andyfuji

Somewhat agreeing, I can easily hit a running target at over 800m with the Lee Enfield. Mind you the Lee Enfield is unscoped; I shouldn't be able to kill something from nearly a kilometer away, while standing, without a scope. Bullet cones would be pretty bullshit, but a "suppression" effect that causes your weapon to shake if being shot at or chased by a zombie would be nice. After all, not everyone in the world is a trained marksman, nor is everyone as cool as an ice cube in the heat of a gunfight.

I used to play on TAW's Wasteland Sandbox server, and it was a helluva lot funner. Strangely the game mechanics were near identical to DayZ; weapons and supplies are strew about the map and such. But even though no one was explicitly told to, people teamed up and worked together. People built towns and forts from scavenged materials, and those players who decided to murder and rob others were deemed outcasts. Hell, there were often clear cut factions and most of the time passing a lone rival on the road didn't lead to someone getting shot. DayZ, it seems to me, has brought in the bandits on it's own accord. Everyone I know who regularly played Arma before DayZ came shuns the mod for the rampant deathmatching. Once everyone jumped on the bandwagon and bought Arma solely for DayZ, in came the riff-raff and their jumpy trigger fingers. I honestly don't think it's the fault of DayZ or it's developers. People just come in with the mindset that everything that moves is something that absolutely positively needs to die. Unhook your IV-drips full of Pop Rocks and calm the fuck down.

Just because you can't physically see or hear a person doesn't make them any less real. There's a clear cut difference between games like GTA and games like DayZ that people fail to realize. We fail to realize that our opponents in a multiplayer game are real people, not AI constructs designed to be abused.

I read this, and the post itself made me somewhat sick; not because of anything Rocket said, but how his idea backfired. I downloaded DayZ because I wanted to play something like he described. I wanted to play something that forced me to think about everything I believed and throw it away. I wanted to be angry at the game. I wanted the game to feel like hell; a true psychological horror. But actually playing the game, I felt alone. I played the game for roughly 12 hours over the course of a weekend, trying to find some kind of realization in it, and eventually it came. And this realization was of the worst kind. Over that 12 hour playthrough, I was murdered more times than I can count; cold blood, without a conscience. Each time a different hunter, but the result was always the same. They didn't say a word, they just held the gun to my forehead as I tried offer them a can of beans. I felt alone because I wanted to help people. I felt like an outcast because I was the one with a conscience. Eventually I killed someone, and it was terrible. I felt physically sick and I never want to do it ever again. I stopped carrying around guns because I didn't want anyone to feel like they were forced to shoot me, and I didn't want to be forced to shoot anyone. There were no gun-barrels pointed at them, no brandished axes. I was less than a threat and I handed out free supplies like I was the goddamn post-apocalypse salvation army. And nearly every person I handed a free can of beans shot me in the back. I felt like I was a fucking sociopath because I didn't enjoy murdering people. The game never made me angry, it just made me depressed and afraid. I'm horrified at what DayZ has shown me about society's morals. We have no empathy. We're all faceless individuals with loaded guns, ready to blow away our faceless friends; laughing as they bleed out. We realize that none of our actions have consequences, and take advantage of it. We realize people are replaceable because everyone's the same. We are armchair warlords laughing as we rape and pillage our own cities. You can very well argue that it's just a game, but what we fail to realize is other people play the game too. No one plays CoD or TF2 and wins six games in a row then lets the other team win one; just to make them feel like they aren't complete shit. We murder them, we teabag them, and we scream at them through the microphone about how completely shit they are. I feel ashamed to admit to people that I play video games because I know what they will think of me because of it. The only way to "fix" the game is to give it clear goals. If you let people do whatever they want, they will just end up killing each other.

I tried climbing to the top of a smoke stack at the Elektrozavodsk power plant. Upon reaching the top, my legs snapped and I was rocketed away from the tower; died from the fall.

Now, I've heard all the horror stories about Chernogorsk. Everyone knows there be monsters in Chernogorsk, but up until this point every living thing I've met has either tried to eat my brains or scoop them out with a bullet. There be monsters everywhere apparently, so I figured getting shot at in a new place would spice things up. Even if I did happen to catch a bullet, at least the walk would have been nice. So I made my way to the forbidden city, slowly but surely. I crossed the last hill before the city and heard a man shouting at me from some abandoned construction site. I cautiously came to meet him. Expecting a surprise party featuring bullet cake, I was shocked that he seemed to be more afraid of my hatchet than I was of his automatic rifle, so I stayed around and camped out a bit, eating miscellaneous food that had been strewn about on the floor (how sanitary.) I began to feel adventurous and started a journey into the heart of Chernogorsk. The man offered to escort me there, but I insisted it was best only one of us waltzed into a death trap. We went our separate ways, him back toward Elektrozavodsk, where I had came from. The city was eerily quiet, I scrounged around a while and found my favorite rifle and pistol; the Lee Enfield and 1911. I realize they aren't the greatest guns, but I love their look and feel. Apart from the odd shambler the town was dead. I walked into town with my gun drawn, ready to vanquish wrong-doers, but found there weren't any wrong-doers to slay. I was rather disappointed. I found a magazine that fit the rifle of the man I had met earlier and made my way back to the construction site on the off chance he was headed back himself. He never returned, so I decided to take up his role; greeting survivors on their journey to Chernogorsk. I felt the concrete building he had been stationed too open for my comfort, so I made my way up to the grain silo north of town. I didn't trust greeting new comers in person so I decided shooting the zombies which were inevitably chasing them into the city was the next best thing. I saw a woman running across a bridge accompanied by a trail of hungry looking friends. I picked off her companions, but perhaps she thought I was shooting at her (and magically hit everyone but her.) She ran away back toward where she had came. I was a bit frustrated with the situation, but perhaps keeping people away from the city was better than welcoming them in. Shortly after, a man came running toward town with a similar bunch of friends. Dispatching them, I saw the man run to the construction site for cover from the gunfire. He didn't run away, so I greeted him with a salute. He greeted me with a bullet. A poorly aimed bullet. I tossed a smoke grenade off the tower in hopes he would take it as a sign of surrender, but he only fired more bullets. Reluctantly, I responded with a bullet of my own and he fell. I attempted to suppress my guilt of having killed a fellow survivor by insisting he was a bandit with ambitions to murder me. Seeing no more people were traveling among the road in, I decided I would go relieve the poor fellow of his supplies. I made my way back to the construction site and found the man I had murdered was the same who greeted me upon entering the town. It was depressing, and I felt somewhat sick. I waited around for someone to either shoot me or finally accept my help. A new traveler happened by; empty-handed and wounded. My guns weren't being very helpful, so I offered them to the guy. He stayed silent, and stared at me from the ground beneath the building. Unsettlingly, the guy only moved when he thought I wasn't looking. Perhaps he was secretly plotting to sneak up and axe me in the back, maybe not. He stared at me for another minute or so, then dragged his broken legs back into the forest. No one has come to Chernogorsk since.