puppetmasterjjk

I'm glad to see more people have come into the thread and agree that the bandit model system is counterproductive. Also, many suggestions have been made in here, including a few of my own on how people can be enticed to work together a little more than they currently do. Also, suggestions have been made for how to change characters so everyone is less "samey", but so that everyone is still on an even playing field. The only "imbalance" currently, is that people don't feel that zombies are enough of a threat now that they all know how to deal with the ARMA AI and predictable spawning. Real imbalance, however, comes from putting players on uneven ground with one-another. Adding a class system, talent points, or even changing player models based on what kind of survivor they are will cause real imbalance. As has been mentioned over and over, it creates a specialized breed of PvP players, rather than shifting the focus onto survival. The reason people love the mod is because it's the only real zombie survival simulator out there. If it has to be done, tweak the zombies to make sure the emphasis is still on the zombies, but don't add weird "arcadey" systems that take away from the simulation. Players are meant to survive, and the reason that so many players are getting caught being careless and in the open by hostile players is because they all know where the zombies are, and thus they don't care enough about their own survival while traveling or when dealing with other players. Right now, the large amount of hostile players is the only thing that keeps the people who cannot survive and run around in the open in check. Until zombies get spread out across the map, people who don't understand the dangers of other players are going to continue being careless when they know zombies aren't near. Survival of the fittest, etc.

Does the humanity system actually do anything to stop people who want to just go around killing people? Like I said, it just creates a faction that is meant to be attacked.There aren't many things you can do to stop people from preying on eachother. I want the zombies to be a bigger and more widespread threat, but that won't stop people from killing other survivors - In fact, it may just backfire, since it would be harder to get supplies through scavenging, so groups that just murder unsuspecting survivors would be made more effective. Lowering the amount of loot you can find would have a similar effect. Your "psychopath" ideas are pretty neat actually, but really I don't think any sort of numbers system like that benefits a zombie survival simulator, it would get to the point where the focus of the game is on keeping your magic numbers low. I don't like the idea of a class system at all, that's way too arcadey with skills and such. Personally, I'd much rather just have everyone able to do what they want and all on a level playing field like it was.

Oktyabr, understand that my first thought for a zombie buff would be to spread them into forests and such, so we're on the same page there. It sounds more and more like you just want a zombie buff, which is fine with me. I don't understand why or how you think that a bandit model for people who kill survivors is going to shift the emphasis away from PvP at all. It's almost like creating a new faction made just FOR PvP. If hostile survivors remain to be such a huge issue for you, then perhaps you should try pushing for non-PvP servers instead. Many people love how the PvP aspect has been, everyone was on a fair playing field. Just because you think that the mod will die because of the PvP doesn't mean everyone else agrees with you. Edit: Like Comrade said, co-op is a great thing, honestly the best part of the mod is working together with survivors. That doesn't mean that you can't work cooperatively against other survivors when necessary. Also, I don't just set out with my group to kill other survivors. We try to hit certain towns based on our needs and react accordingly to any other survivors we encounter. If we find someone who can benefit us, then we'll pick him up. If we find someone who is a threat to us, we either avoid or kill them. If we find someone who has the things we need to survive and they're an easy target, then we might just take it. Most of the time, however, it's easiest to just evade other survivors. What's so wrong with playing that way? 95% of a group's time is divided up between traveling, sneaking in-and-out of towns for loot, and fighting off zombies when they're alerted. I'm glad there's such a massive amount of tension when encountering other survivors.

Human players are trying to survive. They can think, use weapons, stay hidden, use coordination, and most importantly, be greedy. Why shouldn't they be more threatening than the zombies? If you feel like the zombies aren't enough of a threat, then what you want is for the zombies to be buffed somehow. Surely that would be a better way to emphasize the zombie threat, rather than creating a new faction that enforces the "shoot on sight" attitude. If you're letting yourself get caught in the open, or using main roads to travel and not planning ahead for other survivors who are going to be looking for an easy target, then you're not doing well enough to survive. When you get murdered by another player, you should learn from your mistakes. They aren't using cheats or exploiting bugs, they're just playing a zombie survival simulator and exploiting players who are weaker survivors than they are. Most of the time, killing another player is done to survive, whether it's out of desperation or just to make life a little easier. This game doesn't need to be changed to hold anyone's hand. It benefits the stronger and more patient survivors, while punishing the weak and impatient ones - teaching them to learn from their mistakes. Xero, I suggest trying to sneak as much as possible around zombies. After a while, they really aren't too much of a threat unless you really screw up. The fact that they are hard to shoot makes them enough of a challenge to actually punish players for alerting them. When it comes to rooftop snipers, you have to be very proactive and patient. Use buildings to sneak around and move slow when in a dangerous area (which you should be doing anyway, remember there are zombies around). The sniper has a lot of area to be watching, which means they can be seen from all around as well. When you're scavenging a city, take it slow and keep your eyes and ears open for any other survivors. If you spot somebody, then assess the threat and react accordingly. Here's a video showing my group handling that exact situation. Sorry you can't hear them, they were using the in-game chat. Also sorry for the bad video quality and the background noise. I suppose we could have left and avoided him, but we needed the medical supplies to survive, as you can see me using our last bloodpack, and to get more of them we had to take out that guy who would have tried killing us if we weren't careful. It's worth noting that if this were after the update, I would be punished and start turning into a bandit because of what I did for my team. (and for the small friendly fire incident in the beginning). The sniper was not a strong survivor, as he had picked a completely open rooftop and made himself into a huge threat to everyone in the area, so he was naturally punished.

That's part of survival. If you're out in the open where another player can kill you without being seen, then that's the risk you take. I think it encourages role-playing and realism to know that you have to be really careful, and extremely patient. People who like to play as the psychopaths are fine with me, since it is something you would expect in a survival game like this. They make the other survivors have a much tougher time, in that they have to prepare/react based on armed threats. The "Call of Duty" mentality won't be stopped except when server bans are agreed on by moderators and players I suppose. Changing systems in the game itself, like with the morality update, isn't going to prevent these types of people from joining, nor is it going to make their style any less effective. They aren't role-playing, but they do still have to play the game to become powerful enough to do what they want. An effective survivor group shouldn't have any trouble with kids running around with their starter revolvers. Any that have managed to survive well enough to collect decent weapons have spent a lot of time playing the game now and have turned more into the Psychopath/bandit role. I think oppositely from you, in that I wouldn't mind to have the death messages removed completely. You could say that I prefer to have it as close to a simulation as possible, where you only learn player names upon meeting them, (maybe still include names popping up when close, to make up for the fact that it's difficult to recognize people in-game immediately like you can in real life) or otherwise being informed by other players (Say you meet someone new and he tells you about a player who is a friend, or somebody who had robbed him before). Ideally, survivors can have a much wider variety of models that they spawn with. That way, everybody, including bandits, could recognize most of those that they have come across before from longer distances, like you would be able to do in real life. This would mean that specific skins or indicators for bandits wouldn't be necessary, as it would be possible to recognize them based on their normal player model. edit: Another simple idea could be to assign models for newer players. It could cut down on the amount of new people who you approach, expecting them to know how the game works, but instead they randomly blast away at people and zombies. Maybe this sort of thing could be applied to all characters, sort of indicating how long they've been surviving/their skill level and NOT their moral state.

I don't see the reason for the morality system. Players who murder others are already punished based on their reputation among other players. If another groups sees people murdering survivors, or experience it themselves, then they know to watch out for that particular group. Realistically, you don't know what someone is like before you observe their actions, so There doesn't need to be a magical system that spoils that psychological aspect of the game. People should be careful with the actions they choose and should be paranoid enough about other groups without having to look at what the person has been magically labeled as. If group A gets murdered by another group, B, without warning, then that doesn't mean that the guys in group B should be punished by a morality system and labeled as bandits for everyone to see. The problem was that group A's leader didn't keep his group safe enough, and so they were punished for it by being attacked. The other group, B, had decided that killing group A was the best method for them to survive, which is a fair enough decision to make. Group B's consequences will come from what others experienced - they committed unprovoked murder, so they are now considered a threat by all of those who know. Everyone from group A now knows that there is a stronger team out there that isn't afraid to kill to survive, while a third group, C, who maybe observed from afar what had happened, will now be weary of group B and might try to eliminate the threat for their own safety. Additionally, the word may spread among survivors that there is a hostile group (B) roaming an area of the map, so friendly groups may form and ally with another against possible threats, like group B. The greatness of the mod has been that you have no clue what to expect from the people you haven't met yet, and it's the same way for them coming across you. You can choose to avoid them, join them, or make the first strike and kill them to protect yourself - All without being labeled one way or the other. If you want to play the "bandit" role, you can be creative with just how you rob or murder your targets without them being aware of your past, aside from what past experiences they have had with you. Giving people a different model for their morality is just turning them into the "Call of Duty 1337 fragz have to kill everyone that I encounter" player that everyone hates, rather than encouraging role-playing, real paranoia, and clever survival. A good fix would be to have a way for players to change their own model - possibly limited to one change per day or only at certain locations. This way, people who want to keep their bandit skin for role-playing can use it, and those who don't want to advertise that they are bandits, won't have to. Just like in real life, what is stopping you from just looking normal and going around killing people?