Larryhud

Hi, apologies late to the party with this reply. Unlike perhaps some people I find this topic fascinating. I have not bought ARMA 2 yet so obviously not played the mod. However I have seen many, many hours of narrated youtube video as I wanted to get a feel of the game before I potentially bought it. This of course makes you think about how you would play it should you buy it. Therefore the evolution of tactics within the game is vitally important, for long term playability at the very least. These are my conclusions and much of the early ground has been walked on of course so bear with me. When spawning, there is no risk to trusting a random survivor as you have nothing to lose. As the character evolves there is more and more risk to trusting anyone, therefore it becomes a zero-trust exercise. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that there are no visual clues to trust/deception (no body language) and that a brand new player can kill an experienced player easily if surprised. Therefore the evolution trend must be towards bandit factions. In fact trust becomes so paramount that you would only trust your friends and even then you may have an inner circle! Everyone else would be shot on sight. As larger groups clearly have advantages over smaller groups, the natural evolution would be to have larger and larger factions, until perhaps there were just two? I have not played EVE but it does sound like it has evolved like this also. Obviously there are many factors that affect this theory. This would only evolve this way if the playing population were generally static and experienced. If there was a continual influx of new players then it may stay the same (with the premise that the most experienced players would get bored and leave). Also, there are always players that jerk around in every MMO, but it is relatively small and cannot be avoided so I have do not think this has a bearing. If the zombie threat increased it would makes the environment threat more than the opposing player which may drive co-operation? Perhaps combined with fewer resources? All fascinating.