freelunch

A Trait bonus scheme? That rewards/reinforces you for being consistent to a style of play. Yeah, I buy that. But the traits would have to make sense within an "RPG" viewpoint (not Rocket Propelled Grenade) Trait bonuses I would suggest: 1) Players who move across those miles, get a speed and stealth bonus (quieter); they increase this skill. 2) Players who camp in one place get a speed drop (they are getting fat) and noisier (they don't practice field craft) 3) Players who bandage someone else, get a ...hmmm humanity bonus...sounds familiar that one. I guess if other players could SEE your humanity level, then altruistic behaviour could have positive traits that are worth acquiring. Otherwise...hard to see how bandaging someone does anything except allowing you to get quicker at doing it. EDIT: I know; the player you treat gets a trait "War wounds" - if you die then they get a penalty which causes blood to seep. (4) Players who eat too many beans...errr...start making farts (which attracts zombies :-) ) But yes, a system in which your behaviour has obvious consequences and drives outcomes would be good (too bad it's not an open mod). But traits that impact areas associated with player skill (like aiming your weapon) would be a bad idea in my opinion.

1) Disconnection/reconnection timer for paralysis to stop server hopping to assassinate/run away 2) Voluntary Player Tag with murders/bandit kills visible to others as a game mechanic for Trust/Reputation. 3) Vastly more loot spawn points (same amount of loot overall) to make things less predictable...

Ironically it may increase player cooperation in the game, and add an incentive NOT to betray other players. You need someone to watch your back, and they need you. It's no-longer a case of trying to live longer than the other guys - it's a case of avoiding death completely. But then, the game would become utterly boring, everyone will run away from each other and the sound of gunshots! It might stop the murder victims coming back, and adding to the psychotic mass of shoot-first-talk-later players, but on balance, it's probably a bad idea. How about instead: Bohemia sell an electric shock kit, shoot someone and they really feel a kick?

This thread is for solutions to "loot farming" by server hopping. I agree there are other issues, which I also rank more highly. If you don't think loot farming by server hopping is a problem - ignore the thread. I have to assume, if you bother to post saying do nothing about it, because there are other issues, you are probably being disingenuous and either snipe the loot sites or server hop for loot. There is a problem - and if this mod goes beyond Alpha it will have been fixed one way or another.

Ha Ha Ha. I'll take that as a comment meant to parody server hoppers. It's unbelievable! LoL. It's a virtual world - work off some virtual fat and WALK damn it!

This seems like a really tough problem to solve. I really don't like the solutions suggested - each has serious negative aspects - and becomes another issue or only reduces the level of server hopping. Server hopping for loot is a problem - by "cheating" some players gain an advantage. It unbalances the game and needs to be fixed (like a few other issues). I suggest, we (err I mean Rocket) doesn't solve the problem which is very difficult, but change/mitigate the problem. This can be done by VASTLY increasing the number of sites for loot and reducing the probability that each spawns loot, so the average loot spawn rate remains the same (i.e. scale this as the number of servers increases, as a ratio to number of loot points to make *worm hole travel* less productive than walking!). then: (1) Server hopping becomes tedious and a waste of time - it's better to put the miles in as you will find more active spawn points by travelling. (2) Snipers would now be wasting time staking out a particular building, as no-one spot is important, instead it's more interesting and unpredictable as survivors are going to/fro with random patterns. (3) New players are no-longer massively disadvantaged by lack of knowledge, while experienced plays sit on favored spawn points and snipe etc. (4) Players must travel and really scavenge for loot...rather than ignore 99.9% of the map.

Good point. What's your suggestion then?

The game needs pk's! I have no problem with that. It's just that when the majority play that way - murdering someone stops being a fun lifestyle choice, and becomes a grind...to the exclusion of all other fun lifestyle choices. This game has become unbalanced; psychotic might be a good word to describe it!

I think you said it pretty well. Karma system?

A disconnection timer has been mentioned in a few threads I seem to recall. The idea I remember liking most was that for 60 seconds after requesting a disconnect, the player suffers paralysis, until disconnection occurs. That would deal with those who abuse disconnection during a fire fight. I guess you can extend that to having a short paralysis on connection as well, for those pop-in assassins. I think that would be enough to encourage folks to disconnect in areas where it's unlikely that there will be other players, or zombies, hanging out. Ideally direct chat will be working during this time...I imagine there could be an interesting conversation, if one does spawn next to another player, until the paralysis wears off.

Agreed, social aspects and cooperation, with new people you meet ingame, died when we all become zombies!!! My serious suggestion is that Trust has to be part of the game mechanic, or new players will give up too soon. There needs to be some element of either necessity/advantage to trust or the "bandit" label needs be to strongly applied so people know who is trustworthy or not, so banditry has some downside rather than being all upside. Two ideas: 1) A Bandit label is applied to a character name; and importantly this persists even after Death. You must create a new name if you want to lose that label. The age of the name is clear to other players. So new players are an unknown quantity, old players have a track record. I doubt that pure PvP players would have trouble with that. It doesn't stop anyone playing how they want. If you want to betray - create a new name. Of course in real life - none of us has a tooltip saying they are reliable above their head. But in real life - we don't come back from the grave to add to a zombie apocalyse! 2) Create safe zones, where PvP can be punished. But no artifical game mechanic will do. I suggest AI faction groups (20 men) hold some countryside areas. The armed AI people will shoot any player who kills another player within their zone. Has to be located so snipers cannot pick the AI off! In the AI faction zone, you can trade with other players or meet up in relative safety. This also allows/encourages players to group together, to raid the AI faction for weapons + stores and to kill any human players who thought they were completely safe!

The Zombies are not the real zombies in this game - the human players are the zombies! We play, trust, and get betrayed to our "death". We come back and have learned a bitter leason about trust. Only the desperate can trust in this DayZ zombie apocolpyse, for everyone else you just risk losing all of your investment. We all learn that lesson. Like a virus, this human behaviour, speads through the game! Reinforced with each "death". We become murdering zombies ourselves!!! Everyone is a dangerous stranger to everyone else, except for those meeting up outside of the game!!! Ha that is funny. Clearly that does not work right. Of course, in real life it's not like that even in the worst kind of social disaster. We all have one life - so we ourselves do not come back and become another murderer! We take our trust to the grave.