mithrawndo

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...

I'd like to see a spawn button (attached to a "pop-up" server welcome message over a black/default screen) added to the workflow, as I think this would satisfy your first point. This means that you would select and connect to a server, and once the client has loaded in you would be presented with a window & button to spawn into the game, rather than loading you straight in. If you don't click the button to spawn in, the server will disconnect you after X seconds. This is really just a quality of life thing; It makes it possible for players to do real-life stuff whilst the client loads/connects, and avoids any initial lag/latency when first connecting to the server by adding a grace/buffer period to the spawn mechanic: I can now load the game, click connect and go and pour myself a glass of water without fear that I'll be shot when I spawn as I directly control when I spawn into the server.

Agreed, 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 would also reduce the chances of injury. It's a very elegant addition to such a system, and I thank you for your input :)

Naw. You seem to like the word soccer, and we don't. You can have it back for your own sport!

You did exactly the right thing by running away. Where you went wrong was that once you were in cover and the gunfire had ceased, you should have been looking to see if you could turn the engagement in your favour, hopefully by ending your assailant. I know many sheep who would respectfully disagree with this statement. As for the sentiment? Military history supports the premise that retreat and regroup is seldom a poor strategic decision. Examples of so-called "bravery" tend to be overhyped mistakes: See the Charge of the Light Brigade as a pertinent example, given that I presume you to be English (or at least British)

I'm not convinced by your choices here (nor the idea itself), but if I may chime in my suggestions? A character who has survived for some time would have a slightly increased toughness (+1%?)A character who has kept himself fully healthy by constantly snacking would require more sustenance over time to sate their hunger and thirst (+5%?)A character who has allowed themselves to get hungry and thirsty before refuelling would require less frequent sustenance over time (-4%?)A character who is well exercised (and hence "fit") would be able to sprint for slightly longer (+2%?)A character who spends too much time lying down would become less fit and hence less able to exert themselves (-3%)There are many more, but I feel that any such system should be a double edged sword rather than simply a list of "perks".

This would be amazing, game changing even. Something as simple as (for example) military tents having a 5% chance of spawning around Green Mountain would radically alter the balance of power. Pie in the sky it might be, but small chance based changes to the world map could be a wonderful addition to the game - my beans are definitely floating around this thread somewhere!

For a time it would, I guess it depends how long after the apocalypse the world is set. The land based control segment of the GPS system is there primarily to make adjustements to the GPS constellation's constituent satellite flight paths. It would likely take several years before the first of the satellite's orbits decayed sufficiently, and the way the system functions this satellite would then mark itself as "unhealthy" to the rest of the system. There's a redundancy of 33% built into the system (it's designed to run with 24 satellites but there are actually 32 satellites in the GPS constellation). If we're talking 50 years after "DayZ", then yeah the GPS system will be inactive. If we're talking 10? Well, it won't be as accurate but it's not unreasonable to assume there will still be 20 or so satellites available in the constellation, albeit slightly off path and hence not especially accurate by GPS standards!

Ahh, this one could go either way. Was he force fed the bacon?

To extend this analogy: "You're not allowed bacon as you're too much of a pussy!" That seems kind of... wrong, no?

Shh, I'm having fun!

The paradigm will shift though as the internet becomes more strictly policed; as people push more and more boundaries; as cultures bleed into one another, both real and virtual. We may yet see a day where your (or my) actions within a virtual world could be considered criminal. Human Rights and the Internet are still very much virgin territory: In 2011 someone at the UN produced a paper declaring access to the internet a human right, meaning that if your ISP cuts you off or some twerp script kiddie manages to ping bomb you to death, you can (legally, at least) take them to court in the Hague! As an Aussie this should be important to you: Like us limeys, your government has their fat paw grasped around the metaphorical network cable. The point anyway is maybe the next time you are winding someone up online, in or out of game, maybe you should have a wee think about it afterwards. The further the boundaries are pushed, the sooner the demise of the free and open internet as a whole will come. I'd personally hate to feel responsible for hastening that day by feeding someone a can of beans or calling them a dick bag on a forum. The playing field is different; you call me a name in real life and I can punch you in the face for it. Online? Well...