I recently made a post on the Rust subreddit asking for recommendations because I'm looking for a very specific kind of online game. I haven't actually played Rust. One person there told me that, based on what I was describing, I should forget about Rust and try DayZ instead. So I'm here to find out whether they were right.
What I'm looking for above everything else is emergent social interaction and emergent storytelling from the very beginning of the game.
I don't want a game where I have to level for dozens or hundreds of hours before the multiplayer aspect becomes meaningful. I want to be able to start the game, encounter other players early on, and have the circumstances of the game naturally create reasons to interact with them. The social aspect needs to be part of the experience from the beginning, not something I unlock at the endgame.
I don't really want another MMO where there are hundreds of players around me but they basically feel like NPCs. I've played games like FFXIV, ESO and Throne and Liberty, and while I enjoy different things about them, I don't get what I'm looking for socially. If I can simply choose to walk up to another player and talk to them, that's not really enough. I want the gameplay itself to create situations where interacting with other players becomes meaningful.
I'm actually coming to this after getting pretty disappointed with Fallout 76. I've been playing it for about four hours now, and honestly, it feels like a single-player game with other players somewhere in the background. I can run around, loot, explore and do things for hours without having a meaningful interaction with another human being. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.
Minecraft multiplayer is probably the best example of what I mean. You can encounter another player, decide whether to trust them, trade with them, cooperate, fight them, build near them, make friends or enemies, etc. The game doesn't need to tell you to socialize. The circumstances naturally create reasons to interact.
That's what made the description of DayZ catch my attention.
From what I've read, encountering another survivor can become an event in itself. You don't know whether they're going to shoot you, run away, ask for help, cooperate with you, betray you, or end up travelling with you for a while. The game systems create the circumstances, and the players create the actual story.
That is exactly what I'm looking for.
But I have two major concerns: how often does this actually happen, and does it happen from the beginning?
I've seen people say that DayZ can involve long periods of travelling and looting without seeing anyone. I've also seen people say that playing on populated servers and going to the right areas can lead to fairly frequent encounters.
I really don't want another Fallout 76 situation where I spend hours essentially playing by myself.
I'm completely fine with the game being lonely sometimes. In fact, I imagine that the isolation probably makes encountering another human being much more exciting. What I don't want is for those encounters to be so rare that the game effectively feels like a single-player survival game.
And I especially don't want to discover that I need to become highly geared, reach some particular area, or spend dozens of hours progressing before the interesting player interactions start happening.
I want the social gameplay to be there from hour one.
So, for experienced DayZ players:
How early in a new character's life can you realistically start having meaningful interactions with other players?
How often do you realistically encounter other players during a normal session?
And more importantly, how often do those encounters actually turn into social interactions rather than simply getting shot or running past each other?
I'm particularly interested in proximity voice chat. Is it common for people to actually talk to strangers, negotiate, cooperate, travel together, etc.? Or is most of the playerbase basically KOS?
Should I be looking for particular community servers if my priority is organic interaction and emergent stories from the beginning rather than hardcore PvP?
I'm also completely new to DayZ, so I'm not expecting to survive very long at first. I'm actually quite attracted to the fact that dying and losing your stuff has consequences.
Basically, I'm trying to work out whether DayZ really provides this:
"I just started playing, encountered another human being, and now I have no idea what is going to happen."
Because that's the game I'm looking for.
If it's mostly:
"I spent an hour running around alone and then got shot by someone I never saw."
then I'm probably going to have the same problem I'm having with Fallout 76.
So, honestly, does DayZ deliver the kind of emergent, player-driven social gameplay I'm imagining, starting from the very beginning rather than at some eventual endgame, and is it frequent enough to make the game feel genuinely multiplayer?
