Daverex

You have a point there. According to the popularity of PVP-focused servers, having a mechanic that would now discourage PVP in favor of a more PVE-oriented experience would possibly come as a shock to new players who didn't play the DayZ Arma2 mod and know the unrelenting terror of super Z's who would zig-zag towards you at frightening speed from 400 meters away at the drop of a flare. People were holding-off on shooting not only to avoid being targeted by up-geared players, but by the entire region's zombie infestation as well. And I liked that better than what we have today. Yes it is a bit extreme. These examples are on the "far end" of solutions to accomplish greater organic RP viability in core DayZ. As it stands at the moment, murder has no perceivable consequences and therefore is believed to be encouraged. Item damage was initially believed to be enough of a deterrent, but in reality it is something not even considered when a player engages in a KOS policy. For the most part, I just want to see some more attention given to the PVE aspects of the game. The infected are far too easy to deal with by default and most server owners do not care to change their settings without going overboard. With a general lack of inter-human interaction as radios are pointless and nobody has any reason to pick up a pair of handcuffs except to roleplay, there really is no reason NOT to kill other players as soon as you have the opportunity. And if that isn't the game the devs are happy with, then I think something along these lines will be necessary without reverting back to some old DayZ trickery. Haunting was merely a placeholder. A project codename. The features I outlined are not 100% and certainly not precisely what needs to happen if the devs were to decide that adjusting difficulty and player interactions to suit a more PVE experience. Mental instability like paranoia-induced noises would be enough. Fake gunshots from a vague, distant location heard only by the debuffed player, for instance. But at the same time I feel like these KOS players should be MORE afraid of their surroundings. Zombies are weaker than they used to be, dumber than they used to be, and I rarely see more than 6 at a time (Just enough to take in a fist fight for a normal player), so something that procs when a player has murdered X number of other players, that makes zombies harder to deal with, feels almost necessary to me. Because PVP is something you normally won't consider until you're equipped for a real fight, anyway, right? Unless you're the murder hobo who will charge and fistfight the first person he/she sees. I believe getting hit by infected attacks can already get you sick... at least, these two things have coincided for me in the past. 15 is a large number, I was thinking it would start somewhere around 3-5 initially, indiscriminately. As far as complexity? As someone who has dabbled in modding and programming I don't believe this is at all complicated. Getting player turning to be less jagged was complicated, and many of us would say it was a waste of time to begin with. As far as rewarding players for kills... I don't believe that's very sportsmanlike to have a purely consequence-free environment in the context of DayZ. And as far as rewarding goes, players who have killed other players are already richly rewarded with the dead player's loot, after all. Would any further reward really be necessary, when it's already so heavily encouraged? Having extra rewards for what is normally a heinous crime seems farcical, to me. Thank you for your replies.

You're alone. You've been alone since you woke up on the shoreline. A few bambis killed with the knife you found and you're set to move further inland with a backpack and some food they didn't eat. You've even picked up a few rounds of .308 Win for later when you find a hunting rifle. About two hours of travel later you hear a loud scream nearby, and notice there are at least 7 zombies now actively moving your direction from the town you just left. You run to a nearby house but the door opens as you approach. You want to check inside but are afraid there may be another survivor inside, so you run further away. Just as you think you've gotten far enough away to be safe, you hear another scream behind you as you run, seemingly between you and this horde of zombies. Something is luring them to you, but you see nothing. Finally you get inside a building. A few zombies make their way inside, but you take care of them. You stop to drink and eat to recover from 10 minutes of sprinting and running. But you hear footsteps in the house almost as soon as you're finished resting. You reach for your knife and sprint to the room you heard the footsteps from, but nobody's there. You're in this house alone. The zombies outside notice the clamor you just made and continue circling your building, looking for a way inside. How can this be happening? You ask yourself. No idea, because this is a hidden mechanic. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This part explains my thinking on some of the features shown above; they are not hardline necessities, but rather a brainstorm on how to mitigate "Kill on Sight" play without removing its viability and without being underwhelming. Many people gravitate towards DayZ for its realistic atmosphere, despite the implausibility of a Zombie outbreak; in my personal opinion, a zombie outbreak such as the infected in DayZ is in the realm of science fiction, and something relatively incorporeal such as a haunting would not be too divergent from the content already within DayZ. However, haunting is simply one explanation for most of these debuffs, others may attribute them to mental strain from all the murder, or some mental illness affecting how they see the world that only gets worse with greater feats of violence. Perhaps these symptoms are from the zombie infection itself? Who knows. That all being said; Here is my detailed suggestion on how to implement a mechanic like the one described in the story above: Chance for haunting activation starting at about 4-6 murders regardless of fault. 5% chance of becoming haunted every day (determined at login and then every subsequent day cycle in-game). Going up to 20% after 15 survivor kills in a single life. The haunting is harmless by itself, but some haunting effects can alert Infected and other survivors to your location. The severity of haunting effects may increase with each survivor killed after 4. Whispers can only be heard by the haunted individual. (Most likely the first notice the player is being haunted) Footsteps (without a source) can be heard by everyone except Infected. Footstep loudness random, but always louder than a crouched survivor. Loudness determined on event initiation and unchanged until next event. Doors opening with no one present: Check on enter radius for door: 4% chance of one door opening in radius around player if no other survivors are nearby every 10 minutes. Unnatural cold snaps experienced by haunted individual may occur at random. The cold can be dangerous for a survivor who is already cold. Blood/dark fluid decals may spawn near haunted survivor with or without injury. The scream is the least likely to occur, (triggered only outdoors near towns at a 2% chance once every 10 minutes) and also the most life-threatening as it can be heard by everything in the same radius as an unsuppressed rifle shot. The position of the scream can be solved as 10 meters away from the haunted individual between the survivor and the nearest Infected. Unknown if smudge sticks, salt, or holy icons will disperse the haunting, but possibly necessary to prevent permanent server logout for highly competitive players seeking an uninterrupted murder hobo experience on servers with this feature enabled. Dying will reset the murder counter and thereby disperse the haunting. As a long-term fan and participant in DayZ, I would feel that I'm being treated unfairly if this mechanic were persistent across lives. -This is an edited version of the same discussion that I have posted in the Steam Community DayZ suggestion forum.