Chiefmon

I applaud his maturity in accepting his mistake and correcting it.

Here's what happened. I was scavenging in Electro when I realized that I was being watched by 3 players with rifles up on the roof of a school. They ordered me to stop. All of their sights aimed on me. All I had was a Hatchet. I wait for the inevitable shot. Suddenly they speak. "We will allow you to live if you answer this question:" I brace myself. "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?" "............ African or European?" They burst into raucous laughter and gave me a shotgun with ammo. THIS is how banditry should be done. I would have been fine if they had shot me after that. I want there to be some level of human interaction beyond ironsights. I died soon after to a bandit, but I got a good laugh out of it.

... I'm sorry, did I miss something here? Please, walk us through your thought process as you play DayZ.

What I am saying is that it DOES support my claim. This is me clarifying how the data relates to my theory because, at first glance, it appears as though it is contrary to my theory. Please note that this whole theory is based on the following postulate: players start off inexperienced and don't immediately jump into banditry. THIS COULD BE WRONG AND I ACCEPT THAT. Secondly, to wait for the problem to appear is to be ignoring the purpose of prediction. To do what you are saying would be like, and this is hyperbolic comparison, to demand that we wait for water levels to submerge america before we decide whether or not the sea levels are rising. I am working with the data I have to draw my conclusions: game theory, logic, basic psychology, banditry rates over time, population rates over time. Thirdly, the current banditry rates, as of 9:34 PM CST is at 17.28%. This is APPROXIMATELY 1 in 6. Do you think that 1 in 6 FIRST TIME PLAYERS kill another player in that life? I personally doubt that. THE FOLLOWING IS SIMPLY AN EXERCISE IN MATHEMATICS: If I had a good estimate of the banditry rates of first time players, then I would have much more evidence for my theory, but for the purposes of this exercise, let's ASSUME that it is closer to 1 in 12. Now let's assume that first time players make up 10% of the current population. The math leaves us at a basic experienced bandit rate of 17.59%. THIS IS NOT A BIG DIFFERENCE. However, the variables I am giving are hypothetical. My point is this, we are dealing with a system that has evolving variables. The way most people would view the statistics are as flat rates, but with a growing base value it leads to deceptively* low rates. Another example: There is a virus that takes 1 week to gestate before symptoms appear. It appears in a town. The town has a population of 300 people. 3 people, or 1 percent have symptoms appear every day. Suddenly the town's population doubles. Now there are 600 people but the rate is still 3 people a day. You would claim that the virus's infectiousness was going down. I would claim that it would catch up in 2 weeks. THIS IS THE POINT I'M MAKING. *Before any English-Major smartass points it out, yes, I know that 'deceptively' is a meaningless word. However, it is contextually meaningful in this situation.

First off, I did not intend for the other thread to live. No one posted, then I realized I had put it in the Bandit forums and it should have been out here in General Discussion. Second, the problem is that the status quo of this game is ONLY working because of the ridiculous growth. Once it slows, then the bandit concentration will keep on rising until it's all PvP in mentality i.e. no hope for diplomacy. This is what is called a 'Bubble' in economics. When the bubble pops, the ONLY successful groups left will be banditry groups. The fact that the game has been built on the unstable foundation of fast growth will lead to it falling. Thirdly, of course I trust Rocket, but do you really think he even remotely expected this sort of popularity? Game design is hard, and ALL games need some balance. Now, I'm not saying this game needs much balance at all, it is an anti-game after all. But, it does need SOME. If it went for full on realism, then there would be no respawns, broken legs require two months real-time for healing, and a single zombie bite would be lethal. This is a mod made by one guy with one of the fastest growing fanbases I've ever seen. Right now, I think he needs to nip this problem in the bud before it gets out of hand. My Bandit's Dilemma theory deals with two survivors meeting each other and what they would choose to do in order to survive and how it would set the trend for the rest of their 'lives'. This is all working under my belief that this is a hardcore survival game. If you disagree, I would be happy to engage in a debate with you over some other medium than forum posting.

I actually fixed those mistakes in my other post, I had neglected this one.

I greatly disagree. If that is the core part of the mod, what do we need zombies for? I figured that the core is survival. Of course there is killing people, but coop can be a great substitute for that.

The point I am trying to make is that the game is structured so that experienced players have more reason to be bandits. This is like having a COD game where one team is composed of level 50's and the other team is only level 5's. This in turn makes the newer players WANT to be bandits.

The little rage there was meant as a little bit of humor. I was doing it ironically in stark contrast to the seriousness and ambivalent reasoning before it. I'm sorry that you did not pick up on it.

Oh my god yes. I am currently launching beans at you from a railgun. HERE ARE MY BEANS TAKE THEM! THEY ARE SMASHING THROUGH YOUR FACE AT MACH 7

It seems as though using a Movie as the basis for a reference on realism seems pretty ill-founded.

I am not talking about the collapse of the game, I am referring to the collapse of the current system. IF the current trends continue, Day Z will still be played, but zombies would no longer be the focus of the game.

Hmm? I looked at the post and it is backed up by the data. My post was simply operating under the assumption that game theory held true. I will definitely link this in the OP. Thank you.

I am not saying that bandits are inherently strong, I am saying that it's the players who chose banditry have a higher chance of NOT being killed by another bandit. The lengthened lifespan leads to better loot i.e. better guns. So if a virtuous survivors get killed early because of their trusting nature, all that will survive are hardened bandits. So the only people with helicopters and sniper rifles are bandits. So what does a new player do? Become a bandit to survive. It's natural selection at the core. I feel as though the inner structure of the game i.e. Survivors vs. Zombies vs. Bandits will collapse if this trend continues. It would descend into a sandbox free-for-all shooter... with some zombies.