Pendulum Effect

The game, as it is right now, does not simulate a true experience for losing your humanity. I don't want the game to decide whether I'm a bad person, or if I'm going insane or if I feel bad for killing someone. In the past, Dean has used a meager score to judge if you were a bad person or not. The use of skins were utilized to give a player the sense of dwindling personality, and also give other players a visual representation of what a persons intent was. Sure, what I'm suggesting is not a perfect fix, but the game is a psychopath simulator. It's either kill or be killed with no realistic repercussions to yourself. Sure, you can mount an attack on the "Sniper in Cherno" who's griefing the new spawns, but there's no common ground for which to meet someone outside the forums. That's immersion breaking for me. The common ground mechanic that I'm proposing is simply providing new ways to cooperate that require multiple people to tackle. You can choose to ignore them if you wish and just resort to banditry, but you will lose out on some great mechanics that are fresh and fun. Again, the kill on sight mentality is not meant to be removed from the game. No, it's not broken. It's imbalanced. This is not an opinion that I'm expressing, but rather one that Dean Hall himself has addressed as being an issue that he would like to see resolved. So read the posts before saying that I'm trying to bring CareBears into DayZ. In real life, you'd feel bad if you killed someone out of cold blood having had no provocation. After awhile you might not feel so bad, killing people for fun or for no reason. How do you simulate going insane without taking control from the player? Answer: Giving them a lofty goal, unattainable without the aid of others, and killing a person that could help you get there. There's nothing wrong with the little things in place now, but higher risk = higher reward. The ideas in this post are future goals for the game after the implementation of everything Dean wants as a baseline. We can ALWAYS craft our own experiences, but randomly spawned aircraft or bases are exactly like helicopter crash sites. The infested military island is just like the proposed zombie horde, that could be wandering through the NWAF. It just happens to be on an island, where there's no where for the zombies to go. These mechanics have always been or have always been wanted in the game by Dean! They're just given some focus, some variety and some relative life to an otherwise cookie cutter, uninteresting world. Sure, there are signs of zombie outbreaks and desolation, but the military presence there seems as if it never made an effort to do anything to halt the advance of the infected or save the citizens. That's all.

Yes, but as of right now, it's seen as the only option rather than one option of several. You have much more to gain by killing (life, gear and safety of your friends) than letting them live. Yes, you may get a temporary ally, but 99.9% of the time when you turn your back, you'll be dead. Having a higher end goal that requires multiple people to complete could possibly give the player more to ponder before pulling the trigger. I know that when I'm with my two friends, we'll pull the trigger almost every time on anyone we see, simply because it took us 45-60 minutes to meet up and we don't want to wait another 45 to link up with someone if they are shot while trying to be nice. However, if we had a common goal late game, we might think twice and recruit this person to come along to that island, if only for a meat shield. Sometimes we're given a lot of options, but those options are rendered useless because the climate doesn't effectively utilize them. Just trying to think of a way to balance the pros and cons of all strategies and mentalities.

Alright, good. Someone who actually has constructive criticisms. The only reason I suggest airdrops and such is because Rocket still hasn't really said (at least to my knowledge) if this is a contained outbreak on this certain country, or if it's a world-wide phenomenon. I suppose part of the magic is making you decide what happened and telling us would ruin part of the "tell your own story" vibe. My intent is to get more spontaneity with the surroundings without making them seem gimmicky or artificial. Roaming hordes of zombies would make for a nice little addition, but as of right now that future implementation is the biggest form of "non-static" event to be placed in the game. My idea with the islands is a tricky thing.. It's not meant to be Dead Island on steroids or Left for Dead. It's not supposed to have different "types" of zombies (where there's a bloated zombie that bursts everywhere or a zombie that screams and stuns you), just slightly faster, slightly more agile, slightly more damaging, etc. Something that's based on Dean's idea of the zombie life cycle and his idea for the Alpha zombies. The idea that zombies respawn comes from the fact that this Island is supposed to be rather large (Elektro or Cherno in size, with a docked carrier at the far end). It's not technically feasible, at least to my knowledge, to have a thousand zombie spawn in that one location. Even if the network bubble or server could sustain that many zombies, it's unlikely that a mid-ranged computer could process that many zombies at once. To maintain the illusion that the entire island is infested, zombies would respawn but not necessarily throw themselves at you. They would respond to stimuli gathered around their particular spawn point (preferably out of vision of survivors) and that would affect if they would attack or not. So theoretically, if you were quiet enough with taking down all the zombies that you aggroed, no more would attack you. However, the number of zombies you killed would respawn somewhere on that island in idle mode. But if you go in guns blazing, they will likely keep swarming from their set spawn location due to the amount of noise you make, probably from several hundred meters away. It could be possible for you to "clear" the zombies, as there could be a set number of times each zombie could respawn before they are "dead for good." This way the illusion is kept and it's still "realistic" in that you killed every zombie on that island. Trust me, when I suggest this idea, I mean it in the least possible way for it to be arcade-like. I remember trying to extract one of my friends who was new to the game from Berezino and we were just shooting every zombie because we were cornered. We ended up on a scaffolding before we were finally overrun. But it was fun like that. That's the kind of experience I want for this island, except more intense. Stealth is almost paramount in it. No, there's not a KoS problem, per se. The issue with that particular mentality (and Dean needs suggestions on how to balance it), is that currently there is nothing stopping people from killing on sight. The whole idea of item degradation from bullet damage is to make people think before shooting and instead taking alternate routes to attain a person's gear. Either get a clean shot on their head, take them hostage, bind them or team up was supposed to be the outcome of the encounter, as Dean had intended. While it has certainly helped, there's still no real repercussions to killing on sight. People have wanted stupid ideas like your character becoming more insane and shake. That takes the player out of the game and makes things artificial. What Dean wants is something that makes people really think on whether or not they should kill a person or not. He wants the risk vs reward of being friendly or a bandit to be more evenly balanced. KoS is, and always should be, a part of the game. There should just be more thought behind the taking of life. What better way than to give highly geared people a productive outlet to channel their boredom and gear? Banditry is still an option, but it's not the only option this way.

Sure, then since this is a discussion, do you have any ideas for how to reduce KoS mentality? Or how about the severe and crippling stagnation of end game? Don't call my ideas stupid if you don't have any yourself.

I typed this up on my phone, so I'll have to come back and finish/edit this post when I get to the computer. Sorry ahead of time! [Post edited: 0550 CST 1/7/2014] TO THE ACTUAL POST! I agree with all of these suggestions. I'm a relative purist when it comes to DayZ and I hate when people insist on the inclusion of leveled skills, NPCs and general arcade type implements. The world of DayZ is supposed to be static and desolate due to the nature of post apocalypse devastation, but it is rather cookie cutter at the moment. I have played the Wasteland mod for ARMA, so triggered events are a good way to keep the map from becoming uninteresting and player-based static. As it stands now the map had very few interesting places to explore and has very predictable hot spots, regardless of some inclusions. I'm all for the inclusion for the aforementioned locales and player driven events. I don't feel as if they are "too far-fetched" or "non-representational of the area." In my mind, this argument holds little water, as Chenarus doesn't have to be exactly the way it is in present time. It could take place in 2020 for all we know. Why not add fun locales to explore. We've already pored over this map for years between DayZ and ArmA II. Variety isn't bad, as long as it follows the same art style and aesthetic of the surroundings. Here is my list of items to include. I will separate it into two sections; live and static. LIVE: -Aircraft: I'd like to see the inclusion of mysterious aircraft, on random spawn timers, unaffected by server restarts. These aircraft can fly overhead and drop supplies, crash, or possibly land. The AI controlling these vehicles will instantly despawn if they land (or perhaps just die in the cockpit due to injuries sustained). Crashes and landed aircraft will be home to zombies roaming. This could get people to follow aircraft in the hopes of stealing supplies or even the vehicle itself. This could also make for interesting PvP or friendly player encounters. The origin of these aircraft is unknown, but players can RP that the military is sending supplies, reconing the area for potential incursion or research. -Randomly spawned bases: Now this can be a bit of a problem as bases are more static and immovable. For vehicles, they would either be destroyed by the flames or stolen for people to use, thus creating a convenient way for these objects to disappear from the map after a set amount of time. Bases, however, can be tricky to remove from the map, or even add. It can be immersion breaking if done incorrectly. My current idea is that these bases would spawn in a similar manner to Wasteland (in areas that are unoccupied by survivors and are out of line of sight), the materials can be used for building bases of your own, or be entirely taken over if one wishes. This would be a great way to attract other players for the possibility of loot, building supplies, vehicles and zombie killing. There would be NO NPCs, only zombies.These would be heavily fortified bases. It's defenses could be turned on other survivors. To add a twist as well as functionality: the bases are on self-destruction timers. A survivor has a set amount of time to find a base after it spawns or the self destruct protocol kicks in. It is possible to delay it via a computer terminal or by adding more fuel to the generator, but do you take the risk going in if it could explode at any moment? It makes sense that the military would have such a feature, in case the base was overrun or unguarded after a certain amount of time. The explosion would destroy the base and clear it from the map, cutting back on server resource allocation. Could also be home to zombies that are more durable; body armor and helmets make them more difficult to take down. Think of the riot gear zombie from Walking Dead. -Island Raids: Now before you bash me and say that this is not World of Warcraft and such, hear me out. This has the MOST potential out of anything. Currently there is little reason to head to the islands other than to make bases or camps that are more difficult for other survivors to take over. I for one would like to see them utilized for something really epic and in layman's terms, end game content. In one of the versions of the DayZ mod there was an aircraft carrier outside of Chernogorsk. What if one of islands was home to a giant military base/harbor, much like Pearl Harbor. This base could have an aircraft carrier docked, but eerily abandoned. Why? This was the place they ferried thousands of survivors in the final hours of the outbreak in the hopes to sail somewhere unaffected by the plague. However, things went horribly wrong and obviously some of the infected made it over. A massacre ensued, leaving the entire Island infested by zombies. The real twist here is that currently the objective of the game is to travel North after gathering supplies in the South. After that, the game stagnates and becomes about killing other players so they don't kill you for your gear. This game mechanic would force people to gather supplies for the trek North, build a base, fix a car and then ultimately head back South, brave the gauntlet of new players (Bambies) looking for highly geared players to kill and then go to this military Island. You could acquire a speed boat for this trek, you could eventually get a ferry complete with spots for vehicles, or you could spend time swimming. This island is home to a myriad of zombie types (based on the zombie life cycle), just like Dean Hall has envisioned for his game. In addition to regular zombies of the life cycle, Alpha zombies, a faster and deadlier version of what's on the main land. To enforce the notion that thousands of people were trying to evacuate this area, there will be a pool of as many zombies as they can comfortably spawn in this location. But they will respawn if killed. This will present a highly significant challenge as wave after wave of zombies will throw themselves at you, but really only if you make too much noise. Going it alone is doable, but you must be highly skilled and bring a lot of ammo, but you will probably die 99% of the time. This also presents an opportunity: cooperation! Being so difficult, you would most likely need to find a group of people to take over in order to survive. You could attack at day. Or you could attack at night with night vision! You could take a group of four, equipped with suppressed weapons and stealth your way across the island, looting as you go. You could take a group of 10, going a hybrid of stealth and loud. You could place snipers on the roofs of several buildings, giving cover to the rest of the group. Or you could go with 20-30 people, create a massive assault on the base where you clear the base moving as if you were a wildfire. Friendly fire could ensue. People could be picked off by zombies and you could watch your numbers slowly dwindle until you find yourself alone or scattered, being swarmed. You could finally finish sweeping the entire base (this would be an hours long task, with mid to high end military loot) with your group, finally ending at the air craft carrier at the far end (Ultra high quality military loot and the jackpot of all loot spawns), only to turn on each other. Or you could agree to meet up for another run at a later date, keeping a cooperative spirit that would last. Do you kill on sight now? You could be killing the same guy you raided with earlier. Now he's devoid of gear and won't show up to the next raid. You're shit out of luck, because he was the one with the keys to the Ferry you used to get your armored Humvee to that island. You need to find another group now, Champ. Do you kill Bambies, or do you go to the South to help them survive, nurture them and groom them to become a part of your team to raid this island? This would help enforce communities and even servers where people will tend to logon to most often in the hopes of finding people they played with once. I must also point out that, by design, server hopping would be entirely impossible on this island due to the massive amount of zombies respawning. If you were to spawn anywhere on this island, you would be overrun and mauled within seconds. Zombies would even spawn in buildings. It would probably be best, too, if stashes were implemented before this, as people would want to hoard as much weapons and supplies as they can, just in case they die. Also, if going to do this island raid, you will most likely want to stash everything but medical supplies and magazines for your weapons. Explosives may be necessary. Include an option to pull the pin on the grenade and blow yourself up, just in case you get trapped. Like C.J. from Dawn of the Dead (2004) with his propane tank in the van. Martyrdom at its finest. STATIC: -Shopping Malls: Okay, for this one, we'd only really need one shopping mall. I'm talking a two-three story mall with, for example, 36 different shops. Could be anything from gun stores, clothing stores, electronic stores and hunting supplies. Could even have some food court options. Most of it would be picked over, I'm sure, but you could spawn in some interesting things there. It would be a hotspot for activity and would make for some fun cat and mouse games for both survivors and zombies alike. Mess with the PA system and taunt other survivors, for extra creepiness. Have a lot of zombies in here for some Dead Rising type fun. Not as arcade, but still fun if you want to blow of steam by shooting a ton of zombies. -Super Mart: In an age of Wal-Marts and such, is it really too far fetched that there could be one of these somewhere? Could make for some interesting loot and encounters. -Destructable Gas Stations: A survivor is holed up in a gas station, just shoot the tank for maximum prejudice. Or maybe you're trapped and you want to send a message to the guy who's keeping you in there. "You may kill me, but you'll never have my gear!" So, there's my list. I'll come back to it if I come up with more ideas, but as it stands, these are the most interesting (in my opinion) ideas to keep the game fresh and interesting, especially after you've done all you can in the game as it is right now. Feel free to amend, add to or even use my ideas as a template for further endeavors. I'll follow this post. I hope it gets attention from both the community and the dev team.