Survivalist (DayZ)

In a zombie apocalypse situation cooperation would be absolutely essential to survival. Seeing another survivor or a group holed up in a church would realistically be a godsend. Unless they're severely under equipped in terms of ammo and food a survivor would not shoot on sight.

Today I went further inland than I usually do, reaching Stary after at least 90 minutes of running. While looting the market two survivors who were in the back come out and have their gun on me. So I figure since they're already in a group, they're survivors and there's two of them I should be fine. I greet them, say I'm friendly, no response. I inquire if either of them is hurt and offer blood packs eager to help fellow survivors out, one of them shoots me in the head. This won't happen every time, sure but it only takes one and you can play running simulator again. To survive we are either required to kill everything on sight or steer clear of everyone altogether. I thought DayZ was about survival and cooperation, then why are the rules such that to survive we are forced to shy away from cooperation? Bandits are needed though, they provide great atmosphere and tension but there's a balance between bandits and survivors and in my opinion the bandit playstyle is too dominant. If you play like jacky chan who don't want no trable you get less gear (because you need to avoid Cherno and Elektro) and have to walk more to get anywhere interesting. At the same time your progress is measured by how long you can survive or how far out inland you can get only to be shot and killed over a bloodbag unless you play like a hermit. I don't want DayZ to be a handholding casual game where everyone takes turns camping loot spawns. Ofcourse mayor towns should always be killsites infested with bandits. However outside of these hotspots your first instinct on seeing another survivor should be something like "hey now there's two of us, we can try to loot X or find Y" instead of "he will kill me unless I kill him first" or "might as well kill him to see if he has anything". Getting killed for loot should always be a threat, but for gods sake not at the frequency it happens now. I think the dev realised this, hence bandit skin. However humanity as it is now is not enough. There needs to be a serious consequence towards killing someone. When you take away someone's progress there should be a consequence reflecting the gravity of the action. A life outside of mayor cities/airfield (which are killzones) should have more worth to it than a few supplies. There's a lot of possible solutions. For example if the sound of a gunshot plus the smell of a fresh corpse attracts a horde of zombies. Or low humanity players attracting more zombies. Or low humanity players becoming inexplicably addicted to other peoples beans, keep killing or suffer movement and vision penalties.

I was playing with the idea of different armors with different statistics such as inventory space, defensive stats and movement restriction. Rarely lootable from other players and commonly lootable from equipment stashes in for example warehouses. You could have more choice, scout equipment, heavy combat equipment or a more balanced set with slightly less inventory space. Maybe three tiers of these armors, starting out with the weakest you could work your way up to the heavy duty stuff. Your attire itself could be degrading at a very slow pace (upon taking damage). I'm not suggesting much of a stat boost when it comes to protection, maybe a 20% increased resistance to bullets and a 40% increase to zombie melee for the top tier. The mod doesn't have a good progression in how you become stronger as you survive, for good reasons. However this also means there's not much progression in the gameplay. Armor could change this all and add some kind of end game purpose to surviving, travel to the riskiest locations for a chance at the best armor. More stuff to collect before you get that feeling of "I have everything I want". Meanwhile the damage resistance really isn't enough to turn you into some kind of unkillable badass but just enough to add some flavor in terms of progression as a survivor.