Slicker (DayZ)

Hi, first time poster. I literally registered for this discussion. Seems to me that there are a couple of issues that complicate the "bandit" quandary: 1. Your character is persistent. Your server is not. I understand the reason for this, but it negates the consequences of banditry. Perhaps a character's lifespan should be restricted to the server he connected to? Cross-server information could be used to prevent users from connecting to new servers unless they forgo their existing character and ensure that there are no hacked modifications are being made to characters. It would also solve the issue of people migrating to abuse the day/night cycle. 2. Include some clues when investigating player bodies. I think this would be amazing; you investigate a player corpse and get something along the lines of, "This player appears to have been shot in the back of the head and torso. Looking around, you find a number of spent shotgun shells scattered a few yards from the body." or "You discover a half-scrawled message underneath the victim's stiffened hand - 'Don't trust [playerna-]'" or "Tracks seem to suggest that he was with a group of people/another person before he was killed." This helps potentially identify gear or description of bandits in-game, meaning that players will be wary when encountering someone openly wielding a shotgun, for example. 3. Every murder adds a number of hours to that player's respawn time. It sounds like punishment, but hear me out. The effect of this will be to force a player to seriously consider the impact of killing another person; it simulates the real-world hesitance. Playing a bandit or within a group of bandits makes it easier to survive and you are rewarded accordingly in gear, but you know that every kill is adding a huge number of hours before you can begin your next session should you die. Surviving without killing is significantly harder to do, but infinitely more satisfying and - should you perish - you know you can begin your quest anew fairly quickly. You won't need to worry about a humanity system or bandit skins or nerfed starting gear or whatnot, because you've introduced a game-mechanic that does not arbitrarily punish a bandit or survivor in-game (and by in-game, I mean as the person is playing), but is enough of a mitigating factor to create the desired result.