DayZ Development Blog 8 APR 2015 Brian Hicks / Lead Producer
Just how hard is DayZ supposed to be? What is the targeted experience here? How valuable should items, and thus what I carry be to me as a player? I like to think we’re pretty up front about exactly what DayZ is and is supposed to be, and as we move closer to 1.0 more and more of this will begin to take shape. Once, when asked how valuable tools and resources should be to a player - on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is finding everything you need without issue, and 10 is elation over finding a can of beans (I’m paraphrasing here) Dean was quoted saying an emphatic “10”.
Some folks have expressed concern that the increasing difficulty in surviving and combating the environment would hurt player interaction. To which I say.. Sure, it will hurt player interaction if by player interaction you mean folks wandering up and down the coast, wearing pink dresses and chasing each other with fire extinguishers. However, I firmly believe it will -drive- and foster a different type of player interaction.
Interaction between players making their way across Chernarus, scavenging to survive. Players who enter a village and have to make a hard decision - do I use what little ammunition I have to kill and steal from the survivors already in this town? Do I instead avoid the risk of death from attacking another player, only to potentially risk death by starvation or infected as I make my way around the town? Is the cost of expending my resources in either choice too great?
Make no mistake, DayZ is and always has been intended to be an unforgiving, brutal fight for survival in a harsh post apocalyptic landscape. Obviously, we still have a long ways to go to get to that point, but as we move forward more and more systems will be introduced that support that experience. Balancing and adjustment will have to occur, as the intended experience is not to ensure starvation on the coast, but instead foster the ability to spawn, gather the basic supplies required to move inland, and thus begin the real DayZ experience - your story, your struggle for survival.