razzmatazz

One of the most common arguments against this suggestion seems to be along the lines of "bandits will kill survivors for better gear." That is already happening. Bandits already kill on sight before knowing what gear you have. Giving survivors slightly better odds of finding loot will not change this bandit behavior at all. Also, I don't think the leaderboards have much to do with it. There were lots of bandits before the leaderboards went up. That suggests that the game itself does not do enough to incentivize cooperative play. I don't really see how Srellian's suggestion is unrealistic. It would be more realistic for everyone to not start with the same starting gear. It's not necessarily even unfair. If someone chooses to be a bandit knowing that they will not spawn with weapon, that was the path they chose. However, I think the real problem would be that survivors would feel free to kill newly-spawned persons who don't have guns because they might be a bandit. Since the bandit would have low humanity, it wouldn't count as a murder, and the survivor wouldn't be punished.

No. Loot spawns are never lowered from their current base rates, no matter how low your humanity goes. The idea is not to limit bandits' access to weapons or other items in loot spawns, but rather to reward survivors for playing cooperatively. You don't currently lose humanity for killing a bandit (someone with negative humanity in my proposal), and it should stay that way. Bandit shoots at you and misses, you return fire and kill him. You lose no humanity. Bandits generally KOS as it is. This dynamic would not change that. As the thread title should make clear this idea is not about punishing bandits.. If that's the only way you're evaluating the idea, then you will absolutely find it lacking.

I'm not sure I follow...

Just like they're already doing? At least survivors get rewarded for playing as survivors. Somebody had the idea of gear potentially disappearing when someone is murdered. Maybe have gear disappear when someone gets shot to death? It's somewhat realistic because when you riddle someone with bullets, it's likely you'll damage what they're carrying. Not sure I like the disappearing gear idea, because it ventures close to punishing bandits.

See this thread.

Maybe melee weapons should take up the sidearm/flashlight weapon slot? It would be more consistent with the way the flashlight is handled. Also, as soon as someone finds a sidearm, they're likely to replace an equipped melee weapon with that sidearm. It seems more likely that someone would sacrifice having a sidearm equipped if they could have a melee weapon equipped. Less likely that they would willingly sacrifice having a primary weapon equipped to have a melee weapon equipped.

I think there are actually any number of ways to play this game "properly." I believe the zombie apocalypse poses interesting philosophical and moral questions regarding the nature of man. A plague has turned vast numbers of the population into mindless killing machines. If you respond to this by becoming a mindless killing machine yourself' date=' what does that say about the survival of the human race? Is it worth saving? What makes you different from a zombie that attempts to kill everything in sight? Sure, you have a gun, but your motivations are essentially the same. I prefer to play as a survivor and not KOS (despite the fact that I'm often heavily armed). It's certainly [i']easier to play as a KOS bandit, but I enjoy the added challenge and tension. I also like preserving what humanity there is of humanity. That being said, I personally don't think there needs to be a way to readily identify bandits as bandits. Removes the tension. When you can't immediately tell if someone is friend or foe, it forces you to play more cautiously, and I enjoy it.

Sitting by a fire heats you up anyway. Reheating a heatpack would be redundant. Heatpacks are for players who haven't got all the tools to make a fire or who are in a hurry. If you have the means and the time to build a fire, you don't need a heatpack, reheated or otherwise.

The latest ARMA 2 patch seems to make it relatively easy to turn off the feature where players drop their gear when swimming. I know it's been mentioned elsewhere in the forum, but will this be something we can look forward to?

I've never been fortunate enough to find a ghillie suit, but I rather like this idea. Although, I think the increased stealth should be limited. Maybe less visibility only when prone or crouched and not moving.

Ah, so it's all about realism. Then I have a suggestion to make it more realistic. I don't think anybody who finds himself weighted down with too much equipment while attempting to swim instantaneously sheds every shred of excess equipment. How about when you have a pack and try to go swimming, you just sink to the bottom of the lake/ocean? If you don't want to drop your gear, you can swim/walk back to shore. If you want to go for a swim, drop your gear. Otherwise you drown. It just seems like a very harsh penalty to make someone immediately drop all of the gear and supplies they spent hours collecting simply because they stepped ever so slightly too far into the water. That isn't realistic either. I would agree that it's basically a non-issue if it's impossible to swim anywhere other than the ocean. I'm always wary of wading too far into a pond for fear of losing my gear.

I "server hop," but not for strategic or loot reasons. Here are some examples: Sometimes I like to just hunker down and watch a high-traffic area from afar (e.g., Elektro). If the server I'm on doesn't have anybody in Elektro, I might join another server. I'm playing on a server and then find out that one of my buddies is on another server. If either of us joins the other server, we would be "server hopping" and thus subject to the penalties proposed here. Why is server hopping such an issue? Sure, some people may game it to get more loot. Does their choosing to play that way really harm anyone else? Surely, it makes the game a less immersive experience for themselves, but that doesn't hurt the rest of us. Will they have better gear? Sure, but again, does that really hurt the rest of us? People who play for hours and hours every day will have great gear, but nobody complains that it somehow hurts the game for the rest of us. In any somewhat open-ended game like this, there will be people who manage to play a bit tricky around the edges, but that's just how they're choosing to play. Unless it substantively harms the experience for the rest of us, I don't see how it's something that needs to get fixed.

I've found myself wishing for this as well. It most often comes up when I've been crawling for an extended period of time (usually into a town) and then I need to take a crouching position to enter a building or something. When I can't remember whether I was running or walking before crawling, I might accidentally take a couple running steps after standing up when I mean to walk.

I'm happy they finally made it so that there is no hunger/thirst penalty for not playing the game. It makes it easier to pop in for some quick playing. Before, it was suboptimal to play for just a half hour because you would end up wasting non-hungry/thirsty time by quitting too soon. If I wanted to worry about what was happening in the game while I'm not playing it, I would go play FarmVille.