ZedsDeadBaby

I go into a lot more detail about my proposal here: Player Identification and Classification System, including a (crude) screenshot. Natural facial recognition based on variety of features would obviously increase immersion and be the preferred solution, but I absolutely do not think it's possible to achieve in DayZ. The subtleties of human facial features which permit the level of recognition we're capable of in reality are incredibly complex. Skin tone and texture, hair color, position, thickness, degree of symmetry, underlying bone structures, protrusions of chin and jaw, how oblate or prolate the head is, etc. Even thickness and length of neck, broadness of shoulders and other incidental features contribute to recnogition. Achieving this degree of detail in character customization is an immense technical and artistic undertaking on its own, but also has implications for how clothing and accessories work. Once you have head shapes that can vary, suddenly you have issues where one model for sunglasses or helmets doesn't fit on everyone's face, or shirt collars don't look right, etc. But further, even if the team were able to overcome this challenge and implement a character creation system which would basically be the most advanced ever seen in the industry, you immediately run into issues with draw distance. How far away would these features be discernable? In reality, it is not until 80-100m where humans start to lose their ability to discern faces that they recognize. Given the draw distance in the game and various hardware capabilities, I suspect this fall off would begin in the game as soon as 10 or 20m. Someone in the other thread mentions EVE: Online which probably has one of the more complex character customization systems in the industry, but also benefits from the fact that players never actually see each other in the game, and pretty much exist 99% of the time as only 2D motionless portraits. I think the trade-off is clear. Yes, a system of on-screen indicators is less "genuine" than actual facial recognition but it also overcomes huge technical challenges, is achievable with hundreds of fewer hours of programming and artwork, and is a truer-to-life stand-in for actual human visual abilities. I don't imagine we will come to an agreement on this, but do at least consider my thoughts.

Allow me to clarify, you get a new spawn point only if you die from hostile player action (including force feeding). Suicide by zombie would not assign you a new spawn point. Being poisoned by a player would.

TL;DR you also think there's a "correct" way to be a bandit in the game, and think a 200-word essay on the subject makes you right. Want to play this game? Note: especially one who robs at gunpoint, not only one who robs at gunpoint. There are other ways to be a "robber." Rob: is to "take by force or threat of force." So, sorry for the news but shooting someone in the face and taking their stuff is still robbery and hence therefore still a perfectly "correct" form of banditry. Gangster: member of a band of violent criminals. Not criminals who threaten but do not engage in violence, mind you. But actual violent criminals. Exploitation: to use someone in an unjust or cruel manner to gain resources. Again, bad news there. No one "correct" way to do that either. I can do that by handcuffing you and taking shit, or just by shooting the living shit out of you. Plunder: to steal, typically with the use of force. Use of force. Not threat of force. Not "asking kind of nicely." Actual use of force. According to your personal interpretations of the definitions of a bandit, you mean? Right? Right. Are we done?

Definitely not being dramatic, mate. The dude asked for opinions. Sorry mine consisted of something besides greasing up his knob with a fistful of astroglide and pumping away like a rabbit in heat. Then those are not community enforced rules. Holy shit. Just because I want words to mean the things they're supposed to mean doesn't make me hyperbolic or dramatic. Are the rules enforced by the community, or not? It's an honest question. If there's a white-list in place and anyone who steps out of line is booted, then the people who control the list enforce the rules, not the community. Why is it dramatic to ask for a bit of honesty in this regard?

Umm, I'm pretty sure when you say someone is playing "correctly," you're implying that people who play in other ways are doing so "incorrectly." Right? I'm sorry that words mean things, bud. I didn't write the dictionary. Well, okay. I'll just put you down in the "won't see eye-to-eye" category and we will move forward like that, deal?

It's up to you to decide if it's worth the effort to coordinate with your friends and group up with them. If you don't play at the same time all the time, agree to a common meeting spot and try to return there at the end of your play session. If you can't be bothered to to do that, then maybe it's not so important to you that you play with your friends after all? This is part of the social experiment that is DayZ. What's more important to you, being able to play alone and do whatever you want whenever you want, or the safety, security and added fun of having your friends around? Currently in the game, that's a choice you have to make, and it's an interesting one. It makes you think about things and weigh your options and make a decision; if the developers implemented multiple characters you wouldn't have to think about anything at all. Hooray! Now you have a "with friends" character and a "solo" character and your problems are solved but in a completely artificial, uninteresting and vapid way. Right. And if they have multiple characters, they don't actually have to deal with the consequences of their actions. They can act like a jackass, get killed, and then return the next day to their fully-geared, uninjured and healthy "main character" which is total bullshit. If you act like a jackass and get killed, you should be dead and have to start over on a fresh character. Period.

And if they pick poorly? Someone who doesn't adhere to their idea of "proper" play? They blacklist them? Kick them permanently from the community? That's not really community enforced. That's admin enforced. If you "hand pick" the community and just keep weeding out people who don't 100% completely agree with you lock-step and no questions asked, then you might as well just have a set of hard and fast rules and boot people who break them. What's the difference? RP is great, and community building is admirable, and building long-term relationships and rivalries is cool, but doing so all under the constant watch of the all-seeing eye who threatens at any moment to revoke your white-list status if you step out of line is frankly wretched. That is a very flimsy definition of "community enforced rules."

If your rules are community enforced, why do you need white-listing so badly? Again, if you plan to have a server free from arbitrary restrictions, why do you need white-listing? Personally, this is the part that bothers me most. Just seems like a rather thinly veiled excuse to basically slap a "KEEP OUT" sign up for anyone who doesn't conform to your ideas of how people should play which is exactly the opposite of community enforced rules.

Bad to see yet another person who thinks their way of playing is the one "correct" way. Perhaps the "correct," way to play is just to play the fucking game and not act like your way of enjoying it is the One True PathTM and anyone who doesn't do exactly the same thing is a dirty peasant who just hasn't seen the light yet.

That's definitely not how it works. Character data is stored on the hive, not on any individual server. OP, it's a common issue apparently to do with a server's ability to remain connected to the hive. Also, some servers have not yet been "white-listed" and so they will not have permission to access the hive yet and will not store your progress (or be able to retrieve your data from the hive, so logging in to these servers will effectively "wipe" your character). rocket discusses the issue here: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/155698-serious-database-issue-bug/ Here's the tracker issue: http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=78 You should go there, vote it up and add comments about your own experiences to increase visibility on this relatively critical issue. In the meantime, I suggest you use the "Favorites" function to flag servers which reliably store your progress, then only play there. However, it may still happen occasionally and, yes, it's an "Alpha thing."

Seriously, I'm sitting here reading OP and thinking, okay? Are we eventually going to come to a point where there's something to discuss? You KoS. Congratulations? I guess I'll write about it in my diary tonight or something. What a pointless post. Some might argue that the point to being a hero is that you do what you do despite the fact that you might die trying. If there were never a threat of death, then being a "good guy" wouldn't be very impressive would it?

There are no spawn points by those areas anymore, mate. Coastal spawns work fine.

Sweet and simple. People in vehicles should be able to defend themselves and not just be sitting ducks behind glass.

First of all, it's not a democracy at all. Nobody's voting on anything. We're just discussing ideas and the developers don't decide what to do based on how many people agree or disagree with an idea. Secondly, it's super convenient in this case that "smart minority" just happens to mean "people who agree with me." Do you find that's usually the case? I bet you're always one of the "smart minority" in your view of the world. Multiple characters trivializes death. Period. That's the only argument that needs to be levied against this idea. It is a non-starter. It lets people have a "screw around" character that they don't care about and they can just hop on and act like a jackass with no regard for their own survival. If you want to run around acting like an idiot, you should have to do it on your one and only character and deal with the consequences of your actions. Democracy or no democracy, the developers are not going to implement multiple characters. You can either take time to think about the reasons why, or just cross your arms and be grumpy about it, but I promise you the problem here is not that everyone else is stupid and you're super smart.

Check out this post: Squad Identification. Would appreciate your comments. I'll link to this thread from mine.

Search function? http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/162494-squad-identification/

People have been saying this shit since April 2012 and it hasn't happened yet. I think we're safe.

Really? With what? I haven't received any reward yet. Does it come in the mail? Or are you just making shit up?

Everyone made similar claims of "50%" or even "75%" during the days of the mod. Then they published the numbers and it turned out like 16% of the player population were bandits. The problem was never as widespread as people claimed, and I think that's still the case. The thing is, when you get KoS'd, you know it. When someone sees you and doesn't kill you, you might have no idea. Unless you also see them, you won't even know anything happened at all. There are no more shitty towns with no loot, mate. This isn't the mod anymore. Every town has loot. And, sorry, but I don't see what's "f@@ktarded" about remaining unseen. It's one of the single most effective survival strategies in the game, and always will be. I will never shed a tear for the dead survivor in the middle of the bleeding highway when there's a perfectly good forest 50 meters away that would have concealed his movements. Stay off the highways, stay out of open fields, stick to forests, and stay low when you approach towns. Move quietly and don't fire your gun unless you have to. It's not "f@@ktarded" it's basic survival. You know, that thing all you non-KoS'ers claim the game is all about? No harm, it's just senseless. Most of the feedback takes the form of preemptive solutions to the "problem" (taking it on assumption that it should even be considered a problem). We get the weekly "killers should go insane" thread, or the daily "the bandit skin worked great!" post, or let dogs smell bad guys, or cover bad guys in blood, etc., etc. Instead of letting the balance between murder and other stuff evolve naturally as more other stuff comes online, people are clamoring to jump the gun and slap a bunch of artificial naughty-boy systems on the game in order to force people to behave themselves before there's really any compelling reason to do so. In reality, there's really not that much more to it right now. Can we be honest with each other? What else are you going to do? There's like a dozen zombies on the map, and they all die to a single ax swing. You can "help" other survivors, but help them do what? Find food? If they can figure out how to open doors, they don't really need help with that. The only legitimate activity other than murder right now is anti-murder. Maybe map exploration, but that has its limits too. You can defend survivors against people trying to murder them but, then, the practicality of this profession relies on the presence of frequent murderers against which to defend survivors. So you're basically arguing against your own livelihood when you play the game to hunt murderers, and then turn around and say there shouldn't be as many in the game.

Absolutely! That's actually one of the awesome secondary benefits of a system such as this. Right now, masks are nothing but cutesy decorations. They're otherwise meaningless. If it were actually possible to recognize faces, suddenly masks take on a whole new value and an entirely different meaning. It's a concerted effort by someone to conceal their identity. And, to me, that says something about their intentions. Rather than a bandit skin which is forcibly applied by an artificial system of judgment, this system is entirely in the hands of players. Do you choose to wear a mask because you're afraid someone will remember you? If you see a player wearing mask, what do you think that says about them and their intentions towards you and other players? Personally, I would assume the worst. If you're wearing a mask, it means you're planning to do something you don't want to be remembered by. Maybe you purposefully leave your face uncovered to reassure players? I disagree that "everyone" would simply wear masks. I think a lot of people would refuse to conceal their identity as a means to let people know that they have nothing to hide. I think this is fantastic. It's just the kind of player-driven system that belongs in DayZ. No magical faeries telling you who is good and who is bad. No artificial "skin" applied to people because of their behavior. Real human choices and real human judgment using your own powers of observation, intuition and wisdom built from experience. Plus, it's a reason to stay alive. The longer you live, the more you have witnessed, the more knowledge you have. It's something you carry with your character besides guns and food. A reason to actually care about your life beyond loot and map position.

I've never seen anyone shoot another human being in their face, but I am willing to wager if I did I would probably commit their face to memory for a few days at least. Binoculars, long range scopes, etc.

So if you see someone murdering someone one day, and then you see the same person a week later, you're going to recognize them by the hat they're wearing? I really don't think that works.

Here is an (obviously very crude) example of what this might look like in the game. I used the "climb ladder" triangle because I am not an artist. I'm sure the team could do better. I imagine the icons would appear briefly, for 3000ms or so, and then fade away. They could be "called" back with a key, similar to how the item hot-bar works now. They would also re-appear if you looked away for a time, and then looked back at the player. The colors represent the categories to which the player has assigned each player. No text information would appear, so you would just have to remember what each color represents. Notice the players with masks are unrecognizable. Credit to user meccmax at reddit for the screenshot from this thread. Thanks stranger!

It's a thought. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the "internal dialog" approach. Reading my own thoughts just does not feel right to me. I don't think it works very well at all for the hunger/thirst system, and I would not support it for other features. I know rocket is not a big fan of HUD, but in truth on-screen text is HUD. I think a subtle, well-designed on screen HUD element is superior to scrolling text when it comes to keeping me immersed in the experience. Stopping to read a full sentence pulls me out far more than a small icon does.