StickyNote

I agree, being the better person should be more difficult. But being the bad guy shouldn't be so easy and encouraged. There's very little morally to think about when killing someone in Dayz. A little more than in other FPS's, but we all know the player can respawn after you pull the trigger. Thus more artificial challenges occur when you become a bandit, and these challenges are hardly anything. Things like attracting zombies are a joke, since they're insanely easy to deal with, and are an annoyance at best until they break your legs. You might attract other players, but hey, it's another reason to get into another gunfight and more possible loot, and is no more of a threat to you than other bandit are to regular players. Maybe less of a threat since you're more inclined to shoot back.

I've personally thought they should be able to at least run close to your speed, but not much faster so that you can actually lose them in ways that don't feel weird. But to compensate for their lower speed, they'll run directly at you, slow you down when you get hit, and draw aggro from closeby zombies. Supports zombie combat, AND makes them more challenging, while lowering how annoying they are now.

I'll tell you why banditry is not difficult and realistic. While a surivivor has to meticulously search for supplies, and evaluate every encounter they have, a bandit does not have to do the same. A bandit needs only to find a weapon, and start killing people for their loot. A bandit doesn't have to evaluate every person they meet, and instead can just shoot on sight, without any thought. This is why many survivors feel their deaths at bandits as cheap. Because it is cheap. The bandit didn't have to put in any thought or effort to survive. It's incredibly quicker and easier to kill someone for gear than to search building after building, and town after town for it.

I would like to see players needing to resort to having their weapons lowered as their default stance. This would act as a step to resolve frustration with shooting on sight, random close range PvP, and identification of intent for banditry. This would also add to the realism factor of the game. What I propose is that having the gun raised for an extended period of time will cause heavy weapon sway and slight fatigue, both unsighted, and sighted in. This will bring 1. Identification of intent. Players will more likely to have their weapons raised with intent to kill something. Thus it becomes easier to identify potentially hostile players. 2. Decrease of on sight shootings. If players now see a gun pointed in their face, it can now be immediately recognized as hostile intent, and they can immediately bolt off and respond accordingly. A player that bumps into another player with their gun lowered will have time to identify if they're friendly, or run to cover to communicate in safety. 3. Increased teamwork. With people reflexively shooting each other less, teams and bonds will form more easily. 4. Added depth in gameplay. More decision making comes into play. Whether or not you should have your weapon raised at this moment, whether or not you want to make yourself appear hostile, etc. Would add more depth too if Dayz was tweaked to encourage zombie combat. 5. Added realism. Your arms will get tired holding a gun up at ready position for too long. What this does not bring 1. A discouragement for sniping. 2. A punishment for banditry. Yes banditry might become more difficult but they are not being punished in terms of having negative effects bestowed upon them for killing people. Instead an added layer of depth has been added for banditry, forcing them to think about when they should have their weapons raised, keeping their weapons down to trick players, etc. Feel free to discuss. I personally feel this is an interesting way to fix a lot of complaints and frustrations. This is not a way to discourage banditry but to make it more interesting while lowering the frustrations of people that play pure survival from what they feel are cheap deaths.

I assume that if you choose to go military, you get kitted out with military gear and perhaps military vehicles? It'd be pretty difficult to say no to that, survivor or bandit unless someone will execute you for failing your duties. Also banditry within the military? haha i love it

That's an interesting idea. One that encourages PvP and survival at the same time. Seems difficult to balance though. As in what's stopping the military players from playing nice, or just camping in the woods to hold their status. Also would their status be saved as they move server to server? As for getting shot in the face because you had your weapon pointed down, that's part of the added depth this would bring. Whether or not you choose to keep your weapon up in case of bandit attack, and look hostile to everyone else as well. And if you keep your weapon down and meet someone with their gun up, you have to make the quick choice of raising your weapon, or scrambling for cover to engage in combat.

+1. The real danger in this game comes from bandits, and should shift back to zombies. As long as the body armor doesn't protect against zombies, this idea is a step in the right direction.

Forced safety does not belong in this game. I would like to see it be possible to clear out a town of zombies, and have the town constantly be assaulted by zombies spawning outside of town, but not a safezone.

That is true, and I don't know if the Arma 2 movement system is very lax in adding new player animations and movements but that's something that really should be added in the game. Primary weapons tend to be superior to the sidearms anyways. Perhaps for the time being, it can be a tradeoff until dayz is able to implement the lowering of sidearms.

No that would not be the post apocalyptic mindset at all. People can easily become a bandit guilt free because they know the player will just respawn, abeit with lost gear and survival time. They didn't kill a member of their own species. One of the few surviving members of a dying species that desperately need to reform to bring the human race back from the brink of extinction. In Dayz, they know they don't have to rely on other players to survive because they can just survive on their own, and what better way to bide the time than to drop a few players. To hunt a few down. Survival has become a science, and not particularly challenging. The zombies can't touch you if you run. You're loaded on all the supplies you need to survive a week. The challenge becomes to stalk and hunt down human prey

Oh so that explains that poor shot sniper that I was stalking. Yeah I agree that there should be a server rejoin cooldown period. This seems too easy to exploit

A black and white vector traced image? That's 100% reddit's signature unoriginality. In regard to OP, it's dice rolls man. You've just been rather unlucky

This. Where I work, I'm trained to shoot if I see a weapon pointed either at me or someone else on sight. It's become reflexive. Add fatigue to having your weapon raised so you can't have it raised all the time. Also it really pains me to not be able to roll or dive to cover. Being stuck crouching walking when you bump face to face with someone sucks. I understand it's probably not possible to add those due to arma 2's movement system already in place though.

Yes that hurts more when you get shot wearing only kevlar, but not enough to throw you on the floor crying in pain. Especially if you're wearing a trauma plate with your kevlar, disappating the force throughout your entire chest region, severely lowering pain, and of course, trauma, from the bullet impact. I myself own a pair of standalone ar500 steel trauma plates level III rated capable of withstanding a .308 Winchester at 2780 ft/s round (which is the SAAMI designation for the higher pressure version of the 7.62x51 NATO) by itself without any kevlar.

I agree that ease of death should be one of the main appeals of this game. But personally I think that ease of death should come from the zombies first, and bandits second. Pretty much every single one of my deaths, bar the times I broke my legs, were from getting shot by bandits. As of this moment I have no fear of zombies, just other players that murder for sport. Simply have body armor offer protection against bullets and not zombies. Just because you've been shot, doesn't mean you'll be in crippling pain. There's videos and testimony of tons of people getting shot and not even knowing it. On youtube there's even a man who shoots himself while practicing holster drills. All he ends up doing is complain about it, and limp off to treat the wound.

It's not clear whether or not you're wearing armor. Visually it only shows you wearing a plate carrier. Whether or not you have a kevlar insert or trauma plates in there isn't shown so it's arguable that you start out unarmored. As for taking small caliber rounds and surviving, getting shot in the chest or even in the head isn't always a one shot kill. The man that founded Delta Force himself took a .50 caliber round to the stomach and lived. In fact one of the common complaints about the 5.56 rounds, even still prevailing now that they've switched to the 62 grain steel cores, is that they're not particularly lethal at certain ranges. Sometimes putting round after round into someone just wont drop them due to the size and speed of the round, and at certain ranges, these rounds fail to tumble, which is the effective cause of death with the small caliber rifle rounds.

You can use your mouse wheel

Personally I would love to see towns be more dense and larger. I didn't even know I was in Cherno the first few times I was there based on the description people gave me about the place. I really expected there to be more buildings, for it to be more dense, and I had some idea of multistoried building to building PVP combat based on what people were saying about it.

I started playing rather recklessly with new characters and I'm averaging about 2-3 a day, with one that lasted a few days before entering a glitched server that made me create a new character. I'm certainly curious about people who manage to die 30 times a day, how they have that much time on their hands and the persistance not to adapt. Perhaps these are the dreaded ax bandits people keep talking about.

Balancing zombies so that combat is equally as viable as sneaking and eluding them would definitely make people start killing them. Also more loot on zombies. Or collecting zombie bits. For zombie disguises.

~2 million survival attempts in 4 days? Something seems a bit off about that number.

Zombies don't provide much reason for combat. They can't touch you if you run, so you can just shake them off one way or another. You don't get anything for killing zombies except bumping up your zombie count. Even if you're all decked out on gear, you still don't feel inclined to fight zombies. Instead all that stuff is either saved for a scenario that's not going to happen, or for pvp.

I would like to know how these survival attempts and numbers have been gathered. Most populated servers I enter has the chat ticker going "player x was killed" repeatedly every minute. I don't know how they're getting themselves killed every minute but some players are just repeatedly dying after a very short amount of time. I've only died roughly twice by zombies. And those were because I broke my leg. the 6+ more times were from getting shot by hostile players. Zombies provide no threat compared to players as they can't even hit you if you run.

Definition of death match noun 1(in wrestling) a match in which many of the normal rules do not apply, typically leading to a more violent contest. 2(in computer gaming) a mode of play in which the aim is to kill the characters controlled by other players. Does this not describe the general attitude of experience players in Dayz?

After putting more thought into this, I believe the problem isn't so much that teamwork isn't promoted. It's that zombies right now serve as an annoyance rather than a challenge. They stay on your heels but they can't hit you. They'll follow you indefinitely if you let them. Combat against them's no fun. They move erratically and rarely directly at you and at high speeds, thus limiting combat to inside of buildings, when they're right on top of you, or the few occasions that they're running straight at you. Even still, it's just a better idea to simply sprint off as soon as you acquire zombie aggro than to face them in combat. Thus survival is still easy, but groups get separated due to lack of interest in banding for combat, and sneaking is awkward and more difficult in a group combined with the easier choice of just sprinting off when you're detected. Because zombie survival is easy, and groups are easily disrupted and rather pointless, and zombie combat is also not a good idea, all the excitement goes to PVP. IMO Zombie behavior needs to be completely redone first