Kageru

I hope there's one in Australia, need to go looking.

Self-defence banditry is easy. More than 1 kill per X hours and you get a bandit skin, so it only marks career PK's which is what you care about. Bandit skins don't stop PvP, they mean that it becomes survivors versus bandits which creates more stories than a everyone kills everyone setup. Indeed extend it so you can have various bandit gangs so there's clan wars, those with lots of bandit kills become hunters and you'll start to see loyalty, politics, betrayal, competition, vengeance and all those other sources of interesting stories. It was removed because Rocket has some mystical belief that removing game mechanics increases the depth and variety of game-play that results, something pretty clearly erroneous in practice.

If it was survival of the fittest the world would be ruled by tigers or bears. It's dominated by humans because they are a social animal that naturally works in groups and is made much stronger thereby. This would be especially true when there is a powerful external threat. I'm really hoping the ones who believe it is only the cops stopping citizens slaughtering each other live far away, because that's a sick society.

Because it's not about the character, it's about your chosen play-style. It allows more co-operative players to have some level of trust that the stranger they meet isn't a PK gearing up. Removing the mechanic rather than fixing it is probably one of the dumbest design decisions I've ever seen.

The game had an end-game solution. Habitual PK (bandit skin) versus survivor PvP. Just like Eve has survived so long because its PvP is shaped by the struggle of in-game factions. Maybe it had some minor issues but it was a great mechanic because it made PvP part of the story and allowed new player friendly ad-hoc co-operative player behaviour without limiting PvP. And most of the good press, when they're not just playing with Rocket on a locked server, came from this time. And then Rocket removed it so it became unstructured (barring out of game groups) and meaningless PK. And he removed it because it was much more important to implement bear-traps... :/

Yes, Rocket has not the slightest clue why his mod became popular or how to appeal to a non-niche audience. It wasn't for the PvP. It was because gaming magazines talked about the psychology and ambience of role-playing survival against zombies. And he needs to pack it in with the "this is art!" bullshit. That is the saddest excuse for not actually thinking about the player behaviour your rule changes will have on how the game is played. He should just admit it's Arma-II, and you should bring your own organised team if you want to compete, with a bait and switch wrapper suggesting it's about zombies.

Good post OP. Wasted though, the non-PvP players don't post on the forums long-term. They work out the truth of what the game is, how long it will take to mature, and silently move on. This game has had a massive media hype, largely undeserved for the stage of development it is at, that has driven up people giving it a try. But longer term the number of players logging in each night will fade to the hard-core player base the mod is designed for (Rocket's bias is pretty evident). Still, it's confirmed the obvious (If you have zombies in it, it will sell) and I'd expect to see other iterations of the idea.

No one really knows. Rocket's post is ambiguous and vague. Probably because increasing the PvP activity conceals the lack of content. But your guess is as good as anyones.

It means less targets for him to potentially shoot. Private hives sound fun, and much more realistic / interesting in that you'd develop factions and politics.. Which is what kept Eve interesting.

It's not suggestions or possibilities they are short of, it's the fact that implementing any content that didn't come as part of Arma-II takes time. The latest patch seems to be pretty good proof of that.

Accept the game for what it is. A endless, persistent, objective-less, team-less Arma-II map with a complicated and time-consuming gearing up process. However once you are geared up it allows you a huge advantage over lesser geared players and the chance to send them back to start all over again making it a player-killer's wet dream (so they're not going to go to CoD). Maybe it will be something more in a year or two.

PvP is cheap content using mechanics it gets for free via using Arma-II as a foundation. It will be months to years before there is anything much else to do. Though seeing Rocket describe how a team of newbies playing together, and getting axe murdered in turn by a silent veteran, is "cool emergent content" makes me realise he gets off on it. Also that he doesn't really understand the term.

It would be a more interesting game if it was PK vs Anti-PK vs survivor. At the moment's it's just a free for all and fairly meaningless because it is almost always the right call to kill or avoid any other player (barring pre-set groups). There's no "story" or "psychology" in that.

PK's do it because they know there's a real life person on the other side not enjoying their gaming. The idea of people raging, quitting or crying on the forum because of their actions is the game they play and the motivation to invest hours of time. Zombies are boring to them because they are both no challenge and don't care when they get wtfpwn'd. Roleplaying a "zombie survivor" is equally alien. They adore Day-z because there's lots of noobs, the game is full of exploits, they can gear up to give themselves a massive advantage so they rarely die (sniper rifles being the preferred weapon, even better if you don't even see them), dying sets their target back and there's no repercussions from playing this way. If you wanted to design a game to make the PK community wet themselves it would probably look something like day-z.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was good death-match, but really when you look at it like that the only strengths it has is a perfect environment for sniper / long range rifles and a slow re-gearing process.