chezzprinn

Kind of a simple suggestion,really. I think that more variation in the way you are wounded in a fight with another player through a slightly deeper injury system would make pvp that much more intense. I suggest that the possibility of either becoming mortally wounded or suffering internal bleeding after being shot/axed/can-openered would add a nice higher risk factor to conflict. It could be as simple as adding another modifier [Mortally Wounded/Internally Bleeding] to the player's status after being hit in a certain area (chest) or by a certain calibre weapon that stays with them until they die from it, (it would be random,of course) or as complex as having different types of internal injuries (lungs,stomach,intestines) lead to varying times of death, with characters who have been hit in places like the stomach/intestines periodically crumpling/falling over due to intense pain before dying a slow,agonizing death a short distance away from where they were shot in contrast to characters hit in the throat/lungs gasping for air and coughing up blood whilst squirming on the floor. Accompanying animations/audio effects would be pretty cool as well. So would blood trails, but I don't know whether that'd be possible. I feel that a lot of fights end up with both parties being shot, but only one surviving thanks to his insta-heal bandage, even if he was hit directly in the chest. Picture this: Imagine you're scavenging through Elektro with a mate. You make a quick pass of the school but are ambushed by another player. Your mate is hit in the throat and goes down, his character gurgling and writhing on the floor while you are hit in the stomach. Your character falls to the floor as well, but you quickly make it back up and find cover. You can barely see as your character is in a great deal of pain/shock and you know you're about to die, but you decide to take whoever shot you with you into the inky black. You bandage up to stop the external bleeding, even though you know you're screwed anyway and make your way around and into the school--your character falls again as legs are failing him. You find el bandito smugly rearranging his inventory in one of the school rooms and blast the fucker. The last of your character's strength fails him and he falls into unconsciousness and the death but at least you got your revenge. Having a chance for bullets to become lodged in a character, requiring the need to be pulled out with pliers lest the character remain in constant pain and run the risk of infection,would be a nice addition as well. What do you guys think?

It doesn't have to take the complex route, they could just implement a random chance that you'll get a 'mortally wounded' status after being hit in the chest/back/wherever . Sorry about the text, btw, didn't know the default colour was the same as the background.

Now before you ask, yes this is another insanity/morality metre system based on how much you kill, but hear me out. Most of the systems that I've read always end up exclusively punishing a player for killing multiple people instead of presenting both a positive and a negative to slaughtering your way through 20+ hapless survivors. The system I am suggesting (open to tweaking of course) is this: Whoever said being insane in an obviously insane world was such a bad thing? My suggestion is comprised of two factors;fear and insanity. What better two primal human emotions emerge in desperate survival? Insanity Now this follows the basic pattern of what I've read so far. Killing people lowers your sanity.(Unoriginal, I know but killing another human is taxing one's sanity, however much people try to disregard this fact. Even the coldest of serial killers are visited by their victims.) Hallucinations are also not a new thing but I think if sanity is to become a factor in DayZ there has to be some form of psychological impact, namely in the form of hallucinations. Hallucinations could come in many forms, from an incessant malevolent whispering to the reappearing of people the player has killed, all dependant on how low one's sanity is but the main factor here is to not make them too detracting to gameplay. (i.e. Whispering is barely audible but unnerving, hallucinations are only momentary) The real negative to having a low insanity is that to other players a person that has low sanity is just that, visibly insane, making their motives clear and simple. This could be shown by random phrases blurted out fom the insane player through text e.g " Do you hear them, my loves?" Or something equally weird and disturbing. Mind you this level of insanity doesn't come from killing say 20 people but from prolonged murder of say up to 50+, this will dampen the desire to kill in most ( Who wants to be running around babbling uncontrollably unless they are looking for the perks of being insane.) Now this is where I see people lacking in innovation. Why affect someone's playstyle negatively if you have nothing positive to counter it with? Is it better to be a madman in a mad world? As well as the slightly negative affects of having low sanity, players that reach the lowest sanity will also get an advantage over their boring,sane counterparts. That is fear. Have you ever been near a mad person and not felt fearful of their intentions? Someone who has reached the lowest possible sanity will have the ability to inflict fear upon others of a lower sanity. Fear would encompass shakiness, harsh breathing and shock in somone coming up against a manical bandit, giving the bandit a slight advantage. Keep in mind that not everyone who kills will get this, only those who embrace the pros and cons of insanity. As well as inflicting fear, players with extremely low sanity will gain a slight gain in health( SLIGHT is the word here, trying to emulate the disregard for self many insane people have.) So in short, you kill many people, you persist through the increasing amounts of hallucinations and obviousness of your condition and you will be rewarded somewhat. "But I want to kill people and not suffer in a loss of sanity." That's where you take your 'happy pills'. Anti-psychotic drugs are rare but enough of them will raise your sanity ( Think laudunum in Amnesia DD) and so you can happily persist in your butchery without moral repurcussions and will remain undetected by sane folks. I don't know whether all or some of these ideas can be implemented but I'm just trying to put the idea out that maybe sanity consequences for Pking can also benefit mass Pkers as well as flagging them to potential victims if their sanity is low. I know this is a far way from being a complete fix to the over Pvping but I think it would make an interesting mechanic. TL;DR Killing people affects your sanity ( Gasp! What an overused, crappy solution!) but being insane doesn't always mean bad. You inspire fear in those with a lower sanity (shakiness,shock) and gain a slight boost in health ( Again, SLIGHT.This wouldn't be creating a horde of indestructible lunatics.) You do however, have to take the good with the bad and the lower your sanity, the more you hallucinate. (Whispers, phantom players, etc.) and become visibly insane (Random text denoting madness.) You can raise your sanity by finding anti-psychotic drugs which are rare but allow you to kill without feeling the consequences. I know alot of this idea is unoriginal but I believe that maybe this way of addressing some sort of sanity metre in-game doesn't detract too much from those who prefer a bandit way of life. ( Sorry for the wall of text) :D Note: Most of the ideas that I have listed here are NOT mine. This post was meant to be a CONSOLIDATION of all the various ideas out there about a sanity gameplay mechanic, the aforementioned post contains only ONE METHOD of how sanity could be implemented into the game that I gathered from OTHER MEMBERS of the community. The only original idea that I put forward is potentially integrating benefits as well as negatives to any mental illness element put into the game. The method DOES NOT matter, only the main point of this post being that IMO insanity/mental illness would be an interesting mechanic.

I have just written a new thread that describes my own ideas on how insanity should be implemented for those who find this method a little too punsihing/unrealistic, whatever. http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=29184

Ok, seeing as my last thread contained ideas already greatly discussed witin the community regarding a sanity system, I decided to post my own ideas on the subject. For the record, I don't think sanity should be something that affects only one kind of player e.g. bandits, and if you read my last thread, it proposed that if a sanity system was based on kill count, there should be benefits to being insane as well as negatives. Well this new system I am proposing is not based on killcount and is in fact a condition that can be acquired by EVERYONE. Firstly, insanity (or equivalent mental illness) could be a sideeffect of infection through encounters with zombies. To rationalise this,insanity could be the manifestation of the zombie disease in a potentially non lethal form. The product of the body striving to rid the brain of the disease, resulting in a severe breakdown of the victim's mind but not a total zombification. So, the way this works is: Player X gets mobbed by zombies but escapes. However, each zombie hit that causes infection also has a small chance of causing insanity. ( 1%?) Player X, being the unlucky guy he is, acquires insanity. Insanity would involve all the various symptoms proposed by the community (hallucinations, shaking etc.) BUT also comes with a few added benefits, these being fear and a slightly raised blood level. ( To simulate lack of self-preservation) Insane people inspire fear in other sane people. Fear causes heavy breathing and shaking in an affected person. This, coupled with a slight increase in blood level, gives an insane person a small advantage in close combat. The question then to the player is this: Do you embrace your new way of life for the added benefits and put up with the negatives or do you try to combat the illness with anti-psychotic drugs ( I'm not a psychiatrist so I don't know the exact name for drugs used to treat people deemed insane) which are incredibly rare. So, is it better to be a madman in a madworld? This idea ask the player that question and lets them decide. TL;DR Every zombie hit that causes infection also has a tiny chance of causing insanity within a person(1%?). Insanity causes hallucinations, shakes, etc when not kept in check by anti-psychotic drugs which are extremely rare. However, insanity also gives slight benefits to close combat (fear-instillment in other players, slightly raised blood level.) This gives the player the choice to either embrace insanity as an adaption to the new world, or try to suppress it with drugs. Keep in mind, I am open to any tweaking or suggestions of what to add onto this idea. Thanks for your time :)

Read my last comment.

I find I actually agree with you. My OP was a bit short-sighted but my main aim was to suggest including insanity (or some other mental condition) in DayZ with included benefits and negatives based on the condition. To be honest, I don't really care how it's implemented (PvP doesn't bother me), just that IMO, insanity would make a very interesting mechanic to survival.

I wasn't pretending that I knew anything about mental health, I was just compiling all the various things I had seen SUGGESTED by OTHER members of the community and promoting that maybe there could be a benefit to being on the low side of a sanity system. Obviously the various complexities of mental health will never be able to be fitted into a GAME and why would they? I wasn't saying that everyone who has ever killed multiple people feels remorse, goes insane etc, I just thought it would be interesting to implement a sanity system akin to that of Amnesia DD's which added another level of depth to the game. (BUT WAIT! NOT EVERYONE WHO'S EVERY BEEN IN THE DARK FOR PROLONGED PERIODS OF TIME GOES INSANE!!!111! YOU MUST BE IGNORANT OF MY OBVIOUS CONNECTION TO MENTAL HEALTH!) It's a game bro, we can't fully emulate real life but we can add elements that make the game more fun to play, which IMO this concept does.

Thanks for the feedback! :D As a side note, I forgot to add that the idea of the community to implement cannibalism would fit nicely with this as truely insane people could benefit from being able to eat their victims. This is intended to be a consolidation of the various ideas about insanity I've read (with the added bit on benefits of insanity by myself) in the forums and so any suggestions as to what could change or be added are welcome. :)