cat (DayZ)

I would like to ask a few things about loot drops: 1. Are the very common vehicle wrecks (brown ones) just decoration? And do they carry loot some times? 2. Is there any loot near non-enterable houses at all? 3. How common are crashed helicopters? Are they found near towns or in remote areas? Are these actual damaged helis or are they they preset crashed blackhawk model with the still usable M134?

SImply learn to avoid snipers, it is very easy. You are basically proposing to nerf NVGs and sniper rifles out of existence.

I do not think so. Scoped rifles are mostly weapons for hunting people. And for that purpose they are great. Having the extra pressure of a horde of zombies chasing you after a shot just adds to the challenge.

Well a wasteland cop walking around with a group of bandits unharmed should give you a hint.

That problem is adressed by only allowing players with very high humanity levels (so high you can only reach it by extensive carebearing) to become a cop. So if you see a guy with a cop uniform, that is proof that he is an extraordinary good guy

No bandit skin ----->Deathmatch on a 16x16km area

I think there are very clear-cut good-guy actions one can commit, like giving blood or treating a wounded player.

Great idea I think. +rep

There is probably 100 million* different custom models for this game, which you can easily verify by browsing your favorite arma2 modding site. And even if no custom models are introduced, ARMA2 itself offers many different existing models to use *number exaggerated a tiny bit for dramatic effect

You have to play the game then to see. In reality even before you can finish that sentence "Hey are you friendly...." you will be already dead. If there was no bandit skin, I would shoot ANYONE on sight simply because I do not want to lose my rare gear which I gathered by traveling kilometers to a player who just freshly respawned and wants a shortcut to better gear. Not going to risk it. You only have to land one headshot with the most basic pistol and that is it. You might never read the name of who shot you. You respawn kilometers away from the site of the murder. The game WILL deterioriate to pure kill or be killed if you remove bandit skins. Because there is no more risk or consequence to playing as bandit. By letting anyone come into killing distance you put a huge amount of risk on your side and make it super easy and effortless for anyone to kill you Besides, if you salute you can not fire your weapon for two seconds.

A way to designate untrustworthy players (=murderers) is absolutely necessary. Because if there was no way to tell if someone is trustworthy or not, I would rather shoot anyone on sight instead of risking to lose my high end gear to a random guy with makarov.

No. Because no bandit skin means anyone can murder anytime without punishment, which in return would cause me to shoot anyone in sight just to be on the safe side.

---------------------------------------------- Introduction ---------------------------------------------- On my last playing session, I was jumped by 7 bandits on balota airfield. SO I swore revenge and after collecting some gear (enfield rifle + binoculars) I camped out in the air control tower and fired warning shots at any approaching bandit. I was able to spot them from 500m and usually managed to produce near misses with my enfield which scred most away. However after some time I heard gun shots below me. I panicked and climbed down and headed towards the rear exit. When I arrived at the staircase I found 2 dead bandits. They shot each other because they got into an argument over loot which was near the staircase. The funny thing about teh story is that they initially planned to sneak up on me, which would have worked, but their greed over the shiny loot made them fight over it and saved my life. While my attempt to create a safe zone for innocent players failed, it led me to several interesting ideas that could be implemented into the game: ---------------------------------------------- More rewarding carebear experience ---------------------------------------------- Players who exercise great feats of carebearing, like give blood or hunting bandits or other things the gameplay can detect as supportive should be rewarded: For example after a player reaches certain levels of humanity, he should get a new „skin“ which would resemble a cop, or wildwest sheriff. The advantages of this would be: -Players would instantly be recognized as trustworthy. -They could facilitate creating meeting places which could serve as „safe hubs“ or trading posts for the „good guys“. Newly spawned players would naturally swarm around these „saints“ and form mobs of good guys to hunt for supplies. Safe zones would be generated on the fly by their presence and people could meet to chat or simply have supervision by a moral authority in order to trade items. -They would even be able to assume moral authority and gather good guys around them to form parties that go out and actively hunt bad guys. In order to safeguard the rank of „wasteland cop“ against abuse safeguards should be in place: -A player who commits murder while being a cop, should get a severe penalty and instantly be branded as bandit and this should stick for a while, because he betrayed a position of high trust. -The rank should be only attainable by persistent display of care-bearing. And only by going out of your way of being a good guy. Basically a normal player who is just being an average good guy that never murders could not attain the rank. In order to become a cop, one would have to build a strong record of humanity, by any means the game code an detect „good“ deeds. Examples I can think of are, bandit hunting, giving blood. ---------------------------------------------- Enhancing the Bandit experience ---------------------------------------------- On the evil side of things, I would like to propose a more diverse differentiation for the bad guys too: Bandits that prey on innocents but do not prey on fellow bandits should stay as is. --------------------- FERAL --------------------- Bandits that however attack anyone, should be designated „feral“. These would be outcasts even among criminals. For that I would suggest more different variables: --------------------- Bandit honor --------------------- Basically humanity for bandits. If it drops below a certain amount, the bandit becomes feral. ---------------------------------------------- Rewarding longevity ---------------------------------------------- Another point I would like to suggest is to reward longevity of a player. For example for every so and so playing hours a player survives he gets PURELY COSMETICAL rewards, in form of a more bearded looking character and cooler looking „rambo“ survivor skin. This would be a nice visual representation to other players and a way to reflect high survival skill so everyone can see. For example, when people form groups, these guy would instantly be reconized as leaders. These would be applied to all newly proposed „factions“ (do not take the word factions literally here, it is used in the more soft sense as factions form dynamically ingame without formal rules) Innocents Cops Bandits Feral Bandits Depending on technical limits of the game, there could be several levels of survival ratings to represent on the model, each with its own appropriate name: Innocents ( Amount of time survived) 1 – Fish 2 – Survivor 3 - Veteran Cops (Amount of care-bearing done) 1 – Carebear 2 – Wasteland Cop 3 – Pathfinder Bandits (Being hostile towards non-bandits) 1 – Outlaw 2 – Murderer 3 – Bandit Lord Feral Bandits (Being hostile to anyone else) 1 – Feral Dog 2 – Hyena 3 – Lunatic Again I would like to state these should be purely cosmetical rewards for everyone to see. No bonus stats or whatever. They would be an extre incentive to stay aliveand offer the gratification of making good performance visible to other players (who can not see your stats obviously)

-----About needles in a haystack and the illusion of threat The map is too large Assuming the game map without water is ~200 square kilometers. Then the average density on a 50 player server is 4 square kilometers PER PLAYER. That means if evenly distributed, each player has a box of 2x2 kilometers all by himself. Taking into account the average density of obstacles, like buildings, trees and terrain the average unobstructed viewdistance is less than one kilometer. Further taking into account that if you do not run the game on full AA and high resolution the visibilty of other players is reduced further. Taking all of the above into account, the average player who does not constantly scan the area for other humans will only notice other moving players on a maximum distance of 200-300m. That is basically needles trying to find each other in a haystack. So to recap all of this: On a 50 player server: -4 square kilometers per player -Unobstructed view distance: less than one kilometer -Practical spotting distance: 200-300m Now some may argue, a chance this low to find other players is good, it enhances the sense of loneliness and dread. But that is just an illusion. Statistically you are very safe by simply running around on your own. And that loneliness is not dread, it is perfect safety. I designed quite some missions for all arma and flashpoint games, and while an empty landscape with creepy music seems foreboding and dangerous, it is in reality a peaceful, void space, simply because you can not populate the map densely enough with zombies to uphold a sense of constant danger. Hardware limitations and bandwith are limits to this. So if you remove the creepy music and look at the statistic reality of it, a game on a map this large degenerates to peaceful hiking with teh occasional food can hunt in a village. And this perceived illusion of threat will quickly wear of to experienced players and the only real threat will be interaction with other players, which is too rare because the huge playable map waters it down. So I would like to propose this: 1 Create variants of the game where only half or a quarter of the actual map is accessible. Halving it would still leave each player with 2 square kilometers for himself. 2 Offer the same mission on Takistan. Here is why: It is much less tough on the CPU and GPU because there is less object density on the map. The landscape is wide open, with only concentrated dense areas scattered. This has several advantages: Players can see others from farther away, because the practical spotting distance is far higher. Also Tak offers far more enterable buildings which allows players to fortify in places. NOTE: Moderators please do not remove this threat by assuming it is just another "map too large" topic, as I am clearly explaining the reasons in detail why that is. the issue: You have to look REALLY hard to find danger. and in a survival game, avoiding danger should be harder than looking for it. And that is not the case on a map this large.

-----About needles in a haystack and the illusion of threat The map is too large Assuming the game map without water is ~200 square kilometers. Then the average density on a 50 player server is 4 square kilometers PER PLAYER. That means if evenly distributed, each player has a box of 2x2 kilometers all by himself. Taking into account the average density of obstacles, like buildings, trees and terrain the average unobstructed viewdistance is less than one kilometer. Further taking into account that if you do not run the game on full AA and high resolution the visibilty of other players is reduced further. Taking all of the above into account, the average player who does not constantly scan the area for other humans will only notice other moving players on a maximum distance of 200-300m. That is basically needles trying to find each other in a haystack. So to recap all of this: On a 50 player server: -4 square kilometers per player -Unobstructed view distance: less than one kilometer -Practical spotting distance: 200-300m Now some may argue, a chance this low to find other players is good, it enhances the sense of loneliness and dread. But that is just an illusion. Statistically you are very safe by simply running around on your own. And that loneliness is not dread, it is perfect safety. I designed quite some missions for all arma and flashpoint games, and while an empty landscape with creepy music seems foreboding and dangerous, it is in reality a peaceful, void space, simply because you can not populate the map densely enough with zombies to uphold a sense of constant danger. Hardware limitations and bandwith are limits to this. So if you remove the creepy music and look at the statistic reality of it, a game on a map this large degenerates to peaceful hiking with teh occasional food can hunt in a village. And this perceived illusion of threat will quickly wear of to experienced players and the only real threat will be interaction with other players, which is too rare because the huge playable map waters it down. So I would like to propose this: 1 Create variants of the game where only half or a quarter of the actual map is accessible. Halving it would still leave each player with 2 square kilometers for himself. 2 Offer the same mission on Takistan. Here is why: It is much less tough on the CPU and GPU because there is less object density on the map. The landscape is wide open, with only concentrated dense areas scattered. This has several advantages: Players can see others from farther away, because the practical spotting distance is far higher. Also Tak offers far more enterable buildings which allows players to fortify in places. NOTE: Moderators please do not remove this threat by assuming it is just another "map too large" topic, as I am clearly explaining the reasons in detail why that is.