DedPan

People need to get over the notion that PvE and PvP are two separate entites in this game and are in fact 2 sides of the same survival coin. In the Rezzed Q&A Rocket seems to make it very apparent that bandity is supposed to be in game, even going as far as to say that "..punishing baditry is just totally not within the scope of what we want to do, if we do that we destroy everything." He also goes on to discuss how much he values the idea of immersion in the game world (citing how things like side chat were ruinning it). Splitting PvP and PvE into separate game modes basically goes against both of those principles. Yes PvP needs some work, as Rocket himself states, but all of these ideas to split up playstyles or make PvE only servers come off as little more than people being mad about dying and want to be able to go off on their own without the mean old bandits to harass them. Fact of the matter is banditry is part of what make survival in this game so intense and so interesting. After playing this game for long enough you learn how to avoid zombies and they stop being much of a threat, whereas human opponents never stop coming up with new ways of doing things. At the end of the day bandits are people just like you, and a small piece of leading moving very fast hurts them just as much as it does you; as nihilistic stated above, it's totally within anyone's ability to out-think, out-maneuver, and out-shoot a bandit. And if that fails you, you learn to adapt, stop going to places that are known bandit holes, think more and move more carefully in places you might suspect of being bandit county. Don't use that tired excuse that spawning without gear somehow marks you for inevitable death, I've died plenty of times and gotten back on my feet with a weapon and gear, it's a matter of being smart and looking in places that aren't the usual obvious shitholes. (ie the firehouse in chern that everyone knows about, or the market or church in elek everyone knows about)

Even at 16% it's still safer than most places in Africa and South America.

I think the general "problem" people have with PvP is twofold. First, right now there is is sort of a general lack of PvE content past a certain point. Like most everyone else when I started playing I scrounged around, looked for supplies inland and all that, even made a few trips to the NW Airfield. After awhile though it sort of got boring to poke around mostly empty towns, or spend the better part of an hour running through the woods to get to the Airfield, when I can just stay by the coastal cities and get a lot more excitement. Over time I even found dodging zombies to be less intense than it was, and started to focus more and more attention on smarted targets if you will. Rather than bring PvP down, PvE needs to be brought up. More objectives and things to do PvE wise would help immensely and get people out of the cities where the bandits live. The second problem is the people themselves. When I first started playing you could get pickup groups of survivors going and it was admittedly very fun. As more people came in we got more and more lame shits in, and people such as myself got so tired of being back-stabbed while in groups or just outright shot then we said "fuck it, I'm better off avoiding people or shooting them before they can shoot me and take all my shit." If you want a coop game go on the forums and see if you can get together with some people, get some friends together, or try and find some public TS/Vent/Mumble/whatevers to join. That one idea of putting in radios in game is an awesome in-game solution that would encourage people to cooperate without fear of being overheard in public chat and whatnot. All this talk of punishing bandits or putting in things like birds following them (how's the idea of doves following survivors with positive humanity strike you?) is just trying to hinder people for your own sake. If Rocket didn't want people to be able to shoot each other I'm pretty sure he'd find a way to turn friendly fire off. The fact is, banditry is a fact of life in DayZ by design, people need to learn to adapt to it be it avoiding known bandit areas, grouping together for safety, or just plain getting better and killing the bandits back so they can't take nothing else.

Of course people band together since there's strength in numbers. At the same time though, lots of people seem to be complaining about bandits killing them, without giving a single regard to the fact that there seems to be little to no non-bandit cooperation. Just looking at the forums, there's clearly lots of people who are pro-cooperation, yet people are still getting shot. I have a strong feeling the problem isn't so much bandits anymore so much as a system distrust of one another that has developed.

I think the "hardcore" factor is part of what draws some people to this mod, at least it is for me. I've always regarded Arma2 as being the most realistic and unforgiving military game out there, and that realism is part of what makes DayZ fun, because it forces you to slow down. You can't run and gun kill-streaks and be a one man army like you can in other games, and you can't mow down a hoard of zombies like a lawn mower. Hell just the other day I got overwhelmed by zombies even with an AK in my hands. That's what makes it fun and interesting, is the fact that you need to slow and think about what you're doing; you need to think about what consequences your actions will have in regards to zombies. Add on top of that the fact that you're also facing off against the deadliest prey of all, without the benefit of assigned "teams." That suspense of if you can trust people, or even if teaming with certain people is going to ultimately be worth it or if they're just going to drag you down is unique to DayZ. I think that's why some people are opposed to certain suggestions that "dumb down" game play, because they seem to cheapen the hardcore element If you don't think other people agree at least a little, then I ask you how else did the game go from having a handful of servers that you didn't even need a scroll bar to sift through to a list so big it's sometimes hard to find the same one twice?

The problem with this argument is the assumption that everyone is naturally good and gonna play nice, and it's an anathema that people prey on those weaker than them. The Walking Dead is full of people who are desperate and looking for a leg up to survive. How about the 2 guys Rick wasted at the end of season 2? Or here's a better question, you think Merle would have been as caring as Rick was? Hell just look at the period right after Hurricane Katrina. Plenty of people looting and pillaging following the breakdown of law. You know how people stopped from becoming victims? The same thing that works in DayZ: a gun and a mistrust of anyone you don't know.