the idea of locks and keys.  You could take it a step forward and meet American Steel partway and introduce "Safes".  A safe would only hold a limited number of items but they would be secured to the player or require a combination mechanic to open.  This could potentially preserve your precious saw and trowel from random looters but limit someone from controlling the entire map.

 

* In the beginning, Ultima Online (UO) had very few restrictions on player actions.  The world was intended to be a MMO simulation where the environment balanced player actions.  What was unexpected though was the tendency of players to use online anonymity to play unhinged sociopaths.  This "grief play" was extremely detrimental to new players in the beginning as character death meant you could lose all your stuff AND XP.  To counteract "grief play" the UO world was regularly modified to restrict "griefing" and eliminate the simulation aspect.  Unfortunately, every new mechanic resulted in "grief players" finding new and novel ways to "grief" others.  I don't think this cycle ended until PvP-free servers were eventually introduced (and "grief" play evolved into confidence schemes).

 

On the other hand, the early days of Ultima Online were incredibly fun and tension filled.  I think Project Zomboid captures some of this tension with death being permanent.  The problem with UO early days was not necessarily "grief players" in my opinion. It was "lag" providing an uneven playing field between players.  Most players could put up with character death but character death due to internet latency was mind-blowingly frustrating.  You'd be fighting some well known jerk on your server when your dial up connection bombed out, and the jerk with the T1 connection then killed you.

 

Here is why I think Project Zomboid will be successful with the Ultima Online-esque simulation format that Ultima Online was ultimately unable to ever do:

1.  White-list servers - PZ an isn't MMO so it doesn't have to please everyone at the same time.  It can offer endless configurations so people can play how they want on their own servers.

2.  This is how you died - PZ knows what it is and makes no apologies for it.  All characters are going to die and dying is terrible.  This isn't Minecraft with zombies where you get to build the ultimate sandbox structure (unless of course you set the game up that way!)  The game is ultimately about survival for as long as you can.  Then you die.

3.  I don't think Indie Stone has the same economic incentive to reduce "grief play" as UO did.  UO was a subscription model that made money as long as the players were happy and playing.  Unhappy players would rage quit and cancel their subscriptions.  In my mind, this model was improved with Everquest's "level treadmill" mechanic that kept players playing and not rage quitting.  I don't see this same need in PZ as so many other options are available.

4.  Remaining a more hard core "simulation" type game may be more economically sustainable in the long term for Indie Stone.  There is certainly a niche for hard core games in the market.  Dwarf Fortress, Super Meat Boy, etc.  People don't always feel like playing a sanitized and safe game experience.

 

I think the best approach to PZ MP is to channel competitive (and grief prone) PVP into role playing PVP.  Private servers that allow PVP but where the private admins require players to include role playing elements will be more successful at attracting the type of player that makes PVP fun and memorable.  Sportsmanship is important in all games, in my opinion.  (And by role-playing elements, I mean requiring players have "in character" reasons for conflict.)

 

In summary, I believe some of the game-y restrictions on PVP suggested above would weaken PZ.  If there are groups of players who want to form guilds and battle it out on private servers, I think innovative "grief" play - leading a horde to your rival's safehouse, burning their safehouse - could be very fun. You gotta give "grief" players credit.  They are horribly innovative at finding sociopathic methods of tormenting their targets. They think of things no developer could ever dream of! I think the key is that players all agree on the ground rules ahead of time.

 

My unsolicited 2 cents. :)

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Not all opinions are equally viable and Rathlord brings up an excellent point. Rathlord has similarly pegged a suggestion of mine before, and I'm sure there are thousands of people that have had such experiences.

 

He's a no-holds-barred, no nonsense, moderator . . .But also, very fair.

 

For that, he's seriously one of the best, if not best, forum moderator I've ever had the pleasure of knowing!

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I think it should just be sleep in real time. If you went off to Youtube it would be like dreaming xD.

Encouraging players to not play the game is generally pretty shitty game design.

 

i was just stating my opinion.

 

 

The greatest game ever would be so entertaining that you would never want to put it down. Making sleep real time is a huge problem since it would cause two problems. One the player wouldn't be playing the game. You don't want that, you don't want to give the player a reason to leave the game, since it could create the possibility they will never come back. You want the player to HAVE to leave the game, because their life is getting in the way.

 

Ignoring that the biggest problem above all else is, people will probably dread sleeping. Maybe they have plan for this exciting building, or plan to raid a warehouse but oh wait. The player needs to sleep for 8 hours. Guess I'll have to wait. It would probably kill peoples excitement, and just not want to play MP since sleeping would be this big block of nothing.

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This is another one of those things I'd rather see in the hands of the server admin -- if you really want to have a real-time sleep, let it go. I personally like the idea, though it does pose some quite evil design challenges -- but some F2P games already do this as a method to encourage you to spend money, and they don't seem to lose people.

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I think it should just be sleep in real time. If you went off to Youtube it would be like dreaming xD.

Encouraging players to not play the game is generally pretty shitty game design.

 

i was just stating my opinion.

 

 

I don't mean any offense; I'm just saying that wouldn't be a viable way to go with the game (at least vanilla). If someone wanted to mod that (or even it be available via a server toggle) that's fine, it's just not the way to go for most people.

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I like what Jela331 said, keep sleep in time with the game but shorten how long u have to sleep. 3-4 in game hours to rest from fully exhausted would only be about 10 mins. good time to take a piss and grab a beer?

 

everyone has to sleep and night raids do happen alot in reality so i personally feel this is a risk you should have to take. in order for someone to raid in the night they would likely have to alter their characters sleep schedule anyway, and then venture out at night which is way more dangerous, to find a players safe house.

 

you could also implement that players can possibly awaken from loud noises, so if an enemy enters the house in any way besides silently picking a lock or walking thru an unlocked door/window it might wake you up, that way it prevents being murdered or robbed in a cheap way?

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I like what Jela331 said, keep sleep in time with the game but shorten how long u have to sleep. 3-4 in game hours to rest from fully exhausted would only be about 10 mins. good time to take a piss and grab a beer?

 

everyone has to sleep and night raids do happen alot in reality so i personally feel this is a risk you should have to take. in order for someone to raid in the night they would likely have to alter their characters sleep schedule anyway, and then venture out at night which is way more dangerous, to find a players safe house.

 

you could also implement that players can possibly awaken from loud noises, so if an enemy enters the house in any way besides silently picking a lock or walking thru an unlocked door/window it might wake you up, that way it prevents being murdered or robbed in a cheap way?

 

YES this is exactly what I was thinking. I like the idea of a shortened sleep-time as well. Perhaps 10 minutes in real-time. Along with this would be the possibility to be awoken from you sleep by a loud noise such as the smashing of a window or door. 

 

Another thing I was thinking about is that PVP kind of HAS to be a part of MP at least somewhat because it's a  huge part of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world. Now, PVP on any public server would be hell and I wouldn't want to take part in it... but PVP on a white-listed private server where everyone knows each other and agrees to play realistically and without intentions to grief sounds ideal. I'm picturing warring factions/bandit raids/etc. 

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You know how much you must sleep in pz, 10 minutes of waiting time everytime would simply be to much

 

The way I think it should work is that you sleep just like in pz but you wake up in about 10-20 sec maybe even an option were you can decide how you want sleeping to work on the server, or not at all.

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