JudgeX

1) Mosin Nagant Why? Durable, regionally accurate, large caliber, bolt action... very cool old gun with plentiful surplus ammo supply... not a superman weapon, but something reliable, sturdy, and solid enough to hit a zombie and put him down at 200 yards. 2) Melee Weapons (been requested like 3000 times). Why? Just realistic... before I'd let one zombie chase me 5 km, I'd jam a tire iron in its mouth. However, i'd like to see that using the melee weapons is something you only do as a last resort... like you aren't going to fight off a zombie and have full health, and 2 or 3 zombies and you are done for. 3) Compound Bow Why? Quiet, used frequently by hunters, reusable ammo. Maybe more plentiful ammo than the crossbow, but a little harder to hit with. Also, if the shotgun could be a little more deadly to groups of zombies that would be cool, too.

So glad to see some support for the Mosin. It's just such an awesome surplus military weapon. I have 2 myself. Reliable, runs well... it's a definite zombie-apocalypse handout weapon... second line all the way, but how much I'd love to have one in Day Z on so many occasions. Should kill a zombie in one hit chest or head, be accurate at medium and long range (but no optic unless we also get a mosin sniper)... The drawback to the weapon is that it's bolt action, so, maybe you have to tap R between shots or there's a time limit, or the gun goes out of iron sight mode while you cycle (since every dude isn't going to be a pro mosin shooter)? I don't know. This would make it great if you only had 1 or 2 zombies after you, but if you mess up and get that 3rd or 4th zed on your trail, the mosin starts to suffer... Also, bayonet ;).

I think this needs to be a dev priority... this and maybe establishing server groups. I've also thought about the possibility of distributing the character storage task to some of the servers, as well...

So while I'm asleep, a group of neckbeards with nothing better to do besides troll blows up my character? No thanks.

This is just me thinking aloud in public... responses welcome. Why are there bandits? 1) Because people enjoy fighting other players in any online game. 2) Because in reality, killing people and taking their things would be beneficial, and not below some people's morality. 3) Because some people really get a kick out of "trolling" and "griefing" other players. Why is this a problem? Because the game rewards cooperation, and many people want to enjoy this portion of the game unmolested. It becomes a problem when the penalty for being killed for someone trying to cooperate and build is magnitudes greater than the penalty for someone spawning, sprinting, and blindly firing at anything non-zombie with a Makarov. Why not Co-Op only server? 1) Because this is unrealistic, and allows for different forms of trolling and annoyance anyway. 2) There are a million other games you can play that are co-op only. Why not a PVP only server? 1) Because this is unrealistic, and... 2) There are a million other games you can play that are PVP only. So, you're a carebear advocate, right? No. Dead wrong. I love the atmosphere that allows me to choose to murder someone for their beans if/when I want to/need to... I simply think it's too easy right now, and there's no thought process. "I see you first, your beans are mine." However, as much as we want to just shoot people, we must admit that the penalty for death for a player who has worked carefully at establishing gear or attempting a goal such as repairing a vehicle or setting up a nice camp is much higher than that for a spawn-and-sprint bandit, whose entertainment comes for free, whose attack is generally unexpected, and whose lifespan is quite often extremely short. So, what if we just leave it the way that it is? You can only build a sandcastle to have it pointlessly kicked apart so many times before you tire of building sandcastles. Read the forums. People are tired of the "Call of Duty" factor. So, what do we do about it? That's the tricky one. We don't want to eliminate banditry for reason #2 at the beginning of this post. Reason #1 isn't wholly wrong, either. It's reason #3, mixed with reason #1 that really puts a bad taste in people's mouths - especially when you couple it with the risk-loss comparison between the builder and the bandit. That being said, I would move to make banditry have an associated cost of inconvenience. Good suggestions I've read/heard have been: 1) Bandits spawn farther away from Elektro/Cherno, so that they must travel a longer time to return and put their free Makarov against other players again. 2) Rewarding long term, healthy, active survival (you ate a lot of food, killed a lot of zombies, started some fires, bandaged some players) by giving random starting gear bonuses (extra beans, magazines, box of matches?) This could also be judged with an achievement system. 3) Give people a couple of free murders per day, but afterwards start spawning them farther and farther away. 4) Reward group-play by allowing survivors to keep a non-weapon item or two on respawn, to represent that this person has formed connections with people and through cooperation has gained for himself. Working to be able to spawn with a survival knife and compass, for instance, could be a good way to show that the player relies on self sufficiency rather than stealing, and is thus rewarded. 5) Zombies could have a slight taste preference for bandits, so that in a situation where two people are in LOS for an angry zombie, it chooses the more murderous of the two more often. Now, if you think these are all care-bear ideas, I'd like to remind you to actually consider the results of what some of these would accomplish. Like-minded players spawning closer together... and also keeping more people in the game and avoiding some player-induced rage-quit... ultimately secures the violence-minded bandit more targets. tl;dr: Day Z is awesome, let's quit being all "omg carebear" and strive for better realism. This isn't EVE Online.

Well, the game instantly closes when you alt-F4... like, faster than any game I've ever played in my whole life outside of Solitaire. I dunno if the scripting of Arma II allows for slowing that down or disabling it, but if it does, I'd seriously consider throwing a wrench in there.

I'm extremely aware of this. But I think the game would ultimately be more fun for everyone if that "kicking over" took a tiny bit more work than it currently does. Note: I'm not talking about when I get Winchestered in the north by a guy who wants my Winchester ammo... or when I tromp into a building and the nervous guy blasts my face off. I LOVE those encounters, and even when it's my death, they make an awesome story...

Anyway, it's a fun thread, whether you agree or disagree. I am impressed that the community has remained civil, even with differing opinions. That alone gives me even more hope for this mod than I think even patch notes that include my favorite hoped-for changes :). To get back to it, the game really is about sandcastles. You are given a sandbox, and several tools to cooperate and build sandcastles with... and equally many tools to steal sand and work from other people, just like in reality... it's a great balance between those two playstyles... It really is that third playstyle of "kick every sandcastle, respawn, repeat" that I feel is horribly unrealistic. btw, when I say sandcastles, I mean "survival" and "stockpiles" and "cooperative goals".

Why do you need words? The mod has elements of cooperation. Bandaging others, sharing tents and fires, working to gather parts for vehicles and multiple seats... so on and so forth... I didn't say that the people who want to enjoy that unmolested are doing anything better or correct... I was stating that some people have that desire, while others have the desire to... well... molest... and that's fine, too... Like I said, my only complaint is the exploitation of the respawn mechanic and how easy it is to wield against people who are working hard at cooperation. Making that 20% harder wouldn't ruin the game.

30 seconds if it's not prime-time and it takes 4 spawn-in-attempts to not land in the debug woods.

Listening right now... this is kind of like EVE Radio. I like it!

I considered buying Arma II about 15 times over the past year or so.. as I'm a big Project Reality fan and they were doing an Arma II mod. Also, military sim is more what i'm interested in if it's ever made actually fun... But, to answer the question, Day Z made me take the plunge and pull out my wallet. Worth every penny. In all honesty, I wish I could have paid the money directly to Rocket.

I kill survivors all the time... but, I also want to link up with other players sometimes. I don't see why people who mostly just kill other people should spawn right beside people who want to team up. Leave the PVP as it is, with no penalties for murder... but, as your humanity drops lower and lower, you should spawn around other people with low humanity rather than people who work to cooperate. You can still go kill them all you want...

Maybe a max chase distance, but also a chance of tripping and falling while being chased to make up for it? You're freaked out because you're being chased by zombies... they'll stop after 300 yards or so, but in that 300 yards while sprinting, you have a good chance of falling down or getting otherwise slowed? I don't know... I'm not 100% happy with that solution... but yeah, being chased to the ends of the Earth by a zombie is pretty crazy annoying... in real life, I'd stop at a trash pile, grab a pipe, and take him down... or start throwing bricks, or maybe even just gouge out the damn thing's eyes and take a little damage.

LOL, so, to sum up OP's post... "My playstyle has no disadvantages, don't change anything!" My reply is... Your playstyle exists in other games. Go give those a try. Survival games are very rare. 100% random PVP with no consequence for the aggressor is stupid.

I don't like the idea of making people look different based on their actions. That, I find, actually IS a punishment. However, spawning someone elsewhere based on their playstyle is not a punishment. They are spawned in a place equally distant from supplies... a place with other players in good number, and are perfectly capable of walking to the spawn of non-bandit players... I just don't see your reasoning. As a matter of fact, there is none. "Strive for realism" - People running around with 9mm shooting everyone in sight has never been the case, even in the most apocalyptic situations on Earth, including war, ethnic cleansing, natural disasters, etc. It's just not what really happens. People do not behave in this way... and never will. The "deathmatch" behavior, as I said before, is EXPLOITATION of the respawn mechanic. It is cutting into the realism, not helping it. It turns a game from an interesting survival simulator with awesome PVP capabilities to... just another deathmatch, except for the few people who manage to run away from populated zones as soon as they spawn... THEY get to experience some of the game's other systems, but they don't get a good chance at cooperation, since they were scattered to the wind by an invincible horde of infinitely respawning zombies with guns. Game mechanics that move away from this playstyle make Day Z more interesting. Game mechanics that move towards this playstyle make Day Z more similar to Quake 2. Stop hiding behind sensible PVP. You're advocating for nothing but griefing, as it's the only thing that I've even remotely advocated against.

You just want to be able to spawn sprint shoot with no consequence. I understand. However, seeing as how that isn't really realistic behavior, people who engage in it more frequently would probably enjoy the game more if they were spawned closer to people of like mentality. It's not a punishment... as was mentioned before, it's a consequence... and it makes sense... I think a major part of the misunderstanding here is that you think I want to banish "badguys" to the cornfield. I don't. For one, a couple towns up the coast is not "banished"... and for two, I'm not talking about villainous players. I'm not talking about pro bandits who PVP well. I'm not talking about the guy who occasionally kills people and is friendly other times. I'm talking about people who kill pretty much zero zombies, on average don't even survive long enough to get hungry, and do nothing but respawn, look for people, and shoot at them as a priority. As I said before, I frequently banditize people myself, and have worn the bandit skin for roughly half of my gametime. I have nothing against legit bandits. I would just like the focus of this game to shift 10-15% more towards "survival" (because there are so few multiplayer survival games), and take a step back from plain old "deathmatch". Some of the suggestions I relayed here would do a lot for making that the case.

I've had this experience twice: Being chased by runners, I found a steep hill and ran down it until I found a short dropoff (about my height, not enough to break legs)... I dropped down and was trying to lose them by hiding... But what happened was the zombies bolting down the hill at full speed flew off the dropoff and landed further down the hill, the drop for them being about the height of 2 people at that speed, and they died as they did this... It did not work on the crawlers... but I just ran from them afterwards. It's very difficult to find a hill that this will work on and execute it, but, hey, if you're bolting and find one... thank me ;)

Ehh, you said carebear again so I didn't read the rest of your post. I think those who support my position have made it clear that we're not carebears. A carebear is someone who wants to reduce PVP in a game or make it only consensual, or avoid it altogether. No one said anything of the sort. Mild starting location segregation is not a carebear concept in a game that is meant to have some element of cooperation. It is an attempt at preserving that cooperation in a realistic and manageable fashion.

Well, after reading these replies, I have to say I'm not impressed. If you're striving for realism in this game, the more similar it is to Quake, the more off the mark it becomes. That being said... if you think the game is fine the way it is and think banditry isn't a problem when bandits suffer literally 0 repercussions on death, but cause massive repercussions by killing, then, you're voting for the game to be YADM (Yet Another Death Match). I just thought that the game was extolling much, much more than that, and a system that promoted REALISM would be a little more rewarding for people who acted REALISTICALLY. But I suppose many of you think the zombie apocalypse would be much like a deathmatch. That's okay. I just had a slightly more advanced vision of it... where banditry produced dynamic, dramatic, memorable encounters, rather than pitiful little shit-stain pop-shots from A.D.D. 15 year olds with infinite, meaningless lives and angsty attitudes.

The punishment is already in-game. If you don't kill everyone you see, your likelihood of being murdered at random increases. It's well over 50% of people that I see take shots at me or run away and hide. Again, it's not punishment to simply move these people farther away from places where people spawn who are not bandits. They can still PK each other until their faces turn blue... it just puts in a very small element of work for them to PK non-PKers. A small element of work exactly equivalent to the one you already prescribe for non-PKers - "run for 5 minutes when you spawn, into the wilderness" ... "run for 5 minutes towards Chern"... or... "spawn and run about with your makarov like you were going to IN chern, but instead up the coast a solid distance". This change would also help players group with friends, which is something that a lot of people have asked for... if you and your pals are bandits, you spawn closer to each other. If you and your pals aren't? Closer. If you and your pals differ? Well, same game as it is now, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Jamesbiff: Your suggestion about "what's to stop you from stopping banditry for a few hours..." ... NOTHING. As a new player just trying to survive without being shot quite so randomly, i just got A FEW HOURS to prepare for you, since you shot me to death 3 times already in Chern. Simple.

Yeah I wasn't a big fan of that one, either... However, there's nothing in my post talking about "right and wrong"... for the 50th time... is it right to like pepsi as opposed to coke? No. So, what's wrong with starting obviously like-minded players closer to themselves? How is that "punishing" or "hindering"? Survival is about natural selection. Behavior, such as homicidal mania, is not conducive to long term selection or survival. Intelligent killing of competition here and there can increase viability of an organism, but the method of play invoked by many is NOT realistic. Instead of "punishing it" or "judging it" a solution is presented to "gently segregate" it. No game rules change. Nothing was considered "bad". Simply "unrealistic". And unrealistic play is still viable, but pushed up the coast a little and made to work its way down. This way, "run away from the coast immediately" doesn't have to be the automatic mantra of ever survivalist player. Players who still want to grief can do so, but now they share the "travel" burden with people who don't want to play that same way, BUT, only when they wish to "grief" players who have demonstrated that they are NOT playing in that same way. Out in the field, nothing changes. I still pump a couple rounds in the back of some poor sap's head for his beans because I ran out, and then later get murdered by some scared dude in a barn who thought I was going to be a bandit to him, too.