New Way to Play SCUM

[ACE]

I'm looking for thoughts from players who would like a whole new way to play SCUM. We have the official servers, custom servers with 1-10X loot, the bot shops, RP servers, Partial PVP/ PVE. We have servers that allow only solo or duos to squad sizes of 6 max or 15 max. There is even a Battle Royale server which is sort of a SCUM sideshow.

I want to talk about the common problems I see we all have in SCUM with the current mechanics and a single solution which could solve most of them.

First problems... Players lose interest in the game and because of this squads dissolve. Even fun highly skilled squads have players who go inactive, just like bad attitudes, inactivity breeds inactivity. Sooner or later squads simply melt away due to inactivity. Not all of them but many of them, Why does this happen? SCUM is a complex game and most players who last more than a 50 hours in it stick with it until they get into the existing typical gameplay loop of...

A. I've been looted and lost all my ♥♥♥♥...

B. My base was offline raided and I lost all my ♥♥♥♥...

C. I play for hours & never see anybody out in the big huge massive world even when I go looking for them, lose my will to play...

D. Members of my crew lose their will to play, because of inactivity or lack of interaction...

E. Have a big huge base, massive assets, vehicles, but nobody to play with and no action when we do play.

The quality of play, weeks after a wipe, when you have a big base, multiple reserve kits, a padded bank acct, wheels, and allies, really drops off if you aren't able to sustain interactions with players. In the average 4 hour session during prime time, most players on servers don't see or interact with other players outside of their own squad. Some days you get lucky, other days you need to rely on kill feeds or warzones or special incentives to find other players.

Also, losing your ♥♥♥♥ when you get killed, or when you get offline raided, is part of the Winner/Looser Outcome cycle and most players have some difficulty with this. That is why servers with 5X-10X loot in a survival game and bot shops not only exist but are so popular. They reduce the down time between when you can feel like a winner or rather less like a loser when you come out on the losing side of the very rare encounter cycle.

Lastly, nobody can play this game 24 hours a day, and so some servers try to limit raiding artificially by making rules to that effect or selling some gimmicky offline raid protection discord devices to notify you of a raid/trap detonation. I know some of you goobers can devote all your free waking time playing it... For the rest of us, we can't or don't want to play it all day long or necessarily everyday, some of us we have jobs/lives/gfs/bfs etc.

We want a better quality of hours played, over more quantity of hours played waiting for something to happen.

==Raise your hand if you've ever had one or more of the above problems. ==

Now let's think outside the box of the current game mechanic cycle. At a solution staring us in the face.

The map has 4 tradepost locations.

Imagine first if the PVE zones around these tradeposts were removed. Then each one of these traders would be really important points to defend from enemies as they permit commerce and money to flow into the banks for respawns etc.

Next imagine a server with only 4 squads (think factions), but the player limit for each squad (faction) would 500. Obviously not all squad (faction) members would be online at any time but because there are only four squads (factions). There would always be someone from your faction on at any time of day allowing you to always go out solo, form into a duo, a trio, or whatever size group of players would be needed for a particular task they wanted to work on together.

On a full 64 slot server, the odds are very good just like a deck of cards with suits of spades, diamonds, clubs, or hearts, each squad (faction) would have about 16 players online when the server was at full capacity, give or take a few players.

Because every player in the same squad (faction) can see the tags of every other player in close proximity can tell who is friend and who is foe in combat situations. Were a certain group within the faction to come under attack in the field, they could request for help that could come from anybody else in the faction or faction allies. This type of feudal faction arrangement would work far better at encouraging high activity levels, always allowing players to partner up even when their usual group of friends were not online or playing other games and eliminate offline raiding because there would always be players online. PVP encounters would be more deliberate and require more squad (faction) coordination but also be really easy to find because every member of the squad (faction) would have access to the knowledge being shared on a squad (faction) discord.

Players that were more PVE focused, and who wanted to build bases or defenses or outposts could do that, those who wanted to provide security or farm could do that, those players who wanted to loot could do that, players who wanted to drive, could be tasked to do that. There is a huge amount of quarter mastering and inventory management that needs to be done too and players who like to do base ♥♥♥♥♥ kind of activities could do that. Being free to play SCUM how you want, rather than how you need to play would also encourage higher activity.

Finally, some players just want to play solo and or PVE, or Role Players, and I would create a PVE zone smack dab in the middle of B2 called the border lands, where RPers or PVEr's would be free to setup a trading post of their own and trade with the factions or not.

I'm looking for thoughts of players who would be interested in playing on this kind of server, with this sort of ruleset, who would enjoy an experience with a guarantee of daily player interactions both within their squad (faction) and PVP opportunities, because of the intel of where combat is occurring against anybody else in the squad (faction).

[Frle]

Hey there!
I wanna thank you for this extensive thought process/suggestion post, it does show you're really invested in the game.

I do hope more people jump in and comment on this, as I'm also interested to see a discussion about this. Good luck! :D

[ACE]

Thanks Frie!

[CrankyOldMan]

The official servers already have squads that block the entrances to the traders prohibiting players access or exit from them...
Large squads would just camp the trader and kill and loot any player trying to enter.
For official server i don't like it, do what you on your private server!
A new player logging on or a solo will have no chance and more than likely if they never played before get a quick feeling this game sucks and quit!

[ACE]

This would not be for an official server at all.

Any "large" squad who tried to roll an entire faction would find out that even the biggest fish get eaten by a shark once they swim into the ocean. If you tried to go into a trade post, with a large squad, you might be able to temporarily cause some havoc, but the faction would muster their resources and/or allies and wipe out your squad pretty fast.

It is possible that a well organized squad could overthrow a weak faction and using the game's mechanics over take the flags with the 24 hour timer, if that was their objective, good on them. If they can overtake a well defended tradepost then they become the new faction in control of it. Those kind of natural organic gameplay events would be a welcome change to the monotony of logging into full decked out base on a 5X server full of loots, guns, defenses, and stores and stocks but only 2 out of 10 squad members logging in because everybody else is super bored.

When everybody has to defend against everybody else the game doesn't really work all that well. Especially with the snowball effect of chain raiding, and offline raiding. If you take offline raiding out of the equation and also take inactivity out of the equation, you always have players able to log in and form up into groups and either do group activities of their choice rather than necessity, or do something solo, maybe suntan during base defense, or level up their engineering skill by fixing walls, or farm and tend to crops, grab a chain saw and cut logs and stock up the log supply etc.

New players, need only join a faction in order to not be KOS at a trader. New players want others to play with, both to contribute, but also to learn the game. Factions want members, because that is both how they identify who is friendly and who is a foe, i.e. who should be KOS within their territory. Factions also grow strong, via strength in numbers. The few players, interlopers perhaps, who don't like the idea of joining a squad (faction) could either live out on the edges of the big azz map, away from the borderlands between faction territories where PVP would be common, or they could play in a big PVE/RP area in the middle.

It is pretty clear that plenty of players are already quitting the game, even those who love it because the cycle of gameplay doesn't sustain enough interactions to keep them from playing something else. Which is why those of us who love the game are playing with our 5th, 10th, 20th or 26th squad.

We need to try new things, the squad system we have is very limiting. The bot shop servers completely remove scarcity from the game, and the gameplay loop of day 1-day 5 survival and excitement are gone after you have a base fully stocked and piles of loot. This is a new idea to solve a lot of problems that drive people to quit from boredom.

[insettoinfetto]

Originally posted by 2018theninja:

First problems... Players lose interest in the game and because of this squads dissolve.

Long story short....game is too focued on BB, raiding and squads.
Already said many times.

Devs should switch focus only to the PvE part of the game.
Raiding/BB/squads affect few players and steal resources from development that will impact all kind of experiences (from SP to Hardcore pvp)

I'm also used to say :

if PvP is predominant in SCUM, game experience will depend on server population and will totally change from official to PvE servers, to SP.

if PvE part is hard and predominant, game experience will mostly be the same from SP to Hardcore PvP.

And devs should also understand that a PvPer is not attached to a single game. For even minor reason thet easily lose interested in a game and switch to another

Devs should stop listening to those kind of players and focus more on PvE part of the game.

Originally posted by 2018theninja:

The map has 4 tradepost locations.
Imagine first if the PVE zones around these tradeposts were removed. Then each one of these traders would be really important points to defend from enemies as they permit commerce and money to flow into the banks for respawns etc.

This was somehow planned. Tomislav said that in future they could remove safe zone around outposts. But turning outposts into factions....hmm
it seems just a shift from BB/raiding to a similar situation but in larger scale. Not sure if it will help.

In a survival game there should be 2 basic elements :
limited resources and hostile environment.

And this is not present at the moment. And I'm not talking about NPCs.

[Famous]

Name tags should never be a thing in this game, it makes the playing field too uneven. Faction name tags should never be added, squad name tags should be removed, and duct tape arm bands should be a thing like Ukrainian soldiers.

Some missions should require multiple players to accept, but player number limits should also be a thing. This way solos would be forced to make friends to do some missions.

All missions should drive player interaction/pvp by increasing likelihood of players encountering each other during missions. You can see a dip in the steam charts after the map expansion, on a map this size we need 100 players minimum, and missions that drive pvp.

Low tier weapons, like the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ revolver needs to be more common all over the civilian areas. Loot needs to be reworked so that it starts to respawn after 5 minutes of no one being around. players going from one poi to another and finding nothing because of a respawn time that is too long is not a good thing, but it needs to be low tier loot that respawns sooner. Allowing ALT loot farming is another issue.

Death needs to be balanced, established players returning to their body minutes after death needs to be changed. Victors being robbed of their victories because of quick respawns is another thing holding this game back. The quick respawn makes squads unstoppable, when the majority of the player base is solo and duo.

[ACE]

Originally posted by Famous:

Name tags should never be a thing in this game, it makes the playing field too uneven. Faction name tags should never be added, squad name tags should be removed, and duct tape arm bands should be a thing like Ukrainian soldiers.

Some missions should require multiple players to accept, but player number limits should also be a thing. This way solos would be forced to make friends to do some missions.

All missions should drive player interaction/pvp by increasing likelihood of players encountering each other during missions. You can see a dip in the steam charts after the map expansion, on a map this size we need 100 players minimum, and missions that drive pvp.

Low tier weapons, like the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ revolver needs to be more common all over the civilian areas. Loot needs to be reworked so that it starts to respawn after 5 minutes of no one being around. players going from one poi to another and finding nothing because of a respawn time that is too long is not a good thing, but it needs to be low tier loot that respawns sooner. Allowing ALT loot farming is another issue.

Death needs to be balanced, established players returning to their body minutes after death needs to be changed. Victors being robbed of their victories because of quick respawns is another thing holding this game back. The quick respawn makes squads unstoppable, when the majority of the player base is solo and duo.

Agree with arm bands and doing away with name/squad tags. Makes so much more sense. One department that has been very consistent with the SCUM team is the art department. Pushing out content every few weeks. Armbands/headbands are something they could accomplish within an update or two.

I don't think forcing anybody to do anything int he game is the right move though, Solos or groups, the game suffers from too many restrictions as it is.

More ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapons in houses would work for me. I think heavy weapons in general should be much more rare. I think traders should work different. The stock that exists in the trader should be wholly player supplied by sold items. Both in quantity and durability. Buying only brand new stuff that is created out of thin air, NO! These things should have to be scavenged in the world, someone should have had to craft it or have looted it. Would make for much more compelling game play.

I also think you could eliminate sector and random respawns. Could turn that off in server settings, and make it so you like now you can only put your bed down in an area with a flag. I'm not convinced there should be a cost for dying, only that you lose fame and gear, which impacts your ability to procure stuff at the trader, and also requires you to re-gear before you go back into battle. If you die you'd have to respawn back at your shelter only. Then you either stand up a forward operating base, so have to pre-plan for a forward respawn, i.e. requiring coordination and some combat engineering, or you come back to the battle from shelter spawn at the homebase i.e. the trade post.

[Famous]

Originally posted by 2018theninja:

Originally posted by Famous:

Name tags should never be a thing in this game, it makes the playing field too uneven. Faction name tags should never be added, squad name tags should be removed, and duct tape arm bands should be a thing like Ukrainian soldiers.

Some missions should require multiple players to accept, but player number limits should also be a thing. This way solos would be forced to make friends to do some missions.

All missions should drive player interaction/pvp by increasing likelihood of players encountering each other during missions. You can see a dip in the steam charts after the map expansion, on a map this size we need 100 players minimum, and missions that drive pvp.

Low tier weapons, like the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ revolver needs to be more common all over the civilian areas. Loot needs to be reworked so that it starts to respawn after 5 minutes of no one being around. players going from one poi to another and finding nothing because of a respawn time that is too long is not a good thing, but it needs to be low tier loot that respawns sooner. Allowing ALT loot farming is another issue.

Death needs to be balanced, established players returning to their body minutes after death needs to be changed. Victors being robbed of their victories because of quick respawns is another thing holding this game back. The quick respawn makes squads unstoppable, when the majority of the player base is solo and duo.

Agree with arm bands and doing away with name/squad tags. Makes so much more sense. One department that has been very consistent with the SCUM team is the art department. Pushing out content every few weeks. Armbands/headbands are something they could accomplish within an update or two.

I don't think forcing anybody to do anything int he game is the right move though, Solos or groups, the game suffers from too many restrictions as it is.

More ♥♥♥♥♥♥ weapons in houses would work for me. I think heavy weapons in general should be much more rare. I think traders should work different. The stock that exists in the trader should be wholly player supplied by sold items. Both in quantity and durability. Buying only brand new stuff that is created out of thin air, NO! These things should have to be scavenged in the world, someone should have had to craft it or have looted it. Would make for much more compelling game play.

I also think you could eliminate sector and random respawns. Could turn that off in server settings, and make it so you like now you can only put your bed down in an area with a flag. I'm not convinced there should be a cost for dying, only that you lose fame and gear, which impacts your ability to procure stuff at the trader, and also requires you to re-gear before you go back into battle. If you die you'd have to respawn back at your shelter only. Then you either stand up a forward operating base, so have to pre-plan for a forward respawn, i.e. requiring coordination and some combat engineering, or you come back to the battle from shelter spawn at the homebase i.e. the trade post.

Its shocking the number of requests for name tag removal and it has not happened. Then you look at all the more successful survival games without name tags...

I think there should be missions for solos, duos, and trios for example, so you are not forced, but there is incentive to group up with others, perhaps other faction members.

I agree that traders need changes. I think they should have 3rd tier items for sale, 2nd tier items sometimes, but never 1st tier weapons/items.

Respawn mechanics that are allowing hundreds, maybe thousands of SCUM players get robbed of their victories daily is a great way to grow a game.

[dustbiter]

I think it's too easy to spam locks and lock out garages and deny new players resources. I recently started playing a bit on Official Australia PvE and I realised every garage everywhere was locked. It's a lot harder to get screw drivers to pick the locks open now. Players will exploit mechanics so it's up to the devs to design mechanics to prevent such behaviour.

I think SCUM doesn't consider the player experience much and leans too hard towards making things painful and tedious. For example gearing up with a gun is intentionally slow, you never find a gun that's loaded with a mag which is unrealistic. It's a lot harder to get a working car now than before. Together with the recent poor introduction of hand abrasions and fatigue, every player can see it's all aimed at slowing and hurting them. The problem isn't with the players gearing up fast. In Dayz the players keep scavenging and looting and lose their gear when they die. And there's players that keep playing, gearing up and pvp encounters are addictive. In SCUM the large map, scattered spawn in and many military POIs everywhere and base building all discourage PvP encounters. When you lack interesting AI enemies and NPCs to fight player encounters are critical, usually it's a fight but encounters can be social too.

[ACE]

What if the respawn was limited to bed only. Then you'd have to preplan your operations, or at least be subject to having other faction members in the area to protect your loot and provide you cover until you ran back or got a car ride back from a designated driver in your faction. With a faction you'd have more capabilities to call on to get back into action and advance your faction's survival.

[Sr. Morajsakom]

Topic on this thread brings me to my og wish to be added into the game, a playstyle that supports hiding. Should work well for soloers, aka be made easier playstyle played by individuals, and smaller groups, and also realistic as so.

[ACE]

Originally posted by dustbiter:

I think it's too easy to spam locks and lock out garages and deny new players resources. I recently started playing a bit on Official Australia PvE and I realised every garage everywhere was locked. It's a lot harder to get screw drivers to pick the locks open now. Players will exploit mechanics so it's up to the devs to design mechanics to prevent such behaviour.

I think SCUM doesn't consider the player experience much and leans too hard towards making things painful and tedious. For example gearing up with a gun is intentionally slow, you never find a gun that's loaded with a mag which is unrealistic. It's a lot harder to get a working car now than before. Together with the recent poor introduction of hand abrasions and fatigue, every player can see it's all aimed at slowing and hurting them. The problem isn't with the players gearing up fast. In Dayz the players keep scavenging and looting and lose their gear when they die. And there's players that keep playing, gearing up and pvp encounters are addictive. In SCUM the large map, scattered spawn in and many military POIs everywhere and base building all discourage PvP encounters. When you don't have any AI enemies and NPCs to fight player encounters are critical, usually it's a fight but encounters can be social too.

That is stupid when players do that. Again, that was a decisions made by the devs years ago before base building and some of them are lockable some aren't. There are still plenty of search points outside of prefab lockups however.

Agree with not finding mags with guns, however if you had the resources of the faction you'd be able to mate up mags with guns really quickly, even with the huge itemization that exists in the game, which is why factions make more sense than squads. Additionally, you could leverage the power of the traders to buy the mag if you didn't have enough of them.

Most PVP are KOS because the opportunity cost of not KOS is almost higher than taking the risk of no just KOS. With the great wide azz open world of the map, players see each other so rarely, both are thinking KOS because if one is thinking maybe I'll try to be nice, they end up dead.

If you detect another player first, you are 90% chance going to win a PVP encounter with them, 95% chance if you lay eyes on them first and 99% if you shoot them first. If you choose to talk instead of shoot, you give away this huge advantage, expose yourself to the whim of a potential or probable enemy taking your gear instead of trading with you. If they kill you they can take what they want of yours, without having to give up anything in return, which is why players KOS.

You clearly identified one of the biggest problems though, which is huge map + too many POIs, + not enough players. If we had just 4 factions, instead of hundreds of squads, you would be playing with people daily, splitting into the group focused on the task of your choosing, and able to call for support if needed via discord immediately. Also since you can communicate exactly precisely where help is needed to the whole faction, you'd get help, rather than relying on some ambigious "kill feed" "B3" -Yeah where the F in B3? Trainyard, Castle, on the East West Highway, the big field, the corner of the map nobody goes to, the other corner, Bootcamp? B3 Bunker? Totally superior way to play in my opinion.

[ACE]

Originally posted by Sr. Morajsakom:

Topic on this thread brings me to my og wish to be added into the game, a playstyle that supports hiding. Should work well for soloers, aka be made easier playstyle played by individuals, and smaller groups, and also realistic as so.

Could totally play a stealth game outside in the woods, building on the outskirts far from the traders. Nothing against playing as solo and not joining one of the four squads except if you want to respawn as you need to put money into the bank. I think a neutral PVE recruit point in the town of B2 where each faction has a recruiter would allow you to join a faction in order to go to their trader, and then when you leave the trader you can leave that faction if you don't like playing with others but still like playing PVP. You'd almost always be out numbered in combat however if you tried to take on a faction, but again maybe that is your play style "never tell me the odds"

[Sr. Morajsakom]

Originally posted by 2018theninja:

Originally posted by Sr. Morajsakom:

Topic on this thread brings me to my og wish to be added into the game, a playstyle that supports hiding. Should work well for soloers, aka be made easier playstyle played by individuals, and smaller groups, and also realistic as so.

Could totally play a stealth game outside in the woods, building on the outskirts far from the traders. Nothing against playing as solo and not joining one of the four squads except if you want to respawn as you need to put money into the bank. I think a neutral PVE recruit point in the town of B2 where each faction has a recruiter would allow you to join a faction in order to go to their trader, and then when you leave the trader you can leave that faction if you don't like playing with others but still like playing PVP. You'd almost always be out numbered in combat however if you tried to take on a faction, but again maybe that is your play style "never tell me the odds"

Currently? Thats not hiding. I once tried to bring ideas about the ability to create base and tunnels under ground, accessible similar to how chests can be buried, truly hidden, those could only be accessible by a certain size of squad, or some other similar rule intelligently ruling it out for larger squad possibilities.

EDIT: Like where a huge squad can have their game on overwhelming anyone with numbers, a tiny squad could have the ability to play completely hidden.

[ACE]

Can't you do that at the coal mine? Or with a server that permits build anywhere, in the caves some place?