bazbake

Bandit identifiers. Some survivors enjoy the possibility of being stalked by murderers. Bandits think it will ruin immersion. They also think it will break the game. Let me address those points in order. They'll still be able to hunt you. Maybe. Depends on how it's implemented. No. No. No no no no no no no no no no no no. NO! To elaborate on that last point...considering how powerful the weapons are in this game.... Bandits are KoS. Period. No matter what you do, they want to shoot you first and take your stuff. Survivors are not KoS. They won't shoot until you shoot. Bandits will always kill survivors unless they miss. Here's what happens when two players meet: [Example 1] Bandit meets Bandit = 50/50 chance of being shot or shooting first. Bandit meets Survivor = Bandit will shoot while survivor hesitates. Survivor finds Survivor = Survivors won't shoot. Survivors lose nothing. Survivors gain nothing. So 75% of the time a bandit meets another player, they will successfully take someone's stuff. Half of the time a survivor meets somebody, they get to live. You see where this is going. It's harder to survive as a survivor than it is to murder and rob people. The combination of ridiculously powerful guns and the inability to read people makes it so that bandits are more likely to take everything someone has than survivors are to walk away alive. Logic says that survivors will eventually give up and become bandits. Not only will their odds of not dying go up by 25%, but their odds of getting someone else's loot will go from 0% to 75%. It's going to happen. The only thing stopping a total conversion is time, new players who don't know any better, and the liberal, constant, and pervasive use of metagaming (using forums, chatrooms, ventrilo, mumble, walkthroughs, and bringing your friends along in order to circumvent the limits of the game.) The nature of the system is that bandits know exactly how it works. Don't let the impassioned pleas for game balance fool you, they know the game is broken. They're counting on it staying that way. Don't believe me? Well, what happens if bandits are identified? [Example 2] Bandit finds bandit = 50/50 chance of being shot or shooting first. Bandit meets survivor = 50/50 chance of being shot or shooting first. Survivor finds survivor = Survivors won't shoot. If bandits are identified, then survivors have a 75% chance of surviving encounters with other players and a 25% chance of getting someone's loot. Bandits have a 50% chance of looting someone and a 50% chance of being killed. To put this into perspective, what are the odds for a bandit in a system where everyone is a bandit? [Example 3] Bandit finds bandit = 50/50 chance of being shot or shooting first. 50/50 chance of getting loot. Exactly the same. If you're a bandit, there's no difference between a game full of nothing but bandits and a server where the bandits are identified as bandits. Bandits interested in PvP, who are looking for player on player combat and want to test themselves and reap the rewards of their murderous urges after triumphing over the weak will never notice the difference between a game where bandits are treated like bandits and a game where everyone is a bandit. It's the other ones that are terrified. The ones who shoot you in the face after you heal them. The ones who who shout friendly and then pump you full of lead. The players that don't want to be identified as bandits are the ones that would never survive a straight-up fight. They're the ones that could never play a game where the entire world sees them as they see the entire world. The very idea horrifies them and puts them in a panic. Oh, look, here they come now....

I got killed in the middle of nowhere. Had to recover my corpse. Two hours later after a marathon run I accidentally clicked on "hide body" I was so excited to find it again. Whoops. Luckily, I died in the same town as an ATV loaded with rifles, so that wasn't so bad. What was brutal was my attempt at vaulting onto a high step ten minutes later to check a house, phasing into the steps, and breaking both of my legs and dying because of a bug that sometimes makes it impossible to heal yourself if you break your legs while moving forward.

Tents and off the map vehicle storage mean this isn't really all that true anymore.

At the point he mentioned "RP elements" I decided he was trolling us all. My favorite comments from this thread, "Because this is a post-apocalyptic wasteland and it's realistic...that's why you should only team up with people on forums and interact with them on Skype because we know where all of the good loot is from online FAQs and maps...you know...realism." This game gets funnier and funnier.

You can change your character skin and name without respawning. So...all arguments about "realism" are nonsense. There's no such thing as realism when it comes to identifying other players in the game right now.

No min-maxing, munchkining, or math manipulation in order to get around the system. Just start playing, grab some loot, and survive. The environment should get more complex and elaborate, not the character creation screen.

It's not so much that solo players would be punished and team players would be rewarded. It's more that the current system for creating teams relies exclusively on forums and metagaming. And players are growing increasingly casual about this.

If you add character progression, you punish new players. It's one thing to force someone to play smarter each time. It's another to force people to play longer each time. Character progression makes this an RPG where you get better at things because the computer says so, not because you, as a player, got smarter or faster on the draw or more clever. Every multiplayer game is a game of King of the Hill. By having people who play longer get better skills, you increase the steepness of that hill. So the guys on the top can sit back and relax while the guys on the bottom keep sliding right off before they can even make an attempt to knock them off. This is not the way to go.

It worked in Mount and Blade because you're following a story with NPCs and characters and endgoals and save games. Not sure how it'll work in a game with permadeath where you're supposed to lose everything you have when you die.

Drink the pepsi, eat the pasta. Hoard the sardines and beans and coke.

... Uh...so it's supposed to be unfair now that the game is unfair in your favor? Good luck with that one. You know what makes the game hard? Losing all your stuff when you die. But right now, you can't even guarantee that.

This is a pretty cool system. And the people saying it "punishes" player behavior are really just bandits. What they really mean is it causes "consequences" for player behavior and they don't want risk, they just want reward. Currently, players can change their name and skin at will. This is a mechanic that favors exploitation unfairly. Could you imagine in the real world if every time you did something that would cause retaliation you could just change your name, face, fingerprints, and social security number? And then change it back at whim? This is how DayZ works. Having your tags reset after death is also nonsense. Because the person who did all of that is still there doing it. In fact, not only are they still carrying out the same activity, they probably have a tent full of stuff stashed somewhere so that if they die they can immediately re-equip and continue doing it. Until they make custom skins and names that are permanently attached to your character, until they get rid of tents and vehicle storage, and until death becomes permament and all of your actions are tied to that single life you have and nothing can change that, tagging people on sight within visual identification range and having it carry over after death is a really good idea.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/65631-slow-positive-health-regeneration/#entry632009

You'll die from starvation and blood loss from starvation in 85-100 minutes in this game. If you scaled blood regeneration to be on the same timeline as starvation, you would heal about 1 blood/second. So in that way, a blood regeneration-based health system would make more sense than healing yourself with food and would also have the effect of making zombie fights incredibly brutal. Of course, with weapon damage being BIG BOOM based instead of bleeding-focused, it favors first-shot gun combat even more than the current healing system. So an entire damage overhaul would need to be in place.

I'll just go out on a limb and guess that Rocket assumed that people who died would lose their stuff. So the idea of people dying 10 times and not losing anything never occurred to him. I know, I know, he really should have focused on making the game easier for people instead of that whole "if you die, you start over" nonsense, but it's too late now. We're down the rabbit hole. Next thing you know he's going to get rid of tents and reinstate permadeath to the game. And then people will actually have to keep looking for loot instead of just serverhopping, hoarding, and then stashing it all.

You can't fight back. Bandits can change their name and skins. The only way to actually fight back against bandits without them being able to disconnect and completely become new people is to make sure they can't change their skins to look innocent. That way you can still play the way you want to without being able to cheat by becoming an invisible chameleon master of disguise. Also: "Don't punish playstyles?" Are you serious? I want to play as an invincible walking tank, but the game code doesn't recognize this. My playstyle is being punished! I want to be able to fly around like Superman and cause sonic booms, but the game code doesn't recognize this. My playstyle is being punished! I don't want to eat out of cans or kill animals, but all the game gives me is beans, game, and livestock! My playstyle is being punished! I don't want the risk of losing everything I own so I store it in tents and alt+F4 to get out of firefights. Now they want to take that away from me! My playstyle is being punished! How dare you punish my playstyle! PLAYSTYLE PLAYSTYLE PLAYSTYLE! P.S., bandit skins are coming back.

This is a realistic zombie simulator! Hold on, BRB, let me check my GameFAQs walkthrough for the nearest deerblind and put a post on the dayzforums requesting a medic to take care of this broken leg. Oh shit, that guy I shot at and saw me run away is coming. Let me change my name and skin so he won't recognize me. Oh, whoops, I bled out. But at least I still have those assault rifles in my tent.

@Acix Sniper rifles are the deadliest weapons in the game with the longest range and pinpoint accuracy. But...making players have to actually deal with the consequences of choosing the weapon would be too much....? (No wonder the weapons in this game are so ridiculous.)

They don't want your loot. They want your life. DayZ's not a zombie survival simulator, it's a murder simulator. Minus the whole "disguise yourself, avoid witnesses, stalk your target" part. More like a "shoot random people you see on the street and disappear magically" simulator.

Surviving is easier if you're a bandit than if you're a survivor. Partly because guns guns kill so quickly at close range. If two equally-outfitted and matched players meet in close quarters and one is a bandit... Bandit sees other bandit first. Shoots. Gets other bandit's loot. Other bandit sees bandit first. Bandit gets shot. Loses all their loot. Bandit sees Survivor first. Shoots. Gets survivor's loot. Survivor sees other Bandit first. Bandit shoots first because survivors don't shoot first. Gets survivor's loot. If a survivor meets another equally-equipped and matched player in close quarters... Survivor sees other bandit first. Bandit shoots. Survivor dies. Bandit sees survivor first. Bandit shoots. Survivor dies. Survivor sees other survivor first. Survivor survives. No one gets extra loot. Other survivor sees survivor first. Survivor survives. No one gets extra loot. So if you play as a bandit, one in four possible encounters are death, three in four are extra loot. If you play as a survivor, half of your encounters end in death, none of them end in loot. Playing as a bandit is the easiest way to play the game. So if you're asking if there is any stone-cold logical reason to not be a murderer, the answer is no. You can't even get a reputation as a murderer in this game because you can just change your name and your skin whenever you want making it impossible for anyone to ever recognize you for any action you've taken in the game. On the other hand, there is a sense of satisfaction in knowing that you're a hard-ass motherfucker willing to take risks for the greater good. So there's that...if you're into that sort of thing.

Almost a month of playing and murder free. I did scare someone the other day in Elektro. He ran into the firestation with a pistol and I was crouched with my gun pointed at the door. He ran around in circles for about thirty seconds before finally running back out. Pretty rude. He didn't even say hello.

One time i used the crowbar it looked like a hatchet...

There's an entire thread on the subject full of unadulterated bandit rage over on the general discussion board.

How's that going to work? Bandits can just change their faces and their names. Witness: "Yo, I saw this Caucasian-looking dude with a neckbeard and orange shades named NoobHunter sniping newbies on the shore." HeavyKane: "I'll go hunt him down." Ten minutes later... NoobHunter: "Oh, shit, here comes the law." D-con, rename, reskin, reconnect. HeavyKane: "Have you seen any Caucasian avatars named NoobHunter?" NoobHelper: "You know...nope. And if you're thinking I am that bandit, you are clearly wrong, as I am clearly an Arab-looking guy with horn-rimmed shades who is not named NoobHunter." HeavyKane: "Carry on, then." EDIT: Actually, bandit skins are coming back, so that might actually work. You might want to round up a posse, though, because PvP is about to get a hell of a lot more entertaining.

So your tent gets raided once a month. Do you regularly survive longer than a month? If not, then you're exploiting a hole in the whole concept of permadeath and showing that this game really isn't about survival anymore, it's about metagaming loopholes so you don't ever have to suffer the consequences of your actions or fear actual loss. By going on to try and reinforce that loophole by designing a game mechanic to protect the few dangers to our current parachute/safety net/extra lives just seems...small. It's like cliff diving. With a parachute. And then strapping rocket boosters to the parachute just in case the parachute doesn't open fast enough. That's what this game is headed toward, and you're encouraging it because not only can you not conceive of ever having to start over from scratch when you die. You think that finding a tent should mean definitively that you never have to do so.