Been playing sakhal on most populated sakhal server now for quite a while and would like to give feedback. To me it seems sakhal has only few players, clearly a lot of people tried it after 1.27 came out but since then player numbers have gone lower, people went back to chernarus/livonia as they didnt prefer sakhal.
- I think one of best ways you could improve sakhal sell rates and number of players is to allow people have their own individual character on each of the maps, atm afaik you can have 2 characters only, forcing people to delete their chernarus/livonia characters in order to play sakhal has been major mistake when it comes to selling the DLC to as many players as possible.
- Second is that while sakhal has good hide locations for loot stashes, the map is very small and because of that stashes are actually being found quite easily on highly populated server, it doesnt help that forests you painted to south coast of the map and to tier 3 area cant hold stashes, there is so few spots to hide them in those areas that they are found instantly by players like me.
-Third you clearly made tier 3 island very open area, no ways to hide stashes in woods, no bases. Map design of tier 3 area is main problem of sakhal i think, pvp in tier 3 area sucks because of the terrain/woods/general map design, the island is ugly, boring, open, dull, and whole island is basicly same empty barren forest which only provides players with very few combat styles.. And here is the big problem, whats the point of going to tier 3 area if you dont have bases in there and if the PvP in that area is boring because of the map design. No terrain features, no dense forests, no high hills, nothing special, just empty park-like birchforest where you can spot people miles away and that whole island is the same, there is no variety at all for different styles of combat. Atm you just go to tier 3 area for better weapons, then what ? You have to walk BACK to main island in order to enjoy those weapons in fun areas, why did you design it so that tier 3 area is only something boring where you quickly visit and walk long distance back. Wouldnt it be better that after you reach tier 3 area, you would end up being also in the most interesting PvP environment, beautiful terrain and where you can have small base of your own too.
-4th is that sakhal has clearly been designed so that you visit tier 4 ship, visit tier 3 island, and then head back to mainisland with loot, its like travel simulator, it does not appeal to most of your playerbase to do the trip over and over and over again. You gotta remember that they are supposed to repeat this time after time after time, is it fun after couple of first times to travel back and forth especially if the destination is boring, ugly, baseless and basicly all the same without any variety in level design.
-5th is that there isnt really many good base locations either, me and friend built base with 6 layers of walls before raiders would get to loot and raiding / lockpicking is so easy that 6 walls deep base lasted about 1 week on sakhal that is very small and full of experienced players. Raiding with fists, stonespears, crossbowbolts is overpowered. You can spend 1000 nails, 6 locks, loads of tools, wire and sharpening stones but still all it takes is 3 hours, some wooden sticks and small rocks that you can basicly gather freely and easily. Locks are easy to pick at night with macros, basicly loot is 100 times safer in a stash than in a base which renders bases completely useless.
What i believe as old level designer of a wargame would dramatically improve sakhal is complete new level design of tier 3 island, make it very detailed, hilly/cliffy, decorated with mostly pine trees + rocks instead of birch trees, make the environment be most interesting warzone area that supports multiple playstyles/combat styles that is seen in Dayz (aka sniping, stalking, sneaking, running from building to building, camping, ambushing, luring). And it needs to be expanded bigger, i would make full use of the archipelago idea and fill up the sea that is between tier 3 island and main island with 40% more landmass replacing the water in form of beautiful medium/small sized islands and chain of islands, so it becomes much more interesting for players to walk to tier 3 area when there is very beautiful, dense and coverfull/hilly archipelago which is bridged by ice sheets where also PvP is fun, shooting from island to island, waiting for storm to run through open ice.. It would also be better to expand the tier 3 area in form of small/medium islands to south side as well, so there would be dense archipelago there too, basicly point of this is to increase the landmass size of sakhal and combine that with the idea of making tier 3 area most interesting area for PvP.
The landbridge bottleneck design you chose for tier 3 island "main" entrance is extremely difficult design to make fun even in war games, i dont know what your aim was gameplaywise to have that but i dont think its good design for this game, i believe its ok design to make it challenging to enter tier 3 with vehicles. I believe dense archipelago styled access to tier 3 island would be much more interesting for players as long as you make it beautifull and detailed as well, height+cliffs can make islands very interesting looking and interesting for PvP.
Going to tier 3 or tier 4 is not a problem, you setup stashes with dried food, drink from wells and you can pretty much run as a freshspawn without any weapon to tier 3 everytime you die... problem is that once you are there, its dull place to be, so you wanna head back to interesting place which is main island. Which makes you question is it worth traveling back and forth for little bit better weapon while you could just do the PvP with tier 2 gear and save you the traveling.. Developers often dont play the game themselfes as much as the players do and you are blind to issues that comes when you play the game alot, even if something is fun, is it fun if you repeat it many times... also when was the last time you developers tried to make base of your own in the game, see how long it takes to gather supplies and how fast its all raided.. bases on veteran player's server are completely useless features. I can crack all the bases codelocks with macros in 1 night and im not the only one doing it.
