Suggestion: Vehicle spawn improvements

[mawendt]

ok. i'm a good idea fairy sometimes. (mostimes?)

vehicles are already spawning, why not spawn some in the little garages and large sheds to get the pavlovian search response?

maybe server options could include randomizing damage and fuel down to zero for spawned vehicles. would cause players to search for/need repair kit or fuel cans.

i'm seeing twice as many quads as any other vehicle... when, maybe, hatchbacks are probably more common. just saying.

[AgentRev]

Yeah, that's not happening.

[mawendt]

because... it's not a real priority and you are overworked into the ground, you don't particularly like the idea, or its a stupid idea?

would you like it if someone else did the work? and it worked?

[AgentRev]

Because Wasteland is not DayZ, and shouldn't become like DayZ. A vehicle shall not spawn with a level of damage that prevents it from being driven reliably without requiring further maintenance, and a vehicle shall not spawn with a level of fuel that would prevent it from being driven to the nearest fuel station without a manual refill. Anything that doesn't respect this is against the spirit of Wasteland. Vehicles are mere tools to help you get to battle, not objectives in themselves.

As for the garage thing, it simply would require way too much work for very little benefit. The vehicle spawner is entirely dynamic so that it can be adapted to other maps rather easily. It doesn't work with static positions, it scans random areas of a certain radius to find empty spaces where vehicles can fit.

[mawendt]

Rev, dude... I'm cool with your position on it as a developer.

But.... to set the record straight about Wasteland, not DayZ et al...

https://dev.withsix.com/projects/wasteland-survival-sandbox

Creating rules like 'shall not' is a good guidance for A3Wasteland, as envisioned by you (and very well envisioned, I praise)... it's DayZ that emulated Wasteland. And the spirit of Wasteland is (as THE original supporter, playtester, and financier of Wasteland by Tonic) exactly what you haven't described.

Wasteland wasn't meant to be candyland of vehicles, weapons, and shopkeepers. You spawned empty handed, and earned everything through searching, scavenging, teaming up, trust, ambushing, not-trusting, booby traps and griefing. "Mission" originally didn't pop up on the map where everyone saw them but you stumble accross them, or heard the vehicles, or saw the smoke from a downed aircraft. There were random ai Kill teams that hunted you down, or you tripped over patrolling while you moved from point to point looking for food and water, which you ran out of fairly quickly. You hunted as silently as possible (you could kill cows, chickens, and rabbits for meat) since when you made noise other players and ai would hunt you down for food, water, and weapons.

It was meant to be stressful, brutal, and unfair. People radge quit constantly. Those same people swore they'd never play again. Yet always came back because it was a challenge, and you had to not only beat other players, but 'beat the system' that was unfair and allowed you one chance out of a 100 to survive a set.

When R3F was implemented, it became neccessary to base up and consolidate supplies and defend them. AT rocket weapons, and snipers, and thermals, and silencers were RARE and coveted. Ammunition was in short supply. As was fuel (since the fuel stations were deactivated, only fuel cans were around). In short, Wasteland, designed by TAW_Tonic, playtested thousands of hours by the TOW clan (The Original Wastelanders), paid for mostly by me (blush), kiddy-fied by 404 and Sa-Matra, and imitated for DayZ (and shoddily I might add) has become probably one of the top three mp ideas for Arma.

A3Wasteland is fun, and I love what you've done with it. It really is a fantastic framework for pvp or tvt. I made this rant because I think it can be better in a different way, and when I write that I mean you're making it better in a diffrent way, just not in the 'spirit of wasteland'. It's in the spirit of Rev or A3Wasteland, a different product in many ways - updated, better in some ways, and obviously popular.

When I toss stuff out, its from a guy that wants A3Wasteland to surpass any other mod. Don't get offended or whatever... I really do have a reasonable knowledgeable and interest in supporting this.

Now just convince my wife and RL job to give me time to do more than type stuff like this....

[AgentRev]

Those are not general Wasteland rules, but personal requirements as to what I think is best to maintain a certain level of fun, and therefore what the vanilla repo conforms to. When I played Breaking Point, it could take 2 to 4 hours (e.g. the entire free time available in a student's typical weekday evening) just to gather all the pieces to repair a car in order get somewhere, and it was fucking enraging. I never want to experience that again, nor do I want other players to experience that. My personal guideline is "less bullshit, more action".

It was meant to be stressful, brutal, and unfair. People radge quit constantly.

I want it to be awesome, challenging, and above all, fun. I don't want people to rage quit, I want them to stand back on their feet and go reclaim their belongings by all means necessary.

The reduction of "rarity" was purposeful, as a way to accelerate gameplay into large firefights with decent guns in a couple hours, rather than random 1v1's with shitty guns over the course of many long, boring hours. I don't want it to be a hide-n-seek walking simulator looting game, I want to be a battle of epic proportions where the major teams are not afraid to mark "come at me bro" on the map. I want to experience large, hour-long firefights erupting in Pyrgos, Kavala, and the likes.

A3Wasteland is not a reincarnation of Wasteland as envisioned by Tonic, it's envisioned as what a "Grand Theft Arma" would look like, minus the roleplaying stuff. I don't find the name "Wasteland" relevant anymore, it simply stuck because that's what we were given to start with, and that's what people identify us as. I'm not quite sure as to what that term really means anymore. Also, your description of the original Wasteland is pretty much what DayZ and Breaking Point are, in a nutshell.

On a side note, I thought that Wasteland was originally created after DayZ, and that it was envisioned as a "faster-paced DayZ without zombies"...

[mawendt]

Nopester. CraigBob released the original and first zombie mod... "The Dynamic Zombie Server" or DZS, which he still works on rarely... It was fun, but choppy with over 10 players. Tonic had a server, eventually took the zombie scripts out, we tossed a bunch of names around, and 'Wasteland' was born.

DayZ about a year later, and about 2 years after a Bis developer castigated me on the Bis suggestion thread that Arma was "a MILITARY SIM and zombies had no place in the Arma environment, thank you very much, and speak no more of this sacriledge." Rather very short sighted for any developer. Heh.

Rocket came on as a programmer/artiste and had some bizzare thoughts about exploring the nature of man. People who tried that early version hated it so much he had to change his development tune. DayZ blows in that its a Picasso when people in general would rather have something less complicated and more enjoyable. BP is much better, but with 5 minute repsawns of gear.... lacks desperation. Funny. Rocket gets funded and produces a less than enjoyable product. Others produce better products for fdree like Breaking Point and get ignored. Go figure.

Here's my thought: what you want is not incompatible for the A3Wasteland template. My whisper in your ear is to make it MORE popular by offering server settings that can have the Rev Wasteland or a hardcore wasteland or anything in between. Do that and A3Wasteland will be even more popular. Juuuuuust sayin'.

Little tweaks separate you from the commoners. Options give some sort of influence to the user. Not everyone likes it easy, you know? and opening that option up extends popularity... setting rarity in weapons and vehicles, setting random vehicle damage and spawn/respawn limitations, blinding players to active missions, no shopkeepers, making food/water/fuel/medikits scarce all work in the flavor of making it popular among the user, not the developer.

Again, I'm not beating up on anything you do or your development philosophy. In the end, the guy whats it charge decides how it be. I'm hoping you'll consider that if you create a set of server options that are easy to use that include some of these suggestions, A3Wasteland will become even more popular. It leaves your philosophy intact, but allows the user to flavor to taste.