mithrawndo

If you check back, we emptied his gear after he had left the server. The hostile acts we committed were: 1) Surrounding him (debatable, but for the sake of argument accepted) 2) Making demands of him 3) Shooting him 4) Handcuffing him As for what I expected? Rational thinking, a desire to engage in multiplayer and/or a survival instinct. The victim here showed none of these, hence my attempts at further understanding his actions. Couldn't agree more. Still, much like the saying that "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing", similarly if we stop trying to make this the Grand Social Experiment, so will it stop.

There are a few organised groups out there that focus on helping players. Reddit Rescue Force is one of them, as are the Trusted Wasteland Medics. I share your remorse; This short video pretty much sums it up.

Exactly! Having come from Eve Online what drew me to this game was it's sandbox elements and the adrenaline inducing interactions - it's more terrifying when someone confronts you than shoots you I think, and as I've mentioned in other posts in this thread I actively hunt out these interactions, from both side (see earlier post about walking down the road shooting zombies to draw attention). In his boots, I wouldn't have stayed silent. It's this silence I struggle to understand above all else... the victim went from having at least three or four different avenues of escape to none in half a heartbeat. To save his gear and life. When he was lying on the floor unconscious I patched him up and offered him salvation in the form of a blood bag. At this point he had nothing to lose and whilst I could understand if he was sitting there seething on the other end of the screen, it was the complete lack of any interaction that makes no sense to me. Avoiding it altogether, yes... but once you're already cornered? As for trying friendly? I am no liar. I will not tell someone I'm friendly if I'm not; If I offer you a way out, you will have it. I am not alone in doing this, and from what I can see from the "anti-bandit" sentiment espoused in this thread, the KoS mentality problem actually lies mostly with the anti-social part of the player base.

I have made no claim for moral superiority because of my actions here, so stop trying to put words in my mouth please. My assertion was simply that you are more narrow minded than I am; you see only one outcome of a kidnapping, rather than many. We shall have to agree to differ on the definition of the word "hostage", as this has devolved into a cyclical debate. These are both valid responses too, but not the only option in these circumstances. In this specific example the target did not attempt to fight back until his choice was removed: He was crippled by our sniper whilst trying to run across the airfield after (I assume) refusing to communicate with his captors. Presumably because he, like yourselves, made an assumption on the motive of his captors LimeMobber: Clarify for me, if you will - What exactly are your choices when three guns are pointed at the only exit of a building, and those guns are all out of your line of sight?

Hostage: A person given or held as security for the fulfillment of certain conditions or terms. By this definition, in these circumstances the moment I made my demand of the victim, he became our hostage. I do understand however that you see this belligerence as a philosophical point, and that you're taking the attitude of No Surrender. As a British citizen with Irish links, my heart sinks to see someone think like this, but it's your right to do so. Edit: Reponse to edit: Oh my, seriously? You've just made me write you off as a troll :(

Thank you for the clarification! I was only aware of it's use in the 30's and I clearly haven't had enough sleep to be able to join the dots! Likewise the terrorist/freedom fighter relation in your latter point. I think I might need more caffeine. As I stated, the target here was already our de facto hostage when I tried to open communications. With three guns from three angles pointing at him (though admittedly, I only told him of the one sniper and by my presence inferred a second), any step out of line would result in death. I assert therefore that the choice to be a hostage or not isn't yours to make! As with the second, the exact phrase is known as "Gunboat Diplomacy" or "Big Stick Diplomacy". It's not pretty, it's not elegant - but it's still diplomacy. See Imperial Europe between the 18th and 20th centuries, and every middle eastern conflict since 1970 for examples of how people act in these circumstances.

Thanks: I know it's petty, but language is the basis of civilisation in my mind! It saddens me to hear what you say not because I have an issue with that reaction, but because that reaction should surely be only one of a multitude of options available in the situation outlined in the original post. Sometimes the best thing to do is to stay quiet and fight, and whilst it's not the case here sometimes the right response is indeed to run like hell. Sometimes however, surely bargaining your way out is the better, braver and more honourable way to deal with being taken hostage? After all whilst we didn't actually have him restrained, by locking down the building in which he was in we had put him into a de facto hostage situation. As for your last point? I could have put a bullet into the target's head from 50m when I first spotted him facing away from me in one of the bunk room's in the barracks. Instead, I gave him a warning that he had been spotted and tried to open negotiations for his freedom. That is surely a microcosm of diplomacy...

A very simple, short and sweet suggestion: Add the ability to control your landing. In real life when you drop down from a few meters up you can tuck and roll to allow the force of your inertia (multiplied by gravity) to be spread out. Parkour enthusiasts will attest to this; bend the knees, roll through your shoulder to the opposing hip and you can be back up on your feet and running after quite a long drop - as much as two stories even! In DayZ, a drop of 2m is enough to incapacitate you (as you just fall like a stone). This is perfectly authentic as if I landed like that in the real world, I'd certainly sprain my ankle if not worse. What I'd like to see is very simple, inspired by the mechanic Minecraft used to allow you to "stick" to the platform you were walking on. Hold down shift (walk)Walk off side of a single storey building (still holding shift)Upon landing (assuming you're still holding shift!), your character will perform a roll before returning to the standing position This would enable players to comfortably drop from small heights (up to a single storey - approximately 2 metres, for the sake of balance as much as anything) without fear of destroying gear and/or damaging themselves but, without removing the risk. It's also reasonably authentic to the circumstances of falling: The player will panic upon falling and lunge for the landing control key - just as your heart would be in your throat in real life if you fell from two storeys (you might not be able to react in time to land gracefully!). As a player learns the game they will start to spend more time walking when at risk of falling, just as in real life many people become more cautious when at heights. This landing animation could take as much as four or five seconds to play out (preventing further action on the player's behalf until it's completion), and could be accompanied by a loud thud, a rustle of clothing and even a grunt from the character - alerting anyone nearby that someone has just dropped from above. When in first person view, the camera would spin around, disorienting the player until they have become accustomed to it - again, quite authentic to my mind. Edit - Thanks to Scrubbie_McNoob: Your gear should play a role in how well this system works. If you had backpack, this could slow the speed of the animation and increase the chances of injury. If you have a weapon, it could again increase your chance of injury and risk damaging the weapon. With the addition of the physics system it becomes feasible for you to be on a roof, throw your backpack, gun and melee weapon off the roof to the floor and drop down yourself. High quality footwear could also help reduce the chance of injury. Thanks for reading. Your thoughts and criticisms are most welcome.

When we approached Balota, we had no intentions of sticking around. One of our number needed a few pieces of gear that spawn in the area (namely M4 optics), and so we took up positions to cover whilst we tried to scour the area for equipment. Our encounter was not unexpected, but it was not the purpose of the visit. I still don't understand what you're inferring: "No Pasaran" was the rallying call of the communist supporters against the black coats in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s. It translates roughly from Spanish as "None Shall Pass". Your analogy of the British patrol during the United States revolt against the Crown doesn't make sense to me either, as the British had as much right to the United States as the white "Americans" of the time did. This seems to be going radically off topic though!

Apologies for editing your post, but the wall of text hurt my eyes. Whilst your reaction saddens me, I completely understand where you're coming from. I've seen myself act in a similar manner, too - and in fact I even mention just above your post that I will often try and fight my way out of a hostage situation if I feel it's going to end badly. However the topic at hand isn't surrounding the common reaction of trying to bite when cornered (a perfectly natural, animal-esque response), but rather trying to flee when it's clear that running isn't a viable option. As for the smack comments? I think my posts on this board speak volumes about how I personally handle interactions: Diplomacy and manners are key. Smack is not an option.

DayZ is in it's Alpha development stage. This means that for the most part, the only development we see is the addition of more features. Once the developers are happy that the project is feature-complete, we move on to the Beta development stage, where the primary function is to address the problems created in the Alpha stage - in other words, handling bugs. Software development isn't all that similar to building a house. To continue the analogy though, it's entirely possible to lift the house off the ground, tear up the foundations and rebuild them without damaging the house itself. For clarification, this Wikipedia entry has details of what to expect whilst the game is in alpha. TL;DR? Expect more bugs without fixes for a long time to come, and expect more features to be added long before any bugs are fixed!

When I play alone I tend to do this too. I'll walk the road on the east coast, picking off zombies with a pistol to try and attract some human attention. Guess that's kind of sad when I put it like that... This is exactly how I act on the receiving end. I'll try to keep a weapon concealed as long as possible and if the encounter is going south? "If I'm going down, I'm taking you all with me!" Hence I can't wait for explosives to be a thing!

From the original post: Your gear should play a role in how well this system works. If you had backpack, this could slow the speed of the animation and increase the chances of injury. If you have a weapon, it could again increase your chance of injury and risk damaging the weapon. With the addition of the physics system it becomes feasible for you to be on a roof, throw your backpack, gun and melee weapon off the roof to the floor and drop down yourself.

Not sure if there are threads on the suggestions board about this yet, but if not: Go. Now. Make it so!

What gets me most of all is that he didn't try and fight; he tried to run. He only tried to fight when the opportunity to run was taken away from him. When we searched his gear after he logged off, he had an M4 with a couple of magazines and an FN for backup. He could have at least tried to pull the old "pistol in the pants" trick on us. As for the rest, it's is a sad example of the self perpetuating cycle of distrust that means as the player base of the game grows, so the quality of the interactions seemingly decreases. I challenge your assertion here: Yes, most players will shoot on sight but if you make the effort to engage players more (as I am consciously trying to do now, hence this topic being the first of many intending to analyse the psychological element of the game's encounters), so this trend can be arrested and more fun can be had by all. I'm sure I'm not alone: In most successful hostage situations I've encountered - from both sides - if you play it cool and do what your told, you'll come out of it alive. Hell, you'll often come out of it better off than when you started!

That's an interesting point; perhaps it was as simple as the guy was playing with no sound? Unlikely as that may be, it's possible - though doesn't explain why he spun like a marionette when I made initial contact. You're right about the handcuffs too - because he logged off I couldn't recover them. As for the sniper? I'm still torn. The target was trying to draw a weapon whilst on the ground, and it was only in post mortem that we realised his legs must have been broken. Our sniper was so delighted that he got the guy down whilst moving at full sprint, transversally from 500m that we weren't getting much else other than exclamations of delight from him over the mic at first! We had plenty of cover too, and could have easily tried to talk him down. Thanks for that.

Some interesting points here. We're dealing with human psychology here, which is a fascinating subject in itself. Apologies for the annotation, but I think I kept the meat of the meal. I'm blessed with a commanding voice and a confident manner (verging on pompous), which is why I often end up calling the shots in team games I play, despite being totally and utterly tactically inept (I've been a commander for 300+ fleets in EVE and a 25 man heroic raid leader in WoW, both of which to my mind have more resemblance to this game than any FPS you'd care to mention). However I am cursed with a Scottish brogue, which can sound guttural and aggressive even when being friendly. As all the target had to go on was my voice, perhaps this would have spooked him? I was careful not to offer choices or surrender the advantage to him... Thank you for this, that's good advice. I'll change my tack next time as you're absolutely right - I'd be loathe to drop my weapon completely too. I would have surrendered, and perhaps if the opportunity arose I may have tried to put up a fight after I had started a discourse with my assailant. the "Surrender or else" was simply an honest statement, given in a jovial but commanding tone. We gave him a good thirty seconds before I revealed that we had a sniper on the door, too. Thanks for all the responses guys, it's enlightening to hear how people react!

When I issued this command, he was crouched down in one of the bunk rooms in the barracks, so he was actually pretty safe. By running, he put himself into the line of fire. If he'd have done as I said, he could at least have tried to trick us!

Actually we were only three (sniper, midrange and close quarters), but the dialogue makes for better reading without revealing exact numbers :) Your response to the situation would probably be accurate, but we were careful not to reveal ourselves until we had the area covered. Unless you'd have got lucky moving between the Barracks, you would neither have seen nor heard us until it was too late - and the sniper was beading him all the way, itching to take the shot. I'm not concerned about people learning my tactics, as what we were doing was fairly textbook stuff, easily countered if he even had one friend on the airfield - of which we couldn't be entirely certain, given the reasonable server population. You've lost me with your Spanish civil war reference though...

I'm loving the fact that the hate is being levelled at a guy who was just being honest about your ridiculous censorship laws. I thought Aussies were made of sterner stuff - when did you let Melbourne become the unofficial capital, guys? "Greatest Country On Earth, Mate". :lol:

I would love for the game to have "Bub" zombies, but I'm pretty sure this isn't the zombie apocalypse Rocket is looking for. It would be amazing to see a zombie unload a clip at you, then stand there looking at it, trying to figure out why it doesn't work anymore - then try to eat it.

I agree with your idea, but as the flashlight is treated like a weapon I'm not sure this is possible. Have you tested using a head torch instead? I suspect this does exactly what you're looking for. When holding the alt key your head visibly moves, which infers that a headtorch would follow your camera. Now if only you could wear a head torch over the top of a beanie...

Human beings have a predisposition for spotting patterns. It gets us in all kinds of trouble, as it leads us to doing Bad Science and making Assumptions. The "fact" that anyone wearing a mask is hostile is one of these. There is no magical pattern for spotting hostile players.

As long as you are restricted to no more than around 2 admin reserved slots, I'm all for this. Beans.

I like the idea of taking this information away from the user, but as others in this thread have mentioned it's not workable to do so: Anyone with access to the server console could easily discover how many players were connected, adding an unfair advantage for super users. Will watch this topic with interest, as I would love to see a mechanic that allowed this level of immersion to exist. DayZ is at it's finest when you don't know if there's someon else nearby...